The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  “Not really. I’m still of two minds about taking it back to Sawyer’s World, but leaving it here is probably obvious. Anyone who backtracks us, or knows that we went to Chara and determines the obvious route back, will check here. And the last thing we need is a bloody great bull’s-eye marking where we hid the thing.”

  “If you don’t like a bull’s-eye, I could do a couple of low passes with Sophie’s thrusters and make an X to mark the spot.”

  Carson looked at her, sighed, and said “you’re not helping, you know.”

  “All right then, how about a detour?”

  “What?”

  “We don’t go straight to Sawyer’s World from here, we find another system, bury it in the dirt on a rocky moon somewhere, and then head back to Sawyers.”

  “Yes, that would work. Do you have a destination in mind?”

  “No, I’ll have to check the charts to see what makes sense. The systems are more likely to be inhabited though as we get closer to old space, even the non-terraform ones may have asteroid mining operations or research labs or something of the kind. No guarantees.”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s still the best suggestion so far, Jackie. Can you take a look at your star data and see where we can get to and if it makes sense?”

  “Okay. But I’ll need to go back out and check on the fueling operation in a bit.”

  Chapter 36: Maynard

  Dirty Snowball

  Maynard paced the short length of his cabin, turned, and paced back again. At least there were on a planet now and had some slight gravity. The waiting in orbit had been getting ridiculous. Hopkins was a week overdue, what had gone wrong? He left his cabin and strode forward to the control deck. “Any word?”

  “No sir,” the pilot responded. “You know we’d have called you if there was.”

  “Damn. This is the right system, isn’t it?” Maynard knew it was one of the very few stars within range as a stop on a return route from Chara, and the only one with a planet in a torch orbit. But then where was Hopkins?

  “Uh, yes sir. Perhaps he’s having radio problems.”

  “You think he might already be in-system? Could he be waiting somewhere else? This system has a couple of gas giants doesn’t it?”

  “It does, but they’re not suitable for refueling. Their moons are small and rocky, except for one sulphur moon like Jupiter’s Io. No, this is the best location in the system.”

  “Why wouldn’t he find us in that case?”

  “Perhaps he missed us, or thought he’d arrived before we did.”

  That seemed unlikely to Maynard, but the other possibilities were that Hopkins had double-crossed him, or that Carson had gotten the better of him. In which case . . . “Okay, take us up, put us in orbit and scan for a recent landing. Since he hasn’t radioed, something is obviously wrong.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  On their third orbit they spotted the bright aureole of exhaust-cleared ice that indicated a landing. And yes, there was a ship parked in the center of it. A squat delta. That was Roberts’ ship, not the Hawk.

  “How close can you land us without them noticing?”

  The pilot examined the terrain below them. “It will be tricky, but if I approach low from the south I can put down behind those hills.” He pointed to a large pressure ridge in the ice to Sophie’s southwest. “That’s maybe a kilometer. If the thrusters don’t kick up too much of a plume I might get closer.” He paused and looked at the landing area again, then up at the position of the local sun. “In about a half-hour we can land up-sun from them; we’ll be lost in the glare.”

  “Excellent. Do it.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “You think this is our best option?” Maynard’s man Taggart was pulling his suit on as he spoke.

  “Are you questioning my judgment?” Maynard responded.

  “No, Brother, but it seems complicated.”

  “I wish it were simpler. We don’t want to destroy their ship until we have whatever they found, so we can’t just blast them. And we don’t know what weaponry they have, or what they did to Hopkins.”

  “But what if nobody comes out?” asked Rohm, the other man suiting up.

  “They’re still fueling, somebody will have to disengage and stow the boom when they’re done. If you have to, damage it so someone has to come out to investigate.”

  “Right.” Taggart pulled his helmet on and sealed the neck ring. “Comm to infrared,” he said over the suit’s speaker, and touched a control pad on his forearm. It was unlikely that the Sophie would pick up communications from their scrambled suit radios, but the radio signal alone might warn them. Using the line-of-sight IR system would keep their conversations private and their presence undetected.

