“Granted,” Carey said.
“Probe launched,” Star Fall said. “I am connecting the link Chairman Gregory has set up to the ancient ship to the computer system in the probe.”
Matt glanced back at the command crew. “Monitor all systems on Star Fall carefully. No slips. Nothing gets through.”
The command crew nodded.
“Link connected,” Star Fall said.
Silence.
Matt glanced around at all the faces intently focused on their stations. No one seemed to be in damage mode at all.
He glanced at Carey who was staring at the big screen with the image of the ancient ship on it, her expression intent.
Silence.
Matt couldn’t remember a time recently that silence had so dominated the big command center. He didn’t like it.
Finally Star Fall said, “The ancient ship’s name is Arcadia Case. It was put into shutdown mode by its chairman one million, one hundred and seven thousand years ago.”
Matt looked at Carey who looked shocked at that number and the fact that the chairman would put the ship into shutdown mode. For Seeder ships, that was like putting the computer core to sleep.
“Does Arcadia Case know where its chairman and crew went?” Carey asked.
“No,” Star Fall said. “But it has told me how Chairman Gregory and his crew can help strengthen the ship Arcadia Case, so that would be advised at the moment.”
“Does it have history of its culture?” Matt asked.
“It would possibly be able to access that,” Star Fall said.
Carey nodded. “Cut off your contact and let Chairman Gregory and his people attempt to strengthen the ship per instructions.”
“Connection terminated,” Star Fall said. “I have left the probe and told Arcadia Case the probe is there if needed for contact.”
“Thank you,” Matt said.
“Looks like we got another bit of information,” Carey said. “We now know how long ago exactly the population left.”
“I did manage to retrieve a video link of the chairman of Arcadia Case,” Star Fall said, “putting his ship into shutdown mode.”
“Play it, please,” Carey said a moment before Matt could.
A surprisingly clear image appeared on the screen of a Seeder chairman, working in the command center, clearly alone.
“Sorry to have to do this, AC,” he said out loud. “But this is the best way for you to have a chance to survive.”
Matt was stunned.
“Let’s just hope the Seeders eventually get here in time to save you,” the chairman said. “Sleep well my friend.”
At that moment the chairman tapped a screen and the image went dark.
Again silence filled the command center.
Intense, harsh silence.
Matt couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The chairman of that ancient ship had hoped Seeders would rescue his ship.
“Chairman Ray is trying to contact you,” Star Fall said.
“On the big screen,” Carey said, her voice soft.
Ray and Tacita’s faces replaced the image of the old ship.
“We know that man,” Ray said. “His name was Gulle. He helped in the construction of our ship and was a department head in our science department for over four hundred years. That was almost four plus million years before the time shown on that video.”
Matt just stared at Ray and Tacita.
How they could remember someone from millions of years earlier was anyone’s guess, but the special Seeder genes they all had to command Seeder mother ships gave them that skill. Matt knew that he now never forgot a name or a face, when before becoming a Seeder, he could barely remember anyone.
“So like we do with human cultures,” Carey said, “it seems this culture helped Seeders without anyone knowing it.”
Ray nodded.
Tacita just looked shocked.
“So what did he mean by hoping the Seeders got there in time?” Matt asked.
“Star Fall,” Ray asked, “would you access the memory of how the Seeders originally left the first galaxy. Show the path of how we were expanding and show the location of this galaxy.”
Matt was stunned. The Seeders had been on a direct path toward this area of space when suddenly they turned, eventually ending up in the Milky Way galaxy and now beyond.
“Scout ships would have reached this location in just under eight million years at our old speed,” Ray said. “So Gulle must have hoped we would eventually get to speeds we are using now and get here sooner.”
“We did,” Matt said. “Just not for the reason he thought it would be.”
Ray nodded.
“What caused the change in direction?” Carey asked. She just kept staring at the map of galaxies seeded full of humanity.
“Three galaxies ahead had new alien cultures,” Ray said. “So we turned to avoid them just under a million years ago.”
Matt nodded to that. Ray and Tacita cut the connection and the image of the ancient ship appeared again.
The more information they managed to gather, the more they didn’t know.
This entire thing would be enough to drive a person to drink.
SECTION FOUR
The Race Starts
EIGHTEEN
OVER THE LAST two days, more and more information had come in from scout ships finding more and more abandoned and dead galaxies behind shields.
Nothing had been discovered as to the nature of the shields and how they transmitted energy to the center of the sphere. Or for that matter, even what kind of energy they transmitted.
And Chairman Gregory said the repairs to the ancient ship Arcadia Case would take four or five more days at least before it would be worth the risk again of Star Fall contacting it.
