“My chief of data acquisition has asked me to relay a request to you,” Pakkpekatt continued. “He would like you to attach a tracking and monitoring limpet to the target at first opportunity. In the foray team’s action plan, that was considered a mission failsafe.”
“Colonel, I intend to attach this entire yacht to the vagabond, as soon as I can figure out where to do it. We’ll do a hand attachment of a TRAML then, if everything’s still quiet. I’m not going to fire anything at her if I can avoid it.”
“Lando,” said Lobot suddenly. “Look.”
The surface of the vagabond had suddenly come alive with small, pale patches of light. They appeared and disappeared in orderly patterns along the top of the hull extrusions, forming sequences that drew the eye forward, and then to the edge of the curving hull, where they disappeared.
“Oh, no! Artoo, look out! It’s getting ready to attack!” Threepio exclaimed.
“That’s not what happened the last time they fired,” said Lando.
“The last time they fired, we were two klicks away,” Lobot reminded him. “We wouldn’t have been able to see this stage from there.”
“Some thought here that this is engine activity, and the target is preparing to jump into hyperspace,” said Pakkpekatt over the comm. “Suggest you back away and launch that limpet now. You may not get another chance.”
“There is another possibility,” said Lobot. “This could be the next question for us. If so, it is one we’re not prepared to answer.”
“General, I strongly suggest you drop the limpet and get your people out of there,” Pakkpekatt said forcefully.
“No!” said Lando. “I want to know what’s happening on the rest of the hull, the part we can’t see. Where do the lights go? Is there a beginning, an end? Lobot, where are those other video feeds?”
“I am monitoring,” said Lobot. “The light streams originate at a point aft of our position and diverge into two streams which wind forward along the hull, following the surface contours. Both streams end at separate points on the far side of the ship.”
“Threepio, can you make anything out of this? We’ve got two streams again. Is this another duet?”
“I do not recognize this as any form of language known to me, Master Lando. But perhaps it is not linguistic, but symbolic communication.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sir, perhaps they are pointers, not streams.”
“Pointers—so which one do we follow?”
“Master Lando, might I suggest that you follow them both, back to the point of divergence?”
“That’s backwards!”
“Sir, the conventions of symbolic communication are not universal. You have been conditioned by the customs of your culture to extrapolate in the direction of movement, rather than to look for the source.”
“Threepio’s right,” said Lobot. “You can follow a stream to its origin or its destination. Perhaps we’ve taken so long since we first signaled them that they’ve decided we missed the portal, or don’t know how to find it.”
Lando raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Backwards it is,” he said, and reached for the thruster controls.
Watching the streaming lights flicker by and disappear in the direction of the bow, Lando could not help feeling they were going the wrong way. But when they reached the spot from which the light seemed to appear, a dark hole irised open there, and the streaming lights vanished.
“They’re inviting us inside,” said Lobot.
“Well, I’ll be the last pup of an ion storm—” Lando breathed in delighted wonder. “So they are, Lobot. So they are. What kind of atmosphere did the survey ship record on Qella?”
“Nitrogen seventy-five percent, carbon dioxide thirteen percent, oxygen nine percent, water vapor one percent, argon one percent, traces helium, neon—”
“That’s enough,” Lando said, putting Lady Luck on automatic station-keeping. “The droids won’t mind, but it’s a bit thick for my lungs. It’s suits for us, pal. Let’s go get prepped.”
The yacht’s outer airlock and the opening in the vagabond’s hull were mismatched in both shape and size. The solution was an old invention, elegant in its simplicity, which Lando had made standard equipment on all his vessels—an extensible cofferdam. Flexible yet vapor-tight, the cofferdam could telescope out from the hull of Lady Luck and attach itself to the other ship, forming an enclosed tunnel between the airlocks.
Lando locked the helmet of his suit in place with a twist and looked across the compartment at Lobot. “Everything all right?” he called, more loudly than necessary. He’d spent as little time as possible in space-suits and still had the neophyte’s reflex of trying to shout through the faceplate.
