One wall was inset with long windows that looked into a series of labs where samples were analyzed. Technical personnel wandered around their benches loaded with expensive analysis equipment, dressed in double-sealed white environment suits, peering through bubble helmets.
“Sure there’s no indigenous life there?” Kandara asked, staring into the labs. “Looks to me like you’re taking contamination protocols very seriously.”
“Standard procedure,” Geovanni replied. “It takes seven to twelve years to receive preliminary Sol Senate Exolife Agency clearance, confirming there’s no autochthonous microbiology. Personally I think that ought to be increased to fifty years, with a quadrupled sample range, before you can formally announce an all clear with any form of authority. But that’s just me. Over the years we’ve found some interesting microbes on some otherwise inhospitable planets.”
Kandara stared around as if she was trying to memorize the facility. “Any chance you missed something on Nkya?”
“No. Beta Eridani was a classic by-the-book arrival procedure. Kavli spent a couple of months decelerating down from point-eight-C. She arrived in-system this February. We sent a squadron of astronomy satellites through her portal. So far all standard and good; my people know what they’re doing.” He waved a hand at the semicircular room at the end of the labs, nearest the portal to Nkya. It was a control center, with two lines of big, high-resolution holographic windows all along the curving wall. Several desks had smaller screen stacks, with senior researchers and their gaggle of graduate astronomers drooling over images of strange, dark planetary crescents, orbital paths, fluctuating data tables, star maps, and rainbow graphics that to me resembled bad abstract art. “We picked up the signal straight away. Hard not to. It was multispectral, low power but constant.”
“Signal?” Alik barked in surprise. “Nobody said this was an active artifact. What the fuck are you sending us to?”
Geovanni gave Yuri a quick, resentful glance. “I don’t know. I don’t have clearance.”
“Go on, please,” I told him. “What happened after you detected the signal?”
“It was just a beacon signal, coming from the fourth planet: Nkya. So we followed protocol and informed Alpha Defense. A robot lander was flown down from orbit, keeping a minimum designated quarantine distance from the source. Once the lander put a portal on the surface, we started sending equipment through.” He pointed at the big circular portal at the end of the egress chamber. “I’ve never set up a base camp so fast. Just about the first thing we sent through was a twelve-person science ranger vehicle. Connexion security drove it and two Alpha Defense officers out to the artifact and came straight back. That was ten days ago. Next thing I know, Alpha Defense has ruled the whole expedition ultra-classified, and I get orders to send a secondary base through. That’s a joke, because it’s actually better than base camp; it even includes its own hospital, for crap’s sake. Some trucks hauled it out to the artifact, and an engineering crew set it up. They only got back yesterday. The preliminary science team left seven days ago, with another convoy of trucks packed with research equipment. Now you guys are here, and I’ve been ordered to give you total priority.”
“Sorry about that,” Loi said.
“Why?” I asked him. “Everyone is doing their job.”
The kid blushed, but had the smarts enough to shut up.
Geovanni took us right up to the five-meter-diameter portal. They don’t come much bigger; it was circular with an elevated metal ramp bridging the rim at the bottom so the cargo trollez could drive over unimpeded. Bundles of thick cables and hoses snaked through to Nkya underneath the ramp. Three sentinel pillars stood on either side, blank ash-gray surfaces concealing the formidable weaponry they contained. God help any alien that tried to come through without Ainsley’s approval.
Not that it would ever come to that. The G8Turings would cut power to the portal in a millisecond if any bug-eyed, tentacled monster even approached the other side.
I stared through the broad circle. It opened directly into a thirty-meter-wide geodesic dome, also stuffed full of supply racks. Two multi-sensor globes on chest-high posts were positioned on either side, letting the G8Turing scan anything that approached.
“This is it,” Geovanni said proudly, sweeping an arm toward the portal. “This is what we do. Welcome to another world.”
