Gate Crashers

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “He wants to build a warship, doesn’t he? That’s why Mr. Rockwell was here tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a warship, precisely. Armed courier would be more appropriate.”

  “You have doublespeak down to a fine art,” Eugene said.

  “Well, I did have an excellent teacher.”

  “Don’t give me that. I taught you to identify euphemism and equivocation so that you weren’t duped by them, not so you could use them as tools to obfuscate the truth yourself. I find myself sympathizing with Dr. Frankenstein.”

  “When in Rome, Professor,” Fenton said patiently. “This is kind of inside baseball, but I’ve already succeeded in … taming the president’s response and in keeping your team operating independently, I might add.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “His first impulse was to turn the whole operation over to the Department of Defense.”

  Eugene’s face went red, and he threw up his hands. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect from that genetic throwback. He’s a nearsighted reactionary.”

  “Can you really blame him?” Fenton asked. “You’ve studied the history of politics and civilization your entire career. Tell me, how does the indigenous population generally fare when a technologically superior race shows up?”

  Eugene opened his mouth in preparation, but no firm rebuttal materialized.

  “Exactly. I’d bet that was the first thought to go through your head last year,” Fenton said.

  He was embarrassed to recall she was right.

  She continued, “Look, tensions were high enough when we discovered the buoy in the first place, not to mention the mystery ship, but that ‘wildlife preserve’ business yesterday was the proverbial last straw. Everyone in the cabinet is united in the opinion that we need some teeth to bare in case first contact goes sour. They believe we need to present some deterrent.

  “I’ve managed to convince the president, as well as most of the other advisors, that our first outreach should be a blend of diplomacy and a show of strength. And I’ll tell you something—even that concession was like pushing a cart with square wheels up a mountain.”

  Eugene crossed his arms and sighed. “So that’s the deal, huh? Take it or leave it?”

  “I’m not satisfied either, Professor, but passions have a way of cooling over time, so I think we’ll see a greater swing toward calm as everyone gets used to the idea. Besides, I don’t know what you’re so worried about. It’s not like we’re even going to be around when it finally happens.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Well, I could be,” added Harris.

  “You’re more right than you know,” Fenton said.

  “Okay, that sounded ominous,” said Harris.

  “That depends on one’s aspirations, I think,” she dodged.

  “Don’t leave him dangling, Danielle. If you weren’t going to tell him whatever it is, then you shouldn’t have dropped hints,” said Eugene.

  She paused to consider the situation. “All right. A crew for the new vessel is being considered even now. Although the crew will be civilian on paper, its members will be drawn from existing military ranks, including a marine detachment focused on boarding/counter-boarding operations. At this point, you are favored to lead the marine detachment.”

  “I’m sorry?” Harris said, genuinely shocked.

  “Why does that surprise you?” asked Fenton.

  “Because I’m not remotely qualified,” Harris responded quickly. “I don’t have any experience with first-contact situations.”

  “Oh, well, then, that is a problem. Can you suggest anyone who does have the relevant experience?”

  Harris started to run through names, but stopped when he realized the causational impossibility of finding someone experienced with something that hadn’t happened yet.

  “Um, well, no. I guess not.”

  “Precisely,” said Fenton. “What you do have is plenty of security experience and an intimate familiarity with the whole ARTists program. You’re a ground-floor member, after all.”

  “Basement,” Eugene joked.

  “The point is no one else in the corps has your firsthand knowledge of the program or relationships with the people in it. So that makes you the most qualified candidate for the job, despite your junior rank.”

  “That’s a real problem, though,” said Harris, struggling for ground. “I can hardly command a ship’s company of marines as a sergeant.”

  “No. However, the military does offer Officer Candidate School.”

  “That’s a three-year process.”

  “I think you’ll find we can speed that up a bit, given the circumstances.”

  Harris decided to let go of the emergency brake and just let the wheels of fate spin freely. Despite all the turmoil, he was beginning to think that Jeffery’s carelessness a year ago had been the biggest favor anyone had ever done for him.

  “Splendid. We’re in agreement, then,” Fenton said. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I would really like to see my bed once this week.”

  “Seconded,” Eugene said. “But there will be more to discuss another time, Mrs. Fenton.”

  “It appears time is the one thing we have in abundance, Professor. Please give my regards to your wife.” Danielle Fenton picked up her tablet, nodded to Harris, and departed.

  In the Jaguar a few minutes later, Eugene patted Harris on the forearm. “You held up admirably in there. Tell me, Thomas, how much truth was there in the answer you gave Rockwell about your father and elderly neighbor?”

  “Are you kidding? We didn’t even have a yard growing up. We lived in apartments right up until I enlisted.”

  “So you made the story up out of whole cloth, on the spot?”

  “Yup. Anybody who wanted a fence would have had to put it up in the hallway.”

  Eugene smiled broadly and silently congratulated himself again for his uncanny ability to spot raw talent in unlikely places.

  “Well played, my lad. You may just live through this, after all.”

  “Are you really that eager to get rid of me?” Harris asked quietly.

  “What? No, you’ve been excellent, Tom. Why would you think that?”

