Love and Other Metals

by K. P. Redmond

  I’m supposed to monitor the displays at the same time. If there’s gonna be a solar storm, we’ll get a space weather alert from Luna. The main thing we’re worried about are micro-meteoroid showers. They can come at any time, and statistically on a voyage of this length, Nastez figures it’s even money we get smacked by the zippy little rocks at least once. The anti-collision system will automatically sound the alarm when space debris is detected by radar. But both Nastez and the captain believe that the software ain’t reliable for small objects moving fast. They say that sometimes a human can pick out patterns that a machine might dismiss as noise. Yea, I know, it’s kind of dumb. But they’re officers so I do what I’m told.

  Nastez has gone back aft to work on unpacking evasuits—the heavy, long-duration suits that we will wear on Hrothgar—so I’m alone. It’s getting late in the watch and I’m bored. I take a moment and compose a note to Macy and Mason back at the Home. I tell them how exciting my new duties are; I start to leave out the part of being Captain of the Head, but then decided to tell them about it anyway. I know Mason will think it’s funny; Macy probably will too but I can just see the big show of crinkle-nose disgust on her face when she reads about it. Two little firecrackers. I remind them that they can send me messages too, although it’s possible the orphanage is making it hard for them.

  That done, I look for something else to do. Nastez don’t seem to mind me fingering my guitar on the flight deck to pass the time so I’ve been doing that off and on. But without the headset I can barely hear it over the hum of the flight deck. I study the headset, tucked into its little nook on the side of my wristy. I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I look at it—but then I laugh at myself. It’s just a dang headset! What the heck, I figure, even if the it bugs out again it’s not like it’s going to explode on my head. So I put it on.

  Everything seems to work fine; I pluck a few notes and I hear a few notes. The same ones I hit this time. So I start going through some scales just to warm up my fingers. But when I stop, the sound of the strings don’t stop. I hear extra notes that I didn’t play. Then a few more notes when my hand is totally off the fretboard. Then my previous recording plays back through the headset and we’re back to the races with weird harmonies and electronics and something that sounds like a didgeridoo…do I hear bagpipes? This is really creepy. I tap on the headset and look at the wristy. It’s not even broadcasting to the headset; the transmission is coming from somewheres else.

  I shake my head and rip off the headset. Nothing is making sense no more.

  I’m staring at the console but not seeing it. I’m inside my own head, running the possibilities around and around, bumfuzzled. What is it that my headset is receiving?

  “What’s going on?” asks Katya.

  I jump a little and turn to her. She’s standing right next to me, watching. I’ve been so engrossed in my headset problem that I hadn’t noticed her arrival. “Um…I don’t know,” I say. “My headset is acting up. Something is wrong with it, or maybe with the wristy. I was playing guitar—but I’m hearing stuff that I didn’t play.”

  She tilts her head. “Really? That’s strange. Maybe the file got corrupted?”

  “Yea, that’s possible I reckon. But the weird thing is, what I’m hearing back ain’t random. It’s extra notes, like as if it’s being composed.” At least that’s what I was thinking but now that I’ve said it out loud—that it’s composed—I realize how stupid it sounds. She’s gotta think I’m an idiot.

  But if she doubts me, it don’t show. Her eyebrows furrow with interest. “Can I listen?” she asks. Sure, I nod. She pulls out her own headset and mates it to my wristy. I play a few notes on the guitar. The notes come back, then more notes, then a synthesizer, then me singing that same song from the other day. She lights up. “That is really bizarre! It even sings!”

  I know I’m blushing. “Um, that’s me, actually. From before.”

  “Oh. But you’re right, it’s not random! Not at all!” She pulls a meter out of a bulkhead compartment and waves it over my wristy. She shakes her head, confirming that the wristy is not transmitting. She holds the instrument in the air, slowly turning with it, trying to find the source. She settles on a direction. “It’s coming from outside,” she says. Without another word, she sits at her comm console and her hands fly over the controls. “I can triangulate using the ship’s antennae. Let’s hope whatever it is keeps transmitting.”

