I hope they’re friendly, he thought. If they weren’t friendly then Sam and his crew and passengers were probably as good as dead—if they were lucky.
“You say you are sure most of the spacecraft are robotic?” the musician Choice asked. Sam remembered her theory. Would intelligent machines be easier to deal with? They might be harder to persuade but less likely to be pissed off.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Brook answered. “It doesn’t pay to put people on ships like that. They are mostly high-tonnage hulls on very slow trajectories, using the system’s gravitational conveyor.”
“Using the what?” Choice asked.
“Sorry,” he said and smiled at the singer. “Astrogator talk. Bear in mind, this is all movement in a system, not between stars, so there’s no jumping going on that we’ve detected. Anyway, for moving between worlds in a system, once you’re out of planetary gravity wells you can get just about anywhere almost for free if you’re not in a hurry. Give your ship a little shove and all the different moving gravity fields in the system will do the rest, provided you’ve got a good computer to figure out all the vectors. We call it the gravitational conveyor. It’s like a thirty-rail billiards shot on a frictionless table.”
“More like three-hundred rails,” Running-Deer said.
Brook nodded. “I didn’t want anyone to think I was exaggerating, but XO is right. These people are great at number crunching.”
Sam felt his scalp tingle with a sudden realization and he sat forward.
“How do you know that, Mister Brook?”
“The number crunching? Well . . . we back-engineered the courses, sir. Ran them through our astrogation models and they all checked out. Beautiful math, sir.”
“You reverse-engineered every course on this plot through our astrogation suite?”
“Yes, sir, every single one. Is . . . is something wrong?”
Sam saw Running-Deer rotate her workstation and look at him, her eyebrows elevated in the surprise of her own sudden understanding. She’d figured it out, too. He met her eyes and nodded in affirmation, and then settled back in the command chair. For the first time in over a month he felt himself relax just a little.
Brook looked from him to Running-Deer and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, sir. Did I miss something?”
“Yes you did, but it’s perfectly understandable, Mister Brook. You’ve finally got this rich flood of data. You’ve done an outstanding job of organizing and processing it in hardly any time at all. Naturally you’re focused on what’s different or novel. You missed the significance of some things which aren’t different. Two things to start with.
“First, as advanced as they may be, they haven’t figured a way around Newton’s laws of motion. No magic inertialess drives down there, just thrust and gravity, same as us.”
“Oh. Yes, sir, that’s right,” Brook said. “Inertialess drive? I guess I never thought of something like that. What was the second thing, sir?”
“Well, they don’t have any courses too complicated for our astrogation computers to unwrap.”
“Oh!” the musician and cybernetics expert Choice said. “Well, then that means . . .” and her voice trailed off.
“Right,” Sam finished for her. “Their computing ability is not significantly better than ours. Or if it is, they aren’t using it, and why wouldn’t they? It doesn’t help your theory of machine intelligence, does it?” he added with a smile.
She hesitated and then shook her head.
“No, it doesn’t.”
No defensiveness, no prevarication, just a straight, honest answer. That was refreshing.
“A question, if I may, Captain?” the New Zealand anthropologist Johnstone ventured.
“Of course,” Sam said. Johnstone spoke so seldom in these meetings Sam was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake tagging him.
“Have we made any progress on translating the language?”
Sam looked at Lieutenant Bohannon.
“What’s the story, Lieutenant? Any progress?”
“Yes and no, sir,” she said. “As Mister Brook said, we have done no actual decoding. We don’t have a key, a way into the language. What we do have is a growing body of words, phrases, and sentences. We’re getting a handle on grammar, what may be case and declension differences. But until we know the meanings of some of those words, that’s all we can do. But the more of this structural work we do now, the quicker we’ll be able to give you an auto-trans program once we get actual vocabulary.”
She looked to her left where the Buran linguist, with child in arms, was strapped into a communication workstation.
