Morgan sat up very slowly. A wave of nausea hit her, followed by dizziness. Why was there no nurse call button? Without one she’d just have to manage on her own. She was sitting, propped up on her extended arms. Still some dizziness and nausea, but it lessened the longer she sat. The shade was, thankfully, drawn over the only window. Daylight would have made the headache so much worse. A drink of water wouldn’t have been bad though, not that there was any in the room. An aspirin wouldn’t have gone amiss, either.
Morgan exhaled slowly and made ready to try to stand. She threw back the covers to find she was wearing blue sweatpants made of the same prickly material as everything else. Her bare feet touched the carpet and she recoiled. It was like standing on wire wool. The IDSA wouldn’t have put her in a hospital that was in a third world country, surely? What if the Right-to-Work Wars had ravaged the country so bad that that was all that was left? Oh God, here came the nausea again. Okay, Morgan, stand. She walked on the balls of her feet to avoid the scratchy carpet and made it to the door. But instead of a nurses’ station, she saw a large dining room. There were four long tables, complete with dark wood chairs. The floor, thankfully, was varnished wood instead of the rough carpeting. She walked a few paces out into the large space, noting the doors all around the walls, just like her own.
“Morgan!” Elaine said, running joyfully over to hug her. Morgan returned the embrace while trying to keep the contents of her stomach down.
“Where are we?” Morgan asked. “And why do I have this pounding headache?”
“Well…” Elaine said, uncertainly, “come with me.” She led Morgan by the hand quickly across the dining room, through a set of glass double doors, across a small lobby, and out another set of identical doors.
“Jesus Christ!” was all Morgan could manage.
Below them was a small concrete forecourt in front of the building, then trees that curved gently upward as they stretched back along a rise. Beyond the forest was a wheat field, and then a subdivision consisting of single family homes. Morgan kept raising her gaze to take in each new area as the land curved up into the sky, until she had to tilt her head up to follow the path of this strange new world.
As Morgan craned her head further back and up, there was a city, or at least a small chunk of one, complete with high rise buildings. A river wound through it to feed into a small lake. After that lay another forest, bordering landscaped parkland. She had to look almost straight up to see it. She guessed the straight-line distance to that area to be just over a kilometer. “What the fuck is this place?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, darlin’. The aliens must have brought us here.”
“It’s a ringworld. We must be being held down by centrifugal force, rather than gravity. It’s a kind of environment we predicted centuries ago.”
“That’s my guess too,” came the familiar, deep voice of a large man from behind her.
“Chris!” Morgan turned and hugged him tightly, headache and nausea forgotten for the moment.
“Isn’t this… wonderful?” he asked.
“I don’t know I’d say ‘wonderful.’ I’m still stuck on shock. I thought I was on Earth!”
“So did we,” Elaine said ruefully. “My guess is this is supposed to be Earth, or as close to it as they could get. The gravity’s the same, but the rest…”
Morgan turned back to the sweep of the ringworld wheel, looking at a miniature mountain range, another city, and something that looked like a jungle, until her view was cut off by the top of the building she had woken up in. The vast circles that made up the ends of the cylinders were colored like sandstone. The space between them was about a quarter of their diameter.
“So what do you suppose this building is?” she asked, looking at the door they had exited.
“Some kind of quarters,” Chris said. “We all have our own rooms. Oh by the way, you probably need a water and some aspirin, right?”
“Hell yeah I do!”
“Follow me.” Chris led the way back into the dining room, to the opposite end from where Morgan had first entered it. There was a metal cabinet, its open doors revealing a vast array of pill bottles.
“It’s all the medicine from the ship!”
“Yup.”
“How thoughtful of them. Where’s that aspirin?”
“Right here.” Chris dispensed one and handed it to Morgan, together with a dixie cup of water. She gulped them down. “Fountain’s right there,” he said, pointing to the left of the cabinet.
“Great. I feel like hell, so hopefully this kicks in soon. How are you guys doing?”
“Shitty,” Elaine said. “Feel like I’m coming up from anesthesia.”
“I’m not quite as bad as you guys, but not exactly great either,” Chris said.
“I wonder how long we’ve been out of it?” Morgan said. A chilling thought ran down her spine. “We don’t know how much time’s passed! Hell, it could be a thousand years if they have some kind of hibernation technology! Everyone we love would be dead! Earth might even be gone!”
Elaine exhaled slowly and deliberately, and Chris merely nodded. “We’ve no way of telling.” Then his expression brightened. “Although drugs lose their potency over time, and those little pills cleared my headache right up. So I’m guessing it’s no more than a couple of years. My gut tells me it’s a lot less.”
“My gut tells me to throw up!”
Chris chuckled.
Others began to drift over, zombie-like, emerging from their rooms like dizzy caterpillars making their uncertain way out of chrysalises. “Where the hell are we?” Captain Martelle asked.
“It ain’t Kansas,” Chris said.
“Sally!” Morgan shouted. She ran over and hugged the disheveled woman.
