The Engines of God

by Jack McDevitt

  Hutch set up one of the cameras for his inspection, opened the tripod (which they would anchor into the ice), and attached a sensor cluster. “We put the cameras on the ground, around the target. We’ll launch two comsats. If the cameras see something, they’ll transmit pictures to the comsats, which will send a hyperlight alarm to Point Zebra. The satellites are enclosed in convex casings. No right angles.”

  “What triggers the cameras?”

  “A sudden and substantial increase in electrical activity, or in temperature beyond that normally encountered. Each camera has its own sensor system, and will operate independently. If something does happen, we should be able to get pictures.”

  “How about ordinary electrical storms? Won’t they set it off?”

  “Angela says lightning will be infrequent here, and quoted pretty good odds against normal phenomena triggering the sensors. If they do,” she shrugged, “too bad. Somebody will come out for no reason.”

  “Somebody will come out?” This wasn’t exactly the kind of alarm system Carson had in mind. “Won’t they be able to tell when they get the pictures at the Point?”

  “They won’t get any pictures. The pictures are stored in the satellites. All that’ll happen is an alarm will go off.”

  “Why not send the pictures?”

  “Can’t. Hyperspace communication requires a lot of power. We just can’t generate enough for complex transmissions unless we plan to hang around ourselves and use Ashley’s power plant. So we do the next best thing: we send a beep.”

  Fine, Carson thought. Every time there was an electrical storm, they would have to dispatch a ship. “I can’t say I care much for this arrangement,” he grumbled. “How safe will the cameras be if an event occurs?”

  “Hard to say, since we really don’t know what the event is. They have to be close to the target area, within a few hundred meters, for the short-range sensors to work. If we back it up farther, and go long-range, they’ll pick up too much stray activity, and then we will get a series of false alarms.”

  “Okay.”

  “One other thing. If the kind of action we’re looking for develops, there’ll be a lot of electricity in the atmosphere, and the transmissions will get scrambled. In that case, the satellites will not get the pictures.”

  “So package in a delayed broadcast, too.”

  “I’ve done that. We will also record everything at ground level. Redundant copies everywhere. So if anything survives, we’ll have a record.” She was proud of her work, and had expected Carson to notice. But he still seemed preoccupied. “I’ve tried to shield the equipment as best I can,” she continued.

  “Okay,” he said. “Good.”

  “You’ll want to send someone out in a couple of years to replace this stuff. It’s not designed for this kind of mission, so it won’t last much beyond that.”

  “I know,” he said. They both understood that such a backup flight would be unlikely.

  They pinpointed a target area on a broad, snow-covered plain between a mountain range and a swamp filled with nitrogen and hydrocarbon sludge. The plateaus that had drawn Carson’s attention were scattered across an otherwise flat landscape. It looked like a piece of the American West, covered with ice, and bathed in the pale red light of the distant sun.

  They settled on a group of four mesas which lay within an area approximately sixty kilometers on a side. Each was already roughly rectangular. (The group had been chosen primarily for that reason.) The smallest comprised an area of about six square kilometers, the largest about a hundred. Carson would have given much to find four mesas at the corners of a square, but nature had not provided, not on this world, nor on any other in the system. He was as close as he could get.

  They planned to polish off the rough edges, and convert the mesas into perfect rectangles. To that purpose, three would require only minor sculpting. The fourth, the largest, would need a major effort.

  “They won’t look much like Oz,” said Terry.

  “Sure they will,” said Janet. “When we’re finished with them, they’ll be all straight lines. No curves. Like the cube moons.”

  “And you think it’s the straight lines that matter?”

  “Yes,” she said. Right angles. It always comes back to right angles. “You know what? Maybe it’s just a matter of creating a design that doesn’t appear in nature. We were talking about doing some crosscuts. Making it fancy. But that might not matter.”

  Carson was uncomfortable that no one on board had experience using the big pulser. “We might end by shooting ourselves down,” he said.

