“Lin!” Bain shrieked. “There's a planet out there!”
“What?” A far-off thud followed her shout, then two seconds later, Lin bounced down from the dome. She ricocheted off the floor, up to the ceiling and landed hard in her chair. “Soldrums! What is a planet doing this close to a Knaught Point?”
Her hands flew over the controls, requesting more data. Her hands moved so quickly that they were blurs. Neither Bain nor Lin took their gazes off the screen, which showed a crystal clear, real-time video image of a planet less than four hours’ flight from the Knaught Point.
“It shouldn't be there, should it?” Bain asked, after a few seconds. His throat hurt, and his voice cracked a little from the force of his shriek moments before.
“All the physical laws I ever learned say it shouldn't be there. The electromagnetic fields and the energy flows moving through the Knaught Points make the gravity fields unstable. Ships can pass through without any trouble because we don't stay in the general area for more than a few days at the most. Planets, though...” Lin shook her head and kept working on the control panel. “Even plants would be mutated into dangerous forms, or be unable to survive more than a few generations. I don't even want to think what it would do to animal or Human genetics.”
She kept working, glancing down to check new figures that moved up the screen, always raising her head to stare at the planet.
“There it is.” Bain pointed at the elongated, yam-shaped dark blot on the screen. The Mashrami ship had come through. “It's going into orbit, isn't it?”
“Looks like it. Ganfer, readings?”
“Mashrami energy levels have dropped past the critical levels. Even if they only need half the energy requirements of Human ships for life support, they will deplete their reserves within the next hour. Judging from the drop in energy since emerging from the Knaught Point, even life-support processes may be too much of a drain.”
“Why did they come here?” Bain said, in the silence that followed the pronouncement of doom for the Mashrami ship and crew.
“Only one way to find out—study the planet.”
* * * *
Sunsinger went into a spiraling orbit around the planet, constantly shifting so that it never flew over the same geographical point twice. Six orbits took them from the equatorial region and ‘up’ to one pole, going by Sunsinger's orientation in space, then headed back down.
Bain studied the energy output of the planet's sun, the distance between planet and sun and the angle of the planet in its orbit. According to solar system models he had studied, and others stored in the ship's teaching memory, this planet should have had thick ice fields at both poles. It had none.
The planet was three-quarters water. Spectrum analysis and energy diffraction identified all the gases necessary for Human life. The amounts were slightly different from the desired norm, but Bain knew Humans could survive for a long period of time on the planet without any serious harm.
Whatever lived on the planet, though, was dying off. In six orbits, Sunsinger only found evidence of plant and animal life at the edges where water and land met. The mountains were scorched ledges of bare rock where they didn't show volcanic activity, either pending or past.
Signs of some kind of civilization thickly lined those margins of habitable land. Bain didn't know what to make of the strange readings. The ship's sensors found power plants and clusters of life signs that were likely cities—but the readings were just slightly different from the norm. The differences, when added together, made all Lin and Bain's guesses questionable. Were they looking at a dying civilization, or a hastily-built colony world, or just an unlucky planet whose animal life had migrated to the coasts as a survival measure?
The Mashrami ship settled into a descending orbit around the planet after Sunsinger had already completed four orbits. Its crew, whatever survivors there were, showed no signs of trying to contact anyone on the planet. The ship had limped into orbit without using any of the pitiful remnants of energy remaining to it.
Maybe, Bain thought, the Mashrami couldn't use up any energy after a certain point. Maybe there was a safeguard to keep the crew from draining it dry.
“Why would someone come to a dying world like this?” Lin muttered. “It doesn't make any sense, if you're low on energy, to come to a place that's worse off than you are.”
“Life signs do not match what we know of Mashrami biological needs and phases,” Ganfer offered.
“If Humans were down there, would they match other Humans?” Bain asked.
Total silence on the bridge. He felt a chill race up his back when Lin slowly turned her whole body and just looked at him.
“Good question.” She nodded. Her eyes still focused on him, but Bain had the distinct feeling Lin saw nothing as she ran the question through her mind. “Suppose this planet isn't the way it's supposed to be. Suppose the Knaught Point has only appeared a short time ago, and the damage being done to this planet is recent.”
“That still doesn't tell us why the Mashrami came here.”
“Why did we follow them?”
“Huh?” Bain hated it when he couldn't figure something out, and hated it even more when he looked stupid in front of Lin.
“Why did we decide to follow the Mashrami when we realized they were damaged and running away?”
“We thought they'd be heading home.”
“What if they have?” Lin's eyes glowed, bright with excitement. It was an odd kind of excitement; not happy, not victorious. She even looked tired and a little sad.
“This is the Mashrami home world?” Bain turned to look at the planet, a brown globe streaked with clouds. He felt hot and scorched just looking at the decaying world.
“Ganfer: speculation.” She licked her lips and swallowed hard before continuing. “A Knaught Point appears too close to this world. Maybe not total, instant damage, but they can see their eco-system is doomed. Someone here is smart enough to try to make use of the Knaught Point. They put together a fleet of ships, and start spreading out through the universe, trying to find new worlds to settle on. One problem, though: nearly every habitable world they find is already occupied.”
“They could have asked for help,” Bain said.
“Yes, they could have. The atmosphere here is close enough to what Humans need, the Mashrami could have landed and tried to use sign language or a dozen other methods of communication to ask for help. They didn't. Maybe it isn't in their psychological make-up to ask for help. Maybe they think only the strong can survive, and anyone who asks for help is weak. In order to deserve to live, they have to destroy others.” Lin shrugged. “What are the chances of my speculation being correct, Ganfer?”
