“Is it safe?” demanded Leonid Disa. The chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Interstellar Computronics peered at the display skeptically. He heaved his huge belly up and braced it against the edge of the conference table as if readying himself for flight. “I’m not killing myself when the vidnews cameras come in.”
“It’s safe,” Dr. Salazar assured him. “I’ve personally tried it. The experience is… unique.”
Disa looked at his daughter, who nodded, then at Ralston. The archaeology professor said, “I’ve entered dozens of the dioramas with no ill effect.”
“What of this de la Cruz boy?”
“That was an unfortunate accident,” spoke up Salazar. “We are going to be in litigation over it for some time, I’m afraid. That will, of course, slow development of this find, but…”
Leonid Disa snorted and boldly stepped into the diorama Ralston had retrieved from Alpha 3. The man’s expression froze and his eyes glassed over. Forty minutes later, he sagged slightly and stumbled from the alien scene.
“That’s the damnedest, most remarkable thing I’ve ever experienced. Think of the possibilities. Schools. Military training. My company can do a complicated briefing in a fraction of the time it takes now. IC is proud to have sponsored the expedition that brought this back, Dr. Salazar.”
“But the University owns it, Citizen Disa.” Salazar’s smooth reply told Ralston that this had been well thought out and had been decided they owned it since Ralston was an employee.
“You’re forgetting where the equipment and money came from. And that was my daughter out there risking her life to bring this back.” Leonid Disa shook his head. “IC owns this, Doctor.”
“The terms of Dr. Ralston’s employment preclude such an arrangement,” said Salazar.
“A shame.” Disa shook his head.
“Yes,” agreed Salazar, delighted that the IC chairman had relented so easily. “But your quitclaim of the process will provide both financial and technical support for the University.”
“I didn’t mean IC was giving up the telepathy transmitter,” said Disa. “I meant it was a shame that IC has to retract all its funding for this school. What’s that total this year, Dr. Salazar?”
From the way Salazar turned pale, Ralston guessed it amounted to a sizable sum.
“Of course,” said Salazar, trembling, “the University needs a corporate partner to properly develop and market this machine. IC might be the appropriate company.”
“We’ll license it.” Disa named a ridiculously small sum. Salazar started to protest, then changed his mind.
“The lawsuit over Citizen de la Cruz’s unfortunate accident…” Salazar said.
“We’ll see about settling that. I know the de la Cruzes. Money-hungry upstarts. They’d sell their immortal souls if it fattened their credit balance enough. IC wants this, Dr. Salazar. We want it badly.”
“Doctor, the newsers,” came the worried secretary’s voice. “Should I allow them in?”
“At once. Don’t keep the vidnews waiting,” Salazar said with gusto, again in his element.
Ralston thought he might be sick. Since they’d returned to Novo Terra, everything had been taken from his control. Salazar had pounced on the working diorama like a carnivore hungry for a meal. Still, Ralston hadn’t minded too much. Salazar had postponed the proceedings against him in the de la Cruz death—and Ralston saw that Leonid Disa might take care of that matter completely.
Ralston sighed. It’d be good to return to a more routine schedule—and to pursue what he had learned on Alpha 3.
“Citizens,” spoke up Salazar, “we are here today to announce the discovery of a device that will revolutionize education.” Salazar went on to briefly describe the telepathic projector’s discovery, function, and potential.
“Dr. Salazar, is it true that this device was whisked away from Alpha 3 just minutes before its star went nova?” The newser motioned to bring cameras in closer for the reply.
“It is. One of our very own graduate students, Leonore Disa, was responsible. She is the daughter of the chairman of Interstellar Computronics, and, uh, co-sponsor of this expedition.” In a voice almost too low to hear, Salazar added, “She worked under the tutelage of Michael Ralston of our University.”
“Citizen Disa, comments?” The newser elbowed Salazar out of the way. Leonore tried to speak, to give Ralston the credit for the discovery. When her replies didn’t jibe with what the newser wanted, he quickly turned to Leonid Disa. The crusty industrialist had dealt with the news before; he gave them curt, slightly belligerent answers. They focused fully on him.
Salazar cut in. “We have begun intensive investigation of the mechanisms. Our Dr. Binton, head of the University engineering department, will be in charge.”
“Binton?” asked Ralston in a low voice. “How’d he get into this?”
Leonore shrugged. “Salazar must have thought Binton had better camera presence than you.”
“He ought to. All he does is lecture at women’s clubs and write articles on how microwaves are your friend.”
“Don’t, Michael. Being bitter isn’t going to solve anything.”
He saw that Leonore was right. He’d been let off the hook and ought to be happy, but the discovery of a lifetime had slipped through his fingers. The engineering department now took full credit for the telepathic projector—or as much as Leonid Disa would let them. The elder Disa wanted his daughter to receive full credit for the discovery.
Ralston wasn’t inclined to argue that point. Leonore had furnished the starship, the expensive equipment supervisor, and the personal support that had made it possible to recover the diorama from Muckup. Without her and her father’s money, Ralston would have been left with nothing except headaches.
