Treasure of the Silver Star

by Michael Angel

  She indicated the tangle of cables which penetrated the whitish surface in the engine’s flank. Draped over the bulk of the alien machine were components of human manufacture, each sprouting cables and contacts fusing it to the engine’s body. If anything, it served to heighten the thing’s alien looks.

  A ring of computer consoles surrounded the engine. Thanks to Ferra’s repair, each one now glowed with multicolored lights. Tally stepped over to the main control panel, eyes roving over the unfamiliar controls. A quick exhalation as she puffed the layer of dust from the console. Ferra joined her as the screen finally powered on. Without another word, the two women began scrolling through the system’s data banks.

  “This is curious,” Drake observed. “It certainly looks like they had one heck of a fight here.”

  “But there’s no bodies,” Sebastiàn finished the thought. “How about that, doc? Maybe the local bacteria here are able to break down our cell tissue? So that they decayed away over a hundred years ago?”

  “I doubt that,” Kincaid said. “From what I’ve seen, the only thing the local life forms have in common with us is that they breathe oxygen.”

  “Any guesses as to what happened here?” asked Drake.

  “Whichever side won, I’d say it was a Pyrrhic victory. The scientists here managed to wipe out all traces of the project. I doubt that anyone had a spacecraft or communications gear to contact a rescue party. If someone was stranded here, they couldn’t have survived for more than a few weeks. Nothing that I’ve studied here is edible for humans.”

  “Couldn’t they have transported themselves out with the engine?” asked Sebastiàn.

  “It’s not a two-way street,” Drake reminded him. “This is a temporal anode. You can bring stuff here, but you can’t move it away.”

  “Besides,” Tally called from the console, “according to their records, they still couldn’t figure out how to move living organic matter through the machine. Something to do with the bioelectric field that surrounds all living creatures.”

  “You’ve got their archives on line already?”

  “More than we had,” Ferra acknowledged. “But still less than half. Dust and moisture have ruined a lot of the old storage links. I’ll try to fix what I can, but it’ll take a while.”

  “Here’s something,” Tally said, as she pulled up a coordinate map on the screen, “It’s a slipstream chart of the area. There’s a narrow entry and exit window below the high peaks at coordinates seven dash eight, mark six.”

  Excitedly, Drake relayed the information to the Ranger. In a few short minutes, he heard the familiar rumble of the patrol ship’s engine overhead. Then a soft thump in the earth as she came to rest above. Tally continued to search Project Sargasso’s archives, while Ferra lugged over length after length of power cabling.

  “I’ve got it,” Tally said, with a grin of satisfaction. “I’ve found the Sargasso engine startup program.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Ferra puffed. “But while you were playing with the computer, you might have noticed that you’ve got no power connected to the space temporal array,” She indicated the rusted hulk of a cold fusion chamber, its controls and toroid-shaped structures punctured by blast gun fire. “However, if you want to start her up, I’ve found enough cabling to splice us into the Ranger’s power system. Give it a couple minutes, and we can charge the Sargasso engine’s core battery. With the Captain’s permission, of course.”

  Drake considered. Perhaps Tally had corrupted him, but he felt his natural curiosity override his caution. “Go to it. While we’re at it, let’s bring a plate of that metal to the Ranger. I want to see if we can transport something right on board.”

  Ferra managed to pry up one of the metal sheets lining what Drake thought of as the transport platform. With a little help from the rest of Drake’s crew, the power cabling was run up the entrance ladder and down the hill to a nearby clearing where the Ranger lay under the cover of an overhanging grove of trees. The slab of metal was placed in the ship’s small cargo area, with a miniature camera set up to watch any change in the slab’s status. In a few minutes, the temporal engine’s battery was charged and ready to go.

  “Want to give it a try?” asked Ferra.

  “Ready if you are.”

