Lancaster curled up in a fetal position and began to weep.
“So, did you keep one hat your entire senior year of college?” Little Jack asked.
“I lost it twice, but I always got an identical one. Mika saw them, but didn’t noti… Wait, I’ve never told you that story.”
“I know. She did.” Little Jack motioned to the medical bed.
Lancaster leaped to his feet and ran to it. Looking through the translucent dome, he saw her smiling face past the rows of numbers expressing her vital signs in a language he did not understand, nor care. She was alive. That was all that mattered.
“I’m nove, too, by the way,” Little Jack interjected.
* * *
Bolts of color sparked out of the darkness, and in the middle opened a flash of white light through which Odin’s Revenge emerged. It was a comfortable enough distance away from the planet to take a look before getting too close for comfort. It was one of the reasons Little Jack had not upgraded to one of the newer types of space folding drives; Spectrum gave him more control as to where and when to emerge. It was also because neither he nor Lancaster could afford a new drive, but they didn’t tell anyone that.
Today Little Jack was especially glad he had the accuracy that he did. He had felt a strong rumbling while coming close to the system; and now when they emerged into the standard universe he could see why. The system’s core was not a star, but a black hole. That explained why the trip had been so quick. The speed of Spectrum drive was based on gravitational waves, and this system had pulled them harder than most.
Surrounding the black hole were giant rings of light; the accretion disks which were made up of captured matter heating up as they neared the event horizon. It provided luminescence for the system.
Dwarfed by this enormous phenomenon was a gas giant that in most other systems would be considered huge. Here, however, it was camouflaged by all the galactic debris; though it bore a ring that glistened on the side of the black hole.
Lancaster was mesmerized by the site, unable to take his eyes from the enormity of it all. His two partners were distracted by the work they needed to do. Little Jack kept one hand firmly on the controls while the other pressed buttons along the control panel to check for any danger around them and the minimum safe distance from everything.
Mika had turned her seat toward the console on the side. She had plugged in the coordinates based on what Lancaster and she had found in the ruins beneath the hotel. This had to be the spot; but the planet could not be where Teo went. There was no surface, and nothing could be on it worth searching for. She scanned the system, but there were no other bodies that could be called planets. At best there were some dwarf worlds whose erratic orbits would one day place them in the garbage heap of debris that illuminated the system.
Lancaster checked the console on his side, looking closer at the luminescent ring and the softly radiant clouds of gas on the planet. He found something interesting. Nestled just within the rings was a moon with an atmosphere. It sat at such a distance from the planet to benefit from its radiation heat, but far enough to not be pulled in. Light from the accretion rings provided illumination. It was a perfect, though unusual, combination of elements to make it a candidate for life.
But also, its inconsistent proximity to the black hole gave it an unusual and dangerous quality. Throughout the various systems that humans had explored, every planet had its own time dilation. Residents on these worlds aged at slightly different speeds. Even those on the same worlds aged differently based on how close to the surface they lived. Those further out or in orbit aged slower. Those closer to the surface or inside it, especially on more dense worlds, aged faster. Those who traveled a lot between worlds aged the slowest, especially when they spent a lot of time in Spectrum drive, utilizing the dimension of pure gravity to travel between star systems. Lancaster, for instance, had aged quite a bit less than Mika because. Little Jack, even less. Commercial interstellar pilots remained young the longest.
For most people, this difference in age was not noticeable. Humans tended to settle on worlds that retained a similar amount of gravity to their former home of Earth. Even explorers did not tend to land on planets that might affect their internal timeline too greatly.
Because of the gravity around it, partly due to the gas giant and mostly because of the black hole, this world dilated time a lot more than any of the three on board had ever seen. Simply flying this close might be causing them to lose time in the rest of human occupied space.
As such, Little Jack looked for a way to get back into Spectrum drive and out of the system. Lancaster stopped him by telling Mika to look at specific coordinates around the moon. She did, and she spotted a lone satellite.
“Nikos,” Mika said.
“You register that’s what he’s using to monitor Teo?”
Mika nodded, and said, “I still don’t comprend what his goal is with that.”
“Fes, we can get you out of the mix if we can find him.” Lancaster and Mika went about searching the surface for life.
The further down they scanned, the more the monitor grew bright without details, like an overexposed photograph. They could see things moving quickly, as though they were on time lapse, but the relative time dilation between where they were and the surface of the planet was too great to get any details. They would have to get in closer.
They used the instruments to measure the speed of incidents on the surface relative to their own timeline. In so doing, they found that at sea level, time was presently going close to a hundred times faster. (Their instruments were not built to be any more precise.)
This would not be so bad for someone making a quick trip. Landing for a couple hours would mean they’d reach orbit after losing just over a week of their own time. But stretch that into a few days and you’ve lost a year.
Added to that was the problem that the dilation was increasing. As the moon moved toward the side of the planet facing the black hole, time was moving faster on its surface, and would soon be perhaps thousands of times faster. They could easily launch from the surface only to find themselves in a completely alien future, long after humanity had gone extinct.
