A Strange Encounter

I.

“Log?” asked Captain Dekk.

“It’s up to date,” his copilot, Sten, replied.

“Good.” Dekk looked out of the massive front window of his command ship. It was a small ship, but quite effective for space travel. Everyone recognized it for its brilliant red coloration and its marking on the side proudly bearing the national flag, along with the command star and the symbol of the International Space Station.

Sten started reading aloud. “Left the Space Station two days ago, at 3:00, full fuel and supplied with food enough to last us eight days. Our mission was to investigate the heat readings closer to the sun in our own system: coordinates 370, 1040, 27 in standard units.

’Yesterday, 8:00: Narrowing in on heat readings. Our scopes recognize the readings are being produced by a ship, not unlike our own. Fuel at 95% and food still plentiful.

’Today, 8:00: Within 300 units of heat readings, scopes identified life forms. Identified ship is of a different make then our own. Expected approach at 10:00 today. Fuel at 88%, food supplies about 3/4 left.”

“Excellent,” Captain Dekk said. “And now it is 9:00, and the ship can be seen with visual scopes. Life forms have been confirmed. And they’re not like us. They’re aliens.” He adjusted some dials on the control board in front of him. “I do hope they are not aggressive. A space war is the last thing we need, our government is already unstable from the last combat.”

“And we are approaching a planet,” Sten commented. “Not reddish or grayish, and not gaseous, as most exterior planets are, but blue. I am detecting water in the liquid state on the planets’ surface.”

“Well, we won’t land on the planet. We were assigned only to investigate the ship.”

“Right.”

Sten went over to the computer screen, where it showed their ship’s screen relative to the other ship. He noticed something different.

“Captain, you said it would take us about an hour to reach the ship?”

“Yes.”

“Were almost halfway there, in ten minutes.”

Dekk spun his chair around and looked at the screen.

“You’re right! And we’re still traveling the same speed. That can only mean one thing.”

“What?”

“The ship is coming to us!”

II.

Commander Jen piloted his ship at near maximum speed towards the foreign object. His ship, one of the guards for the International Space Station, was painted blue, and was a sleek, large ship, designed for utility, speed, and firepower.

Jen’s copilot, Tel, walked into the bridge room. “How close are we?” He asked the commander.

“Pretty close. And the unidentified object is coming towards us, which speeds things up a bit.” He adjusted the scope and the engine dial, and he also pushed the button that warmed up the main cannons. “I’m detecting life forms. If they’re friendly, we can try to communicate, maybe capture them for analysis, and if they’re hostile, we’ll fry them off the map.” He patted the weapons board.

They waited in silence, watching the ships draw closer to each other on the screen.

"I hope they aren't wanting to fight us," Tel said. "However superior our weaponry is, since we rebelled, we're still too small to fight off major threats."

"Well, we do have our own colony," Jen replied. "But perhaps if we were fighting someone that was a threat to our home planet as well, they would temporarily truce with us until we fought them off."

“Are we going to try to board the ship?” Tel abruptly changed the subject.

“If they’ll let us. Prepare the harpoons and alert our men for possible action.”

Tel went quickly out of the room. Just then, Jen saw a light flashing on the receiver. He picked it up.

He heard an indecipherable combination of vibrations and clicks. Although it seemed orderly, there was no telling what it said, or even if it was a message at all.

“Tel! Come quick!” he beckoned.

Tel came running back into the room. “What is it?”

“That’s my question to you,” Jen said, and handed over the receiver.

Tel listened intently. “I can’t make anything out of it,” he finally said.

“Maybe the aliens are trying to contact us. We should try to talk back to them.”

“I doubt it will help,” answered Tel, but even so he talked through the receiver:

“Hello? We wish to make contact. If you can understand us, try to return an answer.”

There was a long pause. Then an answer was returned, fuzzy and warped:

“Hello? We…contact. Understand…we make answer.”

“What can it mean?” Tel exclaimed. They understand our language?”

Tel spoke again: “We wish only to discover your intentions. We do not mean to harm you.”

A voice spoke back, a little clearer: “We return discover…intentions. Do not…harm us.”

“It doesn’t make sense!” Tel exclaimed.

A light flashed on the ceiling. “We’re approaching the ship. Launch the harpoons,” Jen told Tel.

“But…”

“Just do it!”

Tel launched the harpoons, which floated swiftly through space for about a mile, and attached to the other ship. Jen’s ship swung around, and the two ships were locked in a gentle spinning motion as they both orbited the planet.

“I’m receiving a life scan,” Jen said. “It will take a few minutes, but we can then have an analysis of the aliens’ body structure.”

A voice was heard over the receiver: “You…harm us.”

