*
The next few minutes felt intensely chaotic. Shadow-people flitted in and out of the walls like hyperactive ghosts, fluttering overhead and then gone before the eye could focus on them. The vibrations grew worse, even from within the protection of the ship. Bandicut wondered what they were like outside. He spoke aloud, to the wall: “Is there some way for us to see what’s happening?”
Jeaves or Delilah or someone did something, because the front wall of the room dissolved, revealing the spacecraft docking bay, and the empty cradles on the far side of the ship. Shadow-people were whirling about the ship like leaves in a storm. A hoist on the far side of the hangar was sliding jerkily across the floor. Bandicut could see the floor and the cradles vibrating violently.
Delilah dropped out of the ceiling and spoke in a chiming voice: (The shadow-people are completing the final spaceworthiness checks. Nonessential modifications must wait.)
“Are the shadow-people coming, then?” Bandicut asked.
(No. Their place is not on a moving ship.)
Antares’s gaze darkened. “Won’t they die if the station is destroyed?”
(They will make their own way from here. The preflight is now nearly complete.)
Another shudder passed through the floor. A shadow-person flitted across the ceiling on the inside, emitting a whreek! of...alarm? Or was it calling out a checklist?
Abruptly all the walls went transparent, revealing the entire docking bay. It was as if they were suddenly standing on an open platform, with only a ghostly form of the ship surrounding them. Bandicut drew a sharp, dizzy breath—while beside him, Antares grabbed the back of a seat to steady herself. As the shaking intensified, she lowered herself into the seat, then pointed across the cavern. “Look!” The far wall of the docking bay had turned as clear as the ship—or perhaps the entire side of the bay had simply opened to space, revealing darkness and the glimmering mist of the distant nebula.
(Hangar integrity is failing,) chimed Delilah. (We will be departing in a few moments. Does anyone wish to leave the ship?) Overhead in the docking bay, structural members of the dome were starting to come apart and fall. A supporting beam fell, twisting and turning, and glanced off the top of the ship.
All four of them involuntarily ducked; but no one spoke except Li-Jared, who bonged in consternation. Delilah chimed once more, as the sharpest quake yet shook the bridge. (If you are staying, please prepare for departure...)
Bandicut blinked, grabbing a seat for support—and realized with a start that they were already moving.
*
There was no physical sensation of movement, but the edge of the docking bay streaked past in a blur, and suddenly they were in space. Bandicut turned to look back, and thought he glimpsed several flecks of animated blackness darting away from the ship, back toward the station. The last of the shadow-people? The waystation was shrinking behind them. Bandicut drew a sharp breath. The station wasn’t just receding; it was disintegrating. “My God!” he said hoarsely, causing the others to turn as well. The station was flattening and contorting like a globule of oil in water. Large pieces of it were separating from the whole. They stood, silent, watching.
After a few moments, the ruins flared into a starburst of light. When the light faded, only a cloud of debris remained.
Bandicut swallowed hard. Before he could think of anything to say, Ik turned forward again, shouted, and pointed to glowing lines of text floating in midair beneath Delilah. They read:
Sorry for the scare. That happened much faster than expected. I regret losing the waystation—but we nearly lost you and the ship, and that would have been worse. I am now aboard, but not yet fully integrated with the shipboard AI.
Estimated time to Starmaker Nebula, if you agree to the trip, is nine days via n-space.
Estimated time to Shipworld is unknown.
Estimated time to nearest waystation, if you decide not to accept the mission, is twenty-one days.
Please think carefully about what I’ve said. Godspeed to us all.
—Jeaves
“Can you all read that?” Antares asked, an instant before the text vanished.
“Hrah, yes. It was in my language.”
Bwang. “Mine also.”
Bandicut just nodded.
Antares looked thoughtful. “So Jeaves is onboard. And it sounds as if he’s giving us a choice, rather than planning to—” rasp “—shanghai us.” Antares glanced around at the clear bubble that surrounded them and shivered. “This feels worse to me than being in the star-spanner bubble. I know it’s practically the same. But I feel naked here.”
They were surrounded by the stars, with almost nothing visible enclosing them except a ghostly deck of the bridge, and a tracery of surrounding hull. Bandicut had to fight back a feeling of vertigo. “Yah,” he whispered. “Me, too.” He called out, “Delilah—can we have some walls back, please?”
With a chime, the walls reappeared around them, leaving just the front of the bridge open to the view of space ahead. “Thank you,” Bandicut sighed. He drew a long breath, then turned to the question that he assumed was on everyone’s minds. “Jeaves, can you hear us? Where are we headed right now? Remember you said, if we agree to go.”
Jeaves’s voice returned, but immediately started breaking up. “Yes, I...not forgotten...trouble with...voice capabil...”
“Jeaves? Are you all right?” Ik asked.
“Not entirely...software integrat...”
Jeaves’s voice fell silent, and Delilah chimed, (Jeaves is unavailable at this time. Do you need further assistance?)
Bandicut shook his head.
Ik turned to him. “Should we be worried?”
“Damned if I know,” Bandicut said. “Goddamn computers...probably a different operating system on the ship. How many thousands of years have these people been making computers?”
