Secrets in the Stars (Family Law)

by Mackey Chandler

  "You have to wonder how far they range the other way," his Xo said. "Is their civilization as mature as their technology? Have they been at it longer than we have, to be ahead of us in ship design?"

  "Indeed," Gordon agreed. There was simply no way to speculate.

  "Let off a couple hard pings from our radar," Gordon instructed. "I consider them friendly and we're not trying to hide from them."

  "Aye, sir," Brownie said. "We could send voice, but there is no indication they understand it."

  "You could send images," Thor suggested.

  "Why not video?" Brownie asked. "They responded to video before."

  "Yes, they responded, but when we send video they sent back still images. I think they just analyzed our video and extracted images," Thor said. "They have never sent video back to us. For some reason they seem uncomfortable with the format. It may be quite incompatible."

  "Good morning, Commander," Captain Fenton said on the command band.

  "Ah, good morning, Captain. Do your people have a report ready?" Gordon inquired.

  "Yes, and I'm sending a text version with some images. I'll leave it to you who you wish to allow see it," Captain Fenton said. "There's nothing particularly disturbing, but it's interesting."

  "I'll probably post it to the fleet net, but after your summary and looking myself," Gordon said.

  "We know now there is no land. Not even under the hurricane. There is definitely life. We see mats of what we assume is vegetation. We've identified three distinct types by color. Although one of my crew pointed out they might be seasonal variations or groups that mature together and are at different stages. None of them however project from the water more than a few centimeters. There are large organisms that surface and submerge. We saw them on radar and then were able to train the telescope on them. Observe," he said sending the video over.

  The scene appeared to be from a height as there were clouds below. There was also a fine grid of lines on the image with numbers at the edge. As the view zoomed down it found a gap in the clouds. Eventually a pattern of waves became visible and then a sprinkling of dark grey dashes in the water. At the highest magnification the dashes were tiny streamlined shapes. When they broke through the surface there was just enough white around them to tell they splashed up foam. They would show white around one and then it went under again. It would still be visible from above, but the image blurred a little. One could presume because it dropped beneath the surface a bit.

  "How big are those?" Gordon asked.

  "Thirty-five meters average," Fenton said. "A few small ones that might be young, or the sexes might be radically different in size. They only show as breaching the surface three or four meters on radar. We haven't seen one jump out of the water like Earth whales."

  "Earth whales jump out of the water?" Gordon asked, clearly surprised, making an appropriate gesture with his true hand cupped.

  "Indeed they do, although these are about half again as big as most Earth whales. But on Earth whales occasionally jump out of the water unaware and land across a small boat. It doesn't do the whale or the boat, either one, a whole lot of good."

  "As we mentioned a couple shifts back, we don't want to land any sort of shuttle until we know more. Seeing these, that now means until we're sure something bigger than the shuttle isn't going to playfully jump on it, or pull it under. We'll put that in our reports for sure," Gordon said.

  "There was one area where we had three bumps sticking up out of the water," Fenton said. "They were approximately round and about a meter and a half high in the middle. We'd have missed them in the background variations if it wasn't a fairly calm area, but there was cloud cover so we couldn't eyeball them. I'm hoping we can turn the telescope on them in another local day or two."

  "What is different about those? They don't go back under like the whale thingies?" Gordon asked.

  "No they stay up, and as close as we can resolve with the radar they are at the points of a triangle with equal sides," Fenton said, his eyebrows said he found that significant.

  "Ah, so you think they are artificial?" Gordon guessed.

  "It seems at least possible," Fenton agreed.

  "Keep surveying, noting any changes in particular," Gordon ordered. "We'll examine the material you've given us. I'm going to send the Sharp Claws off, she isn't needed for escort now in my opinion. The Dart can go along if they wish, to examine the other planets in the system in more detail since we'll be here a few days. We'll hold another meeting when we both start a new shift. Meanwhile I'd like the various engineers to make suggestions to Mr. Ellis on the Retribution about what sort of a soft lander we can construct. They have the biggest fabbers and the most material. I want something that can be finished in a day or two, not a week-long project."

  "Aye sir," Fenton agreed. "We'll keep updating the data as we get it as well as summarizing it when we have another meeting."

  "That's fine," Gordon agreed. "It's always good to keep running backups."

  That nudged Fenton's paranoia again. What did Gordon think might happen to them?

  Chapter 5

  Gordon had the Sharp Claws safely away, the Dart agreeing to accompany them. He studied the data from the world, sending a copy to Lee's and Thor's boards without discussing it out loud on the bridge.

  Lee suggested they use a balloon after a parachute to drop it slowly. When it was low enough to drop the last couple meters, the balloon would be cut loose. After it lifted clear the hydrogen would be ignited to destroy it. Thor suggested they not drop any technology they didn't want to give to unknown sapients. At a minimum he suggested enclosing all critical items such as electronics in a sealed container with a non-explosive self destruct. A thermite compound should do the trick.

