by Rick Cook
The captain watched on the screen as the enormous doors far back on the Maxwell’s hull slowly split open. Except for the space-suited men hovering gnatlike around the hatch it was impossible to determine the scale.
Slowly, carefully the space-suited workers brought the first cylinder free of its cradle. They were in no hurry. The cylinder’s mass was considerable and the more carefully the cylinders were handled, the sooner the array would stop ringing, settle down and start producing useful data.
Once the cylinder was eased out into space on the shadow side of the ship, the workers erected a sun screen, a shade of thin plastic on threadlike struts. Even this far from the star the differential heating caused by sunlight could affect observations.
On signal, the ship rotated gently to bring the next sensor bay to the shadow side. Again the doors opened and the ballet was repeated.
Gently the scooters drew the four sensors off several kilometers from the Maxwell. Two or three space-suited figures trailed along like pilot fish on a couple of sharks. As soon as they were a safe distance away, Jenkins ordered the ship to slide away on its maneuvering jets.
DeRosa played her sidestick gently and Jenkins heard the low “whoosh” of the bow thrusters and the ship eased away. It was so gentle there was no sensation of motion. Only the tendency of dust motes and other objects to float to the left told him the ship had been briefly under acceleration.
The units still needed to be positioned and aligned, but that was best done without the ship hovering so near. The scooters would ferry the workers back when their shifts were done and in an emergency, their inflatable auxiliary cabins would provide refuge for the crew.
While he watched the work, Jenkins considered the other problems he faced. Like most of the difficulties that have occupied captains from time immemorial, the people problems were a bigger headache than the problems with things.
The worst one, he acknowledged, was to keep the crew and the technicians and scientists from clashing. Hell, he thought, I’m a ship’s captain, not a social director. But he was the ship’s captain and that made it his problem. For perhaps the hundredth time he wished he had Andrew Aubrey’s easy way with people.
Maybe I should try to learn consensual management. The theory and practice of getting groups of people to work together by forging agreement was alien to him. Most of the time in the Space Force you never needed to work at it. Crews were small and most of the time everyone understood their jobs. If there was a problem you tried talking it out and if that didn’t work, you gave a direct order.
I feel like a damn dinosaur, Jenkins thought as he watched the intricate zero-G ballet unfold on his screen.
There were nine people in the conference room when Carlotti walked in. Some of them were studying the display on the wall-sized screen at one end of the little room and others were reading off the smaller screens in the wood-grain top of the long table that nearly filled the room. One or two were huddled over a screen speaking in low tones.
“Well,” Carlotti said without preamble, “I assume you’ve all seen what we’ve got so far. Does anyone have any thoughts on what that star is doing?”
“What is the spectrum on this radiation anyway?” asked Dr. C.D. MacNamara, a big soft man with a potato face and unruly blond hair.
“Surprisingly narrow,” replied elegant little Winston Chang. “Within that spectrum there are three or four strong peaks close together.”
Charlie George, the head of the spectroscopy section, ran a liver-spotted hand through his thinning white hair. “That’s a damned odd configuration,” he said as he scowled at the displays.
“A natural maser!” MacNamara exclaimed. “The star has a thick hydrogen corona and it’s masing.”
“That’s been theorized, of course,” Carlotti said.
“And here we have the first true example of it,” MacNamara said triumphantly. In astronomical circles he was known for his rather heterodox views on stellar atmospheres.
“I wonder,” Chang said. “It doesn’t precisely conform to the theoretical predictions for a natural maser. Dr. George?”
Charlie George shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s damned odd, but I’ve seen stranger emission spectra.”
MacNamara waved that aside. “Perhaps our initial readings were not completely accurate. Or perhaps the mechanism is more complex than we had imagined. It is certainly coherent or near-coherent radiation.”
Sharon Dolan sat at one corner of the table and said nothing. As the only planetologist on board, she was the head of her own one-woman department. Professional courtesy demanded she be here but no one expected her to say anything.
Carlotti sighed. The eternal problem of astronomy was trying to decide whether anomalies meant something or if they were simply problems with the data. “The data is still coming in. We’ll know more as we get it analyzed. If worse comes to worst we can always divert one of the large arrays to study the system more closely.” He made a face. Any diversion would upset observation schedules which had been worked out months in advance. Worse, it was bound to produce strains and infighting among astronomers whose observations would have to be delayed.
“I think the appropriate thing to do is to let it ride for now. We can meet again tomorrow afternoon and see if the data makes more sense. Shall we say three p.m.?”
“I hope you like bread pudding because we’re going to have a lot of it. They didn’t even eat the toast.”
Carmella O’Hara ran a brush through her short dark hair while her friend chattered on.
“It must be rough to cook and then have nobody to eat it,” she said to her friend lounging on the bunk in her tiny cabin.
Mary Beth wrinkled her nose. “In catering you don’t expect to be appreciated. But when you overestimate or underestimate how much food you’ll need, you feel like you’re a professional failure or something.”
