Chapter 12
Russell had spent the night tossing and turning——although, without a window, he could never really tell if it was night or day. At some point, the light in the corridor had been dimmed, which, since he didn’t have a watch, was the only way he had of estimating the time of day. At least now he had a room that he could leave to meet up with the others. But he had no doubt that Morrow would throw him back into a cell without batting an eyelid if he breached the rules in any way.
The previous evening they’d had a preliminary meeting in which Dr. Hope had told the volunteers all he knew about the expanding death zone——which wasn’t much. Morrow had insisted Russell be part of the first reconnaissance mission. Dr. Hope and John Mitchell were still arguing about the destination. Russell would only discover where he was going shortly before setting off.
A few minutes earlier, a soldier had taken him in handcuffs to the canteen, where a cold meal awaited him. He jabbed his spoon around half-heartedly in his porridge——or whatever the sludge in the bowl was supposed to be. He ate alone; he guessed Lee probably didn’t feel like having breakfast, and the others were still sleeping. Before Russell had finished forcing the food down his throat, the door swung open and General Morrow entered the room in his spotless blue uniform.
“It’s time, Harris. Please come.”
Russell stood up slowly and followed the general out into the corridor. “What kind of destination have you chosen for me?”
“Hold your horses, Harris. You’ll find out everything in good time.”
Morrow led him quickly to a room next to the transporter lab, where Dr. Hope, Mitchell, and Lee were waiting for him. Two armed soldiers stood in the background guarding the door.
“This is our destination,” the scientist said, pointing at a screen.
Russell looked at a small section of the Milky Way. A dot, about an inch above the boundary of the death zone was flashing red.
“The world we have selected for you has an atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen. We have been unable to establish if there is any life on the planet. You will go there and carry out various measurements——inside and outside the transporter. Based on our existing data, we can estimate to the nearest quarter of an hour when the sphere will break off contact. You collect the data and five minutes before the start of the fifteen-minute time window, you return.
“Five minutes? And within the next fifteen minutes the sphere disappears?”
“Well, we don’t think the sphere will physically disappear. With the data you bring back, we hope to get some clues as to what’s actually happening. The recordings on this device ought to be particularly interesting.” Hope pointed at a yellow metal box on the table.
“What is it?” Lee asked.
“A set of electro-magnetic sensors. It is a smaller version of the interface we use here to connect our computers to the artificial intelligence. It will connect to the transporter at the destination and record various parameters that Mitchell and I have been working on. Changes may occur to the transporter shortly before the connection is lost. With this measuring device we can record those changes and subsequently analyze them.”
“This is purely a recon mission,” General Morrow explained. “You go there, switch on the devices, wait until shortly before the calculated time, and leave again. That’s all. There isn’t much risk involved.”
“Unless you’ve miscalculated the time. Then we’ll be stuck there and never get back,” Russell said. The idea of being stranded on an alien planet was horrific. They would die of thirst. Or, if there was water on the planet, slowly starve to death.
“Do you have any further questions?” Morrow asked, looking at his watch.
Russell and Lee exchanged quick glances and shook their heads.
“Good! Let’s get going, or there won’t be enough time to get all the measurements,” Dr. Hope said brightly.
Morrow gave them each a pistol in a holster. “Just in case.”
Russell took the weapon and pulled it out of the holster, checked the magazine and slipped it back in. Then he attached the holster to his belt.
“No space suits?” he asked.
“No, you won’t need them,” Dr. Hope said. “As I said already, the environmental conditions on the planets we’ve chosen are friendly. Your combat uniforms will do just fine.”
“Now please follow me to the transporter cave!” General Morrow ordered.
Together they crossed the control room. Mitchell nodded briefly in farewell and returned to his console. In the background, Russell spotted Marlene standing beside an armed soldier. Clearly the general had permitted her to watch the mission. She waved and then Russell, Lee, Morrow, and Hope walked through the door and climbed the metal steps up to the transporter lab. A metal table a few feet from the sphere was piled with pieces of equipment.
“Here you have tools and supplies, a flashlight, a distress rocket, a first-aid kit, walkie-talkies and a few other implements,” Dr. Hope explained.
Without exchanging a word, Russell and Lee started to fill their backpacks and pockets with the objects.
“Take this,” Dr. Hope said, and handed Russell a watch. Russell recognized a timer on the digital display, which was counting down from two hours and three minutes.
“When the timer reaches zero, you return. No sooner and no later.”
“Understood.” Russell picked up the yellow recording device and nodded to Lee to take the other one.
Then Russell stepped toward the black, curved wall of the transporter and laid his hand on the outer skin. The thing had been lying around on Venus for millions of years, just like the transporter on Earth, and was thousands of times older than anything humans had ever built. And yet the alien machine still worked flawlessly. A rectangular entrance appeared in the skin, providing a view of the interior.
Russell and Lee stepped inside, followed by Morrow and Hope.
