The discussion moved on. “Has the military hardware been installed in the landers? Are they now fully operational?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Henri. “That was completed a week ago. All four pilots have been training for attack missions in them. Sanam and Tim were military pilots before they joined ISEA, as you know, and have been coaching the others.”
“I gather Sanam’s coaching skills go beyond fighter pilot tactics; at least with Arun, they do,” said Arlette with a touch of spite in her voice.
“I don’t think that’s quite fair, Commander,” said Marcel. “I think they have fallen in love and are not prepared to hide it. Not a bad thing for a new colony like ours. And they aren’t the only ones.”
“Oh?” said Arlette archly. “Are you offering cohabiting quarters now in the Orange House?”
“I haven’t been asked yet,” replied Marcel, “but perhaps we should be proactive about it. Better than having people creeping about at night in the black-out barefoot.”
Arlette’s comments were a lot closer to the mark than she knew. At about the same time, Sanam and Arun, having completed a simulated attack on Prometheus in Lander 2, were parked in orbit, weightless, and ‘reviewing the data’.
“Look at me, Arun,” said Sanam, removing the last of her clothes and floating across the cabin in front of him. “Aren’t I a naughty girl?”
“You are the most ravishing beauty in the Milky Way!” said Arun, struggling with his safety harness.
“Well then, you should look and not touch,” she said, “It’s my prerogative to touch. Now you just stay there and I’ll see what I can find.” She ran her hands over his body. “Oooh!” she said. “Is that nice?”
He exploded; she knew he would, and she smiled and smiled as he vented his passion on her.
When Mission Control received Arlette’s report that some sort of vehicle from Andromeda was progressing up the LDST 2 wormhole towards Omega 16, General Lee had no option but to report the news to the Heads of State of the G25 immediately. This precipitated a diplomatic crisis, dividing those who were adamant that Earth must assert itself within its home galaxy, and those who pointed out that these aliens would easily determine which solar system LDST 1 was connected to, and would bring galactic conflict into Earth’s back yard. A summit meeting held a few days later did nothing but deepen these divisions. The instruction to Prometheus that was hammered out after two days and nights of debate elaborated the risks in lengthy detail and required the mission commander to use all available means to avoid conflict, but not to concede Earth’s right to colonise any uninhabited planet in the Omega 16 system.
When this message finally arrived it was of no practical relevance and, after discussing it with her aides, received the same response from Arlette as its similarly conflicted predecessor. She binned it.
In the three days it took to bring the First Defence asteroid from its parking orbit to the mouth of LDST 2, life on Ceres proceeded in its customary good-natured fashion, despite a protracted rainstorm that temporally halted construction work.
It was during this period, perhaps hastened by the confinement that ensued, that several budding relationships blossomed. Perhaps the most celebrated, and certainly the noisiest, was the passion that enveloped Carla Da Silva, the botanist, and Giuliano Benedetti, the cook. Upon the delivery of yet another cereal seed that he believed would take his bread-making to hitherto undreamt of heights of aromatic perfection, he declared that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that she was the mother of perfection and harmony and that he would happily lay down his life for her, all in Italian. Carla didn’t know much Italian, but she got the gist alright, flung her arms around him and kissed him with all the passion she could muster. Giuliano then broke into his favourite Rigoletto aria, a sure sign to the rest of the crew that a wonderful meal was on the way, and the two of them were practically inseparable from then onwards.
Carla’s colleague on the celebrated first Safari, Mpho Mathe, also much appreciated by Giuliano for her discovery of the wonderfully versatile Cerippo, was a slim, elegant woman whose passion was her profession. She was a superb talker, and her presentations on wildlife were always packed. She was probably the most envied woman in the crew, for she was a stunning beauty, her dark brown skin and fine facial features absolutely perfect. She and Marcel would talk together for hours, gently educating each other about the magic of their respective sciences. Most of the crew knew they were in love before they themselves recognised it, for it seemed to them not quite proper for intellectuals such as they were. However, when the lights were suddenly cut after the rainstorm in anticipation of the arrival of the LFIs, and they reached out to each other in the darkness and touched for the first time, there was no mistaking the nature of the magic that shot through them both. They linked hands and drew each other closer. Cheeks touched, then lips touched and a fire broke out that burned the whole, long Ceresian night.
* * *
Cobus was baffled.
His satellite had been in place at the exit of LDST 2 for almost twenty-four hours, receiving a stream of unintelligible data from whatever was moving towards it up the wormhole. The data stream had stopped, probably, he surmised, because the Andromedans had realised that their own satellite was no longer functional. Then, after what seemed like a massive disturbance somewhere down the wormhole, it started again, but now it had become two almost identical signals. Why would that be? He had to conclude that his knowledge of wormhole dynamics was far too slim to even attempt an explanation, so he called in the expertise of Yevgeny Kusnetsov, Chief Scientist.
“What do you make of this, Yev?” he asked.
Kusnetsov sat down at the monitor and began to work with the data. After a few minutes a 3-D diagram appeared on the screen. “Hah!” he said. “Your alien friends are re-engineering the LDST. It has become a two-lane highway!”