No one answered. Bandicut looked back up at the ceiling. “Delilah, what direction are we heading right now?”
(Away from the disintegrating station. No destination set yet.)
Bandicut sighed. It really was up to them, apparently. “So how about it? Do we go along with Jeaves on this mission?” He turned his hands up and looked from one to another.
Bong. “If we go, we’ll probably die.”
“Hrah. If we don’t go, we’ll probably die.”
Antares looked impatient. “Uhhl, can we forget all that for a moment, please? John Bandicut, did he not say that if we don’t go, Ed’s homeworld will be destroyed? And others, as well?”
“Yah. Many other worlds, I think, is what he said.”
“And did he not also say that if we do not go—if this thing is not stopped—” Antares paused “—a great many stars—thinking, intelligent stars—may suffer?”
“Yeah, he did.”
Antares nodded and pressed her lips together. “So-o-o...”
Li-Jared muttered and hissed, and stalked around. “Hrrm,” Ik said, following Li-Jared with his gaze, “it would not be right to turn our backs on such need.” Ik raised his chin slightly, and his deep-set eyes caught the orange glow of the walls. Li-Jared stopped his pacing for a moment and turned to stare at Ik.
“Much as I want to go home,” Bandicut said, forcing the words out with some difficulty, partly because he had not until this moment made up his own mind, “it looks to me as if we...should go by way of the Orion Nebula.” /I can’t believe I just said that./
/// I knew you would. ///
/Why didn’t you tell me, then?/
/// You needed to decide for yourself. ///
/Mmph./
Li-Jared had wheeled, scowling at Bandicut. His electric-blue eyes dimmed, as though his displeasure were sucking the life out of them. “You mean by way of the Starmaker Nebula?” he grumbled.
Bandicut nodded.
Ik’s expression was firm. “I believe we must. It is the right thing to do.” He clacked his mouth shut. “I am sorry, Li-Jared.”
“Right for wh
om?” Li-Jared muttered, in a tone that sounded like gravel shifting.
“Do you deny the need?” Ik said. “If the four of us can help entire worlds—?”
“I don’t deny the need!” Li-Jared snapped. “I do deny that it should always be up to us to do these things.”
Ik gave a slow shrug. “I do not, rrm, disagree. But if the need exists, and we alone have the ability to help...” He raised his long-fingered hands.
“You and your damned long view,” Li-Jared muttered, pacing away from them. He paused at the far end of the room, then paced back, scowling down at the floor. When he drew close, he looked up, his eyes bright with electric-blue fire. “I suppose you are right, as you so wretchedly often are. I suppose we are only four lives, compared to worlds—and thus, as you say, it is the right thing to do.” He spread his arms wide. “Must I be happy about it?”
“None of us is happy about it, Li-Jared,” Ik said. “But we will do what we must. Yes?”
Li-Jared drew a weary breath and said, “Yes.”
A text message appeared in the air:
Thank you. One more thing: the nebula is host to more life than you might think. We should not be afraid to ask for help, if the opportunity arises.
A moment later, Delilah reappeared, floating through a wall and ringing again like a hoop. (Would you like to look around the ship now?)
“Please,” murmured Antares. “It is time we saw where we’re going to be living—”
“Or dying,” Li-Jared grumbled, turning with a flick of his hands to follow the halo.
Chapter 6
Triton Station
Julie Stone sat in her room in the Triton mining station, staring at a holo of Lake Tahoe, on Earth. She had never been to Lake Tahoe, but the image of the cool still waters, the snow-capped mountains, and the blue sky soothed her mind like a balm. She had been staring at it so much she was starting to feel that this was her way of drinking alone.
But she wasn’t really alone, of course, because the translator-stones were always present, rummaging silently through her mind. And their words—or the translator’s words: Something still out there trying to destroy your world...more data needed...must decide for yourself whether to trust us... kept running through her mind, like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. It had been weeks now since she had first felt the stones, and they continued to make her life a waking dream.
/Who are you, really?/ she asked them for the hundredth time. /How am I supposed to know whether to trust you? Wasn’t it others just like you who killed John?/ She couldn’t hold back the thought, and she couldn’t hold back the shame that followed. She didn’t want to demean John’s death. He died, after all, saving Earth.
As usual, from the stones there was no answer, just a vague, humming reminder to be patient.
It had started with the translator, deep in the ice cavern beneath the surface of Triton, when it chose to speak to her and her alone. Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was the translator itself speaking in her mind or its daughter-stones, embedded in her wrists. Whichever it was, they had chosen her, just as once before the translator had chosen John. Why, she didn’t know. But it was putting her in an impossible position, as the liaison to the first and only alien artifact ever found by humanity.
There is much we have to learn together...
Was she sane? Was she crazy? Alien voices in her head, from these pulsing jewels in her wrists? She’d tried to explain it to her best friend, Georgia, but somehow she never could. Same with her boss in exoarchaeology, Kim. Was it something the wrist-stones were doing to keep her from talking about their mission? Tomorrow she had a meeting with the top brass, and she needed some answers.
*You will know us through our actions,* whispered a voice, as though to reassure her.
