Excalibur's Quest

by Dietmar Wehr

  Neither one of them had anything more to say for the remainder of the time until the ship approached the relay buoy. It was just as large as the one in X1. The AI brought the ship within 200 meters of the device, which did not respond in any way to any of the signals that the ship tried to send. The Vergon had given the humans specific instructions on what to do now. It was extremely simple. The hangar bay hatch would open. The communication module inside the hangar bay would be given the appropriate signal. It would then move under its own power out of the ship and over to the defunct relay buoy. At that point, Excalibur’s job, insofar as the deployment was concerned, would be over. The Vergon hadn’t said what the module would do next, and Koenig’s curiosity made him keep the ship close by to find out.

  He was astonished to see, on the main display, that a few minutes after the module had attached itself to the buoy, it appeared to burrow into the spherical device. When the module was no longer visible on the outside, the opening it had created began to expand for no apparent reason. The engineering AI hypothesised that the module had deployed nano-sized devices that were literally disassembling the old buoy as a prelude to using the materials for expansion of the new module.

  Koenig jumped when he suddenly felt something touch his arm. It was Soriya’s hand. “Should we be moving on to the planet to try to find out what happened?” she asked gently.

  He nodded. “Yes. You’re right. Thanks for the reminder.”

  It didn’t take long for Excalibur to approach the alien home world, still under stealth mode, which Koenig was beginning to think was unnecessary and dangerous. The ship was scanning with passive sensors only, but it was already becoming clear that the space around the planet had orbiting objects, and some of them looked like they were fairly large. Koenig wasn’t worried about the large ones. They could be seen in plenty of time to avoid a collision. It was the smaller ones that might not be seen visually until it was too late to avoid them.

  “All right, collision risk is getting too high here. Begin active scanning.”

  Koenig held his breath, waiting to see if there was any reaction from the locals or their orbiting devices. When a minute had passed with no reaction at all, he allowed himself to begin breathing again.

  The first good look at the planet showed that it was almost completely covered with clouds. Koenig had seen more than a few habitable planets in his career but never one with so much cloud cover. A thought occurred to him. “Astro, anything unusual with regards to radiation hitting the hull?”

  “Cosmic ray intensity is two orders of magnitude higher than normal, Commander. Our hull is protecting the crew; however, the intensity is increasing and will soon exceed the hull’s ability to absorb it.”

  “My God, TWO orders of magnitude?” said Koeng. “I don’t like the sound of that. That’s the kind of thing that I’d expect to see during a super-wave. Can we tell where the cosmic rays are coming from?”

  “The galactic center, Commander. Recommend moving the ship so that the planet will block the cosmic ray stream.”

  Koenig hesitated for only a moment. “Yes, do that.” Within seconds, the ship had taken up a more or less stationary position over the far side of the planet, part of which was in the sun’s shadow.

  “Radar can show us the layout of the surface, but I doubt if it’ll provide us with the answer to the big question. Astro, can the ship drop down below this cloud cover?” asked Koenig.

  “In theory, yes. It has never been done, but the vertical maneuvering units have sufficient thrust to offset the planet’s gravity; however, dropping below two kilometers altitude is not recommended.”

  Koenig and Soriya exchanged looks. His idea of dropping deep into the planet’s atmosphere clearly made her nervous. He gave her an encouraging wink and said, “Astro, take the ship down below the cloud cover while maintaining a two-kilometer minimum altitude.”

  “Acknowledged and executing,” said the AI.

  “Maybe I should take a shuttle down instead?” said Soriya.

  Koenig tried to make his response sound carefree to hide his own nervousness. “What, and let you have all the fun? Not this time, XO.”

  The descent took almost five minutes as Excalibur slowed to a velocity that would not cause the hull to overheat from air friction. The main display was now switched to the ship’s bow opticals. Koenig’s tension increased as the ship plunged into the cloud cover. He knew that radar was scanning ahead for any mountains or artificial obstructions, but he still felt like they were flying blind. The display sidebar showed the altitude, which continued to drop, and yet the cloud cover just kept going on and on.

  It’s the cosmic rays. The thought popped into his consciousness along with the memory that early 21st century scientists had confirmed experimentally that cosmic rays hitting water molecules in the air caused them to form clouds.

  When the altitude hit 3.4 kilometers, the cloud cover dissipated. Radar had already detected structures that could be a city, and the astro AI had maneuvered the ship in that direction. The city was coming up fast as the ship slowed to a more manageable 10 meters per second.

  “I want a slow pass over the city,” said Koenig quietly. The AI acknowledged the order. As the ship began a gentle turn, Koenig and Soriya were able to see the ship’s shadow moving across the ghostly cityscape. The size of the shadow surprised Koenig, but he quickly realized that he shouldn’t have been. Excalibur might be a light cruiser, but she still massed almost 33,000 metric tonnes, and her hull design was wide and relatively flat. He shifted his focus back to the ground and the spaces between the buildings.

