“We do. Okay, get things secured, I’ll take Sophie up and we can check from above. If anyone else is around I want to be able to get out fast.”
∞ ∞ ∞
As they flew over the ridge they were greeted by a dazzling plain of newly refrozen ice and fresh snow, fallout from the ice that had vaporized in the blast. Of Maynard’s ship there was nothing but a crater and a few scattered hull fragments.
“That was a lot more powerful than back on Chara,” Roberts said.
“Maybe Rico found a setting that went up to nine,” said Marten.
Carson gave him an odd look. He turned back to Roberts. “Try the radio again.”
“Sophie calling Rico, come in.” She touched a control to try a different suit frequency. “Rico, this is the Sophie. Are you receiving?” There was no response. Jackie tried each suit frequency in succession. It was wasted effort. “Nothing. If he was out in the open . . .”
“I know. But I dug a tunnel. That’s how I came up behind you.”
“The radio should still penetrate the ice. Hang on, let me try something else.” She brought up another display and touched several control pads. “Suit telemetry,” she explained. There were three similar displays on the screen. “That’s mine,” she said, touching the window to close it. “And that’s yours.” She closed that one. “Which leaves this one, which must be Rico. I’m getting a faint signal, his suit is still functioning, anyway.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I can’t tell. He must be under the ice; this is a very noisy signal. Let me get a fix on it.”
“How do we get him out?”
“Same way we refueled. The boom head’s gone but we’ve still got the hoses, and plenty of steam.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Two hours later a broken but breathing Rico was out of the ice and back in the traumapod. A half-hour after that they were headed back to Alpha Centauri.
Chapter 38: Home
Sawyer City Spaceport
“We’ll take care of Rico,” Ducayne said. “I can use someone with his talents, they just need to be focused.”
They were all—Carson, Marten and Roberts as well as Ducayne—sitting in chairs squeezed around the desk in Ducayne’s more public office.
“All right,” said Carson. “And what about us?”
Ducayne took another look at file he had open on his computer screen, then looked up at them.
“Well, gentlemen, er gentle beings,” he gave an apologetic nod to Marten, who nodded back. “First, congratulations. You found a significant cache of Spacefarer artifacts—from the sounds of it, some of them we have concerns about—and you also put Hopkins out of business, one of the more notorious artifact smugglers. Not that that’s my department, exactly, but any operation that can smuggle things in and out of systems and raise large amounts of cash is a potential security risk, so I’m happy to see him gone. As for Maynard, I should thank you for settling a debt I owed him—”
“Your agent?”
“Exactly. But I would also have liked the opportunity to question him.” Ducayne pushed a fist into the palm of his other hand until the knuckles cracked. “By the way, all of you,” he said, looking at each of them in turn, “the Velkaryans are still out there, it wasn’t just Maynard. They won’t know what happened to him, and we’ll certainly keep it quiet, but it’s in your own best interests that they never find out. Understood?”
A chorus of agreement answered him.
“Right, then.” He picked up the talisman from his desk. “So this is a key and a map, eh? Clever.”
“There’s one other thing, Ducayne,” said Carson in a somber voice. Ducayne looked up at him, puzzled. Carson looked at Marten, and Roberts, making eye contact with each. Carson took a breath. “Something we left out of the report. We’ll tell you about it once because you should know, and then never mention it again because we don’t want people to think we’re crazy.”
That didn’t seem to bother Ducayne. He looked almost as though he had been expecting something like this. “Does it involve a pyramid?”
The others started at this, then settled back. Perhaps he meant the archive pyramid. Carson looked at Ducayne suspiciously. “Yes, what about it?”
Ducayne paused. “How to put this? Let me hypothesize. You saw, you all saw, or experienced, something highly unusual, far more so than anything in your report. Unusual and yet related to something that people sometimes claim to have seen, and have their veracity if not their sanity doubted. Am I correct so far?”
They all nodded, wondering just what Ducayne knew and where he was going with it.
Ducayne paused, thinking. “Here, let me show you something.” He pulled his computer screen over, took a small gadget out of his pocket and plugged it in, then placed his thumb on the scan pad for a moment. The computer beeped, and he keyed in a couple of commands to bring up an image. He turned the screen towards them.
The picture showed the surface of an asteroid or small moon. The surface was irregular, the ground uneven with hills and valleys, all of it overlain with a thick layer of regolith or dust and peppered with craters and small rocks. The sky beyond was black. The interesting thing in the picture, though, was a broad, fresh-looking crater with large pieces of very-regular looking debris scattered about it. The angles and flat sides on the debris—where it had not been broken or torn apart by the crash—could very easily have been fitted together to make a pyramid.
“We heard about some unusual wreckage on an asteroid in the Epsilon Eridani system—”
“That package I delivered?” asked Roberts.
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Ducayne said. “The man who found it assumed it was just some unlucky explorer, but he took a couple of pictures and a piece of the debris and reported it. When we realized there was something funny about the wreckage we sent a team out. They took these pictures, and what equipment they could from the wreckage. That wasn’t much I’m afraid. But look at this.” Ducayne pulled up another image. Taken from the same vantage point as the first, it showed the same rough terrain of the asteroid, with the same fresh-looking crater. But the debris was gone.