  Tally flipped the switches on her side of the panel, feeding power down the ancient wires and into the machine. Ferra concentrated on feeding the computer the proper codes, to avoid a shutdown. The space temporal engine began to hum softly, not with a mechanical sound, but with a light, fluttery pulse which almost sounded like music. Tally smiled as she listened to it.

  “I believe we’re in business, gentlemen,” she said. Ferra pounded her on the back with her exuberance, making Tally cough.

  “Care to test it?” asked Drake.

  “Yes, but I want to start with something small, something within a short range of time and distance. Let’s use the pile of climbing rope I left outside by the entry ladder. That can’t be more than a couple hundred meters away.”

  “That sounds good. Sebastiàn, head over to where we entered the tunnels. I want you to report what you see.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Lieutenant jogged off.

  Tally tapped a few more keys. “According to the records, you program in a set of coordinates on a global grid system. Then, you set the appropriate time of removal, with a different set of the two for deposit.”

  “And the coordinates have to be somewhere within two hundred meters of one of the anodes,” Ferra concluded. “Let’s bring that rope into the Ranger’s cargo bay. The camera in there should let us see the results for ourselves.”

  “Okay, that does it.” Tally finished her programming with a flourish. “Our console is hooked into the Ranger’s computer. I’ve set the transport time for one minute ago. Arrival time will be ten seconds after departure, in the Ranger’s cargo bay.”

  “Sounds good, you’ve got power.”

  Sebastiàn called in using his hand-held comm unit. “I’m in position now.”

  “Then cross your fingers,” Tally said, as she flipped the switch. A low, musical hum emanated from the Sargasso engine.

  A gasp from Sebastiàn. “The coil of rope just vanished.”

  Tally nodded. “And it should appear in the center of our little transport platform...right about now.”

  They saw a shimmer appear on the camera feed. The coil of rope materialized on the Ranger’s deck a few inches to the side of the metal slab. The image stayed wavery, taking several seconds to coalesce into full solidity. On the camera, one of Drake’s crew let out a low whistle, then walked out to pick it up.

  “It’s at room temperature,” the man said. “There’s nothing to distinguish this from any other piece of rope.”

  “Looks like the math was just a little off,” Ferra noted critically, “But not bad for a first test. Let’s try something a little further away in time and space.”

  “Right,” said Tally, calling up a new set of documents. “The program uses a planetary mapping grid, then an interstellar one.” She frowned as she skimmed through a dozen screens, each dotted with tiny red and blue marks. “It looks like they’ve scanned in surface maps for most of the inhabited worlds.”

  “You should be able to find the exact city block where Tallyho, Inc. is located,” Drake noted. “Why not try bringing in something from there and have it appear on the platform in this chamber?”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” She located the appropriate grid points on the stellar and planetary map, then laboriously entered them in. The musical hum from the machine increased as it was activated this time.

  A flicker came from the expanse of ivory slabs. Drake watched as a piece of wooden furniture slowly flickered into existence.

  “It’s my office desk,” Tally said, her voice filled with wonder. “Brought it in from four o’ clock yesterday. She’s a real antique, I bought her for...”

  Tally’s voice ran down as the furniture continued to solidify, and s
he could see it more clearly. The desk’s surface had been damaged, and each of the drawers were staved in. Papers had been strewn carelessly over the top of the desk, and it appeared that some of them had been burned.

  “And I thought I kept a messy house,” murmured Kincaid.

  “Someone’s ransacked my files,” Tally gritted. “It had to have been the Security Council’s people, before they sent Ruger after us. No one else could bypass my security. They wanted to see how much I had put into my official reports. See how much I knew about that base in the Kuiper Belt.”

  “Want to bring it all the way through?”

  “No need. I’m letting it go back.”

  A push of a button, and the humming stopped. The desk faded away like a mirage.

  Ferra spoke up again. “Well, that proved a few things. It works. What’s more, it can do everything it’s supposed to do. The precision is limited only by how well you plot your coordinates. If it can reach Terra from here, then I doubt it has an effective range. Not bad for a machine that can run off a single core battery.”

