Project U.L.F. Read Online Free PDF Page B

had made little contribution to the rest of the evening’s proceedings.
     
    *    *    *    *    *
     
    The ceiling appeared distorted through the base of the glass as Mannheim drained the remainder of his brandy. He poured himself another before moving to his desk. He wondered what it was that Leonardson thought so important. Sitting in his chair, he flipped a small panel on one of the arms open and punched in his PIN number on the keypad revealed there. A pane of smoked glass rose up from a slat in his desk and a touch-sensitive keyboard appeared on the glass surface in front of him, shimmering into view as if it had just been hauled up through a great depth of water.
    He accessed his electronic mail account. The screen registered three messages. Leonardson’s, one from engineering, and a third from an address he did not recognize. Probably another reporter wanting an interview or permission to film.
    He opened the message from Leonardson. Almost immediately a life-sized holographic image of the man’s head appeared to his right. Mannheim started. Leonardson was daunting enough in the flesh, let alone as some computer-generated specter. He still wore the worried look that Mannheim had seen the previous evening and the grays of the holo-image gave him a sickly, pallid complexion. Mannheim guessed this recording was made shortly before or after the call he had received the previous evening.
    Leonardson spoke quickly and clearly. “Douglas, the information you are about to receive has been distributed as top-secret among senior staff here. The planet in question has been designated code black by my organization, which means we are the only people to know of it. You will be the only other person to have knowledge of it outside of the CSETI. This cannot be leaked. The details are too sensitive and would provoke too many questions. I suggest you erase the attached files once you have accessed them. The first is a copy of a message we received and the second charts our resulting course of action and its outcome.”
    Leonardson’s image disappeared. The message had been so abruptly terminated that Mannheim wondered if there might have originally been more.
    He accessed the second file and a second image appeared to replace Leonardson’s. It was the head of a young man, but the recording was of such poor quality that on occasion the image distorted and broke up. The accompanying hiss of static was interrupted only by fragments of garbled speech. “Mayday....deep space mining ship....failure....put down....two point...light years....Centari Red 603. Food....onth....Mayday. Help. Please.” The image broke up and vanished.
    Mannheim was still none the wiser as to how all this information was of importance to him. He was puzzled yet curious.
    The third file comprised a number of documents from the CSETI. Fortunately the distress message had contained some vital information. Centari Red 603 was a giant red star on the very boundary of charted space and there was only one deep space mining fleet reported beyond the Centari sector at that time. Assuming the mining ship had been forced to put down on its return then an investigative team would only need to travel directly from Centari Red 603 on a course which would eventually result in a rendezvous with the mining fleet, and somewhere between two and three light years beyond the star they would encounter the planet where the ship had been forced to land. It would take time but it was exactly what the CSETI did.
    The search was aided by the fact that the mining ship was constructed relatively recently and by law had to be fitted with a transmitting radio beacon. These beacons regularly transmitted a radio signal that was unique for that ship. Since their introduction they had proved invaluable in rapid identification and searches such as this one.
    The CSETI craft dispatched had found the mining ship but reported no trace of any of the crew even though there was still at