Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  “Sancho … are any of those shapes in your records? Are those math symbols I don’t recognize? Or maybe some language still in use that I don’t know?”

  “Aside from some basic geometric shapes, I don’t recognize anything on the tube. I’ve run scans through some of the X-ray spectrum, as high as my assay sensors will go, and found no additional marks. The ones you are seeing on the display are roughly 1015 Hertz in frequency, just outside visible range.”

  Collier stared at the holographic display, then looked back at the assay chamber. Strange designs, only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum. A tube with no apparent function, hidden or buried in a rogue asteroid.

  He shook his head against his own thoughts. Every Belter carried somewhere deep inside his or her own head the possibility, but no one had ever found any real proof. Ceres was rife with confidence tricksters looking to peddle worthless junk as the real article to the few tourists who visited the Belt. There had to be another explanation.

  He had not found an alien artifact.

  Something Sancho had said jogged his memory. “Sancho, you scanned this on the upper frequencies, right? Ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma ray?”

  “Affirmative, Skipper. No more markings.”

  “What did you find inside the tube?”

  “I didn’t penetrate the casing, Skipper.”

  Collier frowned. “How much energy did you use?”

  “My scanners are rather low energy output, Skipper. Six hundred sixty-two thousand electron volts.”

  “How much shielding would it take to stop that much?”

  Sancho paused before answering. “Depends on the material. The assay chamber walls are two point five centimeters thick, and they stop the rays fine. I got no reading from my gamma ray scans.”

  “So the tube absorbed the gamma rays.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Collier rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Wouldn’t it have to be made of something very, very dense to do that? Like lead?”

  “More like depleted uranium, Skipper.”

  “Shit, Sancho! Why didn’t you say that before? We should have taken toxicity precautions.”

  “Because it’s not made of that, Skipper.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not made of that. I get zero radioactivity from the tube. I was just saying it would take something like depleted uranium to absorb my gamma rays.”

  “Then what is it made out of?”

  “I said before. I don’t know.”

  Collier steadied himself. “Okay. Sorry for going off on you like that.”

  “I would have mentioned it, Skipper. I find nothing hazardous about the tube.”

  “But you don’t know what it is made of, or what it does, or how it came to be there.”

  “Affirmative,” Sancho said, his voice betraying no emotion.

  “But you know it won’t hurt us.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I can’t find anything hazardous about it.”

  Collier sighed and reexamined the ultraviolet display. He floated to the assay chamber and thrust his hands into the operating gauntlets The holo display was a perfect match of the tube, and he manipulated the object while watching him own hands on the display with the ease of long practice. As he grasped the cylinder, he matched his gloved fingers to some of the symbols and felt for any sign of heat, coldness, roughness — anything.

  He felt nothing through the gauntlets, but then again, he hadn’t expected to. “Sancho, I’m going to take it out of the assay box. Switch lighting to UV-rich.”

  “Aye aye, Skipper. Get your sunscreen ready.”

  Collier removed the tube from the assay box. The lights became very faintly purple, and the symbols on the cylinder shone brightly. There was nothing he could feel that was different about the markings. He played his hands along the sides of the tube, lingering on the various symbols and markings, trying to feel anything to break the cool impenetrability of the object.

  Nothing.

  He tossed the tube away from him in frustration, sending it cartwheeling through the cabin and forcing himself slightly backward. The white cylinder bounced off the opposite wall with a soft clang and headed slowly back toward him.

  If it was a human artifact, it was an impressive feat of engineering. Maybe Jovian researchers had come up with some kind of special material that resisted wear and scans. It could be a test bar of some new substance from one of their labs on Callisto or Ganymede. But then, what would it be doing way out here in the Main Belt, buried in an asteroid?

  Some kind of corporate experiment? Maybe the asteroid was a rogue because of a mining detonation gone wrong, and this tube was some kind of marker or beacon that got buried in the blast.

  None of these theories answered the many questions the mysterious object posed. If it was a human-made artifact, he had never heard of or seen anything like it. He could hardly believe something as valuable as this would just remain lost for so long. Surely, someone somewhere would be looking for it, and Collier would have heard of such a search.

  He rubbed his eyes. He had to admit that the most likely answer was that he, Sancho, and the Dulcinea simply lacked the ingenuity, knowledge, and resources to adequately analyze the rod. No doubt it was some common alloy that resisted the scans Sancho could perform, and the bar was such a common piece of equipment that it was valueless and therefore not worth searching for.

  “I’m going to bed,” Collier announced to Sancho.

  “All right. Do you want to stay here, or head back to Ceres, or keep looking, or…?” Sancho let the question tail off.

  “Stay here,” Collier said.

  “And the white tube?”

  “Leave it. We’ll pick up our investigation in the morning.”

  “Copy that. Do you want any sleepmist, Skipper?”

  “Uh … sure. Pick one,” Collier said, strapping himself loosely to the sleepnet aft of the control suite.

  “All right. ‘Winter Dreams,’ ten parts per million. Good night, Skipper.”