How very biblical of you, she thought. But when do I see your actions?
Was this how John had felt, isolated and caught up in incomprehensible forces? Had he wondered, as she desperately did now, Why is this happening to me?
*
The meeting with the brass was not going well.
They wanted answers, and she had few to give.
Arrayed around the table were several of the station administrators—Cole Jackson, Lonnie Stelnik, and a couple of others; she was used to dealing with them. But added to the mix were visiting VIPs from various oversight bodies. A man named Mackler represented a UN agency; Dr. Takashi of MINEXFO, the Mining Expeditionary Force, was here; he was joined by his boss, Special Envoy Dr. Keith Lamarr.
And Julie, in the hot seat.
“Miss Stone,” said Dr. Takashi, “in the past two months, we’ve tried various methods of studying the translator, none of which have produced usable data. We have tried, twice, to move it into our labs here, with spectacularly expensive results in ruined equipment. You’re the only one it will talk to, and we need you to talk to us.”
Julie opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. She wanted to say, You don’t understand, there’s a danger to Earth! But as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she felt the familiar pressure in her head—not painful or threatening, but inhibiting. The stones did not want her to talk about that yet. She drew a slow, steady breath, and said the only thing she could think of: “I don’t know what you want from me.” She felt like an idiot saying it. /Why won’t you let me talk?/
*You will be able to soon.*
“Really, Miss Stone, I think we’ve been pretty clear about what we expect,” Dr. Lamarr said. He was a salt-and-pepper-haired man of fifty-something, and he conveyed a distinct aura of quiet power. “We expect you to initiate communication with the extraterrestrial device—”
“I have opened communication.”
“We mean communication that is not exclusive to you.”
“It’s not as if I haven’t tried,” Julie said. “I’ve asked it to speak to other people besides me. I don’t know why it won’t. But I can’t force it.” To the wrist-stones, she muttered, /Can’t you give me something to say to them?/
The stones said nothing, but seemed to be thinking.
Cole Jackson, Director of Survey Operations, spoke up in a gravelly voice. “Doesn’t seem like the thing wants to talk to much of anyone.”
“It’s talked to at least two people,” Lamarr said with careful patience. “And I want to know—what’s so special about John Bandicut and Julie Stone? Is that so unreasonable to ask?” His gaze never left Julie.
She felt her face redden. “No, it’s not,” she whispered. Then she felt the stones stirring, and she pressed her fingertips to her brow, half closing her eyes.
*Tell them this: the translator is gathering important data. When it is finished, it will have a message. And it will be requesting transport to Earth.*
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again.
“Yes, Miss Stone? Was there something you wanted to say?”
Clearing her throat, she repeated what the stones had told her. /Is that all? Nothing more?/
*Not at this time.*
Lamarr echoed her own question: “Nothing more?” She shook her head. Lamarr’s exasperation was evident. “Miss Stone, if this object—”
“The translator.”
“Forgive me. If the translator intends peaceful interaction with humanity, isn’t it just logical that it would explore communication with a variety of people, not just one, or two? That it should have picked only you, out of all the people on Triton—it just seems odd, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” she acknowledged.
“Isn’t it possible that—how shall I put this—?”
Julie flared. “What—that I’m lying to you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
Lamarr pressed his lips together, revealing no emotions.
She knew she should shut up; she’d already said too much. But...“It’s just like the way you thought John was lying, even though the evidence was right there in front o
f your faces that he stopped a comet from hitting Earth.”
“Evidence,” Lamarr said softly. “The evidence I know of says that Mr. Bandicut stole and destroyed a very expensive spacecraft.”
“Telescope cameras recorded the collision with the comet!”
“Cameras recorded a collision. But whether it was a comet, or our spacecraft, is another question altogether, isn’t it?”
Julie raised her hands and dropped them, giving up.
“All right,” Lamarr said. “I think—unless someone else has a question for Miss Stone?—we’re through with this part of the meeting. Miss Stone, you may return to your duties, but we’d like to talk to you again tomorrow...”
*
Julie made her way back to her office in exoarch, but didn’t stay long. There was no way she could do any useful work in this state. She headed to the gym and the centrifuge room. As she jogged around the revolving track at the half-gee level, she tried to clear her mind of it all. It didn’t really work. When she finished, she still had a head full of chaotic thoughts as she trooped back to her quarters for a shower. But at least she was physically tired, which made her feel that she was doing more than simply joust with the air.
As she struggled into clean clothes, there was a buzz on the comm. “What is it?” she called, pulling a sweatshirt over her head.
The system answered in the contralto voice she thought of as Hazel: “Julie Stone, you have a holo-message waiting. Origin: Earth.”
“Who from?” Please don’t let it be another screed from Thomas. Her brother still couldn’t understand why she’d gone to Triton in the first place, and regarded her statements about John Bandicut as pathetic fantasy. Maybe it was from her parents. She was due to hear from them, but they rarely used holo.
“Sender is Dakota Bandicut,” said Hazel. “Would you like to view it on your screen?”
Dakota? “No, I’ll take it in the VR room.” If John’s niece had gone to the expense of sending a holo, she wanted to view it in full virtual reality.
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