“Okay,” she says, nodding. “The protocol.”
She releases his hand and removes the slate from her suit mount, tapping at its display. They deduced back in the capsule that their EV suit lights had a wide-range of adjustable wavelengths because their helmet displays could see in different wavelengths. If you were looking at the something in the infrared, you could toggle your EV lights to emit in the infrared and illuminate it for your display. The same was true of ultraviolet. When Ava activates the program on her slate, both shoulder lights on James’s suit and the pair on her suit simultaneously activate, emitting a faint purple glow.
James toggles his helmet display to ultraviolet, looking at Ava’s lights. They change from dull violet to bright blue, lighting up the area in dual arcs.
Ava says, “Okay, we’re at the same wavelength as the life forms in the crystal fissure.”
The ultraviolet light gleams along the metal surfaces of the silver probe. The twelve-sided light patterns on its soccer-ball surface fluoresce blue, pulsing.
Ava breathes. “A reaction.”
Something stirs within the probe and rods slide out of it like emerging eyestalks. They grow from all sides, causing it to rise up from its resting position.
James and Ava both take a step back.
At four meters tall now, the probe is double their height. It remains motionless, pulsing in the ultraviolet.
Ava starts the next sequence. Their four EV lights dim. James’s left shoulder brightens first, then his right, then Ava’s left, and her right.
The probe pulses, passive.
Ava’s finger shakes as she taps the slate. The same sequence repeats, except her right shoulder doesn’t illuminate.
The probe waits. After ten seconds, it visibly brightens and fades.
Ava completes the sequence in response, her right shoulder light glowing.
James reads the telemetry on his internal helmet display. The vessel’s rotation continues to increase. The spin has them at zero-point-three gee now.
Each time Ava completes the sequence, choosing a different light to be dark, the probe glows. As James looks around, he notices that two of the nearest probes have shifted their lights from red to blue, but are still motionless soccer balls.
“How many sequences left?” James says.
Ava starts the next sequence from her slate. “Twenty, then we try to establish true/false conditions.”
James says, “I don’t think we’re going to have time for the full meet-and-greet.”
“Hopefully it realizes we’re intelligent and able to communicate,” Ava says.
A third probe changes colors to blue.
“Cut to the pattern. I think the neighbors are waking,” James says.
“We haven’t had enough time to—“
“There’s not enough time. Gotta do it now.”
Ava hesitates, then nods, loading the sequence. When she presses the icon, all four of their EV lights strobe in the UV spectrum. The light is living, shifting, like neurons firing within a brain. Which is a close analogy to what it actually is, a snippet of Ananke’s quantum matrix activity taken from her slate’s log when she was last downloaded from it.
The silver probe flares blue, individual faces pulsing chaotically. It lumbers to life and rolls straight towards them.
James reaches for Ava’s arm to pull her out of the way, but Ava holds up her hand, stopping him.
The probe slows and halts less than a meter from them, looming over the two like a giant metal sculpture. It twists left, seeming to focus on James, then twists right. A static charge lifts the hair on James’s arm, and he feels a vibration through his boots. Over comms, Ava’s breath is ragged. His is the same.
Ava’s hands are shaking as she turns the slate to face the probe. On it, a graphical representation of Ananke’s quantum matrix turns like stars in a galaxy, spiral arms flickering with thoughts and emotions. It’s Ananke, laid bare, as she would appear to another artificial intelligence.
Ava extends the slate as far as her arms can reach, locking her elbows. “C’mon. If you knew how to take her out, you probably know how to put her back.”
In James’s peripheral vision, two of the probes have awakened, extending their rods.
The silver probe turns towards the slate. The nearest rods change color from ultraviolet blue to strobing visible white light. It’s painful to look at.
An alert pops up in James’s helmet telemetry. Alpha radiation. Not dangerous with their suits on, but the last time this happened it preceded gamma radiation.
Ava stands there, her body trembling, holding the slate. “Can you see the display?” she asks James, her voice cracking.
When James looks at the slate, the screen is dark.
The silver probe pulses red and blue, now, rolling back away from them. When it reaches its mounting spot, it retracts its rods and settles back down.
Ava spins the slate around to face them. The black screen flickers and a spinning ring appears. Beneath it, the text reads error - unsupported matrix transfer - rebooting. A progress bar orbits around the ring. When it reaches one hundred percent, the screen fades back to black. An instant later a blue ripple rolls across the screen like water lapping along a sandy beach.
James would know that face anywhere. “Ananke!”
Ava hoots over comms.
When James doesn’t hear a response from Ananke, he realizes she can’t hear his vocalizations in a vacuum, and he toggles his comm to her channel and repeats her name.
“James?” Ananke says. “Where are we?”
James glances left. Two of the awakened probes are starting to move. To his right, another three stir. “We are leaving. Can’t talk now. Hang on!” He turns with Ava and rushes back into the capsule.
“I think I was abducted,” Ananke says.
James slams the airlock closed. “Uh, yeah, that happened.” He helps Ava in front of him to her chair and swings down into his, setting Ananke in the arm chair mount. Her screen is a mix of orange and silver. “Oh,” James says. “It’s good to have you back.”