  “G’night,” Collier said, dozing off almost as soon as he inhaled the sleepmist.

  He hadn’t had a “falling” dream in years: most Belters said they had them several times a month, obviously due to the free fall environment. Collier, on the other hand, rarely had one. This one, though, was memorable. He had been falling for an endless interval, alternating between the ancient inherent terror all human beings shared for falling and a more sophisticated but no less unsettling feeling of disorientation. He felt unmoored, unconnected to anything substantial, like Antaeus being crushed in mid-air by Heracles. Nothing was objectively true, and each time he tried to establish some kind of certainty he came away with only a drifting, floating queasiness.

  He awoke from the dream with a start that sent his heart pounding in his chest. He glanced about the cabin, momentarily panicked that something had gone horribly wrong, but managed to calm himself enough to speak to Sancho.

  “Anything new to report?” he croaked.

  “Good morning, Skipper. Nothing new inside or out.”

  “Hmm,” Collier said, tearing himself loose from the sleep restraints. Without a word to Sancho, he stretched luxuriously, calming himself from the nightmare, and contemplated the tube once again. It had nestled itself in a corner away from the gentle pressure of one of the cabin blowers. It looked precisely the same as it had hours ago when Collier had abandoned it.

  Collier scrabbled around his food storage bin, looking for something suitable for breakfast. Without caring overmuch what he selected, he tore open a packet of soyfruit and munched unenthusiastically on the contents.

  Sancho still had the display of the white cylinder in ultraviolet on the holoprojector, the odd symbols and markings just as cryptic as they had been hours ago. Collier presently made his way to the tube, seized it, and
monkey-walked his way back to the main cabin area.

  “Okay. Let’s try to do this systematically,” he said halfheartedly to Sancho. “I’m going to start pressing the symbols in what I hope is some kind of order, and you’re going to maintain a close watch in all areas of the spectrum to see if there is any change at all in the bar’s makeup. Got it?”

  “Aye aye, Skipper. Switching cabin lights.”

  “Good. I want you to record what I do, so we make sure not to miss any combinations.”

  “Skipper, there are an infinite number of combinations. Since we don’t know how many times—”

  “Damn it, I know it’s probably hopeless. But we’re gonna do this anyway. Now. I’m putting my thumb on this marking here,” Collier carefully lined up his thumb with one of the outermost designs. “Got it?”

  “Yes.” A replica of the marking appeared in midair with the designation ‘thumb’ next to it.

  “Any change in aspect?”

  “None.”

  “All right. Now to the next marking.”

  And so it went for hours, Collier moving his hands and fingers on the tube, Sancho recording his movements to avoid duplication. Sancho pointed out again that there was no way to get all the possible combinations — Collier could tap a design once, or twice, or three times, or four times, ad nauseam, and he could do so in combination with any of the other designs. He could also twist, slide, scrape, and perform dozens of acts on each marking, separately or in concert with others.

  He stopped pointing that out four hours later when Collier suggested he use his gamma ray scanner to probe his own memory lattice.

  Collier was not a scientist in the same way the Jovians were. He did not see the value in dedicating himself to solving problems that had no practical application to life. He was aware that pure research led to practical discoveries, but he himself had little patience with the more philosophical pursuits of science. His science had to produce results. So it was more than a little galling when nine hours of touching, tapping, sliding, twisting, scraping, tracing, and otherwise manipulating the featureless white bar produced nothing at all save ten sore fingers and a short temper.

  “No result,” Sancho said again, for what seemed like the millionth time. “According to our pattern, you now need to slide lengthwise across design six, then tap design nine two times while twisting ring B clockwise.”

  Collier had shouted at Sancho several times in the session, accusing him of forgetting something or repeating himself, and always, the computer had responded with courtesy and gentle correction. He seemed to be aware of the toll the procedure was taking on his commander. Collier, for his part, had apologized to Sancho for berating him, but it was becoming clear that he could not keep up the mindless repetition forever.

  Nevertheless, Collier performed the action prescribed by his computer. He slid, tapped, and twisted in accordance with the pattern.

  “No result. Now you need to slide lengthwise across design six, tap design nine two times, while twisting ring B counterclockwise.” The two had long ago set up their own system for orienting the bar to their ways of thinking.

  Collier sighed. “How many attempts have we made so far?”

  “In total? Six thousand, seven hundred eighty-two.”

  He pushed the tube away and rubbed his hands. “That’s a lot.”

  “It’s relative, Skipper.”

  “It’s a lot to me.”

  “Okay,” Sancho said evenly.

  “I dunno. Seems like there must be a better way to do this.”

  “With our setup, I don’t know what we could do differently.”

  “That’s just what I mean. With our setup. The Jovians would have a much more scientific way of doing this, I’m sure.” Collier said.

  “Maybe. I don’t really know their methods.”

  “Everyone always says they’re the best scientists in the system,” Collier mused. “I’d bet they could crack this thing.”

  “Are you suggesting we go to Ganymede, Skipper?”