“Everything is fine,” said Lobot. “I have nominal pressure and temperature, and there is minimal interference.”
“All right, then. Extending the cofferdam.”
Lando pressed the switch, engaging a specialized autopilot which not only controlled the movement of the tunnel of rings, but took over thruster control for Lady Luck as well. The autopilot reported its progress in relentless detail, which Lando ignored until just before contact.
“Beginning cofferdam attach sequence. Attempting magnetic lock,” the autopilot announced. “Testing. Magnetic lock failed. Attempting negative pressure lock. Testing. Pressure lock failed. Attempting Chemical Lock One. Testing. Chemical Lock One failed—”
“What’s that hull made of?” Lando demanded.
“We may have to free-fly over there,” said Lobot.
“You sound almost hopeful.”
“I’ve learned that it’s something many people try on their vacations.”
“—Attempting Chemical Lock Three. Testing. Chemical Lock Three failed. Attempting Mechanical Lock One. Testing. Mechanical Lock One holding.”
Mechanical Lock One consisted of thousands of tiny composite barbs attached to monomolecular threads. The barbs were driven into the hull like so many anchors, and then the slack was taken up, pulling the cofferdam’s ring seal snug against the surface.
“Any change, Colonel?” asked Lando.
“No change, General.”
“She doesn’t seem to have felt it,” said Lando to his companions. “Pressurizing the cofferdam.” They could not hear the hissing, but the transfer pumps made the deck under their feet vibrate. “Looks like a good seal. Pressure is holding.”
“Good luck, General,” said Pakkpekatt, reduced now to the role of spectator. “I envy you.”
Lando drew a deep breath and offered a jaunty grin. “I might trade places with you if I could, Colonel,” he said. “Lobot, if you lose contact with me, take the ship out of here. Don’t come in after me.”
Lobot cocked a questioning eyebrow. “Do you really expect me to follow that order?”
“Well…,” Lando said, and the grin returned. “At least wait until I yell twice.”
“Good luck, Lando,” Lobot said, and opened the inner airlock.
“Do be careful, Master Lando,” Threepio called after him.
The cofferdam’s rigid rings had handholds spaced at intervals, which Lando used to pull himself along through the five-meter-long tunnel between the ships. He paused outside the vagabond’s portal to switch on his suit and helmet spots, as the chamber beyond was still lit only by the overspill from the lamps at Lady Luck’s airlock.
With his own spotlights on, Lando’s shadow no longer led the way for him. But the lights revealed little detail inside the Qella vessel—only an empty space enclosed by blank walls of the same mottled color as the hull itself.
Grasping the upper rim of the opening, Lando raised his feet and floated himself through, twisting to look in all directions. He had half expected lights to come on as he entered, but that did not happen. But the lights he wore were enough to assure him that he was alone.
“All right, I’m in,” said Lando. “This chamber is about twice my height in every dimension—plenty of room for all four of us. N
o response to my presence yet. There’s no light, and there doesn’t seem to be another doorway. But then, I can’t see any mechanism for the hatch I came through, so maybe I just can’t recognize the exit.”
“Watch your assumptions,” said a new voice—Bijo Hammax. “Just because you came out through a double-hatch airlock doesn’t mean that’s what you’ve entered.”
“Hey, Bijo! I thought you’d be sore at me for stealing your date.”
“I decided to wait and see what happened,” said Hammax. “If she kills you, I plan to forgive you.”
“Thanks, buddy,” said Lando, turning. “Wait, here’s something—that’s odd—”
Looking back toward the outer hull, Lando thought he could see the attachment ring through the wall of the chamber, encircling the opening as a faint gray shadow. He turned off his suit lights, and the ring became more distinct.
“Why have you turned your lights off, General?”
“Can you see this?” Lando demanded. “I don’t know why or how, but I can see the attachment ring through the bulkhead. There’s a gray ring, a shadow, exactly that size, visible on the inside.”
