by Robert Culp
I tap Aria on the shoulder, “I suppose ‘favorite aunt’ would have been too much to ask? What do I know about children? The only upside here is I get to avoid that whole ‘Honey, I think I’m pregnant’ drama.”
“Relax. Gorb will love her. So will Dr. Took.” Does everybody know my private life? “And what woman, before she has one, really knows anything about children?” The cutter climbs to a hundred feet, and starts flying very slowly over the starport area, taking scans and looking for people or the materials needed for the array.
Shawna pilots. Aria stares at the scanner readouts. “I think this area was nuked. Radiation levels are steadily climbing and will be off the scale soon. We will all need decontamination. Miss Watson! Dig the antiRad tablets out of the medical pack, please and thank you.”
I go to the flight deck and look over Aria’s shoulder. “Probably neutron weapons, given the lack of structural damage. But even so, where are the bodies? D’you think we got zapped enough to worry about?”
Aria responds, “The readings at our landing site were low, or I would have directed we don protective gear. So standard decon should be sufficient. What really troubles me is we did not notice this from Night Searcher. Did you see anything we can use for a sensor array?”
“That’s the good news. We can scavenge some pieces from both ships for the electronics. We just need something for the antenna. Oh, here’s the PMU with the navigational data I downloaded.”
Sherri taps me on the shoulder and hands me the two anti-radiation chewable tablets.
“Thank you.” Aria says it to me as I say it to Sherri.
Fifteen minutes pass. Aria points at something through the windshield and says, “There! Forty-five degrees starboard, range 1500 meters; that is an old radar dish, just as I was hoping for. Very well, Sonia, you and your team go back and get whatever we can use from the miner. Shawna, you are now under Sonia’s operational control. I will fly the cutter we found up to Night Searcher and get equipment and radiation hypos, as well as a few more hands to help us.”
Speak of the devil, “Mother Hen, this is Night Searcher, there are sixteen vessels entering planetary space. I say again, one six vessels entering planetary space. Night Searcher Actual says for you to get your teams to a cave or other hiding place. We are taking the battle to the far side of the local moon.”
That changes things. “Disregard my last orders. Shawna: Find the nearest cave or tunnel and put us there.”
Shawna peers into the navigational sensor system. “Tally ho. Twenty-one hundred miles northeast. There is a huge canyon complex. The central valley has a large cave opening in its side.”
“Unless you tell me not to,” I tell Aria “I’m going to start shutting down anything on this tub that will give away our position. External lights, emitters, anything we don’t need.” I’m not waiting for an answer. I start shutting things down. “Ideally, something to mask the thermal signature of the engines would be good too. I doubt we’ll fit in Shawna’s cave—shut it, Jonesy—any chance we can get underwater?”
“Good thinking, Sonia,” Aria says, “It is a nice idea, but I do not think we have the time to get to the ocean, not to mention deep enough to be unnoticed.”
Shawna chimes into the discussion, “This cutter is cylindrical with a radius of ten meters. The cave opening is twenty-five by hundred twelve. We’ll fit. And we don’t want to be underwater in this can. We may be on our own here for weeks.”
Aria assents. I yield to the subject matter experts.
The cutter enters the canyon and screams down towards—and into—the cave. After the opening, the cave is narrow for about three hundred yards and then opens up into a large cavern. The cavern has numerous tunnels that extend farther than our scanners will reach. Shawna threads the needle at two hundred miles per hour. I am impressed and say so. It would have been nice had we the opportunity to back into the cave, but you can’t have everything. Fortunately, she has enough room to turn the ship so we won’t have to back out.
“Pretty slick, chick.” I tell Shawna.
“On the money, honey,” she replies. “This isn’t my first rodeo. You don’t get to be a cutter pilot on Night Searcher without having demonstrated skill.” I’m going to say “modesty” is not her strong suit. At Aria’s direction, Shawna flies us further in and sets us down.
“We need to conserve power,” Aria says. “Everyone get into an APE suit. If an orbital bombardment starts, we do not want to find out the hard way they are using chemical or biological weapons.” Aria commands.
