He tucked the collar of his camo-shirt back under and donned the bright aloha shirt, pulled out his cheek pads and wiped off the makeup. He checked his omni. The tourists would be back any moment. As he thought that, several of them came in to use the facilities, and Rico stepped out.
“Mister Smith, there you are!”
Oh, crap. It was the tour guide.
“Were you with us on the tour? I didn’t see you, and that shirt is hard to miss.”
Damn, that had been a mistake.
“Oh, uh, ma’am,” Rico stalled. He placed a hand over his stomach, and tried to look sheepish. “No. You see I went to the restroom before the tour and, well, this is embarrassing but it must have been something I ate.” He rubbed his stomach for emphasis. “I was in there just about the whole time.”
“Oh my goodness. Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine now.” Rico wiped a hand across his brow. The sweat was very real, and it added to the effect. “I, uh, I don’t suppose there’s another tour?”
“I’m sorry sir; this was the last one today. You could come back tomorrow if you’re feeling up to it. We can go over to visitor relations and arrange it. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Rico ran a hand across his stomach and made an exaggerated wince. “I’ll be fine, but I think perhaps I’ll just go home.”
“All right Mister Smith. Feel better.”
“Yes, thanks.”
Rico joined the others leaving the facility. All in all, that had gone rather well.
∞ ∞ ∞
Velkaryan HQ, Earth
“Pavonis is dispatching a ship,” Laquis reported. “Vaughan was available. They’ll be leaving within a day, they should make Zeta Reticuli three weeks from now.”
“Good. So we’ll hear back when?” said Hubble.
“Seven weeks at least, with in-system transit time. Longer depending on what they find. There’s still no progress on duplicating the Communication System.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Denver
“How did it go?” Brown asked when Rico arrived back in Denver the next day.
“I made it back, didn’t I?” Rico grinned and shook his head. “No problems. Go ahead and have your contact arrange for the Blue Book archives to be shipped, and I’ll pass that information along.”
“What about the photographs and other files?”
“Wait a day and then arrange for them to be retrieved,” Rico said. “We want to make sure they’re not on the same truck as Blue Book, that would waste the whole exercise.”
“Right. Of course not.”
“Any reason to stick around here on Earth after that?”
Brown thought for a moment before answering. “There are some things I would have liked to have checked out regarding the Sol talisman, but all my leads have been dead ends. Quite frustrating really. So no, no other reason to stay. We can get back to Sawyers. I’ll book the flight.”
“Do me a favor and charter a ship.”
“You have a problem with scheduled?”
“Not exactly,” Rico said. “Go ahead and book the tickets too. I just want some flexibility in our route, in case the Velkaryans catch on too quickly.”
“Why not just delay the Blue Book shipment until after we have what we want?”
Rico had already considered that and rejected it. “The problem with that is the timing doesn’t work. They’re already getting impatient, even though it’s supposedly my money at risk. I’m hoping they’ll watch me less closely once the process is rolling on delivery. If they spot me at a spaceport before that, it would raise an alert.”
Brown nodded. “Indeed. But are you sure we can get out after that? They’ll come looking for you when they realize they’ve been duped.”
“That’s why both the tickets and charter. But you shouldn’t have a problem; they don’t know about you.”
24: Hallelujah
Alpha Mensae system
No beacon welcomed them when they dropped out of warp on the fringe of the Alpha Mensae system. Roberts had not expected one; this system was at the outer edge of the bubble of explored stars known as T-space. Some called it a network rather than a bubble, arguing that stars without terraformed planets weren’t logically part of “terraformed space.”
Roberts understood the mathematical distinction but discarded it; it was easier to think of T-space as a spheroid defined by how far a ship could travel from Sol or Alpha Centauri without refueling. Alpha Mensae was just a bit further than that, and although she’d topped up before leaving Verdigris, the tanks were running low.
The lack of a beacon, however, didn’t mean they were alone. Roberts scanned the communication bands as they approached.
“I’m picking up some faint radio chatter on the ship-to-suit channels,” she announced as Sophie moved deeper in-system.
“So there’s somebody else here. What are they saying?”
“I’m only getting one side of the conversation. The suit transmitters aren’t strong enough. It sounds like some kind of prospecting or geological survey.”
“What does the database say?”
“Not a lot.” Jackie skimmed the on-screen readout. “It doesn’t seem to have been updated by on-site exploration; the planetary data is from telescopic observation. A couple of gas giants, asteroids, three terrestrial planets—”
“Three?” broke in Marten. “That’s unusual.”
“Terrestrial as in ‘rocky’ or ‘not gas giants’, not as in ‘terraformed.’ Mars, Venus and Mercury are considered terrestrial too. But one of these three here does show an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and enough trace gases to indicate life.”
“So we make for that one,” said Carson.
“Fair enough. We should announce ourselves to the locals, though. They’ll detect us anyway soon enough.”
“Agreed. We wouldn’t want them to think we’re claim jumpers.”
Roberts tapped out a control sequence and keyed her microphone. “General broadcast to anyone in the Alpha Mensae system. This is the charter ship Sophie, inbound on an archeological survey. Just wanted to say hello.” She touched another key and turned to the others.