Carmella laughed and nodded. That was why she liked Mary Beth, she thought. When she was with the plump little blonde, it was easy to relax and laugh. Pilots, vacuum jacks and engineers were so damn serious all the time, and Mary Beth Villa didn’t know the meaning of the word.
There was a knock at the door. Hairbrush in hand, Carmella swiveled around to open it.
There was Iron Alice DeRosa.
“Hello Cammy,” the older woman said.
Carmella O’Hara’s stomach tied itself in the old familiar knot.
“Come in,” she said softly.
Iron Alice stepped into the room and at Carmella’s gesture settled herself on the bunk next to Mary Beth.
“This is Mary Beth Villa,” Carmella said by way of introduction.
Iron Alice nodded and looked at the young woman. “You’re not a pilot, are you?” she asked in her gravelly voice.
“No ma’am,” Mary Beth used the title automatically. “I’m in the Quartermaster division.” She fidgeted and tried not to stare at the legend sitting next to her.
“Well, I won’t stay,” Iron Alice said. “I just came off shift and I wanted to say hello. How you doing?”
“Just fine,” Carmella said.
“Getting your simulator time in?”
“Oh yeah. They keep us pretty busy.”
“That’s good. Very good.” She got up. “I’ll talk to you later, then. A pleasure meeting you, Mary Beth.” She patted Carmella on the shoulder and was gone.
“Jesus,” Mary Beth said, eyes wide. “I didn’t know you knew her.”
“Oh yeah,” Carmella said uncomfortably. “Yeah, I know her. She’s my aunt.”
“Oh. So that’s what they meant.”
Carmella’s antenna quivered. “Who? What did they mean?”
Her friend looked embarrassed. “Well, I heard some people talking once, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Carmella said tiredly. “Look, Mary Beth, I’ve never asked Aunt Alice for anything. No special favors, nothing.”
“Sure. I understand.”
Like hell you do, Carmella though
t. No one understood what it was like to have a legend for a relative, someone who insisted on doing things for you whether you wanted it or not. Someone you looked up to and were scared to death of at the same time.
When she found out the Americans were going to get an interstellar mission, Carmella had put in for a slot. Naturally. She’d remembered how thrilled she’d been when she had not only been chosen, but had been given the rank of Senior Pilot.
She also remembered how it had all turned to dust when she found out who the Command Pilot for the Maxwell was. In addition to acting as pilot for the ship and executive officer, the Command Pilot had a major role in picking the pilots for the ship’s tugs and shuttles. Naturally.
The knot in her stomach drew even tighter.
“Carmella,” Mary Beth asked at last, “is she always like that?”
“Well, no, I mean she wasn’t around home. Look, Mary Beth, let’s just drop it, okay? And please don’t talk about this. I mean to anyone.”
The next “afternoon” a very confused group of astronomers met in the conference rooms in the forward part of Spin. It was a larger room than the one the department heads had used the day before because there were a lot more people at this one. Word of the star’s anomalies had spread and as more data had come in more people had gotten interested in this very strange new sun.
In addition to the department heads, a number of other specialists were there. Father Michael Simon had joined the group and even Dr. Takiuji had forgone his usual iaido practice to be in on the meeting.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Dr. George said half-disgustedly as he studied the information displayed on the wall-sized screen at the end of the room. “This isn’t a picture of a star, it’s a portrait of madness.”
That wasn’t a new observation. For nearly an hour the group had been poring over the data and the results of the analysis programs trying to fit what the instruments were telling them into some coherent picture.
“Are we sure the instruments are functioning correctly?” C.D. MacNamara asked almost petulantly. The new data made it very obvious that if the star was masing nearly everything he believed about stellar atmospheres had to be wrong.
“The instruments, yes,” Peter Carlotti told them. “We think the processing and data-reduction software is correct as well, but there’s always the possibility of an obscure bug of some sort.”
He looked like he had just found half a worm in an apple and so did a couple of the others. A major software problem would seriously damage their ability to make meaningful observations.
“A bug like that would hardly be obscure, I think,” Father Simon said.
“All right,” Carlotti announced, “brainstorming time. Does anyone have a hypothesis, no matter how far-fetched, that might possibly explain all this?”
“There is one hypothesis under which it does make sense,” Winston Chang said softly.
“Which is?” MacNamara snapped.
“Which is that the system has a high civilization of its own. What we’re seeing is produced by intelligence.”
For a moment no one said anything.
“Oh my,” Dr. George murmured from the end of the table. “Oh my.”
“Well, it would explain the readings,” Chang said.
“That hypothesis would explain anything,” MacNamara said tartly.
“LGM? It has for over a century,” Carlotti said. LGM was astronomers’ shorthand for “Little Green Men,” the explanation that anomalous results are caused by alien civilizations. In its time it had been suggested to account for phenomena that later proved to be things as diverse as quasars and pulsars. It remained the hypothesis of desperation in astronomy.
“If there was someone out there we would have seen something more concrete by now,” someone objected. “Even those small sensors could have picked them up at this distance.”
