Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

“So, that’s why Blackwell was spending so much time meditating to the thing. He thought he could get it to work without the crystals.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’ll bet he’s still meditating to the fake skull and doesn’t know it.”

  “We can only hope. So are you guys actually going to try the thing, or what?”

  “Undecided.”

  “I think I’d give it a shot. Maybe I could get into that bastard’s head and screw him up good.”

  “Yeah, I heard you put a hurting on those guys in the bar.”

  “You should have seen the look of surprise on their faces.”

  “Unfortunately, I have seen that look recently.”

  “You have to kill somebody or something?”

  “It’s something you never get over. Keep that in mind the next time you’re taking somebody’s man-card.”

  “Yeah, it’s better not to have to live with it if you don’t have to.”

  “So let’s keep the skull thing between the three of us. When we have a chance you and I can get together with R.J. and we’ll decide what to do.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain. Ten minutes to breakaway. Better tell the kiddies.”

  “Tell me something, Dan. How many jumps to light is this for you?”

  “You kidding? Lost count a long time ago.”

  “How many places did you have to search for me?”

  “R.J. could probably answer that.”

  “Did you keep up the logs?”

  “Oh, yes. Just the basic entries and a few of the more memorable sightings.”

  “Has there been contact from Earth, at all?”

  “Just one message we managed to pick up. Don’t know how long it took to get here. R.J. could tell you that.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was a message to Wilson from Jeannie.”

  “Oh god, don’t tell me.”

  “No, no. It wasn’t a Dear John. It was a nice note saying the pre-marriage counseling camp sucked and would he please get his butt back there and marry her.” Danica smiled and keyed the intercom. “Get in your high-chairs kiddies. We’re going to jump!”

  There was muted cheering from the habitat module.

  Danica brought the ship to heading and engaged the flight director. I sank back in my seat and watched Tusania shrink to nothing in the aft cameras as we became light. My heart did another back-flip. I had that sudden urge again; wait…hold on a second. Then it was a tiny star, then gone. All I had left was my big bird necklace and heart song.

  But it did not take long to settle back to modern living. Shaving the beard was like a ticket back to the future. The Tusanis had no sugar or sweetener of any kind, so the first candy bar lit me up. I played R.J. a game of chess, and had he not underestimated the value of a pawn again, he would have beaten me. He sat for a half-hour after the game staring at the board.

  There were unexpected soap opera undercurrents aboard. I noticed them the first day. Patrick and Catherine. Something had happened there in my absence. I spotted them in the med lab standing too close for too long. I was grateful they had not noticed. It was easy to understand. Chances had been good I would never be found. Three months in a tight space with enough luxury and just enough privacy. When two people have a connectivity they don’t know about, they are bound to discover it.

  Story of my life.

  So all I had to do was make it easy for them. Say just the right things, be too busy to think about romance, use caution enough to avoid intruding on the secret meetings. The truth was, I was too concerned about our destination to think about anything else, anyway. Too much had gone wrong already, and we hadn’t even gotten to first base.

  Then there was the matter of Danica’s godhead. If there was ever a good time to test it, this was not that time. The thing was a nemesis. Even if it did not posses the magic claimed by the legend, the thing was a diamond so valuable it could start wars. The only protection anyone who possessed it could ever possibly have would be that no one knew.

  On day two, Wilson and I had the habitat module to ourselves for a time. We sat at the conference table with our feet up, drinking coffee. Wilson was bored until I asked him the keynote question.

  “So pre-marriage counseling camp sucked, I hear.”

  His chin snapped up and he suddenly looked confounded. “What a surprise, eh?”

  “She sure doesn’t sound like she’s undecided.”

  “You still gonna be best man, right?”

  “You still going to be the groom, right?”

  “Wow, that sounds funny.”

  “It’s never gone this far, old friend.”

  “She’s writing the vows for both of us. Is that customary?”

  “I got a feeling you’re going to promise to love, cherish, and obey.”

  “Now wait a minute…”

  “Too late to back out now.”

  “Well, who knows how long we’ll be out here…”

  “Yeah. I know Patrick can take it. I don’t know about Catherine.”

  “Tell me somethin’, Adrian. What are we gonna do if we catch up to them?”

  “We’re going to be way smarter than we were before. We’re going to be invisible thieves in the night. If Emma is still alive and we find her, I’d like to take her right from under their noses and be a trillion light years away before they realize she’s gone. That’s what I would like to happen.”

  “Okay, let’s do that, then. But just one thing. Have you ever met Patrick’s daughter in person?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “So we’re going someplace nobody’s ever been, to find someone we’ve never met, and steal her back from people we don’t know, is that about it?”

  “I do believe you’ve got it.”

  “Okay then. No problem.”

  On the third day of travel, still six hours out from the heliosphere of the Enrika system, a nervous R.J. woke me early. He fidgeted around impatiently while I used the bathroom. I had to visit his engineering station before coffee could be served.

  “This is weird space. We’ve entered weird space,” was all he kept saying. Wilson appeared in the galley, still in pajamas, his hair sticking up in an Our Gang cowlick. He watched us with a sleepy, disconcerting stare.