“Thanks.” I went up the ramp’s shallow slope after him. I couldn’t help a little flash of unease as I drew level with the portal’s rim. The Nkya base camp was less than a meter away from me now—a single step, as Connexion’s famous first ad said. A step that would span eighty-nine light-years.
Using ordinary Connexion Corp portal doors to walk between the company’s Earth-spanning network of hubs never bothered me. The greatest distance one of those doors covered was trans-oceanic, maybe six thousand kilometers. But…eighty-nine light-years? You couldn’t not be aware of the time and effort it’d taken to cover that awesome gulf.
Long before Kellan Rindstrom demonstrated quantum spatial entanglement at CERN back in 2062, human dreamers had been coming up with semi-realistic plans for starships. There were proposals to mine Jupiter’s atmosphere for helium-3 that could power a town-sized pulse-fusion ship that would scout nearby stars. Country-sized sails a molecule thick that would ride the solar wind out to the constellations. Skyscraper-sized laser cannon that would accelerate smaller lightsails. Antimatter rockets. The Alcubierre drive. Quantum vacuum plasma thrusters…
Kellan Rindstrom’s discovery consigned them all to the history folder marked: “quirky inventions that never made it past the concept study.” When you can connect two separate physical locations via a quantum entanglement portal, so many problems cease to exist.
Even so, starships require a phenomenal amount of thrust to accelerate up to a decent percentage of light speed, and Connexion Corp’s modern designs achieve in excess of eighty percent. Before Rindstrom, that would have required carrying vast amounts of energy and reaction mass on board. Now, all you do is drop a perfectly spherical portal into the sun. Meta-hot plasma slams into that hole at near-relativistic speed. At the same time, the portal’s exit is fixed at the apex of a magnetic cone, which channels the plasma into a rocket exhaust. There is no limit on how much plasma from the sun you can send through, and the starship masses very little—just the portal and its nozzle, guidance units, and a smaller portal communication link to mission control. It can accelerate fast.
When it reaches a star, it decelerates into orbit, delivering a portal link back to Earth’s solar system. That means you can start sending through entire preassembled asteroid industrial complexes straight away. Within a day you’re ready to start crunching minerals and begin manufacture. The pioneer crews build habitats that house the workforce, which builds the next generation of starships, which fly off to new stars. It’s almost an exponential process. And in their wake, the newly discovered exoplanets are ripe for terraforming.
Connexion Corp has been one of the major players when it comes to sending starships out from Earth, building and flying them for more than a hundred years. Every new Universal settled star system is another huge income source for the company. Beta Eridani is the farthest star humans have reached. Eighty-nine light-years from Earth.
One step.
I felt the slight drop in gravity as soon as I was through the portal. Not quite enough to mess with my balance, but I took the down ramp carefully just in case.
The dome was a smaller version of the egress chamber back on Earth, piled high with pods and equipment cases. A quarter of it was given over to life support equipment: big spherical tanks, air filters, pumps, ducts, quantum batteries, thermal exchanges; everything to keep humans alive in a hostile environment. If the main portal and the redundant emergency portals were closed for whatever reason, those chunks of machinery could sustain the base personnel for years if necessary.
>
Sandjay coupled to the base camp’s network and splashed local schematics across my tarsus lenses. Connexion Corp’s foothold on Nkya was laid out in a simple triangular array, with passageways leading out radially from the main dome to a trio of slightly smaller domes.
“Ordinarily, this would be full of geologists and exobiologists,” Geovanni said as he headed for one of the three big airlocks at the edge of the dome. “But right now we’re keeping base staff to an absolute minimum. We’ve taken local samples, but further field trips are on hold. The only people here today are engineering support and your security teams.”
He took us through the airlock, which was large enough to hold all of us and our trollez while it cycled. The passageway on the other side was a plain metal tube with light strips and cable conduits running overhead. Even with all the insulation layers built into base camp’s structures, the surface had a faint mist of condensation—proof of just how cold Nkya was.
