by Ian Douglas
“Thank you, sir.” He’d asked Hallerman, the base supply manager, to give him a list of losses and damages. “Briefly, can you give me an overview?”
“Our most serious material loss was food. When we were told you people were arriving, we moved much of the food out of supply lockers here in the E-DARES facility and placed it in three storage sheds on the surface. A natural deep-freeze, you might say.”
“Yes. Keeping it well clear of the waste storage sheds, I presume.”
Ishiwara ignored the weak joke. “Two of those sheds were badly damaged in the attack. The director has Hallerman and two of our technicians checking it, but many, perhaps most, of the food packs were torn open and exposed to vacuum. Some may have been…cooked, I guess is as good a word as any, by the surface radiation. It poses no health threat to us, but frozen liquids and sauces boiled and burst from their packs. Frozen meats and vegetables exploded. Like putting them in a microwave, you understand?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. So how much do we have left?”
“Mr. Hallerman will have the complete report later today. As a first estimate, however, I would guess that we have one week of food left for everyone here. If we skimp and go on short rations.”
That was bad. It would take a week for a ship to get out here from Earth. The Chinese sure as hell weren’t going to share their food. “Very well. We will go on short rations, Doctor. And I will talk to Earth at once about getting a supply ship out.” If it could run the blockade of that Chinese cruiser up there. What was really needed was a full relief expedition, with an American warship to take out the PRC vessel.
“There…is another matter, Major Warhurst.” Ishiwara looked uncomfortable. “Something I must discuss with you.”
“Go ahead, Doctor. I’ve had nothing but bad news so far today. A little more won’t hurt me.”
“Dr. Vasaliev and the others…requested that I speak to you. They are…we are concerned about what the Singer may think about what is going on up here.”
“The Singer? I thought you all believed that to be an automated beacon of some kind? Do you have some new information? That it’s…manned?”
“During the fighting yesterday, shortly after the Chinese ship bombarded the crater, in fact, the Singer fell silent.”
“My God!”
“It is the first silence we have heard since its discovery. It remained silent for twenty-eight minutes, sixteen seconds, and then resumed its song. The patterns of sounds seem to be much the same. ELF emissions have increased, however.”
“Extreme Low-Frequency radio waves?”
“Yes. The Singer has always emitted some, but the power of its transmission has increased now by a factor of two.”
“Is it trying to communicate?”
A shrug. “We don’t know. ELF waves, unlike shorter EM waves, penetrate water to great depths. They do not penetrate ice well, however, though we have been picking up the signals where the ice is thin.”
“Like here, at the Pit.”
“Exactly.”
“So…what does all of that mean?”
“We don’t know. And that, Major, is the point. We don’t know.” He spread his hands. “To those of us monitoring it at the time, it was almost as though…as though it were listening. And the ELF transmission could be an attempt to communicate. Or…it could be RF leakage from some other process entirely. We have no way of deciphering it.”
“You really think it could hear us? Hear the battle, I mean? It’s eight hundred kilometers from here, and eighty kilometers deep.”
“Believe me, Major. I have had considerable experience working underwater. Sound travels very well in the sea, and the roof of ice would serve to focus the sound downward, into deep channels. Yes, I believe it heard. Certainly the sounds of the bombardment. Perhaps other things as well. We don’t know what their capabilities are.”
“What do you recommend?”
“There is little that can be done at this point, Major. Unless you would care to release the research submarines you brought here with you. For as long as we have listened up here, the Singer has remained unmoving, unresponsive. Someday, we will have to go to it, if we are to make contact.”
“I agree, Doctor. Unfortunately, we’re in the middle of a war here, you may have noticed. Not exactly the best time to try making contact with an alien civilization.”
“Understood. But…if it should become necessary to make direct contact…”
“Show me unequivocal proof that we can talk to them, and that they want to, and I’ll do everything in my power to see that it happens.”
“There could be a terrible danger. This…this war is not exactly proof of our civilized nature. We don’t know how the Singer will react.”
Jeff folded his hands before him on the desk. “Dr. Ishiwara, my orders are to safeguard American and CWS interests here on Europa. The Chinese are a threat to those interests. What do you suggest I do to stop them—use harsh language? Anyway, if the Singer gets interested enough to come up and see what’s going on—”
“We might wish it had stayed below, Major.”
“So what is it you want? To surrender? That’s what the Chinese are demanding.” A single, brief communiqué had come through after the enemy retreat from the crater yesterday: Surrender or be destroyed. It was part ultimatum, part message, a declaration that the enemy considered their initial defeat a temporary setback only.
Ishiwara sighed. “Some here have suggested as much. To be blunt, they don’t see any other way out.”
“Dr. Vasaliev?”
“I shouldn’t name names. But we have discussed it.”
Warhurst watched the Japanese scientist for a moment, hands folded. The man returned his stare with a bland lack of expression. “They put you up to this, didn’t they?”
“Excuse me, Major?”