“Oh my God am I glad to see you guys,” Sally said, withdrawing and clutching her head. Chris and Elaine headed over and the group hugged. As they parted Elaine asked “Why am I wearing someone else’s clothes? These jeans are practically falling off me and they’re way too long. And I’ve never worn a plaid shirt in my life.”
“Same here, I’ve got this weird, scratchy jogging outfit.”
“To say I have a few questions would be a gross understatement,” Martelle said.
“We all do,” Chris replied. “And you haven’t even seen outside yet.”
* * * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Present Time
“The task we have before us is nothing short of monumental,” Captain Weber said. The night had brought cooler temperatures to Serenity Bay, and the morning was still overcast. The eighteen men and women stood in a circle in Newton Square, at the head of Main Street. “Close inspection of their landing site shows that the ground was blasted by some extremely powerful engines. Nandi flew over the site with a drone earlier, and these engines were arranged in a circle some fifty to sixty meters across. No way to tell how tall their ship was, of course, but from that measurement we know it’s in the same class as Hercules and Atlas. We’re not talking about a flying city, we don’t think, but we’ve no idea where they went. It could be somewhere else in Tectonia, or it could be dozens of light years away. The reason I think we shouldn’t rule out other points on Tectonia is that if they did live here one good way to throw us off the scent would be to use a spaceship instead of leaving tracks over land, but that’s the least likely scenario.”
“If they’re in space, they can’t be that far away,” Haruka said. “Else they wouldn’t have known we were here and been able to pounce in the exact time period between Hercules arriving and having her tanks refilled enough to evacuate.”
“I was thinking along the same lines,” Weber said. “They somehow have eyes on Epsilon, even if they don’t live here, and were watching our activities over the years. They deduced that we were going to have a human presence here, not just robots, and they were ready.”
“Which means they know we’re here, too,” Michael said.
“Yes it does. There’s nothing
we can do about that. It’s a risk we take, since we, voluntarily, jumped into the same situation the CM-1 crew found themselves in. I do think we ought to stay on Atlas whenever we’re not actively searching, and we also should post a watch twenty-four seven. Atlas’ tanks are full, so we can leave with as little as a half hour’s notice.”
“Captain, what if we used our presence here to draw them out somehow?” Grace said. “Hope they come after us, and be ready for them? Assuming they don’t blast us with orbital or super-long-range weapons, we could see where they came from and maybe follow them back to their base.”
“That’s good thinking. So good in fact, that I don’t think we should venture more than an hour from the ship. We have to explore, of course, but we should balance it with the very real possibility that we might have to leave in a hurry, either to escape or to pursue. What range would that give us with the vee-tols, Jake?”
“Maybe 125 kilometers round trip, Sir.”
“I suggest we do new orbital surveys of the whole of Tectonia too,” Grace said.
“I agree, Grace. You take charge of it.”
Her face lit up. “Yes, Sir. I’ve always wanted to program a fleet of orbiters to do a large-scale survey. Nice to finally have the chance, despite the circumstances.”
Weber nodded. “What resolution can we manage?”
“Ten centimeters, stereoscopic.”
“Then we can compare that to the old 3D survey data,” Michael said excitedly. “Any differences should jump out immediately.”
“Fantastic. I’ll work with you on it once we get the data. It’ll take a few days to get enough orbiter passes to grab it all on the highest resolution. And I’ll get us visual and radar data given the cloud cover.”
In the wake of finally being able to plan and act again, there was a prolonged silence. “If they’re near enough to spot us, but not on Epsilon, I’d say they live in the Hydra system,” John said. “Possibly on Vissan, Entente, Celeste, or Hyperion.” Even as he named then, John turned them over in his mind, assessing the only other planet orbiting Constantine—a green gas giant—and the largest four of its thirty-five known satellites. It had to be one of them.
Captain Weber nodded thoughtfully at the options John had given him. “What if we took an excursion there—to Vissan?” John added.
“Really, John?” Michael said. “We can’t use up another warp restart, so that only leaves ZPR to get there, which would take weeks, and even then there’d be the vast energy and time needed to visit even the largest satellites, never mind survey them.”
Weber shot Michael a look that said, unequivocally, that’s enough. Michael caught it and clammed up, but not liking it. “No idea is off the table,” the Captain said. “We’re extremely intelligent people, so if anyone can figure this out with the resources available it’ll be us. We’re out here on our own. With no hope of real time communication with Earth, if we mess this up that’s it. There’s no next ship to rescue us. It seems like an impossible problem to solve, I know. But with investigation and hard work we can greatly narrow down the search parameters, either on this world or off it.”
There were nods of assent. “One other thing to note is radio communications: Oliver, please get the antenna array up and running, and see if you intercept and triangulate any transmissions already present. Focus on the frequencies Andromeda reported.”
“Yes, sir.”
“John, organize rover expeditions, Lizzie, you organize vee-tol flights.”
“Yes, sir,” both said at once.
“We’ll find them. I’m ex-Marines, and what held true there holds true here: we leave no man behind. Whoever or whatever our comrades’ captors are, we’ll hunt them down and take our people back.”
