Secrets in the Stars (Family Law)

by Mackey Chandler

  "You have shapeshifter legends on Derfhome?" Jon Burris asked from the master com console.

  "Not really," Gordon said, embarrassed. "I got that reading trashy Earth books."

  "If the monster knows and remembers everything Gordon did, what is the difference to me if you have different genes now, but treat me exactly the same?" Lee asked.

  "None at all, until some night it decides to slither in your bunk and absorb you too," Gordon said, in a really creepy voice.

  "That's terrible. You gave me goose bumps all over," Lee protested, rubbing her arms.

  Ha-bob-bob-brie leaned closer and observed. "Interesting. But feathers would be much nicer."

  They jumped out without further incident.

  * * *

  "Clean sky. Everybody is here. Ping the system?" Brownie asked Gordon.

  "Yeah, looks like nobody is home. Do it."

  After a moment Brownie spoke again. "I doubt it is coincidence, but the Caterpillars jumped with us. That would mean they've deciphered enough of our chatter to understand time units and numbers."

  "How close?" Gordon asked.

  "To the second within fourteen places. Tight enough to jump in close formation with us."

  "I hope they don't take up doing that uninvited," Gordon said.

  "Jumping out of sync would be as dangerous for them as us," Brownie pointed out. "They aren't stupid and I wouldn't be surprised if their clocks are a digit or two better than ours."

  "So they must know our numbers, spoken and binary, and 'yes'. Why aren't they talking to us or at least trying harder to so?" Thor asked.

  "We are trying," Talker assured him. He seemed upset. He was still on the High Hopes just for the purpose of pushing forward translation with the Caterpillars. The bridge was crowded in fact with two riding in jump seats.

  "No criticism implied," Thor said. "Or at least them, not you." Talker just nodded at that.

  "Maybe they have a thing about error," Ha-bob-bob-brie said in a rare suggestion.

  "What kind of a thing?" Thor asked.

  "It's an occasional mental illness among my people to have an abhorrence of any error. They fear it so much they are locked in indecision and can't function. It usually shows up very early in an individual when they are first learning to count. They count over and over, never confident of their answer."

  "That sounds very much like what we call obsessive compulsive," Jon Burris told him.

  "Do such ones count also?" Ha-bob-bob-brie asked.

  "Yes, I don't know if they count over uncertainty, but they will count steps to a familiar destination, or touch and count each post of a fence along which they pass. You understand fences?" Jon asked.

  "The Hinth understand fences," Ha-bob-bob-brie assured him. They might not read it on his face, but there was amusement in his voice.

  "Be sure to inform Vigilant about the Caterpillars syncing with us in his written shift instructions," Gordon ordered Brownie. "We'll do the normal offset to see behind the star then you can pick a target to go on to. Talk to me if there's any conflict or interesting choices.”

  "Aye, initiating a group change of course to do the usual dogleg," Brownie acknowledged. "I'll check the stars for targets when we come back on shift. Notice the Caterpillar is still not running ahead. I think th... "

  "What do you think, Brownie?" Thor teased at the sudden cut off.

  Brownie did something odd. He cut the bridge out of the command link. Gordon sometimes did that to discuss something privately but other hardly ever did so. That got their attention.

  "I thought I saw a deep entry burst. But it isn't. Or it's atypical. It appears to have happened right when our radar wave front reached the same point, and I don't believe in coincidences. The spectrum looks more like emissions from a jump, but that's crazy," Brownie protested. "I'm going to look at the recording again."

  They let him view it again. Even Thor abstained from wisecracking.

  "There! I'm not going crazy," Brownie said. "There was a radar return off the same spot as the jump emissions. It jumped out eighteen seconds after we painted it with our radar."

  "You think somebody jumped early because we pinged them?" Gordon asked frowning. "That would be really stupid to take a lower probability jump just because they know we saw them. If they had anywhere near enough velocity to jump they could have waited a bit until they had full jump velocity and gone out safe. We'd have never caught them if they had a head start, and we saw them already so what did they gain?"

