by Olga Werby
“No. Just the rats. But we have no idea what’s going on the outside. What’s happening to people all around the world? The Lunar colonies? Mars? On Vars’s ship?”
They had tried to get in touch with the Vaults and with Matteo’s own institution back in Seattle, but all they’d gotten was static. Either the world suffered a catastrophic failure or their lab was purposely being shielded. The second alternative was of course preferable to the first, even if personally unpleasant.
“If humans wanted to colonize another star system, what would we do?” Phoebe asked.
“We would identify a good candidate for colonization—a stable star, a planet in a habitable zone, not too far away from Earth—and then send a probe,” Matteo said.
Phoebe had come to the conclusion a long time ago that Seeds would make the best long-distance colonists. Not only were they fit psychologically for the long confinement of the voyage between stars, the Seeds had the genetic diversity required to start a stable colony. “And when would we send the colonists?” she asked.
“Only after we were sure our people would be able to survive out there on the new world.”
“Exactly! We wouldn’t send them right away. We’d wait for the probes to verify that they had found someplace suitable for us. And then we would send ships with the supplies our colonists would need when they got there. Only after that would we send people.”
“That’s what we did with Mars,” Matteo agreed. “But when we’re talking about colonizing another star system, we’d need more than just a supply ship or two.” He pointed to the window separating them from Sophie. “It’s possible that we might need to send…bodies.”
On the other side of the lab, Sophie had stripped off her clothing, and underneath, her entire body was now covered in a fine mesh-like suit—nanobots in yet another form. She was watching Phoebe and Matteo, unblinking, unsmiling, expressionless.
Phoebe felt herself tremble again. She turned the intercom back on. “Sophie? What’s going on now?”
“Check this out,” Sophie said. She picked up the metal lab bench with one hand and held it out with her arm extended all the way away from her body. “And this.” She set down the bench and picked up a metal pipe. Effortlessly, she twisted the three inch thick steel into a pretzel. The nanobot suit had given her capabilities similar to those of a construction worker’s exton.
Phoebe killed the intercom. “Can she break the glass?” she whispered to Matteo.
There was a soft hiss and a slight whine, and Sophie’s voice came over the speakers again, even though the switch was still off. “Of course I can,” she said. “But there’s no reason to freak you guys out more than you already are. We’re all scientists in here, just trying to do our jobs.”
“What’s your job, Sophie?” Matteo asked.
“I’m here to understand, just like you,” the woman said with the same flat expression. Phoebe worked hard to control her breathing.
Chapter Fourteen
Vars was tethered to Ivan Kroffnic, one of the more experienced crewmembers. Ben was also there as an expert on biomimetics, linked up with Trish Cars. Their expedition to the surface was rounded off by two of Liut’s officers, Ziva Yarr and Glen Kabukicho. The officers’ job was to do reconnaissance, ensure safety, and, Vars guessed, to keep her and the two JPL engineers from doing anything stupid…like dying or injuring themselves.
On the flight to Mimas, there had been surprisingly little interaction between the military crew and the scientists. But they all used the same cafeteria, so Vars at least knew all the names of Liut’s people. Ziva and Glen were young and athletic. Ivan was also very fit, but older. Perhaps Liut had decided Vars, the least experienced member of the crew, needed someone more mature to keep an eye on her.
It wasn’t clear to Vars who’d made the decision about who would be the first people on Mimas outing. She could only guess that she was assigned to the team either because she was completely expendable or too troublesome to keep around. Or maybe it was because Liut didn’t trust her. Whatever the reason, she didn’t care. She was walking on the surface of another world. Who cared why she was allowed to do so?
The reconnaissance team members were data-linked to each other and to the ship, mostly via versing only—video feeds were unreliable due to interference from Saturn’s intense radiation—but the crew of the ship could watch them out of the windows and on the ship’s external cameras and follow via audio. The plan was to bring detailed close-up images and other readings collected from actual contact with the Mims’s structure back for thorough examination by the whole team. Ziva and Glen also rolled cables and set up a few external cameras to enable better communication between the people walking the surface and their ship in the future.
There was no atmosphere on Mimas to obscure the view. Saturn hung over their heads on full display, with its rings edge on, appearing to cut the gas giant in half. At about twenty degrees from Saturn’s poles, aurora was playing among the churning clouds. Here and there, monstrous lightning strikes set the gas giant’s atmosphere aglow. It was hard to look away from the full glory of the spinning spiral storms in Saturn’s upper atmosphere.
“Remember to breathe, Vars,” Ivan said almost at the same time as her suit started to blink angrily at her. Vars hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. The view was literally breathtaking.
“Thank you,” she said. She looked around again, this time focusing on the surface of the moon and not on the view above it. Mimas was a tiny moon, composed mostly of water, both frozen and liquid. It was a million times lighter than Earth; one only had to “jump” at the speed of 360 miles per hour to get off the moon altogether—the escape velocity. If Mimas had an atmosphere, any old jet would have been fast enough to fly off this small ice ball.
