The eternity artifact, p.23
The Eternity Artifact, page 23
Lazar was a big man, huge in armor. Too big to be a physicist. He watched two techs slip equipment into the empty receptors on the bulkhead aft of the pilot’s section. “Fine.” He turned. “There’s enough space here, but will the receivers be able to handle the signals?”
“The equipment is completely compatible,” I assured him. “Let me link you to Major Hondohl in Comm. You can verify that.” Wasn’t about to argue on secondhand reassurance.
Lazar and Hondohl talked for less than five minutes. Polius looked annoyed in a pinch-faced way. Lazar was nodding at the end.
“Better than I’d hoped,” he said, after I broke the link for him.
“Could you explain what you hope to do?” I finally asked.
“We’ve begun to detect various energy emissions,” Lazar began, “but the angle and composition of the confinement basin effectively block any monitoring except on the lake’s surface itself. The emissions seem to be intermittent, or they’re moving, and we don’t have enough equipment to cover the lake in order to monitor what’s happening…”
“And the ice beneath is melting fast enough that you don’t want to risk it, either?”
“That won’t happen. There has to be an equilibrium reached because the surface temperature is so low and the radiating area so large that it can’t melt all the way to the surface. We’re more limited by the lack of enough remotes to cover the surface. By flying higher above the lake, we can obtain the data simultaneously in real time…”
Understood that part, but still wondered about his “equilibrium.” Seemed to me that what the ancient aliens had done didn’t fit a lot of expectations, scientific or otherwise.
“How high do you want the shuttle?”
“We’d like to try a thousand meters, then go higher, if we need to.”
With the power of the shuttle, a thousand meters AGL was almost on the deck. “That will limit the time we have.”
“Can you hover over the lake at that height?” That was Polius.
“For maybe a quarter stan before I burned out the AG drives, and we went straight down.”
“Flitters can hover.”
Ignored the exasperation in her voice. “Only in an atmosphere, and that’s not here. There, they can use diverters. That gives lift because they’re acting against atmosphere.” That was a gross oversimplification, and not really correct, but I didn’t care. The basic point was the same. You couldn’t hover for long without burning lots of power, and the less atmosphere and the more gravs, the faster you burned it.
Lazar smiled faintly. He knew I’d oversimplified, but he wasn’t saying anything.
Polius turned to him. “Cleon… is she… is that right?”
“Lieutenant Chang may be slightly conservative. I would judge that she might be able to hold position over the lake for so long as seventeen and a half minutes before all systems failed.”
Polius missed the glint in his eyes. I didn’t.
“How slowly can you go?” demanded the geologist.
I linked to the shuttle system for the calculations. My own estimate had been close, but I’d wanted the backup. “It’s a power trade-off. At a thousand meters AGL, the shuttle’s limited to roughly two hours at max power in this grav field before the heat dissipaters—”
“The temperature out there is close to absolute zero, and you can’t dissipate heat?”
“Not inside the shuttle.”
Clear that Polius had trouble understanding trade-offs. Greater heat dissipation meant either less endurance in deep space or even greater systems complexity. Complexity is the enemy of effectiveness and survivability in space.
“What about two thousand meters?” asked Lazar.
“You’ll get another thirty to forty minutes. Either way, we’ll have to return to the Magellan before I can set you back down on Danann.”
“Power constraints?” asked Lazar.
“Exactly.”
“You mean we have to go back to the ship?”
“Only for fusactor mass.”
“But…” Lazar was frowning.
“We’re getting the water from the surface, as ice, but it has to be melted and purified.” Purification wasn’t absolutely necessary in emergency situations, but I didn’t want the shuttle sidelined for feed-line cleaning and repairs just to accommodate a pouty geologist—and there was always the possibility of power surges with impure mass. Not something I wanted to experience in dealing with a higher-grav planet without an atmosphere.
“We’ll try two thousand meters, then,” Lazar stated.
Polius glared. Kept her mouth shut, though. Physicist ignored her. I would have, too.
They settled into the couches mounted before the equipment boards. I went back to the controls and began the liftoff checklist.
Navigator Control, this is Sherpa Tigress, commencing mission liftoff this time.
Stet, Tigress.
Couldn’t tell if Morgan was pleased, worried, indifferent.
While I circled the shuttle over the frozen surface of the lake, I used the screens to catch and record images— all through temperature differentials. Still pitch-black below. Images had to be enhanced, and enlarged. Mostly recorded, but occasionally even took a look. Saw one gout of steam shoot up through a crack in the ice—so thin that it quick-froze and fell like ice dust.
Also monitored the internal comm between Polius and Lazar.
“… temperatures at the bottom more than four hundred Kelvins…”
“… readings… circular pattern… ovals again…”
“… look at that! That plume is almost a hundred meters high…”
I kept a close eye on the fusactor and the AG drives. The slightest excess heat trend, and we were headed to orbit and the Magellan.
Surface of the ice was covered with humps and small peaks. They hadn’t been there two days before. Whatever was under the lake was something different. No radioactives I knew lasted billions of years without significant decay. No device humans built would create that much heat that soon, especially not after even a century of disuse. Danann had been abandoned billions of years back.