  "No, you don't understand. I'm not saying it well, because it's not normal at all and I'm rattled. The vessel was small. Maybe forty meters long, although I don't think it was full broadside to us. It might be semi-stealthy because it didn't give us a strong return at all. That's unusual with what the Retribution puts out. But it wasn't up to any velocity at all. The radar showed it at pretty much at system rest. It jumped out but I have no idea what vector even. It just disappeared from a standstill."

  Nobody said anything.

  "Go ahead. Tell me it's impossible," Brownie challenged.

  "Impossible is for damn fools who can't believe their lying eyes," Lee said.

  "Have any of the other ships asked about it or commented on it?" Thor asked.

  "No, I think they all pretty much let us do the system scan and don't put eyes on it if their own radar isn't active, unless we are giving orders to maneuver," Brownie said. "Even Retribution's radar is just slaved to my board when we use it and they don't need a person sitting running it."

  "Then don't say anything," Gordon decided.

  "We shall have to change some assumptions," Ha-bob-bob-brie said simply.

  "I agree, but I know plenty, even most people will say 'impossible' just like Brownie challenged us." Gordon said. "They'll say it was an artifact of the software or we're trying to do some kind of scam. Do what you want, because we are not a military organization to classify information. I won't order it, but I'm not going to report this in any official way as part of the Little Fleet. I'll privately tell the Mothers and business associates who I'm sure respect me. But the Claims Commission or public in general? We'd just get mocked."

  "I'm absolutely certain you are correct," Jon Burris on coms said. "Have you ever read anything about UFOs?”

  "I am aware Earth Humans have a history of seeing unexplained things in the sky they took to be vessels of some sort," Gordon told him. "Derf never had a history of such things. Not that we didn't see odd phenomena from time to time, but Derf either attributed it to gods or nature."

  "Human denial can be pretty stubborn," Jon said. "Scientists denied rocks could fall from the sky clear into the seventeenth century. Even when a fall of them broke roof tiles all over town. The French imposed such a rigid scientific orthodoxy on the matter that other nations threw their meteorites in their museums away rather than argue with the experts. But seeing things they took to be aircraft of some sort didn't really pick up until they had their own aircraft. I've read on it a bit, It really took off around the time of World War II and right after."

  "You mean the First Atomic War," Gordon said.

  "Yes, but they didn't call it that until much later. There were certain types of UFOs that repeated, cigar shaped or night lights, but for a short period most of them were very consistently disk shaped," Jon said. "So they came to be commonly called flying saucers."

  "Since you have an interest, enough to have researched it, what is your opinion?" Gordon asked.

  "I think there's a pretty good chance Earth was surveyed briefly,” Jon said.

  "But, they didn't try to communicate?" Lee asked.

  "Would we?" Jon asked. "There was fighting everywhere. There were aircraft and the Germans had ballistic missiles and jets and a sort of cruise missile. At the end the Americans had atomic weapons, even if they were crude and small. We didn't land for a lot less trouble with the Bunnies. They just had a military of sorts with firearms and that deterred us. Remember what Canny McDonald told us? He said an
y ground force he could land to try to secure the Bunnies' world could be overrun with spears and bows and arrows he'd be so outnumbered. So who in their right mind would want to land in the chaos of a global war that had millions of men fighting with airplanes and tanks and long range artillery?"

  "Could you explain why people kept seeing UFOs if the initial survey was over and the aliens went away? Why didn't the sightings stop?" Thor asked him.

  "Once people have adapted a meme they apply it to things they wouldn't have before, and by then there were a lot more objects in the air, and in near space, to explain away. At least some of the things called UFOs after the war were Human aircraft. Some of them were secret military aircraft so those sightings wouldn't be confirmed as a known aircraft. Some were satellites and some were just hoaxes. People enjoy fooling others. Especially since people who saw UFOs were regarded as crazy it was fair game to play them for fools. Tossing dinnerware in the air to photograph was amusing."