The shape of the Herschel impact crater was partly due to the moon’s low mass. It was a solidified version of a raindrop hitting a puddle of water. The difference, of course, was the scale of the impact features. The crater was just over eighty miles in diameter, ringed by mountains. The central ridge was as tall as Earth’s Mount Everest, with its sides almost vertical. Weak gravity allowed for sheer walls. Many had remarked how Mimas, with its Herschel Crater, resembled the Death Star—the space station from a two-centuries-old science fiction story.
The crater’s central mountain had a double peak. At the base of the smaller one, about four hundred feet above the flat plane of the crater, was the Mims’s artifact, glinting in the reflected light from Saturn. It had clearly grown in size since it had first been spotted by one of the telescopes in orbit around Earth, extending about five hundred feet up the slope.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Ben said. “Like some alien beehive.”
“Well, it is alien, and nanobots have some aspects of a bee swarm,” Trish said, with more sarcasm than the moment deserved. Vars assumed it was her coping strategy. None of the scientists on this mission had ever been this far from home...or so close to an alien construct, nanobots not withstanding. “And it did act like honey to lure us in,” Trish added.
Ziva and Glen slow-hopped ahead of them. Distances were deceptive here. Everything was equally sharp, whether close or far away with no atmosphere to add that bit of haze that assisted distance-perception. But Vars knew their spacecraft had landed a few miles from the sharp slope of the central mount. That was just a few hops and skips for the athletic Glen and Ziva. It was taking Vars a lot longer. Ivan hung back with her.
Still, soon enough, they reached the slope, and Vars found herself holding her breath again. She suddenly had the overwhelming sense that the artifact in front of them was full of intent. She just needed to figure out what that was.
Glen and Ziva were already bouncing up the steep slope of frozen ice like mountain goats. At the base of the artifact, they stopped. Observations from orbit had shown that the artifact was mostly hollow and that there was an openin
g at the top. The plan was to climb up and take a peek inside. Sure enough, within moments, Ziva had spooled out her tether and started to ascend. Glen took the spotter position below. The cube-within-a-cube construction formed a natural ladder. The gravity was so low that it seemed that Ziva could practically jump all the way to the top of the alien structure. She made it look easy.
“It’s a very sturdy construction,” Ziva said as she made her way up. “The outer layer looks completely structural. But through the cutouts, I can see a lot more…activity.”
“Activity?” Ben asked.
“Yes. It’s like little fireflies zooming inside. But not random—there’s a pattern to it. Even if I can’t understand it…yet.”
“Would you say the outer surface is old, weathered?” Vars asked. Mimas was orbiting through the outer ring of Saturn, and just a few months of moving through all this dust would have eroded the outer surface of any structure if it wasn’t being continuously rebuilt. All this particulate material bombarding their own spaceship was a cause for concern, too, which was why Liut planned on implementing the JPL team’s suggestion of coating their shelter with a layer of ice for additional protection against weathering. It wasn’t like they were leaving Mimas any time soon...or even had the capability to do so if they wanted.
“Surface looks new,” Ziva said. “Come and see for yourselves.” She waved them up. “I’ve tried to break off a sample, but it didn’t work.”
“You tried to get a sample?” Trish practically yelled. “Do you know what bees do when their hive gets attacked?” She was running, or what passed for running in super low gravity, toward the artifact. Ben was practically pulled along. “Crazy jarhead,” she groused.
“Ziva, Glen, please restrain from doing any more damage to the structure,” said Ben. “We come in peace, remember?” Vars could hear the strain in his voice; he was having trouble keeping up with Trish.
“Right,” Ziva said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
How hard is it for everyone to work on the same team? Toward the same goal? Vars sighed and tried to walk faster. Unlike the rest of the team, she didn’t have much experience wearing an exton; she had to pay attention to every step, every move. The grips on her soles required careful positioning and just as careful release. Theoretically, the suit made walking on ice easier, but not for Vars. And every time she sped up, her safety buddy held her back.
“Just take your time, Vars,” Ivan would say, reducing the length of their tether. Vars didn’t even get angry with him. It was obvious she was struggling. Who knew that a few miles could be so far?
“Okay, I’ve made it to the top opening,” Ziva announced. She waved down at them from nine hundred feet above the floor of the crater. The central mount towered thousands of feet above her. “But this thing doesn’t end here. It continues inside the mountain, boring up and into the ice.”
Vars still huffed and heaved to the base of the artifact. Ben was already climbing it, while Trish stayed below as his safety buddy. Ziva secured a bunch of ropes to the sides of the structure by tying them to the cube clusters at regular intervals, making it easier to climb. Vars wished that the woman showed a bit more reverence for the artifact, but then again, Ben was making full use of her lines. He managed to reach the top in much less time than it took Ziva to scale it.
What’s the rush? Vars wanted to say. But instead she said, “What do you see, Ben?”
“If I had to make a wild guess,” Ben said, “it would be that we are looking at a power generating station. A battery, essentially.”
“What is it powering?” Trish asked.
“Good question,” Ben said. “I’d like to get a look inside, but…it’s too narrow for me. It looked bigger from orbit.” He leaned into the opening. “Who knows? Maybe it was bigger.”
“It’s too small for me, too,” Ziva said. “If we were just a tad smaller...or didn’t need these extons…”
“We should send in a drone,” said Ben.