APE suit. I never thought about an APE suit for a child. Fortunately, we’ve got some spares. All of the ship’s boats have twenty APE suits, two med kits, four survival packs, one accelerator rifle, a mechanic kit with welder, and a high-energy weapon. This one has a Plasma Gun. I find a small APE suit. A small is still very large on Gwen, but with some carefully applied cargo straps, I make it work. It’s not comfortable, and I feel bad about that, but it’s unavoidable. She doesn’t complain, so I ask, “Gwen, can you use your mind and tell us anything about what happened on the planet or the ships coming into the system?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t make it happen. What ships?” An answer as simple as it is terrifying.
Aria is looking at the scanners.
I’m looking out the windows. “Y’know, it occurs to me that if I lived here and were looking for a place to hide from a nuclear holocaust, this cave would do nicely. You may want to consider taking a patrol in further to see what else may be here.” Was that my “out loud” voice?
“Thank you for volunteering, Sonia,” Aria says. “Take your team and do a five mile recon.” Me and my big mouth.
“What? But I...oh all right. Sherri, Jonesy, gear up. We’re going walkabout. Do we have trip-flares or any other sort of advance warning pyro?”
Jonesy answers. “PSAS, six units.” The Perimeter Securing Alarm System is an electronic device that stakes into the ground, and once activated, communicates with all perCom devices in its database, alerting the good guys of approach by any unknowns. Quite a handy device, especially as it is almost false alarm free. The late great Michael Sinnair designed it centuries ago along with someone named Desiree Rian. History paints her rather…colorfully. And clads her scantily.
“Gwen, I want you to stay here and do whatever Granny Aria tells you, okay? I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay. Do you have any books? I am very bored.”
“Sorry, didn’t bring any. Look around, see if you can find something interesting, but mind Aria first and foremost. Ask nicely and she may teach you to play chess.”
Sherri and Jonesy both grab a survival pack and an accelerator rifle and state they are ready to go. They obviously want me to carry the Medkit. Makes sense; they’re the killers, not me. I shoulder it, and we are off.
“Jones, plant a PSAS stake in the corridor.”
“On it.”
We move to the first alley clockwise from the entrance and move down the tunnel. His former commander was right. Aboard the ship, Jones argues with just about everything, but get him on rock instead of deck plating and he can’t do enough for you.
The ground of the cave is sandy, like a beach. The ceilings vary from eleven to twenty-five meters. But the bottom isn’t just sandy it’s also flat. That doesn’t happen in nature. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this look like a natural cave.
“Team 2, Mother Hen, test coms every thirty minutes on sqCom 112. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged.” We stop long enough to switch our perComs to secured communications channel 112.
Jonesy runs the bioscanner mounted on his rifle. It shows no life at all for a thousand meters: its maximum range. We are easily a kilometer in and the cave is very, very dark. There are flashlights in the survival packs and mini-lamps on the accelerator rifles. Our helmets also have either infrared or ultraviolet night vision capability. That’s what Sherri and Jonesy are using. I’m following behind them using plain
old Mark I eyeballs and a flashlight. As we move into the depths of the cavern, I see a faint green glow coming from one of the chambers off the main tunnel. I plant one of the PSAS stakes in the downstream direction of the cave and tell them I see it. They don’t. Apparently it’s not registering in either the UV or IR spectra. Both of them switch off their night vision systems. Jones goes to the left, Sherri to the right. It’s not bright enough to read in here, but there’s enough light to get around. The stone in this area has been left in its worked state. The chamber is basically a cube, about thirty feet on a side. In the corner farthest from the entrance is a large circular object, about one meter across. As an engineer, I can’t help marveling at the work that must have gone into making this thing. It is made of something that looks and feels like obsidian. It has no scratches, no chips, and in the center is a green glowing sphere. The orb is about the size of a golf ball, and pulses green at regular intervals, a period of a little over three seconds.
I take some pictures and send my report to Aria. “Cover me,” I tell my team. They level their rifles at the disk.
