“Sure. Let’s get geared up.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Forty minutes later the captain lazed on the deck, sipping a cola fortified with a splash of One Barrel, the local rum, and keeping an eye on the dive activity with the underwater camera. They’d checked out the debris, whatever it was, then stayed around the coral head looking at the fish and generally behaving like the dive tourists they were. He’d seen it all before, and Nelson, his dive master and their guide, could take care of them.
He checked the chronometer. They’d be coming back soon. A look at the screen verified that, they were starting to ascend. Wait, was Dave carrying something? He’d told them not to bring up any coral. This wasn’t a park, but he’d seen too many reefs damaged by tourists to be happy about it. Why hadn’t Nelson stopped him?
He set his drink in the holder, stood up and walked over to the ladder to help the divers aboard. Marissa, the other tourist, was already there, and tossed her fins up to him as he leaned over. He set them on the deck and reached down to her.
“We found something!” she said, hauling herself up, ignoring the mass of her tank and weight belt.
His planned admonishment about taking coral died on his lips. “Huh? What?” Before she could answer, a voice called up from the ladder.
“Here, take this!”
Dave was at the ladder now, holding up not his fins or a piece of coral, but a piece of wreckage, something that looked like it might have been part of the instrument panel from a boat, or perhaps an aircraft. He reached down and took it, then passed it to Marissa as Dave pulled off his fins and passed them up. Nelson bobbed in the water just behind him.
“What’s going on?” the captain called to him.
“Some wreckage. Other side of the coral head.” Nelson’s voice came in short gasps as he swam to the side of the boat. Dave was already halfway up the ladder. “Scattered. Could be parts of an aircraft, hard to tell. Brought back instruments.”
If it was an aircraft, someone could likely identify it from the serial numbers, he realized.
The captain helped Nelson aboard and they got the gear stowed. They rinsed the panel off in fresh water and began to examine it. It was worn, areas of glass—he assumed it was glass—covering the displays were heavily frosted from being scoured by sand, and the few areas of what had probably been exposed metal—screw heads, torn wiring, whatever—were heavily corroded.
“It’s been underwater a long time,” Nelson said. “Could have been there for a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty years. Maybe much longer if had been under the sand until the storm.”
“Not that long,” said the captain. “These look like digital instrument panels. A century, tops. Before that it was all analog.”
“Any manufacturer names or serial numbers?” Dave asked.
“Well,” he flipped it over and scraped away some of the algae and corrosion. “Nothing on the back where I’d expect.” He flipped it back and rubbed the front. “Looks like there’s some writing under here. Hand me that rag, would you?”
He scrubbed the front diligently for a few minutes, hoping to get the algae and other growth off of the panel without erasing any lettering. Finally he had a couple of lines cleared. “I don’t recognize the language.” The lettering, if that’s what it was, didn’t look like the Roman alphabet of English or western European languages. “That’s not Russian, either. Anyone?”
Dave bent forward to get a better look at it. “It’s not Arabic. It looks vaguely Chinese, but it’s not. Just decoration, perhaps?”
“It reminds me of something I’ve seen on a clay tablets in a museum,” said Marissa. “Cuneiform. But it isn’t quite the same. It couldn’t be, of course.”
A sudden chill went up the captain’s spine, despite the heat of the day. They were hundreds of kilometers southwest of the so-called Bermuda Triangle, but the thought came anyway. “Nelson, how much more wreckage was down there?”
“Quite a bit, and scattered. Stuff that could have been airframe, bits of machinery, plumbing. Hard to say what else might be under the sand or coral.”
“Anything you could specifically identify? As in, you knew exactly what it was because you’d seen something like it before?”
Nelson paused, giving the captain a quizzical look. “Not when you put it that way. I’ve dived a lot of wrecks—ships, aircraft, even some old rocket debris off of Florida—and I could usually recognize something. Why?”
“Just a hunch. I think we want to recover more of whatever this is. It could be important, and valuable.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure I want to say what.” There was no way he was going to say flying saucer. “Not yet. We need to get an expert opinion, but from the corrosion and growth, despite being under the sand, that thing has been down there a lot longer than a century. The hurricane must have stirred it up. It’s got no manufacturer markings that I recognize. What looks like writing in no alphabet I’ve ever seen.”
The more he spoke, the more sure he was. “Let’s just say I don’t think it’s from around here.”
