Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

  I offered responsibility. “Proceed, R.J. Delicately.”

  “I’ll set the laser Dremel to a depth of 4 millimeters. If it’s not enough, we’ll cut again. We should expect rapid depressurization almost immediately. I have the chamber set to collect whatever comes out and store it. Here goes.”

  We had to squeeze together to see through the observation window. A tiny blue beam popped out of the tool in R.J.’s black rubber-gloved hand. He braced the strange amber dome with his free hand and began to cut around the base. One half-second later gray gas began escaping from the bead. The vapor trail lasted only two or three seconds. R.J. turned the dome as he continued. A strange glow seemed to be emanating from the new seam.

  When the cut around the base was complete, we craned our necks to see as he put down the tool and slowly lifted the dome lens off of the base. Hiding beneath it was the strangest jewel I had ever seen. It was the size of an egg, and was mounted upright on an intricately carved golden pedestal. It slowly pulsed silver light on one side and white light on the other. A narrow golden band ran down both sides of the egg shape from the top, dividing it in half.

  “What in the hell is that?” asked Wilson.

  With one hand still holding the base, R.J. looked back at him. “See what kind of gas we collected from it, will you?”

  Wilson went to a spectrometer readout panel, dialed in a few commands, and called out, “Nitrogen. Pure nitrogen.”

  Catherine spoke. “Nothing exotic. Just standard storage techniques to preserve the metals inside.”

  R.J. looked at me. “I see no reason we can’t bring it out.”

  I glanced at Wilson. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

  “Okay. Pressurize the chamber and remove it. Let’s get a closer look.”

  When the chamber had achieved neutral atmosphere, R.J. spun off the locking wings and opened the sample door. He carefully drew out the strange diamond on its base and held it up in front of us. Both sides of the stone continued to slowly glow, both so heavy with facets they could not be counted. Silver rays from one side, white rays from the other, extremely beautiful, like pin-sized beams from a laser scanner.

  “I could just sit down and stare at it all day,” said Catherine.

  “I need to do a bunch of spectroscopics, Adrian. We need to know what kind of light this is.”

  “Wilson, could you take a look at our systems and see if we’ve cleared up the radar interface at all?”

  Danica’s voice came over the intercom. “I started that already, Adrian. The rear-facing scanning arrays are now looking clear, so far. There are no more master alarms.”

  “Well, I’ll be. Oh, this is so weird,” said Wilson.

  I resisted the urge to take the thing from R.J. for a closer look. “We need to get underway. Everybody strap in. R.J., stow that thing, and once we’re up to speed I’ll give you thirty minutes with it. Then let’s gather in the habitat and see if we can figure this out. Danica, you hear that?”

  “I’m already waiting for the Nav computer and Flight Director to reconfirm course and give us a time, Adrian.”

  We hastily stowed our tools and gear, secured the airlock and lab, and when permission came from the ship we hurled ourselves back to light. R.J. was out of his seat and back in the lab before I could unbuckle. We hung out in the habitat module, drinking coffee and waiting. An unshaven, weary-looking Dr. Patrick Pacell stuck his head out of his sleeper cell, climbed precariously out, and made a trip so awkward to the nearest restroom that we all stopped and stared, ready to rush over and pick him up from the fall that never quite happened.

  As the restroom door slid shut, R.J. appeared in the corridor carrying the crystal with the same care he would have given an explosive. He sat among us, continuing to stare in awe at his newest mystery.

  I tried to bring him back to reality. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense. What have you got?”

  He looked at me and shook his head. “It’s something really, really special.”

  “But function, R.J. What the hell is it for?”

  “I have no idea,” he replied, and he seemed disturbed by the admission.

  “There you go. I told you. It’s some kind of deep-space tracking device to keep an eye on Dan,” said Wilson.

  “I don’t think so,” answered R.J.

  “Based on what?” demanded Wilson.