  Rohm touched a control on his own suit. “Got it.”

  Taggart and Rohm depressurized the Star Wind’s airlock and stepped out onto the ice. They were parked a hundred meters from the pressure ridge that had hidden their landing. The fastest way to the Sophie would be over the ridge. Even in one-tenth gee, climbing that would be a challenge. “Rohm, we’ll use the climbers. Get the launcher.”

  Rohm unshouldered a piece of equipment that looked something like an underwater spear gun, with a spool of cable beneath its wide barrel and a barbed spear-point protruding from it. He aimed it just below the crest of the ridge, waited for the aiming system to lock, and fired. The spear launched itself up, trailing the rope behind it. As it hit the ice, a penetrator charge detonated to anchor it firmly. On the launcher a green light blinked on.

  “Okay, it’s secure.” Rohm said.

  “Right, I’ll go first.”

  Taggart clamped a motorized pulley around the rope. He unreeled a short tether from the device and clipped the end of it into a D-ring at the waist of his suit. “I’m on. Climbing.” He held on to the climber and slid its large thumbwheel forward. It began to pull itself up the rope, the tether taking most of Taggart’s weight as he used his feet to maneuver around crags and protrusions on the ice. A minute later he was at the top. He looked back down at Rohm. “Piece of cake,” he said, “come on up.” Rohm soon joined him at the crest.

  They made their way over the top of the ridge and looked down towards the Sophie. The fueling boom was still deployed, its warning light still blinking. Good.

  “So, do we wait here for someone to come out, or what?” asked Rohm.

  “No, we should get closer. Might give them too much warning if they see us coming.” Taggart examined the approach to the other ship. There wasn’t a lot of cover. A few low ridges, but they’d have to crawl. A large area around the ship was fresh snow and slick ice from their landing. About as many places to hide as a frikking skating rink, thought Taggart in disgust. Then he had an idea. “Okay,” he said, tossing another rope down the pressure ridge and clamping on. “Let’s get closer, I have a plan.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Roberts checked a panel. The tanks were about three-quarters full, but it was time to check on the fueling boom. “I’m going out again,” she said as she pulled her boots on. “We’re almost done.”

  She airlocked out and walked back to where the ice boom protruded from the ice. She inspected the ice surface carefully, looking for cracks or telltale puffs of vapor that might indicate a potential problem. While she was bent over, she thought she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. What was that? She turned her head, but then couldn’t see anything but the edge of her helmet visor. She shifted up to turn her torso. What in the world? There was a cable or rope draped across the ice. She looked up at the Sophie. No, it wasn’t anything from the ship—and she would have recognized it if it had been. She turned to look in the other direction.

  There were two ropes, a couple of meters apart, and barreling towards her across the ice, holding onto motorized pulleys, were two figures in space suits. For a split second she wondered if Carson and Marten were playing some bizarre game, then realized the truth. She started to run for the airlock. “Carson, we’ve got compa—
” Then one of the intruders slammed into her, the impact knocking her over. She regained her breath and shouted into the radio. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Two intruders in suits on the ice!” She struggled with them now, trying to get loose, but she was tangled in some kind of net. “They’ve got me snared. Mayday!” She felt a hand grasp her wrist, and despite her struggles, watched as one of the men touched the control to turn off her suit radio. “God damn it, Carson!” she shouted, knowing he couldn’t hear her, “Not again!” She tried to reach the tool pocket on her suit, maybe she had something to cut the netting with, but she was too tangled. She kept up a steady scream of curses as her captors grabbed the pulleys on the ropes and with her tangled in the net between them, began to reel themselves and her back towards the pressure ridge to the southwest.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Carson turned at Jackie’s first startled call. He had just reached the radio when her call of “Mayday!” triggered the ship’s computer to sound an alarm, flashing an overhead light and sounding an urgent warble.

