by Andrew Lane
Diameter at widest point: 78 metres
Information to be written down or recorded somewhere, which would eventually make it back to Earth to join increasing yottabytes of information that humanity had collected about aliens. One day, it might all start to make sense. Or not.
It would have been Tate, Nikki or Henk who had instigated the laser scan of the Gliese SUT. They were all in the command container, accessing their AIs by waving their arms around like swimmers paddling in a virtual pool of information. He could hear their voices in the background. There appeared to be no attempt by the Gliese to communicate by radio or targeted laser, but then, what would they say that anyone could understand? The process was well understood – they arrived, they docked, they fixed, they left with their fee. Nothing more to be said.
It struck Marc suddenly that the Gliese had made pretty good time. Did they have repair stations orbiting numerous planets all across this area of space, or did Gliese SUTs just cruise up and down the space-ways waiting for a callout? Or did they just have significantly faster SUTs than humans did?
He’d been wondering how the two fuzzy SUT cocoons were going to manage to connect. It wasn’t like their internal structures could actually get near one another. In the end it was a surprisingly simple process. A circle of foam about halfway down the Gliese SUT started to glow red, then yellow, and then white. Suddenly it went black, and moments later a long cylinder of foam that looked as if it had been melted all the way along started to slide out of what was obviously now a circular channel that had been burned through from the inside. It was faintly suggestive and Marc couldn’t help laughing.
“Control yourself,” Kara said behind him. “This is a vitally important and delicate process of astro-engineering.” She didn’t sound convinced.
The plug of foam had completely emerged by now, leaving behind what was obviously a tunnel that led to the Gliese airlock. The plug kept on going, floating away into empty realspace: yet one more piece of space junk that was littering the universe. Listening to the voices of the SUT’s staff in the control container, Marc realised the RIL-FIJ-DOQ was going through the same process. Indeed, he could hear a hissing sound from one of the nearby containers as their own plasma cutters fired, melting through their SUT’s protective covering.
“I guess we should be grateful that whatever in netherspace attacks things from realspace doesn’t have plasma technology,” he said.
“If there was anything sentient attacking us,” Kara said. “I’m still not convinced. It could easily be the netherspace equivalent of digestive juices. Or some kind of quantum energy. SUT personnel across the years have managed to personalise it into some kind of living threat.”
“Despite what we experienced a few hours ago?”
“Maybe we didn’t experience anything. Maybe we just thought we did. Maybe we were tripping on the psychic fumes coming off netherspace’s digestion.” She didn’t sound serious but who the hell knew? Netherspace might well be hungry for life.
Marc shook his head, and kept his thoughts to himself. As far as he was concerned there was something out there, and that was the end of it.
From somewhere inside the RIL-FIJ-DOQ he heard a distinct thump, and the hissing noise stopped. A few moments later a similar cylinder to the one that had floated away from the Gliese SUT came into view. The edges of the foam were still glowing with the heat from the plasma cutter. The plug was rotating slowly about its centre of gravity, pinwheeling its way out into the universe.
Now that both SUTs had holes running through their protective shells, the Gliese SUT moved in a stately manner closer to the RIL-FIJ-DOQ. When it stopped, it was so close that it filled the screen: a side-to-side and top-to-bottom view of gouged and scrubbed grey foam, and a curved section of the hole that the Gliese had burned through. Through the hole Marc could see what looked like a satingreen wall of metal: the actual SUT itself.
He felt unaccountably nervous. He’d met aliens before – he’d exchanged his artworks with them, and been at parties where they had been present, although nobody was entirely sure what they thought they were doing there – but this was different. The aliens were on their own territory here, and it was humanity that was the visitor. Would they behave differently, he wondered? Would they be officious and brutal, or would they just wander about the way they did on Earth?
His thoughts were interrupted when the satin-green wall suddenly puckered and protruded out from the exterior of the alien SUT, forming a tentacular tube that nearly filled the hole. The blind end of the tube seemed to be pulling open, like a mouth. Just before it vanished off the edge of the screen, Marc thought he saw little claws or teeth forming all the way around it. Moments later there was a clang and a vibration that ran through the RIL-FIJ-DOQ as the tube clamped onto its airlock. Marc left the canteen to watch the fun.