* * * *
John, still feeling buoyed by the Captain’s faith in his crew and their mission, surveyed the bleak terrain surrounding Serenity Bay. He’d headed halfway down Main Street, towards the sea, and fifty meters to his right, down a single-track paved road, lay a large corrugated shed. There was no power available in Serenity Bay, so when John reached the shelter he didn’t bother pressing the button that would open the huge roller door. Instead he headed to the side of the building and entered via the regular door. Inside was dark, as expected, so John turned on his flashlight and walked to the front. The shiny, hulking forms of five rovers reflected the bright light all over the gray inside of the structure. They resembled 1960s aluminum-skinned motor homes with their rounded bodies and silver exteriors. “Hello, babies,” John muttered, patting the side of one. They were the size of small motor coaches, lifted high on six small tracks. Their bodies connected to their undercarriage via long suspension arms. Equipped with solar panels for charging in the field, the rovers could support a crew of four on trips up to three weeks long.
John didn’t anticipate any trouble getting them out of the garage; the roller door could be cranked open by hand if necessary. He approached the middle one and pushed a button next to its main door. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. The door should have slid open -- the inside of the vehicle coming to life at the same time. Odd, he thought. Attempting to board the other rovers yielded the same disappointing result. Then it hit him. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Call Hans Weber.” His implant made the connection.
“What is it, John?”
“I think I know what happened here: even the rovers don’t have power, so it all fits. I think they hit the colony with an EMP burst. They wanted everything dead, and to stop the crew having any hope of escape.”
“Oh God. Their implants…”
“Would have been fried. Hang on a sec, I want to patch Nandi in.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Call Nandi.”
“Hi. What’s up?”
“I’ve got John on the line with us. We think the aliens blasted this place with an EMP as the crew was trying to escape. We need your opinion on what might happen if their implants were hit by one.”
There was a long silence. “Their executive and auditory centers would have been damaged,” Nandi said, thinking it over. “The heat induced in the circuits would’ve damaged the surrounding neurons, especially the ones they were grafted onto. Bastards,” she spat. “If I ever get a hold of one of those… whatever they are…”
“I feel the same way,” the Captain said. “But, we need to focus on what happens now. We’ve got a job to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“This is the greatest discovery ever made,” the tall, graying-haired Grace said to the assembled crew in the passenger compartment. Around them were projected the satellite photos of Tectonia; one area, at least. In center, around the flight deck, a large circle was highlighted. “It’s a wall of some sort. It’s nearly eight kilometers in diameter. It’s too geometrically perfect to be natural. It was built by some form of intelligent life.”
Everyone present sat or stood utterly transfixed. “Good God,” Michael managed. “How was it missed before?”
“It’s buried under what looks like a jungle,” Grace said. “It’s likely to be ancient.”
“But still, the topographic data was pored over on Earth…”
“John wrote some code to recognize pattern based on Gaussian distributions, looking for hints of any geometric shapes. It’s almost lost in the noise. Almost. That’s why it was missed.”
“So there is, or at least was, life on Epsilon,” Haruka mused. “It’s like finding the lost city of Atlantis.”
“Do you think that’s where the aliens took them?” Max Tucker asked.
“No idea as of now,” Grace answered. “I’ve yet to scrutinize the area inside the circle closely. We might find something. But the first step is to analyze every square meter of it by hand. We should split up that task—the area’s huge. I’ll assign each of you a portion of the map. Then once done we’ll reconvene and share what we’ve discovered. By the way, it’s 800 kilometers away, roughly southwest of here. Not reachable by vee-tol.”
Captain Weber stood up. “It’s seven at night. I don’t anticipate anyone getting a lot of sleep tonight.” There were light chuckles around the front of the compartment. “Grace’ll inbox you all with the images. Our searches of the immediate area have been fruitless so far. Hopefully this’ll be the key to cracking the case.”
* * * *
Dawn broke over Serenity Bay. The overcast gloom of the last few days had begun to break up and Constantine once again warmed the landscape. The crew’s eyelids drooped. The coffee-fueled frenzy of data analysis had been an all-night affair, and now their bodies and brains begged for sleep. Half of them sat in the front row of the upper passenger compartment, while the others stood in a rough semicircle.
The virtual glass, through which they had been watching Tectonia come to life in the early morning, went back to white and then changed to a display of the terrain they had pored over all night. “I want to thank everyone for their help,” Grace said. “Its true that visual analysis yielded nothing, but topographic analysis is another story.” Yellow lines and shapes overlaid the satellite images. “There’s a mound at the center that seems to be mostly symmetrical, except for the west side which slopes away much more gently. All around for hundreds of meters the land’s much flatter than typical terrain outside the circle. Further out it gets bumpy again, but get this: there are flat radial spokes going almost out to the circle in all directions. They were probably thoroughfares.” Grace beamed.
“This makes the Pyramids look like a strip mall,” Captain Weber said. “There are doubtless many discoveries to be made there. Future expeditions will explore it in great detail, if we come back to Epsilon. However, our opinion is that it’s a ruin, and not the location of our compatriots. Not to mention it would be extremely difficult to reach without the rovers.”
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