  “Jackie, what’s going on?” He switched on the windows as he said this, and what he saw to the southwest knotted his gut. “Jackie, do you read?” There was no answer; her radio must have been cut off.

  He scrambled back to the airlock and pulled a suit from a locker.

  “Carson, stop, what are you doing?” Marten grabbed his arm.

  “They took Jackie,” he tried to shake Marten’s grip loose. “We have to go help her.”

  Marten held his arm tighter, and pulled Carson’s face down to his. “Slow down. Think this through. What are you going to do? They’re probably armed.”

  “So are we,” Carson said, but he recognized the truth behind Marten’s words and stopped struggling. “Right. You’re right. And shut off that damn alarm.”

  “You won’t go anywhere?”

  “Not yet. Just shut off the damn noise and let me think.”

  Marten walked forward the few steps to the cockpit and cancelled the alarm, then turned back to Carson. “Okay. Now, who were those guys?”

  Carson thought for a moment. “They couldn’t be Hopkins’ men. Perhaps the Velkaryans? I thought Hopkins was working for them.”

  “And maybe they didn’t trust him, or he was supposed to meet them here. Jackie said there weren’t many places to refuel. So why did they take her?”

  “They want whatever we found. They’ll probably call us soon to offer a trade.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Only as a last resort. We don’t know what they’ll do when they get it. We need more information.” Carson looked meaningfully toward the traumapod.

  “You want to thaw Rico out? But he’s one of them.” He also wasn’t really frozen, just in a state of hibernation.

  “No, he’s one of Hopkins’ men. As he said, it was just business. He might know something. And if he is one of them, all the better, he might know even more.”

  “Yes, and he’ll be annoyed we kept him in the traumapod all this time.” Marten shook his head. “We can’t trust him.”

  “We don’t have many choices, and even less time. Give me a better idea or I’m taking him out of the pod.”

  “All right, I hope you know what you are doing.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Rico opened his eyes slowly, then snapped awake as memories came back. There’d been a crash. He’d been hurt. He tried to sit up, but was held down by straps across his arms and chest. He was in a traumapod. How? Then he saw Carson and the timoan and remembered. “How long?” He felt strange, too light. The gravity was wrong. “Where are we?”

  “Take it easy,” Carson said. “You’ve been out for a while. You had some bad skull damage, then it was just easier to keep you hibernated. This is a small ship.”

  “What’s going on?” The traumapod had evidently done a good job on repairs, he felt fine.

  “We’re half way back to Alpha Centauri, a fueling stop. We’ve got trouble, and you might be able to help.”

  “Half way back? What the hell, you kept me in a can for two weeks?”

  “Most of that was for your own good, Rico, you were bleeding into your brain. And as I said, this is a small ship.”

  “So you were going to keep me in a can all the way back? And what then, turn me over to the authorities?” Wait, did they say something about a problem? Rico was still processing a bit slowly.

  “We hadn’t figured out yet what we were going to do with you,” Carson said. “Although the thought of turning you over had crossed my mind. That’s irrelevant now. Who was Hopkins working for?”

  “Hopkins? Why?” He must still be a little out of it from the hibernation. Wasn’t Hopkins dead?

  “Somebody just kidnapped my pilot, and they probably want to trade her for whatever we found at Chara. Can we trust them enough to do a deal?”

  “So that’s your problem.” Rico thought for a moment. Hopkins had definitely seemed scared of whomever he was working for. “No, I don’t think you can. I don’t know exactly who they are but they made Hopkins nervous. He’s not, wasn’t, a guy to get nervous easily. How did they find you?”

  “Us, Rico. You said you were on our side now—”

  “Not if you’re going to keep me in a can and turn me in.”

