“Very well. We will approach slowly.”
“Go to set an approach course?” Zach asked.
“Go to approach,” Captain Golden said.
Zach nodded and turned back to face the array of readouts. The twisting orbital path around Hydra adjusted to pass close to the largest of the glowing dots surrounding the planet.
“About how long?” Golden said.
“Seven hours, at least until we’re in its environs.”
“We’ve set an intercept course with Vissan,” Craig said.
“Very good,” I-Naan-I said.
“However, in the meantime, I’d like to cut to the chase: why exactly do you need us in order to survive?”
“We need the warp drive.”
“Why?”
“We have to escape this star system. Around 6,500 of your years ago, we were nearly wiped out by a race called the A’araka. At some point, if we’re still here, they’re going to come back and finish us off.”
* * * *
“Why do suppose they sound like Americans?” Grace said.
“They went through all the media on Hercules and found that was the most common accent, I expect. Given that just about everything ever made was stored on there, there can’t be much they don’t know about us,” Craig said.
“It’s just a version of our moon that’s bigger than Mars,” John said, peering out at the surface of Vissan, covered in craters and mottled with various shades of gray.
“Yep,” Catherine said. “It reminds me of Mercury.”
“Okay,” Captain Golden said loudly, the smell of dinner still hanging in the air. “If they were to invite us to go down there, do we dare risk it?”
“You mean to actually go into Vissan?” Grace said.
“Yes.”
“I would,” John said.
“I think I would, too,” Grace said.
“And me,” Catherine said.
“I would,” Craig said.
“I’m thinking about it,” Chris said.
“It’s completely optional,” the Captain said. “And this is assuming their spaceport would even accommodate the Falcon. But if we do land, any diplomat who wants to stay on the ship can stay with the rest of the crew.”
“I just keep thinking about Haruka,” Sally said. “There’s no way I’m getting off this ship.”
“Let’s set a time limit,” Golden said. “If the delegation that gets off isn’t back within three hours, we go looking for them.”
* * * *
As John watched, every detail on the surface of Vissan appeared to multiply. Mountains resolved into ranges, and still more, an infinite fractal pattern. A country-sized crater rim overlapped with another, and in the intersection of the great circles were ever more. Its center was where they were headed. One pit near the center of this area turned out to be made up of many smaller ones, whose walls stood out from the gray surface in stark relief due to the low angle of Constantine’s light.
One of the myriad small pockmarks in Vissan’s pummeled surface grew in John’s vision, until he could clearly see a black circular hole in its center. Into the maw of the beast. John thought of Nandi, Joey and Jordan as the ship hovered directly over the hole. Falcon then began her descent.
* * * *
Craig headed down the steps to the floor of the cavernous chamber in which Falcon had landed. A massive door had slid shut above them after the ship descended, and air was pumped in again while the ground cooled enough for them to walk on it. At the bottom was a cluster of half meter-wide silver balls. As Craig approached, they bulged upwards at the top so that they were roughly pear-shaped. Even so, he was still three times as tall as they were. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Martelle,” the nearest one said, its top turning cyan. “I am I-Naan-I.”
“Pleased to meet you again. This time under rather better circumstances.” The aliens didn’t pick up on his anger, or if they did they ignored it.
“And this is I-Karu-I,” I-Naan-I said, turning and gesturing with a stubby arm-like protrusion to his right.
“A pleasure, I’m sure,” Craig said.
I-Karu-I glowed green at its top. “The V’Sha are at your service, Craig. We mean no harm, and are not hiding the fact that we desperately need your help.”
“So tell me more about your encounter with this other race, and how you know they’re coming back again.”
“Let us first get situated in a comfortable place to meet. Follow us.”
I-Karu-I rolled towards a metal door at the side of the chamber, somehow keeping the bulge at the top. He was followed by his minions, and then Craig, John, and the twenty-six others who had chosen to disembark. Once through the door, they amassed in a lobby with six large glass doors leading off elsewhere. The ceiling was low enough that the taller delegates had to bow their heads.
“We now have a long elevator ride,” I-Karu-I said.
Craig and John looked at each other. “That’s going to put us some distance from the ship,” Craig said. “It worries me a little.”
“Yeah, and our implants can’t transmit through that much rock,” John said. He unconsciously patted his pocket, containing a stun gun. “Are you willing to risk it?”
Craig exhaled. “Well, there’s no warp drive for them if they mess with us. So unless that’s a bullshit story designed to lure us in, I think it’s safe.”
John nodded.
All six sets of steel and glass doors slid open. “We will need to use at least three to accommodate everybody,” I-Naan-I said.
John, Craig, and some of the others entered one of the ten six meter-wide circular elevator cars. The doors closed. The glass walls allowed them to see the bare rock speeding past as they descended.
“It’s a rather long way down,” I-Naan-I said.
“How far?” John asked.
“Eight kilometers.”
John looked at Craig. “Wow!”
“A little disconcerting to be that far from the ship,” Grace said.
“Yes.”
“I hope we aren’t going to have a problem,” Catherine said. “How fast do you suppose we’re going?”