Even where they were, still far from the planet, time was getting warped, and would continue when they reached orbit. They needed to find what they were looking for so they could get in and out and away from this system as quickly as possible.
Little Jack needed to get closer for them to do a more thorough scan of the planet; one where they could find signs of human life; or any life for that matter. So he made sure Lancaster and Mika were set up at their consoles and ready to begin on his mark. They were.
Just before launching his thrusters, Little Jack realized that he hadn’t switched from graviton sails to solar sails yet. “Hmm,” he muttered.
Lancaster knew that tone of voice, and it was alarming. “Hang on to something,” he told Mika. They were both already strapped in; but that may not be enough, depending on what his partner had in mind.
Little Jack angled the graviton sails while he peered out the front, eyeballing the trajectory. Lancaster began to ask, “Wha…” but was then lurched back into his chair.
Little Jack had engaged the sails and they had latched onto the gravity of the black hole. It pulled them toward it while Little Jack adjusted with the thrusters to nudge them toward the planet. His body tensed and he sucked in a deep breath, his habit for concentrating heavily on a difficult task.
Mika grasped on tightly to whatever she could find. She could feel her heart beating through her chest, and she calculated the odds of having a heart attack so soon after intense medical treatment. Regardless of the odds, it was like falling from a tall height; there was nothing she could do now but wait until they reached the destination.
It happened mercifully soon, though it felt like much longer. It had only taken a minute in their experienced time, but in their usual timelines, it had been a little longer. When they got to the moon, it wo
uld be even longer, and if they stayed on the moon until it got much closer to the black hole, it would be much longer still. Based on the time dilation they had already witnessed, the instruments estimated that when the moon reached the point closest to the black hole, time would slip by at a speed it could no longer even calculate. Time was now literally of the essence.
Little Jack turned to the others, expecting them to already be at work scanning. They weren’t. They were clutching their chairs and pieces of the dashboard, their teeth clenched and their eyes wide. “What are you doing?” Little Jack blurted.
The pair shook out of their stupor and got to work scanning the surface. Even with their closer proximity, everything was going by quickly. It was difficult to get any readings.
Lancaster had to force himself to focus on the search. He kept getting distracted by unique sights he had never witnessed, despite the myriad worlds he had explored. Rivers flowed like melting wax. Trees shivered like animals in the cold. Desert dunes moved across the sands like sails on the ocean. As for animal life, he could only catch glimpses when they stopped for a period of time. When they moved again, all he could see were smears. They were lives being experienced a hundred times faster than his own; births, struggles, triumphs, emotions, and deaths all racing before his eyes.
Though fascinated as well, Mika remained focused. She looked for solid structures that didn’t move. She zeroed in on rock formations, especially those that may have cave openings, and searched around them for signs of structures a human might have built. She set the sensors to alert her upon finding metal in hopes that this would help her locate the ship. This only served to confuse her as there were numerous metal deposits across every mountain.
It was an entire world they were scouring for clues; and that would only lead them to knowing where to land. It was starting to look like a bigger task than they could do with what they had.
Then Little Jack had a thought. He scanned the satellite orbiting the moon and found its wireless source. Using the cockpit computer and communications array, he hacked into the satellite. His presence would be noticed by whomever it was sending a signal out to, but that wouldn’t happen for a while, so it was worth the detection.
Once inside its memory banks, Little Jack found the coordinates of the planet where it had been spying. He then sent those coordinates to Mika, saying, “Try these locations.”
“Aren’t you going to send them to me, too?” Lancaster asked.
“She’s focused on the job,” Little Jack said.
Lancaster began to protest, but hesitated, aware there was truth in his partner’s words.
Before he could say anything Mika straightened excitedly. “Found the ship!” she said, and she sent the coordinates back to Little Jack. He closed in on the scan and put it up on the holographic heads up display at the front. It was Teo’s vessel all right, landed tightly within a small clearing, half hidden by the foliage. Oddly, it looked neither damaged nor crashed.
So why was he still there? Escaping the heavier gravity would be difficult, but his ship should be able to handle it if it had enough fuel. And he must have known about the time dilation when he landed. No one knew the answers.
Little Jack did a self-diagnostic of Odin’s Revenge to make sure it would be able to escape the pull of the planet while Lancaster and Mika made sure they had everything they would need for a search.
Lancaster stopped momentarily to look over Mika. Her hands were shaking as she prepared herself quickly. “Mika,” he said. “Are you ready for this?”
Mika didn’t hesitate. She nodded her head as quickly as her hands were shaking and she didn’t say a word.
Once everyone was ready, they strapped themselves in tightly and Little Jack flew them full speed for the planet. About halfway there he turned off the thrust and allowed the gravity of the planet to pull them. He then threw it into full reverse, slowing them down before hitting the atmosphere. Though he wanted to get in and out quickly, he wanted to be extra cautious landing here.
It went smoother than expected. Little Jack had to adjust his thrust as he lowered further through the atmosphere and it did use more fuel than expected, but time and reality did not change in any noticeable way. There was just the nagging feeling that the clock was now moving faster out there past the bubble they were in, and it might be too easy to forget.