  The sounds keep coming through my headset. If this is a ProvGov ship messing with me, my goose is really cooked now. But as hard as I try, I can’t imagine why they would do such a thing. So I sigh and hope for the best. There ain’t much else I can do.

  “It’s about 20 kilometers out,” she continues, “on the starboard side, at about 2 o’clock, 15 degrees elevation.” She peers hard at the display, her hands working a small joystick to zoom the camera. She plays with the zoom. She adjusts focus. But there ain’t nothing there. Katya searches for several minutes, her pretty face locked in concentration. Either the source is invisible or too small for the cameras to pick up or it’s coming from another dimension or who knows what. She sighs and puts her hand on her forehead. “There’s just nothing. I honestly don’t know what else to do. Any ship would have been pegged immediately by the radar. Maybe some kind of tiny drone?”

  “I got no clue,” I say. “I get the feeling like somebody’s trying to talk to us, though. Maybe they just don’t know English.”

  “You’d think they’d talk in whatever language they know, but OK, maybe…let me try some Ukrainian.” She keys her headset to transmit. “Vitayu,” she says, “Zvidky vy?”

  The music stops. There’s a short silence, then the sound of Katya’s voice repeats back in the headsets, as if playing back a recording. Katya raises her eyebrows and her lips curl into a frown. “Bonjour? Hola?” she says. The words replay back to her as before, then the music resumes. Me singing, mostly, but now with bonjour and hola mixed in. Like I said before, I don’t much like the sound of my own voice. And now Katya gets to hear it too. Ugh.

  “OK I’ll trying something else,” she says, as I watch over her shoulder. She sets up her console to transmit on the headset’s frequency. She uses software to make tones, like a telegraph or Morse code. She keys the console button; I hear the tone in my headset. The music stops. Whatever it is, it’s listening.

  By now Nastez is back on deck; so is Louis. We’ve got an audience. Nastez puts the sounds on speaker. Katya taps out a code. Tap, tap, then a delay, then tap-tap. One plus one equals two. The speakers respond: tone, tone, delay, tone-tone. It can repeat like a parrot at least. Katya continues. Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, then a delay, then tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Two plus three equals five.

  The speakers respond with the same pattern; two plus three equals five. But then it adds one of its own: tone, tone-tone, then a delay and tone-tone-tone. one plus two equals three. The speakers chatter on with more tones, more combinations, as if whoever is out there is grateful that somebody has finally caught on. Katya looks at me, her eyes wide. “You’re right, Straker. They are trying to communicate.” She explains everything to Nastez as Louis listens in. Louis looks lost. Nastez looks as interested as Katya. This is my first mission, but I reckon even they ain’t never come across nothing like this before.

  “This is beyond me,” says Nastez, “but under the law, if we encounter a spacecraft in trouble, we are obligated to assist and rescue if necessary. Perhaps that’s the case here. We need to know, one way or the other.” He keys his wristy. “Captain, I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve had a communication from an unknown ship.”

  “I’ll be right there,” replies the captain through the wristy’s tiny speaker. Her response was immediate. The woman never sleeps.

  * * * * *

  The captain and Nastez spend most of the next watch conferring privately in her ready room below decks. The rest of us linger around the galley chatting, listening to the speakers. My watch is over and I could ha
ve returned to my quarters an hour ago, or headed to the gym, but I am too excited. I am past my fear of being found out and realize that this was something very big. And it had all started with me. Finally, Nastez floats into the galley from the lower deck, followed by the captain. The rest of us clam up, waiting for the word.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” says the captain. “Neither the first officer nor I are happy about this, but we will have to treat this as a rescue operation. Our first priority is to establish basic communications with the other ship. We will then be better equipped to ascertain what sort of assistance, if any, they require. We also need to know their location, obviously, if we are to rendezvous with their ship. For some reason our equipment can’t determine that.”

  I look over at Katya. Looks to me like she’s taking that last remark personal but I can attest that she did try and was pretty damn creative about it. Louis is looking at her too but of course that’s his usual, since he’s crazy in lust with her.

