The Daedalus Incident Revised

by Michael Martinez

  “Comm channel three, I hear you five-by-five, over,” Greene responded.

  Maybe he really did know what he was doing, Shaila thought. “So what are you, former military?” she asked as they entered the airlock.

  “JSC Civilian Corps,” he replied before a deafening whoosh marked the evacuation of breathable air from the chamber. “It never really took.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look around, Lieutenant,” Greene said as they exited the airlock. Personnel transports packed with miners headed off down the access road, while a massive hauler filled with ice rolled past. “I wanted to do science, not play corporate contractor.”

  The two headed toward one of the rovers parked outside. “Everyone has bills to pay,” Shaila replied. “That’s why I’m chauffeuring you around.”

  Rover Three looked somewhat like a late 20th century pickup truck, with a flat bed in the back for loading gear. Shaila placed the ’bot in the back, securing it with cargo straps under the watchful gaze of Greene’s holocam. He even panned around as she closed the tailgate and got in up front. She resisted the very childish—and very tempting—impulse to flip him the bird. Instead, she revved the motor and took off down the access road toward the cave.

  It wasn’t a silent ride, but it wasn’t overly uncomfortable either. Greene piped up occasionally with questions about the geography they passed, as well as the mining operations. He expressed grudging admiration for Billiton Minmetals’ efficiency—they launched a couple thousand metric tons of deuterium, uranium and other valuables back to Earth each month. Shaila deferred much of the mining questions to Harry Yu’s people, but found herself warming up to the conversation when topic turned back to the unique features of the Martian landscape.

  “Hey, Lieutenant, can you do me a favor?” Greene asked.

  “Aren’t I doing you one already?” Shaila asked.

  She heard the scientist chuckle. “All right, fine. Another favor. That ridge over there, does it overlook the base?”

  Shaila already knew where this was going. “Yeah, and one of the launch pads for the ore-hauler pods. Lemme guess.”

  “Five minutes,” Greene promised. “I just need a few shots.”

  Shaila wheeled the rover off the access road and toward the ridge. “You got three.”

  She eased the rover to a stop about ten meters from the edge of the ridge. Beyond it, she could see one of the Billiton launch pads in the background, and McAuliffe itself behind that. She had to admit, it was kind of pretty in a space-geek kind of way, and Greene was impressed enough to quickly hop out of the rover and start setting up his tripod.

  As Greene began recording, Shaila pulled out her datapad and went through her e-mail again. Stephane and Yuna were at the cave and ready; she told them she’d be a few minutes late due to Greene’s detour. And Diaz forwarded a reply from Houston with regard to, well—everything.

  “Currently, we have no theories with regard to seismic anomalies, electromagnetic anomalies or Cherenkov radiation presence,” the mission liaison officer-on-duty wrote. “Working group established; will advise. Continue investigation. Allow mining operations so long as seismic anomalies are confined to current affected area.”

  It was just what Shaila expected: We don’t know. Status quo for now until you either solve it or everything really goes to hell. At which point, we’ll blame you. She made that last bit up, but she wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it panned out.

  “Lieutenant, can you come here a second?” Greene said over the comm. Shaila looked up to see him about 15 meters away, fiddling with his holocorder.

  “Sure,” she replied, climbing out of the rover. As she walk-skipped over, she saw him picking up the tripod and moving it back and forth, left and right. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got something here I’ve never seen before,” he said. “Maybe you know what it is.”

  Shaila was immediately on guard. “Mars isn’t supposed have anomalies, you know.” Houston’s archaic terminology seemed to be contagious.

  “Seems to have plenty, lately,” Greene said, pointing to the small flip-screen on the holocam. The middle of the screen was obscured by a line of fuzzy static.

  Shaila looked at him quizzically. “Bad imaging chip?”

  “No. Keep looking at it.” Greene picked up the tripod and moved it back and forth. The line moved toward the top of the screen as he moved the camera toward him, then back down as he held it further out. In the course of about eight centimeters of movement in either direction, it disappeared entirely.