“Why would they do that?” asked Cobus.
“Who knows? Perhaps they’re sending a whole fleet!”
Cobus shuddered at the thought.
When he reported to Henri, Cobus gave him just the facts and left out Kusnetsov’s dire prediction.
Henri’s response was immediate. “Merde! How long will it take you to get a second first defence asteroid down from the belt?”
“At least fifteen days,” replied Cobus. “I’d have to get a unit up there first, select an asteroid, and then get it back here.”
“OK, forget it,” said Henri. “We’ll just have to be lucky.”
“I don’t get it,” said Cobus.
“Look,” said Henri. “If we send our asteroid down one lane, and the alien ship comes up the other, we’re out of luck, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t want to be on that ship if they pick the wrong one,” said Cobus.
“Given their apparent capabilities in wormhole engineering, I suspect they will have thought of a way round that,” said Henri grimly. “Can’t you split ours in two?”
“No, our parasite equipment doesn’t have anything like that kind of explosive capability,” replied Cobus. “It works on induction, not brute force.”
“OK, I’ll talk to Marcel and let you know if we come up with a plan. When will our First Defence asteroid be there?”
“In another six hours,” said Cobus. “Do you want me to send it straight on down?”
“Probably yes, but I’ll confirm that before it arrives.”
Henri’s subsequent discussion with Marcel and Arlette didn’t change anything.
“They’ve created themselves an escape road!” exclaimed Arlette. “I just never believed they’d let us take them out with the same trick we used before. Throw in First Defence by all means, but let’s get ready for a new alien visitor.”
“Let’s think this through,” said Marcel. “If Yev is correct, and I’m sure he is, knowing his mental capacity, then they will wait to see which side our asteroid is coming down, then change lanes and wave it past.”
“Ch
ange lanes!?” Henri was incredulous. “At a significant fraction of the speed of light? I’d like to meet the driver!”
“That’s neither here nor there,” went on Marcel. “We don’t know if or how they could do it, but I wonder if the course modification equipment we have on the First Defence asteroid would work when it’s going down a wormhole?” He called Cobus.
“Naar – nice one!” said Cobus to Marcel’s question. “I don’t see why it should not respond but it’ll be in a massively distorted electromagnetic environment, so I wouldn’t like to predict the outcome.”
“Well, surely that’s better than just crossing our fingers?” suggested Marcel.
Cobus agreed. “I can see that we’re getting a slightly stronger signal from one side than the other,” he said, “so that’s the side I’ll put First Defence on to start with. If the stronger signal moves to the other side, I’ll yank the wheel and we’ll see what happens!”
“OK,” said Marcel. “Keep us posted. You’re go to put First Defence into LDST 2 as soon as it arrives.”
Arlette and Henri were nodding.
Cobus took a break to think. First Defence did not have an intelligent navigation system and would have to be controlled by him directly. That meant that there would be a significant communications delay between his receiving the data on the signals coming up LDST 2, and his instructions reaching First Defence.
“Well, so be it,” he thought. “If they change lanes at the last minute, we won’t have time to react. But would they take such a risk?” He thought not.
When he returned to his station to deliver the final course correction to First Defence, he was calm and resolved. He set up an alarm system on his phone to warn him if there was a tell-tale shift in the strength of the two signals, then called Henri.
“We’re in attack mode,” he reported. “I estimate that it will be no less than forty-eight hours before the alien ship and First Defence approach one another. I have a system set up to warn me if the ship changes lanes.” He went off to talk to Kusnetsov again.
“Hmm, what’s the mass of that asteroid of yours?” asked Kusnetsov.
“Seventy-two million tons, Yev,” replied Cobus.
Kusnetsov busied himself on his computer for quite a while. Finally he looked up. “The kinetic energy of that thing at the speed it will reach when it’s halfway down the tube could threaten the integrity of the LDST, you know.”
Cobus didn’t know. “So?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a spectator in the front seats.”
Cobus grinned. “But we’ll be watching from here,” he said.
Kusnetsov shrugged. “In that case we might be in for quite a show. Make sure we have the ship’s telescope pointing in the right direction.”
“Well,” thought Cobus as he made his way down to the canteen, “this job does have its moments.”
On her way back to her quarters for a shower, Sanam stepped into the lift to find Julia already inside. She looked decidedly unfriendly. “Have a good time up there in the lander, Major?” she enquired.
“Yes, the whole exercise went extremely well. Arun and I are very happy with…”
“Yes, I should think you are,” Julia interrupted her, “and I suggest that you ensure that the internal monitor is switched off next time before you…”
“Oh my God!”
Julia got out at the next floor and left her there, biting her lip.
“This is going to be it!” thought Cobus as he sat down before his screen. The signal being picked up and relayed to him was quite constant, but now there was only one. The alien ship was progressing rapidly up the wormhole towards Omega 16, and First Defence was accelerating down towards it in exactly the opposite direction. He reported to Henri. “All steady for possible collision within the next two hours,” he told him.
At almost the instant that he heard Henri reply “Copy that”, his alarm went off: the signals had switched sides. Cobus was ready. He moved to activate a pre-programmed message to First Defence to change course.