He found the SUT’s full complement waiting in a semi-circle around the airlock. Even Leeman-Smith was there, humming happily to himself and smiling at everyone. Marc wondered what drug had been used on him.
Pressure equalised with a slow hiss, and the airlock opened outwards. A smell like rotting leaves wafted in.
“You don’t seem excited,” Marc whispered to Kara.
“Seen one Gliese, seen ’em all,” she whispered back.
A Gliese, like an untidy hillock of damp leather, appeared in the airlock and stopped. For a moment, nobody moved, and then the semi-circle of humans split apart to form – what? An honour guard?
Tate stepped forward, marking himself out as humanity’s representative. He turned and headed out of the shipping container. The Gliese followed, its little nubs of feet making a slapping sound on the hard floor.
Two more Gliese entered the RIL-FIJ-DOQ, one after the other. In between them was a sideslip-field generator, twin to the defunct one in engineering: a scarred and incised globe looking like it had been dredged up from fathoms deep under an alien sea. It floated a few feet above the floor, either following the Gliese in front or being pushed by the Gliese behind. Together, the three of them formed something that had the feel of a funerary procession, leaving the airlock and following Tate and the first Gliese.
“Built-in updown-field generator,” Tate said quietly, looking over his shoulder. “We got the latest model. Wow!”
None of the Gliese, it struck Marc, had shown any interest in the interior of the SUT, or the humans. They were moving like deliverymen on the last shift of the day with a heavy domestic appliance that needed to be plugged in.
Marc wanted to laugh. A snort from Kara’s direction suggested she felt the same. It was that same rogue thought that started kids giggling uncontrollably in school. That simulity-inspired sense of togetherness did not make it easy to keep a straight face.
A fourth Gliese arrived, bringing up the rear. Rather than follow the others to the engine compartment, it stopped in the airlock and seemed to be looking around, sizing them up. Marc thought that it seemed to spend longer “looking” at Tse than the others, but with Gliese it was almost impossible to tell. After a few moments it wandered into the centre of the compartment and then headed for the exit at the other end.
“I think it wants to look around,” Henk said. “They say it’s a fairly regular occurrence. I’ll go with it, make sure it doesn’t try to interfere with anything.”
“What will you do if it does?” Kara asked.
Henk shrugged. “Reason with it? Pound it with an iron bar? I’ll improvise.”
As Henk followed the investigating Gliese, Marc moved to follow the other three and the new drive, but Tse held up a hand. “I think we should stay here,” he said.
“Why? I wanted to see the installation.”
“You hire a pre-cog, you get predictions. Somewhere across the landscape of the future there are a couple of landmarks. They’re difficult to make out, but I think one of them involves the Gliese spending a long time trying to fit the new device, while in another we have to be recovered back to Earth in their SUT, which
might be fun but doesn’t help us with the mission much. There is a landmark in which they’re in and out quickly, which is good, but the route to that landmark involves us all staying here. If we follow them and watch what they’re doing, we more than likely end up at one of the other landmarks. Don’t ask me why; I’m only the cartographer.”
Marc shrugged. “Probably not much to see, anyway.”
Anyway, he wanted to ask Kara about Leeman-Smith, who was still singing softly to himself in a corner. Marc had been given a short account of the confrontation by Henk and wanted more detail.
“That information about Leeman-Smith, boss? You really get it from a general?”
“He did know a lot,” Kara allowed. “Thought the world of me, too. Satisfied?”
Marc wasn’t. But it was all he’d get. After a few moments he moved to the airlock and looked along its length towards the distant Gliese SUT. The inside walls of the tube were the same satiny metal that he’d seen on the screen. About a hundred metres down he could see a dark circle that he assumed was the entrance to the Gliese SUT.
He took a step towards the tube.
“I wouldn’t,” Tse said quietly.