“I’m scared shitless every time I enter this thing,” Lee said.
Russell couldn’t suppress a grin. He’d felt the same when he’d first stepped into the alien contraption over twenty years ago. Meanwhile, he had almost gotten used to it.
The inside wall shimmered gray, yet it still emanated a cool light, the source of which nobody could explain. Suspended in the center of the space was a sphere——the actual transporter. It was the gateway to billions of worlds, only a tiny fraction of which supported any form of life. Steep metal steps led up to the sphere.
Russell looked at the black console, which protruded out of the floor of the smaller sphere. He could still see Dr. Gilbert standing in front of the console all those years ago, when he had sent Russell and his fellow prisoners as guinea pigs to other planets. Some of them hadn’t returned to Earth alive.
“The pressure in my head ...” Lee said. “It’s hard to believe you can communicate with the AI like this. But I’ve never tried it. On New California I always avoided the thing.”
“We all did.” Russell closed his eyes and concentrated. At first he only felt the pressure, but then random images crowded into his mind. He thought he could hear voices coming from far away. Russell knew this was the precursor to making contact with the artificial intelligence. If he continued to concentrate for a few minutes, he would be able to control the transporter with his mind.
“Don’t even think of changing the destination,” General Morrow said coldly. “We are monitoring everything from the control room and would notice right away.”
Russell shrugged and began climbing the steps up to the inner sphere. Lee followed right behind. When they reached the top, Russell placed his hand on the wall and an entrance immediately appeared in the hovering ball. Russell turned around and looked down at Morrow and Hope, who were standing at the bottom of the steps.
“The destination code?” he asked.
“It’s been pre-set. The code of the transporter here on Venus is engraved on your wrist watch.”
“Should I try and communicate with th
e artificial intelligence of the destination sphere? Maybe I can find something out before contact is broken off.”
Dr. Hope shook his head. “No, the monitoring device will do that. Refrain from making any attempt at contact, it could affect the measurements. Only initiate the return transport via the console.”
Russell nodded and stepped into the inner sphere. Lee followed him and put the device down on the ground.
“Could you ...?” Russell began, but Lee had already put his hand on the wall next to the entrance and the sphere closed as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“It’s scary,” Lee said darkly. “And nobody has a clue how the damn thing works.”
“Let’s get this over with.” Russell put down his own data recorder and stepped over to the console. A code in strange symbols——the language of the aliens——stood out against the black background. Russell hesitated briefly, then tapped on the lower field. Lee watched him carefully. Russell felt a slight jolt, as if he were in an ascending elevator.
“That was it. We’ve reached our destination,” he said.
“I noticed. There seems to be a little less gravity than on Venus.”
Russell opened the door and attached the rope ladder securely to the console. He left the yellow box where it was. A green light indicated that the device had started to measure the vibrations of the artificial intelligence. He let Lee go first and then followed.
Lee created an entrance in the wall of the outer sphere. Bright light flooded in, and Russell squinted.
“Impressive!” Lee said, and stepped outside without hesitation.
Russell joined him. He found himself in a landscape of needle-shaped cliffs that stretched hundreds of feet up into the air from a stony ground. The cloudless sky was blue. Light blue and hazy on the horizon, the color changed to a darker shade of steel-blue high in the sky. They were standing in the shadow of the transporter, so the sun must be somewhere behind them. It was pleasantly warm and a gentle breeze stroked Russell’s face. He kicked at the sand with his boot and almost immediately hit the rocky substrate.
“What’s that sound ...?” Lee asked.
Russell noticed it too: a dull droning noise, like the sound of heavy machinery running in the distance, filled the air. He walked round to the other side of the transporter, but was confronted by the same monotonous landscape of sand and rocks and huge jagged cliffs. A bright yellow sun hung in the sky.
Russell frowned. “I have no idea what that droning could be. It seems to be coming from everywhere at once.” He looked at his watch. One hour and fifty minutes. “OK. Let’s get to work. Switch on the measuring device.”
The engineer had already put the yellow box down on the floor of the sphere and flipped a switch. It beeped, and a green light blinked at regular intervals. “And now?”
“I guess we should have a little look around. Come on!” Russell turned left away from the transporter. He took a compass out of his bag and turned it slowly. The needle turned too. “No magnetic field. We mustn’t lose sight of the transporter. We could easily get lost between all these rocks.”
They walked straight ahead for a while. The reddish needle-shaped rocks were scattered unevenly across the flat ground. When Russell turned around, he could just spot the transporter between two huge spires of rock. “That’s far enough,” he said. “We shouldn’t go any further.” He stopped and concentrated on the dull droning. It was impossible to make out where the sound was coming from.
Lee stepped aside and touched one of the rock needles with the palm of his hand. His eyes widened slightly, then he smiled. “I know where the droning comes from. They vibrate.”
“What?”