Liut spoke up into their head speakers; he was quiet all through the walk and climb, not offering any suggestions or opinions...so not like him. “No,” he vetoed the drone idea. “Sending machines into that thing is a last resort.” Vars actually agreed with him. The Mims’s nanobots were just too good at taking over human tech. “Isn’t Alice a midget or something?” he asked.
“She’s Bambuti,” Vars patiently corrected the major. What was the point of getting irritated by that man? He obviously knew who and what Alice was. He was trying to get a rise out of her. “Of Pygmy heritage,” she added anyway.
“That’s what I meant.” Surprisingly, there was a note of contrition in Liut voice. “Would Alice fit?”
“She actually might,” Ziva said. Ben agreed. Even encased in her exton, Alice was the size of a child.
“Okay. Alice will come on the next EVA,” Ian spoke from the ship. Even with his new cyberhumatics-driven arm—or perhaps because of it—Liut had barred him from leaving the ship or going anywhere near the Mims’s structure. But Ian still monitored all actions and conversations closely. Vars assumed that both men were on the bridge scowling at each other. One team...
“I’ll use the lasers to take measurements as far as I can,” Ben said. “I’ll also lower my camera into the opening. I have enough tether for at least a few yards. That’ll give us something to look at back on the ship.” He peered over the edge, down at Vars. “So Vars, now that we’re up close, what do you think of it?”
What did she think? She had stopped thinking a while ago—she was now all emotions and impressions. At least the rest of the EVA went smoothly enough...and fast. Time had a way of contracting when one was having fun.
Alice did indeed fit through the opening. Ziva and Glen lowered her into the structure via a tether until her feet hit the curving floor of the tunnel. She was wearing a stripped-down version of her exton and was connected to the rest of the team by a video link. Establishing the direct feed to the control room was the one concrete thing they had accomplished on their first EVA: Ziva and Glen had laid out several kilometers of data cable between the alien artifact and the ship.
Ben stood at the base of the artifact with Trish, Vars, and Ivan. “Clearly it must, at a minimum, gather and transmit data,” he said. “If I were sending a mission to the stars, I would want to get as much data back as possible.”
“Would you be willing to wait a century?” Trish asked.
“Me personally? Heck no. But I mean the entire civilization. When we sent early probes to the outer reaches of our solar system, many researchers didn’t expect to live long enough to see the results of the experiments they’d launched. We explore because that’s what people do.”
“We explore because it greatly increases the long-term survival of the human species,” Trish said.
“That too,” Ben agreed. “But on an individual level, we explore simply because we’re curious. I just want to see what’s out there. And if by my curiosity I advance the survival chances of the whole human race, so much the better.”
“So now you think it’s a giant antenna?” Ian chimed in from the ship. “I thought you said this structure was for power generation.”
“It can do more than one thing,” said Ben. “And we have to assume there are sensors and data storage in there somewhere, too. Sensors that collect data, a transmitter that sends that data home, and power to make it all work—the basic trifecta of long-distance exploration.”
As they talked, Ben set up his portable instruments for examining the nanobot-constructed cubes: a field microscope, a small heat and power tracer, and an X-ray spectrometer. Ben’s field microscope came with several flashlight-type illumination sources including one in ultraviolet spectrum, helping to expose and identify the assorted micro-components on the surface of the artifact. The heat tracer analyzed variations in infrared output and created a heat map of the section of the structure it
was focused on. Nanobots gave off different heat signatures depending on the work they were doing, at least back on the ship when Alice studied them in her lab. In addition to heat, this tracer created a visualization of the artifact’s magnetic envelope on a granular level. As electricity flowed inside the alien structure, it generated corresponding magnetic fields. The power tracer gave a glimpse of where and how much electricity the Mims’s systems used. Ben’s third portable instrument was the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, which gathered information on the alien structure’s chemical composition. With these tools, they could begin to understand the configurations the nanobots assembled, make guesses at their possible functions and power requirements, and produce a list of the components from which they were constructed. Back on the ship, Ron Silverman, the other member of the JPL team, was set to compare Ben’s findings with the nanobots native to their ship. At least that was the plan when they left the ship this morning. Reality always had a way of intruding on the best-laid plans.
“Interesting,” Ben said after a while. “These bots are constructed from the minerals found in the surrounding ice—the dust from Saturn’s rings, essentially. They’re distilling the ice and gathering materials to create more nanobots. The fresh-looking ice here? That’s just a byproduct of nanobot replication.”
“So instead of emerging from under the ice, the artifact grew out of it?” Liut asked. Vars was surprised when the major declared that he would not be going on any EVAs personally. Instead, he carefully monitored everything from the bridge, never surrendering the control of the ship. All data gathered by the EVA team were shown on the ship’s screens in addition to the multiple views from the surface stationary cameras as well as everyone’s body cams. In some ways, the bridge crew was getting a more complete picture of the alien artifact than the people on the ground.
“It would seem so,” Ben said after a small hesitation. It was hard to work the equipment, move, and talk at the same time. At least Vars found it so. Ivan was very insistent that she did things one at a time, serially, no splitting attention between tasks.