by Neely Dobbs
CHAPTER 32: Alliance
Kyell and Sabanda sat at a table in the Visuals Room. Five view screens simultaneously replayed various scenes of the Colossus diverting the Wasp into an orbital insertion path. Kyell froze the visuals as Jazon, Vick, and ADIZ entered.
“Good morning, Vice-Admiral, Commodore” Agriel said formally, yet with a cheerfulness absent during his encounter with the Colossus. “I hope you got some rest.”
“Same to you, Commander,” Sabanda replied.
Jazon spoke up quickly, “Let's skip the protocol, folks. We're all in this together. Agriel, call me Jazon; you know Kyell and Sabanda.”
“Thank you, Jazon” Agriel grinned, adding quickly, “and I'd be honored if each of you would call me Vick.”
Kyell pointed to the trays at the end of the table. “I don't know if you've eaten, Vick, but I know Jazon is hungry. There's enough there for both of you.”
As the two men uncovered their trays, Sabanda said, “We've been reviewing visuals of the Wasp's encounter. While you eat, watch screen five.” She re-started the display.
Kyell shifted his chair aside slightly to offer Jazon and Vick better vantage points, then said, “Jazon, you need to see this. It's part of what I noticed last night.” He pressed a console switch. The view reversed action until he released it, then resumed moving forward.
“That's it, there…that faint distortion. Must be some form of tractor beam, but the Wasp reported no magnetics or energy emission. Hmm… Plasma nucleonics, maybe?”
Sabanda worried an errant curl. “Possibly, Kyell, but did you notice that faint glow from the Colossus during the deflection? A glow like that couldn't be a simple corona effect like that produced by electrical conduction through a wire in moist air. There was no moist air— not in space.”
Kyell reversed the recording again and re-started it at one-tenth speed. “OK, now look at this.”
At reduced speed, a glow was more apparent, extending between the Wasp and one huge "foot" of the Colossus. That glow was decidedly different from the illumination of the Colossus itself. It was just at the edge of visual perception, faintly glowing against the darker background of space.
“Great job, you two,” Jazon said sincerely. “Maybe some of the Wasp's other remotes or onboard systems caught something more— maybe on recordings made at frequencies outside the visual spectrum. Those might show it more clearly. Vick, check that out with your crew later. Right now, though, we have other business to attend to.”
Pushing his finished meal aside, Jazon established brief eye contact with each person, subtly acknowledging the importance of their roles. “We're here to review the Wasp's encounter and its possible connection to the SDs. Kyell has mentioned he found something that might be important, but we can't yet afford to assume his theory is right. We need to review every available visual of the SDs to see if any of us finds something that matches his tentative conclusion.
“First, though, Vick has some news about the signal sent by the Colossus. I think we should hear it now, since he felt it was important enough to leave the Wasp to his second-in-command and race here.” He winked at Vick. “The floor is yours.”
Vick stood self-consciously, suddenly aware that he had the full attention of the most important V.I.P.’s in the Kepren Cluster. He took a deep breath to compose himself, then began.
“As I've briefly mentioned to Admiral…” Jazon's stern look froze him for a moment. Then he realized the reason, relaxed and corrected himself. “As I told Jazon, earlier, the signal sent by the Colossus sounds like it could be some kind of code. We fed it through all of our automated decoding algorithms, but didn't come up with anything we recognized. So, while we haven't deciphered the code yet, we still suspect it could be a coded message.”
“What sort of message?” asked Kyell.
“That's what we were wondering, and why I... uh... raced to Mathlen so quickly, Kyell. I know this is all still speculation... but I know how good my guys are at this kind of analysts. So I thought it was important enough to get it to you immediately. I'm hoping you can help crack the code so— if it is a message— we can figure out what it says.”
Vick handed an m’bar to ADIZ, who deposited it into the proper cavity in his chest. Vick said, “ADIZ, play sector 3/41/9, segments 161.22 through 162.38.” Immediately, from the robot's internal speaker, came a static buzz that hinted at being very fast staccato clicks. Everyone listened intently.
After a few moments Kyell whispered, “Hard to be sure, but I think part of it... maybe a series... is being repeated. I don't know what it is, but somethin' about it seems kind’a familiar. But I don't pick up any intelligible pattern so far.” Seeing no differing opinion from the group, he asked, “Vick, you said your communications whiz-kids believed it was a code. What do they make of it?”
“They think it’s got to be some kind of a clicker code. They're convinced there's a pattern there: three, possibly four groups of clicks that repeat over and over. Shallen thinks maybe it's three groups, Alten's sure it's four.” Vick scratched his neatly shaved chin. “Did you take ‘Theory and Analysis of Supra-luminal Communication Encryption and Transfer' at the Academy?”
“Yeah,” Kyell winced. “I suffered through a whole year of Danton Kellice's version of academic torture, but I don’t remember much besides the pain. The cadets referred to it as ‘TASCET,' but I remember little beyond that." He wiggled his eyebrows up and down, comically. "I guess you could say I've always had problems with ‘TASCET understanding’.”
Sabanda and Jazon groaned.
“Well,” laughed Vick, “Alten and Shallen were tops at the Academy in Kellice's class. And, strangely, both are almost positive the signal uses one of the coded encryption patterns they studied in that class— or similar enough to make it sound familiar. And to me it feels…” He tilted his head slowly to the right. “It's like the sound of a frequency filtered or compressed so tightly that information is lost. Does that make any sense?”