“Would you agree with that, Councilor Abanna Zhaquaan?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Deandra Bohannon,” it answered in its deep, strangely flat voice, “We are in the same position in which industrious but unimaginative philosophers find themselves: wealthy with respect to rules and structure but destitute of meaning.”
“Huh,” Sam said, surprised at the idea there were Buran philosophers, but really, why not?
“So how do we find that meaning, Councilor Abanna Zhaquaan?” he asked. “How do we get a key to their vocabulary?”
“There is only one reliable way,” the Buran said. “We find common words and proceed from there.”
“That makes sense,” Sam said. “I guess even modern linguists couldn’t decode some of those old Earth languages until they had a key, some starting point. I take it we’re working on that?”
“Yes, sir,” Bohannon answered. “We’re sending pictures of objects with English language text labels, along with audio clips saying the English word. We’re starting to get some return messages with similar attachments but we’re not certain they understand what we’re looking for. But if these return messages are what we need, we could have a working version of their language in a few days.”
Sam saw the two Varoki consult for a moment and then Haykuz, the assistant, spoke.
“The Envoy e-Lisyss wishes to know why the aliens are being instructed in English instead of aGavoosh, which is the official language of the Cottohazz administration.”
“Actually, it’s the first language of the Cottohazz,” the Nigerian journalist Boniface pointed out, “but legally all six common languages of governance are official, and English is one of those.”
“Nevertheless, the envoy expresses his objection.”
“Noted,” Sam said, and he saw Running-Deer trying to suppress a smile. He doubted the Varoki envoys understood what “Noted” really meant in Navy-speak.
“Why did we emerge so far from the main planet?” Dr. Däng asked. “It will take us a long time to reach orbit and there are considerable communication delays.”
“About ten minutes each way on the comms,” Sam said, “and that will decrease as we get closer. We’ve got a residual velocity of thirty-five kilometers per second, so we’re looking at ten days to Destie-Four, the main inhabited world. Hopefully that will give us time to crack the language and get acquainted. It also gives them time to get used to the idea of us. By the time we’re likely to be within range of any of their defensive systems I hope they’re okay with the idea of visitors. If we appeared a lot closer, they might shoot first and then think about asking questions later.”
“Come now, Captain Bitka,” Dr. Däng said. “We’ve made no threatening moves. This is clearly a highly advanced civilization. I doubt they would make the sort of errors in judgment you seem willing to attribute to them.”
“Well, Dr. Däng, I hope you’re right but we can’t count on it. Besides, it occurs to me we’re a pretty advanced civilization too, and we do stupid shit all the time. Also, our crew is wound pretty tight. Let’s give them some time to get used to all this. I don’t want us to do anything crazy, especially before we know enough Destie to explain it was a mistake.”
“I still think it was an unnecessary waste of time,” she said.
Sam smiled.
“Also noted. Lieutenant Bohannon, get
me a language and somebody down there to talk to.”
PART II:
The Gates of Hell
Cassandra
On board USS Puebla, in the K’tok System
7 August 2134 (five and a half months after Incident Seventeen,
four months after USS Cam Ranh Bay arrived at Destination)
One of the unique advantages to having been stationed for several months in orbit above K’tok, the only extra-solar world biologically compatible with humans, was that USS Puebla’s food lockers had been stocked with edible but exotic fruits, vegetables, and meats from the world below. “Crab cakes” were a regular entree on Puebla’s menu, covering a wide variety of flavors but sharing that name since most of the animals in the area around the Needle downstation were crustaceans of one sort or another—or at least the K’tok-evolved analog.
Another popular local delicacy was meteor fruit, so-called because its surface was lumpy and rock-gray in color. The flesh was crisp, moist, and sweet, however, reminiscent of some of the very tart varieties of apples. Lieutenant Rosemary Hennessey, Puebla’s engineering officer, was eating a large meteor fruit as Commander Cassandra Atwater-Jones arrived in the forward engine room. Hennessey was tall, big-boned, broad in the shoulders and hips, blonde, and ruddy-faced, at the moment more so than Cassandra remembered.