“Not visible on the relay. Are you saying that the hull is translucent, Lando?” asked Lobot.
“Well—yes. Where’re the ship’s spots? Can you sweep them across the outside?”
“Coming up.”
With Lady Luck’s brilliant spotlights trained on the hull, there was no mistaking the sight—the whole bulkhead glowed faintly, and the ring darkened to a sharp-edged black shadow. When Lando brushed his gloved fingertips across the surface, he could feel that the shadow was slightly raised.
“It’s almost like a bruise,” he said. “Like the hull is swelling where those thousands of tiny grapples have grabbed on to it. Artoo, come in here. I want you to scan and record this.”
“That could be a self-repair function at work,” said Hammax. “Mechanical One does do some microscopic damage to the attach point. As for the translucent hull—General, you may have discovered why the ship has so few surface features. We’re not seeing the true hull, just an outer membrane, probably differentially transparent to radiation. All the sensors are concealed underneath.”
By the time Hammax finished his speculations, Artoo appeared at the portal. He chirped at Lando, then entered when Lando waved him in. The lack of handholds in the chamber was not the problem for the droid that it was for the general. Thanks to the array of small gas thrusters built into all astromech droids, Artoo’s motions were far more controlled than Lando’s—who found he kept drifting into one bulkhead or another, slowly twisting from side to side and turning end over end.
“You getting a better image now?” Lando called.
“Much clearer,” said Lobot. “Are you ready for the rest of us?”
“There’s nothing else to see,” said Lando, switching his suit’s floodlamps back on. “The bulkheads are completely bare.”
“Does it appear to be the same material as the outer hull?” asked Hammax. “If so, there could be any kind or number of sensors or weapons concealed underneath it. They could use that material the way we use one-way mirrors. For all we know, they could be as close to you as the nearest bulkhead, watching and listening.”
“Thank you for that thought,” said Lando. “But if this is a Qella ship, it’s a dead ship. It’s been in space too long. And, Colonel, this is starting to look like a dead end. We may have to make our own entrance.”
“Lando, remember what we talked about yesterday,” said Lobot. “Any obvious path, any unlocked passageway, may be a trap. If there was a big red switch in the middle of one of those walls, I wouldn’t want you to touch it. Access must require more than observation—it requires knowledge. The perfect lock is invisible to you and self-evident to the Qella.”
“Maybe there’s something about the mottling on these walls,” said Lando, craning his head. “It’s the only thing in here I can see that could carry information. Lobot, Threepio, why don’t you come on over and see what you can make of it. Bring the equipment sled with you, too. Artoo’s making out like a fish in water, but the rest of us can use something to hang on to.”
Lando sighed and touched a suit control to blow a jet of cool air across his face. “I haven’t a clue,” he said finally. “Colonel? Anything there?”
It was Bijo Hammax who replied, “No. We’re stumped here, Lando.”
“Being stumped was my best strategy,” Lando said forlornly. “I was hoping that if we showed ourselves to be slow learners again, they’d give us another hint.”
Bijo laughed.
“Maybe if we touch the right pattern of spots,” Lobot suggested.
“I touched about thirty spots already before you got here, with my head, my elbows, my bottom, my knees—”
“I said the right pattern, not a random pattern.”
“So tell me what the right pattern is,” Lando said sharply. “Light or dark? Fast or slow? Left to right or top to bottom?”
“I don’t know,” Lobot said. “I’m sorry.”
“Aw—it’s not your fault. What we need right now is a Qella brain, and we’re fresh out of them. I knew I’d forget to pack something.”
“Lando—”
“What?”
“Have you ever seen Donadi stain-painting?”
“What? Lobot, you’ve picked a strange time to start practicing idle conversation.”
“Answer my question,” Lobot said shortly.