I set the medkit and my rifle on the floor and approach the edge of the object slowly and in the most non-threatening manner I can. I brush sand away from it, and I start digging to one side, looking for the bottom. I find it about an inch down. Through my glove, I can feel the disk is warm to the touch. I’m just guessing, but it seems about human body temperature. I work my fingers under the edge and attempt to lift on the edge of the disk, but it doesn’t budge. I report my findings to Aria.
“Interesting. Very interesting,” she says. “The Captain would be most pleased with a trophy like that. Come up with a way to carry it back to the cutter, or do you think we can maneuver in close and grapple it?”
“Carrying the disk is a no-go, it is way too heavy. If we want it, we’re going to have to move the cutter closer and winch it aboard somehow. Maybe we can use the robots to tow it.”
“No readings on the bioscanner,” says Jonesy. “No organic signature at all.”
“Roger. We’ll finish the patrol and return to the cutter.” We move further down the tunnel, recovering the PSAS stake I planted when we entered this room.
Without warning, Sherri barks: “Target!” There’s the body of a biped on the cave floor. Jones walks up and prods it with his rifle, then kicks it gently. Then not so gently. But still there is no response. Jones draws his pistol and fires one round into the body’s head. It twitches from the impact but makes no other movement. As we continue down the tunnel, we begin seeing bodies of the same description. Sherri notices the resemblance first. “Are these the same things that attacked the ship?”
They are all dead. I stop counting at thirty. They all seem as if they had been burned with an intense heat. Something similar to a flamethrower. The range of wounds runs the gamut from blister to charred flesh. I report our finding to Aria.
We hear explosions coming from the direction of the cutter. Aria reports that we are all protected. Apparently the bombardment is in the canyon outside the cave. It makes sense, there’s nothing to absorb the sound aside from the sand. And it won’t do much.
“Mother Hen, Team 2. It looks like there may be a back door. Shawna is good, but the tunnel is narrower than the cutter at many points. So we won’t get out that way. We found a bunch of dead aliens. They look like the same buggers that attacked us on Night Searcher. I’m setting up perimeter alarms behind us. So, right now, it looks like there are at least two avenues of approach to the cutter: one, the way we came in, and the other from here.”
“Roger, Team 2. Get back here and rest up. Then we will get that disk moved. We hope to be able to head out of here in stealth mode in about three hours. Keep PSAS stakes in place.”
“Roger.” The cutter has a stealth mode? Sweet. “We may need a radiation decon. We haven’t noticed any symptoms, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. Did you guys order out for pizza or is it PB&J again?”
“You wish. Field Rations. And I am saving the ham loaf with lima beans just for you. We will all get full decon when we get back to Night Searcher.” She said ‘when’ not ‘if.’ Good.
We walk back to the cutter and once inside get out of our APE suits. Shawna hands each of us a bag meal and a bottle of water. I help Gwen open hers. You need a field knife to slice the plastic. All she has are her fingernails and teeth, and neither is suitable. She is hungry from long hibernation so isn’t as picky as I had feared. She eats everything edible in the bag except the candy. She gives it to me, and I save it for Gorb. I’d offer her another meal, but I don’t want to stuff her with her belly against her backbone. And these are not the most appetizing of meals. Furthermore, Aria hasn’t mentioned anything she’s done to merit such punishment, aside from beating her at three games of chess. I make sure she gets plenty of water to keep the FieldRat from setting up in her gut. We all sit around in relative comfort. Jonesy, Sherri, and I catnap until Aria tells us it’s time to get the disk.
We take the anti-gravity sled and some digging tools back to the disk. Aria and Ralston come with us to provide support and cover. It takes a few hours to get the grapples and jacks under and around the disk. With Aria’s help, we can lift the side about six inches. Once we get it up high enough, we can edge the anti-gravity sled under it. Fortunately, there’s a cargo ramp on the cutter, so we can just float it in. Sherri and Jonesy secure it for the trip back to Night Searcher.
Back in the cutter, we hear from Night Searcher that the remainder of the sixteen ships mentioned yesterday (has it really been that long?) are breaking orbit. Night Searcher will loiter for another six hours then head for orbit. Aria acknowledges. We all crank our seats back for some sleep. After what seems like thirty seconds, I’m awakened by Aria moving through the cabin, telling us all to sit up and strap in. I look over at Gwen. She smiles back and gives me a thumbs-up. Shawna is doing her preflight inspections.