The exploration of the huge space station was also proceeding slowly, without any large finds at all. In two or three more days they would access the command center of the station and start investigating what systems they could get running again. No one had much hope since the station was in much worse condition than the Arcadia Case had been.
So with things once again on a smooth daily routine, both Carey and Matt decided they wanted to run the first ten-kilometer leg of the relay for their teams, just as they did every year.
Carey loved being the starting runner for her team. That was always fun.
The race each year started and ended in the massive lounge in the very nose of Star Fall. The lounge could hold a thousand people if needed, and it was the farthest point anyone could get in the front of the ship.
If you thought of Star Fall as a large bird in glided flight, the lounge was at the tip of the beak of the bird. That was why the lounge was called The Tip.
Hundreds of comfortable tables and chairs scattered around The Tip and a good hundred couch and chair areas also filled the huge space.
The ceiling was lower in some places and walls of plants in others allowed for much of the room to have a feeling of privacy.
A massive kitchen served the room twenty-four-seven and it was a favorite spot for watching the strangeness of galaxies flashing past in trans-tunnel flight.
Carey and Matt had spent their fair share of time in the big lounge, usually just sitting with a glass of wine staring out ahead as the streaks flashed past the massive ports.
The starting line was flat in the middle of the lounge. A bunch of couches and chairs had been pushed back to form a sort of passageway through part of the lounge and out one door.
One team started every ten minutes to the cheers and support of all of those in the lounge. Each team was timed. Each runner wore a special wristband that allowed Star Fall to track the runner’s every movement. The wristband could only be taken off and transferred to another team member in a transfer point or in case of injury along the course.
While wearing the band, the runner could not teleport.
Screens all over the ship constantly displayed the location of each runner and their team
name.
The course was laid out by red lines along the floors from front to the back of the ship. The course went through large meeting rooms, down narrow hallways, up and down stairs, across major ship hangars, and along major corridors as it wound its way to the very tail of the ship and then came back by a different route, ending in The Tip once again.
Thus the name Tip-to-Tip.
Nine-thousand kilometers long. Each ten-member team had to run nine-hundred ten-kilometer legs. It was a bruising test of endurance, but also a lot of fun. No rules about walking or running. The key was to just finish. Very few teams actually worked to win the race. All just wanted to finish.
Matt’s team was called “Chairman M” and Carey’s team was called “Chairman C.” Only chairmen of ships ran on their teams, so everyone wanted to beat them. That also was part of the fun.
Carey loved the race every year. So did Matt.
They had flipped a coin and Carey had won, so her team got to start off ahead of Matt’s team.
“That’s the way it will end up as well,” she said to him, smiling.
They had both changed into their running clothes in their apartment, then jumped to The Tip. All of their team members were already there and the team ahead of Carey’s was just starting off, their lead runner going across the giant lounge and then out through a large door and into a massive hallway, all while everyone cheered.
Carey fitted the official team armband on her arm, then talked for a minute with her team, making sure they all had their times down for jumping to the transition point.
Then she kissed Matt and walked over to the starting area.
There was a timer ticking down and then a loud ding sounded and the light on her armband turned green.
She started off at a fairly good pace as the hundreds and hundreds of people in The Tip cheered.
Then the cheering calmed as she went through the door and out into the wide hallway leading from The Tip back toward the rest of the heart of the ship.
The red line on the floor moved at a steady pace under her feet as she forced herself to calm down, slow down, and breathe.
Just breathe.
Damn this was fun.
She wouldn’t be thinking that in thirty days if they were still in, but for now she just let herself enjoy the feeling of running through her ship.
NINETEEN
MATT FINISHED HIS ten-kilometer leg just a few minutes behind Carey, even though she had started ten minutes ahead of him. He just had a naturally longer stride than she did.
She knew he was close from the screens in the transition point, so she had waited for him to make the pass-off of the armband to Chairman Aicher.
Matt was smiling just as she was. It felt great after all the stress of the last week to get out and really exercise.
Between nine and ten hours from now they would run their second legs, depending on how fast or slow the rest of their team ran. The first legs were always faster. But then as the team members settled into routines and run-walk legs, the hours between having to run grew, which helped them all recover a little.
At least as long as all of the team members stayed healthy.
They jumped back to their apartment and Carey took a shower while Matt checked to see if anything more had come in from the command center. So far everything was on track.
So far.
Matt took a shower next, then they both sat and had lunch while looking over reports.
There were a couple things that had bothered Matt that he had thought about while running.
The chairman of the Arcadia Case had put the ship into shutdown mode knowing he would never come back. That means he planned on teleporting somewhere, assuming the older Seeders could teleport, which it was logical to think they could.
But teleporting to the center structure would be too far, even for Matt and Carey. And if the chairman of the Arcadia Case was a normal Seeder, he couldn’t jump very far. Not much farther than across the galaxy he was in.