  That made sense to Gordon and he swapped the suggestions to each of them without telling them the source to prejudice them. Both endorsed the other's ideas. He forwarded them to engineering and added his own idea to use the tanks from filling the balloon as float pontoons once empty. Again he didn't identify the sources so nobody would feel constrained from criticizing an idea because it was from the commander or rejecting one because they didn't like Thor. It never occurred to him that anyone might not like Lee.

  After reviewing the collected data Gordon asked Lee and Thor, "See any reason not to put this project on the fleet web for anybody who is interested?"

  "Not at all," Thor said. "It's going to be a greenie in everybody's ear. It may be a long time before it puts money in their pocket, but we're not exactly going home broke."

  "I see no harm," Lee agreed. "Most will just listen to a news summary channel and skip wading through the whole thing. They're too tired after their shift or busy meeting up for poker."

  "And it's posted... " Gordon said, as soon as he touched the key. "I'm off for some lunch. You have the conn, Thor. Can I have them send you anything?"

  "I have the conn," Thor acknowledged. "I'll order direct. I haven't looked at what they already made today. I hate to make extra work for them with a custom order if the special of the day sounds good."

  "I'd like to tag along if you aren't meeting somebody," Lee said.

  "I'm meeting you," Gordon said, unlatching the belts they all kept loosely engaged at stations.

  * * *

  Lee grabbed two pre-made cold sandwiches. They had a bit of green hanging out of them, a luxury from their experimental gardens. Nobody had tried growing even limited fresh food on a ship for some years. An unusually long voyage seemed a good time to try again. The equipment had improved. The little bit of crunch was a huge boost to morale.

  Gordon took two of the large submarine sandwiches, adding enough mayonnaise to the cold one to make it drip, and sufficient hot mustard to the hot one that it would be inedible to Lee. That and another big mug of coffee was a light lunch for him.

  "What do they want to measure with a soft lander?" Lee asked. She had to wait for Gordon to swallow. It looked like it was a four bite sandwich.

&nb
sp; "The salts present in the water is the biggie. They'll boil off the water on a heated pan and then vaporize the residue with a laser. That will give them the relative abundance of various elements," Gordon said. "That is a start at understanding both what the core down under the water may be like and what biological processes are possible living in that water."

  "What about retrieving an actual sample?" Lee said.

  "I've seen a couple proposals. All of them risk a shuttle crew, and I'm not going to do that."

  "How did they want to do it?" Lee said. She seemed very interested.

  "One proposed dipping a small sample with a scoop at the end of a long line. The shuttle would have to go far lower and slower than I can accept," Gordon said. "The other idea was to drop a modified anti-missile missile as part of the soft lander. A very small sample could be pumped aboard. With the weight of the warhead and guidance electronics removed it could achieve a low orbit by remote control."

  "I'm betting if there is anybody down there, thinking creatures that is, you don't want to light a rocket off in their face. That's almost as bad as setting of a charge to check the depth," Lee said. "I think the thermite destruct charge is pretty risky too."

  "Worse," Gordon told her. "If there is any intelligent life down there I don't want to send them a very sophisticated missile to reverse engineer. Even without a warhead."

  "But we're going to recover it," Lee objected.

  "We would intend to recover it," Gordon corrected. "What happens when something gets bumped too hard or gets wet, or our brilliant engineers don't get a wire connected tight, and it doesn't fire? Also it has to float there long enough to pump water into the rocket and the testing chamber to be boiled off and laser vaporized. It makes me nervous. What if some huge thing like we've seen decides to swallow it? "

  "We've got good guys and military grade hardware," Lee argued. "I'd bet on an alien submarine snatching it before a mechanical failure."

  "Even worse!" Gordon agreed. But he smiled.

  "How about this? You can fill a small tank with a sample of the sea water, and loft it with a balloon up to where a shuttle can snatch it out of mid-air? I looked on the net-fraction and they did that with airplanes years and years ago," Lee said. "They grabbed the line under the balloon."

  "Ah-ha! I thought you had some idea to propose," Gordon said. "You do like balloons don't you? How would we snatch it in mid-air? Our shuttles don't hover well. The exhaust tends to vaporize anything they would stream behind them on a line. We are not hanging a crewman out the lock with a pole and hook. Not even near stall speed. I don't like the idea of our shuttle deliberately trying to run into something in the air. Pilots go to a great deal of trouble not to do that. I'm not even sure I'd want to give strange sapients the idea how to make balloons."

  Lee frowned. "I'll try to think of something else. The airplanes put a big 'Y' shaped thing on the nose, but engineering wouldn't even talk to me about putting one on a shuttle. He said no and then no, and then he got rude. And anyway, a guy in the lock would have a safety line on!"

  Gordon just rolled his eyes.

  * * *

  "We can have it ready by the middle of next shift," Jeremiah Ellis promised. He was head of engineering on the Retribution, which was best equipped to make the soft lander.

  "That's fine," Gordon said, "but I couldn't sleep wondering if it was going to work. I don't want it to land until the main bridge crew is seated and can watch it live."

  "Oh... what exactly do you want to be able to see?" Ellis asked.

  "Cameras are cheap and rugged. Weren't you planning on streaming all kinds of video off this thing when it lands? As easy as it is, why not?" Gordon demanded.