“Vasaliev and the others who want to surrender—or who are afraid that our little scrap with the Chinese up here is going to wake giants down below. You weren’t going along with them, and they made you do this to…what? Humiliate you? Pull you into line? Show you how intractable us low-brow military types can be?”
“I…really can’t comment on that, Major.”
“No, of course not.”
The expressionless exterior finally cracked, just a little. He looked away, embarrassed. “Perhaps, sir, you should speak directly with Dr. Vasaliev about this.”
“I think I will. I don’t like to see power or authority abused.” Jeff leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about yourself, Dr. Ishiwara.”
He looked surprised. “What is it you want to know?”
“You are an authority on underwater archeology. That much is in your record. And my impression is that while Pyotr Vasaliev is the director here, he’s basically the administrative honcho, while you’re the chief expert on our friends down below. Am I right?”
“Dr. Vasaliev has a great deal of expertise in xenotechnoarcheology. He studied under Dr. Alexander himself when he taught at CMU.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I have only the highest respect for Dr. Vasaliev, Major.”
“Of course.” He decided to try a different approach. “So…what interested you in underwater archeology?”
He took a long time to answer. “My…father is a powerful man. He was once Minister of Trade and Industry, before he became the ambassador from my country to the United States. Later he was a senior advisor with the Ministry of Science and Technology. He was largely responsible for the period of intense cooperation and technology exchanges between Japan and the United States after the UN War, you know.”
“I do know.”
“There was, of course, an almost frantic scramble to reinterpret our understanding of history and of human origins against the backdrop of the discoveries on Mars and on our own moon. A very few artifacts and certain large, architectural wonders were now seen either as constructs by alien colonizers or as structures raised by humans under alien tu
telage or cultural influence. Some of our dating conventions had to be completely revised. At the same time, we needed to be very careful not to fall into the old cultist trap of believing that every invention, every impressive structure, every ancient mystery was the result of alien interference in human prehistory. The remains of extraterrestrial colonization attempts on Earth are really quite minimal, and all have been extensively reworked and rebuilt over the ages.” He smiled, becoming more animated. It was clear that the wonder, the mystery of ancient human contact with extraterrestrials held him in its siren’s call. “At Giza, you know, the pyramids were once truncated, and reached their current stature only slowly, over thousands of years and through several redesigns. And the Sphinx did not acquire a human face until, we think, the Fourth Dynasty. An records uncovered on the Moon show that it began as a great stone lion facing the equinoctial rising of the constellation we call Leo over twelve thousand years ago.
“In any event, I grew up at a time when interest in ancient architecture, in ancient alien visitors, was exploding across Japan. How could I avoid it? By the time I was in university at Kyoto, a great deal of work was being done at Yonaguni. You know of it?”
“Somewhat. An ancient monument of some sort, submerged off the Japanese coast?”
“Exactly. An immense structure submerged since the ending of the last Ice Age, at least ten thousand years ago, probably more. It was first recognized as anomalous by divers in the 1980s. As we learned what it really was, it became an object of considerable national pride, you see. The Ancients had visited us as well as Egypt and Peru, Lebanon and Iraq. I learned to dive expressly to visit the monument. Later I joined the Navy and became an expert in small submersibles. I am afraid my father—how do you say it?—pulled strings to get me into the JDF programs I wanted.
“In the years since I have done research both on the moon and on Mars, at Cydonia and in Planitia Utopia. When they needed a submarine expert to study the Singer phenomenon, I was the logical candidate as Senior Researcher.”
“I see. Excuse me for bringing this up, Doctor, but…you lost a brother in the UN War, didn’t you?”
Ishiwara’s face again became an unreadable mask. “Yukio Ishiwara. One of the Six Eagles. A hero in my land.”
“He died attacking an American space station, before Japan changed sides and came in with us against the UN. How do you feel about working with Americans, Dr. Ishiwara?”
“That was…a long time ago. I tend not to be political in my thinking, Major. Or in my attitude toward others.”
“And yet we have a political situation here. Who will make first contact with living extraterrestrials? Us? Or the Chinese? No, I should restate that…because you, Dr. Ishiwara, will be in a position to lead that contact no matter who wins this fight. If the Chinese take over this facility, I imagine they will value your expertise. You could easily end up working for them.”
“Is that why you have denied us access to the Manta submersibles? To block us if we are forced to work for your enemy?”
“That’s part of it. We were also looking at using their electronic components, if need be, as spares. And…they may have suffered some damage in the battle. I have our SEALs checking them over now, to make sure their hulls are tight, their systems intact.
“But I’ll tell you this frankly, Doctor. If there’s a danger that they’re going to overrun this facility, or if we’re forced to surrender, I will destroy both Mantas to keep them from falling into enemy hands.”
“I…see.”
“And how about you? Are you political enough to see the dangers of letting the Chinese make first contact with a technologically advanced civilization?”
“First of all, we still don’t know that the Singer represents such a civilization. We understand very little about it at all. I’ll also say, frankly, that I fear that the Chinese intend to force contact with an intelligence which, so far, has remained completely aloof. That could have devastating consequences, for all of us. We could be like insects attempting to awaken a slumbering and ill-tempered man.