The remains of Kukul’s spacecraft had been found.
∞
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: G type star 27.5 light-years from Earth, also called Beta Canorum Venaticum.
Kakuloa: Alpha Centauri B II - terraformed planet orbiting the second largest star (B) in the Alpha Centauri system.
maglev: generic term for a train which flies above its track by magnetic levitation. There are several different designs and prototypes in use today.
omni: Short for omniphone - compares to today’s smartphones as smartphones compare to walky-talkies. (Look for “Nokia Morph” on YouTube for a nearly-there concept video.)
omniphone: See omni.
parsec: A distance of approximately 3.26 light-years. (Technically, the distance at which a displacement of one AU creates a parallax of one second of arc.)
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.
Sawyers World: Alpha Centauri A II - second planet orbiting the largest star (A) in the Alpha Centauri system, first extrasolar planet settled by humans.
Taprobane: Epsilon Indi III - Third planet orbiting Epsilon Indi, ironically named for the island known as Sri Lanka or Ceylon, ironic because of that planet’s cooler climate.
technetium: Element 43 on the periodic table, it has no stable isotopes; all naturally occuring technetium has long since decayed. In current time all technetium samples are produced artificially, in reactors. In “Stone Age” and The Chara Talisman, Carson discovers a talisman fragment which contains a technetium battery.
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.
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.
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.
Velkaryans: Church of Divine Stellar Providence. The bad guys.
Verdigris: Delta Pavonis III - third planet orbiting the star Delta Pavonis, so named for its greenish hue and the heavy jungle covering the habitable areas.
warp bubble: The thin shell of highly-curved space surrounding a ship in FTL flight. Based on Van Den Broek’s lower-
energy configuration of an Alcubierre warp metric.
Zeta Reticuli: A pair of G type stars separated by about 0.1 light-year at a distance of about 39.2 light-years from Earth.
Acknowledgments
There are always far too many people involved in the production of a book to thank each individually, or this would be as lengthy as an Oscar acceptance speech. But the following are certainly worthy of acknowledgment:
First, thanks to the readers of the first book, The Chara Talisman, for their enthusiastic responses. That did make this one easier, and I’m sorry this one took so long. I’d blame my beta readers for raising unresolved points which I had to fix, but they were right, and they were my fault in the first place.
Thanks also to the members of the Highlands Ranch Writers Workshop for helping me brainstorm this on the sketchiest of outlines.
My fellow writers Lou Berger and Aaron Hughes gave me many comments on earlier versions of some of the scenes in this book, for which I am grateful.
Thanks to my ex, Jill, for her early comments, and again to my kids, Arthur, Robert and Selena, for their belief in my writing, and for feedback on the drafts. And a particular thanks to Robert for his constant enthusiasm for the project, which you can read as, he kept nagging me to finish it.
I would also like to thank the creators of the (free!) computer program Celestia, which has proved an invaluable aid in getting the astronomy right in both this book and The Chara Talisman.
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, Fall 2012 and Winter 2013
Preview: Alpha Centauri: First Landing
The following excerpt is from the upcoming prequel, Alpha Centauri: First Landing, set roughly fifty years earlier than this book, detailing Earth’s first steps into what would become known as T-Space. It is still a work in progress, some details may change.
1: Substitute
Earth’s Moon
“You’ve gained weight since Mars.”
George Darwin looked up from his office desk, irritated at the interruption. Then he recognized the unexpected visitor and smiled. “Captain Drake! I didn’t know you were on Luna. Come in. What brings you here?”
Drake entered the office and seated himself in the chair across the desk from him. “It’s Commander Drake now, actually.” He paused a moment, glancing around the high-ceilinged office, taking in the spider plant hanging in the corner, the pictures on the wall. Most were scenes from Earth, of Darwin in unusual environments. Hot springs, a glacier. He looked at the wall behind Darwin and smiled wryly at one. “You have that picture on your wall? I get tired of seeing it.”
Darwin glanced over his shoulder at it. It showed a bleak rocky landscape in dusty shades of red with a pinkish sky. Two space-suited figures posed for the picture. Drake and himself. “That’s why it’s behind me. It’s to impress visitors; my glory days.”
“Don’t say that. It makes you sound like an old man, and where does that leave me?”
“In my office trying to avoid telling me why you’re here when I thought you had a starship to make ready.”