  “Huh,” Shaila said, unimpressed. “Wonder what that is.”

  “Holocams don’t get static, Lieutenant,” Greene said. “Pixilated, sure, but not static.”

  He had a good point. And the stationary nature of the effect meant that it wasn’t Greene’s equipment, but something there that was affecting it. “Doc, can I see the camera?”

  Greene stepped back from the tripod and waved her toward it. She did the same thing he did, moving it back and forth. Sure enough, there was a fixed point of interference—a spot on the ground, seemingly, that created the line on the screen.

  “All right, so Mars has an anomaly every now and then,” she said.

  “No kidding. This equipment is rad-hardened, so I’m at a loss.”

  Shaila jumped back to the rover to fetch a sensor pack. It was standard issue on every rover, and while it didn’t have all the geological settings the surveying sensors had, it had a better range. Thankfully, once she got back to the camera, the little sensor didn’t disappoint.

  “I’ll be damned,” she muttered.

  “Trace electromagnetic field readings?” Greene said. Shaila turned to see him looking over her shoulder.

  “Apparently,” she said, her voice neutral. “Wonder why.”

  Greene picked up the camera again, this time moving it sideways a half-meter in each direction. “It’s a line,” he said. “A very narrow band of EM radiation.”

  Shaila’s mind flooded with possibilities: a fissure in the Martian crust with a pocket of magnetic material below? Some kind of electrostatic effect between the base’s AOO sensors? She moved the sensor around the invisible line as best she could. “It’s not extending upward. Seems to be under the ground,” she said. She turned to look at the holovision host. “You’re the physicist. What do you think?”

  Greene arched an eyebrow and grinned slightly. “Sure you don’t want to just report it to Houston and keep me out of the loop, Lieutenant?”

  “You already know about it,” she parried. “Might as well get some use out of you while you’re here.”

  Greene started walking off with the tripod, keeping an eye on the flip-screen to keep the static in view. “All I know is that highly focused EM fields like this aren’t found in nature. And most electronics radiate EM omnidirectionally, in a sphere.”

  “I know what omnidirectional means,” Shaila groused, following Greene as he walked. “Where are you going?”

  “End of the line, I suppose,” he said. “If it’s not natural, and it’s not omnidirectional, then it’s in a line for a reason. Why else would you place a perfectly straight line of EM energy in the middle of nowhere?” She could practically hear the grin in his voice. Scientists and their curiosity . . . .

  The line continued across the ridge, then down into a gully. As they picked their way down the rock face, they saw the line on the screen grow larger; Greene theorized that as they descended, they were getting closer to the line of EM that, for now, still apparently resided under the Martian surface.

  “How far under, do you think?” Shaila asked.

  “Dunno,” Greene replied. “But it would have to be pretty focused and very powerful to have this kind of effect on the holocam. Like I said, it’s rad-hardened. Either this is a whopper of an EM, or the EM is a byproduct of something else that your sensor isn’t picking up.”

  Shaila suddenly had a thought. “So why aren’t our suits affected?” Shaila
asked. “I mean, they’re rad-hard, too. But if it’s affecting the camera....”

  “Good question. I have no idea. Could just be that the EM that the camera normally gives off is somehow interacting with whatever’s underground in just the right way to produce this effect. And that sensor reading is pretty faint. You had to be right on top of it to get anything. Base sensors wouldn’t pick it up.”

  Shaila clambered down to the floor of the gully. “You know an awful lot about the equipment around here.”

  “It’s my job,” Greene said simply. “I cover space exploration. And remember, I’m former JSC. I still have friends inside. I keep up on things.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Shaila said.

  Greene turned toward her, the camera momentarily forgotten. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “What way?”

  “The colonel told me not to ask about it, but I wasn’t going to anyway.”

  Shaila’s heart started beating faster. He must have misunderstood her snark for something else. “Ask about what?” she finally said.

  “Atlantis.”

  The word hung between them for several seconds. “Good,” she finally said. She saw compassion on his face, and was surprised at how much the look pissed her off.