“Not necessarily,” Sharon Dolan said. “You have been concentrating on the star and ignored the planets and the space around them.”
Carlotti had the grace to look uncomfortable. Sharon had asked for early observing time for the planets on the small scopes and been turned down.
“It’s still preposterous,” MacNamara said.
“Fortunately it’s testable,” Carlotti said. “It won’t take much to scan those planets and the nearby regions. If there is something there we should find it fast enough.” He shifted in his chair, as if to rise. “It will take us several hours to organize a program of observation for these new phenomena anyway. While we are doing that, we might as well check the planets. Shall we meet again in four hours to discuss observing strategy?” There was a chorus of assent and the meeting broke up.
Four hours! Sharon thought as she settled herself down at the workstation in the Telescope Shack. The implication was clear. She’d have the use of the scopes only until the rest of the astronomical team was organized. That was barely enough time to start examining the planets, much less do any serious work. There was no time to implement a systematic observing plan. She’d just have to sweep the inner planets with the instruments and try to analyze the data on the fly. With luck maybe something would turn up that she could use to argue for more instrument time.
Later on she’d be able to use the smaller instruments freely, of course—after the big ones were deployed and the more senior researchers were occupied elsewhere. But that would take weeks and she wanted to know what was going on near that star now.
Well, she thought, maybe I’ll get lucky.
The first information came from the arrays. The images from the telescopes had to be enhanced to be meaningful and even with the Maxwell’s computers that took time. The array data would benefit from enhancement too, but it could be run through simpler, faster programs to get a first cut.
Sharon called for an overview of the inner system and frowned at the result. The infrared scan was showing point sources everywhere. There was a band of roughly equally active heat sources around the star and many others scattered more-or-less randomly throughout the field of view.
The creases on her forehead got deeper and she punched a few keys. There were objects that produced an effect like that, but the display showed an absurdly large number of them.
Then the second display came up and she caught her breath. Most of the heat sources were at about the same temperature no matter how far they were from the star! That implied that the objects were producing their own heat and that made no sense at all.
Or maybe it does!
“Jaysus,” Sharon Dolan breathed. “Oh Jaysus.”
Frantically, she began punching buttons to train one of the telescopes on the nearest of the heat sources.
Carlotti was on the screen. That in itself was odd, Jenkins thought. The astronomer usually liked to be where the action was and unlike most of the scientific personnel he wasn’t afflicted with space sickness.
“Captain, can you turn the ship to a bearing of twenty-seven degrees?” Carlotti was pale and his dark hair was even more unruly than usual.
“Turn the ship?” Jenkins repeated, mystified.
“Slew it, actually. We want to bring all four of the forward telescopes to bear on something.”
“Well, we aren’t scheduled for maneuvering . . .”
“Captain, please.” Carlotti’s voice was agonized.
“You in, Al?” Jenkins asked.
“Here.” DeRosa’s face blossomed in a window at the bottom of Jenkins’ screen.
“You heard what he wants? Can we do it?”
“Yeah. Not much of a maneuver. Take us about ten minutes to do it, plus thirty minutes to secure for maneuvering.”
“Thirty minutes?” Carlotti sounded like he was in pain.
“This is a big ship, Dr. Carlotti.”
“Yes, you’re right. Very well, but please as quickly as possible.”
“Would you mind telling me what this is about?”
Carlotti looked uncomfortable. “We have an anomalous object we wish to obse
rve using all four telescopes as a synthetic aperture optical array. I’d rather not say more until we have more data.” With that he blinked off.
Jenkins touched a pad and his pilot’s face grew to fill the whole screen.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?”
Iron Alice shrugged. “Someone probably spotted a comet or something.”
“Think they’ll tell us about it when it’s all over?”
DeRosa made a face. “For weeks. At every opportunity.” Captain Jenkins and the crew had their own telescopes of course, but they were widefield instruments trained outward to precisely fix the Maxwell’s position and relative motion. There were position checks on the star but the navigation software wasn’t looking for oddities. It was where it was supposed to be and their relative motion to it was within parameters. That was enough.
Dr. Peter Carlotti was practically beside himself. “Dammit, there can’t possibly be life in this system! That’s an M2 red dwarf. The life zone’s too narrow and none of those planets are the right type.”
In spite of efforts to keep the discovery a secret, there were nearly thirty people jammed into the conference room and more gathered outside the door. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another fifteen minutes but already the arguments waxed hot and heavy.
“Not right for our kind of life, but obviously right for someone’s,” Winston Chang corrected him smoothly.
“Not right for anyone’s,” Carlotti snapped. “The inner planet is as hot and airless as Mercury and the two others are Mars-types.”
“There was a lot of speculation about men from Mars.”
Carlotti snorted. “Then where are the signs? Any civilization able to go into space would leave traces all over the surface of its planet and there are none here.”
“We would,” Chang said. “That doesn’t mean everyone would. Besides, what about the Jovians? There seems to be a lot of traffic around them.”