“Okay, Ma’am,” the engineer said, her mouth still partly full, “here you go. Six remote-piloted workbots, fabricated to the specifications you provided.” She patted the exterior of the packing cases and opened one lid. The smooth, featureless, composite-alloy flattened cube, about fifty centimeters across, nestled in the foam cavity inside the container. Cassandra ran her hand along the surface.
“Thank you, Leftenant Hennessey. I appreciate your attention to this. Quite a lot depends on their functioning correctly. Quite a lot indeed.”
“As you say, Ma’am.” Hennessey secured the lid. The two of them floated in the forward engineering room of the destroyer, and now Hennessey turned and looked at Cassandra with as close to a completely blank look as she could ever remember receiving. The engineer took another loud bite of fruit.
“I have to ask,” Cassandra said, “aren’t you the least bit curious about what these remotes are for?”
“No, Ma’am, and I don’t want you to tell me. Right now, I have plausible deniability and I’d just as soon keep it that way. I’ve been a Navy engineer for eleven years, and I spent most of that time in starships. There isn’t an engineer in the service who doesn’t want to crack open a jump core and look inside.”
Hennessey paused for another bite.
“But they sting, don’t they?” she went on, her words distorted by a mouth full of fruit. “Hell of a defense mechanism: anaerobic microscopic solvent, eat through about anything except solid composite alloy—coincidentally the same material in the exterior casings of these workbots you had us fabricate.
“Of course, if that’s what you had in mind you’d have to seal the bots into the workspace, since the solvent will eat through any sort of flexible airlock seal. I suppose the thing to do would be to take a solid composite hood—like that one over there you had us put together—and weld it solid over the access door, with the bots inside. Then use the bots to open the access door.
“But once they’re sealed in, how do you refuel them? Well, give them batteries and a Tesla-effect proximity recharger. Nice touch. All they have to do is get close to that recharger plate you had us set into the containment hood surface and they can juice right up.
“But how do they get around in zero gee without running out of reaction mass? You can’t refill that by proximity. Very cool solution: electromagnets with reversible polarity. Find anything magnetic in there and play push-you-pull-me to get around. And those gripper arms: all hard composite gears, no flexiparts. Very retro.
“Of course, that’s all just speculation, you understand.” She took another bite with a wet-sounding crunch.
“I quite understand,” Cassandra said. “I have to say—and without in any way commenting on the validity of your speculation—that for an experienced engineer you do not show a great deal of enthusiasm at the prospect.”
Still chewing the fruit, Hennessey looked at her for a moment, possibly deciding what to say next. Cassandra had the feeling that none of the possible responses she was considering would be friendly, and she wondered why. Hennessey swallowed and shook her head before answering.
“Commander, since the ceasefire we’ve gotten about a dozen replacement officers and ratings, which makes a dent in the casualties we suffered but not a very big one. Aside from those replacements, every woman and man on this boat would be dead today if it weren’t for Captain Bitka, and most of them have sense enough to know it. When the captain went missing, a lot of us took it hard, but missing doesn’t mean dead. It just means missing, and he’s pretty good at getting out of tight spots. But then you come along with word you’ve found the wreckage of his ship, and we need to hurry up so you can paw through it, maybe get a look at something important.
“The thing is, if there’s wreckage then he’s not missing; he’s dead. And no, none of us have a great deal of enthusiasm for that prospect, Commander. What I can’t figure out is how you, of all people, can. You must be quite a piece of work.”
Her eyes never leaving Cassandra’s, Hennessey took another deliberate, crunching bite out of her meteor fruit.