“I’ve set that to repeat at ten minute intervals. We’re far enough out that nobody will hear it for a while. Let’s get deeper in-system.”
∞ ∞ ∞
“Calling Sophie. Calling Sophie. This is Rockhopper, we are mining exploration ship. My name is Petrov. Welcome to the neighborhood, but I will be surprised if you find anything archeological.”
The call, with the speaker’s Slavic accent, came when they were a few hours out from Alpha Mensae II, the life-bearing planet, the Sophie having warped to within a million miles of it.
“Hello Rockhopper. We’re surprised to find anyone this far out. So, why do you say we won’t find anything archeological?” Of course the odds were low, but a surprising number of terraformed worlds had shown some level of intelligent life, although anything beyond old stone age technology was rare. Mostly Jackie was making conversation.
“You will understand after you do a couple of orbits of Hallelujah. It is pretty barren.”
“Hallelujah?”
“The planet you’re approaching. We may not be first ones here, but there were no names in database, so we named it.”
“Sure, first lander’s privilege, but ‘Hallelujah’?”
“Well, standard abbreviation for this star’s name is A. Men. It seemed appropriate, yes?”
Jackie’s groan echoed Carson’s.
“So, not reflecting any remarkable find, then.”
“Afraid not. We are doing all right, but nothing hallelujah-worthy. Anyway, we have been out here a while. We would welcome a chance to rendezvous and say howdy, and do data swap. By chance, are you courier?”
“I am.” Most charter operators were. Ships were the only way to carry messages faster than light, and courier fees earned the operators some extra credit. It was like a contract to carry mail b
ack in the early days of air flight; it could mean the difference between a profit or a loss. “But we’re probably headed outbound after this, it’ll be a while before we’re back in civilization.”
“Nyet problem, we will be here for a while.”
∞ ∞ ∞
“I see Petrov’s point,” said Jackie as they approached the planet. “This place is more like Mars than it is Earth.” Hallelujah’s orbit skirted the outer edge of Alpha Mensae’s habitable zone, and the planet was slightly smaller than Earth, with a thinner atmosphere. At first view the highest lifeforms seemed to be lichens and mosses, although the oceans—considerably smaller than Earth’s—might hold more variety.
“You’re right. It almost looks like they Ares-formed this place. Do you suppose the Terraformers even touched this system?” When it came to planetology, Carson deferred to Jackie’s knowledge.
“We can check the life-forms when we land.” The life seeded by the Terraformers all showed a common genetic heritage with Earth, whereas independently-evolved life they’d found, while biochemically similar, showed clear genetic differences, in some cases incorporating different nucleic acids. “But it might have been Earthlike at one point. It does look rather like a wet Mars now, though.”
“The key question is, how long has it been that way? As little as fifteen thousand years? In which case it might have had more life, and attracted the Spacefarers.”
Jackie shook her head. “I don’t think so. You can build up some pretty big deserts in that time, but not like this. Barring some massive stellar flares blowing most of the atmosphere away, I’d guess this would take a couple of million years at least. My planetology is a little rusty.”
Carson sighed. “I think you’re right.”
∞ ∞ ∞
“Zeta Reticuli? That is haunted place,” the old prospector, Petrov, said. They had enjoyed a meal together and were now, at his insistence, working on a bottle of vodka. Jackie took it slow, she might have flying to do. Petrov’s accent grew thicker with each drink. One of his crew was already dozing off in a chair.
“What, haunted?” That was a new one to Jackie.
“Well, I have never been there myself. I am not knowing anyone who has, not who came back. That is problem. I hear of ships heading to Reticuli system but do not hear of any coming back. So, is rumor the place is haunted.”
“If nobody comes back, who started the rumor?” Jackie said.
“Oh, I’ve often heard tales of ruins that were haunted,” Carson said. “It’s the kind of thing an archeologist picks up on. Not that anything I’ve explored has been, but the rumors were a good indication that there was something of interest there.”
“It could just be surrounded by a thick dust ring,” Jackie said, recalling the hazards of flying into the Epsilon Eridani system. The energy release from a warp field encountering anything much bigger than a grain of dust could destroy the ship.
“We could see dust ring,” Petrov said. “It would show up in good telescope, like maybe ship’s guidance scope, da?”
“Fair point.” She’d use caution entering the system anyway.
“Well, if it’s haunted, there are ghosts. If there are ghosts, there were once people, or something like people,” said Carson. “It sounds like it would be archeologically interesting.”
“Should have known it would not bother you. You archeology folks always poking around in dead places.”
“We’d poke around live places too but the residents tend to object,” Carson said with a broad grin.
“Ha! Da, that is problem,” the prospector said. He picked up his glass, noticed that it was dry, and refilled it from the rapidly emptying vodka bottle. “Well, good luck to you.” He raised his glass. “Na strovya!”
“Cheers.” Carson tossed back his own drink.
Jackie raised her glass to her lips without taking a sip and wondered just what they were going to encounter at Zeta Reticuli.