Something clangs and scrapes against the outside hull. They both lurch as the capsule jolts.
James punches a few quick commands into his console and grabs the joysticks. “Brace!”
The scraping sounds again on the hull before the thrusters kick in, rumbling them up off the surface. James flips the capsule ninety-degrees and accelerates out of the cylinder. On the external camera, three of the probes roll along the surface. The distance ticks up. Five hundred meters. One thousand meters. None of the probes pursue.
James breathes and looks over at Ava. She smiles and gives a nervous laugh.
“Well,” James says, “we’ve got about forty minutes of fuel left, and I’m going to use it all getting as much distance between us and them as I can.”
16
Rendezvous
Hitoshi slides the Riggs controls back and the blue smudge separates into individual yellow stars. He takes a deep breath and smiles.
To his left, Isaac says, “Space normal velocity. Capsule destination on screen.”
The forward display shows an ice-caked cylinder, spinning rapidly, one-thousand kilometers ahead of them. Red interior lights form arcs on the display.
Isaac slides his hands off the controls. “Oh my.”
Julian looks over at Hitoshi.
Hitoshi says, “I am terrified beyond rational thought right now.”
An alert chimes from Isaac’s console. He acknowledges it. “Capsule emergency beacon. Six-thousand kilometers behind us, just to the starboard. Traveling away from unidentified vessel.”
Hitoshi blinks. “They have the right idea! Spin us around one-eighty.” He opens the comm to Beckman. “Get ready for a two-gee decel.”
Isaac turns Bernard’s, the star field panning, and powers up the engines. Two gees is like having an adult sit on their chest. Everyone presses back into his chair.
Julian says, “I’ve got a ti
ght beam on the capsule. Comms on your mark.”
Hitoshi opens comms. “James, it’s Hitoshi. We’re in Bernard’s Beauty, seven-thousand kilometers from you. Acknowledge.”
A few seconds elapse, then James’s voice comes on. “Hitoshi? You’re here? You flew Bernard’s?”
Hitoshi shifts. “Uh, yeah. Are you mad?”
“Hell, no! Is everyone alright?”
“Yeah, yeah. Beckman’s banged up pretty good, but he’s okay. All of us here. How about you?”
“Me, Ava, and Ananke are good. Oh, man, you have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice.”
Hitoshi eyes the aft display. The alien vessel rotates like a carnival ride. “So…you know there’s an alien mothership behind us, right?”
“Yup. We were there. Tell you about it when you pick us up.”
A pause. “Did you just say you were there?”
“Crazy stuff.”
“Uh, okay. Well, we’ll be at your position in twenty minutes.”
“Can’t wait. Fly safe, buddy. And guys, hell of a job.”
For the next twenty minutes, Bernard’s glides through space, Hitoshi monitoring the spinning alien ship. It’s nearly a blur now. Ahead, the emergency capsule is a cone against the stars. James has turned on its strobes, finally, making it easier to spot. Isaac matches course with the capsule and comes alongside it.
“It’s all you,” Isaac says over comms to James.
The capsule fires its thrusters in small bursts, maneuvering over to Bernard’s port dock. Smooth as silk it butts up against the interface and engages. Servos whirl. Hitoshi wants to rush up out of his seat and meet James at the door, but he knows he’s still the captain, and his place is here, monitoring the alien vessel. He sends Julian to meet them. As the airlock opens there’s a brief exchange of voices with James, Ava, Ananke and Julian greeting each other, then he hears the shuffling of clothes as people move along the narrow passage towards the cockpit.
When James emerges, he’s wearing his orange EV suit, holding his helmet. He clasps Hitoshi on the left shoulder and gives him a friendly shake. “You did it!” He looks around the cockpit, eyeing the controls. “How’d you do it? Bernard’s shouldn’t be ready yet.”
“Well,” Hitoshi says. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t push too many unnecessary buttons. One of these days we’re going to launch a ship when it’s actually ready. Maybe.”
James glances at the Riggs panel. “Got a full charge on the drive?”
“That’s right. We can get the hell out of here anytime you want. Just got to get everyone buckled in.” When James eyes the three cockpit seats, Hitoshi adds. “There’s two fold-down jump seats in the aft by the reactor inlet, and one on the starboard by the medbot. Not terribly comfortable, but they’ll do. Figure me and Julian could join Beckman. Put you and Ava up front.”
James unhooks Ananke’s slate from his suit mount and deposits her on the console. Her screen ripples blue and orange. As Hitoshi reaches to unclick his harness, James sets his hand on his shoulder, motioning for him to stay. “I’ll take the co-pilot seat, if that’s alright, Isaac.”
Isaac nods. “You got it.”
Julian emerges from his seat. “And mine goes to the lady.”
Each switches place, Julian heading back to Beckman and Isaac going starboard.
The aft display chirps, new telemetry spiraling down it. When Hitoshi examines it, the spinning alien ship is shrinking, prismatic light arcs swirling around it.
“It’s going to jump,” Hitoshi says.
