[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  “What’s going on?” Leonore demanded.

  “Darling, I’m sorry now that you came. Wait, don’t get mad. This isn’t my doing.” Nels smiled. “But what a chance! The primary’s going nova.”

  Leonore had passed beyond anger. She simply stood and stared at him in disbelief.

  “Really strange, too. This is a G5 yellow-orange. Shouldn’t go nova, but everything’s indicating it will. Soon.”

  “You knew the star was going to blow up?”

  “We suspected, not knew. I’ve been mapping the surface of the star. The latest conformal mapping showed an oddity usually found only in rising magma plumes.”

  “The Rayleigh-whatever?”

  “Rayleigh-Taylor instability. A density inversion. Heavier matter has come to the surface. Same phenomenon shows up in gas fingers escaping black holes.”

  “Your dissertation,” Leonore said.

  “Right. That’s why they wanted me on this expedition. We’re looking at a sun going nova. Up close, for the first time with full instrumentation, everything!”

  “The radiation,” Leonore said. “That’s why we’ve all been sunburning so badly.”

  “You don’t look too good with a peeling nose,” said Nels. “Didn’t Justine tell your prof to keep you out of the direct sunlight?” Nels shrugged it off. “That’s just part of it. The instabilities are increasing. The solar mechanism is becoming increasingly upset. It started out following a familiar Bessel function, a zeroth order one. Simple stuff. The perturbations started creating flow pathways between the density layers. Now the oscillations in the corona are—” Words failed the physicist.

  “We can’t leave, Nels,” pleaded Leonore. “Our discovery. What about it? The University wouldn’t send us all the way to Alpha 3 unless they expected us to do our work to completion.”

  “They probably sent Ralston here to get him out of the way.”

  Leonore went cold inside. That carried the ring of truth. It was no secret that Michael Ralston was an embarrassment for the archaeology department. She had seen the others treat him as a pariah. Even she had been guilty of believing the stories before she’d gotten to know him better.

  “Shouldn’t have allowed anyone to come at all,” Nels finished. “Especially you.”

  “What’s the risk in staying?” Leonore asked.

  Nels Bernssen looked as if she’d put the electrodes on his ears and then turned on the current. “You’re not thinking this through, Leonore. The primary in this system is going to explode, go nova, go pop! Nothing but superheated plasma will be left of Muckup and all the other planets. Nothing. Not a twig, not a pebble, not one single drop of that damned rain.”

  “We can’t possibly get all our data in two months.”

  “Leonore,” he said, taking her arms and shaking her, as if this might change her mind. She pulled away. “No one has ever witnessed a nova before. We’ve seen the after-effects—centuries later. We’re dealing with a completely new set of data. G5s aren’t supposed to blow up like this one’s threatening to do. When I say the primary’s going off in six months, I might be wrong. It might be half that.”

  “Or twice?”

  “Stop it,” Nels said angrily. “You and Ralston and the others are going to have to leave when the evac ship arrives. Staying any longer is stupid. Suicidal.”

  Leonore Disa had come all this way to be with her lover, but she’d found more on Alpha 3 than she’d intended. She took it as a personal affront that she wouldn’t be allowed to study the vault and pry loose the answers to this planet’s mysteries locked within.

  “Get me back to the dig right now,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  SIX

  Michael Ralston didn’t even hear Leonore enter his shelter. He bent over the hardcopy of a photo taken within the diorama, studying one segment with a magnifier.

  “What happened to you?” the woman asked, startled at the size of the knot on the back of the professor’s head. In the light, it showed as an ugly purple and green mountain of tender flesh.

  Ralston jerked upright, knocking the magnifier to the floor. It lay there buzzing in protest. He switched it off before asking angrily, “Don’t you ever knock before entering?”

  “Sorry, Doctor,” she said. “But what happened to your head? It looks as if you gave yourself a good rap.” She reached out hesitantly. Ralston flinched away when her fingers brushed over the edge of the wound. “Let me tend to it.”

  “I’m all right. What do you want?”