  They installed the mount for the particle beam projector in the cargo area of the shuttle. Janet looked at it uncertainly and grinned at Hutch. “If the thing falls out,” she said, “the show’s over.”

  Hutch tried to visualize the way the operation would work. They would have to fly the shuttle at times almost on its side in order to get a good target angle out the cargo door. “I hope none of us falls out,” she said.

  They loaded the pod modules on board, and filled several spare air tanks. There’d be no opportunity to cycle air from this environment if things went wrong. For that reason, Carson, who was now thoroughly persuaded to play it safe, brought along enough for a month.

  “Why so much?” asked Drafts.

  “Shuttle might break down,” Carson said. “We could get stuck there.”

  Hutch didn’t like the shuttle. It was boxy, not very aerodynamic, not good for atmospheric flying. It would be a bumpy ride. And slow. And she was not entirely confident, despite what she had told Carson, of her ability to handle it. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but this is a shoebox with wings. You’d be better off if you could get Angela to pilot the thing. She’s used to it, and she’s the best there is.”

  “It can’t be that hard.”

  “You want to bet your life on it?”

  Carson looked at her, and smiled his approval. “Thanks,” he said.

  He took Hutch with him to the bridge, where Angela was examining displays of the target area. “We’d like to have you fly the shuttle,” he said without preliminary. “Hutch tells me it’s likely to be difficult to handle, and she says you’re pretty good.”

  Angela studied him for a long moment. “Is that what you want?” she asked Hutch. She wore a light brown ship’s jacket, with Ashley’s logo, a sail against a circle of stars, displayed prominently on the left breast.

  “Yes. I think it would be a good idea.”

  “Then I’ll do it.” Hutch thought she looked as if she had something on her mind. “Of course the shuttle’s cramped. And four people will crowd the ground station.”

  Janet leaned in. “I’m not all that excited about carving mountains. If you want, I’ll help hold the fort here.”

  In the morning, the shuttle slipped its moorings, parted from the Ashley Tee, and began its descent. Angela had preset a glide path that allowed a methodical entry. They slipped easily into the upper air.

  The delicate interaction between the shuttle’s flux and local magnetic fields provided all the lift she needed. But as the air pressure rose, they began to bounce around. The wind thumped the panels and blew gobs of thick rain against the windows. Carson, tied into a temporary web in back, complained loudly.

  “It’s okay,” said Angela. “With this kind of vehicle, you’ve always got a lot of headwind. Don’t worry. It’s pretty tough.”

  Mountain ranges and snow dunes and a coffee-colored sea rose to meet them. No human foot. Hutch thought. Ever.

  An hour later, they approached the target area, coming in over a sludge-filled river. The landscape was mottled with snowdrifts and boulders and gullies. The light was a Halloween mixture from the red sun and the watery-brown ringed giant that floated on the horizon like a Chinese balloon. Gloomy, cold, and forbidding. Not a place to build a country estate.

  Angela turned south. “Ten minutes,” she said.

  The plain smoothed out. The wind came up again, and the
surface disappeared beneath blowing snow. The sky was red, not sunset red, but rather like the scorched appearance of clouds in the aftermath of a forest fire.

  The first plateaus appeared.

  “They’re down,” said Drafts.

  He’d been watching the pictures come in. Janet had shown some concern during the shuttle descent, and was visibly relieved that the mission was on the ground. “Looks like a rainstorm to the west,” she said. Orange-gray clouds rode over a mustard-colored mist. “Maybe some of that two-hundred proof.”

  “Janet.” Drafts swung to face her. “Tell me something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you do with your spare time when you aren’t chasing cosmic waves?”

  A bank of displays on her right were dark. These were the long-range scanners, still looking for anything unusual in the system. The sun, the worlds and moons, comets and rocks and assorted debris had been blanked out. Anything else, anything else at all out of the ordinary, out to the edge of the system, would register.

  Fool’s errand. What else could you call it?