“Somebody cleaned it up. You?” Roberts asked.
“No. These pictures are almost a month apart. After the discovery they brought back what they could—these pictures, some small artifacts and pieces of wreckage—and left a reconnaissance beacon. When we went back again recently, the only thing left was the beacon.”
“And it recorded—what?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” That got a grin. “What did you guys see that you don’t want to talk about?”
“A large, flying pyramid.”
“So did we. What else?”
“It landed.”
Ducayne snapped his head up at that, and looked directly at Carson. “And?”
“Unfortunately we don’t know. It was on the other side of the mountains from us, but it cleaned up the damage to the structure on the ground. What else did you record?”
“Not very much. The big pyramid landed and blocked the view of the recorder. When it took off again, the debris was gone.”
“Apparently they like to keep things neat,” Roberts said.
Ducayne shook his head. “They also seem to be avoiding contact or leaving evidence of themselves. I wish I knew why.”
“So would I,” said Carson. “They didn’t seem to have this non-interference directive 15,000 years ago.”
“If it was the same people.”
Carson’s gaze turned sharply to Ducayne. “You have some reason to think it wouldn’t be? The pyramid shape of their ships seems a strong connection.”
Ducayne shook his head. “No specific reason, just that 15,000 years is a long time.” He touched another control on his computer. “There’s one other thing. We let your search program run, and in fact we got it into a few private databases. It found a few things.” Another image appeared on the screen.
It was the talisman, the
passkey. Several of them, in fact, making an array of a half-dozen different images, most with different star patterns than the others.
“More talismans!” said Carson.
“Exactly. Apparently these things have been found all over known T-space, although we don’t have provenances for all of them.”
Carson thought back to his first encounter with Hopkins. “There’s a chance some of them are faked. How many do you have in hand?”
“What makes you think we have any in hand, Carson? These are all in collections, some public, some private.”
Carson just looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “I think I know you better than that.”
Ducayne grinned, then pulled the screen back and checked a file. “Three, although one wasn’t responsive—we checked for radiation and tried pinging them at different frequencies—that might be a fake, or it might just be dead. The patterns are all different.” He turned the screen to face the others again and sequenced through the talisman images. “You know, if I had my way, as we could identify the locations we’d send a full Homeworld Defense Security team out to each one of them. But we don’t have the manpower or the budget, and won’t anytime soon. It would also kick up an amazing ruckus.” He paused for a moment, then came to a decision.
“So, Hannibal, do you feel like taking on a, what shall we call it, a broad archeological survey? I think we can find someone to back you.”
“Well, I still don’t have any incontestable evidence of my spacefarer hypothesis. This little expedition was hardly scientific. I suppose I could write something up on the terrace-builders of Chara III.” He grinned at Ducayne. “Besides, if the spacefarers are still around, I imagine you’d rather I kept quiet about them.”
Ducayne nodded. “You've got that right.” He looked at Marten. “The offer covers you, too, if you’re interested. I think we can work something out.”
“Wait, what about my ship?” Jackie demanded. “The Sophie needs major repairs.”
Ducayne turned towards her. “Where’s the ship now? On the field?”
Jackie nodded. “Yes.”
“All right, I’ll tell you what. Have it towed into the bay down there,” he said, gesturing towards the hangar bay outside his office. “It will help our cover here anyway. We’ll get it fixed up for you. In fact, if you’re willing to come work for us—”
Jackie stiffened, her eyes narrowing as she gave a slight shake of her head.
“—or willing to take a retainer and contract work,” Ducayne said, adjusting his offer at her reaction, “then we can even make certain, ah, improvements.”
Jackie relaxed, one corner of her mouth turned up in a half smile.
“All right, but it’s my ship, I get final say.”
“Fair enough. Do we have a deal? That includes what I just mentioned to you, Carson.”
Carson looked at Roberts and Marten. “What do you say, gentles?”
“Suits me,” said Jackie.
“You know me, Carson,” Marten said, “I left home for travel and adventure. I’m in.”
Carson turned back to Ducayne. “All right, we’ll do it, on one condition.”
“Condition?” asked Ducayne.
“Yes. Can we avoid planets with any bloody mosquitoes?”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Glossary
Alcubierre: Miguel Alcubierre derived a series of equations consistent with Relativity which describe warping of space in a way which permits Faster-Than-Light travel.
Chara: G0-type star 27.5 light-years from Earth, also called Beta Canorum Venaticum.
Finazzi instability: In 2009, Stefano Finazzi, Stefano Liberati, and Carlos Barceló applied a quantum analysis to the Alcubierre warp metric and deduced that quantum fluctuations could destabilize the warp.
Kakuloa: Alpha Centauri B II - terraformed planet orbiting the second largest star (B) in the Alpha Centauri system.
omni: Short for omniphone - compares to today’s smartphones as smartphones compare to walky-talkies. (Search for “Nokia Morph” on YouTube for a nearly-there concept video.)
omniphone: See omni.
parsec: A distance of approximately 3.26 light-years.