  The city seemed to be deserted, with only animals of a variety of shapes and sizes wandering around, sometimes individually and sometimes in small groups. The land surrounding the city seemed to be teeming with animal life, but there was no sign of any humanoid beings at all. Koenig found the images disturbing but couldn’t figure out why he felt that way. When he looked over at Soriya’s face, he saw that she was frowning and looking unhappy too.

  She noticed him looking at her and said, “There’s something about this that I don’t like.” He nodded but said nothing.

  After the ship had made a complete 360-degree sweep over the city, Koenig cleared his throat and said, “Let’s head for the next city as fast as possible without stressing the hull. I want to see if it looks the same.”

  The second city looked the same, right down to the animals milling around. Koenig wanted to check out a third city but changed his mind when the AI told him there were no more cities in daylight that weren’t also exposed to high levels of cosmic rays. When he learned that they would have to wait almost nine hours for another city to move to the low-cosmic ray side of the planet as it rotated, he decided they had seen enough.

  “I don’t see any point in waiting nine hours to see a third city. The complete lack of any EM transmissions tells me that the rest of this planet is the same as what we’ve already seen, and I’m not prepared to send anyone down to the surface for a closer look. We don’t even know what to look for! If this was caused by the super-wave, then the systems that haven’t been hit yet should still have intelligent life on them. If they don’t, then we know that the super-wave is not the cause, and its arrival now is just a coincidence. Astro. Can we reach jump velocity without dangerous exposure to the cosmic rays?”

  “Affirmative; however, staying in the planet’s cosmic ray shadow until we reach jump velocity would mean jumping in the wrong direction. Therefore it is recommended that Excalibur make a short jump to a point beyond the super-wave, re-orient its heading to the correct destination and jump again.”

  “That’s acceptable. You may begin.”

  One of the larger animals on the surface looked at the dark object in the sky that seemed to be the source of the increased humming sound. It searched its confused memory for a similar sight but found nothing, and yet, there were some vague memory fragments of seeing other objects in the sky and even one of looking down on to the
ground from a great height. The pungent smell of a nearby female in heat took its attention away. Those memories, and others that the creature found confusing, were becoming harder and harder to hold on to. Even as the creature mounted the female, it couldn’t help feeling a sense of despair.

  Koenig was relieved when the ship made its initial jump away. The jump itself only lasted a few minutes. The astro AI reported that cosmic ray intensity was back within normal parameters. They had outrun the super-wave, which travelled at near-light speeds.

  After a quick conference with the astro AI, with Soriya present, one of the other signal source systems that was a safe distance from the projected path of the super-wave, and which was now designated as V2, was chosen. Because the distance to V2 was not large, the estimated transit time at 30% light speed was so short that Koenig ordered the AI to slow down the pre-jump velocity enough for him to get eight hours of sleep before they arrived.

  V2 was quite different from V1. As soon as the ship dropped back into normal space, the com AI reported a cacophony of EM transmissions on a whole range of frequencies. Koenig once again cursed the Vergon for not providing a translation matrix so that the humans could communicate with the Sengal.

  “Can we at least get some video images?” he asked.

  “Affirmative. Switching signal to the main display, Commander.”

  What Koenig saw was the upper body of a generally humanoid-looking form. The head was wider than a human’s, but it had two eyes, one mouth, and something that could have been a nose. The long hair prevented knowing if there were two ears in the usual places. The creature was talking, but without the translation matrix, it was all just noise to Koenig.

  “Why is there something familiar about this image?” said Koenig to no one in particular. It was the com AI that answered.

  “There is a superficial resemblance to one type of large animal on the V1 home world.”

  “Show me,” said Koenig.

  The image shifted to one side. The other side showed a zoomed in image of one of the larger animals in the first city they had examined. The angle was different, but when the com AI used its equipment to isolate, enlarge and then rotate the animal image, Koenig gasped in shock. While most of the other animals of the same type were walking around on all four limbs, this particular animal had reared up on its hind legs, and while it wasn’t identical to the humanoid in the transmission, there were definite similarities between the two heads.

  “DNA mutations,” whispered Koenig. “They were experiencing widespread DNA mutation. My God. Something turned these people into those animals. Could a biological weapon do that?” He wasn’t really expecting an answer since the AIs on the Bridge did not have bio-genetic data to access, but he got one.

  “One theory, which has not been widely accepted, was first proposed in the early 21st century, namely that genetic information was being transmitted from the galactic center every 65 million years or so that rewrote the DNA of all lifeforms exposed to it,” said the astro AI.

  Koenig frowned and slowly shook his head. “How could any civilization accomplish that? The amount of power they would need to broadcast that much information would be unimaginable.”

  “The main reason why this theory was never widely accepted was that it postulated that stars in general, and the giant black hole at the galactic center in particular, are sentient entities that consciously decide to modify all galactic life.”

  “No wonder the theory never gained traction. How could anyone believe that a star was a conscious being?” asked Koenig.