Seeing those gouts of superheated steam turning into icefalls sent chills down my back, insulated armor or not.
46 FITZHUGH
Despite the lack of artifacts and my inability even to suggest where such might be found, the three days I had spent on Danann had been more than worth the exhaustion and inconvenience. No matter what Dr. Taube and some of those who had demurred from visiting the megaplex said, seeing and walking through a city—even an alien city—imparted a feel that no amount of statistics and maps could have conveyed. Rational and considered analyses may be the coin of the realm of academia, but such analyses are worthless unless backed by intuition grounded in experience.
In the days following my return, I stepped up my exercise program and tried to find greater meaning in the positioning of the Danannian structures.
On twoday, I had spent the morning deep in analyzing ratios and arcs… and getting results, but not ones that contributed much to my understanding of the Danannian megaplex, save that there seemed to be a relationship between the length of each canal and the angular value of the arc formed. So engrossed had I been in calculations that doubtless would heterize nothing that I was more than slightly tardy in reaching the mess.
For whatever reason, the captain was only settling herself at her table as I hastened into the mess. While Special Deputy Minister Allerde was already seated, two chairs to the captain’s left, the executive officer was not present, nor was Commander Morgan, but Major Tepper and a number of the pilots were seated at the table closest to the captain’s table. Lieutenant Chang glanced in my direction, then looked away quickly. Had I offended her in some untoward fashion? I hoped not. For all her terseness, and despite her considerable pulchritude, behind both lay a mind of considerable power and depth, and I would have liked to talk with her far more.
Yet… how could I broach the diffidence she cultivated? One could not say, even indirectly, “I believe you have a beautiful mind, and I would appreciate the chance to know you in greater depth,” without being instantly categorized as lupine in character and lecherous in intent.
There was a space at the table adjoining the one occupied by the pilots, and I eased into a seat across from Chendor Barna, the almost reclusive artist, and beside Bryanna Nomura. As the expeditions cryptographer, Bryanna’s utility heretofore had been as marginal as my own. “Good evening.”
“And to you, Liam.” She smiled.
“I fear we represent a convention of the underutilized…”
“Perhaps.” She took a sip of ersatz merlot. “I have been thinking. About linguistics and codes. We need them, but would the Danannians?”
I passed on imbibing the merlot, ignoring the carafe to my right and sipping plain water instead. “That’s an old argument. Given our physiological evolution and limitations, language is a necessity if we wish to function above the most basic level of hunter-gatherers. Therefore, we assume that language, especially a written language, would be a necessity for all species, including ancient aliens.”
“Could the megaplex have been a hive, and could the Danannians have been the ultimate social insect species? All this similarity suggests great regularity, and to me, that suggests a culture more like intelligent social insects…” She paused, tilting her head, her black eyes intent upon me.
“That would appear to be the initial and obvious conclusion, and one borne out by our own experience, but I would question the validity of an assumptive determination based on unconscious application of anthropic principles.”
“An explanation might help, Professor.”
Restraining the urge to comment upon Bryanna’s lack of perspicacity and unfamiliarity with the richness and depth of language, I forced a smile. “We might do better by taking into account ser Barna’s disciplines, and regard the structures and dwellings below as blank canvases or untouched light matrices.”
“Their apparent emptiness does suggest something like that,” Barna replied.
“The physicists have determined that the walls and floors and ceilings of the structures are composed of an anomalous composite that can extrude itself into any shape. The exact mechanics and physics of this technology have not yet been discerned, but the fact that it existed suggests a very different social structure. I would submit that decor and decoration rested upon the creative ability of the individual inhabitant—and that the shapes, even the colors, of the basic furnishings and accessories were molded by and to the will of whoever lived in each set of quarters.”
Both Bryanna and Chendor nodded.
“Initial indications are that they also possessed devices—built into each unit—that resembled nanetic processors that could provide such items as clothing, food, bedding, and the like. This suggests that wealth—if you will—or power—was based on the ability of the individual to create and conceptualize, and not upon the ability— as in our societies—to manipulate the physical elements of survival in order to create a position of superiority…”
“Not all human societies based power on that—”
“Or those that use the illusory promise of rewards in a hereafter that has never been proved to exist by any scientific test or experimental methods ever developed over more than five millennia,” I added quickly.
Two stewards appeared from the kitchen area, each in the white garb so traditional in military vessels and so impractical for all its tradition. They glided toward the captain’s table. Nearing it, they turned, and in almost measured cadence, each moved toward a different end of the longer rectangular table, each carrying a basket heaped with bread. Both used both hands and arms under the pseudowicker baskets.
Bread shouldn’t have been near that heavy. Ancient alarms went off, and the chair where I’d been seated went flying back as I took three steps, trying to keep my body level.
“What…”
The steward turning toward the head of the captain’s table lowered the too-heavy bread basket slightly. My aim was off slightly, and my shoulder hit the outside of his right shoulder blade, an effort useless except to throw off the aim of the neural disruptor concealed by the basket.