“Okay, Shawna,” Aria says. “As soon as I give the signal, punch it for orbit. I have a sqCom from Night Searcher that says they are in place and expect to be ready to receive us when we get there.”
“Hold on to your hats, boys and girls.” The cutter hovers and gently rotates 180 degrees laterally. Then the engine spools up, and the launch shoots out of the cave to make a sharp, steep 3G climb to reach Night Searcher. We soon learn she is currently fighting off a pair of 400-ton corsairs. They just couldn’t wait, could they?
The cutter heads for orbit. Once we are in artificial gravity, I slip out of my seat to examine the disk. The color of the ball in the middle has changed from green to red. I hope that’s not bad. We all buckle in when the tactical officer COMs us. “Cutter 2, mask yourself with the moon. We will pick you up as soon as we get rid of these pests. It’s taking a bit longer than expected.” Shawna acknowledges and adjusts course accordingly.
I tell Aria about the change in the disk. Sherri has joined me. “Get something non-conductive, like a broomstick.” I tell her. “ I want to touch this thing and see how it reacts. If it starts to hurt me, or I start to do something bad, use the broom and push me away from it.”
She nods.
I brush the disk with my hand—no change. Jones hands me the portable hull scanner from the cutter’s mech kit. When I scan it with the portable unit, the light on the disc turns blue. My perCom bleeps, as does everyone else’s. Aria speaks first: “Binary code, millions of bits of it so far. I will try to decipher it as soon as it stops sending, but we may need the main computer on the ship to figure this out. Hmm. Shawna, just in case, disable the auto-transmit. Everyone shut down the auto-synchronize functions on your perComs. If that thing is uploading a virus or some other malware, we do not want it in Night Searcher’s system.”
I have an idea. “Gwen, I understand your telepathy, your thought reading, is passive. But please let one of us know if, and when, you know something we don’t.” There’s no point in us being surprised.
“Of course. I will tell you whatever you wi
sh.”
On approach, we can see several carbon streaks and more than a few impact craters on Night Searcher. In her wake, we can see the floating debris of the ships, not wise enough to leave her alone. The cutter berths without incident. Shawna announces engines are secure. She reaches for the door control but Aria stops her. “Not until the decon team is in place. Sonia, you will explain to Gwendolyn what is going to happen, please?”
I turn to her to begin my explanation, but she is already looking at me and speaking. “We will take off all our clothes. We will put them in bins to be processed or destroyed. We, in teams of two, will bathe each other with special cleansers. Afterwards, we will don new clothes provided for us. Is there more?” While she explains, everyone is coming out of his or her clothes. There’s some locker-room rancor, but not enough to get excited about. For once, I’m happy to have a child in the room. Apparently, there are some levels to which even Jones won’t sink.
“Not really. I don’t think I could have explained it better myself.” I pick up my perCom and ask that a petite-small flight suit be brought to the flight deck for her. Sherri takes my perCom and gives slightly different instructions—a tee shirt and overalls.
“There are other children aboard,” she explains. “There’s no reason to make her suffer in something that doesn’t fit when other options are available.” I can’t help wondering why I’ve only seen adults then. I must not be getting to the right places.
“Sonia, leave the disk on the launch for now,” Aria says to me. “Get Gwen bunked, and then get down to Engineering and verify we are ready to Transit.” She sees my panicked look. “I should have said ‘verify we are able to Transit.’ I will go to the Bridge to isolate a library computer.”
“Roger. Not to be argumentative, but I have a counter-proposal: I’ll drop Gwen by Medical for a check-up and a round of any necessary inoculations. We did find her in a TMOD with no idea how long she’s been there and on an unfamiliar planet. While Doc is checking her, I’ll hit Engineering and get us spun up there. I also recommend this cutter be declared ‘off limits’ until we know more about that disk and/or the code it broadcast. Once we’re in Transit, I’ll talk to the Purser about permanent quarters for Gwen. And just out of curiosity, does being Chief Engineer rate me a larger stateroom?”