  “It’s a flood of noise in the low frequency spectrums. None of it makes sense. Never saw anything like this before. It bothers me.”

  “Is it affecting systems?”

  “Well, no, but still…”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “Stop and investigate.”

  “But we’re still in the interstellar medium. You said we’re five-and-a-half hours from even the hemisphere of the place.”

  “The star is weird, too.”

  “Is the system what we expected?”

  “Oh yeah, five planets, all on the ecliptic. We’re twenty degrees above so it’s a straight-in just as the flight director and nav computer have programmed, but all of this space is strange.”

  Wilson came up next to me, sipping coffee. The smell was distracting. “He’s right about the star, Adrian. I was looking at the emissions last night. It’s not a normal solar wind.”

  “You want to stop out here, too?”

  “Might not hurt. Take a close look at what we’re flying into.”

  “Okay, R.J. You win. Tell Danica to stop and bring us to station-keeping. If she complains, tell her it was your idea.”

  I looked down at Wilson’s coffee. “Are the doctors still asleep?”

  Wilson leaned in and whispered, “In the same sleeper cell.”

  “I didn’t need to know that.”

  “You want me to get you one of these coffees?”

  “Only if you don’t want a fight for yours.”

  “I better get you one.”

  Carefully balancing our coffees, we strapped in so that Danica could park us. When she was done, Danica called back. “Auto-pilot station-keeping, Adrian?”

  “Sure, but make sure the CAS l
ink to the flight director has the audible warning turned on, okay?”

  “Well golly, that’s a good idea.”

  “Sorry. Unnecessary reminder. But it’s not old age kicking in.”

  She came back to the habitat module, passing Wilson on his way to the engineering station. She plunked down in the seat across from me and gave me an exaggerated smirk.

  I shrugged. “Maybe I am getting senile or something.”

  Danica giggled. “I won’t worry unless you start reminding me to take my space vitamins, Dad.”

  I shoved a cup of steaming coffee at her, made just the way she liked it. “I’m way not old enough to be your dad, girl.”

  I cooked her breakfast. We sat together eating while the two engineers hung over their stations, studying the oddity of the space around us. We were barely halfway through the eggs when the conversation between R.J. and Wilson began to heat up.

  At first they refused to even look back at us. Finally R.J. straightened up, excitement in his voice. “We’re behind the NGC 6188 Nebula, Adrian. We’re looking at stuff nobody’s ever seen before. Man, this is not normal space.”

  Wilson looked at R.J. and interrupted. “It is a neutron!”

  R.J. argued, “Can’t be.”

  “Is!”

  “It’s the NGC 6193 cluster. It’s making everything look weird, that’s all.”

  “No way, man. That is a blue star. A neutron SSS.”

  “A slow-burning star system? You’re nuts. You’re not an astrophysicist. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Neither are you. And I’ll tell you, if there were any astrophysicists here right now, they’d be going crazy declaring it’s blue light from a neutron star.”

  “It’s the cluster effect, that’s all.”

  “Okay, let’s run it through the analytical programming. Let’s see what that says.”

  “Okay. I’m inputting it.”

  They hung over R.J.’s station in silence for half a minute. Wilson erupted, “Theoretical neutron-based star! See!”

  “I don’t believe it. The computer is confused.”

  As I stood to join them, a squinty-eyed Patrick emerged from the sleeper section. He fumbled his way through the coffee stores, gave us a split-second guilty look, then began to mix his coffee.

  I came up beside Wilson and stared down at their data screens. “Gentlemen, can we go in there or not?”

  “Not as it stands right now,” replied R.J.

  Wilson raised his chin and gave an I-told-you-so look.

  “What do we have to do?”

  Patrick joined us, sipping his coffee, avoiding looking at me directly.

  “We need to know this area of space is not harmful to biology before we get any closer,” replied R.J.

  “How do we do that, fellas?”

  “I can do that,” said Patrick.

  “How?”

  “Easy. Done it many times. We generate a few hundred stem cells of the most vulnerable tissue possible, expose them to the spectrum of radiations in this area for a certain amount of time, then simply watch for cellular aberration.”

  “How long?”

  “Aboard the larger agency exploration vehicles the recommended minimum is six hours of exposure.”

  “Patrick, we don’t want the trail to get any colder than it already is.”

  “I’ll get Cather…. I’ll get right on it.”

  I sat back down with Danica, and stared out a portal at nothing.

  “Everything okay with you these days?” she asked.

  “Fine, just fine. You getting burned-out up front?”

  “You know, I’m not, actually. Something about the ship always talking to me. I almost never get lonely.”

  “It is a reliable relationship, at that.”

  “As opposed to some relationships which are not so.”

  “You’re overdue for a sleep period.”

  “No way, Dad. From what I’m overhearing, we’re heading into a slow-burning blue-star system. No one’s ever seen one of those. You think I’ll lie in my cell and be able to sleep?”

  “No way I’m old enough to be your dad.”

  She eyed me in an unusual way. “I would be willing to relinquish the left seat to you.”

  “Smart. That way I’ll be to blame if anything goes wrong.”