  Leonore dropped onto an uncomfortable plastic folding chair, and pulled it closer to the table. She hunched forward, hands clenching and unclenching.

  “I’ve just been over at the solar physics site,” she said.

  Ralston’s mind shifted from how to best investigate the intricacies of the problem posed by the dioramas to another type of problem. “Who’d you go over there to see?”

  A hot flush rose in Leonore’s cheeks. She hadn’t thought her motives were that transparent, but why else would she willingly associate with researchers in the physics camp? They weren’t archaeologists.

  “Nels Bernssen. He’s a post-doctoral worker for the University. We met about a year ago and…”

  “Spare me the details,” Ralston said impatiently. “I’m happy for you. May the two of you be happy forever and ever.” The words came abruptly, a clear dismissal.

  “Dr. Ralston, please. We’ve got to talk about this. What Nels found out tonight is important.”

  “All research is important.”

  His attitude began to annoy her. Ralston saw her mounting anger and added, “I’m sure Dr. Bernssen is very good at what he does. I’m also sure you are very proud of his accomplishments. It’s just that our find today is foremost in my mind.”

  “It has a bearing on the find,” she said. “Nels reported to his project leader…”

  “Justine Rasmussen? She’s the one I met when we first grounded. A garrulous person. All she wanted to do was talk. Didn’t seem to notice we had a considerable amount of work to do then.”

  “Yes, her,” Leonore rushed on. “Dr. Rasmussen has starred back a com packet requesting our immediate evacuation. Nels doesn’t think it’ll take more than two months for the starship to arrive.”

  “Ridiculous,” snorted Ralston. “The ship just left. It’ll be another few weeks before it’ll even arrive back at Novo Terra. You know there’s no way of communicating while a ship is shifting. Besides, it’s too expensive to retrieve us this quickly.”

  “Nels said the University would send another immediately and damn the cost when they read Dr. Rasmussen’s message. This system’s primary is going nova.”

  Ralston sat and stared. The coldness within him spread, frosty fingers gripping at throat and heart and belly.

  “No,” he said. “You didn’t understand this Nels. Physicists always talk in riddles and you simply missed his meaning. I read the survey reports. Alpha Prime is a G5, not too dissimilar from Earth’s sun. They don’t blow up, they collapse into white dwarves. I checked everything out about Muckup, too.” Desperation entered his voice. He would not be denied his find! “I showed the planetary data to Estevez. He’s the top-ranked xeno man at Ilium.”

  “The radiation levels are rising,” said Leonore. “Nels found some sort of disturbance both in the star’s corona and on the surface. He can’t say exactly when Alpha Prime will explode, but he knows that it will eventually.”

  “That’s it,” said Ralston, a flood of relief washing over him. “He’s talking in astronomical terms. That’s like speaking with a geologist. They say ‘soon’ and they mean ‘soon geologically’ or ‘soon in astronomical terms’. It might be a million years. For a star’s evolution, that’s fast.”

  “Nels means months. Maybe only days. Please, Doctor, call him. Or com Dr. Rasmussen and talk to her. I might have misunderstood, but I don’t think so. Nels was too emphatic. We’re going to lose not only the find but the entire planet.” />
  “You told this Nels about the find?”

  “I didn’t describe it in any detail. He wouldn’t have appreciated its importance even if I had. He’s always been more interested in stability criteria.” Leonore smiled wryly. “Sometimes, he’s more interested in that than he is in me.”

  “Now I know you’re exaggerating,” said Ralston. Leonore’s soft brown eyes shot wide open at the unexpected compliment. He smiled and pushed the hardcopy photos into an accordion folder. “I’ll call Justine Rasmussen and see what’s happening. It might not be as bad as your friend made it sound.”

  Ralston dragged out the small, battered com unit and fussed with it several minutes. Hissing and popping almost drowned out Rasmussen’s reedy voice.

  “Wanted to talk with you, Dr. Ralston,” came the physicist’s cracked reply.

  “Why is the communication so bad?” Ralston shouted into the unit. “Shouldn’t be this broken. Getting crosstalk from one of the other bands, too.”