Lancaster was struck by how normal it all seemed; like any other planet he had been to. The colors on the flora and fauna were a bit muted, and a large number lacked any pigmentation. But there was nothing that he would have even thought about in any other circumstance. He checked the atmospheric conditions and found that the air was even easily breathable.
Mika wasn’t considering the surroundings, nor looking through any of the sensors. She was sitting stiffly in her chair waiting for the thump on the ground to indicate she could go out to look. She was also thinking about what to say if she found Teo alive, and how to feel if she found him dead.
The nearest clearing where it was safe to land was a half kilometer away, so Little Jack settled down there. He waited to open the landing ramp until all of them were there together. He didn’t want Mika to run out into the jaws of some beast… Not when he was just beginning to like her.
As soon as they were out, Mika raised her goggles to her eyes. They were set to thermal imaging, so she spotted all the animals still scampering away from the loud vessel. But there was no sign of a human.
Lancaster looked up into the sky, at the unusual looking sun. Rather than a yellow globe, a flaming ring surrounded a clear, round marble, while a yellow-red line crossed crookedly through the middle. All around it, a wide river of asteroids drifted lazily by.
Little Jack had imaged the region during the landing, and had the area mapped out in a hologram, which he opened up above his handheld Geographic device. Showing the others where they were in relation to the ship they had spotted, he pointed the way and began walking. Behind them, the loading ramp of Odin’s Revenge slowly closed.
They stayed close. Mika’s pace was slowed by the necessity of following Little Jack’s holographic map. There was enough foreign foliage to get a person lost by simply going around the wrong side of a tree, and the unusual sky behind the thick layer of forest canopy made it harder to orient one’s self in the proper direction.
Along the way, they heard the various whoops and whistles of the local animals. They had been retreating after the landing, but presently they sounded different, closer. Lancaster shined a heat signature beam into the woods through his Illuminator and found several animals which had rallied and were closing in curiously. “Hey,” he whispered.
Little Jack slowed and looked, turning his glasses to the same setting. There weren’t a lot of animals, but there were enough that he didn’t want to take a chance. He handed the map to Mika and placed his hands near his pistols. Lancaster kept his Illuminator handy, ready to flash bright light to scare off anything that was dangerous.
They realized in a moment the mistake Little Jack had made by giving the map to Mika. With no one slowing her down, she marched swiftly toward the destination. The two men had to follow her heat signature to find her up ahead in the forest.
They all caught up as Mika emerged in the clearing. Teo’s Novasilk starship sat before them, stubbornly mundane in its appearance, half-heartedly covered in foliage. It had no major signs of damage, little weathering, absolutely no aging, and no signs of having been missing for almost half a decade. It was just there before them, like a ghost.
Teo’s partner Verick had “borrowed” it from his corporation when he took Teo out to hunt for the Idol of Haniz. As a luxury shuttle for use on company retreats, they had been flying in style. Though that made the ship stand out all the more with its shiny white and red paint, a brass and titanium metal hull, and several flourishes along its side, including a brass winged mermaid on its bow; a detail Mika was presently staring at with a blank expression.
Tree branches, pieces of bus
hes, and other foliage were leaning up against the sides, resting along the top, or laid on the landing gear. It wasn’t nearly enough to hide it, and it seemed as though the person who had tried had simply given up at a certain point.
They all took a moment to stare at the shuttle for their own reasons. Then Mika shouted out Teo’s name. The two men hushed and tried to quiet her down. Mika was defiant. “We need to get out of here, right? So let’s find him! Teo!!”
“We might attract something else!” Lancaster argued.
“Something that hasn’t had dessert,” Little Jack added.
“Well we’re not leaving,” Mika said determinedly.
“No,” Lancaster said. “Let’s look over his things to figure out where he might have gone.”
Mika nodded in agreement. Everyone relaxed and looked around in separate directions searching for where they might find some clues. “Teo!” Mika shouted as she moved off in one direction. Little Jack and Lancaster shared a look, but didn’t try to stop her anymore. Instead, Little Jack looked over the control panel for the door to the ship while Lancaster walked into the woods in the opposite direction.
He was watching the ground for signs of tracks, and he soon found some. At least they seemed to be human footprints. He wasn’t used to searching for signs of someone who had been in an area in the last million years. He thought about calling out, but he wanted to be a little more certain before he got anyone’s hopes up.
Mika had stopped shouting Teo’s name. She came around to realizing that she wasn’t going to hear him respond unless she provided a gap for him to do so. She looked over the woods to see if there was any sign of him while she listened. When there was still no response, she shouted again.
Then she spotted a flat board laid out between a couple trees. This was not a natural phenomenon. He had set it up. She laid her hands on the table, a hopeful energy coursing through her. Then she shouted his name again.
Little Jack found where the keyboard was hidden where he could type in the backup code if someone had lost their key card. This was probably going to be easy. Married men were always predictable. Their kids’ names first, then their spouse. And since they didn’t have a kid…
Relic Worlds - Lancaster James & the Salient Seed of the Galaxy, Part 2 Page 9