  “Never trust a woman.”

  “I thought I knew that.”

  We mulled around the habitat, waiting while Patrick and Catherine remained in the science lab. Six hours later, Patrick emerged. “You are good to go, Adrian. There’s no sign of incompatibility at all.”

  “In that case, please tell Catherine to strap in.”

  I slipped back into the command seat. We wasted no time in resuming course to Enrika. Three hours later, the unexpected reared its ugly head once again. R.J. had remained at his engineer station. He abruptly came over the intercom with a tone of urgency. “Adrian, objects approaching on the long-range. They are quick.”

  “R.J. could you be a little more specific?”

  “Three small conical-shaped spacecraft, approximately three feet in diameter, on an intercept course.”

  “Weapons energy signatures?”

  “No, but we are being continuously scanned.”

  “How long before intercept?”

  “Now!”

  Before I could again ask for clarification, a shiny gray ball with probes sticking out of it appeared in front of us, matching our speed.

  Danica wrenched her head to the right. “Another one to starboard, Adrian.”

  I twisted around and spotted the third out my port windshield. “Yep, over here, too.”

  R.J.’s voice came back over the com. “Our warp fields are being dampened, Adrian. We’re slowing.”

  “Everybody strap in.”

  It was a thirty-minute slowdown which ended in capture by a three-point tractor field. For lack of anything else to do, we took the stellar drives off-line and waited. Just as I was about to ask R.J. to try transmitting greetings, he came over the intercom. “Something coming in, Adrian. Check out your main com screen.”

  TRANSIT THROUGH ADRIA PLANETARY SYSTEM PROHIBITED WITHOUT CELESTIAL CODEX.

  SPACECRAFT—GRIFFIN—TERRAN SYSTEM—EARTH ORIGIN

  NASEBIAN CODEX ALPHA-PI-THETA-UPSILON-XI-CHI-NU-NU

  YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO PROCEED

  WARNING

  EFFECT NO INTERFERENCE TO ENRIKA

  The three small craft departed so quickly we did not see them leave. They simply disappeared.

  “Wow!” said R.J.

  I looked over at Danica. “Re-engage the stellar drives, please. Stay strapped in back there. We’re going back to light.”

  We resumed course.

  An hour later, after passing though the bow shock point, and entering the Enrika System’s heliosphere, the conversation between R.J. and Wilson picked up. I could not clearly hear what they were saying, but I could tell many unusual things were popping up. As the blue neutron star began to take shape in our view screens, R.J. came forward and leaned between us. “Man, this is really spooky, Adrian.”

  “Take it easy, R.J. I don’t want you scaring Danica.”

  “Oh, funny,” she replied.

  “Yeah, you think I’m joking? The nav computer is having trouble plotting the movement of the planets and their moons.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re moving so slow. It’s hard to project a future!”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, and it’s the same thing with the rotations. We can see the terminator on Enrika from here, but the topography on it does not seem to be changing.”

  “We’re still awful far out, R.J.” said Danica.

  “Yeah, but everything here is crazy. You wait. I’ll be back.”

  “He can also be trying at times, can’t he,” said Danica.

  “Quite often actually. The problem is, he’s usually right, especially when you don’t want him to be.”

  Enr
ika’s blue sun quickly grew large. Planets to port and starboard of us became bright, glistening diamonds.

  Danica said, “Flight director is displaying the countdown for braking.”

  I hit the intercom. “Time to strap back in again. Next stop, Enrika high orbit.”

  Danica pressed a key on her monitor and looked at me inquisitively. “Boy, some of what R.J. is talking about must be right. We asked for a geocentric orbit to study those surface coordinates, but the flight director is not calling for an orbital insertion. It’s mapped a stop and station-keeping four hundred miles above the surface with a thruster-firing schedule to maintain that distance. The planet’s rotation is so slow we can hold geocentricity with nothing more than a drift. The CAS is showing no satellites or other man-made objects. It’s a very clean thermosphere.”

  “Okay, some of that is strange.”

  The forty-five-minute slowdown put us exactly four hundred miles above the planet Enrika, at the coordinates Killian’s henchmen had said were used for pay-off meetings. R.J. and Wilson wasted no time aiming the forward cameras at the surface. It took only a few minutes and we began hearing surprised laughter from them.

  I looked over at Danica warily. “You have the spacecraft.”

  “I most certainly have the spacecraft,” she replied. “You’d better go see what those rascals are up to now.”

  Behind the pilot seats, I stopped and looked down at R.J.’s station. “Okay, what?”

  Wilson said, “Put it up on the main monitors so everyone can see it.”

  An image appeared on monitors all around the ship. It was a view similar to looking down from an aircraft at about one thousand feet. We were looking at a modern city that resembled the whitewashed buildings of Santini Island or parts of Greece. The architecture was built into steep hillsides, with sprawling communities in the valleys below, a large spread of very neatly organized and spacious buildings. There were small, light-colored vehicles on white roadways, a few citizens in mono-colored clothing here and there, among carefully placed light-green trees and foliage. And there was one very peculiar aspect to it all.

  Not one thing was moving.