by Isaac Hooke
Eight Months Later
I stood on a landing of the vast, dimly lit vaulted chamber somewhere near the north pole of the Sphere ship. It had the feel of an auditorium. Rows and rows of seats, not dissimilar to those humans used, circled a central stage.
Whether the stage was for theatre, briefings, or was simply a giant cinema, we’d never know. Like much of the rest of the ship, it was half-completed. Still waiting to be fitted out properly.
Alvin stood next to me, the bot’s powerful floodlights illuminating the backdrop of the center stage. And what was on that backdrop was probably the closest to a clue we had found for where the Taus had gone.
What was it? A mission patch? A flight plan? Simply a symbol? We didn’t know, we hadn’t managed to do that much analysis into their culture. Hell, there hadn’t actually been that much to analyze on the ship, despite its size. This was a construction site, with probably the same amount of art and literature one would associate with a human structure being built. In other words, not much.
Sure, Ranger’s hold was full of what we could recover, and we’d tried to pull out pieces of interesting-looking technology, or anything which looked like it might hold data.
Leila’s team had done wonders in establishing what still functioned, but any deeper analysis into it would have to wait the thirty years it would take to get it home.
I squinted at the embossed metal work covering the backdrop. It showed a stylized depiction of the galaxy, tilted slightly forward on its plane, the flat upper edge presenting towards us. From one of the spiral arms, four lines arced away in a spreading fan.
Once again I was reminded of this species’ ambition. If I was interpreting what I was seeing right, and this wasn’t something just completely embellished, they hadn’t just elected to flee their system, or even quadrant. They’d decided to flee the galaxy.
Leila’s team, working with Rice, had completed their initial review of the Tau drive. It definitely appeared to be an improvement on ours and when we returned to Sol, would advance our technology by decades. Leila thought it could maybe stretch up to ten light years per year.
But, even at that speed, it would still take the Tau 250,000 years to get to the nearest galaxy, Andromeda. And there was nothing to suggest that was even the galaxy they were aiming for. They could be going much, much further.
Was our galaxy that inhospitable a place that they felt their only recourse was to flee?
***
“Skip.” Tyler sat in front of me in the mess, where I was wolfing down lunch while reviewing the latest archaeological discoveries. Rudely, he wafted away my holo. “Remember months ago you asked me to cross-reference point radio sources with displacement frequencies?”
In all honesty, I’d forgotten, but I nodded for him to continue.
“Well, between all the other stuff you’ve been piling on my to-do list, I’ve finished the preliminary work on it.” He had a strange look on his face, half proud, half trepidant.
I set aside my meal and steepled my fingers. “Let’s take a look.”
With a gesture, Tyler opened up a large holo-display. It hovered in front of an entire bulkhead of the mess.
It was focused on Sol. Slowly, the point-of-view began drifting out. Soon the nearest stars became visible. A scale bar shifted from saying one to five light years.
“We’re looking at a distance of twenty light years from Sol here. At this distance, we have around one hundred and fifty stellar objects.”
Boxes appeared around a dozen of them. “These are the ones which appear to have displacement drive activity around them.”
I raised an eyebrow. Some of them were stars indicated in the Sphere ship’s archives. Others were totally new. But the thought of that many stars so close to home showing signs of interstellar ships was mind boggling.
The image continued zooming out. It now showed 100 light years’ distance from Sol. At these scales, no star was individually visible; instead, it showed a frosting of thousands of points of lights.
“We have around 15,000 stars shown now,” Tyler said quietly. Large swathes of the stars turned a distinctive green. “Dozens of them show activity.”
The view scaled out again. Now the whole of the Orion arm was visible, covered in clumps of green. “All of these show activity. Some of this data is very old by the time it gets to Sol, obviously. But it’s there.”
The view panned out to show the whole pinwheel of the Milky Way. “Here’s where things get fuzzy. The black hole at the center of the galaxy, Sagittarius A, is blocking out much of the data we would probably receive. But I think the results speak for themselves.”