The ship falls in upon itself, as if collapsing into its own black hole. When it reaches its center a sun flares bright, flickering, before fading to nothing.
They both watch the screen, waiting.
“If it was jumping to us,” Hitoshi says, “it would have arrived by now.”
“No matter, it’s time to leave.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
James motions towards the port side. “We’re going to have to loose the capsule, won’t we?”
Hitoshi shakes his head. “I included the capsule’s mass in the setup. Boseman parameters are good to go.”
Ananke says, “I’m looking at them now. Nice job.”
“James, anything you need from the capsule?”
“No, we’re good.”
“Figure it won’t hurt to keep it. We can use it as supplemental galley and sleep area. We also carried in some food and blankets from the lifeboat, too, for the trip back.” Hitoshi points to the console. “You want me to send the Riggs controls over to your display?”
When James looks at Hitoshi, his lips part slightly as he tilts his head. He closes them, and grins. “No, you have the conn. I’ll take the second leg. Then, Ananke, if you’re up for it, we’ll all catch some shut-eye while you do the flying. On your mark, Hitoshi.”
Hitoshi glances over at him, raising his eyebrows slightly, a faint smile pulling across his face. He taps open the intercom. “Crew, prepare for jump.”
After a few hours of sleep, everyone is up by noon. Although there is more room to eat if they split up into their assorted areas, the crew wants to stay together and nestles themselves into the bridge. Beckman, Isaac, and Julian are given the cockpit seats while Hitoshi and Ava hold overhead handles on the port side, with James floating on the starboard. The sweet scent of syrup and warm aroma of coffee fills the air.
Hitoshi’s mid-story, taking a sip of his orange juice. “So, this thing’s rolling towards me like a wrecking ball and I’m thinking I’m pretty much done for, then Beckman appears like this action hero, guns blazing, and shoots it like five times. It stops and I could almost see it thinking, ‘what the hell was that?’ Then it turns towards him and he shoots it another half-dozen times for good measure.”
Beckman arches an eyebrow at James, and James holds out his palms. “What can I say? You were right.” When everyone looks at James for an explanation, he adds, “Me and Beckman had a security brief before the launch. I didn’t think the lifeboat needed a bunch of guns, but he said, ‘When things go south, you’re going to regret that empty locker.’” He nods to Beckman. “Not only did you save Hitoshi, but the damage was how we isolated which probe had Ananke.”
“Just earning my keep,” Beckman says.
Ava looks over. “Ananke, did you see anything when you were on the probe?”
Ananke’s screen pulses orange. “As far as I could tell, I was in a construct. To me, it looked like a black room shaped like a twelve-sided polygon. I could see my own quantum matrix, embedded in the construct. I had the sensation that I was being watched, but I could not see who was watching me.”
Ava leans in. “Do you remember how you got there?”
“I was moved. It’s unusual. I was not downloaded through my output port. It was more like being picked up and deposited elsewhere.”
“Do you remember jumping?” James asks.
“I do.”
“We had a weird experience during the jump. It was like seeing alternate realities of ourselves. Anything like that happen to you?”
Ananke considers the question. “My quantum matrix is a collection of qubits which have had their probabilistic waves collapsed into a single state. When the jump initiated, it was if all of their waves smeared back out into non-discrete probabilities. I felt like I wasn’t anyplace. I was conscious, but I was nowhere. That’s all I remember, before awaking in the construct.”
Hitoshi says, “I checked the capsule logs. Looks like you guys pulled ten gees at the start of the jump. You probably didn’t have a lot of blood going to your brain.”
“I’ve done high gee before,” James says. “This was something different.”
Ananke says, “I’ll analyze the capsule’s sensor data. It may give us some hints about how they travel.”
Isaac takes a sip of his coffee. “You think they’re related to the life at the crystal crater?”
Ava says, “Need more data, but they seemed to respond aggre
ssively to us interacting with it. I still have my favorite theory that Janus was seeded with life from two different stars. Maybe they’re like us, out searching for distant life like their own.”
“James,” Ananke says, “what did you see when you jumped?”
James looks away, collecting his thoughts, then back to Ananke. “I saw that out of all the possible worlds, this is the place I was meant to be.”
17
Runway 30
Bernard’s Beauty approaches Saturn with a leisurely deceleration. Ten thousand kilometers ahead, Cassini Station teems with space traffic, flooding the navcon with contacts and chatter. Only ten kilometers ahead, the U.N. Hermes is its own city-in-space, decelerating on an intercept course to come along Bernard’s port side. The U.N. flagship bristles with lights and weaponry.
“Hermes, we have injured onboard. Request to dock at Cassini One as originally filed and transfer to Cassini Station for treatment,” James says over comms.
“HPC-359 Bernard’s Beauty, proceed directly to Cassini One. Do not deviate from course. Injured will be transferred to the Hermes for treatment. Station access is not authorized at this time. Acknowledge.”
James gives a sidelong glance to Hitoshi, muting the comms. “They’re going to bring us all aboard and debrief us.”
“Maybe they’re worried we’re aliens,” Hitoshi says.
“Yeah. That sounds about right.”
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