Sapphire: A class of small interstellar scout ship, capable of sleeping about six if they’re close friends, with a range of about 20 light-years on full tanks.
Saywers World: Alpha Centauri A II - second planet orbiting the largest star (A) in the Alpha Centauri system, first extrasolar planet settled by humans.
supercircle: A special case of a superellipse, a geometric figure described in Cartesian coordinates by the formula:
(ax)n+(by)n=c
For a=b, if n=1, the shape is a diamond, if n=2, it is a circle., if n > 2, it looks like a square with rounded corners. In the mid-20th century, Piet Hein used a superellipse with n=2.5 (or 5/2), extensively in architectural and industrial design.
Taprobane: Epsilon Indi III - Third planet orbiting Epsilon Indi, ironically named for an old name for the island known as Sri Lanka or Ceylon, ironic because of its cooler climate.
technetium: Element 43 on the periodic table, it has no stable isotopes. With a geologically short half-life any that was present when the solar system formed has long since disappeared. In current time all technetium samples are produced artificially, in reactors.
thruster: High-efficiency reaction drive, a kind of fusion-powered arc-jet.
timoan: (Analogous to “human”) The sentient natives of Taprobane. Descended from the ancestral species of terrestrial mongoose and meerkats the way humans are descend from the ancestral species of apes, monkeys and lemurs. They independently achieved iron-age level civilization (e.g. Earth’s Celts) before human contact.
T-space: Terraformed (or Terraform) space - Usual term for “known space,” a spheroid of stars centered on Earth and about 20 parsecs in diameter. So called because many of the sun-like stars within it were found to have planets that were not merely Earth-like, but deliberately terraformed by people or aliens as-yet unknown.
Unholy War: A nuclear war which took place in the early part of the 21st century, involving primarily the smaller nuclear powers, purportedly for religious reasons.
Valkaryans: The bad guys. See chapter 9.
Verdigris: Delta Pavonis III - third planet orbiting the star Delta Pavonis, so named for the heavy jungle covering the habitable areas.
warp bubble: The thin shell of highly-curved space surrounding a ship in flight. Based on Van Den Broek’s lower-energy configuration of an Alcubierre warp metric.
Acknowledgments
To thank everyone somehow involved at one remove or another would turn this into an autobiography; ultimately any novel is a product of all the influences in an author’s life. But the more direct influences are worthy of direct thanks.
First, thanks to my (ex-) wife Jill, and my kids, Arthur, Robert and Selena, for their belief in my writing, for putting up with my long hours hidden away banging on the keyboard, and for early feedback on the drafts. And a particular thanks to Robert for his constant enthusiasm for the project, even to the point of persuading his teacher to let him use The Chara Talisman as the subject of a book review.
Thanks also to Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and all the participants of their June, 2010 novel writers workshop, for the impetus to finish the novel, and for their feedback.
Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, thought enough of the short story “Stone Age,” which I crafted from this book’s first few chapters, to buy it and publish it in the June, 2011 issue of that magazine, making it my third SFWA-qualifying sale. Stan, I still enjoy writing the shorter stuff too -- there’s one on its way as I type this.
My friend Lou Berger suffered through many iterations of parts of this novel, in particular the “Stone Age” chapters, and the opening of the book is much improved for his feedback.
And finally, but by no means minimally, my thanks to Toni Weisskopf of Baen Books, both for the very first
personal rejection letter I ever received (years ago, for a short story) and for her early comments on the synopsis of this novel.
The story “Omnilingual” mentioned in chapter 26 is by H. Beam Piper, first published in the February 1957 issue of Analog (then named Astounding) and widely republished. If you haven't read it, you should.
The song Jackie sings to herself in that same chapter was inspired by Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements,” but I rewrote the verses to make the names fit a more regular pattern on the periodic table.
I try to get the details correct in my writing (hard SF authors do the math), but sometimes mistakes slip through. Like any experienced software engineer, I blame the computers.
-- Alastair Mayer, Colorado, October 2011
Preview: The Reticuli Deception
The following excerpt is from the upcoming sequel, The Reticuli Deception, which follows the further adventures of Hannibal Carson, Jackie Roberts, and the rest.
Chapter 1: Insight
Sawyers World, Alpha Centauri A II
Dr. Hannibal Carson paused at the familiar weather-beaten door to the old hangar at Sawyer Spaceport. The “Office of Techno-Archeology” plaque was gone; the replacement plaque, looking as beat up as the previous one, read “QD Shipping.” The main hangar doors were open this time, and Jacqueline Roberts’ ship Sophie occupied the central bay, panels removed and undergoing repairs.
Carson made his way to the back of the hangar and up the stairs to the mezzanine, meeting Ducayne at his office door.
“’QD Shipping’? Isn’t using your initials a bit of a giveaway?”
“Who said Quentin Ducayne was my real name? Anyway, we tell people it stands for quick ‘n’ dirty.”
“That must discourage customers.”
“That’s the general idea, yes.”
Carson shook his head. Spooks. “So what do we have? I take it Jackie came up with something?”
The Chara Talisman Page 25