“No,” Tel replied. “We are attaching the ships so that we will not float away. We will not board your ship, unless you let us or if we have to.”

“Do not attaching…us. You harm board…let us away.”

“Jen!” Tel cried. “They understand our language! They’re copying every word that I'm saying!”

“Just a minute,” Jen answered. “The life readings almost done.” And then he leaped back from his chair and cried, “Save us!”

On the screen was a creature of horrific structure. It’s body was a solid, black orb, about two feet in diameter, and it had almost a hundred glowing green tentacles protruding from it’s body on all sides! It used these tentacles to rotate, to stand, to control the ship, and to move around.

“Aliens! I never expected them to look like this! How can they survive? It looks like an enormous bacteria!”

“What do we do?” Tel asked.

“Keep talking,” Jen replied. “Perhaps if we can keep them calm, we can reel in the harpoons and capture them.”

“But…”

“Do it!”

Tel said over the speaker: “Please stay calm. We will not harm you.”

“Please…stay away. You board…we harm.”

So the deadly debate continued, as the two ships danced around each other, attached only by three thin cables, orbiting the massive blue planet.

III.

“I’m beginning to understand the essence of their language,” Captain Dekk said coolly. “Not the words, of course, but I can understand what they mean. The same way I can understand you without actually being next to you. Mental communication.”

“I think they mean to hurt us,” Sten said nervously.

The voice from the other ship spoke again. Sten and Dekk could not understand the words, but this is what they said:

“If you harm us, we will harm you.”

“I think they mean to return harm if we harm them,” Dekk said. “I’ll keep talking. You load the gun. It’s time to go on the offensive.”

Dekk replied, with some difficulty: “If…you board, we harm you. Do not attaching. Do not attaching.”

“I think I told them to back off,” Captain Dekk said. “Sten, fire the blaster, but don’t hit the ship.”

A pale blue streak of laser shot past the blue ship on the scanner.

Quickly the voice spoke: “We will detach the harpoons if you come with us. Otherwise: we attack.”

From the blue ship to the red ship came a burst of fire and a rain of metal objects. Dekk’s ship vibrated with the impact.

“No,” Dekk replied to the voice. “Sten, fire at the ship.”

The blue bolt hit the ship with deadly accuracy, causing the whole ship to be shocked with electric power. Soon after, the harpoons detached.

“We not…come,” Dekk said. “If you not go, we…attack.”

Dekk could only use the words he heard them use, but he seemed to make his point clear. The voice spoke again:

“We will go back to our planet if you go back to yours. We will not harm you.”

“Wait… you mean they actually live on the planet?” Dekk asked Sten.

“It looks like it,” Sten replied. “Quick, answer them.”

Dekk replied to the voice: “We go back. We not harm. You go. Let us go.”

“Good,” the voice replied. “And if you come back, you will die. We have more ships. We do not live on the planet. We live in a space station above the planet. We are a rebellion. But if we call the planet for more ships, they will truce with us until you are destroyed.”

“We have…more ships,” Dekk replied. “We go.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

The ships sped away from each other into the empty darkness, the blue ship, towards their planet, the red ship, towards their space station.

“That was close!” Dekk said. “I’m surprised we didn’t start a war on the spot!” He adjusted one of the dials with a green tentacle.

“But it explains a lot,” Sten added. “We haven’t had an encounter with other aliens because we have been looking in the wrong place! The blue ship people- they have been looking for us among other planets, because that is where they live. How do they survive in such powerful gravity?”

“And we have been looking for them among the asteroids all this time! We should have known!”

“But I’m glad it’s over, and that no harm came of it,” Sten said. “What course shall we set?”

“Back to our International Space Station, near asteroid 11657K.”

“Very well.”

“By the way, did we ever get a reading on the aliens’ body structure?” Captain Dekk asked.

“As a matter of fact, we did. I’ll project it on the main screen.”

Dekk leaped out of his chair. “Save us!”

On the screen was an alien of horrific structure. The whole alien was a brownish hue. It had five jointed appendages, two sets sticking down, one of the sets touching the ground, while the other set dangled in the air, and a round fifth appendage sticking straight up in the air, with several holes and knobs on it, and a fluffy object on the top. The lower four appendages had five knobs each protruding out of the ends.

“Aliens! I never expected them to look like this!” Dekk cried.

“It’s so strange! How could they survive?” Sten added. “Without tentacles, how do they absorb food, like we do? How do they even move around? They must by very clumsy creatures.”

But after Dekk got over the shock, he decided it would be best to bring the information to the government of his asteroid colony as soon as possible, so he altered his course.

Humans would always be the aliens to him.