  “So for now,” the captain continues,” we will hand the task of establishing a common language to Doctor Kapoor back in Shacktown. The home-facing laser comm link will be prioritized for that purpose.” She looks over at Katya, who nods. Then the captain turns to me. “Recruit Yuuta, am I correct that you have an acquaintance with Doctor Kapoor?”

  “Aye Cap’n, I do. Doc Kapoor is the smartest man I know. He was a friend of the family back when, uh, my dad was around. Went to school with his daughter Alia too.”

  “Oh, yes, the poor girl. All right then. Yuuta, you will assist Second Officer Navolska with whatever she requires to configure the comm. You will also act as primary point of contact with the doctor. Apprentice O’Neill, you will alternate water closet duties with Recruit Yuuta as needed to allow him time to work this issue.” Then to all of us: “Doctor Kapoor has been contacted and has agreed to take on the project. Yuuta, you and Navolska have a conference with him at twelve hundred hours local. That is all.”

  “Aye, captain, twelve hundred hours,” says Katya.

  With that, the captain releases her sticky boots and pulls herself through the aft hatch. I look over at Louis. He don’t look too pleased; it may feel like he’s been demoted but I don’t think it was ever the plan for me to do the honey-pot for the whole trip anyways. Mostly I think he’s pissed because I’ll be working with Katya. His dark expression makes him look more dangerous than usual. I take a deep breath and go to him. “Nothing like a little hoohouse patrol to make your day,” I say.

  His expression lightens up a mite. “Oh, well,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, “it’s not like I ain’t done it before, no big shakes. Besides, we’re sharing it, remember?”

  “Oh I ain’t forgot,” I say. “We’ll split it up fair and square.”

  “OK Yuuta. You get it day after tomorrow.”

  “Aye, Apprentice. I’m obliged to ya.” I turn to go, but then say back to Louis, “I’ll tell Katya that we’re square about the whole thing. Maybe it’ll make an impression with her.”

  Louis manages a dark grin. “Yea, well...every woman loves a man who can fix a toilet. What the hell—I’ve tried everything else.” With that, he pushes off in his effortless jock way to resume his watch on the flight deck.

  I don’t know whether to be afraid of him or feel sorry for him.

  * * * * *

  “And the foreign ship continues to transmit?” asks Doctor Kapoor. We’re sitting at Katya’s station at the rear of the flight deck while Louis and Nastez sit up front at the main consoles.

  “Not continuously,” says Katya. “It goes in spurts. They transmit music and tones, then go quiet for several minutes, then resume. It seems random to me. It responds to transmissions from our side but we can’t determine what language these people speak. All we have in common is music and simple arithmetic.”

  Doctor Kapoor’s face is blank, but that’s just the delay. These past few days we’re travelled nearly a million kilometers so it takes a while for the signals to travel to Luna and back, even at light speed. The fact that this mysterious ship talks to us without any delays proves that they’re close: there’s no getting around the basic physics. “Well,” he finally replies, “I suggest we get them to tell us what language they speak. We’ll set up a connection between them and the laboratory servers, using the laser and the radio link you’ve already established. We’ll point them to a language-learning application. The computer will catch on quick enough to what language they’re requesting. From then on we can use standard translation software and move forward with the rescue, if that’s what they need.”

  Katya and I look at each other. I shrug. Seems like a decent idea to me. “What do we need to do from here?” I ask.

  The delay again, then the reply comes: “Oh, oh yes…Katya just needs to set up the protocols on the laser between Allgood and the lab. Configure a two-way bent pipe from the laser to the radio link with the foreign ship. Then sit back and watch us work from here. Just sit back and watch. Very, very simple.”

  “Copy that. I’ll get back to you when I’ve set it up,” says Katya. “Bye for now. Out.” She kills the video, looks at me and says: “You know how to get back to the redoubt, don’t you? From the emergency training. It’s that closed hatch at the back of the pivot room.”