“All right—no, I haven’t. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“To human perception, stain-painting consists of huge canvases covered with random splotches of color. The Donadi sit and stare at a painting for ten minutes or more at a time. If they stare long enough, and practice what they call ‘looking past,’ something happens in their brain that turns the splotches into a three-dimensional image.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Hammax. “Strangest thing. The Donadi go into this meditation thing and end up in a state of high rapture over something that might as well be a hallucination.”
“But it isn’t a hallucination,” said Lobot. “A Donadi painting isn’t an image—it’s a stimulus to the perception of an image. The image isn’t real, but it’s contained in the painting all the same. It’s a perceptual trick, and it only works for their species.”
“You think maybe if a Qella came in here, he’d see the answer right away?”
“I’m saying that these markings may have been made not just for Qella eyes, but for Qella minds.”
Lando frowned and shook his head. “Even if you’re right, that doesn’t get us any closer.”
“Artoo is the only one of us capable of seeing the entire chamber at once. I can send him alternate sets of perceptual parameters, which I am retrieving now from the Institute for Sentient Studies on Baraboo. They have the most comprehensive collection of neurocognitive models that exists. Artoo can reprocess the image according to the parameters I provide, and project it for us to see.”
“Sounds a lot like trying to fill out a sabacc on a draw of four cards to me.”
“Luck is chance informed by applied knowledge,” said Lobot. “You said so yourself.”
“I did?”
“You did. Stand by.”
It is said on Gaios that a seed does not know the flower that produced it. What is true of seeds and flowers is true of civilizations and worlds. In the long history of the galaxy, many a family tree has grown too tangled to be clearly remembered by either ancestor or descendant.
On a thousand thousand worlds and more, life erupted from creation’s crucible of energy and time—and vanished into extinction in an eyeblink.
On a hundred thousand worlds and more, life erupted from the crucible and would not be dislodged, brandishing cleverness and fecundity as its weapons against entropy and change.
On ten thousand worlds and more, life erupted from the crucible and then transcended it, learning to bridge the unbridgeable distances, venturing forth as
explorer, and settler, and conqueror to worlds far from that which gave it birth.
And some of those worlds touched with the gift of life in time passed it on to their own children, until the gift had been passed across the eons to a million worlds, flower begetting seed begetting flower until the galaxy itself sang of it. But in all the history of all that is, no species anywhere has ever known its whole heritage, for memories are shorter than forever, and the only witness to those hard first births is the Force itself.
The people who called themselves the Qella had no children of their own. No colony worlds owed them allegiance. No free worlds owed them honor. The Qella had possessed the tools to leave their homeworld, but they had lacked a sufficient reason.
But the Qella had parents, parents they scarcely remembered, but to whom much of what they were and knew could be traced. The parents of the Qella had called themselves the Qonet, and they had had many offspring, as had their parents, who called themselves the Ahra Naffi. So although the Qella had no children, they had siblings in some number, and cousins close and distant in numbers beyond counting.
It was with the hope of finding such kin as the Qella might have that Lobot sifted the archives of the Institute for Sentient Studies. Lobot knew no more about the family history of the Qella than did the Qella themselves, but he knew the patterns and principles that applied. His hope depended not on luck but on a well-chosen search algorithm, the thoroughness of the archivists, and the fruitfulness and resilience of the Ahra Naffi line.
Or, at least, so Lobot would forever claim. Luck was Lando’s game, and Lobot preferred to distance himself from anything so ephemeral and unpredictable. It was a silent rivalry, and Lobot took unvoiced pleasure from the times when Lando’s way failed him and Lobot’s own succeeded. He prided himself on playing a more precise and controlled line, where competence counted for more than chance and diligence was rewarded more often than daring.
This time the reward was the mind-prints of the Khotta, of Kho Nai.
The image Artoo was projecting covered only part of one wall, but incorporated the patterns of the entire chamber as they would have been perceived by a Khotta. Compressed, processed, and translated, they needed no explanation. The entire image had but one focal point and one possible meaning.
Before the Storm Page 21