  “Watch this,” replied R.J. and he drew the unit closer to him, picked it up with one hand, and gently removed the crystal from its mount. Holding the egg of light in one hand, he carefully separated the it into two halves. The half emitting silver light became a heavily faceted stone with a flat back. Its counterpart was the same except for the gold band running around its edge. Both halves continued to pulse their radiance, both as spectacular individually as they had been together.

  R.J. spoke as he stared at his treasures. “I have scanned both of these in every range there is. I’ve tried for every known wavelength of light. I was not able to measure or even detect the light you see emanating from either of them.”

  Danica keyed her intercom. “Are you certain they are crystals, R.J.?” she asked.

  “Actually all rocks are crystals, Danica. Only the ones of a higher order possess transparency. There’s no way these were formed naturally. They were artificially created to do just what they’re doing, whatever that is.”

  “So couldn’t Wilson still be right?” I asked. “These are something made to transmit through subspace or something?”

  “Watch this,” replied R.J., as though he had not even heard my question. He took the stone with the gold border around it and placed it in the palm of his left hand. With a quick glance around to be sure we were all paying attention, he turned his hand palm-over as though trying to drop it on the table. Instead, it seemed to stick to his hand. He glanced up once more, expecting us to be impressed. We were. Next, he took the stone from his palm and stuck it to his forearm, then moved it around in every possible way. It held as though it was glued in place.

  “I don’t get it,” said Wilson. “Adhesive on the flat side?”

  R.J. shook his head. “Nothing. Not a thing. It is attracted to skin on a molecular level. Put it where you will, and the only thing that can remove it is the touch of human skin. In the lab, I tried to pull it off with forceps. It would only have come off with some skin. I can slide it around my arm as long as I use my hand. Anything else, it won’t budge.”

  “Really, really weird,” said Wilson.

  “Just how do you know these aren’t harmful?” asked Catherine.

  “I ran some tests with the med lab computer. Like everything else, the equipment doesn’t seem to know these exist at all. They have been located in the tail of this ship for weeks, but none of us have exhibited any adverse symptoms. I’m open for any other tests you might suggest, Doctor.”

  “I don’t suppose there's anything to suggest a point of origin for them?” I asked.

  “Nothing that I’ve found,” answered R.J. “I think we can assume these were not created on Earth, of course.”

  “So all we know is that these were deliberately installed in our tail section and were interfering with our radars?”

  “That’s all I’ve got,” said R.J.

  “When did we first begin having radar trouble?” I asked.

  After a moment of silence, Wilson answered. “Enuro. It had to be after Enuro. The thing had to have been installed there. They had the perfect opportunity, or at least somebody did. The ship was torn apart for days. Guys were running around working on it continually. It would have been a piece of cake to install that thing.”

  We sat together in yet another moment of silence, wondering what it all meant. I looked at R.J. “You can’t really say for certain this is not some kind of tracking or monitoring device then, right?”

  “I guess not. I just don’t think so. Why would the thing separate into two pieces? Why is it designed to adhere to human skin? That just doesn’t sound like a subspace trans
mitter.”

  “Well, I for one am lost,” said Catherine.

  “Is there any other analysis at all you can do on it, R.J.?”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Well, when you’re through, please store it in the science lab vault. We’re approaching Mu Arae. We need to start getting our act together.”

  “What exactly is the plan, Adrian?” asked Wilson.

  “Because we know so little about the place, we’ll put into high orbit around Tolkien Minor and run some scans as inconspicuously as possible. We’ll see what kind of installations are down there, then make a decision to land or not. Everybody should get set up for a surface excursion in case it comes to that. In the meantime, Wilson, would you take a look at our rear-facing arrays now that the interference has been removed, then run scans as deeply as possible and see if there’s any hint that we’re being followed?”

  “Will comp, Adrian.”