Every part of the galaxy which wasn’t occluded by the huge black hole which bound our galaxy together was green.
I leaned forwards, staring at the image.
Interstellar activity was everywhere.
Humans were definitely not alone.
The question was, was it friendly? I thought back to Carol Farris and what she had told me.
And gave a swallow.
Ralph Kern Bio
For as long as I can remember I've always enjoyed science fiction, especially the grand masters of the genre, Arthur C Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Alistair Reynolds and many more and finally decided to try my hand.
I hold a degree in Aerospace Technology and won the opportunity to work in Milan on the design of a Satellite, got a Pilots License (before I learnt to drive) which led to the best weekend job going, taking Air Cadets flying in a motor gliders and for a year was an officer cadet in the TA.
After all that I had a bit of a quarter life crisis and decided that I would succumb to the kid in me and follow a career in chasing bad guys. That led to a huge hole in my life though, the desire to think about what I consider 'the big issues' a desire I'm addressing with my writing.
Nowadays I've calmed down a bit and enjoy spending time traveling, seeing what the world has to offer, scuba diving, long distance running and writing of course
You can buy my books here or join the SciFi Explorations newsletter to keep up to date on my releases and promotions.
Status: Inactive
By Richard Fox
One thing they don’t tell you about coming out of suspended animation: it hurts. The cabin’s lights burned against my closed eyes and my lungs tried to breathe in fits and bursts. I smacked a fist against my sternum twice before I finally got a decent gulp of iodine-laced air.
The sting of needles radiated off my back and through my limbs as nerve endings regained their full function, reasserting themselves without any subtlety as the Sus-An effect faded away. The painful halo around the ceiling lights receded as my eyes remembered how to work. My limbs felt heavy, like they were full of slush. Tubes running from the ports on my neck, arms and thighs filled with blood-tinged fluid. The proprietary cocktail pumped into me by the Sus-An techs drained out in seconds.
I waited for green lights to flash on the ceiling before carefully removing the tubes and tossing them to the side of my topless coffin.
The thought of Jessica and Bryce going through the same thing hit me. My wife was tough, but Bryce was seven, and no kid should have to go through that kind of pain. Maybe Shiroyama Corp would have the process improved by the time I got back and they could wake up in bed, not a torture chamber.
“Wakey wakey, sunshine!” Lafige leaned over my coffin, a lit cigarette in his mouth. He looked as bad as I felt: puckered skin, inflamed skin around his ports, even the ink on the tattoos covering his chest and shoulders looked smudged.
“We do not get paid enough for that bull crap, eh Jensen?” Lafige winced as he opened and closed his hands. “You all there?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I sat up and got an instant migraine. “Guess we made it.”
“Comp’s got us in stealth mode. Should have an idea if there’s something worthwhile here—or we just wasted years on a damn crap shoot—by the time we get to the bridge. Don’t know about you, but I need to take a leak.” Lafi
ge limped away before I could get a hand up for some help out.
I uncoupled the latch on the side of my coffin and swung my legs over the side. The cold floor stung my feet as I hobbled over to a showerhead, nestled against the bulkhead next to a row of mostly empty lockers.
Lafige beat me to the bridge. Most of the workstations were unpowered, their functions jerry-rigged to a pair of consoles against the front view ports. The Moonshot should have had a full complement of crew, but all she had was me, Lafige and a slew of robots and drones working through her innards.
A lime green star burned in the distance. The great swath of stars from the Milky Way’s core stretched across space. My first extra-solar trip, can’t say the view didn’t impress.
Lafige, a scope set over the upper half of his head, took a drag from his cigarette and tapped his ashes over the side of his chair. Smoking was normally on the ‘Hell No’ list of activities on a spaceship, but as he and I were the only ones aboard, we disengaged that restriction from the ship’s life support systems. I didn’t smoke, but I’d seen him tear through a pack and a half a day. Nicotine fiends were not pleasant in close quarters. I swear he smoked just to irk those around him.
