CHAPTER 5b
Aboard the Mother-Ship
Semjase– Today is your great day.
Meier – After all you have told me I feel the same way.
Semjase – You had to think about what would be expected. But now I must explain for this time, that you will have to keep silence about certain concerns. At a later time I will be able to allow you to tell about the experience. For that, I will leave out of the transmission of the report certain things of which you may not speak. But come now, first we make a journey through your solar system.
(We go to the ship and are lifted up inside by the transport beam, and only a few seconds after this the ship floats up high and I shoot from about 50 meters height some dia-pictures of the environment of the departure point. I take the pictures partly from straight above, and partly from the side. I can take these pictures still through the entrance hatch as we climb very slowly higher.
After shooting the pictures, Semjase closes the hatch, and within seconds the ship rushes up to several kilometers height without my noticing any pressure or any other change. Everything is just like I was standing on solid ground on the Earth. Different sudden alternations of the course produced no bodily effect, though I can see through the “windows” aboard that at different times we shoot along in the craziest movements, like a great pendulum.)
It was from those transmissions and subsequent discussions that we abstracted the part of this trip published in our preliminary report.
As soon as the trip got underway Meier busied himself examining in detail the special device the ETs had provided for his photographing efforts. “This viewing screen looks to me like clear glass, through which everything outside can be observed. Only I see that this whole viewing screen is very finely scanned [sharpened image), similar to [laser) scanned photographs. The size of the screen was about 50cm by 50cm, while the color-radiation device is installed inside the side of it and recessed, and thus I could not examine its inner workings.
Besides this device, there were many most different apparatus of all kinds all around the cockpit room, installed within a circular control console and in the walls. These strange appearing apparatus, which I had already seen on the first flight, quite evidently serve for the guiding and controlling of the beamship, while evidently so serving as well for exploration devices, distance meters, radiation control means and other things, and play an important role [in the operation of the flight machine].
All of the viewing and picture display screens differ basically from all other known to me apparatus of the same character, of Earth origin. All of the forms, symbols and figures in these screens were displayed in beautiful and often fantastic colors and arrays, and were displayed in depth, contrary to the known to me Earth display or picture screens, which in practice are only able to show displays of signs and pictures by fore ground [flat 2dimensional, no depth] images, while these screens here showed everything in vivid 3-dimensional effect, like they were materially real, and not only generated by impulses…) We must remember that this was all taking place in 1975, before we had multi-color liquid crystal displays and 3-dimensional television.
Meier’s first impressions of the huge mother-ship including their approach and entrance into it through an opened port, the fantastically large parking bay and the many hundreds of other ships seen, some being worked by part mechanical/part organic humanlike creatures evidently used in labor operations, the transparent metal walls, the floating shuttle transport cars used inside the huge sphere, etc., were all described in the preliminary report, up through the introduction to Semjase’s father. They are now enroute to the “transmit position“, which Ptaah says will take about 30 minutes of our time.
Ptaah and Semjase turn themselves to the instruments at a horse-shoe shaped formation. Small light bodies illuminate and a dark picture screen comes alive. Strange forms and symbols appear on it. Other imaging displays are active. Then Meier hears a tone, a very soft and soothing singing of metal. He looked up at the transparent cupola and saw the scene wash away in a whitish milky veil. This only lasted a very short moment, and suddenly he could see stars again. He felt great tranquility inside him. Then he heard Semjase’s voice, and wondered about this as Ptaah had asked for silence. He wondered if something had gone wrong to delay the “transmission“? It had already been acclished for the first hyperleap of a number that they would undertake in the next few hours.
Before the Great-Spacer reached its transmit position, Semjase had sent one of the robotoid creatures back to her beamship in the hangar bay to bring the special imaging device to the control room for Meier to use in an effort to take pictures outside the ship. we now turned to him here and suggested he try.
Semjase – If you want, you can try some photographs here, but whether they will succeed I can not estimate. By regret we do not know whether Earth cameras can take pictures through the cupola. But this we will know after you have developed your films. If you like, we can use the equipment brought from my beamship.
Meier – – I will be thankful for the instrument, Semjase, for with that it certainly will succeed. But what is the matter? Is there no success with the transmission?…
Semjase – Haven’t you noticed?
Meier– I have, but I can’t explain……
Semjase – Then you need only look out the cupola into space; now what do you see there?
Meier– Girl, there are completely other formations of stars than I know from Earth. of course I know only a few by sight, but I see none that I can recognize. Why is that?
Semjase – we have made the first hyperleap.
Meier– This — man alive, dear, from that!… where are we now then?
Semjase – You are around 500 light-years from your homeworld……. There – look there above, that formation of stars there, that is our homeworld, these are the Pleiades. We are only 211 million kilometers from the nearest star. Unfortunately, we cannot arrive closer, because we need a safe distance to be able to transmit again. Perhaps you can succeed nevertheless in getting some pictures with the apparatus, which has already been brought.
(Coming from somewhere, an android appears, bringing the photographic device. Very cleverly it assembles it inside a frame and places it in order. Suddenly the thing speaks to me, and once more I am flattered although I understand not a word. Semjase quickly enlightens me).
Semjase – It wishes you a good success.
Meier – But that is impossible. Can this thing think and act independently? That would be crazy!
Ptaah – But nevertheless it does.
Semjase – Its whole bodily construction is half organic, and its brain chemical.
Ptaah – It is real, and highly developed. You will understand this better after a short time when it is More normal (for you). It is only the newness that makes it strange. But take care now about the photos, because the next leap is being prepared…