  “Okay. Help us out and we’ll see what we can do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You think Hopkins was the only one working for somebody else? I’ve got connections. I’ll put in a good word.” Carson paused as if thinking. Rico wondered how much influence he really had. “As far as I know,” Carson continued, “you didn’t actually hurt anybody, you were too out of it after the explosion. Anyway, none of us are going anywhere unless we deal with those guys.”

  “Okay, okay. So what’s the situation? What assets do you, I mean we, have?”

  “Their ship is parked somewhere on the other side of that ridge,” Carson pointed out the window. “They’re holding Roberts hostage. She was in a suit but they’ve probably got her helmet off at least.”

  Rico nodded. He would have done the same; it would complicate a rescue attempt. “What about us? Suits, weapons, explosives?”

  “We have suits, but nothing that will fit Marten here. He’d have to go in a rescue ball if it came to that.”

  “Okay, suits and rescue balls. What about weapons?”

  “We can’t go in there blasting.”

  “Didn’t say we were going to, but I need to know what we’ve got.”

  “Of course, you’re right. Okay, rifles, sidearms, ammunition for that. No explosives, I wasn’t planning on blasting anything. If it comes to that we can improvise. Melt off the propellant from the ammunition—”

  Rico had thought of that too. He nodded. “Or pull one of the charcoal filters and mix it with liquid oxygen, yeah. Anything else?”

  “Unfortunately a lot of our gear is still back on a mountainside on Chara, not that much of it would have helped.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “What about the Maguffin?” The timoan, Marten, had been just observing the discussion until now.

  Rico gave him a wild-eyed look. Maguffin? “You mean that gizmo from the pyramid? You saw what it did when we tested it, are you nuts?”

  “Well, if nothing else, it is a potential bomb,” Marten said.

  “We’re not going to blow anything up until we get Jackie back,” said Carson, “but you may be on to something.” He went to the locker where it had been carefully stowed and retrieved it. He placed it on the galley table. “Maybe we can figure out how to control it.”

  Rico eyed the device warily. “I think you’re crazy, Carson.”

  “No, look.” He pointed to the symbols and markings on the device near the handles, adjacent to the controls. “Marten, does any of this look familiar?”

  Marten took a closer look. “That symbol,” he pointed to a short line made of linked circles, “isn’t that from the Feynman diagram?”

  Rico
looked back and forth from Marten to Carson. Feynman diagram? “What are you guys talking about? Can you read that?”

  “Maybe,” Carson said. “We found some interesting things in the pyramid after you, er, after Hopkins shut us in. I’ll explain later, we don’t have time now.”

  Marten had been examining the device. “Look here, Carson, these are numbers. Zero, one, two . . . up to eight.”

  Rico looked where Marten pointed. “Aren’t you counting backwards?” he asked.

  Carson shook his head. “No, this script reads right to left, bottom to top.”

  “Shit. I must have had the thing turned up damn near full, then,” Rico said, disgusted at the mistake.

  Carson examined the controls carefully, noting the symbols beside each. “Look at this one, Marten. We decided this symbol meant ‘matter’, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, and the other end of the slider is that linked-circle symbol for energy or radiation. What about this little tornado shape?” Marten pointed to another control.

  “Gravity or black hole, wasn’t that what we decided?” The time they’d spent exploring the exhibits was paying off. Carson had worried that they had been wasting too much time on them. “Okay, assume this is a carving or excavating tool. Maybe they used it or something like it to dig out the base for the pyramid. What controls would it need?”

  “We’re getting rather speculative, Carson,” Marten said.

  “Like you’ve got a choice?” Rico said. “Anyway, you obviously want a power setting. I already know this is the on-off switch.” He pointed to the big pushbutton. “You’d want a way to stop it blowing up in your face, which should be the friggin’ default.”

  “Somebody left the safety off,” said Marten.

  “No kidding.”

  “It has to send the matter somewhere,” Carson said. “If it converted it all to energy there’d be too much to deal with. And a shield of some kind so it doesn’t suck air in from around it.”

  “No, look at these symbols. The gravity symbol combined with the radiation symbol.”