by A. C. Ellas
Meanwhile, Nick spoke to Evie and Dr. Hull, pointing out that if Cai had also seen Santa, it couldn’t be a hallucination, because Cai was in orbit and what he saw through the implant wasn’t affected by whatever was going on in Nick’s brain.
Dr. Sartre then pinged him, distracting him from the fascinating conversation developing between Nick and Dr. Hull. Understanding that the physicist would not contact him without need, he allowed the channel to open.
“Astrogator, we need your help. As you know, we are trying to investigate the floating islands. We can’t do a proper job of it without landing on one.”
“So what’s the problem? Use one of the scouts.”
“The island is faster than the scout, Astrogator.”
He had Cai’s full attention now. “That’s not possible.”
“It is like a mirage. It moves away at the same speed we approach it with, but we know it’s there. It shows up on radar and other instrumentation.”
“So the faster you go, the faster it retreats?”
“Yes, exactly so.”
“Have you tried using both scouts and coming in from both ends at once?”
“The other team needs the other scout too much. That’s why I called you. Can you use Laughing Owl to do that? I calculate you can safely come within two kilometers of the surface, which is lower than these islands like to sail.”
“Yes, I can,” said Cai, pleased to have some real involvement. He and Dr. Sartre selected a target and agreed on the angles of approach. They’d use the scout to try to drive the island right to the Laughing Owl. Cai Chambered, and once he had acclimated to the rush that always accompanied becoming one with his ship-self, he began a spiral descent that wouldn’t harm him or the fragile planetary ecosystem.
It took several hours, but finally, he was where he needed to be and he followed on his sensors as the scout first engaged an island, and it spurted away at the same speed the scout approached. Dr. Sartre’s angle of attack was perfect; Cai didn’t have to budge an inch. The island loomed larger and closer, and then, it abruptly spurted to port, popping out from between the two ships at a right angle to its previous path like a cork from a bottle.
“That’s impossible,” Cai wailed.
“That’s amazing,” Dr. Sartre was shouting. “Fantastique.” He collected himself. “Permission to dock so we can review the data?”
“Granted,” said Cai automatically, thinking furiously. “Use the forward docking ring, the one on top. I can’t open the bay in an atmosphere.”
“I see it.”
From a position above the Laughing Owl, the scout expertly spun about and lowered itself onto the docking ring.
Cai lashed the Eyas in place with a mag-line, extended the docking tube to the matching ring in the belly of the scout and pressurized it before he unlocked the outer airlock door. He exited the Chamber while the physicists finished securing the scout. He joined them in their lab once he was sufficiently recovered, having inhaled a huge lunch. The first words out of his mouth were, “Anti-grav.”
“An interesting idea. What prevents the islands from departing the planet?” Dr. Sartre’s smile was gentle. The grey-haired scientist was standing before a medium-sized console, feeding it data from the scout. Cai had dumped his data to the console before leaving his Chamber.
“They lack the velocity to escape the gravity well—oh. That can’t work, can it? If it’s anti-grav, those islands would be long gone. The harder the planet pulled, the faster they’d move away, right?”
“Your hypothesis needs refinement, but you might actually be onto something. All you must do is figure out how the islands have remained planet-bound.” Sartre’s fingers danced on the keyboard. “Let us review the available data.”
The console projected a holographic display, setting the island, scout and Laughing Owl against a three dimensional grid. The island floated exactly three point five kilometers above the surface and Cai wondered if it maintained that distance as a constant or if it would remain the same distance from the planetary core regardless of what was going on at the surface. Cai decided to check on that by measuring the distance from surface and distance from core for every island he could find.
For the moment, he watched as the scout approached the island. When the scout closed to less than two klicks, the island retreated. The scout never came any closer than seventeen hundred fifty meters precisely. The island was heading right for the Laughing Owl. Cai’s eyes narrowed as he watched the closing distance. At exactly seventeen hundred fifty meters, the island performed its right angle turn and escaped them.
“Interesting. Thirty-five hundred meters from surface to island and exactly half that from us to island.” Dr. Sartre frowned, clearly lost in thought.
Cai moved to a secondary console and jacked in. He could do this without the physical connection, but for delicate and precise measurements, it just worked a little better this way. Using the sensors, he measured the various islands he could find. “Dr. Sartre, have you noticed this? These islands maintain their distance from the planetary surface rather than the planetary core. Doesn’t that invalidate the anti-grav hypothesis?”
Dr. Sartre was at his side in an instant. He studied the raw data Cai was producing with an expert eye. Eventually, he shook his head in defeat. “I do not understand this. No natural phenomenon can account for this. I need to think.”
“Set your graduate students on it, too,” Cai suggested. “What are they doing now? Studying the nebula’s evolution?”
“Yes. I’ll repurpose them.” Dr. Sartre sighed then offered a smile. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Any time, Doctor. Please keep me apprised of your progress, and if there’s anything else I can do to help, let me know.” Cai returned to his chambers and resumed trailing Nick via his implant.
“Where were you?” Nick asked, so Cai summarized the experiment for him. Nick listened with great interest then said, “I hope they come up with something. The only thing I can think of is technology, very advanced technology.”