  “Because you didn’t speak out about my reassignment. You made it sound like a done deal.”

  Eugene sighed heavily and clamped a free hand on the younger, larger man’s shoulder as the streetlights passed below them. “I’d love to keep you here, Tom, I really would. And I know this will take you away from Jeffery.”

  Harris opened his mouth to object, but Eugene cut him off.

  “Oh, don’t insult me, Thomas. I’ve seen you two sneaking around like kids trying to find the Christmas presents for a year now. I was young and horny once, too, you know. I remember the signs. But if it’s a choice between keeping you here and having some other testosterone-poisoned leatherneck leading the marine detachment on that ship…” Eugene shook his head. “No, that doesn’t bear thinking about. It would be selfish of me. You’re among the best of us, Thomas. I want you representing us out there if the shooting starts. Only you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Felix sat heavily at his desk, trying very hard not to move in any direction that his aching body might object to. Unfortunately, because of the circuit training Harris had finished their workout with, that was every direction.

  Two weeks ago, Harris had approached Felix out of the clear blue sky to start a light exercise routine. It had seemed like a good idea, until Felix had a better picture of what a marine considered light exercise.

  Felix pored through fresh experimental data from Magellan’s crew. Captain Ridgeway, Chief Billings, and, oddly enough, the flight ops officer, a woman named Dorsett, had turned out to be standout researchers. Despite the fact that only Ridgeway had any experience conducting field research, she had groomed a great group on her cycle. The ground-based ARTists had taken to calling them Magellan’s A-team. Felix was relieved that they had thawed
out again.

  It was an odd sort of relationship. Here were people born before his grandparents, who might not see Earth again in his lifetime, whose faces Felix had only seen in pictures. Yet he felt he knew them better than some of the people he saw every day, especially Dr. Kiefer and his squad of QER techs. Their quirkiness seemed to grow like kelp.

  The last year had seen progress in fits and starts. The ARTists program’s current crown jewel, the advanced gravity projector, had come early in the process. Now Felix had been tasked with unraveling the paradox presented by the power-sucking transmitter.

  He was sure it was getting around the universe’s speed limit. The appearance of the fuzzy anomaly, as Ridgeway had called it at the time, was too convenient otherwise. But knowing something was happening was very different from knowing how.

  There had been several breaks, however. One of Magellan’s techs had stumbled upon the lines controlling the buoy’s maintenance panels, which now all lay open. This gave them access for all manner of scans and experiments on the transmitter.

  Felix stood up from his desk, carefully and slowly. It didn’t really stop his muscles from hurting, but he had never been one to rip off a Band-Aid either. He walked sort of hunched over to the permanent holographic reconstruction of the buoy, which was spinning lazily through the air at the far side of his office/lab.

  Someone had drawn a meter-long infinity symbol on the floor with black chalk and left a pair of rechargeable batteries inside the loops. It wasn’t the first time. Last week it had been a pentagram made of fiber-optic cables surrounding a plastic dinosaur skull. Felix wasn’t sure if it was the work of a prankster or if one of his compatriots really was going nuts.

  He cleaned up the … offering and set upon the hologram, trying to devise new tests that could give him much-needed insights. Right now, he was vexed by what seemed to be the heart of the transmitter. The metallic sphere, about the size of a softball, was the source of the radio frequency leak. Whatever was eating up all that power was happening in there.

  The office door slid open and disgorged Jeffery.

  “Good morning, Felix,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Hi, Jeff. Forgive me if I don’t get up.”

  Jeffery surveyed the room and spotted a pile of damp workout clothes. “Thomas is still running you into the ground, I see.”

  “Oh, we passed ground last week. Now we’re rapidly approaching mantle.”

  “I just can’t imagine what a sixth-grav lunar native was thinking agreeing to work out with a marine. Are you trying to induce a heart attack?”

  “No, I was … I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly.”

  “Well, whatever doesn’t kill you only leads to irreparable joint damage.”

  “Thanks,” Felix said. “But you haven’t seen the half of it. Two days ago, he tricked me into playing racquetball.”

  “How’d you do?” asked Jeffery.

  “Before or after the concussion? So what brings you here, aside from predicting my imminent physical collapse?”

  “I just wanted to see if you’re making any headway on the radio here.”

  “Not really,” answered Felix glumly. “I can’t study what I can’t test.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m sure the little metal ball here”—he pointed at the hologram—“is the core of the transmitter. Magellan’s people have used voltmeters to get a good picture of the power flow through the system. Most of the energy is going right into this thing, and these two nodes connect directly to it, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they do. The ball absorbs everything we throw at it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything. Infrared, x-rays, acoustics—they all disappear into it once they pass the casing. The scans just come back with a hole in the image, like they’re scanning nothing at all, not even the inside of the case. It doesn’t even emit any heat! In fact, it behaves like a heat sink. All that power going in, yet it’s cooler than the components surrounding it. It’s just…”

  “Impossible?” offered Jeffery.

  “Improbable,” answered Felix.

  Jeffery sat down and absently stared into the hologram. “What if it is just a hole?” he asked after several long moments.