  “I seen it,” I say. The redoubt is the long tubular space beyond the areas of the ship usually used for habitation. It goes aft all the way to the stern of the ship, nestled under the huge water tanks between us and the nuke engines. Normally it’s used for crew protection during a solar storm, but it is also a utility space through which all the comm and power are routed between the antennae on the stern trusses and the avionics in front of the ship.

  “OK, I’ll need you to reconnect some fibers. I can do the rest from here.” She gives me the details and forwards the schematics to my wristy.

  I head aft. The redoubt is normally closed off from the habitable areas but at least it’s pressurized, so I’m told. I pull myself through the airlock and docking portal and continue on until I get to the pivot room. The hatch to the redoubt is usually kept closed as a safety measure. I pull down the two levers to undog the hatch and pull the handle. It takes a bit of effort, but once the seal is cracked, it opens easy.

  I’m staring down a seemingly endless tube about 2 meters in diameter. Except for the habitable areas of the ship—which don’t account for much of the ship’s length—this tube runs nearly the length of the ship, and it’s a very long ship. Jeez. I take a breath and pull myself in.

  There’s a bunch of equipment strapped to the curved walls: breathers, helmets, casual suits; all staged there in case of a massive decompression of the ship. There’s also a small console to talk to the ship’s computer. Some emergency rations. Beyond that, just long runs of electrical conduit on smooth steel walls pockmarked with fastening points, an occasional handhold and an even more occasional dim little light. The lights stretch out in front of me in a perfectly straight line—must be over a hundred of them—back to the butt of the ship, as the walls meet at a dark vanishing point way yonder.

  I kick off from the rim of the hatch to give myself a little velocity. Am I there yet? The wristy says no. How about now? I drift deeper and deeper into the narrow space. Drifting weightlessly, I look back past my feet towards the entrance: big mistake. The circular hatch already seems tiny. This don’t reassure me. Keep your eyes front, I tell myself. It’s really cold too; my breath fogs. I’m shivering in my jumpsuit.

  “How’s it going, Straker?” asks Katya through the wristy’s speaker.

  I swallow and try to steady my voice. “I’m in the redoubt,” I say. “Almost there.”

  “The redoubt is pretty creepy, huh?” she asks.

  “No big deal,” I say, lying. But with the help of my wristy, and with Katya’s confident voice egging me on, after about 10 more minutes I locate the junction box. I grab a handhold to stop myself. I open the box, refer to the schematic and make the changes, disconnecting
a fiber from one port to another port, which is identical to the first except for the number stenciled above it and with only a few centimeters separating them.

  Done. I rocket out of there as fast as I dare. The trip out of the redoubt is not as harrowing as the trip in, since I can see the hatch growing larger as I get closer. I have to grab hard onto a hand hold to break my speed at the last minute and almost crash edge-on into the open hatch. I’m back on the flight deck within an hour, shaking off the chills and very glad to be out of the redoubt.

  Katya re-establishes the video chat with Doctor Kapoor. “We’re ready here,” she says.

  “OK, very good, very good,” says the Doctor after the pause, “let’s give this a try.”

  Katya and I listen in from her station. The doctor starts with the same tones we used. Tone-tone, tone, pause, tone-tone-tone. The other ship responses immediately. The doctor smiles on the video. “Oh my, that’s very good indeed! Looks like our friends are still on the phone.” He continues the progression of numbers, and the foreign ship responds, seemingly with enthusiasm. The doctor then sends through a packet of pure digital numbers; there’s nothing for us to hear but we can see it on the visual display. There’s a small delay, as if the foreign ship is trying to understand the change. The packet is echoed back from the other ship, and they send back another packet immediately—with the digital number incremented by one. They’ve figured it out. Katya jumps in her saddle and squeals when that happens.

  From there the Shacktown laboratory computer takes over the conversation, from packet and echo to packet and new packet back, as both the lab computer and the foreign ship improvise and adapt to each other’s statements, each reply building on the last, the conversation quickly becoming too rapid for human eyes to follow. “Oooh, seems likes true love,” laughs Katya.