“What have I missed?” Cai asked.
“People are dreaming,” Nick told him. “Every night we’re here, we dream of Santa and his elves building toys in a workshop. Right out of a Christmas storybook as far as I can tell. But here’s the rub, my dear…we’re all having this dream and there doesn’t seem to be any variation. Dr. Rowland is calling it mass hysteria. In other news, the botanist, Dr. Leblanc, has managed to capture a tree. She said it gave her a wild ride before it settled in the area they’d prepared for it with rich, rich soil and plenty of water.”
Cai laughed aloud at the video Nick uploaded, which showed the stately, caramel-skinned woman bravely riding a tree that more closely resembled a bronco from an ancient rodeo.
Nick then said, “I’ll talk to you in the morning, my dear.”
“Of course. Sleep well, my sweet man.” Cai broke the connection and yawned. It was pretty late; he’d been down in the science labs longer than he’d thought. He ate a quick meal and retired for the night. No sooner had he closed his eyes it seemed than he dreamed of Santa and his elves making toys in a rather lovely workshop. There was no hate or anger here, just happiness. Joy. Friendship?
Cai blinked awake. He hadn’t been given any of the details of the dreams everyone else was having, but he bet his would be the same. He’d been in orbit for a month without dreams. What has changed? He stood and went into his main room where there was actually room to pace. What has changed, he repeated to himself. I’m in a lower orbit now, well within the atmosphere. And I approached one of the islands. Before now, I kept the traditional two hundred-kilometer distance for a space-going vessel. Maybe I was too high to receive the signal being broadcast.
He stopped dead in his tracks. But I’m not too high now. And what I can receive, I can also touch. He turned to the door leading into Astrogation Chamber. Time to hunt. He called his six, drank the requisite dose of raw Synde and
went into the Chamber where he quickly became one with his ship-self. He programmed in a pattern that would allow him to telepathically scan the entire planet, though it would take some time since his range was limited to about a hundred klicks. I was stupid to orbit two hundred klicks out, tradition be damned. Of course, he’d had no reason to suspect alien technology before now, either. Starting at the nominal north pole, Cai began a meticulous sweep.
Chapter Five: Santa
Cai couldn’t search continuously. He had to eat and sleep, and it wasn’t healthy to remain in the Chamber continuously. Of course, once he had the search pattern programmed in, he didn’t have to be in the Chamber to scan; it was just easier that way. He informed Cortez, in temporary command with Nick on the surface, of what he was doing and why. The XO registered his agreement with the plan for administrative purposes. He also told Nick and the teams down on the surface.
Dr. Rowland loudly called him a fool, stating that only a pharmacological agent could be the cause and advised that he stop wasting time. Cai coldly presented the data contrary to Rowland’s position to the entire scientific team and was gratified when most of them were swayed to his side. The evidence clearly pointed away from strange chemicals and toward something far more sinister.
Dr. Hull then loudly proclaimed that Cai was doing the only sensible thing, and if the telepathic scan didn’t turn up something, he’d be very surprised. His team added evidence to the case—there were signs of an ancient civilization scattered all over the planet.
“Oh, is that so? Then where’d they go?” Rowland demanded belligerently.
“Surely you can’t be that stupid,” said Dr. Alvarez. “In all likelihood the alien civilization collapsed during the supernova. It’s not a survivable event. The amazing thing is that this mud ball has any life on it at all.”
“And it shouldn’t,” said Dr. Hull. “The supernova should have sterilized the planet’s surface down to the sea floor and boiled off all the water for good measure. Even if the water condensed and fell back to the ground over time, it hasn’t been long enough for that process to be complete. It’s only been a couple thousand years—that’s nothing in geological or astronomical time.”
The geologist, Dr. Frank, added her two cents also. “There are some unusual rocks here, with plenty of evidence that the energy of the supernova did in fact reach the planetary surface. So, I must agree, any life on this planet has to be considered an anomaly.”
Dr. Rowland, so clearly outnumbered, finally backed down. “You’re all wrong, I know it. But go ahead, investigate your wild geese. My team and I will carry on looking for the real cause.”
Cai almost felt a moment of pity for the egotistical bully’s inability to recognize when he was so clearly mistaken. Almost. He returned to the Chamber for the next set of scans.
For the next week, his schedule followed the same pattern. He’d wake up at oh-five-hundred ship’s time, run through his exercise routine, eat breakfast and enter the Chamber by oh-six-thirty where he’d run scans until eleven. He’d exit the Chamber, eat lunch and take a nap. At thirteen hundred, he returned to the Chamber and ran a second set of scans until eighteen hundred. He’d eat dinner, relax for a time by dealing with any reports that had been routed to him, check in with Nick and the scientific teams, then, around twenty-one hundred, he’d hit the sack for the night and dream about Santa, elves and friendship.
The northern hemisphere was a wash. There wasn’t much life there beyond a film of bacteria. There was ocean life, of course, but it was pretty sparse in the northern climes. Cai realized over the course of the scan that the planet was approaching the northern maximum tilt—the planetary solstice loomed. He reported this to Nick, who told him that the colonists had designated that day as Christmas, since it was close enough and nobody had any notion as to what day it was on Earth due to time dilation effects.