  Greene turned back to his camera and started walking again, the line of static still in view. “That whole thing will come out eventually, but it won’t come from me,” he said nonchalantly.

  Shaila stood stock still for a few more seconds, fists clenched, before she finally started walking after him.

  Greene went on calmly. “What sucks is that the JSC does so few exploratory missions to begin with. And when one goes south, they cover it up, and send the survivors out to pasture. Or, in your case, to Mars.

  “I don’t have all the details, but I don’t want them. It would jeopardize what little real science JSC still does. And it wouldn’t be fair to those who didn’t make it back. Or to you, for that matter.” He paused to see if Shaila would respond; she didn’t. “Anyway, you don’t have anything to worry about from me, Lieutenant.”

  They walked on in silence for several more minutes, climbing up the other side of the gully and onto a plateau. One of the base’s AOO sensor poles was about three hundred meters ahead, and they were on course to walk right into it.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of interference from the equipment up there,” Greene said.

  Shaila struggled to bring her mind back to the task at hand. “Still doesn’t explain the narrow band,” she said. “I assume that equipment would give off EM omnidirectionally, just like anything else.”

  “True,” Greene said. “But anything’s possible. It’s the start of an explanation.”

  Sure enough, the line led right to the pole. Greene started walking faster, and Shaila had to skip-jump to keep up with his long strides.

  When he stopped suddenly, about four meters from the pole, she nearly ran into him. “What is it?” she asked, annoyed.

  “I lost it.”

  Shaila looked at the flip-screen, which showed a perfectly pristine view of the tower ahead. “Where did you lose it?”

  “Don’t know. Let’s backtrack.”

  They turned and retraced their steps, easy enough in the red dirt despite a light Martian breeze. It only took about four strides before the line reappeared.

  “There we go,” he said. “And it didn’t just stop. It turned.”

  “Turned?”

  “Turned. Roughly 36 degrees to the left, away from the base. Looks like it’s heading off that way.”

  Shaila pulled a map of the area from her datapad, half-expecting the line to lead directly to the mystery cave. Instead, it headed off . . . nowhere. If the line had previously slid neatly between the base and the mining ops, this new line basically headed off into Mars’ no-man’s land. “There’s nothing out that way,” Shaila said. “No mining ops, no nothing.”

  “Does it intersect with another tower?” Greene asked.

  “No, don’t think so. And besides, the line turned before we reached the tower.” She turned to look back at where they had come from. “Let me see that camera.”

  Greene surrendered the holovid to Shaila, who went back to the point where the line diverged. “Look at that,” she said, pointing to the flip-screen.

  Right where the line angled off, a small ball of static appeared, slightly wider than the lines itself. As Greene took the camera back, Shaila used the sensor pack again. “And it’s omnidirectional, too,” she said.

  Greene looked down at the readings. “There’s something under there.”

  Shaila frowned. “So it would seem.” She flipped channels on the comm. “Jain to McAuliffe, over.”

  “McAuliffe to Jain, go ahead,” said Finelli, who had the day’s ops watch.

  Her first instinct was to have the base tell Stephane and Yuna that they’d be delayed again, and to ask to speak with Diaz. After all, this was a random encounter with an EM field, and the cave also carried an unusual EM signature. But after a moment, Shaila knew that getting the ’bot to the cave and figuring out what was going on down there was still her biggest priority.

  “Finelli, have Adams suit up and head out to these coordinates with a shovel,” Shaila finally said. “There’s something buried under the terrain here. I want him to dig it up and bring it back under quarantine. Over.”

  “Roger that,” Finelli said. “How will he know where to dig?”

  Shaila took out her roll of duct tape and made a quick X with two strips. She pinned it to the ground with the pen she kept in her carry-all, then placed rocks on each of the four ends. “Tell him X marks the spot. Jain out.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Greene said, his voice rising. “I want to know what this is.”

  Shaila walked off toward the rover again. “Sorry, Doctor. Duty calls. Chances are, whatever’s going on in and around that cave is going to take priority.”