  “Unable to answer that question, Commander.”

  Koenig stared at the display that was still showing both images. It just didn’t seem possible that a massive black hole at the center of this galaxy could have the intelligence to conceive of new DNA and then broadcast that data to the rest of the galaxy. And yet, it was hard to argue with the fact that SOMETHING had caused the humanoids on the home world to mutate into something different. While the animal’s head retained some similarity to the humanoid, the rest of the body was noticeably different. And it had apparently all happened in a matter of weeks, not decades or years.

  Koenig was still in the process of coming to grips with the situation when the tactical AI made a report.

  “There is a large volume of space traffic that we’re detecting by their communications. Analysis of the doppler effect shows that all of the outbound traffic is heading for star systems that are further away from the oncoming super-wave. It would appear that the inhabitants are attempting to evacuate this system.”

  “Obviously they must think that the super-wave is dangerous, although the atmospheres around planets like this one and their home world would be able to filter out most of the cosmic rays, at least enough to protect life on the surface from a lethal dose,” said Koenig. After a pause, he added, “That begs the question of why they’re in such a hurry to leave. They have years before the super-wave gets this far; right, astro?”

  “Affirmative, Commander. The wave of cosmic rays will not arrive here for another 3.6 years.”

  “That gives them plenty of time to make preparations for the impact on their equipment. I just don’t understand why they feel the need to leave now, and thanks to the Vergon, we can’t ask them why.” After pausing for almost a minute, he continued. “I don’t see any further benefit to remaining here. Astro, take the ship back to X1, and we may as well use the trip back to make some of the jump tests that you recommended. Com, give me inter-craft. I’m going to bring everyone up to speed.” When the AI indicated the internal channel was open, Koenig cleared his throat and began speaking. “This is the CO…”

  Chapter Five:

  The trip back was made in record time, even though it was made up of a series of jumps of gradually longer distances made with gradually higher velocities. Koenig now felt comfortable with pre-jump velocities of up to 50% of light and jumps that were long enough to cause time dilation effects. The net effect of the time dilation and higher hyperspace velocities was that the trip back was not only faster, it seemed to be a lot faster. By the time Excalibur was back at X1, Koenig checked the amount of time that the astro AI calculated had passed back on Earth and was a little shocked to see that it was almost four months. He made up his mind that as soon as they were free from Vergon obligations, the ship would head home and set a new speed record doing it.

  As soon as the ship was within range of the relay buoy, Koenig sent a recorded message explaining what they had found. The Vergon ship was nowhere in sight. A reply came back three hours later.

  WE DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE MUTATIONS WERE CAUSED BY A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON. THEREFORE THE ONLY LOGICAL CONCLUSION IS THAT THEY WERE CAUSED BY MUTIPLE WAVES OF WHAT YOU HUMANS CALL COSMIC RAYS. YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED THE TASK GIVEN TO YOU AND WE WILL FULFIL OUR PROMISE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL HELP YOUR SPECIES SURVIVE THE WAR. THERE IS A COMMUNICATION MODULE NEAR OUR RELAY DEVICE. YOU MAY TAKE IT BACK WITH YOU TO USE TO CONTINUE TO COMMUNICATE WITH US. IT CONTAINS ALL THE INFORMATION NEEDED IN ORDER FOR YOU TO CONSTRUCT MORE COPIES FOR YOUR OWN USE. THE HYPERSPACE MANEUVERING EQUIPMENT WE’VE GIVEN TO YOU WILL LET YOUR SPECIES MIGRATE TO SAFER AREAS OF THE GALAXY BEFORE THE COSMIC RAY WAVES ARRIVE. BE AWARE THAT OTHER RACES WILL BE MIGRATING ALSO AND WILL BE SEARCHING FOR HABITABLE PLANETS. THOSE PLANETS MAY BECOME THE CAUSE OF FUTURE CONFLICTS. WE RECOMMEND THAT YOUR SPECIES BE WILLING TO SHARE SUITABLE HABITATS TO AVOID SUCH CONFLICTS. YOUR SHIP IS FREE TO RETURN TO YOUR SPACE NOW.

  Soriya asked what Koenig himself was wondering. “Migrating to safer areas of the galaxy? How could we possibly evacuate billions of people?”

  Koenig shrugged. “I guess it depends on how much time we have. When will the super-wave reach Sol, Astro?”

  “Based on the assumption that the super-wave was ejected from the galactic core in all directions at the same time, it will reach Sol in approximately two hundred and thirty-three years.”

  “That long!” Given that the Vergons kne
w where human space was, it seemed odd that they would feel the need to mention a mass migration with that much time left. On the other hand, moving over ten billion humans somewhere else was not something that could be done quickly, if at all. Maybe civilizations needed that much time to force the population down to a level that could be moved relatively quickly. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about that problem. Keeping humans from being exterminated in the short run was enough of a challenge, but the time frame did make him wonder about something else.