“And why didn’t you?”
“Because he’s not as clever as you,” he answered quietly. “Over the last twenty years on New California, you were always the first to see a solution when there didn’t seem to be a way out. Because you always had the good of the colony in mind, when others were only worried about saving their own skins. Because you could see the whole picture, when I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”
Marlene grimaced. “That woman doesn’t exist anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t have an answer, I don’t see a way out and I have no more energy to search for one.” She paused. “I want to return to New California and I’m going to ask Morrow to let me next time I see him. And when we’re out of here I hope I never see you again until it’s all over—for all of us.”
Russell took a deep breath. Then he stood up. He finally accepted that he wasn’t wanted here. He walked to the door and stretched out a hand to open it. Before turning the knob, he turned around one last time. “I can understand that you hate me for the way I behaved the other day; I accept that. But I haven’t come because of me, I’ve come because of our colony and what we built up together, and what we fought for. I’m not prepared to give it up. Nor was Albert. And I still believe the answer is within our grasp.”
Marlene got up from her bed and folded her arms in front of her chest. “Now you listen to me! We’ve sacrificed people in search of an answer and we still haven’t found one. We’ve asked the transporter the same questions again and again, with no result.
While she was shouting, Russell had opened the door, and was half way out into the corridor, but Marlene didn’t stop ranting.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve watched that damn video showing the spread of the bloody transporter network in our galaxy and I——”
Russell suddenly froze as if he’d been struck by lightning. He swung around, the color drained from his face.
“What?” Marlene asked testily.
He was looking straight through her, as if she didn’t exist. “In our galaxy ...” he whispered.
Chapter 25
“Transporter! Do you understand me?” Russell asked.
“Yes, I understand you.”
Russell took a deep breath. “Please show the spread of the network from the very beginning until today. And show all transporters!”
Mitchell transferred the incoming data to the big screen in the control room. Dots appeared in the top right-hand corner and spread out in all directions.
“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Morrow asked. “I’m not seeing this for the first time.”
Russell raised a hand. “Wait!”
Dr. Hope pointed at the data columns that were racing across the screen. “Those are all familiar data sets. We have them all saved.” The physicist sounded weary. It was late in the evening and he had already been sleeping when Morrow called for him.
Russell didn’t know whether his hunch was right, but while talking to Marlene he’d suddenly realized what had been bothering him the whole time. He watched the screen in silence. It slowly filled up with more and more dots until the familiar shape of the Milky Way appeared. The camera perspective meant he was looking straight down on the round, white slice of stars. When the image was complete, Russell raised his hand again. “Stop here,” he cried.
“Animation stopped,” Mitchell confirmed.
“And? What does it tell us?” Morrow asked.
Russell ignored him. “Can you change the camera angle? So that you’re looking at the Milky Way from the side?”
“Sure,” Mitchell said with a yawn. He dragged a finger across the touchscreen and slowly tipped the Milky Way backward. Before long, Russell had a side view of the disc of stars with a protrusion at the top and bottom.
“And?” Marlene was standing next to Russell and looked at him skeptically.
“When’s this from?” he asked.
“About ten million years ago,” Mitchell replied.
“Continue slowly.”
But the image was complete, the Milky Way filled with transporters, the spread of transporters had come to a stop.
“We’re now at minus five million years,” Mitchell informed him.
“And the computer is really showing all the transporters on the screen?”
“Yes.”
Russell felt deflated. He must have been mistaken. Oh well, it had been worth a try.
He was about to say something to Morrow when he noticed a movement on the screen. He looked closer but it was already gone. “Stop! Pause the video!”
“I’ve paused it!”
“Did you see that?” Russell asked.
“See what?” Morrow was frowning.
“Rewind a bit. Very slowly.”
Mitchell swiped the screen again and Russell fixed his eyes on the screen.
There it is again!
For a brief moment a protrusion appeared on the bottom of the disc of stars, like a bump, but disappeared again immediately .
“I saw it,” Dr. Hope whispered. “What was it?”
“Hang on, I’m trying to find the exact spot. I’ll zoom in a bit,” Mitchell said. His eyes flicked back and forth between the screens on the console and the big screen on the wall. “There it is!”
Countless dots appeared to grow out of the bottom of the disc of the Milky Way. The bump swelled, and then it was gone.
“Damn it, this is really difficult to control,” Mitchell swore as his fingers flew across the console.
It took a few seconds before the bulge became visible again. Mitchell stopped the animation.
“What is that? That bulge ...?” Morrow asked testily.
“I have no idea,” Mitchell replied in a quiet voice.
“It’s close to the level of the Milky Way. I’m guessing it’s one of the countless clusters of stars.” Hope paused to think, then shook his head. “No, the structure is too big for that.” He turned to Mitchell. “Can you give me the coordinates?”
“Of course, X plus 38,000, Y——”
“No, I need the polar coordinates.”
“I have to convert those, hang on.”