Lieutenant Chang—it had to be her, the only blonde at the pilots’ table—was moving before any of the others.
Thrumm! The ugly whine from the weapon of the other steward filled the mess. Someone yelled, and others screamed.
The steward I’d struck tried to bring up the disruptor— and that was a mistake. My elbow crushed his throat. He turned, still trying to bring the weapon to bear. A spray of neural damage slammed across the table where some of the pilots were sitting. Two went down—I thought, but wasn’t looking for that.
I broke the arm holding the disruptor, and the heavy weapon hit the floor with a clunk. His face was turning red, and he kept struggling—deep-conditioning against pain. I levered him to the floor and snapped his good arm out of the socket, then slammed my boot-heel where it should stop his heart.
The second steward had been staggered by a platter thrown into his face, but stepped back, his face totally immobile, and raised his weapon once more, aiming all too deliberately, not toward the captain’s table, but toward the pilots. People were moving, but most all too slowly, as if they could not believe that such an occurrence might befall them.
Chang had tried to reach the surviving steward, but one of the other officers had bolted and knocked her sideways momentarily. Lerrys was behind her, but he’d been blocked as well by someone trying to escape.
The remaining suicider was bringing his disrupter to bear on Chang.
I couldn’t have that. Not at all.
Everything moved so slowly. I’d forgotten that. I snatched a chair, but couldn’t get a clear throw. The only tactic left was to keep the steward from taking out any more officers. Chair in hand before me, I jumped onto the table where the pilots had been sitting and took two steps—and launched myself at the remaining attacker. The chair might deflect some of the disrupter’s flow.
He jerked the disrupter around—away from Chang and toward me—and another thrumm filled the mess, so loud… so very loud… until the darkness swallowed it.
47 CHANG
Fourteen hundred, and I was in Morgan’s ops office up on the command deck. Lerrys had taken Braun’s afternoon duty. Shook my head. Still couldn’t believe she was gone, not the way it had happened. Morgan had a black expression. Even without the name, I could have told that his background was ancient Welsh. He didn’t say anything for long minutes after I sat down. Neither did I.
“Thank you.” His words were flat.
“You’re welcome. I did what I could.” Wished it had been more. The first steward had taken out Braun and Rynd. Second had managed to wipe out Major Tepper, Major Alynso, Beurck, and Rigney. All six had died in the mess, brains and nerves scrambled. Couldn’t believe that Braun was dead. Sitting there, eating one minute, and dead moments later. You expect you might die piloting. It’s dangerous, no matter what they say. Don’t expect to get your nerves fried by a disrupter eating lunch. Gone…just like that Fitzhugh had hit the phony steward targeting the captain just in time. She’d escaped being hit. So had the Special Deputy Minister. Except for Braun and Rynd—who’d been caught by the blast misdirected from Fitzhugh’s attack—all the damage had been done by the second steward.
If Major Singh hadn’t gotten in my way, I might have been able to do more. Might have gotten killed, too. Something like that, you can never tell. “If you’d been there, you might have done better.”
“This noon was the first time in days, maybe weeks, when the captain was there and I wasn’t.”
“Sounds like they waited until you weren’t there.”
“It could be. Or it could be coincidence.” Morgan frowned. “Neither one aimed at the Special Deputy Minister. They never even looked at him. They should have. If they’d taken out both him and the captain…”
Hadn’t thought about that. Should have. “Allerde couldn’t be involved.”
“You can’t say that about anyone these days.” He paused. “You’re right, though.”
Had to think about that for a moment. Didn’t like what I came up with.
“Do you know what it means?” Morgan asked.
“Probably not.”
“What do you think?”
“Took time to get the stewards, replace them or deep-condition them. Means that someone knew about the Magellan and Danann from the beginning. Maybe they didn’t know who’d be the Comity rep on board—or if there’d even be one.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Guess? Did you and DeLisle get anything out of him before…”
“No… he had an autonomic nerve bloc. Heart, lungs, they all stopped. In the chaos, it took too long to get him to sick bay. Revival wasn’t possible.” Morgan’s lips tightened. “You and Professor Fitzhugh acted before anyone else. How did you know that there was something wrong?”
“I didn’t, not until the professor threw himself… how is he?”
“He took a direct shot from the disrupter. He’s in a medcrib, but he’ll make it. He shouldn’t.” Morgan didn’t sound happy.
“That bothers you? Without him attacking the first steward—”
“It could have been much worse,” Morgan admitted. “The one he got was after the captain. That shot took out Braun and Rynd instead.”
“The professor couldn’t have known that. The man he hit only got off one blast.”
“The professor crushed his windpipe, broke both arms, and triggered instant heart failure, then vaulted a table with a chair and distracted the second killer long enough for you to take him out. Does that sound like your typical professor?”
I’d figured that from the beginning. “He isn’t a professor?”
“No. That’s the problem. He has been for years. He’s got awards and publications, even. But… how many professors have that kind of reaction and training?”