  “I’m not sure anymore,” she said. “I’m really not sure.”

  LOG

  Ground team reports they have touched down.

  We have launched two comsats to ensure round-the-clock communication. We have also orbited a buoy to direct the ship from Nok when it arrives.

  I will add that this is the most unusual mission in which I have participated. No one seems to know what we’re looking for.

  —T. F. Drafts

  NCA Ashley Tee

  May 14, 2203

  28.

  LCO4418-IID (“Delta”). Saturday, May 14; 1745 GMT.

  The ground blizzard hid the surface, burying everything except the taller mesas, which might have been a gray fleet moving across rust-colored seas. The four they had selected were on the westernmost border of the plain, where the ground began to turn mountainous.

  Hutch thought that Carson was being influenced by the towers at the corners of the central square in the Oz-construct on Quraqua’s moon. When she mentioned it to him, he seemed surprised, but then agreed that she was probably right. “I’d like to do the same thing here,” he said. “Make a square by using squares. We’re not quite able to do that, but we can get close.”

  The largest of the four plateaus merged its rear section with a mountain. This was the one which would present the most difficulty, and they therefore chose its summit as the site for their base. Angela had brought the shuttle down through a stiff wind, and laid it cautiously into the orange snow. Hutch was impressed.

  This was a big plateau. They would have needed about ten hours to walk around its rim. Locked in the snow storm, they could not see its sizable dimensions, but they knew they had taken on an ambitious job.

  “Let’s sit tight for tonight,” Carson said. “We’ll set up in the morning.”

  Angela pointed toward a crimson smear in the east. “It is morning. But you’re right: let’s wait ’til the storm blows over. Then this whole project will look reasonable.” She smiled drily.

  Drafts put the technical manual down when Janet came up onto the bridge. “Anything happening?”

  “It’s quiet. I think they’re all asleep.”

  “Do we have a reading on the weather?”

  “It’s bad. I think it’s always bad. I’m not sure. My meteorology is weak.”

  The screens were active. They reflected power drain figures, short- and long-range scans, attitude, orbital configuration. Fuel levels. Life support on both the ship and the shuttle.

  Janet was pleased with the way things had turned out. Drafts, despite his hostility to the project, was a congenial companion, armed with a droll sense of humor. The ship was comfortable, and life was easy up here. She couldn’t see that the ground assignment was anything but cramped drudgery.

  She was about to make some small talk, when he stiffened. Almost immediately, an alert beeped. “Long range,” he said.

  Two displays brightened. They presented optical and sensor views of a hazy object. Range at twelve A.U.s.

  Drafts frowned. “Odd.”

  Projected diameter: 23,000 km.

  “Irregular shape,” said Janet.

  “We seem to have an extra world.” He called up survey records. “Not supposed to be there.” He studied the sensor return. “We’re not getting much penetration,” he said. “It looks like a cloud. Hydrogen and dust. Trace iron, carbon, formaldehyde, and silicate particles.”

  “So it’s a cloud.” Janet didn’t understand why he looked so puzzled.

  “Angela would know more about this than I do, but I don’t think clouds come this small. They tend to be a lot bigger.”

  “What’s inside?” asked Janet.

  “Don’t know. We can’t get into it.”

  He went to mag five and enhanced. It was still a blur.

  Delta. Sunday, May 15; 1045 hours.

  The winds quit as if a switch had been thrown. The top of the mesa became very still, and they looked out across a crumpled orange wasteland. Angela moved the shuttle out of the snow that had piled up around it, and they got out and began assembling their base.

  Within two hours, they erected an RK/107 top-of-the-line pressurized shelter, which consisted of a triad of interfaced (but fully compartmented) silver and black domes. The snow was wet and heavy and resisted movement, and they were thoroughly tired by the time they collapsed into the unit’s compress chairs. Meantime, another storm blew up, and they watched fiery clouds roll overhead. This time, though, it rained. It rained thick, syrupy drops that plopped and blatted against the windows and rolled down like amoebas. Lightning flickered.