“You’re right, neither of us was ever much for small talk. How would you like to go to Alpha Centauri?”
Whatever Darwin had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Yes, he knew Drake was assigned overall command of the fleet preparing for the first manned voyage to another star, but Darwin had assumed that he’d come to inspect the quarantine facility here, or perhaps in the worst case, that the project was being canceled.
“What? In what capacity? You’ve got an exobiologist.”
Drake shook his head. “Actually we don’t. Grainger managed to fall off the descent ladder in a rehearsal exercise. He broke some bones and punctured his spleen. He’s not going.”
“Is he all right? No, stupid question.”
“He’s fixable, but waiting for him would push back the schedule, and our international partners don’t want to wait. China and the European Union have already offered replacement exobiologists.”
“Hah, no way that’s going to happen.” While an American ship, the Robert A. Heinlein, would be the flagship of the multinational fleet, it wouldn’t land. The first ship to touch down on an extrasolar planet would be the Indian vessel Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, and the privilege of first footstep would go to the mission’s lead exobiologist. Since the US still had a monopoly on practical Alcubierre warp technology, they had demanded that pride of place. “But what about Grainger’s backup?”
“Wallace? Last month the Enceladus exploration team found signs of life under the ice. Since it looked like he wouldn’t be needed on the Centauri mission, he lit out for Saturn as soon as he could get authorization. I decided to offer the slot to you first. I know it’s a bit of a demotion, but―”
“No, no. I mean, sure, I’d have to give up the glamor and excitement of running the Lunar Quarantine Lab, but I’m willing to sacrifice to help out an old friend.”
Drake snorted. “Right. The opportunity to investigate two planet’s worth of alien lifeforms first hand has nothing to do with it.”
Darwin smiled. “Well, maybe a little.” He sat forward on his seat, sobering. “Okay, how long do I have to transfer operation of this lab, and what’s my training schedule going to be?”
Drake pulled a data chip from his pocket and placed it on the desk in front of Darwin. “The details are all in there. You already have plenty of space experience, and you’re one of the best exobiologists in the business, so your focus will be the detailed mission plan―”
“Okay, I know some of that from how it ties into the LQL requirements for when you, or we, get back. And I developed the mission biology protocols.”
“So you did. Good. The only other thing is general starship systems, although aside from the warp drive it’s not much different from what we went to Mars in.” Drake started to rise from the chair.
“Oh, and about that,” said Darwin.
“Yes?”
“The gravity is lower here on the Moon. I’ve lost weight since Mars.”
Drake laughed and shook his head. “All right. Read through the briefing on the chip and contact me later today.” He turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. “Oh, one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“Pamela is on the mission team. Will that be a problem?”
Darwin’s gut knotted. In the time they’d lived together, he and Pamela had never quite come to blows, but the screaming matches had more than once disturbed the neighbors. They’d be living in close quarters for the duration of the mission, several months. But they could behave under mission discipline, surely? Drake was looking at him, waiting for an answer.
“No, no problem at all.”
∞ ∞ ∞
The story continues in Alpha Centauri: First Landing, coming soon.
About the Author
Alastair Mayer was born in London, England, and moved to Canada with his family as a young boy. He describes his interest in space flight and science fiction as genetic: his father, Douglas W.F. Mayer, had been an early member of the British Interplanetary Society as well as a science fiction fan (who in fact published some of Arthur C. Clarke’s first tales in Amateur Science Stories).
Alastair became involved in both the L5 Society (now the National Space Society) and computers, publishing articles in Byte, Final Frontier, and other magazines, as well as becoming an accomplished scuba diver and a private pilot. In 1989 he moved to Colorado, where he still lives, and where he works for a satellite network company.
His short stories have been published in several anthologies and his work has appeared often enough in Analog Science Fiction magazine to gain him entry to the “Analog MAFIA” (Members Appear Frequently In Analog). Many of his short works can be found in e-book format on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and other e-book vendor sites.
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br /> The Reticuli Deception is the sequel to Mayer’s first novel, The Chara Talisman. He is currently working on two-volume work relating the first steps into T-space, tentatively titled: Alpha Centauri: First Landing and Alpha Centauri: Sawyers World. He also has more adventures in mind for Jackie Roberts and Hannibal Carson.
Alastair's web site: http://www.alastairmayer.org/
Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Alastair-Mayer/e/B00429C102/
The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2) Page 23