The air in the garage dome held a throat-tickling sulfur tang. It was cool, too. But I didn’t pay that much attention; I was too busy staring at the waiting machine. The Trail Ranger occupied the floor like a possessive dragon come to cozy down in its lair. Like everybody in this day and age, I’m completely unfamiliar with ground vehicles. This brute was wildly impressive. It came in three sections. A cab and engineering section were at the front, with a smooth fluorescent-green egg-shaped body. Lights resembling insect eyes clustered around the blunt nose, just below a curving windscreen; smaller sensor wands protruded like thick black stubble hairs on the underside. The heat radiators were four slim mirror-silver strips running perpendicular down both sides, as if the designers had added missile fins just for the hell of it.
Behind the cab, linked by an articulated pressure coupling, were the two cylindrical passenger sections. They were made of the same smooth metalloceramic, with slit windows on both sides.
Each section rode on six fat tires, individually powered by an electric axle motor. The damn things were as high as I was, with tread patterns deep enough that I could put my hand in them.
Everybody was smiling in appreciation; even Alik managed to twitch his lips with interest. I joined them. I wanted to drive the beast; it was an impulse I guessed most of the team were experiencing. No such luck. Geovanni introduced us to Sutton Castro and Bee Jain, the Trail Ranger drivers.
The interior convinced me Yuri had ordered the Trail Ranger printed specifically for us. I don’t believe Connexion’s exoscience staff would generally be bused about a new planet in such comfort. The rear section contained sleeping pods with a locker for everyone’s trollez. Forward of those, I peeped into one of the four small washroom cubicles, finding a miracle of convertible units and compact storage cabinets to cater for every need from a toilet to a shower. There was also a tiny galley with packets of gourmet meals that a servez was still loading into the fridges.
Our lounge dominated the middle section, fitted with luxurious reclining chairs. Everyone settled down in there as the drivers went forward to the cab. A couple of stewards came in and asked us if we wanted any food or drink. It was all slightly surreal. I’ve seen old videos that included plane flights and traveling on the Orient Express. For a moment I could believe the portal to Nkya had actually transported us into the twentieth century. This was traveling in history.
I have to admit, there was a degree of elegance to it. If it wasn’t so ridiculously time consuming, I could probably get used to it.
“We’re sealing up in two minutes,” Sutton Castro announced over the PA.
Sandjay splashed the garage airlock schematic, showing me both doors closing and undergoing pre-start pressure tests. I didn’t ask for it, but Sandjay was an adaptive altme, about as smart as an old G6Turing, so it can pretty much anticipate what I want and need to know. The biometrics my medical peripheries were reading would’ve revealed rising heart rate, a small adrenaline flush, and raised skin temperature. All its core algorithms would interpret that as one thing: anxiety rising. So Sandjay did what it could to reassure me, and showed me lots of systems working smoothly.
The garage dome pumped its atmosphere away. “Access the vehicle net,” I whispered soundlessly. The peripheral fibers riding alongside my vocal cord nerves picked up the impulses, and Sandjay coupled to the Trail Ranger’s net. “Give me an external camera feed.”
I closed my eyes and watched the image splash. In front of the Trail Ranger, the big garage door was opening, slowly hinging up.
It was dark outside. Gray sky lidded a rust-brown rock plain. A fine dust suspended in the super-thin atmosphere gave everything a hazy quality. Yet I could see tiny zephyrs twirling along across the metamorphic mesa, sucking up spirals of sand. Spectacularly sharp mountains shredded the eastern horizon. The sight was entrancing. Virgin land, desolate and alien.
The Trail Ranger rolled forward. I could feel the movement, the slight rise and fall of the suspension pistons as if we were a yacht sailing over mildly choppy waters. Then the tires were biting into the loose regolith, churning up big fantails.
I opened my eyes, and Sandjay canceled the camera feed. Yuri, Callum, and Alik were all doing the same thing as I was, watching the images coming from the Trail Ranger’s net, while Kandara and the three aides had chosen to stand, pressed up against the long windows, seeing the landscape for real. I guess that’s a comment on age.