“Can we get away from this?” he asked her.
She pointed to a side door in the conference room. No one noticed their leaving. Binton, Salazar, and Leonid Disa held the newsers’ cameras and attention.
“No one’s mentioned the most important thing,” Ralston said as soon as they were in a quiet room. “The message in the diorama confirms what I’d thought. They called it a comet. Apparently it was supposed to be intensely brilliant, but it wasn’t. No tail, no coma, nothing. An astronomical flop.”
“You feel it was the chaos device?”
“What else?” Ralston said, enthusiasm burning brighter now. He began to pace, hands behind him. “The time frames are perfect. This diorama was constructed approximately a hundred years after the passage of their under-achieving comet. These scientists, the ones depicted in the diorama, are worried about the rise in civil disorder—and epilepsy. Their fears are truly paranoid, without much foundation, but they are worried. Were worried.”
“Do you think there’s any danger of catching the epileptic breakdown from the diorama?”
Ralston impatiently shook his head. “Not really. Maybe. How can I say? Some vestige of the field remains on the planet. De la Cruz is dead, and six of the solar physics scientists are disabled. The weather patterns are chaotic. The sun’s going nova definitely shows that the field affected the stellar furnace mechanisms, even if it came slowly. It took almost ten thousand years for its regular fusion cycle to be disrupted.”
“But Nels and the others…”
“They were on Alpha 3 almost three times as long as we were. The lingering effect might be more intense in some places than at others. Who can say? We’re dealing with forces of unknown power.”
“The medics say Nels will be all right. A tiny chemical neurotransmitter imbalance, they said. That was all they could come up with to explain the seizure.” Leonore heaved a heartfelt sigh. “His brain scans are normal now.”
Ralston knew that the others who had been struck down weren’t as lucky. All of them would be slightly impaired in movement, but their health would not be affected further now that they were away from the insidious presence of the chaos field.
Ralston almost laughed at hims
elf. He thought of it as a field. It might not be a radiation at all. Maybe the earliest guesses made by the avian natives were right. Poison. Or something totally beyond their—and the Alphans’—ability to understand. But until he had more data on the phenomenon, he’d continue thinking of it as a radiation device scattering chaos to and fro.
“That clears up a lot that had been worrying me,” he said. “Nels and the others. Now we can concentrate on the real find.”
“Real find? What’s that? The diorama is being torn apart by the engineering department.”
“They’re interested only in the projector. No one has questioned the meaning of what was transmitted. Those alien scientists didn’t say it outright, but they implied that they were beginning construction of a starship. I caught whispers of a scientist named Dial. They considered him a crackpot, but I believe he succeeded prior to the final decline.”
“They didn’t have the technology!” protested Leonore.
“Exactly. Without faster-than-light travel, they’d have to launch a sublight ship. I think this Dial built the ship and launched it. Maybe they left just a few years before their entire civilization collapsed. Maybe it was at the last possible instant.”
“It might not have left at all.”
Ralston smiled and motioned for Leonore to follow. They left the building and headed toward the laboratories.
“Where are we going?” Leonore turned and looked over her shoulder at the administration building. “I’m not sure we ought to leave yet. The newsers might…”
“They don’t need us. The newsers have their story being spoon-fed to them by Salazar—and we’re not a part of it any longer.”
“Michael, I’m sorry about that.”
“About what?” he said in surprise, his thoughts far distant.
“About their saying I’d discovered the dioramas. That was your discovery, but they didn’t give me the chance to correct it. I know what it means to you.”
Ralston shrugged it off. “Let them say what they want. After this, Salazar will leave me alone, and we can pursue this to the logical end. That will be a solution to rock them back.”
“Finding the starship?”
He nodded.
They trooped up the stairs to the second floor. Ralston hesitated as he always did before the door to Westcott’s lab. The idea of entering made him uneasier than experiencing alien thoughts blasted into his brain by the avians’ telepathic projector. He heaved a quick breath, knocked, and entered.
Westcott sat in his chair, eyes half-closed, mouth slack.
“He’s the one, isn’t he?” said Leonore with some disgust. Her quick brown eyes darted to the authorization hanging on the wall. “He’s plugged in directly to the computer.”
“The only one allowed to do it at the University.”
“So slow,” murmured Westcott, drool running from the corner of his mouth. As a robot might, he reached up and methodically wiped it away. “I am so slow today. Can’t integrate quickly enough.”
“Westcott,” Ralston said, too loudly. He moderated his voice. “Have you worked out the trajectories I gave you?”
“What? Oh, it’s you.” Westcott’s rheumy eyes focused. No pleasure showed that he enjoyed their company. No displeasure came, either. He was a part of his machine. “An interesting problem. Where would a sublight spaceship go, given the astronomical parameters of the Alpha system ten thousand years ago?”
The entire wall at the back of the laboratory glowed a dull blue. Pinpoints appeared.
“This is the position of the stars ten thousand years ago. That,” he said, indicating a flaming orange line, “is the vector of the chaos device.”
Leonore started to speak, but Ralston silenced her.
“How did you determine its speed?” he asked the mathematician.