As he did so something in his head caused him to hesitate, and he heard, quite clearly, ‘Wait ninety-six seconds.’ For some time he found he could not move his hand on the keyboard. Then he heard the word ‘Now!’ He pressed the key and the instruction was released.
For the next four hours the signal from the alien ship grew steadily stronger, then there was a huge burst of static. It took several minutes to clear, but then the signal resumed.
“We missed.”
He put his head in his hands and breathed deeply several times, trying to cope with the disappointment.
A call from Kusnetsov came in. “Did you see that?!” he shouted. “Fantastic! Well done!”
“But we missed – the ship’s still coming,” said Cobus despondently.
“Oh that, yes, but didn’t you see the LDST go?”
“Go? Go where?”
“It’s gone, man! I told you this might happen! It destabilised and imploded! You’ve closed down the wormhole to Andromeda! Wait till you see the video! Awesome!”
Slowly Cobus’ thoughts started to clear and he began to think of the implications. “It’s just him and us now,” he said slowly.
He switched his monitor over to the ship’s telescope channel and watched a re-run of the event. You could see quite clearly the blue luminescent tube of LDST 2, perfectly stable one moment, then erupting with a savage flash and almost instantly disappearing. That was it. No debris, nothing. Just black space where the blue tube had been.
Except for one thing. The silver streak of an object moving very fast towards them.
Henri, Arlette and Marcel took Cobus’ incoming call on the video link. They knew instantly that the news was not good. “We missed?” asked Arlette.
“Not exactly,” said Cobus. “We missed the alien ship, but we hit the LDST.”
“How do you know we hit the LDST? What does that matter, anyway?”
“Because it’s not there any more,” said Cobus, and waited for the news to sink in.
“Oh, that does change things,” said Arlette, and a hint of a smile crossed her face. “Now we have only one adversary to deal with, and there’s no way the cavalry can come and save him. I think we’re ready, aren’t we, boys?”
32
The Truth in the Parable
According to the data that Cobus was receiving from his satellite, which was now sitting in a space where the mouth of LDST 2 had previously been, the alien ship was approaching Omega 16 at a mind-bending 60 per cent of the speed of light.
“I hope he’s had his brakes serviced recently,” remarked Cobus to Kusnetsov as they sifted through the data.
“Probably had a bit of a following wind from the collapse of the LDST,” observed Kusnetsov. “I would think they’ll overshoot Omega 16.”
This time he was wrong. Silver Streak, as it was now to be known, entered the Omega 16 system on a path that took it directly away from the star, adding some gravitational assistance to the on-board deceleration process. But it went as far as the outer reaches of the planetary system before it slowed sufficiently to turn and head back towards rocky planets 16-3 and 16-4, more than thirty days later.
During this long and involuntary tour of mostly empty space by the alien spacecraft, the status of the Prometheus mission improved substantially. News of the destruction of LDST 2 was greeted with huge relief on Earth, and the doomsday prospect of imminent invasion by aliens retreated. No one paid much attention to the fact that Silver Streak was still in the vicinity of Ceres in cosmological terms. It was a very long way away, and strategically disadvantaged.
* * *
Developments on Ceres surged ahead during this long military respite. The hens began to lay, which, for Giuliano and his new soul mate Carla, was an event of galactic significance. Sanam found herself pregnant, and far from being embarrassed or inconvenienced in any way, she rejoiced publically in this historic achievement. “Weightless conception is perfection!” she
crowed.
The relationship between Marcel and Mpho continued to develop as he attempted to explain to her, while she was lying quite naked on her back, the physics of the interaction between the two bodies as they passed each other in the wormhole. “This bit here is the alien spaceship” – and he gave it a squeeze – “and this bit right next to it is our friend the asteroid ‘First Defence’” – and he stroked it softly – “and this bit down here is the entrance to…”
“Don’t you dare!” she shrieked.
The Orange House was completed, and in one final flourish of construction enthusiasm, equipped with a freshwater swimming pool. Exploration had now reached all the way to the mountains in the east, and a permanent camp had been established in the beautiful area of lakes at their foot. There they discovered the gazelle roach, a shy, rather elegant, fast-moving creature that quickly became a dinnertime favourite.
Freddy Jones had arrived on the fourth landing party and started to transform the rather crude process of gathering whatever was available into structured agricultural production. He transplanted the fruit trees which had become popular into orchards, cleared fields for cereal planting, and started growing the vegetables that had been brought from Earth in seed form.
While those who had developed a taste for the bucolic were happy, a lot of the engineering types were becoming increasingly frustrated at the challenges of developing manufacturing. The initially generous supply of motors, pumps, furnaces and machines of all description from Prometheus was drying up. Transformation from cottage industry to industrial manufacturing seemed impossible and serious group discussions began to brainstorm these issues. They needed steel, power, heavy machinery and fuel. Specialist equipment could be brought in on subsequent missions from Earth, but the resources would have to be developed locally. The search began for deposits of coal, iron ore and other minerals, and the potential of the eastern mountains for hydroelectric power generation was assessed.
Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey Page 27