Sabanda immediately addressed ADIZ. “Slow down the signal's rate by 10% for ten seconds, then continue slowing in 10% time-lapses until one of us asks you to stop.”
“Responding.” The tempo of the signal obligingly began to decelerate, slowing more every ten seconds.
The group listened for three minutes. The sound of the signal gradually became more clearly recognizable as extremely rapid clicks. However, none of the group recognized any clear pattern, even after the playback rate had been decreased by roughly 400%,. Jazon stood, instructed ADIZ to stop the playback, then asked ADIZ to make copies of the altered sounds for Vick, Kyell and Sabanda for later study.
“Vick, normally I’d debrief you at this point on your encounter with the Colossus. However, in our current situation, I'd first like our assembled group to go over all of the visuals we have on the SDs. Then we can hear your story afterwards, so everything fits together chronologically. Any objections?”
“Whatever you say, Sir…er…Jazon.”
Kyell and Sabanda hid their amusement as Jazon continued.
“We'll run through all the SDs we have visuals on, in order of their occurrence. As you know, many are of poor quality. Most are of the more recent events recorded after we placed remote sentinels near all settled systems prior to any evacuations. Some of the sentinels vanished with the systems, so we have usable visuals of only six SDs.” Turning toward the large wall display as the lights dimmed, he said, “Please make any notes you like, but let's hold comment 'til we've completed one full viewing of all six SDs.”
He signaled ADIZ and the now familiar, but still stunning saga of the lost worlds paraded before them. Silence reigned during the review. Each person was revisited by the strong emotions they had experienced at the time of the actual SDs. When Chad's disappearance had been replayed, they sat quietly, looking around at each other expectantly.
Jazon broke the silence to establish the guidelines for the discussion. “OK, that’s the first pass through. Let's not stand on formalities. Anyone who wants to raise observations, speculations or theories can offer them as they choose. Don't worry whether it's new insights or old ideas, logical assumption or guesses, clear fact or improbable fantasy. If you even suspect it might be important, share it. Any questions?”
After a few quiet moments, he nodded. “OK, let's do it. Who wants to get us started?”
Sabanda broke the silence. “It's clear that until Chad, whole systems disappeared, not just one planet or a star. That's not new…but I still don't see why it broke the pattern.”
Kyell picked up the thought, sifting his fingers through his hair. “I think it's important to focus on how the systems were affected, not just the fact they were. Then we can consider the ‘why'.”
Vick tugged on his long dark ear lobe, then followed up on Kyell's suggestion. “ADIZ, when each system disappeared, was every planet taken at exactly the same instant as its sun?”
After the barest pause, the answer came. “Apparently so. At least to the smallest fraction of a second our sensors can detect.”
“Well, then,” responded Vick, “maybe, when a disappearance occurs, that purplish "frame" is the border of some encircling force that advances until it surrounds all the planets and their star...” He paused to avoid speaking his next thought: And then it swallows them.
Kyell filled the gap. “ADIZ, we need a probability analysis. Examine the odds for the natural occurrence of the following events: First, of any individual planet or star in our cluster disappearing. Second, the simultaneous disappearance of both a planet and its sun. Third, the disappearance of full systems. Fourth, the disappearance of only settled systems. Employ approximation and speculation where necessary, but don't bother giving us the individual odds— just the combined result.”
“Responding.” An appreciable pause followed before ADIZ spoke again. “My regrets for the delay, but in addressing the parameters of your question, analysis and logic dictate the inclusion of two additional parameters. First, the fact that the ‘violet haze' event has approached from the same direction and in the same plane each time. Analysis also projects that slight variations must have occurred in the fabric of space-time. Since probability speculation was requested, I would postulate that the force would be gravitational in nature, possibly related to the total mass of each system.
“Analysis of the combined parameters indicates, with an error factor of plus or minus 4.27 percent, that the final probability is approximately 393 trillion to one against the chance occurrence of such simultaneous events.” The robot fell silent.
The silence held. The members of the team looked from one to another. When Jazon felt sure no one else was going to speak, he said, “Can we..." He cleared his constricted throat. “Can we agree that answers the question about the SDs being intelligently directed?”
Noticing Kyell's questioning glance, Jazon smiled tightly and sighed. “Something tells me we had better brace for the rest, but before I turn the floor over to Kyell, let's recess long enough to gather some additional data.
“Vick, you need to contact the Wasp. See if the remotes picked up anything more on the phenomenon Sabanda and Kyell found— the faint glow from the foot of the Colossus that shows during the course alteration. Also, see if Shallen and Alten have made any further progress on that signal code. Kyell, please join Vick in that code discussion…you're good at asking totally off-the-wall questions that get others to look at things from a new viewpoint.”
Sabanda laughed and said, “Jazon, I'd like to try working with the signal recording for a little while. Is it OK if I kidnap ADIZ?”
He frowned. “I guess that leaves me to rustle up some food for us. " Then he laughed cheerfully, "Oh, well. I guess that's just the hazard of surrounding myself with bright and talented people. Let's reconvene in two hours.”
CHAPTER 33: Cronul
With infrequent exceptions, the master in residence inside the isolated, stone-walled enclosure maintained a serene and pastoral contentment. Few outside events were of sufficient importance to merit even casual note. Only exceptional cases could stimulate lingering interest and consideration. And it was extremely rare for any event to transpired which could create genuine hints of concern and disquietude.
This was one such day.
* * *
Hoga reflected.