“How’s it looking?” I sat in the other chair and skimmed over the Moonshot’s last status report. She’d held up well during our twenty-three-year trip, only some strain on the cargo bay integrity and minor malfunctions in life support to unoccupied parts of the ship. The fabrication plant and raw material stores were green across the board, which were the only parts of the ship that Shiroyama cared about. The displacement drive worked as promised, releasing us almost three AUs from the primary.
“Like shit,” Lafige’s unshaved jaw worked with anger. “Computer on the Sphere ship said this species was inactive. That chucklehead Marcus said he thought—thought—that might mean they were in hibernation, right? Mr. Shiroyama gets a bright idea and then we get tapped to come take a look-see without the FCF’s express written approval.”
I touched a finger to his scope and pulled out a mirror of his video feed, then dropped it in the holo tank in front of me. A dense swath of asteroids stretched across a quarter of the outer edge of the star’s Goldilocks Zone. I dialed through the ship’s passive sensor logs and built out the star system…and felt a cold pit grow in my stomach.
“There’s no habitable planet,” I said. “Small nickel-iron planet at .3 AU, really eccentric orbit, two outer gas giants…radiation is too strong for anything on the moons to live. Wait a minute…”
“Waste of time,” Lafige pushed his scope aside and kicked his feet up onto his station. He crossed his ankles and arms, staring daggers at the star beyond. “‘Inactive’ my ass, there’s nothing here. You know how much I’m getting paid for this gig? Spacer’s minimum plus royalties. We come back with an empty hold and all I’ve got to look forward to is a couple months’ gambling money and the chance to piss on the graves of people I owe money to.” He lifted a heel and slammed it against his work station.
“You,” he shook his head, “you decide to skip a salary to put the wife and kid on ice. Told you that was a bad call.”
I resisted the urge to tell him where he could stuff my bad call and sifted through more graviton readings. A three Earth mass planet high over the system’s plane, on a projected path that would break loose of the star’s gravity and send it wandering through deep space in a few thousand years. The planet was a volcanic hell hole, covered in bright blotches of sulfur allotropes.
I laid down a plot of all detected comets…and leaned back into my chair.
“This isn’t right,” I said.
“No kidding. The FCF said there was something out here and all we’ve got is a whole lot of nothing.”
“No, look at all these comets. Tens of thousands of long period orbits around the primary is way too high for this point in system formation. The intersection with the asteroid belt and the outer gas giants—”
“English.”
“Something knocked this system out of whack, upset the gravitational balance. The inner system will get pummeled by comets and asteroids from the Kuiper Belt until it sorts itself out. Whatever happened…it wasn’t that long ago. There are no micro-singularities on the scope. Models say with 90% certainty that planet about to go rogue was beyond the Goldilocks Zone.”
“So not only is there nothing here, the whole system’s a disaster zone. Great. Knew I should’ve pulled strings and got on the Thetis.”
I zoomed in on the asteroid cluster, not a belt as it had yet to form a ring around the star, and ran a spectrographic analysis on the mountain-sized chunks slowly rotating in the void.
“Lot of oxygen and carbon dioxide gas clinging to the asteroids,” I said. “That was the inhabited world…was. There are sediment striations on some of the rocks. Given the size, it looks like the planet broke up under gravitational sheer. Like a big hand crushing an apple.”
“You sound hopeful.” Lafige sat up and raised an eyebrow.
“There’s no one to trade with,” I said, “but I bet we could find something in the rubble worth bringing back.”
“We’ve got survey drones that can scan all of Mars in a few hours. It’ll take a hell of a lot longer to go through what’s left of Humpty Dumpty out there.”
“Fire up the foundry, build more drones. They’re expensive, but Shiroyama would rather we take a hard look at this place before we shrug our shoulders and head back.”
