“Okay,” she said. “It will be quicker to refuel from a liquid water source. But I want to make this quick. If you can find a city with a landing spot near a lake or a river, then I’ll take her down. Otherwise . . .”
Carson wasn’t sure what the alternative was, and perhaps Jackie wasn’t either. It didn’t matter.
“Two orbits back,” said Marten. “There was a city with a cleared area and a small lake, perhaps it was a park.”
“I remember. Bring up the pictures, let’s see if there’s anything still standing. Captain, can you take us back to that one?”
“Give me the coordinates,” she said, and sighed with resignation. “I’ll adjust our orbital phase back to that track. But I’m going to drop some probes in orbit first. We might need an early warning.”
∞ ∞ ∞
The devastation became more evident as they approached the ruined city. Roberts had seen pictures of nuked cities; they were part of any history of the 21st century. But those had been images of fresh disaster, not something that had apparently happened hundreds of years earlier. The difference was subtle, but in the former there were signs of people attempting clean up and even rebuilding, whereas this place had just been abandoned. There was almost as much rubble between buildings as on the bases of the collapsed structures. Weeds, bushes and even a few scraggly trees pushed themselves up in random patches, often marking low hills where drifting dust and dirt had piled and given them a foothold. The place gave her the creeps.
She found the clear area with a large pond as Marten had suggested. The lack of rubble or nearby ruins suggested that it had indeed been a park. She flared Sophie to a near stall and set her down with ventral thrusters.
“Okay, pay attention,” Roberts announced. “I’m going to run out the hoses and top up our tanks. Stay here, or at least near the ship. When we’re done fueling and I’ve prepped the ship for a quick getaway, if we need to, then we can talk about wandering off.”
“Seems like a bit of waste of time for us to wait here while you’re fueling,” Carson said.
“It won’t take long, ten or fifteen minutes. If something comes up I may need help stowing things quickly. Captain’s orders, stay here until I say otherwise.”
Carson sighed. “Aye aye, Captain.”
36: Planetfall
Zeta 1 Reticuli system
The Velkaryan ship Cacharodon had entered the system several hours earlier, and had been cruising deeper into the system at modest speed, instruments scanning.
“Sir, we’re detecting a plasma trail on the third planet. Readings that look like standard ship’s thrusters, too.” It was hard to hide a ship entering atmosphere from orbit, the ionization trail stood out like a beacon and thruster exhaust differentiated it from a large meteor.
“How fast can you get us to the planet?” Vaughan demanded of the pilot. If they were picking up the signal now, the ship would have landed over an hour ago.
“Is thirty seconds fast enough for you?”
“You’re going to warp to the planet? Are you crazy? We’re not in that much of a hurry.”
“Not to the planet. I’ll aim for just above the limb of the planet, we’ll come out about a thousand kilometers up.”
“You can aim that well?”
“Sure, but if you like we can stop half way and do a course correction. That would only add a couple of minutes.”
“All right, do it.”
A few minutes later they were in space above Z1R III, firing thrusters to establish an orbit. The gravity pulse from that warp outran the Carcharodon’s earlier gravity pulses, from when it entered the system, like a speedboat outracing the ripples of an object thrown overboard.
∞ ∞ ∞
Zeta 1 Reticuli III, a ruined city
The refueling had gone without incident, and finally Carson was leading the team through what was left of the Zirth city streets, if that’s what they’d been, towards the stumps of several buildings. That had seemed like good direction to try.
Carson heard Jackie’s omni beep as they clambered over another rubble pile. He turned as she raised her wrist to check it.
“Radiation warning?” he asked, although his own omni remained silent.
“No, it’s from the ship.” She examined the screen, touched it in a couple of places, and muttered to herself.
“Is there a problem?”
“The probes picked up a gravity pulse, like a ship dropping out of warp.”
“I thought that didn’t leave a signature?”
“Not an EM pulse, but the energy in a warp field has to go somewhere when it collapses. Ducayne’s team modified my warp generators to smear that out a bit.”
“Friendly or alien?” Carson wondered aloud.
“Could be both or none of the above,” Jackie said, remembering their encounter with Hopkins in the Chara system.
“You think we were followed?”
“The Rockhopper from Alpha Mensae? No, but someone might have guessed where we were going. I didn’t file a flight plan but I didn’t try to hide our departure vector when we left Delta Pavonis.”
“Couldn’t it be the Spacefarers?” Marten asked. “Did you detect a gravity pulse when the pyramid ship showed up on Chara III?”
“I wasn’t looking for one then. I suppose it could be, but what are the odds of an alien ship arriving here so soon after we did? I think it’s more likely someone who knew we were coming.”
“Velkaryans, then,” Carson said, scowling.
“Best bet,” Jackie agreed. “We should get back to the ship.”
Carson was torn. That was probably the safest course but they had just reached one of the more-intact buildings, and he was anxious to explore it. He looked at Marten, who looked back at him made a shrugging gesture. Good enough. He surveyed the area for a reasonably flat spot.
“Marten and I want to stay here and check out this building. Can you bring the ship here, land it say over there and pick us up?”
