PROLOGUE
How did we end up on a planet so far from home? The short answer is that when our missions were completed, we knew far too much about Earth’s near term future to be allowed to return. The Defender understood that if we were tempted to share our knowledge of what was to come…it could alter what had to be. So, by mutual agreement, we were marooned here.
We have been asked to give a detailed historical record of our lives. Here is our tale.
**
YURI ALCOV
As my graduation from Yale was nearly at hand, our family doctor gave me my first annual physical. My brain scan revealed what most of the male members of our family knew all too well: a non-malignant, inoperable tumor in the center of the brain. Very few of us on my father’s side of the family ever lived beyond the age of 60. Only my younger brother Peter had escaped this golf ball-sized tumor pressing on the language center of theTaylor family brains. When you are 22 years old, being told that you probably won’t live past the age of 60, doesn’t seem like too big of a deal. However, I was sure that if no cure had been found by the time I reached my fifties, I would feel quite differently.
I majored in linguistics and spoke fluently in over a dozen languages, including Russian, Farsi and Arabic. When the CIA found out that I had aced these language courses, particularly the ones spoken in countries that were potential threats to America, the alphabet agencies came calling. I was intrigued by the idea of becoming America’s James Bond, so I postponed my dream of dot com billions and joined the CIA.
My closest friend in college was Yuri, an exchange student from Russia. Taking as his role model Ensign Chekhov from the original “Star Trek” series, Yuri was determined to become the world’s leading astrophysicist. In his graduate work, Yuri worked 18-hour days using the Hubbel telescope and the latest technologies to chart every asteroid, meteor or comet he could locate. Yuri was able to correlate the path of every NEO (near earth object) in Earth’s vicinity. In the coming decade he would become the world’s leading authority on such matters. He championed the building of deflectors on Earth to protect the planet from meteors, comets, and asteroids. He repeatedly warned the world powers that NEOs would come dangerously close to the Earth in the years to come.
Unfortunately, Yuri’s suggestions, though sound and logical, were never acted upon. Military leaders in Russia, China and the United States all felt that asteroid deflectors could be turned into deadly satellite-killing weapons here on Earth, and could provoke a war if used for military purposes.
There was no denying that these fears were genuine. Cutting off communications and disrupting satellite-based wireless devices on Earth was indeed possible. Imagine the uproar of the masses if cell phones, televisions, and tablets all stopped working at once. The powers that be decided it was better to play Russian roulette with potential Earth-killers rather than risk imperiling our satellites, not to mention incurring the wrath of their wireless-loving people.
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