  Angela sat by a window. “So much for the rare electrical storm.”

  “By the way,” said Carson, “if this is really a gasoline atmosphere, why don’t the lightning bolts blow the place up?”

  “No oxygen,” she said. “If there were oxygen in the mix, we’d get a show.”

  The shelter was state-of-the-art. They had private apartments, a washroom, a kitchen, an operations center, and a conference room. Polarized windows were set in all outside walls. They had comfortable furniture, music, extensive data banks, decent food. “We could have done worse,” said Angela, who, like the others, was accustomed to accommodations produced by the lowest bidder.

  She seemed thoughtful. And when Hutch asked what was on her mind, she hesitated. “Not sure,” she said. “I’m getting near retirement. In fact, they didn’t want me to come out on this one. I think this is my swan song.” Her gray eyes brightened. “This is the most interesting mission I’ve been on.” Her gaze turned inward. “Yeah. I haven’t seen anything like this before. I hope we find something so I can go out in style.”

  “Even a dragon?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Especially a dragon.”

  “It won’t pass very close.”

  Janet had been idling through Ashley’s mission report. The ship had been surveying older stars, mostly middle-aged, stable G-types, prime candidates in the twin searches for habitable worlds and other civilizations. So far, they had nothing to show for their efforts.

  The auxiliary screen on her right displayed the cloud. Nothing much had changed. It was somewhat more distinct, a result of enhancement and, to a lesser degree, its decreased range.

  “Hey.” Drafts stared at his instruments. “I think we’ve got another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another cloud.”

  Janet slid into the seat beside him. “Where?”

  “Extreme long range.” He jabbed a finger at the readout. She picked it up on a window. “This one is on the other side of the sun, moving away from us. It’s out on the edge of the system.”

  “Can’t we get a better picture?”

  “It’s too far.” He was running a search through the data banks. “But it’s also not on the charts.” He turned toward her. “Neither of these objects was here when the original survey was made.
”

  “Or they got missed.”

  “I would have thought that was unlikely. Maybe we better let Angela know.”

  They had just left the dome, just cycled through the airlock and stepped out into the snow, when Drafts’s voice broke into their chatter. “We have a couple of anomalies,” he said.

  They kept walking, plowing through the snow with difficulty. Carson had begun to wonder whether they should try to make snowshoes. “What kind of anomalies?” he asked.

  “Clouds, I think. Two of them.”

  “Here?” asked Angela, looking into a crystal-clear sky, apparently thinking what Carson thought: that they were talking about something in the atmosphere.

  “One at twelve A.U.s, approaching; the other on the far side of the sun. Going the other way. Listen, I’m not sure yet, but I don’t think they’re in orbit.”

  “Clouds, you say?”

  “Yeah. Clouds.”

  “Not possible,” she said.

  “We’ll send you pictures.”

  “Okay. Yes, do that.” She started back inside. “Frank, do you mind?”

  “No. Go back and look. We’ll see you in the shuttle.”

  The ATL1600 general-purpose particle beam projector was of the type that had been used to cut shafts in the polar ice packs on Quraqua. It was simple to operate, durable, and effective. The narrow, tightly-focused beam that it generated was capable, even while tied to the shuttle’s limited power plant, of slicing the mesas like so much cheese.

  On Quraqua, the projectors had been driven by a fusion link with the orbiter. Here, the drain on the shuttle would be considerable, and they could not approach full power. Operations would be limited to seven hours daily. The work would be slow, but they had plenty of time.

  The real problem was that the unit was difficult to manage. It had been designed for installation on board a specially fitted CAT. Carson would have to try to aim it from the cargo hold, while the shuttle was in flight. Hutch’s mount was really little more than a restraining web to prevent the instrument, or its operator, from falling out. They had one advantage: the half-ton unit weighed only about four hundred pounds in this gravity.