Jackie turned to look where he was pointing. “It’s a bit rough, and the approach will be steep over the ruins, but it’s not like I need a runway.” She nodded. “Sure, I can do that.” She checked her omni again. “It’ll take me a half-hour to get back to the ship. You’ve got that long.”
“Whoever warped in couldn’t get here that quickly, could they?”
“If they warped to just above atmosphere, they probably could. But not likely, that would be some tight flying. Okay, one hour.”
Carson checked his own omni. “An hour then. Be careful.”
“Same to you.” With that, she turned and headed back in the direction of the Sophie at a quick walk.
Carson watched her as she left, his gaze lingering.
“Admiring her form?” asked Marten. “Not my type, being human and only the two breasts, but—”
“Ah, making sure she’s safe,” Carson said a bit more forcefully than he’d intended. He turned back toward the building. “Come on, Marten, we’ve only got an hour.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Aboard the Carcharodon
“We have a location for Carson’s ship, we’ll be over it in a few minutes.”
“Good,” Vaughan said. “Can you get an image of it?”
“I’m working on that now.” The pilot adjusted a control. “There, on screen two.”
The image, a steep angled view from not quite overhead, showed the triangular outline of a Sapphire class ship parked in a clear area near a small lake, on the middle of what appeared to be the ruins of a city.
“Look at the ruins. This is a big find.”
“But what caused them, I wonder? It must have been a major catastrophe for them not to rebuild.”
A shape edged into view from one side of the screen. Vaughan could make out a 90 degree angle and two straight sides. “Zoom out a bit, what is that?”
The pilot zoomed the picture out, revealing a large square outline equivalent to several city blocks, with triangular shading. “Is that a py
ramid?”
“It is.” Vaughan studied the image, and compared the outline of the square to the terrain. It was moving. He looked at the shadow it cast. Yes, almost certainly a pyramid, but more than that. “And it’s flying.”
“You’re right. That’s not possible.”
“Hold position here, let’s see what happens.”
The pilot applied braking thrust to kill some of their orbital velocity, and gravity came back to the ship as he throttled up the ventral thrusters to keep the Carcharodon from falling out of the sky. “I won’t be able to maintain this for long.”
“Do what you can.” On screen the flying pyramid had moved close to the Sapphire, which it dwarfed. The shape drifted over until the human ship was no longer visible beneath it.
“What’s it doing?”
How would I know? thought Vaughan, but said “Inspecting the ship, obviously.”
“It could crush it flat.”
“No, it’s moving away now.” The square had begun to move again, drifting away to reveal empty terrain as it passed.
“Where’d the Sapphire go?”
“Zoom in on that,” Vaughan pointed to where the ship had been. “Look for debris. Did they destroy it?”
The enlarged picture showed no sign of debris, nor of any blast damage to the ground beyond what could be explained by the Sapphire’s landing jets.
“Maybe it took off and it’s flying beneath the pyramid?”
“I don’t see any blown dust. For that matter, what’s holding the pyramid up?”
By this time the pyramid was moving away, out of screen.
“Zoom out again, track that pyramid.”
The pilot zoomed the picture out further and re-centered it on the pyramid. “I can’t hold this position much longer; we’re going to run out of fuel.” As he said this, the pyramid accelerated out of frame, and when the sensor tracked to follow, the pyramid had vanished.
“You lost it!”
“It accelerated away. It was too fast to track.” The pilot pulled back on a control and the weight lessened. “I need to cut thrust. Shall I land?”
“Yes. Land by that lake. Refuel and be ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Whatever happened to Carson’s ship, we don’t want it to happen to us.”
“Roger that,” the pilot agreed.
37: Trouble
The landing site, Zeta 1 Reticuli III
Roberts lengthened her stride as she cleared the rubble pile, checking her bearings against the ruined building before her. That was on our right as we came in. She adjusted her path to the left. As she rounded the shattered foundation her omni chimed again. She slipped it out and checked the screen. It was the Sophie again; it and the probes had picked up more gravitational anomalies. She touched a pad to download more data, slowing her pace to study it as she walked.
That was odd; these didn’t look like a warp signature at all. She selected the live feed, streaming data from the Sophie as it came in. Those are definitely some odd gravitational waves. Then the stream stopped and the display froze.
Roberts muttered and banged the side of the omni, as though that would make a difference. It didn’t. Maybe something was interfering with the signal. She tried calling Carson, but he didn’t answer. If he was inside that building already, it could be blocking the signal. But why wasn’t she getting anything from Sophie? She broke into a run.
∞ ∞ ∞
“Carson,” Marten said as they rounded a corner, “is that an entrance?” He pointed to a broad recess, partially hidden by shadow, in the side of the ruin.
“Let’s hope so.”
It was. It was completely open, although littered with the remains of what might have once been a door, or doors. They made their way inside. The interior was gloomy and dust-laden. Daylight filtered in through streaked and muddy windows. Carson pulled a flashlight from his pack.
“Are we looking for anything in particular, or just looking?” Marten asked.
“We’re just looking right now. That and taking pictures.” He had brought a recorder specifically to do so. “Let’s see what we can find to give us an idea of what the inhabitants were like.”