25: Meanwhile
Sawyers World
“Ducayne, I’ve got that analysis you wanted of flight plan records,” Jones said over the intercom.
“Anything?”
“A couple of things.”
“Oh? Come on up, let’s talk.”
A few minutes later Jones entered Ducayne’s office, data tablet in hand.
“So what do you have?”
“We checked flight plans and flight record data back thirty years for anything heading to or returning from that sector. Alpha Mensae, Zeta 1 and 2 Reticuli, Gliese 86, Zeta—”
“Okay, I don’t need an astronomy lesson.”
“Right. We’ve got some info on Alpha Mensae. Seems a couple of ships have been there, none of them reported anything interesting. One life-bearing planet, but it’s more like Mars than Earth. In fact there may be a ship out there now; a prospector ship named Rockhopper filed a flight plan to there a few months ago, for what that’s worth.”
Not necessarily much, thought Ducayne. There was no legal requirement for a private ship to file a flight plan, and although filing a false one was technically against the law, prospectors and other explorers might do just that to mislead the competition.
“What about Zeta Reticuli?”
“Nothing.”
“What, nothing at all?”
“No information. It’s further away, a ship would have to make at least one refueling stop to get there, from here anyway. In fact there are a couple of flight plans filed for there, but the flight plans were never closed.”
“Meaning the ships were never heard from again.” Even if the flight plan had been false and they’d gone somewhere else, the plan would have been closed out when they’d returned to civilized space. “Recent?” It was possible that a ship had returned to, say, Tau Ceti or somewhere else and the news simply hadn’t reached Alpha Centauri yet.
“Three years ago. And another one five years before that.”
Which ruled out the possibility it had already returned to another settled world. If a ship hadn’t been heard from in that long it was almost certainly lost, with a slim chance that it had been re-named and the ID’s altered. Or, just possibly, the crew had found a nice place to live and had retired from the human race. Ducayne wondered how many planets, surely beyond the fringes of established T-space, were inhabited solely by a handful of humans. He shook his head. The romantic history of Sawyers World was overrated; one didn’t get a planet named after one’s self lightly.
“So, as far as you can tell, nothing that’s been to Zeta Reticuli has ever come back?”
“If you put it that way, no. But we’re talking about a tiny sample size.”
“What’s the percentage of unclosed flight plans to other systems?”
Jones did a quick calculation on his data pad. “It varies by distance. The further away the higher the percentage.”
“Twelve parsecs, stop hedging.”
Jones shifted in his seat, looked at the pad, then back up at Ducayne. “Ten percent.”
It was an easy calculation. “So with two ships, ten percent of ten percent, or only a one percent chance that both of them would go missing randomly. Yet two have. That’s a nasty coincidence.”
“It’s worse than that. Not counting Zeta Reticuli, it’s only eight percent each, so much less than one percent chance of coincidence.”
Ducayne sighed. Zeta Reticuli was definitely skewing the odds. He hoped Jones was right about it just being a small sample size. “All right, thank you.”
“You’re worried about Carson and Roberts?”
“Of course, but also about what they might stir up.”
“Shall I get another ship ready to go out there?”
And risk making a bad situation even worse? He needed more information before doing that. Brown and Rico should be back within a few days, maybe they’d have something. And then? “Start the wheels rolling. Don’t specify a destination yet, but make sure we’ve got the range. This has to be played very carefully, and I’m not committing to
anything.”
“Understood.”
26: Abduction
Steel Mesa, Pennsylvania
“This next retrieval order, number 87321234 . . .” said the young records technician working the night shift at Steel Mesa.
“Yeah, what about it?” his supervisor said.
“If I’m reading these access codes right, that’s twenty-seven boxes.”
The supervisor tapped out a sequence to bring the order up on his own screen. “87321234? Yep, that’s right.”
“But, twenty-seven boxes of paper files?” The tech had almost only ever dealt with copies of digital archives, and occasionally a single box of paper files.
“It looks like they’re retrieving a whole project.” The supervisor had been skimming the details on the ticket. “Either they’re moving it somewhere else or more likely just want to trash it and stop paying for the storage. Either way, it’s their stuff. If they want it, we’ll send it.”
“But . . .” The tech sounded a bit lost.
“Just treat it as a regular retrieval, times twenty seven. Use a robo-lift on those boxes, that’s what they’re for. And if there’s enough other stuff going to—” he checked the ticket “—Denver, then dedicate a truck to it, don’t bother splitting the load with another destination.”
“Uh, okay. Got it. Thanks.”
“Sure. Just make sure the recipients have the correct shipping info.”
“Yeah, got it.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Denver
“Got it, thank you,” Brown said and clicked off his omni. He turned to Rico. “The files are on their way. I just got the tracking info. They’re on a Steel Mesa truck bound directly for Denver, so presumably via I-70.”
“That would be right. We did a test with a storage box containing a navigation system, it confirmed the data we were given by the Velkaryans’ Steel Mesa sources.”
“So we’re almost done, then. Shall I retrieve our box? There’s no way it will be on the same truck now.”
“Sure. And I need to pass this information on, they’re expecting it. I want them to stay distracted a while longer.”
The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2) Page 11