by Mark Wandrey
“Really spectacular,” said Harold, obviously enjoying some of the same feelings. For a minute, they forgot they were virtually prisoners and Mindy stopped worrying about the deadline for finding the planet. All too soon, the lights began to come on across the Big Apple. It started from west across the Hudson and headed east toward them, several blocks lighting at a time. They both moaned as the stars began to disappear.
Mindy leaned back to catch one last look and saw Sagittarius again as it faded from sight. The nearby galaxies M28 and M22 were still dimly visible just off the bow of Sagittarius. All that was left was the tip of the hooked bow. “Hooked bow?!” she suddenly yelped, making Harold jump. “Quick, help me find the arrow!”
“It’s almost too bright,” he said and squinted against the growing light. “No, there it is. I can see M71. But it looks like an airplane or a satellite is moving through it.”
She followed his arm and there it was: the four stars of the Arrow. With a practiced eye, she looked back and forth between Sagittarius and the Arrow. “Oh my God, that’s it!”
“What?”
“On the other side of the Portal there’s a pair of constellations I named Arrow and Hook. I called it the Arrow because it reminded me of Sagitta, only with five stars instead of four. The hook was just a curious little group of six stars in a hook shape formation.”
“I can see the comparison between Sagitta and your arrow, but what about this hook and Sagittarius?”
“Don’t you see?” she cried and ran for the door. The guard looked at her curiously as she ran by down the stairs. Harold was right behind her. She reached their apartment and burst through the door. It took a moment to find a pad and pen then frantically sketch Sagittarius by memory.
Harold came in as she finished and held it up for him. “That’s familiar, but I still don’t get-”
“Look,” she said and circled the end of the archers bow. It was six stars in a hooked formation.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “What about that fifth star in your Arrow?”
“I don’t know, probably a star in between Sol and that other system!” She tossed aside the pad and snatched up her computer. With frantic keystrokes and mouse movements, she went to work. Harold gave up watching her; she was too quick to follow, so he went about starting breakfast. A half hour before it was time to leave for work, she sat back and heaved a huge sigh. “Got it,” was all she said.
Harold brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and synthetic bacon then leaned over her computer. The standardized star chart was displayed on one half, while the other was a bizarrely distorted view. He reached in and activated the animation. The strange view rotated and moved. Before his eyes, the foreign constellations morphed into familiar ones. A few stars and galaxies disappeared while others appeared. “Gamma Orionis?” he asked with a curious look. “I would never have figured a habitable planet could exist there.”
“Yep, Bellatrix. The planet must be much farther out in the system than Earth. The primary is on its last gasp. Probably won’t last another hundred million years. The damn life belt must be only a few hundred thousand miles wide. The chance of life existing at all is practically non-existent!”
“But there it is,” he said. “Your extrapolations are quite convincing. Leo will be proud.”
“Two hundred forty light years in one step. Unbelievable!”
“You can say that again. Better pack up your little buddy there, it’s time for work.” Even though it was a national holiday for the rest of the country, they still had to report in. Starting that week, they were on a six day-a-week schedule.
They quickly put away their breakfast plates and headed for the door. There wouldn’t be many people out that morning. The entire country was at home waiting for a meaningless letter.
Saturday morning dawned across the nation known as America. For days, specially appointed people had been laboring with computer programs at the Social Security Administration. For the purpose of avoiding tampering, lists were transmitted to individual Social Security offices. Each office was surprised at how many local people had been selected for one of the nine bunkers. The fact that many of their own staff had been chosen as well made them keep these numbers private, even though the press hounded them incessantly.
On the appointed morning, thousands of social security employees, couriers, and others hired for the day spread out delivering letters. Those hired on the spot were not told what they carried, but after the first few deliveries there was little doubt. All told twenty million notices were delivered by the end of the day. A surprise in the notice was that all relatives would be considered for entry to the bunkers as well as unmarried spouses and their children. Anyone with access to the numbers involved would know the total of potential invitations for the nine hundred thousand beds was nearly eighty million people. Across the nation a temporary calm settled in as the majority of the people believed they were saved and set about preparing to move to their assigned bunker. Even most of those not picked knew friends or family who were, and thus had some hope to hold on to.
In Washington DC, the phone and net connections set up to communicate with the evacuees were overloaded. Officials scratch their heads in confusion. The system had been set up to handle the less than one million notified parties. Across the nation, people slowly begin to notice that those picked to move into the bunkers were a much larger number than seemed possible. The mood quickly begins to change yet again, and the final mass exodus out of the cities commences.
Leo looked up from the computer and smiled at Mindy who was herself beaming ear to ear. “You did it, little lady.”
“Bet your ass I did,” she laughed. Leo looked back down and watched the animation for the umpteenth time, shaking his head in amazement.
“Eventually they would have figured it out over there, once a telescope was set up and a few thousand stars identified. You did it just by looking up at the night sky?”