“Hard to tell. Somewhere over fifty kilometers an hour,” John said.
Eventually the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. Craig and the others followed the rolling silver forms out into a lobby where they were reunited with the others. “This way,” I-Naan-I said. He led them out of the lobby—
“Holy crap!” John said. He looked out into thin air. Near them was a slim bridge leading to a round column several hundred meters away, rising up from depths that were almost too far down to see. More bridges led from that one to other columns, a vast array of them tapering off into the distance. The far side of the cavernous space—too far away for John to reliably estimate the distance—was a pattern of horizontal lines. John walked to the railing. “What is this place?”
“This is the city of T’saana. It is currently our only settlement,” I-Karu-I said, joining him at the edge.
“How many of you live here?”
“Around 360 million.”
“Those are living and working levels in the distance, some two kilometers away. After another four kilometers is another open space like this one.”
I-Karu-I led them onto a moving walkway that crossed the thin bridge. John and many others crouched down above the dizzying void; the handrail was designed for the V’Sha’s height, and hence was at mid-calf level. He looked and saw that the space was actually a vast cylinder. They’re good at building cylinders, he thought. At the destination column, there was a short walk, and then a ride across another perilously long, slender bridge. The floor changed from being sandstone-colored rock to gray slate tiles. Their escort of twenty or so V’Sha were now all different colors at the top, presumably to the humans could differentiate them. They now headed along an important-looking corridor, whose ceiling was about half the humans’ height. The walls were adorned with tapestries. There was a giant slot along the c
eiling, double the height of the sides, that made it almost high enough for them to walk upright.
“Was this part made higher just to accommodate us?” Craig asked.
“Yes,” I-Naan-I replied. They headed through a set of gray metal doors, a small room, another pair of doors, and were then in an enormous circular amphitheater, with a high ceiling, and low desks all around each of the stepped levels leading down.
“Welcome to our parliament’s meeting space,” I-Karu-I said. “Conveniently, it’s out of session, so we can use it. You take this half—he made a sweeping gesture with a stubby arm—and we’ll take the other.”
Craig, John, Grace, and Catherine took the lowest level, looking directly across a circle of tiled floor at I-Karu-I, I-Naan-I, and two others. The rest of both races filed into the tiers above. The floors had no seats, so the humans sat cross-legged.
When all were settled, I-Karu-I began. “This is the most important meeting that has ever or will ever be conducted here; the coming together of two races, who are neighbors in the galaxy. The V’Sha have accomplished a great many technological advances, but we have not yet mastered the warp drive. As I mentioned before, we need it in order to bridge the distance from here to another star system. We must all move; every single one of us, before the A’araka come back to destroy whoever is left. We therefore request that you give us the plans to be able to build the device.”
“In order to consider your request, we must first receive an apology for holding 100 of us captive, and the death of one,” Craig said. The room was filled with a tense, electric silence.
“What do you mean by apologize?” I-Karu-I said. “We have seen such things in your media, but we don’t understand.”
“How can you not understand?”
“We just don’t. It’s outside of our experience.”
“An apology is simply the expressed sorrow for one’s actions in hurting somebody else,” Craig said. “It’s pretty simple,” he added, irritably.
“We only understand ‘hurt’ in the physical sense,” I-Karu-I said. “These feelings, of which we have seen many examples, are simply not part of who we are. Sorrow is a foreign concept to us.”
John was aghast. Couldn’t they just pretend? Fake it like he and most others had done as a child?
“We must confer among ourselves,” Craig said. He turned to John. “They just don’t have feelings at all. They can’t apologize.”
“We saw there are living, fleshy beings under those exoskeletons. Surely they have some fibers of emotion?” John said.
“Not necessarily. Think about dolphins. We can practically understand everything they say. The closest thing they have to feelings is a bond, an attachment. All other communication is purely practical.”
“These beings must also understand attachment, at least on some level,” Grace said. “Let’s assume they’re about as advanced as extra intelligent, land-based dolphins. Okay if I ask them?”
“Go ahead,” Craig said.
“Do you have a concept of an attachment, or a relationship with each other?” Grace asked.
“Inasmuch as reproduction is concerned,” I-Naan-I answered.
“Then suppose that the being you reproduced with, or even your offspring, were taken from you. Would that cause you pain or discomfort?”
There was silence for moment. “A certain… quietness comes over us for a while,” I-Naan-I said, eventually.
“That’s likely the evolutionary precursor to emotions,” Grace said, quietly yet excitedly, to John.
“Yup.”
“So, they’ll understand one day. But not yet.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Craig said. “So, I’m not going to push them on that front anymore.”
“Agreed.”
Craig turned back to the V’Sha. “Who are the A’araka, and why did they attack you?”
“We don’t know why they attacked us,” I-Karu-I said. “They never said what they wanted from us. But we do know they’re incredibly technologically advanced, more so even than you. We originally had four settlements on Vissan. All four were destroyed. Only a handful of us living deep underground were able to repopulate the race. This city, T’saana, was built over the next several thousand years. Like you, we mastered zero-point energy, and power our spaceships with it.”
“That is indeed tragic for the V’Sha,” Craig said. “But how do you know they’re coming back?”