  As the group began to break up, a clean-shaven Dr. Patrick Pacell sheepishly emerged from the rest room dressed in fresh green flight coveralls. Greetings of surprise were exchanged as he came forward and took a seat at the table. He looked like a shaky scarecrow in a flight suit. Catherine and I looked him over like concerned parents.

  “My god, Patrick, you look a damn sight better than you did,” I said.

  He gave us both quick glances as though embarrassed to look us in the eye. “Where exactly are we? I seem to have had a lost weekend.”

  “We are en route to a moon of Mu Arae-E in the Mu Arae system to see if there’s any information about your daughter.”

  “Wow! That’s one hell of an answer, Adrian. Whose ship is this?”

  “Believe it or not, it’s mine.”

  “Okay, I must still be in detox and this is another hallucination.”

  Catherine asked, “How’s the dehydration, Doctor?”

  “I can’t tell. I’m so jumbled, I don’t know what I feel. And, forgive me, you are?”

  I interceded. “Doctor Patrick Pacell, let me introduce Doctor Catherine Adara. Your guardian angel.”

  “Doctor Adara, where did you learn that particular recovery program? I’m not familiar with the parts of it I can remember.”

  “It’s not written down anywhere, Doctor. I have a lot of experience treating daredevils and fools. It’s my own home-brewed remedy and it varies with each individual and each condition. That’s why I can’t publish. The book would be the Never Ending Story.”

  Patrick wiped one hand down his face. His voice was still slightly gravelly. “How will I ever repay you, Doctor?”

  “Start now by calling me Catherine, Patrick.”

  “Okay, Catherine, but that’s not enough.”

  “Nice to finally meet the real you, Patrick. Time for solid food.”

  I pointed at the galley. “Anything you find out there is yours, buddy. You should stuff yourself, as necessary.”

  “Or maybe start slow,” said Catherine.

  “I’d better listen to my Doctor,” said Patrick. “Adrian, why are we going to somebody’s moon?”

  “You were mumbling that someone mentioned it when you were questioning people about your daughter. It’s the only real lead we have. It may be a dead end.”

  “I was? God, how many engrams have I destroyed?”

  “I’d start with soup and see if it stays down,” said Catherine.

  I pushed myself up. “If you two will excuse me, I should say hi to the pilot. She’s going to start feeling neglected.”

  On the flight deck, Danica had the right seat partially reclined, her left leg squeezed in over the armrest, and her right arm hooked over the seat. As I entered and sat, she said, “You must like multitasking.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I can’t tell which of us is the biggest pain in the ass, me or Doctor Pacell.”

  “It’s not like that. We know there’s trouble out there looking for us. We just have to avoid it.”

  “You? Stay out of trouble? That’ll be the day.”

  Chapter 12

  Solar systems are always too large to navigate in sub-light. If you try, it takes days, weeks, months, or longer just to get from one body to another. There is also a tiny bit of a problem in that you do not wish to make a series of jumps here and there going to light each time and then back out of it. So the prescribed method when traveling from system to system is to drop out of subspace within a sub-light speed day’s journey of the celestial body you are trying to reach. But since everything in space is moving, that tends to be a somewhat inexact science. With Danica acting as pilot-in-command, however, overshoot or undershoot is never a problem. The woman tends to plot her dropouts to the doorstep of wherever she happens to be going. It scares the hell out of me every time she does it, but I have to act nonchalant so as to not lose any additional points on my man card. Someday she is going to drop out, find herself in the most cluttered orbital corridor of some populated planet, and get blasted by space debris on her way to burning up in the atmosphere. Chances are I’ll be there and get in at least one sarcastic comment.

  When the Griffin at last burst into normal space, Tolkien Minor was directly in front of us, too large to be seen in its entirety.

  “Better back us out a touch for surface scanning.”

  She stared at me, wondering if the request was a compliment or a cut.