So where did he go? Forget the why, maybe just figuring out where he went and how would give them some clues as to where everyone went. Clearly the shutdown had been clean and planned. Otherwise he wouldn’t have hoped that Seeders would find his ship.
A second thought was about the cultures on the planets. Were they all Seeders, or were they all human, or a combination of both? And was it possible, after a million years, to find signs that any part of the cultures stayed behind and survived for a time?
They might get some answers on that after Star Fall contacted Arcadia Case again. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to wait.
So he told Carey his two thoughts as they finished their ham sandwiches and sports drinks.
“We can send scout ships to take closer readings and looks at a few hundred planets,” Carey said. “That might get us some answers on that question.”
He nodded. He liked that idea.
“No idea how we go about answering the other question,” she said.
“Breadcrumbs,” Matt said. “Only think of them on the scale that this ancient society might use.”
Carey nodded, but Matt could tell she didn’t much like the idea. After a moment she said, “That doesn’t feel right. I think there is something we are missing about the shield and the link to the massive structure in the center. We assume it is collecting energy, right.”
Matt nodded. “An assumption based on zero facts.”
“Exactly,” Carey said, nodding. “What happens if those beams are a form of transportation system?”
Matt nodded to that. “Again, anything is possible. As far as we know they might simply be an anchoring system to hold the galaxy in a consistent location with the rest of the sphere.”
“I was thinking as I was running how the residents of almost a billion habited planets in just one galaxy alone either decided to leave, were taken away, or died.”
“All three of those options scare me in different ways,” Matt said.
Carey just nodded to that.
Matt laughed. “And we think we work on large scales.”
“Compared to this ancient society,” Carey said, “we haven’t left the crib yet.”
All Matt could do was nod to that, since he felt exactly the same.
TWENTY
OVER THE NEXT four days, Carey and Matt each ran their assigned legs of the race. Matt’s team after three days was almost thirty minutes ahead of Carey’s team and she kept reminding him that being ahead didn’t matter, it was finishing.
Carey was starting to feel the exercise in her legs, but every night she took a whirlpool bath and Matt rubbed her legs down and she did the same for Matt’s legs.
They had sent a few-hundred scout ships into three different shielded galaxies to study what bits of the old civilizations were left on the planets to see if they could come to any kind of conclusion.
So far, no luck at all.
It was clear that a large civilization, advanced, had flourished on the planets and nothing much was left of it now. The planets, being healthy, Earth-like planets, had all reclaimed most of what the ancients had built.
There were no structures underground, nothing left at all to show that part of the population had lasted much past the departure date.
And Carey had agreed with Matt’s idea to search for some sort of trail leading from any of the galaxies, but as they both had expected, no signs of that at all.
And not one bit of progress on discovering what the shields were, how they were powered, or what the beam was that connected every shielded galaxy to the core.
Finally, after four full days, the ancient ship Arcadia Case was deemed stable enough to once again connect to Star Fall.
The connection went flawlessly and Star Fall reported back that Arcadia Case was now systems stable.
Carey felt excited, more than she wanted to admit. She and Matt both stood beside their chairmen’s chair, staring at the big board as information from Arcadia Case started to flow in. They were
also streaming this information to the other Starburst ships and Chairmen Ray and Tacita.
“Star Fall,” Matt asked, “Can we break some of this out into areas of questions? First off, does Arcadia Case have the history of this culture?”
“Parts of it, yes,” Star Fall said. “This culture, in the form of the sphere and Center, which is what the massive structure at the center is called, existed for approximately eighty million years. It took another forty million to build the sphere to this size before that. Those numbers are approximate, of course, since there would be no exact starting date to this culture’s expansion.”
Carey couldn’t even wrap her mind around that. She glanced at Matt, but he seemed to be in complete shock, just staring at the information coming over the big board.
This culture, this human or Seeder culture, was ancient. Ancient didn’t even begin to describe it.
Finally Carey managed to clear her head a little, then said, “Does it know what the galaxy shields are for?”
“No,” Star Fall said. “But with some time I might be able to make extrapolations on some of the ancient technology to help in that regard.”
Carey nodded. That sounded promising.
“Does it have any idea what happened to its crew, chairman, and everyone else?” Matt asked.
“No,” Star Fall said.
“Does it know where all the people on the planets went?” Carey asked.
“No,” Star Fall said. That kind of information was not part of its standard operating systems.”
Matt glanced at Carey. Then he asked a simple question. “What is the top speed the Arcadia Case was designed to travel?”
“Trans-tunnel thirty,” Star Fall said. “It could go from here to the Center in three hours.”
“Three hours?” Carey whispered.
Matt just sat there stunned.
TWENTY-ONE
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 6