  “Not bad? I’d say it’s pretty damn good at blowing holes in every physics lesson I ever learned,” Kincaid interjected as he began to pace. “What about the law that says matter can’t be created or destroyed?”

  “What about it?”

  “I mean, when you move something from the past and into its future our present, what happens to it in the interim? When you moved that rope, what happened to it in the ten seconds between you removing it and putting it in the Ranger’s hold?”

  “Maybe it only ceases to exist in this universe. So long as it remains in some subjective space time continuum, it might always be ‘in existence’ somewhere. That takes care of your problem.”

  “It doesn’t even begin to answer the problem,” Kincaid insisted. “What about changing history? If you even pull one thing out of the past, couldn’t you set up a chain of events leading to a different future?”

  “We don’t know if there have been any disruptions, any problems with paradox,” Drake pointed out. “But I’m not the archeologist of the team. What’s your take on this, Tally?”

  He got no reply. Tally’s fingers flew over the console’s controls, calling up maps of Terra and feeding them into the computer like a woman possessed.

  “Tally, what are you doing?”

  “Plotting in historical archeological sites, ones that were known to have treasure,” she breathed. “You know why the Egyptian pyramid tombs were never found with any treasure inside? Because they were plundered. Now, for the first time, I can beat the plunderers to the punch.”

  “We don’t know enough about what this machine can do,” Drake said, annoyed. “Haven’t you been listening to us? If you bring something through, something important, you could end up changing history.”

  “We don’t know that for a fact, do we, Captain?”

  “Look, the one thing we do know is that this machine is too powerful to leave intact. I was as curious as the next person, but we need to get rid of it. Now.”

  Tally’s eyes had gone fever-bright.

  To Drake’s amazement, her hand went to her holster. “There’s only one thing I do know. This machine is the ticket to fame and fortune, and I’m going to get my share.”

  * * *

  Commander Ruger looked curiously at the message projected from the orbiting satellite.

  “A backup computer bank,” he mused, tapping his fingers together speculatively. He spoke to his communications officer. “Send the password list taken from the asteroid base.”

  The image shifted, displaying the words ACCESS GRANTED. There was a jumble of data, superimposed numbers and letters, which filled the screen from top to bottom. Ruger frowned, stepped to the science console.

  “That has to be Terran military code,” he said, “Run it through our decrypter and print me a copy.” The cruiser’s computer banks processed the data in a few seconds, and the results were slipped into Ruger’s hand, still warm from the printer. He sat in his captain’s chair, thinking.

  It was a list of the different temporal anode locations. The platforms had been moved by high security shuttles or warships to remote locations scattered throughout Terran space for testing. His eye rested on the coordinates given for the Kuiper Belt. It was accurate. The first series of tests had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the temporal engine could work, with no effective limit to its range or accuracy.

  His eye scanned the page and found what he was looking for: the encoded location of the original temporal anode, the location of the space temporal engine on the planet below. There was a set of coordinates to bring in a ship through a killer slipstream that flowed over the site. And most importantly, he now had the codes to operate the engine itself.

  “I want a visual scan of the planet surface,” ordered Ruger. He read off the coordinates, tucked the paper away, and then watched as the scene cleared. “Go to full magnification.”

  Implacable zeroed in on the marks of a recent geologic disturbance, the sudden movement of soil at the end of a narrow canyon. His pulse jumped as the tiny shape of the Ranger came into view. The view panned over several round holes nearby, some capped with a dark glass. He saw movement down one of the open ones.

  “I want an assault squad assembled on board our cruiser’s dropship,” Ruger ordered. He tapped the screen with silent satisfaction. “I think we’ll crash the party down there.”

  A few minutes later, the cruiser’s landing bay opened, disgorging a small, heavily-armed and armored shuttle transport. It pulsed with a brief flare of chemical jets, spread its atmospheric wings, and descended towards the ground below like a deadly metallic seed pod.