“The rock needles vibrate in the wind. Like giant tuning forks. That’s why they’re making that sound.”
Russell came up beside him and stretched out an arm to touch the rock. At first he felt nothing, but then he noticed it too. “You’re right. Interesting.”
“Otherwise it’s pretty bleak here. No plants, no animals.”
Russell looked at one of the measuring devices that Dr. Hope had given them to take along. There was no humidity in the air. “There doesn’t appear to be any water on this planet. No wonder we can’t see any plants.”
“Of course it could be somewhere else,” Lee added. “Maybe a few hundred miles away it’s teeming with life.”
“I still wouldn’t want to be stranded here. Let’s get back to the transporter before we get lost. If we miss the time slot, we’ve got a problem.”
Slowly they made their way back to the sphere. They still had lots of time and Russell was surprised at how quiet the usually chatty engineer was being. In fact, he had been quiet ever since they’d got to Venus. Russell had a suspicion. “Why did you volunteer, Lee?”
The engineer turned around and their eyes met. Russell guessed there was more to it than the story Lee had dished up to Marlene.
“Does it have to do with what happened on New California?”
Lee didn’t answer for several seconds. “Nobody takes away my son and gets away with it,” he murmured finally.
Russell understood. “Major Palmer——you want to get your revenge.”
Lee’s eyes turned to ice. “Major Palmer will die. When I get my hands on him I’ll kill him!”
Russell could understand Lee’s anger, but he couldn’t let that happen. “And what do you hope to achieve? Do you really think it’ll make you feel better? Morrow has removed Palmer from New California. It’s over. If you kill him, you’ll only jeopardize the agreement.”
Lee snorted. “And you think they’ll stick to it? Once we’ve solved the problem, we’ll be back to square one. They’ll occupy New California and turn it into a penal colony.”
“The agreement is the best thing we have at the moment, and I think it’s serious. If things turn out differently, we can still defend ourselves. I know that Marlene has ordered for the remaining weapons to be fetched from the depot and hidden.”
“That worked well last time.”
“Damn it, Lee, let’s solve the mystery of the death zone first! Then we can see. If you start attacking Palmer now, you’ll put all our lives at risk. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“I can’t promise anything. If an opportunity arises, I’ll take it.”
What’s the point?
“And if I find an opportunity of destroying the transporter on Venus,” Lee added, “then I won’t hesitate to grasp it.”
Russell did not answer. He would talk to Marlene when they got back. If the worst came to the worst, they would have to come up with an excuse for sending Lee back to New California.
They sat next to each other in silence in front of the black sphere and waited for the time to pass. Then they returned to Venus, without exchanging another word.
Chapter 13
“Nothing?” asked Russell. “What does that mean?”
“What part of nothing don’t you understand?” Morrow said in a cool voice.
Russell had taken a hot shower and changed into a clean combat uniform. Together with Lee, he’d had a check-up with Dr. Payne. Then the guards had taken him back to the control room, where Morrow and Hope were evaluating the data with the young engineer Mitchell.
Russell sat down on a free swivel chair behind Mitchell, who was busy tapping around on a touchscreen.
“Did the measuring devices fail?”
Hope turned around to look at Russell. “No. They’re working just fine. What the general is trying to say is we couldn’t detect any changes in the data from the transporter on the alien planet. There are no clues as to what could have happened with the device.
“Contact ...” Russell began.
“... broke off seven minutes after your return,” Mitchell finished the sentence, without looking up from his screen. “The transporter has disappeared from the network. It can’t be selected with the manual control panel either.”
Great, all that for nothing!
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br /> “I should have made contact with the artificial intelligence of the sphere,” he said, turning to Morrow.
“If there had been an external influence, it would have been visible on our recordings,” Hope said.
“Do the recordings show anything?” Russell asked.
“A great deal,” Hope said. “Incoming and outgoing traffic of the transport network. And status reports of the device, not so different from rocket telemetry, although we don’t know exactly what the individual numbers mean.”
“If you don’t know what the numbers mean, how can you be sure they don’t contain information about the transporter’s disappearance?”
“Because the network traffic is absolutely identical to the traffic recorded by our transporter on Venus. And the status reports didn’t change the whole time you were there.”
“So the mission failed,” Russell concluded, resigned.
“Well, we know one thing for sure: whatever is taking the transporters out of the network works fast.”
“That doesn’t help us much,” Russell said. “So what happens next?”
At first he thought the general hadn’t heard him. Morrow was looking absent-mindedly out of the window down into the transporter laboratory, but then he turned his head as if in slow motion. “Tomorrow we travel to another destination and repeat today’s mission profile.”
Russell shook his head in disbelief. “Just repeat it? And what do you hope to achieve?”
“We’ve come up with a new idea. A new toy.” The general laughed weakly.
Russell was about to ask what it was, but Hope jumped in before him: “I told you the device won’t be ready before Thursday.”
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