Cassandra felt the urge to tell Hennessey the truth, but she did not. She wasn’t sure how much of her urge came from a laudable desire to alleviate Hennessey’s possibly misplaced grief, and how much from a rather pathetic hunger for vindication. It didn’t matter. Neither justified telling Hennessey anything, because the engineer was right in one respect: she did need plausible deniability, but not due to the scenario she suspected. That wasn’t the jump drive from Bitka’s ship out there. It was from the uBakai cruiser KBk Four-Two-Nine, and Captain Larry Goldjune had just assured her they would dock with the wreckage within three hours.
“Ms. Hennessey, this is brilliant work on these ’bots. I admire not only the dispatch with which you completed the project but also the attention to workmanship. I am deeply appreciative, and I will include that appreciation in a formal communication to your commanding officer.
“And one more thing, Leftenant: the next time you speak to me, it had better not be through a mouthful of sodding fruit.”
Eleven sleepless hours later Cassandra clicked down her helmet visor and opened the link to the holoconference. Lieutenant Moe Rice of the US Navy appeared to her right and Korvetenkapitän Georg Heidegger of the Deutsche Sternmarine to her left, both of them on board USS Puebla with her. She had left the balance of the working group on K’tok to schedule the re-interviews of witnesses and negotiate their duty and travel arrangements. That should keep them busy, she thought. She wanted Moe Rice with her, for assistance, and Heidegger where she could keep her eye on him. She regretted not being able to bring Takaar Nuvaash as well, but she could summon up no argument in favor of his coming which would justify so enormous a breach of security.
In a moment, the physicist, Dr. Wu, appeared across the table from them, his image beamed from K’tok along with a two-minute turnaround delay. Not for the first time Cassandra wondered if Rear Admiral Jacob Goldjune, young Larry’s father, had lost his mind. The physicist was Chinese. Keeping this illegal examination of a Varoki jump core secret would be hard enough working with their own scientists, but China was not even a member of the Outworld Coalition. She understood they were lucky there was any human physicist who happened to be in the K’tok system at that time, but still . . . Chinese?
He didn’t look particularly Chinese, she thought, aside from the obvious ethnic facial characteristics. He needed a haircut and a shave, he wore a flowered shirt of baggy cut, and he held a large unlit cigar in his hand. She knew he was in his late forties. He looked tired but excited.
She’d read through his dossier, as much as had been sent to her.
If she’d been back at K’tok, with direct access to fleet intelligence records, she’d have known more. She could request the full dossier, but not without alerting a lot of communication personnel to Dr. Wu’s importance, and so she had to make do with this and blind trust in Admiral Goldjune’s good sense—one of the disadvantages of being “in the field.”
Walter Wu Tao, born May 19, 2085, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Republic of China. 2106 Graduated University of Shenzhen. 2109 awarded doctorate in high energy physics from the Xi Jinping Institute in Beijing. 2109 to 2113, research fellow at CERN in Geneva, West European Union. 2115 to 2121, adjunct instructor in physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States of North America. Then, for the last thirteen years . . . a ship’s purser? On a passenger liner? Well, that explained why he was out here.
“Dr, Wu, I am Commander Atwater-Jones, and these are my subordinates Korvetenkapitän Heidegger and Leftenant Rice. We are pleased you were able to assist us in this examination.”
“I must renew my objection to this entire enquiry,” Heidegger said. “This jump drive is the property of a powerful Varoki trading house—Simki-Traak Transtellar—and we have no business examining it. I was led to believe the object was part of the missing transport.”
“As was I,” Cassandra answered calmly, “but once we discovered our error, and had already docked with the object, Rear Admiral Goldjune directed us to examine it for whatever insight it may offer our investigation. You know that as well as I do, Korvetenkapitän Heidegger, but your objection is noted.”
“If word of this gets out—”
“How would it, Herr Heidegger? Only the four of us here and Rear Admiral Goldjune know the particulars. I certainly don’t intend to tell anyone, nor should you unless you fancy spending the next twenty years in prison. Now Dr. Wu, I understand you have not had much time, but can you tell us anything about the object based on our transmissions so far?”
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