When Cai reached the habitable zone, things changed. He was scanning from fifty kilometers up, a low but stable orbit for his purposes. Compared to the north, the equatorial belt was teeming with life—animals, plants, some organisms that appeared to be a cross between the two, such as the migrating trees and the photosynthetic gliders. He was scanning over the ocean when he sensed something new. An intelligence of some sort. He probed cautiously and was inundated with images of Santa and his elves.
Cai snorted to himself and touched the alien mind more firmly. “I am Cai. I am not your enemy. I want to be your friend.”
“Friends?” the alien replied. They weren’t speaking in words, but in concepts, which was far more universal than language. “Human?” it asked.
“I am. Tell me about yourself.”
He had inadvertently opened the floodgates. The alien mind slammed him with so much information that he almost passed out from the stress of accepting it, sorting it and storing it.
Once the telepathic info dump was complete, Cai told Ffraaz, for that was its name, “I must study what you have given me. I will contact you later. I am in orbit above your location. I will remain in position so that you can reach me if you need to.”
Ffraaz sent an image of the Laughing Owl seen from below. It appeared to be in real time. “You?”
“Yes, that is I.” Cai looked directly down, but he didn’t see anything.
“Human and other?” And by other, Ffraaz meant the ship.
“I am an Astrogator,” Cai replied and sent a mini info dump of his own. For fun, he even included the subjective experience of his journey from Earth to Brahe, leaving out only his time with Nick. That was private.
Ffraaz said, “Now we both have something to think about,” and the contact faded from Cai’s mind.
Before exiting the Chamber, he contacted Nick. The captain was talking to the planetary governor. “It’s only a matter of time,” he was saying, “We’ve mostly managed to rule out a mass hallucination. Whatever we’re all seeing is real, Astrogator Cai confirms that—he saw Santa, too, and he’s in orbit, not here on the surface.”
The governor nodded. “Thank you, Captain. But it if isn’t some chemical we’re taking in, what is it?”
“There was an advanced civilization on this planet when the supernova occurred. It might be some remnant of them. That’s the best theory we have at the moment.”
Cai interrupted at this point, speaking into Nick’s mind. “I have made contact with an alien intelligence. It doesn’t appear to be hostile.”
Nick said, “Excuse me, the Astrogator needs a word with me,” and he strode away from the governor before replying to Cai, “Tell me what happened.”
Cai shared the details of the encounter. “I haven’t had a chance to study the data Ffraaz sent me.”
“Do that before we break the news to the teams,” Nick replied decisively.
“I’ll let you know what I find,” Cai told him. They exchanged a mental kiss before Cai broke the connection and exited the Chamber, feeling worn out. A hearty meal and a nap mostly restored him.
After he’d slept, he turned his attention to the data. He settled in his comfortable chair before his console and jacked in. Moments later, he was immersed in the story of the Hhroon.
The Hhroon were an advanced race, bipedal like human but more closely related to lemurs than apes. They were smart, very smart and cooperative. Their planet, Nnaann, had never been wracked with war as had Earth. They had two suns, Rriil the larger, golden sun and Zzeel, the small white one. As their technology advanced, they began to notice how Zzeel was siphoning star-stuff from Rriil. They had seen supernovae with their telescopes and understood the process that was going on with their own stars.
They began to make plans for survival. There was nothing they could do to prevent the supernova, but there were things they could do to survive it. They built bases deep underground and stocked it with enough bacterial cultures, seeds, fertilized eggs and genetic templates to repopulate the planet after the event. They built the islands to launch after the event to begin
the reseeding process.
They did everything they could, including figuring out how to make stasis tubes so the majority of their people would remain in stasis until the planet was restored. Caretakers were selected to be awake in ten-year cycles to monitor the situation on the surface and to perform routine maintenance on the underground bases.
The supernova came as expected and approximately when their scientists said it would. But it did far more damage than expected. The planet’s tilt changed from a mild fifteen degrees to thirty-five degrees, and the habitable zone shrank to only the equatorial belt. Even worse, the shockwave of the supernova ejected Rriil and its planets, including Nnaann, from the space it had inhabited and sent it hurtling away at four times the speed of all the nearby stars.
Now, they didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t enough space on the planet to let their people out of stasis, and they’d reached that conclusion before the humans came. The arrival of the aliens had come as a surprise to them. They’d never thought they were alone in the universe—they could do math—but the light-speed limit was not something they’d ever conquered, so they hadn’t expected visitors from outer space.
Instead of attacking, for that was counter to their nature, they decided to investigate and study the aliens. To do so safely, they decided they needed to assume the form of something non-hostile that would evoke pleasant memories and feelings among the aliens. They happened across a small child, playing unattended in a field, and scanned his mind. That’s how they learned about Santa Claus. They appropriated the concepts, building a Santa, a sleigh and reindeer and used their remote control robot to study the aliens from a safe distance, but far closer than they could otherwise get.