  Jeremiah looked a little embarrassed. "Well, we did have a request for a cam looking down in the water for fish or whatever. It'll have a light too, for a little more range. Then we have the data channel for the salt vaporizer and spectrograph. There will also be the usual meteorological instruments. I didn't think it would be of any interest to look at the top of the water. We already see that."

  "OK, small change of plans with that," Gordon informed him. "We want three wide angle cameras on the outer edge of the lander looking in, so they observe both the top of the lander from each side and the water behind the other camera. We want enough angle in the view we have full coverage all the way around the horizon. If that's too hard to do with what you have, bump it up to four cameras. Any problem with that?"

  "No sir. We'll have cameras on the perimeter looking in and across each other. I'm sending the design changes to the team as we speak," Jeremiah promised.

  "Has anybody asked for a microphone?" Lee asked.

  Jeremiah Ellis looked stricken. Or perhaps unbelieving. "What would you want it to pick up? The sound of the wind or if there are birds too small for us to see?"

  "No. I'd be surprised if there are birds. Where would they land? How would they raise young until they were old enough to fly? I suppose they could carry their young, but how would they have gotten a start, unless perhaps there used to be land? I was interested in a microphone for the water. On Earth and Derfhome all sorts of animals in the ocean make noises. Water carries sound better than air."

  "Oh, you want a hydrophone," Jeremiah said. “Sure we can do that. If we don't have one I'm sure we have a design for one or can convert a regular microphone.”

  "Good. That way if there's nothing where the thing lands we may at least hear it," Lee said.

  "Any other requests?" Jeremiah asked. He looked like he might be afraid of the answer.

  "Not from me," Gordon said. "Just in case nobody has told the team, we'll want it to splash down near the three odd bumps in the water."

  "Of course," Jeremiah said.

  * * *

  The scientist whose name was a long genealogy to put Gordon's true name to shame for length was setting up another 'burn'. His associates called him Pretty Purple for short. As often happens the nickname embarrassed him, but stuck. His co-workers and friends understood it meant the bioluminescent spots on his hide had a particularly pleasant hue in the purple phase. It also was very appealing to the females of his species. They often gave a little involuntary pink flash of appreciation, which in turn made him flash a little yellow pulse that was the equivalent of a human blush.

  It was an honor and the peak of his career to work in the world's premier materials lab, the only one running three gas chambers protruding through the top of the sky into the heavens. It could be dangerous. Early workers had received some nasty burns trying to observe the electric arc directly. Some got careless about staying wet. Protocol now was for an assistant to count off time and douse the researcher with water at regular intervals. If left to their own devices the researchers tended to be absorbed in their work and lose all track of time. To the point it was a stereotype now.

  The chambers were a vast improvement on the previous platforms that were simply a floating collar defining a port on the heavens. For reasons nobody had yet explained, sometimes the light from the sun diminished and actual water descended from the heavens. But nasty pure water lacking all the elements of life. Indeed if one stayed in contact too long it irritated the skin. Just one more hazard.

  Obviously, if one was running an electric arc to test and alter materials, water falling on the experiment at random from above was disruptive if not catastrophic. The sealed environment had its own challenges. Workers found that the thin substance of the heavens expanded when heated by their experiments. After the first isolation cell burst they invented the pressure relief valve. To avoid a long dangling tube filled with heaven stuff keeping the cell inflated they had invented the water lock. Life-sustaining water was pumped in between sealing doors that could be opened in sequence to pass traffic while keeping the cell inflated with heavenly gases.

  To stay wet, workers and assistants worked in a pool lowered from the entry door. Even then water slowly lost the ability to sustain life. So time in the bubble was limited. The newest
bubble had pumps not only for the water lock, but to exchange water in the bubble for fresh from below. It was exciting to work with the cutting edge high tech gear every day.

  The intense heat of the furnace reduced almost all organisms to the black element of life. That it was also conductive amazed and delighted them. Some substances, such as the silty bottom from various sites, altered to a hard but brittle substance when heated. Those were not conductors. Other minerals when heated with the black element of life yielded malleable materials. They tended to corrode, but both kinds showed great promise for making things.

  Some were quite strong if only they could be made not to corrode away like the prized bright yellow nuggets or the silvery grey ones found naturally. Pretty Purple had rings of both displayed on his longer tentacles. He was paid pretty well. Other materials showed less promise for now. Some of the yellow deposits from around the deep vents stank so bad when heated that the cell in use had to be abandoned for some days. The researchers doing that burn had to flee and the arc was disconnected remotely at the generators.

  Pretty Purple's older brother held his work in derision. Rippling Dots was his unfortunate childhood name. He no longer had problems controlling his enthusiasm. Indeed he had turned absolutely solemn after being selected to the priesthood as the eldest child. He reveled in the privilege of the religious vocation. Pretty Purple was relieved beyond measure that he had escaped it by being younger.

  Rippling Dots was currently babbling at him every time they met about strange new lights in the heavens. That they didn't follow the rules any previous lights did, failed to impress Pretty Purple. They were still just lights above the sky. The idea that they had any influence on his life was something he rejected, although he didn't make too big a point of saying so. The priesthood had many followers and much influence.