  “We’re being uplinked. I’m in orbit to align one of our optical telescopes.” Hisses drowned out a sentence, then, “…Nels Bernssen is the expert. All I’ve seen substantiates his theory—his certainty now. I’ve already starred back the packet with a request for your evacuation. They’ll have a star-ship here within two months to get you and your students off.”

  “What about your own researchers?”

  “We’ve made plans to stay a bit longer. Our evac ship will follow yours by about a week, if all stays on schedule.”

  “When do you star back to Novo Terra, then?”

  More static. Justine Rasmussen repeated. “We stay as long as radiation levels allow. We’re hoping for as long as a year—but we’re keeping the starship in orbit in case we have to run for it. Nels thinks we’ll be close behind you on the way back to Novo Terra.”

  “We can do the same,” insisted Ralston. “We can stay here, then leave when you do.” Precious days might be all it would require to better examine the unique dioramas and the culture and history locked within their descriptive scenes.

  “That’s between you and University officials. We made our plans before we left Novo Terra. They might not want to go to the expense of leaving one of their starships in orbit for you.”

  “But they will for you?” Ralston’s anger rose now. A career hung in the balance—careers, if he counted the dissertations his seven students could write on the Alpha 3 find. The responsibility Ralston felt for his students wasn’t as great as it might have been, but it still existed. And he wouldn’t be denied his chance at the greatest find since the Rosetta Stone. “There’s no way they can force us to go back.”

  Ralston didn’t have to hear Rasmussen’s reply. Even though static tore apart her words, the sentiment came through clearly. The physicist told him in clipped, precise words he’d be destroyed professionally if he knowingly allowed any of his students to remain on a planet marked for vaporization.

  But the find!

  “…talk in person,” came the woman’s parting words. A metallic click sounded, and all Ralston received was solar interference. He turned off the com unit.

  “If we abandon the city site and concentrate on the dioramas,” said Leonore, “we might be able to get a great deal done in two months. Not a complete workup, of course, but enough to save something. We’ll be able to study the photos at leisure back at school.”

  Ralston hesitated telling her about being attacked within the alien museum. He thought it was one of the seven archaeology students, but new possibilities entered now. He couldn’t restrict his suspicions to only the graduate students. It might be someone connected with Rasmussen’s solar physics group, though this seemed farfetched.

  The other possibility, as remote as it was, couldn’t be discounted. An Alpha 3 native might still survive and stalk the ruins of its once lofty civilization.

  “Let me consider our options,” he said. “We’ll keep working on the city until further notice. A day or two won’t make a great deal of difference.”

  “But it might!” protested Leonore. “There’s no way to estimate the extent of the displays without going down and mapping every turn in the tunnels. Just photographing it all might take months!”

  “Don’t mention this to anyone,” Ralston said. “To anyone.”

  “But…”

  Leonore Disa subsided when she saw her professor’s determination in this matter. She spun and stomped from the shelter, vanishing into the curtain of rain plummeting from a treacherously clouded sky.

  Ralston watched his graduate student leave, then turned back to the photos. Somehow, his concentration had fled. The more he stared into the magnifier, the less he saw.

  Ralston wiped rain droplets from the lenses of the IR goggles. Stalking about to spy on his students struck him as absurd, yet he had to do it. To protect the sanctity of the find was important, but not of as great an importance as finding who had attacked him.

  The rain prevented anyone not similarly equipped from seeing him. A quick scan of the compound showed no one else braving the elements. He moved quickly to the nearest shelter, the large one he had designated as a conference room. The pounding of rain destroyed all but the most muffled of words coming through the thin plastic walls. Ralston moved stealthily until he came to the back wall and a punchout spot where air conditioners were supposed to be mounted.

  The University hadn’t sent air conditioners or any other type of climate modifier. They’d sent nothing but the barest equipment necessary for survival. In a way, Ralston approved. This dig was supposed to provide experience for the seven graduate students. Living in shelters more suitable for a billionaire would do little to instill in them the need for innovation and the appreciation for detail.