“Yes, during the blackout. A satellite or a plane flew across Sagittus, the Arrow constellation. All of the systems in Sagitta are fairly near to the Earth so they appear similar, except there are five stars in the constellation on that side instead of four. Probably an intervening star. Anyway, when I realized the hook on Sagittarius’ bow looks like my Hook constellation on Bellatrix, I looked back at Sagitta and there was that light lining up. Million to one shot but that’s all it took to put the pieces together.”
“Gamma Orionis, eh?”
“Yes sir, Bellatrix, that’s got to be it.”
“Damned old system, main sequence K class?”
“Yeah, sub-giant, old and dark. Probably a factor of the planet’s atmospheric composition that makes it appear to still be a somewhat yellow sun that lends the sky an orange tinge.”
“Well done, you’ve got your marriage. Tomorrow okay for you?”
“It would take a month to plan a true first-rate wedding…”
“You have forty-eight hours, I’ll arrange it on Monday the 16th, and you can have the 17th as your honeymoon. Here, use my phone to call your man. The code is six-six-six.”
“Appropriate,” she said as she dialed Billy’s cell phone. He was shocked at her proposal but, to his credit, agreed in a moment. “I’m sorry we don’t have time to get your parents here.”
“They’re in Florida, we haven’t spoken for years. It’s complicated. What about yours?”
“Both dead years, and I’m an only child.”
“Well, I guess this will be easy then.”
“Yep, come to the apartment building tomorrow morning, Leo will be waiting there. He’s giving the entire staff the morning off.”
“So at least we’ll have an audience. Do I have to leave afterwards?”
“I don’t think so; we have twenty-four hours.”
“How much can we do in twenty-four hours?”
“Let’s find out,” she said and he laughed. “Love you, and see you tomorrow.” No sooner did she hang up the phone than it rang. Mindy
returned it to Leo.
“Skinner. Oh, hi, George. Last night? No, I haven’t heard a thing yet. I’m here with Mindy, and she’s found our planet’s location. Good news? Shit, that’s the understatement of the year. Okay, what’s going on?” As Leo listened, his eyes got big and he nearly dropped the phone. “Holy shit! When was this? Didn’t you try to stop her? Okay, okay, does Hipstitch know about this? Well, that’s probably a good thing. Just sit tight, I’ll be over in fifteen minutes and we can formulate a response.”
Leo put the phone down and got up, which was when he seemed to realize Mindy had been sitting there the whole time. He looked from the phone to her twice before shrugging. “Go back to work, something has come up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Sure, boss,” she said and headed for the door. All the way down to her tiny office she kept wondering just what that conversation was about.
Leo reached the Portal Dome in less time than he expected. The escort driver dropped him off, and he trundled inside as fast as his wide frame would allow. There were dozens of scientists and technicians pouring over video footage while Volant, still in his wheelchair, engaged in a screaming match with General Hipstitch. “Well, this is different,” he said as he pushed through the crowd.
“Leo!” Osgood yelled. Leo held up a hand and made his way forward until he reached the video system. On the big plasma display a brief scene was playing over and over. The lab-coated woman finishing her little act with the Portal then stepping through into the alien town ruins. It made for quite a show.
“You sent anyone through to verify if the location change is permanent?”
“I’ve considered it,” Osgood said, “but the two dueling cocks over there can’t seem to agree on anything. They’ve been screaming at each other for about an hour now.”
“Yeah, Hipstitch is a regular pain in the ass at the Portal Project, too.”
“Let’s try to get control of the situation again,” Osgood said and turned to face the crowd. “Everyone, can I please get some silence!” No one even turned to look at him. “Quiet please!” Again, no results.
“Shut the fuck up!” Leo bellowed in his bass baritone and instantly everyone fell silent, even Volant and Hipstitch. “Thanks. Now everyone not needed for further analysis and a possible crossing get the hell out. Go to your barracks and report as planned tomorrow morning, we’ll know more by then.”
Reluctantly, the group broke up and began to leave. Soon only a handful remained. Volant looked at Leo with a surprised look, obviously at a loss for words, while the expression on General Hipstitch’s face was much darker. “You, I can deal with,” the barrel-chested general said and pointed at Leo. “Maybe you can explain to me in plain English what the fuck happened here last night?”
“Well, I only just got here, but after watching the video once or twice I would have to say someone penetrated your security, gained access to the Portal and reprogrammed it for another location. Then they took a free ride.”
“Why couldn’t anyone tell me that before?”
“I tried,” Osgood mumbled, and earned another glare from the general.
“Why did you call it a free ride?” Volant asked.
“Look at the transport indicator lights,” Osgood said and pointed. “It’s the same number of lights as after our last scientist went over. Not only did this woman reprogram the Portal, she also managed to use it without expending one of the charges.”
“That’s not possible,” Hipstitch bellowed, “according to the briefing on this thing that you yourself wrote.”
“We’ve known all along that these markings around the rim are an alien language. Since we haven’t been able to spread out the research data to the world’s scientific community, we’ve been unable to make any headway with a translation.”
“Huh?”
“He said that they need more eggheads to make sense of that chicken scratch,” Volant offered. Months of working with the scientists had made him a qualified translator.
Osgood nodded then shrugged. “That’s close enough.”