Morrow pointed at the screen. “Did we notice this anomaly before?”
“No,” Mitchell replied.
Russell shook his head as he watched the engineer tap around on a pocket calculator, although he had access to the mainframe of the Venus base from his console. Probably it was still quicker to work out rough calculations using simple tools.
“Why didn’t anybody notice this before?” The anger in Morrow’s voice was rising.
Dr. Hope was about to answer, but Mitchell interrupted him. “I’ve got it. Right ascension seven hours, twelve minutes, thirty-four seconds. Declination minus twenty-seven degrees and forty minutes.”
“Hold on, I’ll look if there’s anything in our astronomic databases.” Hope heaved himself up slowly and moved two seats along to another console.
Morrow turned to Russell. “I still don’t understand how this data is different from before. Explain it to me.”
Russell raised both his hands. “Let’s wait and see whether Dr. Hope finds out anything. I’m not a hundred percent sure.” That was a lie, because Russell was now convinced he was right. It was true: they hadn’t asked the transporter the right questions.
Actually we did ask the right questions, but in the wrong way.
Dr. Hope rolled back to his console. He was smiling weakly. “I was right. That isn’t a cluster of starts. It’s the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. A long time ago it was captured by our own galaxy and for millions of years they have been in the process of merging. The relative speed of its stars hasn’t adjusted to the Milky Way yet, which might be why it took some time for the transporters to reach it.
“A dwarf galaxy?” Morrow asked.
“Yes, there are several in our neighborhood.”
“I always thought Andromeda was the closest,” Chris piped up, joining the conversation for the first time.
“That was the accepted wisdom——a long time ago. But since then at least thirty more small galaxies have been discovered that are closer to the Milky Way. Some of them merged with our galaxy long ago, others will in the future. The dwarf galaxy we can see here is in the process, but still has its own structure, even though it’s already considerably deformed. It’s about forty-two thousand light years away from the center of the Milky Way and has about one billion stars.”
“A billion ...” Marlene’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
“I have two questions,” Morrow said. “First, I would like to know why this dwarf galaxy is only showing up in our data now.” He turned around and looked at Russell.
“Because we made a fatal mistake in our communication with the AI.”
“Which was ...?”
“Whenever we asked for data, we added in our galaxy or in the Milky Way. I did it myself: ‘Show us how the network has spread in our galaxy.’” Russell paused to allow his words to sink in. “We phrased it that way so we would get a nice image of the Milky Way, and because we assumed the machines were only in our galaxy.” He pointed at the screen. “This structure here doesn’t belong to the Milky Way, that’s why the transporter didn’t provide any data about it.”
A deathly hush had fallen over the control room. Dr. Hope’s face was turning red. He knew Morrow would hold him accountable for this momentous mistake.
“Stupid question, stupid answer,” Mitchell whispered.
“What do you mean?” Morrow asked sharply.
“The transporter’s artificial intelligence isn’t that different from one of our computers. If you ask a stupid question, it gives an overly literal reply. I’m wondering if the word intelligence even applies to the transporter.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Morrow replied. He looked at Hope sharply, but refrained from making a comment. Then he turned back to Russell. “Second: Why do the stars of this ... dwarf galaxy ... immediately disappear again?”
Russell took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“I don’t know. But I think if we could answer that question, we would know what’s causing the death zone.”
Chapter 26
“This mush tastes gross,” Chris said, pushing his plate aside. He had eaten barely two spoonfuls.
The semi-transparent, vaguely porridge-like stuff didn’t taste of anything, Russell had to agree. But he was hungry, and shoveled it into his mouth unenthusiastically but greedily. “Who cares. The main thing is it fills us up. And right now it’s the least of our problems. New California only has a week left. I hope Mitchell finds something out.”
Russell, Chris, and Marlene were sitting in the small canteen. There were two soldiers sitting at the next table grumpily discussing the bad quality of the news programs from Earth.
“What happened to all the food from New California?” Chris asked. “I mean——they emptied our whole supply depot. It can’t all be gone already.”
“I guess that’s what we’re eating right now,” Marlene said grimly.
Chris looked from his plate to Marlene. “This stuff is from New California? Impossible!”
“I think they boil it, puree it and add concentrates from their reserves. It loses all its taste in the process. And they don’t seem to have brought any herbs or spices with them from Earth. But I don’t care how it tastes, either. I’m not hungry.”
That was easy to see. Russell had already noticed her sunken cheeks the day before. She couldn’t have had much to eat since Albert’s death. Probably the best thing for Marlene would have been to return to New California. But until they made some progress with the death zone, that was of secondary importance.
Russell’s hunch had been right. Now they had to try and get more information out of the artificial intelligence about the disappearance of this dwarf galaxy. Mitchell had immediately started to process the new data. When he said it would take him a few hours, Russell, Marlene, and Chris had decided to take a break and get some food. Morrow had left the control room with them, but had disappeared in the direction of his office.