“There was one of us, Z-Fara-Z, who lived before the attack. He had a gift that nobody since has been able to reproduce. He could see the future. He predicted the near-extinction of the V’Sha, then a long period of peace, and then another war. He wrote many things, which are treasured as the holy scriptures of the V’Sha. But, there were two cornerstones to his prophecies: war with the A’araka, and the arrival of humans.”
John felt like all the air had been knocked out of him. He looked at the others, who stared back, dumbfounded. They looked back at the delegates behind them, who were equally wide-eyed.
Then Catherine’s face lit up. “The glyphs! One was us, of course. We know the next one was Diomede. But the map showing Delta Eridani! They need us to be able to get there!”
John nodded slowly, as goose bumps broke out on his arms. “Their entire religion points to us as being their salvation!”
Craig addressed the V’Sha. “We understand that your prophet foresaw that we would be key to your escape to the star system we know as Delta Eridani. However, the decision to give you the warp drive technology is not mine alone, nor is it a given that we’ll let you have it. It’ll have to be debated at length on Earth. That will take time.”
“We understand,” I-Karu-I said. “We did not expect an immediate answer. Z-Fara-Z’s predictions span thousands of your years. A few more won’t make any difference.”
Craig nodded.
“Now, we understand that you have deciphered the glyphs you found in the abandoned city,” I-Naan-I said. “You know the meanings of three of them. There is of course, a fourth. I’d now like to hand the floor over to our highest priest, I-Mesa-I.”
Another of the V’Sha in the front row, glowed a deeper, pulsating red as he prepared to talk. “I am privileged to be able to speak with the ones the great Z-Fara-Z spoke of, concerning the meaning of the final symbol. It represents a cube. As I-Karu-I mentioned, we have also managed to tap into the zero-point field. However, we have found that it contains not just energy, but information. There is meaning in it. But, we cannot decipher it. He foresaw that humans would be the key to unlocking its secrets.”
John breathed slowly, trying to stay centered, unsure that he was hearing I-Mesa-I’s words correctly.
Craig put his hands on the floor to steady himself. “So how do we do that?”
“Deep below where you now sit is a chamber, in which we have managed to attenuate the zero-point field by slowing down the movement of its waves trillions of times. In this state, it is directly accessible to your minds, but not ours. You need no special equipment. We just need one or more of you to enter the chamber.”
“Holy Christ!” Grace uttered, once she managed to catch her breath.
“I… wasn’t prepared for this one,” Craig said.
John shook his head. “It’s been an impossibly weird journey already, ever since our first encounter with them. But this?”
“It could be a trap,” Catherine said. “They could do anything to whoever steps into the chamber.”
“They could do anything to us now,” John said. “What’s one more step into this bizarre realm?”
“Well, there’s some logic to that,” Craig said. “This religion, prophecy, whatever it is holds water so far. So, I’m inclined to think they’re telling the truth. We mastered faster-than-light travel, they worked on tapping into the field in other ways.”
“If it’s really something worthwhile, we might be able to barter it for the warp drive,” Grace said.
“Good point,” John said. “There’s no tellin
g what it can do until we go take a look for ourselves.”
“But are you prepared to surrender yourself to whatever’s in that thing?” Catherine said. “You could easily die, or come out a vegetable.”
Thoughts of Nandi and the kids flashed across John’s mind. What were her parting words? Go. Have the time of your life. But that didn’t mean ending his life. But to see and experience this thing first hand…
“I’m prepared to go inside it,” Craig said purposefully.
Catherine nodded. “Me too.”
“And me,” John blurted out. For better or worse, he had told her. But not worse choices.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The elevator ride down was the longest and strangest of John’s life. From the Parliament level, the round car descended through a glass tube. The occupants, about half of both the human and V’Sha groups, since it was filled to capacity, went from Vissan’s gravity, which was three quarters of Earth’s, to zero G as they accelerated down. After several seconds, gravity returned as their speed topped out. They flashed through the tube, with a spectacular view out into the vast cylinder of the city of T’Saana. Keeping up the same hair raising speed, they went through solid rock for several minutes. Then deceleration kicked in and they were suddenly in a vast, well-lit cavern. Various machines, some the size of small buildings, lined the floor of the space. Tubes and ducts big enough to walk through and cables as thick as a man’s leg connected them. Though it looked like a chaotic web of technology, even the uninitiated could see that it all converged on the center of the cavern.
The elevator reached the concrete floor with a slight thump, and the party made their way to the focal point of all the room’s field-shaping devices. There were about two dozen other V’Sha awaiting them. John judged by the way they pulsed with waves of red that they, like I-Mesa-I, were priests, scientists, or both.
“Wow,” Craig said, on looking at the chamber that all the machines serviced. It was a cube, about three meters on a side. The edges consisted of silver triangulated trusses, such as one might see holding up the spotlights over the stage at a concert. Most spectacularly, the inside appeared be a solid block of black and white static, like that of an old TV with no signal. Occasionally, horizontal black lines flashed across it.
The Lost Colony Series: Omnibus Edition: All Four Volumes in One Page 18