“I’m on the clock and it’s Shiroyama’s dime. Fine, I’ll get the drones loaded up in the launchers. But that old bastard wants to dock us for expenditures, don’t expect me to cover your share.” Lafige got up and went to the lift leading to the Moonshot’s hold.
I took a picture out of my breast pocket: my last day with Jessica and Bryce. After the crash on Europa, I was uninsurable and un-hirable. I was still a spacer, one that had to beg for the chance to go on this mission. I’d get a pittance in royalties for whatever the ship brought back. That might be enough for my family and I to start over.
I fired up the ship’s active sensors and scanned the asteroids where a living, breathing planet had once been.
***
Acceleration pressed my body against the EVA rig as I flew toward a cluster of shattered rocks the size of city blocks. Pebbles bounced off my vac suit and helmet and I slowed down. The suit was rated against small arms fire, but I’d seen too many spacers spill their air from tiny flecks of rock whipping around void mining operations. Space does not forgive mistakes or extend second chances.
Lafige zoomed ahead.
“Come on, you pussy! Paydirt’s waiting!”
In the three weeks since our arrival, he’d grown more morose and complained longer and louder than usual, until one of the drones finally found something of interest. I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes as we loaded up a shuttle to take us to the find.
I took the long way around a spinning hunk of rock the size of our shuttle. As it passed overhead, I swear I saw square tiles on one side.
“Bingo!”
There, on the jagged edge of a larger asteroid, were the remains of a structure, a few meters in height and hexagon shaped. A wide paved road ran from the building to the asteroid’s edge. The outer surface had been bleached white by ultraviolet rays; the surrounding ground was nothing but washed out bedrock.
“What do you think?” Lafige landed nearby and stepped clear of his rig.
“Definite knowledge of mathematical concepts. Height of the builders in line with something that would evolve in the gravity this place had when it was in one piece. Can’t tell how long it’s been here.” I tapped my retro-thrusters and set down gently. Pitons shot out and anchored against the bare rock surface. The rock’s rotation cancelled out all but the barest hint of gravity. I activated the magnetic locks in my boot heels and felt them bite into the surface.
Lafige took a Gauss carbine off his rig and made his way toward the house. I bounded behind him.
“You’re not going to need a weapon,” I said. “Whatever’s in there has been exposed to raw vacuum for—”
“No chances,” he said. “Can’t spend money when I’m dead, and even the bullet riddled remains of anything alien will be worth something. Even their garbage would be a tourist draw in Vegas…bet I can have the drones cut this place out of the rock. We’ll bring the whole place back.”
The building had a sloped tile roof; missing shingles gave a peek at the darkness inside. A semi-circle indentation against the outer wall looked enough like a door to get our attention. I leaned close to the wall: the surface looked like worn concrete, tiny flecks of burgundy paint survived in the cracks. I ran my scanner over the wall.
“Polymers,” I said. “Badly degraded from void exposure, but the building material is on par with mid-21st century techniques.”
“My grandmother lived in a pre-fab down in Florida, smelled like cats.” Lafige pressed a hand to the indentation, which sank slightly beneath his touch.
I took a plasma cutter off my belt and snapped it onto the ring mount on my other hand.
“Let me do it,” I said.
Lafige pressed harder, and his hand ripped through the door. He ripped a chunk the size of a garbage can lid free and tossed it against the ground like he was skipping a stone across a lake. He kicked out an entrance; the door held up like it was made from brittle paper.
My partner activated the lights on his carbine and vac suit and went inside.
“You know there’s more money in archaeology than tomb raiding, right?” I stepped over the breach he made and into the structure. The interior walls were bare, the floor square tiles that crumbled to dust beneath my steps. Scraps of plastic sheets shuffled across the ceiling, moved along by the asteroid’s rotation. The interior walls ended in a hallway that ran around a room in the center of the structure; each of the six sides had a spacious room, but I couldn’t see what was in the center.