“I only want a quick look. Not as if they’ve left guards or sealed it off. If they don’t want us to go down they’ll stop me before I get into their SUT, surely? And besides – one of them is wandering around the RIL-FIJ-DOQ. A precedent has been set.”
“If you go into that SUT,” Tse said, “then you don’t come back. It’s that simple.”
Marc stepped back rapidly, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the opening. “What if I stay in the boarding tube and just take a look inside?” he asked, surprising himself.
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Do I come back?”
“As far as I know. Which means nothing.”
Marc nodded. “Okay. Just a quick look. To satisfy my curiosity.” And before his second thoughts could ask his first thoughts what the hell they were doing, he moved towards the Gliese boarding tube.
Maybe it was his artistic imagination at work or maybe he’d picked up on some old movie memories floating around Kara’s head from when they were in the simulity together – hell, maybe it was both – but Marc had hoped the Gliese boarding tube would be dark and lined with veins that pulsed slightly in time with the beating of some great heart inside the Gliese SUT. No such luck. It looked just like any tube made of rubberised metal; no strange, alien features. What it did have was gravity, probably from some small updown-field generators in the floor, so at least he didn’t go caroming down its length like a marble in a vacuum-cleaner tube. It also had graphics printed on its surface that could be the Gliese language but looked like so much graffiti tagging.
He walked steadily down its length. As he moved he could feel the heat being sucked from his body and radiated away into the emptiness of space that lurked just the other side of the tube’s walls. They were, he noticed, slick with water vapour condensing out of the atmosphere.
The walk along the tube only took a few seconds, but it felt much longer.
The airlock doorway to the Gliese SUT melded seamlessly into the body of the tube. Marc stood in the opening and looked inside.
Just corridors and rooms. They weren’t coloured or sized for humans, but they were as functional as human ones. Just storage spaces and passages running between them.
And no guards. Nothing that would obviously stop him from stepping inside, or punish him if he did.
There were two open doorways to the left and the right. The left opened onto a room that, for a single shocked moment, he thought was filled with dead Gliese hanging from hooks on the walls. Empty spacesuits? Either that or Gliese sleeping habits were as unusual as their physiologies.
The second doorway opened onto a storage facility for sideslip-field generators. He could see five of them, different sizes, and a rack of platens attached to the wall.
“Gliii-eee-ssssse!”
He glanced sideways, surprised. A shuffling mass of wet leather was coming down the corridor towards him. As it passed him by it seemed to shrug slightly, turning its bulk as if to take a look at him, but didn’t stop. No alarms, nothing.
He turned and made his way back down the tube to his own SUT in case the returning Gliese mechanics entered the tube and blocked his exit.
Tse was still there, waiting. “What did you see?”
“Don’t you know?”
Tse sighed. “You know it doesn’t work that way. Landmarks in the future and paths that lead to them, but not all the terrain and I certainly can not see every blade of grass.”
Marc shrugged. “A room with what I thought were spacesuits but were probably Gliese hanging like bats. Another room with spare sideslip-field generators and spare platens. Not very edifying.” He wondered at his own lack of surprise, then realised he imagined far stranger things several times a day. The sleeping habits of the Gliese were a bit dull, really.
“Glad you went?”
“I’d rather have gone than not, but not by much.”
It was perhaps an hour later that the three Gliese returned with Tate. Conversation had run out and boredom had set in. They re-entered the anteroom, towing the defunct drive on its old updown unit. A minute or so later the nosey Gliese arrived with Henk following.
“All okay?” Kara asked Tate.
“Won’t know until we go into netherspace. But it seems to be.”
She looked at Henk.
“Trundled to the canteen and stayed there. Swear it went into some kind of trance. Then suddenly woke up and came back.”
“Chicken madras does it every time,” Marc commented and then thought, why not? Why shouldn’t everyday Earth scents have an odd effect on aliens? Ridiculous. If that were true, India would be full of aliens. In fact they rarely went there.
Kara went over to Leeman-Smith. “Time to go, James,” she said gently.