“However, I wouldn’t care to guess what I would do with a gun pressed to my head. Would any man? Would you?”
“I have my duty, Doctor. And my orders.”
“And I have my duty to my science. To knowledge, to an understanding of where we came from and who we are. It is clear we have a heritage, Major, one set somewhere among the stars, and I intend to learn what that heritage is, one way or another.” He cocked his head to one side, looking almost mischievous. “Perhaps you should set one of your Marines as a guard over me, Major. To destroy me as you plan to destroy the Mantas.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Although his orders did mention that very possibility, damn them. How far could he go along with that level of bureaucratic paranoia? “In any case, there’s no guarantee the Chinese would require your services. I’m sure they have their own scientific team over there, and a mistrust of anyone working with the CWS.”
“Quite true.”
“Tell me, Doctor. Just how would you assess the threat of our generating a bad response from our friends downstairs? I have more than enough to worry about with the Chinese knocking at our door, without also being concerned about aliens dropping in.”
“I feel,” Ishiwara said quietly, “like one of the mice in the walls. There is something extraordinarily large, extraordinarily powerful down there. It knows we’re here, but it hasn’t deigned to notice us…yet.
“And we may not like it when it does.”
Crater floor
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1310 hours Zulu
“Mission control!” Lucky shouted. “We have separation!”
The platoon channel crackled with laughter, cheers and catcalls. “Whoa!” Corporal Jesus Garcia’s voice called above the rest. “Fifteen point two one meters for Lissa, sixteen point oh five meters for Woj! A new world’s record!”
BJ Campanelli laughed. “Well, a record for this world, anyway!”
“Whaddaya mean, this world, BJ?” Lance Corporal Richard Wojak replied, laughing as he picked himself up off the ice. “You think we could do this on Earth, or any other world?”
“Absodamnlutely,” Corporal Lissa Cartwright added. “This has got to be the best ice dancing anywhere in the universe!”
There were ten of them—“volunteers,” in a you-you-you-and-you way—for a working party on the surface well south of the landing deck. Sergeant Major Kaminski had set them to welding together an A-frame scratched together out of struts taken from the wrecked bug, then using plasma torches to melt the ice so that they could raise the frame and have it freeze into an upright position. The work was well under way when Kaminski and Kuklok had retired back to the E-DARES facility to work out some problem or other with the Marine team working on the crater rim to the southwest, leaving the working party under the supervision of Second Platoon’s Gunnery Sergeant Pope.
The A-frame was up, though, in quicker time than anyone had guessed, which left ten Marines more or less on their own for a half hour or so—too short a time to bother hopping it back to the E-DARES and unsuiting, too short a time to do much of anything, in fact, but amuse themselves on the ice.
The dance competition was the result.
Lucky walked over to BJ and executed a stiff half-bow—the best he could do in his SC-swaddled suit. “May I have the honor of this dance, BJ?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” She extended her right glove and he took it, feeling the slight, invisible shove from the magnetic field enveloping her suit. He gave her arm a tug, pulling her against him, torso to torso.
The superconductor weave in the outer cloth layer of their Mark IIB suits held an electrical charge; its endless circulation around the suit generated a fairly strong magnetic field, polarized outside to inside with the positive charge out—their main protection against the proton flux that made up the majority of Europa’s background radiation. As they pulled themselves together
, forcing their suits into close contact, the like charges repelled one another, the pressure becoming stronger the more tightly they pulled themselves together.
Standing together, they took a clumsy step and kickoff in opposite directions on the ice, moving into a tight, counterclockwise spin.
In the hours since the battle, the portions of the crater surface partly melted by the bombardment had refrozen. Several areas, reduced to ice mush by the shock waves from the mass-driven impacts, had refrozen to a mirrorlike smoothness, made slick by the radiation-induced dissociation of the surface ice into a sheen of water and hydrogen peroxide. Walking was so tricky in some areas that safety lines had been set up to assist the progress of people moving about on the crater floor, checking damage, retrieving bodies, or engaged in other working party evolutions.
They’d found a particularly large stretch of glass-smooth ice south of the landing field, perfect for an impromptu round of what BJ had called Fun with Physics.
They clung to one another’s suits, gripping the carry handles set into each side of their PLSS backpacks, and continued to step and kick in unison, increasing the speed of their spin. Lucky’s visor was pressed against BJ’s, and he could see her laughing features, murky behind the dark polarization of their helmets, centimeters from his own. The flat, icy background whipped past behind her head, the rotations marked off by the small, inner gasp of surprise that occurred each time the sun or the swollen immensity of Jupiter swung rapidly across the sky. It was almost in full phase now, with the sun in the opposite sky low in the west. Their shadows stretched out across the ice, whipping across the mirrored surface like a long, black blade.
“Ready!” BJ said over the company channel. “Ten…nine…eight…”
“Seven…six…five…four…” He chanted the countdown with her, as it was echoed by the Marines standing in a broad, loose circle around the two of them. They pulled themselves even closer as they spun, battling the powerful, magnetic repulsion between them.