  * * *

  “Tally, don’t be ridiculous,” Drake argued. “You’re not seriously going to pull your blaster on us.”

  Tally struggled with her feelings, torn by indecision. Slowly, almost against her will, she moved her hand away from her weapon. Her face fell.

  “No, I can’t. Not on you, Benjamin. But I don’t think I’ll have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’m betting that you’re going to think of your future as well as that of others.” Tally raised her voice, appealing to the entire group. “Even after we blow this machine up, we’re still going to be outlaws. Every last one of us.”

  She allowed that truth to sink in. They were listening to her.

  “This is our chance. We can either remain on the run and stuck in poverty, or we can be exiled and live like kings. All I’m asking is that you let me bring back a few things that will make all our trouble worth it.”

  Drake could sense both of his veteran officers considering it. They had lived a hard-scrabble life for years, dictated by the pittance of a budget the government allocated to the least fortunate branch of the service. They had scrimped and sacrificed to keep the unit together, but it was more out of necessity than choice. Ferra wavered, seemed ready to speak. Kincaid cleared his throat.

  “She may have a point, Captain,” he said timidly.

  “Then I have another one,” Drake declared. “This is a machine of war, not of salvage.”

  “Terra might have been planning to use it in the war, but how do we know what it was really designed for?” Tally countered.

  “Come off it!” Drake snapped. “Do you really think that the people who worked on this machine loaded in all the planetary maps to find treasure? I saw the pre-selected points on those screens. Those are military targets, power stations, and entire cities.” Drake’s voice rose, ringing with conviction and certainty. “You’ve seen the results already. Every place we’ve visited that was involved with Project Sargasso shows signs of violence and death. This machine runs on blood and treachery. Our Fleet Commander has already killed five of my people, simply to get hold of it. We don’t understand this technology, and I won’t be able to sleep until I know that someone like Ruger can’t get his hands on it.

  “But Benjamin—”r />
  “You say you want to bring back a few artifacts? How many do you want? How much is enough? How do we know that what we bring back doesn’t destroy the timeline that we exist in?” Drake shook his head. “Sorry, Tally. There’s too much risk involved. I can’t take you up on that offer.”

  “How dare you talk to me about risk!” Tally cried. “Say you’re right. Then my best friend died for this! Just because you refuse to take a chance—”

  Tally might have said more, but her voice was drowned out by the approaching roar of an engine. The roof shuddered as a shuttle skimmed over the site.

  “Captain!” Sebastiàn voice came through the comm link again, this time charged with alarm. “We’ve got a combat shuttle incoming, and she’s got Home Guard markings on her!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Drake toggled his comm to the Ranger’s frequency. “Ensign Campbell, get the ship airborne and as far away from here as possible!”

  The link crackled with static. “Sir, I can’t just leave—”

  “If you don’t move, they’ll shoot you down!” Drake shouted. “Get out of here!”

  Sebastiàn hung on to the outer lip of the entrance shaft. He felt the hot wind of the shuttle’s exhaust on his face and then watched as the Ranger’s engines turned over with a gusty roar.

  “Come on, get airborne!” he urged.

  The patrol ship lifted off seconds before the shuttle came around to strafe the clearing. Sebastiàn ducked his head as the shuttle’s twin gun mounts beat out a staccato rhythm of death, churning up the soil overhead and blotting out the sun. He looked up again as the transport came down in the space that the Ranger had just vacated. Then the shuttle’s boarding ramp came ratcheting down with a harsh clang. The comm sounded loud in his ear.

  “Sebastiàn, what’s going on?”

  “The Ranger’s safely away, sir,” he said as he pulled out his blast gun. “They strafed the clearing, but they didn’t follow her.”

  “She’s not what they want.”

  “They’re putting troops down,” he added, as he rested his elbows on the top rung. “I’ll buy us a little time.”