  I began to hear oohs and aahs coming from the habitat module as we backed away from Tolkien. The solar system around it slowly came into view. The reason for the cries of awe quickly became apparent. Tolkien’s parent planet Mu Arae-E began to appear, and there was even more to see beyond and around it. We are so used to a clean solar system view from Earth, planets neatly separated by nearly identical distances, all quite far apart, not much else but the sun and moon to clutter the view of those nearest bright bodies. But here in the Mu Arae system things could not be described as orderly in any sense of the word. The place was an astrophysicist’s dream or an astrologer’s nightmare. Too many contrasting bodies to plot in every direction. Not just bright planetary bodies that looked like big stars, but actual physical geological companions so close they could be made out with the naked eye. Some were tumbling in place, others making an excruciatingly slow transit through the black sky. It was no wonder this place was a miner’s dream. Endless candidates for mineral rich asteroids or planetoids all around, going on as far as the scanners could read.

  “Wow!” said Danica.

  “Wow,” I agreed.

  Wilson stuck his head in between our seats. “Wow!”

  “What’s Tolkien’s rotation?” I asked.

  “I’m reading once every thirty-two hours. We’re already seeing numerous installations down there on the surface scans. Most of them are equatorial for some reason.”

  “Let’s map them all, then maybe we’ll pick one to study more closely.”

  “You don’t want to sit out here and wait the thirty-two hours, do you?” asked Danica.

  “Nope. Set us up for a one-hour orbit. Wilson, you want to arrange the surface scans for that period? Make them high-res with imagery, of course.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I keyed the intercom. “Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Tolkien Minor.”

  The moon’s surface scans came back ominous. There were several small industrial complexes, mostly around the equator, two or three others at the poles. They were well spread out, and none looked hospitable. It wasn’t even possible to tell what was being done at those locations. None seemed to support species familiar to us.

  But there was one sinister-looking exception. Directly on the equator at the eighty-one-degree, four-minute longitude, a huge complex was built into the bottom of a massive, ancient crater. The corresponding imagery showed dozens of ships of varying design and markings. There was enough atmosphere inside the electronic dome that occasionally inhabitants could be seen traversing the place. Twenty or thirty makeshift buildings formed a main street of sorts, altho
ugh there were very few vehicles present.

  We sat around the conference table, staring up at the main display monitor. R.J. was the first to speak. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  Wilson countered with his usual irreverence. “Who you gonna call?”

  R.J. looked at him with disdain. “Where did that worn-out cliché come from again?”

  Wilson smiled back. “I have no idea, but it makes my point.”

  “Which is what?” R.J. persisted.

  “Either we go down there, or this is the end of the trip.”

  “Maybe we could get somebody on a com line,” countered R.J.

  “Oh yeah, hey everybody, there’s a ship in orbit wants to know about some kidnappers, anybody know anything? Yeah, that’ll get us some attention.”

  “I withdraw my suggestion,” said R.J.

  “There’s one main area for spacecraft,” said R.J. “Or you could put down out of sight about a mile away behind some dunes and still be under the curtain.”

  “We don’t want to sneak up on them, R.J. We don’t want to make anyone suspicious. We want to look like good ol' boys, as casual as possible.”

  “Who goes?” asked Wilson.

  “I’m thinking you, Danica, and me.”

  R.J. complained, “Adrian, I’ve faced aliens and biker gangs with you and you’re leaving me behind? Plus, you’ll be taking both pilots?”

  “You are very good on the flight deck, R.J. One person who knows engineering and basic piloting needs to be here. I’ll set up a program titled "home". If the worst happens, you call that up on the flight computer, engage the flight director, and the ship will plot a course and return directly to high Earth orbit. From there, you contact ground control and they’ll bring you down. You can then request they come find us. But all of that is only the worst case scenario. I don’t expect any of that.”

  “Well, it sure is an ugly little scenario,” he replied.

  Patrick stiffened. “Adrian, this is about my daughter. I have to go.”

  “Patrick, you’re in no condition to go. We’ve got to be smart about this.”