  "That's not a terribly attractive quality of our species," Lee lamented.

  "If it makes you feel any better, I think the Bills are even more childish about their so-called humor," Talker told her.

  "Great, something where we're happy to be number two," Jon said, drolly.

  "How do you want me to say this in the log and shift change report?" Brownie asked, uncertain.

  "Vigilant always speaks to me except the rare times I go off the bridge early," Gordon said. "I'll speak to him privately and tell him to run the radar and sensor data to see the radar return and exit flash and how they relate. No reason to make a log entry detailing what is after all our private conjecture."

  "Yes sir. I like that," Brownie agreed, nodding. "It gives us room to maneuver later. You notice, the Caterpillars didn't ping the system themselves. So they didn't see what cause that jump burst. They must know what entry radiation looks like, but not a peep out of them. I wonder if they are reading our data sharing from the Retribution though, and if they've seen this sort of thing before?”

  "Maybe they're wondering the same thing about us," Lee said.

  Ha-bob-bob-brie made a really odd sound they'd never heard before. They all looked at him but he was inarticulate. Then they realized, he was laughing.

  * * *

  Lee and Talker tried a new message to the Caterpillars. They sent a grid of sixteen squares. Nine would have been more elegant, but they needed the extra spaces to separate items. With nine there was no way to show if an adjacent item was weighed towards the one corner or the other.

  In the top left corner was the original Little Fleet with an image of Derfhome. They had no way to show that was the start square, but intended to make that their convention. The Caterpillars weren't stupid. They'd pick up on it later if not now.

  In the top right corner was an image of their present fleet including the alien add-ons beside an image of the Badger world Far Away. In the square under it was a small image of a Biter ship tucked in the top left corner of its own square. Clearly excluded by choice.

  The bottom right corner held an image of the Caterpillar ship and the world the Caterpillars had taken The Champion William to see. The enemy ship that had attacked the Caterpillars was displayed to the left square from that corner, made small in its square just as the Biters ship was. It hopefully would show the same relationship.

  Continuing clockwise the bottom left corner showed the Caterpillar ship and the expanded Little Fleet all together with the image of Derfhome. If they continued with them that's what would happen.

  After much thought they put an image of Earth not clockwise from that final image but on the next square towards the center on the diagonal. The Caterpillars following them on to Earth seemed possible, but the fleet would break up at Derfhome, ships going here and there.

  "I hope sixteen squares isn't too much," Lee worried.

  "I hope sixteen is enough," Talker countered.

  Chapter 19

  Hoót-hoöt-hôôt's fine tentacles rippled in surprise. The aliens went from nine squares to sixteen in one step. That was a linguistic leap equivalent to a human's development from five years old to ten or so. It was an admirable audacity to grasp for so much at once. Hoót-hoöt-hôôt commonly used a grid of sixty-four on a side to comment on such things as the quality of supper or his opinion of a subordinate’s usefulness, or lack of any utility at all.

  People who had a great deal to say, or thought they did and just enjoyed hearing themselves talk, made statements of a hundred and forty four squares. That was about the limit of the Caterpillars visual acuity. Even then the subject matter in each square needed to be simple or one had to examine the more complex squares and integrate the detail mentally.

  Being able to read a larger grid and grasp the gestalt mentally was the mark of an adult and a person of letters. Those that couldn't read a grid of a hundred and forty four squares were regarded by other Caterpillars the same way Humans would label one of theirs as a bit simple.

  Breaking something down into a number of smaller grids was the equivalent of popularization or a how-to book for Dummies. There were poems and books on the arts, both decorative and practical, of five hundred and seventy six squares. There was a definitive history of the species from their beginning on the home world until they occupied nine planets which filled two thousand three hundred and four squares.

  The Caterpillar who defined space and time in terms that allowed for star travel wrote a Theory of Everything which filled four thousand ninety-six squares with no blanks. Few people claimed to be able to grasp the sum of it, and Hoót-hoöt-hôôt wasn't sure he believed the ones who did. Simplified forms of it broken down into a collection of smaller grids abounded and a few more were written each generation. The snobs assured the lesser intellects that they didn't impart the full essence of the theory.