  Collier rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting.” He knew very well that if he turned the bar over to the Jovians for investigation, he would have to at least share credit in whatever they discovered. And there was no telling how the fanatical scientists would react to his wanting to take the bar away from them once he allowed them to begin an analysis. Ceres was full of stories about Belters who went to Ganymede for advanced medical care (usually from cosmic radiation damage) and who never returned. While Collier usually wrote those stories off as apocryphal, a small part of his mind wondered if at least some of them had basis in fact.

  “I’m sure any of the corporations would buy the tube, Skipper, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Collier tore his hand from his forehead. “That’s not what I’m thinking. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let one of the corps steal another of my finds. What did you say was next on the pattern?” He snatched the tube out of midair and readied his hands.

  Sometime near the ten thousandth maneuver, after Sancho had advised rest, it happened.

  “Okay … tapping design eight two times, twisting ring A clockwise, twisting ring B counterclockwise.”

  As soon as he performed the action, he heard a sucking sound, as if he had opened a vacuum-sealed container.

  “Aspect change in object,” Sancho said calmly.

  Collier, so used to hearing ‘no result,’ did not understand Sancho’s comment at first.

  “Say again?”

  “Look at the top end of the tube, Skipper. It’s open.”

  It was. One of the ends (the one he and Sancho had arbitrarily designated as the top) had simply disappeared, leaving Collier to look at the mirrored interior of the tube. He saw his own heavily distorted image reflected back to him.

  “Scan the inside,” he said quickly, swimming over to the assay box. He placed the bar in the cradle and slammed the box shut.

  “Null reading,” Sancho said after a few moments. “All scans reflected back, eventually.”

  “What do you mean, ‘eventually’?”

  “It took some of my beams a few nanoseconds to come back — I would guess that they rattled around in there for a while before escaping back out through the opening. But none of my scans penetrated the mirrored surface. I’m sorry, Skipper. I still don’t know what it’s made of.”

  “You recorded the exact movements it took to open the tube?”

  “Of course.”

  Collier thought for a moment, then retrieved the artifact from the assay box. He stared into the tube, turning it idly and watching his own reflection distort as he did so. He could still see no seams or breaks in the tube’s interior. Aside from the mirrored nature, it was the same as the exterior in its perfection.

  “Now what? Should we put something inside?”

  “I don’t advise that, Skipper. We have no way of knowing what will happen.”

  “But air and light have already gone in, plus all the energy from your scans. Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing has happened yet, you mean.”

  “Did you detect anything escaping?” Collier said, still looking into the tube.

  “Nothing at all. No matter or energy.”

  “Well, at least we know that it is hollow, and we know how to open it,” Collier said, his spirits lifting. It wasn’t much — in fact, the change in the bar created more questions than it answered — but a feeling of triumph swelled in him nonetheless. Hours and hours of experimentation had finally produced a result. He had the distinct feeling that more would come in time.

  “All right, Sancho, let’s keep going. We’re going to pay special attention to combinations that resemble the one that opened the tube.”

  “Aye aye, Skipper. Your next move should be tap design eight two times, twist ring A and B counterclockwise
.”

  The ordeal of endless patterns continued, though when Collier finally nodded off, he awoke violently moments later and demanded the procedure continue, Sancho convinced him to sleep, through a combination of logic, pleading, and ten parts per million of ‘Winter Dreams.’

  *

  A few more hours of experimentation had unlocked the method to close the tube again, and when that had been discovered, Collier immediately performed the action that opened it again, just to ensure he could still do so. Two days of prodding had therefore produced the ability to open and close the tube, but nothing else.

  “I think we need to put something inside,” Collier said early on the third day of their trials. The two had debated this point off and on for hours, Sancho maintaining that with no empirical evidence as to the tube’s function, he could not ensure the safety of the ship or operator of the tube, and with Collier growing more and more restive about their lack of interesting results. Eventually, Collier had compromised with his computer: he would leave the ship and operate the device on the asteroid, putting inside some of the dust and dirt from the surface. Although Sancho still maintained that he was putting himself at risk, Collier was firm.

  In the middle of the third day of their trials, therefore, Collier found himself once again on the surface of the asteroid, the white tube tethered tightly to his side. He had marked the ultraviolet “buttons” (the two had come to refer to the designs on the tube as such) with adhesive tape that had not so far interfered with their function, and verified that his gauntleted hands could still operate the symbols.

  “All right, Sancho. Opening the tube again.” He tapped and twisted, and the tube opened. “I’m putting in some of the asteroid. Looks mostly like silicates.” He scooped up a handful of the dust and sand that made up the surface of the asteroid and stuffed it inexpertly into the tube. As he did so, he noted that using the tube itself to scrape debris inside might be easier. Bending down, he filled the tube over halfway with rubble.

  “Okay. Closing the tube now.” He made the appropriate maneuvers and resisted the urge to fling the white object away from him. He could feel nothing different about the tube — through his gauntlets, it would have to have been very, very hot or cold for him to feel any change — and after a minute or more he radioed back to Sancho.