Russell guessed he was composing a message to send back to Earth. Direct communication wasn’t possible, because Earth and Venus were currently very far away from one another on their respective orbits around the sun, and a radio signal had to travel for more than ten minutes between the planets. So it would take at least twenty minutes before Morrow received a reply to his question. In the meantime, the general could have come and joined them, but Russell had never seen him eating in the communal canteen. Morrow probably had his meals brought to him in his office by an orderly. Even back in the days when Russell had been under his command on Earth, the general had always maintained a distance between himself and his subordinates.
“Do you think Mitchell will find anything out?” Chris asked.
Marlene shook her head. “The stars in the dwarf galaxy disappeared in exactly the same way as the stars in our galaxy, and meanwhile the death zone is moving forward. And we haven’t been able to find out anything in our galaxy, despite our missions. And despite our losses.” She whispered the last word.
“The stars in the dwarf galaxy disappeared five million years ago,” Russell said. “But something stopped the death zone back then. It’s only making its way through the Milky Way now.”
Chris stabbed at his porridge with his spoon. “Hope said the speed of the stars in the small galaxy will eventually adapt to our Milky Way. Perhaps that’s why it was only possible for the death zone to cross over now.”
“It strikes me as too much of a coincidence that after millions of years, the process starts up again just as humans have started to play around with the transporters.”
“So you still think there’s an alien force at work?” Marlene asked scornfully.
Russell sighed. He was less bothered by her question than the tone in which his former ally asked it. Since Albert’s death, she used every opportunity she could to make a dig at him. But he decided not to react. “I don’t know. But I’m guessing the transporters came across something as they spread through the dwarf galaxy. I just hope the artificial intelligence still has some data about it.”
The sound of an artificial gong echoed from the loudspeaker on the ceiling. “Harris, Holbrook, and Wolfe to the control room!”
“Well, looks like we’re about to find out,” Chris said.
Russell stood up, took his bowl and put it on a special crockery shelf next to the door. There was no full-time cook or kitchen staff here on Venus. The soldiers had to take turns in the kitchen alongside their guard duty.
Marlene and Chris followed Russell to the security area. The obligatory escorts led them to the control room. Morrow and Hope were already standing next to Mitchell’s console, engrossed in an animated discussion.
“Well?” Russell asked.
“I think we’ve found something,” Hope whispered.
“Show him,” the general ordered Mitchell. A picture of the dwarf galaxy appeared on the screen. Much larger than the one they had seen a few hours ago. Russell had to remind himself that the many dots on the screen weren’t stars, but coordinates that represented transporters.
“This is when the transporter network in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy was largest——five million years ago. For several thousand years, nothing happened. But now look at this!” He pressed on a field on his touchscreen. Suddenly the whole screen was dark.
“All the transporters are gone,” Russell mumbled under his breath. “Like the death zone we’re dealing with now.”
Dr. Hope shook his head. “No. Not quite.” He paused histrionically. “These two images are only one day apart.”
Russell raised his eyebrows. “Only one day?” he repeated. “Our death zone is much slower than that.”
“Yes, the transporters there all disappeared at exactly the same time.”
“The same time?”
“Can you stop repeating the answer as a question?�
� Morrow said in exasperation.
Russell ignored him.
“Yes, with one exception,” Mitchell said, and pressed some more buttons on his console. The screen filled up again with dots. “These two images, which are about a second apart, show the situation about ten years earlier. Do you notice anything?”
Russell furrowed his brow and stared at the screen. He couldn’t see a difference. Slowly he shook his head.
“I’ll zoom in a bit.”
The image changed and now Russell saw it too. “That star there, in the middle, it’s blinking.”
Morrow nodded. “You got it, Harris. That was the first star to disappear. Ten years before all the other transporters in the dwarf galaxy were destroyed.”
“You mean that’s where the death zone originated?” Russell asked. He wasn’t convinced. “A coincidence? A cosmic catastrophe maybe?”
Mitchell leaned forward to speak into the microphone. “Transporter! Name the reason for the disappearance of the transporter on TZ-1.” He turned around to Russell. “That’s what I’ve called the planet. The transporter understands the definition.”
“From my available data, it has not been possible to establish a reason for the erasure of the transporter.”
“Were there signs of life anywhere in this dwarf galaxy?” Morrow asked.
“Yes, around ten-thousand planets had single-cell organisms, and multicellular organisms were detected on several hundred.”
“I mean intelligent life,” the general said.
“No.”
Dr. Hope shrugged. “So no superior civilization that could have done something to the transporter network from this planet.”
“Hmmm ...” Chris’ face was scrunched up in concentration.
“I’ve been saying it all along,” Marlene said. “We won’t find anything out.”
Russell was beginning to lose patience with Marlene’s negative attitude. He was about to make a pointed remark, but bit his lip and instead gave the AI an order: “Give us information about the planet from which the first transporter disappeared!”
There was no response, and Russell was about to repeat his question when the voice droned from the loudspeaker. “There is no available data.”
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