  Even if they failed in their attempt to gain their degrees, they would go out into Novo Terran society with a more acute appreciation of the luxuries afforded them.

  Ralston pressed the IR goggles firmly against the thin plastic panel. Dim, wavering red shapes moved within. He made out three separate bodies before turning to press one ear against the wall.

  The three students, Abeyta y Conejo, Fernandez and Butz, had been staying close together, and Ralston had spoken infrequently to them. On the starship he had ignored them totally after his feeble efforts to involve them in some sort of communication. Once grounded, he had given them their instructions and let them work unhindered. Now he wished he’d learned more about them—other than that they, too, were department rejects. The lowliest students were selected to accompany the Nex-loving Dr. Michael Lewis Ralston, he thought bitterly. While these three hadn’t made any major mistakes on the dig, they hadn’t distinguished themselves for brilliance or even great attention to detail, either. The best that might be said about them was that they put in their time and didn’t complain too much.

  Ralston shook his head. That sounded like an ancient prison sentence being fulfilled.

  “…it’s verd, I tell you,” said Fernandez.

  “She and that cloud of space gas?” scoffed Abeyta y Conejo. “She’s too bonita for him.”

  “She’s the only one who’ll get a good topic, wait and see,” insisted Fernandez. Ralston didn’t have to guess at the topic being bandied about. “Just ’cause she’s chinging him, she’ll get the prize. That’s the way it works. Verd.”

  “Who cares?” Ralston decided this had to be the third student, Butz, responding. “I’m here because my father said I gotta do something besides lying around Veral Beach and chinging all the good-looking muchas. Let them have their fun, as long as I get a degree. Then I can get back to the beaches where I can enjoy myself again.”

  After listening to the three curse Muckup’s mud and perpetual rain, Ralston drifted away, heavy rain drowning the sounds of his boots sucking in the mud. Those three only verified what he’d suspected. Three rich kids forced into the University to get a degree and become “respectable.” Too many of the rich on Novo Terra had fought and clawed their way to the top. Get
ting away from a burned-out cinder of an Earth had made them a hard breed. But that had been a generation back. For their children they wanted only the finest, the easiest, all that they’d lacked when growing up on Earth.

  Novo Terra provided warm sun, soft breezes, temperate climate, fabulous beaches stretching for kilometers with eye-dazzling white sand. If anything, life on Novo Terra was too easy. Those who had fought so hard found their children drifting. That explained why so many pushed their offspring into graduate schools. Getting a doctorate was easier than cutting them off without any credit and forcing them to fend for themselves.

  It did nothing to improve the quality of student work. Too many bought their degrees and appeased their parents that way.

  Ralston knew that if he simply gave all three within that shelter a degree they’d be satisfied. None would care that it hadn’t been earned legitimately. The professor smiled, water running away from the corners of his mouth, when he thought of Leonore Disa. In one respect, Abeyta y Conejo and the others were right. She would get the choicest project. He’d personally see to that.

  Not because he was sleeping with her but because she of all the group shared some measure of his excitement for archaeology. Ralston believed that she would be in the field digging, struggling, sweating over shards and bits of steel to reconstruct entire civilizations whether she received her advanced degree or had to work as a technician. The work, the ineffable thrill of discovery, took precedence over status, real or imagined.

  Ralston frowned. He knew Leonore came from a wealthy background like the others; what made her different? A pang of doubt assailed him. Were the three students right in thinking he harbored sexual fantasies about her?

  Ralston pushed it from his mind. She wasn’t that attractive a woman. What he felt might go beyond simple liking for a student—but it didn’t go that much past.

  The heavy rain and his lack of attention almost made him walk into the side of Asan’s shelter. Ralston wiped the infrared lenses clear again. Through the thin plastic wall he could not make out whether there was one very warm body or two sitting side by side. Spying allowed him to hear Asan and Lantalman talking in their subdued, paranoid tones. They always spoke with protective hands over their mouths. He guessed this derived from time spent in a rehabilitation clinic where infractions of the rules merited far more punishment than did poor grades.