  “Literally?”

  “Well, yeah. You said from the start that it was like the energy was just pouring down a hole. What if this is one?”

  Felix turned the suggestion over in his mind. It had the potential to answer a few questions, like where the rest of the signal strength was going, not to mention their scans.

  “Okay. A hole leading to where?”

  “That’s the real question,” said Jeffery.

  Felix leaned on his elbows and laced his fingers. “How would we test it?”

  “That’s easy,” answered Jeffery. “Drill a hole and stick a camera into it. See where it ends up.”

  “Well, that’s pretty brutal. Think of the damage we might do if we just started boring holes anywhere we pleased.”

  “Felix,” Jeffery said flatly. “We’ve been scanning, measuring, and inspecting this thing for over a year. Everyone is amazed at what you’ve deduced from it that way. However, I think it’s time you consider the possibility that you’ve reached the limit of passive research. I know you’re afraid of breaking something, but no one’s going to blame you if that happens. Well, no one that matters, at any rate.”

  Felix tried to take a deep breath, but that ended when he realized how badly his rib muscles hurt.

  “Eugene asked you to give me a pep talk?” Felix asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “All right. I fold. But you’re coming with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Down to the QER center. I don’t want to go alone.”

  “You want me to hold your hand, too?”

  “Just you wait and see, funny man. Things have gotten … weird down there.”

  * * *

  The two men walked down the short white hall in silence. They passed the Mk VI battle android, which still intimidated Felix. Jeffery presented his palm, and the heavy door slid open. They walked through the antechamber and paused while high-speed wind machines blew any loose particles from their clothing. They reached the inner door and stepped into a dimly lit makeshift shrine.

  “Who dares defile the consecrated sanctum of the—” came the booming voice of the Keeper over the intercom.

  Felix interrupted the well-rehearsed litany. “It’s just me and Jeffery, Dr. Kiefer. You can drop the man-behind-the-curtain act.”

  “Oh, right, then. Carry on,” said the voice.

  Jeffery’s eyes lingered on the red, backlit drapes that had been hung on the walls.

  “What the hell’s going on down here?” he whispered to Felix.

  “I told you it was getting weird.”

  Dr. Kiefer appeared out of the artificial dusk blanketing the center. His beaded grid necklace clinked against bulletproof glasses as he walked.

  “You’ll be ’ere to speak with the Magellan, then?”

  “Kiefer,” injected Jeffery, “what’s with the redecorating?”

  “Well.” Kiefer paused, apparently searching for words. “We wanted to spice things up a bit. It can be a bit dreary down ’ere.”

  “Well, turning the lights up might help.”

  Felix walked over to a table that had been set up in the corner. A blue crushed-velvet sheet betrayed the outline of something underneath.

  “Oh, never you mind that,” said Kiefer. “Very sensitive piece of equipment, that is.”

  “What’s with the sheet?” Felix asked.

  “Oh, for the dust. Likes I says, very sensitive.”

  “This place was upgraded to a class-three clean room. Everyone gets blown before coming inside.” Felix realized what he’d said a moment too late, but no one took up the torch, so he pressed on. “You’ve got infrared lasers built into the ceiling to vaporize any hair or skin cells floating
around. How much dust can there be?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised how much powder and stuff gets tracked down ’ere,” Kiefer said unsteadily.

  “All right, then.” Felix took the opportunity to break up the budding conflict. “We know the way back to Maggie’s QER. We’ll leave your team to their duties.”

  “Jolly good,” Kiefer said curtly.

  Once they were walking alone down the long rows of consoles, Jeffery leaned in close to Felix. “Well, I think we know who’s been setting up those creepy little pagan altars in your office.”

  “The thought had occurred.”

  “We’ve got to find a new QER crew.”

  “Good luck. There are machines in here almost a century old. Where are you going to find someone else with Kiefer’s experience maintaining them? And it gets worse. Any replacement you find will also need to pass the background checks to get clearance for the ARTists project.”

  “I know.” Jeffery shrugged. “Still, it’s something to bring up to Eugene. By the way, who’s Maggie?”

  “Who?”

  “A minute ago, you said that we knew the way to Maggie’s QER.”

  “Oh, it’s just Captain Ridgeway’s nickname for Magellan. I guess I must have picked up on it.”

  “I wonder which one the ship prefers,” said Jeffery.

  “You could ask her.”

  “Her?”

  “Well, she’s named Maggie, isn’t she?” countered Felix.

  Jeffery ignored the perfect circle of logic and kept walking. The machines grew large and clunky as they approached their destination.

  “Ever stop to think how many machines are in here?” asked Jeffery.

  “Well, we have one hundred and ninety-three yank ships in space at the moment, along with a dozen colony worlds, another seventy-eight deep-space mining operations, and the Unicycle. Multiply that number by two QERs for each, and that’s almost six hundred machines.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Jeffery said. He waved a hand in front of Magellan’s primary QER, and a virtual keyboard sprang to life. Jeffery readied his hands by the keys.

  “So what did you want to say?”

  * * *

  “He wants me to do what?” Chief Engineer Billings said carefully.