  “Lieutenant, I shouldn’t have to remind you that I’ve been afforded total access here,” Greene protested, hurrying off after her.

  Shaila turned back to him. “Look, doc. This is interesting, OK? Not part of our usual day-to-day. But there’s a cave out there that’s doing some really crazy shit, and I need to figure that out.” She started to stalk off again, but turned back. “And I’m going to need to borrow that camera.”

  Greene considered her skeptically for a moment before handing over the camera. “OK, but I play ball, and this EM field we’ve found turns out to be something interesting, I want in. And I’ll want it on the show.”

  It was probably the best deal she was going to get. “Fine, pending the colonel’s approval. Until then, don’t distract my people with this. It’s probably nothing, and we have far more serious problems to deal with. Clear?”

  “Clear. Can I have my holotape, at least?”

  “Hell, no.” Shaila gave him a flash of a wicked smile and headed back toward the rover again, tripod in hand and a frustrated holovision personality in tow.

  CHAPTER 9

  March 15, 1779

  Father,

  We are back in the Void, and the questions that have disturbed me of late have lessened, though as we approach Earth, I am certain they shall arise once more. At the moment, however, we are preparing splash down again upon our native seas. Coming home has always brought cheer to a sailor’s heart, and so it is aboard Daedalus, though I fear we may not be able to tarry long should the Admiralty order us to continue our investigations.

  As our days away from Venus amass and the sun wanes in apparent size, I find there is much to be said for the resumption of normal duty in the wake of hard action, for it shields the mind from worry and distress. Plus, the company of our fine officers has been a solace and boon, and I’ve actually found our Dr. Finch to be more congenial than I had first thought him to be . . .

  With Miss Baker locked under guard in the forward area of the ship that used to be the alchemical laboratory, Andrew Finch had little choice b
ut to embrace the rough but earnest bonhomie of the wardroom, where he was forced to take up residence during the young woman’s stay aboard Daedalus.

  This was problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the tremors and sweats he occasionally and randomly endured as his vices seeped from his body. Being an alchemist, and an uncommonly good one at that, the loss of his hookah was not the loss of all opportunity. However, the loss of his privacy meant there was rarely, if ever, occasion for the kind of self-medication that, at the very least, would soothe his nerves and ease his transition into a more healthy life. Not that he had actually opted for the latter, but somewhere between Venus and Earth, he found himself actually curious as to what such a life might be like, given the lack of alternatives.

  And even in his darkest moments, sleeping in an ill-fitting hammock with the snores of Lt. Plumb echoing in the tiny wardroom, Finch was forced to admit there was something refreshing about the camaraderie he experienced in residence there. Yes, manners were coarse. Fulton and Plumb, in particular, held little in the way of formalities or suavity, while Weatherby’s bookish earnestness was, at turns, off-putting or humorous. But the officers simply accepted Finch’s presence as a matter of course, as if bringing Finch into the fold and making of him a friend and comrade was the most natural thing to do.

  Having blackballed numerous candidates from his private clubs for simply being of poor lineage, this instant sense of belonging discomfited Finch to no end. What would his friends in London say about him drinking with these men, who were no better than the sons of farmers or shopkeepers? And what would he say back, now that he had sampled and indeed enjoyed their company?

  It was all too much to contemplate, especially while he spent his days poring over books in vain attempts to divine the goals and needs of the fiend Cagliostro. Finch knew that he was probably one of the foremost alchemists in England, certainly the best currently working for the Royal Navy, but Cagliostro’s place in the pantheon of great alchemists was assured, by sheer knowledge if not morality.

  So when he was not buried in his books and charts and coming up against frustration after frustration, Finch gladly endured the companionship of the wardroom. On this particular evening, as he had heard regularly for the past several Saturday nights, Lt. Plumb raised his glass and said, “To wives and sweethearts.” And in response, all in the wardroom—including the midshipmen, who all too easily fell into their cups—responded, “Wives and sweethearts.” And a moment later: “May they never meet!”