“You guys are the smartest scientists on the planet, and you can’t figure it out?”
Osgood sighed at the annoying man. He was much worse than Volant; at least Volant had some college in his background. “None of us are linguists. We might be able to figure it out, in about twenty years or so.” The general scoffed, Osgood continued undeterred. “Researchers worked for more than fifty years trying to decipher the language of the Egyptians. There were only a hundred or so symbols but there was no basis to comprehend the meanings.”
“They figured it out though, and they didn’t have computers.”
“No, they didn’t figure it out. When Napoleon’s army was in Rashid, Egypt, they uncovered a black basalt stone tablet bearing inscriptions in multiple languages. For the first time, archaeologists had Egyptian hieroglyphs along with identical text in other languages. It served as a one-to-one translation; a primer for ancient Egyptian. Rashid was also known as Rosetta, hence the name Rosetta Stone. We couldn’t break the language, and it was a human language. What exactly are we to use as a basis to translate this alien language? Especially considering most of our efforts are going toward just using this device safely.”
“Well, that old chick figured it out.” There wasn’t much that could be said to that so they all just stood there and watched the scene again.
“Why didn’t you try to stop her?” Volant asked Osgood.
“What, tackle the old lady? Maybe you go around kicking women’s asses, but that's just not me. She was in the dome, so she had clearance, right?” Osgood speared Hipstitch with a glare the man returned. “I didn't know anything was unusual until she was doing her act. That’s when she started doing what you see here.”
“Can you duplicate her moves?” Leo asked.
“No.” Everyone stared at each other. “I know approximately where she was touching, but not the exact locations. I didn't start the recording until she was about half finished. I’ve looked over the whole Portal and there are hundreds of symbols.”
“So start hitting them at random,” Hipstitch said with a dismissive gesture.
“Stupid idea,” Osgood said.
“Excuse me?”
“He thinks it’s a bad idea,” Leo said more diplomatically.
“Why is that?”
“Who knows what would happen? We could open a Portal to deep space, shut it down accidentally, or even cause it to self-destruct.”
“Remember New Delhi?” Volant asked the big man, who just took out a cigar, clipped it and stuffed it in his mouth.
Osgood watched him like a hawk, but the General didn’t light it. He cleared his throat and spoke again. “We need to send someone through to ascertain whether the Portal has been permanently reprogrammed.” Most of those in attendance nodded in agreement while Hipstitch was not nearly as understanding.
“Absolutely not! We are almost down to the bare minimum; we can’t waste more crossings just out of curiosity.”
“This isn’t curiosity,” Osgood argued, “We don’t know where the Portal is going anymore. You want to send a hundred colonists to some alien ruins? We have people working to make Ft. Eden habitable; it’s not the Ritz but its improved and it’ll be better than the complete unknown. One person won’t make a serious difference either way. We’ll send over some needed supplies too, so it won’t be a loss.”
It took some more convincing, but eventually the general relented and a military volunteer was brought in; the last of Lt. Colonel Wilson’s men. They decided before he arrived there was no sense in warning him that the Portal had been tampered with. So the man waited for the okay and jumped through the opening without hesitation.
The Portal gave off the flash of purple light and opened to show the man sprawled in a rubble-strewn courtyard of a ruined town. He got up and turned around, a look of stunned horror on his face. “Answers that question,” Osgood said quietly. The room was so still everyone heard i
t anyway. The two men who'd been waiting tossed the first crate. It banged off the portal as if it had been thrown from the other side. The silence after the crate clattered to the floor was even more profound.
“Get him back!” Hipstitch roared and pointed at the man. He was looking around with concern, a hand on his holstered pistol.
“We knew this was a risk,” Osgood said. A technician handed him a printout of the data from the soldier’s transition and he looked it over. The all too familiar sound of a gun being cocked made him turn back to stare down the tunnel of a high caliber handgun barrel.
“Bring him back,” Hipstitch said with slow and deliberate pronunciation, leaving little doubt that he meant it.
“It’s not that easy!” Osgood complained with a little less bravado. Out of the general’s view, Volant slipped a hand down against his thigh and wrapped his fingers around the calming familiarity of his .40 caliber Sig Sauer.
“Easy? Let me tell you what's easy. Easy is nine and a half pounds of force on the trigger of a government issue M1911a1 .45 caliber pistol. Easy is handling the recoil. Easy is wiping blood and brains off your shirt, and easy is finding another pencil-necked geek like yourself to run this operation.” The man on the other side of the portal could see what was going on and he seemed to be yelling something, of course no sound could pass through.
“What he meant to say,” said Leo carefully, “is the Portal is one way.” Behind them the Portal swirled and closed. “We have never been able to figure out how to come back through. It’s probably built this way on purpose, or maybe it has to do with the physics of the damned thing.” Hipstitch didn’t move. He kept the gun pointed right at Osgood’s head.
“If you’re going to kill me, please get it over with,” Osgood said with a slight quiver in his voice, “but if not, I need to get back to work. We have to figure out how to reprogram this thing and only have a few days to do it.”