“Given the height of these buildings, they weren’t like us.” Timoans had evolved from burrow-dwellers, and had a genetic distrust of heights.
“Perhaps not, but the scale isn’t too far off. They were within the range of our size I think.”
“We knew that from the pyramids.”
“True enough.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Roberts didn’t know what to expect. What happened to Sophie’s signal? Could it be the Velkaryans? If their ship had entered atmosphere nearby they would have heard a sonic boom, or the roar of thrusters, or something. It could be interference, but from what? Maybe a circuit breaker had tripped, in which case it should auto-reset in a minute unless there was a serious problem.
She jogged on. There, that low hill, it overlooked their landing area. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she climbed. Too much time in zero gee, I need to get more exercise. But as she reached the top what she saw knocked the remaining breath out of her.
The Sophie was gone.
38: More Trouble
Exploring the building
“Carson, over here! I’ve found a stair well.”
“I’m glad we found something.” So far, the main level of the building had been empty. “So I guess they’d invented stairs after all.”
Marten looked at him with, as best as Carson could read timoan facial expression, a puzzled look. “Why wouldn’t they have?”
“No reason at all, but all we found in the pyramids were sloping floors and a ladder. No, I didn’t mean anything by it. This is just the first tall building we’ve found that isn’t a pyramid.”
“Oh. The stairs do look a bit odd, though.”
“I see what you mean.” Each step was considerably deeper from front-to-back, perhaps a half-meter, than it was high, only ten to fifteen centimeters. They were more like ceremonial or decorative steps than the sort of practical rise-equals-run of human or timoan stairways. “This doesn’t seem an efficient use of space.”
“Could it tell us something about their anatomy?”
That was such an obvious question that Carson was surprised it hadn’t occurred to him. “Good point.” He placed his foot on the first step, with an easy few inches to spare at toe and heel. “They must have had big feet.”
“Or short legs. Or both.” Marten looked at Carson and grinned. “Ducks?”
Carson laughed. “Bloody big ducks if so,” he said. “And what would they use for hands?”
“Curses, another fine theory shot down by logic. So much for Anas martenis.”
“Marten’s Duck?” Carson shook his head. “I never took you for a biologist. Anyway, wouldn’t it be Anas martenis sapiens?” he said, and grinned.
“Details.”
“Come on,” he said as he started up the stairs, “let’s see what’s up here.”
The second floor proved to be about as empty as the first. There were rooms with scattered furniture, or what was probably furniture, but nothing small.
“It looks like they cleaned out anything that could be carried.”
“So they had warning. Unless they came back afterwards?”
“I don’t think so. The streets, if that’s what they are, are too littered,” Carson said. “They must have had enough time to evacuate.” He was about to say more but the timer on his omni trilled. He glanced at it. “Damn, we’re out of time, we need to get to the rendezvous. There’s not even anything small to grab as a souvenir.”
∞ ∞ ∞
As they descended the stairs, Carson considered their shallow angle again. “Marten, it occurs to me that these stairs may tell us something else about the builders’ anatomy rather than just the size of their feet.”
“Oh? What, specifically?”
“Consider that some animals can climb human or timoan stairs but not easily come d
own again. Cows for example; coming down regular stairs would put their hindquarters too far above their heads. That wouldn’t be a problem with these.”
“You’re not suggesting this place was built by cows, are you? Space-going cows?”
“No, no, of course not,” Carson said, and bit back a joke about the cow that jumped over the Moon; Marten wouldn’t get it. “That’s just an example. But perhaps a quadruped.”
“Hands?”
Marten had a good point, a quadruped wouldn’t have free hands to develop technology. A centaur-like species would have free hands, but wouldn’t be derived from Terrestrial biology . . . which would be a significant find in itself. A trunk? Something lighter on its feet than an elephant? That might work. “How about something like a kangaroo? Biped but with a thick tail to balance the weight. The tail would drag going down steep stairs.”
“A kangaroo? Do you mean a quarrengara?” Marten asked, naming a Taprobani animal that looked like bear standing on hind legs, but with a more pronounced tail.
“No.” Carson pulled up a picture on his omni and showed it to Marten. “Like this.”
“They have big feet too.” There was an amused tone in Marten’s voice.
“Never mind.” He was probably right. Carson wasn’t sure a tail would work with a fully upright biped; it would be unnecessary, so evolution would atrophy it quickly.
They were at the bottom of the stairs now, and as they made their way out of the building, something else occurred to Carson. “Does anything strike you as odd about the architecture of this place? Of all of what we’ve seen here?”
“Compared to what? The stairs are different, but—”
“Compared to the two Spacefarer pyramids we’ve been in.”
“Well, there’s nothing pyramidal here, if that’s what you mean. The buildings, or what’s left of them, have vertical sides. But now that you mention it, the building material is different. That’s probably just a difference in local materials.”
“No, the pyramids weren’t local material.” They’d been a dull pinkish material which could have been an ultra fine-grained granite, but harder and more homogeneous, possibly an engineered material. The buildings here were grayish.
The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2) Page 16