It wasn’t long before the base camp domes were white splinters on the horizon. The Trail Ranger was purring along at fifty kilometers an hour, with the occasional lurch as we rolled over a ridge. Sutton and Bee were following a line of marker posts that the original science rover had dropped every four kilometers to mark the route, their scarlet strobes flashing bright against the sullen rock.
The stewards came around again, taking drink orders. I asked for a hot chocolate. Most of the others had something alcoholic.
“Right,” Alik said. “We’re out of range from base camp, and I can’t access solnet. What the fuck is out there?”
I glanced at Yuri, who nodded. “I can give you the initial team’s report,” I said, ordering Sandjay to release the files for them.
Everyone sat down, closing their eyes to survey the data.
“A spaceship?” Callum blurted in astonishment. “You’re taking the piss.”
“I wish we were,” Yuri said. “It’s a spaceship, all right.”
“How long has it been here?” Alik asked.
“Preliminary estimate: thirty-two years.”
“And it’s intact?”
“Reasonably. It didn’t crash, though there is some hard-landing damage.”
“I’m surprised by the size,” Eldlund said. “I’d expect a starship to be bigger.”
“The drive—if that’s what it is—doesn’t use reaction mass. We believe it has exotic matter components.”
“A wormhole generator?” Callum asked sharply.
“Currently unknown. Hopefully, the science team will have some results for us when we arrive. They’ve had a week’s lead on us.”
“And there’s no sign of whoever built it?” Kandara said thoughtfully.
Yuri and I exchanged a glance.
“No,” I said. “However, some of the…cargo is intact. Well, preserved, anyway.”
“Cargo?” She frowned. “What’s the file number?”
“There’s no file on the cargo,” Yuri said. “Alpha Defense ruled that we absolutely cannot afford a security breach on that one.”
“Something worse than an alien starship?” Callum said. “This should be good.”
“So…?” Kandara narrowed her eyes.
I took a breath. “There are several biomechanical units on board which can only be classed as hibernation chambers, or modules that…ah fuck it, you’ll see. Whatever: They contained humans.”
“You are shitting me,” Alik growled.
I smiled at Kandara. “Still think we’re paranoid?”
She glared back at me.
“How many humans?” Eldlund asked; sie sounded badly shaken.
“Seventeen,” I told hir.
“Are they alive?” Jessika asked quickly.
“The hibernation chamber machinery appears to be functional,” I said diplomatically. “Half of the science team we sent out are medical personnel. We’ll be given a more definitive answer when we arrive.”
“Fuck me,” Alik said, and took a big drink of bourbon from his cut-crystal tumbler. “We’re eighty-nine light-years from Earth, and they flew here thirty years ago? Is the ship FTL capable?”
“Unknown. But possible.”
I watched them, Callum, Yuri, Kandara, and Alik, as they stared around at one another, trying to read their expressions, to see any forgeries amid the shock and surprise. They gave nothing away. And I still didn’t know which one of them was the alien.
JULOSS
YEAR 583 AA (AFTER ARRIVAL)
“They’ve gone,” Dellian declared with a mixture of excitement and resentment as he raced out of the changing pavilion and onto the short grass of the games fields. His head was tipped back to gaze up at the bright blue sky. For all of his twelve years, there had been a great many sharp points of silver light orbiting far above Juloss, like stars that could be seen in daytime. Now several of those familiar specks (the larger ones) had vanished, leaving the remaining skyforts to their lonely vigil, constantly alert for any sign of the enemy’s warships approaching their home world.
“Yeah, the last traveler generation ships portaled out last night,” Yirella said wistfully as she tied back some of her hair.
Dellian was fond of Yirella. She was nothing like as solemn as the other girls in the Immerle clan, who were uniformly quiet and smiled so very little. And unlike her, none of them ever joined the boys in the pitches and arenas as they played their team competitions. But Yirella had never been content to take her place in the arena’s command pens, observing and advising.
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