  There were alternative forms intended to be both profound and whimsical which did such things as leave the corner squares off or open a void of squares within. During one mad period of decadence before the expansion into space an author had published a work of four thousand ninety-six blank squares and received acclaim from a number of morally defective academics. The verbal form of that was of course – silence. A critic published the simplified edition of one blank square, and it was accepted by the masses as a perfect jab. The literary professionals didn't get the joke.

  Hoót-hoöt-hôôt thought the new message was a bit more interesting but the added complexity made it even more ambiguous. Was it a plain notification or an invitation? They had interpreted the previous message as an invitation to accompany this group to the surface. They hadn't been chased away so that was probably correct.

  A few of the Caterpillars were overcome with caution after seeing the alien's weapons. But he'd been among those heading off that school of thought. If they'd been hostile they had plenty of chances to act like that other race with small ships who attacked without need. The fact that the this group, although at some level of conflict with that beaked race, didn't just wipe them out on sight really spoke to their patience. Perhaps they had banged those vermin on the head a few times recently and were giving the lesson time to be shared among their kin.

  He was pretty sure this new message wasn't a dis-invitation to continue with them, but not sure enough to put forth his own translation before letting his peers come to their conclusions. Real consensus was important, and his reputation would suffer if he rushed ahead of it. So he passed it on.

  Hoót-hoöt-hôôt wondered why they sent this message and no comment at all about the strange burst of exit radiation? Surely they detected it, but nothing in the message acknowledged it. Nothing they did suggested they had such a capability either. They ran to a jump at velocity too. It seemed like deliberately ignoring the egg eating dragon in the nesting room. Could it be they knew who had created it?

  * * *

  The far edges of the system returned no surprises when their radar returned few images to them. By the time they saw most of it they were late in
the run to jump and cycled through an alternate crew shift and returned the prime crew to the bridge. They set the acceleration moderate as usual and timed to take the prime crew off shift an hour into the next system.

  Once again they ran through that system and five more in quick succession with nothing worth stopping to examine or claim. They fueled two stops back and could have done another short jump, but everybody was tired and this system had a gas giant positioned for easy access from their entry angle.

  Gordon declared a stop to fuel and grant two rest and recreation days. The Badgers had no problem with that. The senior Bill, Captain Twin on the Deep Space Explorer Green, however called Gordon. He still hadn't found out if the man was really a twin. If he was, what did they call his brother?

  "How am I to maintain discipline when we stand idle with nothing to do?" Twin complained.

  "That's why we stop. To take a break from constant duty," Gordon explained patiently. Why was this such a difficult concept he wondered, but refrained from saying it.

  "How can you get back to normal operations afterward?" The Bill captain asked. For the first time Gordon say some signs of facial expression on the Bill. A hard bill after all wasn't all that mobile like lips, but when he didn't quite close it on the last statement it seemed to have the same meaning as a Human's mouth hanging open in shock or dismay. Derf tended to the opposite, clamping their mouths shut hard.

  "Perhaps I don't understand," Gordon admitted. "Do you keep your crews on the ship permanently once they sign on? Are they... " He wanted to say enslaved, but decided that was too strong a word. "Indentured? Do they never get leave time to visit home or to go on worlds or stations when the ship makes port calls?"

  "No! Of course not, that is ridiculous," Twin said, unaware how thin the ice was, taking that tone with Gordon. "But we don't have leave on ship, which is what this is basically. There is no precedence."

  Gordon ground his teeth and refrained from telling him the entire Little Fleet doing it was plenty of precedence. Instead he said: "Well, I'd be happy to stop at the next planet we see with some nice resorts, fine beaches and maybe a casino or two," Gordon offered. "We'll enjoy fine dining and maybe take in a few shows and have some drinks in the evening. Did I miss noticing such a place and zip right past it?"