“Am I going to see Grandpa?” he asked eagerly. His eyes were wide and the pupils large.
“Pretty much. Just go with these nice aliens.”
He looked at the Gliese for the first time. “They’re kind of cute.”
An alien mouth opened. “Gli-ee-sse!” As always no way of knowing whether it was a word or a belch.
Leeman-Smith laughed. “They’re funny. I think we’re going to be friends.” He followed his new family into the airlock and along the tube towards the Gliese SUT without a backward glance.
Tate hit a button and the RIL-FIJ-DOQ’s outer lock clanged shut.
“Right,” said Kara, in the brisk tone of voice people use when they’ve finished a funeral service. “We’ve some Pilgrims to find.” She turned to the staff. “Time for you to know what our real mission is.”
TWENTY-ONE HOURS EARLIER
“Are you sure?” Tatia didn’t try to disguise the worry in her voice. No need. Everyone else understood the problem. Some were demanding they return to the desert, apologise to the next Cancri to show up and get life back to normal. Except they had no way of doing so, even if Tatia agreed, which she decidedly would not.
“I’m sorry,” Perry said. “It’s a type of drive I haven’t seen before, with a built-in updown-field generator – I’ve obviously got that working okay – but there aren’t any platens. They must be somewhere on the craft. I’ve got twenty people looking, but without them the drive won’t work.”
“Platens?”
Perry quickly explained how netherspace drives were operated. “Maybe the Cancri took the platens away, in case we attacked them.”
They were in an empty space close by the main entrance of the alien SUT, which was still wide open – it was the only way to see where they were going. Perry and a former electronics mechanic had taken one look at what they assumed was the craft’s control room, and groaned.
The craft was now between four and six thousand metres above the desert. After Perry had switched on the updown-field generator, they’d picked up a wind and were moving towards t
he once distant mountains. Their height was variable because Perry hadn’t quite mastered the updown-field controls and had to make regular adjustments. Too high and they’d freeze, too low and they’d lose the wind. There’d been no pursuit, no Cancri craft with guns blazing.
The three hounds on board now had collars and leads made from belts and torn-up shirts. They seemed docile – although everyone was careful not to get in range of that strange, triangular tongue – and had allowed themselves to be taken to the netherspace sideslip-field generator room… where they looked at the drive, back at the humans, then down at the floor. They could have been refusing to help or wondering what the hell was wanted. No one could tell, and their only value was as hostages. After a while, at some hidden signal, they all got up and pattered off along the corridor. Tatia and Perry had followed, only to find them in a room filled with soft cushions, clustered around a machine that was dispensing a yellow fluid that smelled like urine and a yellow paste that smelled like rancid herrings. The hounds, however, lapped it up – literally. After eating they curled up on the cushions and watched their captors.
“What’s the mood?” Tatia asked.
Perry shrugged. “As it was. Most people are happy to be doing something, a few are planning mutiny. I explained they’d have no better luck steering this fucking thing. They don’t care. You’re the devil. Three of them are apologising to the hounds, who don’t seem to notice.” He looked at Tatia more closely. “You’re exhausted. Get some sleep.”
Tatia didn’t argue but stretched out on the floor, pillowed her head on her arms and closed her eyes. Sleep came at once.
But not for long. She was woken by Perry shaking her urgently.
“You gotta come, Tatia! Gotta see this before the light goes!”
Tatia followed him into the corridor that led to the airlock entrance, now jammed with Pilgrims. The crowd eased apart as Tatia and Perry made their way forward, to where a safety rail had been rigged out of what looked like plastic sheeting but wasn’t. The blue sun was low on the horizon, but there was still more than enough light to see the city spread out below. It lay between a river – whose banks were dotted with what could be vegetation, scattered around like confetti – and the now close-by mountain range. It was a city that went on forever, mostly low, rounded buildings and the occasional tower reaching high into the air. Tatia could see vehicles moving, especially around a large empty space almost directly below – empty, that is, except for what could be other, stationary vehicles.