“Couldn’t from the shoddy data given. But the information from the planet gave me several parallax sightings. From this I determined apparent motion. Coupled with distance estimates, I came out with the vector. Fast moving, not quite light speed but close.”
“But the spaceship?” prompted Ralston.
“There.” A single light flashed so intensely that Ralston and Leonore shielded their eyes. This was Westcott’s moment of drama. The scene faded and he turned back to whatever imponderable problem he’d been working on when they entered his domain.
“But we need more,” said Leonore. “Just a light on a data-screen doesn’t—”
Ralston silenced her. He pointed to a hardcopy imprinter.
A single plastic sheet lay atop it. He picked it up, quickly scanned it, and then left Westcott’s lab without even thanking the mathematician.
In the corridor outside the lab, Ralston leaned back against the wall and wiped away a sheen of sweat from his forehead.
“He bothers you, doesn’t he?”
“He bothers everybody, but he’s useful. No, more than that. He’s a damned genius because he’s linked to his computers. But that doesn’t mean I have to like dealing with him. Let’s get back to my office. I want to look this over more closely.”
They walked out to the Quad, then stopped. Several demonstrations grew in intensity. One in particular caught Ralston’s attention. He pointed.
“See the P’torra? And the gadget in his hand? That’s an impulse driver. He’s using it to gauge the mood of the crowd. Whatever it tells him, he passes along to the one haranguing the others.” A woman stood on a small chair yelling incoherent phrases.
“She’s saying something about God’s will being ignored with the diorama,” Leonore said, shocked.
“Come on. If the P’torra sees us, he’ll focus the crowd on us.”
“But the dioramas are such a potent hope for us. Just imagine! We can alleviate…”
“That’s not the point. The P’torra wants only to hone his skill at rabble-rousing. Actually, I suspect he’d love to be able to steal the telepathic projector. He might be promoted all the way to the top of the military pyramid.”
“He’s a soldier? I thought that only their students were allowed on campus.”
“What’s the difference? To them there isn’t one. Come on before they see us.”
Ralston climbed the steps to his office in silence. The P’torra provided a constant source of irritation for him. But between the P’torra and the newsers, he wasn’t sure who he hated more. The newsers sought only the momentary thrill, the brief scandal, whatever titillated. He had a solid story for them.
An entire race had been destroyed by a force—artificial or natural?—passing through space near their planet. The culture had collapsed, their solar system had been destroyed by their G-class sun going atypically nova. A single spaceship containing their leading scientists might have escaped almost ten thousand years ago—and he held their most probable destination in his hand.
Did the newsers care about that? No, they gobbled up the muck that Salazar fed them about a trinket. Granted the projector from the diorama might be a profitable and useful gadget, but it meant less than finding the remnants of an entire civilization.
Or the device that had destroyed it.
Ralston closed the door behind Leonore and dropped heavily into his own chair. He pressed the switch for the projector.
“There it is,” he said. “I’m going to call it Beta, for lack of a better name. That’s where they fled for sanctuary when they left Alpha 3. I know it.”
Leonore stared at the datascreen, then said, “You sound so positive about what happened. You can’t be, even with what you learned in the last diorama.”
“All the data fit into a matrix. This is the answer. The only one that makes any sense. The avian natives fled their dying planet, and we’re going to follow.”
“Will the University let you?”
Ralston laughed harshly. “They’ll be more than happy to get rid of me for however long it takes. Out of sight, out of mind. I disturb their neat, orderly society.”
“You force your students to thin
k,” Leonore said.
“That’s what I just said. I disturb the current order at Ilium.” Ralston flipped over to another screen of data. “If the University won’t fund this expedition, do you think your father might?”
“What? Why, I suppose so, if I ask him. But IC isn’t known for such funding ventures. He’ll be hard-pressed to justify it to the board of directors.”
“No, he won’t.” Ralston smiled without any humor. “Not when you tell him we’ll bring back someone who can construct one of those projectors. I don’t think Binton will be able to reverse-engineer the device. Not soon.”
Leonore laughed. She enjoyed the irony of this. “You really think we can find the survivors of Alpha 3, get them to license it, and return before anyone can build a duplicate?”
Ralston nodded.
“That’s rich. And with them in the spotlight, they’ll take the heat for it, too.”
“Archaeology has its moments,” Ralston said. “But I’m more concerned about one other problem.”
“What’s that?”
“The chaos device. It’s still out there. And it might still be actively interfering with the natural processes of the universe. Can we afford to let such a weapon be held at our heads?”
“You’re exaggerating, Michael.”
He didn’t think so.
“Things turned out well enough for us this time. What if the chaos device comes back? By Novo Terra? We’re not immune. Yago de la Cruz showed that. The members of Justine Rasmussen’s research team proved it, too. We’ve got to find it and destroy it.”
Michael Ralston started planning the new expedition to Beta with Leonore, but the thought burned like a black flame inside his head: The chaos device might destroy them all. And only he believed enough in the danger it posed to attempt to stop it.
Scanning, formatting and basic
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[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos Page 19