“Not enough data available for a true analysis,” the ship-brain responded, after a few seconds of silence.
“I didn't ask for a true analysis, just a speculation,” she said with a sigh. She grinned at Bain, and shook her head in exaggerated frustration.
“Factoring in wide margins for unknown variables, the speculation has a ninety-two percent chance of being correct.”
“But why did they come back here?” Bain asked again. “If they're trying to find a new place to live, they should have colonies out there already, shouldn't they? Aren't there better places to look for help?”
“They're dying, Bain.” Lin seemed to sag a little. Now she looked tired, all the hours of this latest test putting a heavy weight on her shoulders. “Maybe they don't have any place else to go. One thing the Mashrami have in common with us; a sense of home. If you knew you were dying, you'd want to go back to Lenga, wouldn't you?”
“Yeah.” He felt a momentary stab of pity for the Mashrami. That made Bain feel odd, unbalanced. He didn't like it.
“Just like our ancestors wouldn't leave Vidan when civilization fell, the Mashrami don't want to leave their home world—if this is their home world—even though it's dying. I can understand that.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
Sunsinger continued orbiting the dying world, running sensors at their highest setting, straining for every bit of new knowledge possible. None of the city clusters—if that was what they were—showed any sign that they knew the Human ship orbited their world. Ganfer constantly switched reception frequencies, trying to find signs of some communication across the planet.
Twice, the Mashrami ship sent out communication bursts. Ganfer couldn't translate either time, and when he tried to respond, the Mashrami either ignored him, or didn't receive the basic signals. The attempts raised no response on the planet.
Lin speculated that the Mashrami had recognized what the energy tsunami meant, when they were hit. They had hurried through the Knaught Points, wasting their energy, to check on their home world.
Bain didn't know if he wanted Lin's theories to be proven true. He didn't know what to think. He only knew he felt sorry for the Mashrami, and he didn't like it. Feeling sorry for Toly Gaber, after all the cruel tricks and downright nasty things the bully had done to him, was easier than feeling sorry for the Mashrami. It made sense to feel sorry for someone he knew, someone he had seen get hurt and scared. The Mashrami had come out of nowhere, had ignored all communication attempts, and started attacking Human ships and Human colonies without any explanation or threat or warning.
How could he feel sorry for them?
Yet every time he studied more data from the dying, burned world below Sunsinger, he felt sorry for the faceless, destructive aliens.
Was anyone really that evil, to deserve to have their world destroyed? Why did it have to be a Knaught Point that caused the destruction? Knaught Points were helpful, making it possible to travel the vast, empty reaches of space in months instead of generations.
“Why did Fi'in make the Knaught Point appear here?” Bain asked. He and Lin sat in the galley booth, eating a silent breakfast.
“I don't think he did.” Lin gave him a flicker of a smile when Bain gaped at her. “I think Fi'in permitted it to happen, but I don't think Fi'in wanted it or made it happen.”
“What's the difference? Fi'in made everything.”
“Yes, but ... I don't really have the energy for a philosophical discussion. Ask a member of the Order next time we reach a port.” She shook her head and grimaced. “Fi'in lets bad things happen to teach us and make us stronger, not just to punish us. Like Fi'in let First Civ die in chaos and destruction and pain. He could have prevented it, but he chose to let things happen as Humans moved them. I like to think Fi'in let the old civilization die because he knew the Commonwealth would come from it, better and wiser and kinder.” She studied Bain a moment; he kept silent. “It's like those times I let you make mistakes. You might get hurt. I certainly don't want you to get hurt, ever, but I let you make mistakes so you learn from them.”
“Oh. All right.” Bain thought maybe he did understand a little. “What does Fi'in want the Mashrami to learn, then?”
“I don't know. Maybe they have to learn to ask for help and to work with others. Maybe they have to learn to share, instead of taking and hurting others. Maybe they really are as evil as everyone has imagined them for the last six years, and Fi'in is letting them totally destroy themselves. Who knows?”
“Alert,” Ganfer said.
Lin pushed herself out of the booth, and was halfway to her seat at the control station before his second word.
“Change is occurring on the Mashrami ship. Energy readings are fading in all but the front tip of the structure.”
Bain scooted across the bridge, and nearly bounced off his chair before he could hook his leg around the support bar and anchor himself into place. Like Lin, he stared at the computer simulation of the Mashrami ship.
All but the forward tip of the ship turned black, indicating the ship no longer had energy in those areas, and structural integrity was degrading. The tip was golden, the edges fuzzy and outlined in red.
A black line appeared, dividing almost immediately, and cutting the golden area into eight equal wedges.
“It's opening, isn't it?” Lin gasped.
“Correct. I am detecting round objects of roughly the same material as the ship, less than half the size of Sunsinger. All the energy of the Mashrami ship now comes from those objects.”
“Life pods?” Bain guessed.
“The probability is high,” Ganfer said, after less than a second of delay.
“Whoever survived is escaping. That makes sense.” Lin nodded. She kept her gaze on the screen, and started tapping commands and queries into the control panel.
Almost the same moment that the eight dots of the life pods left the ship, the golden lines of energy vanished from the computer simulation. The shape left the screen, and the pod simulations expanded.
“Some of them are stronger than the others,” Bain said, surprised.
“They're not all going to make it to the surface.” Lin stopped working the controls, and sat back to watch.
Three of the eight pods lost their glow of energy almost at the same time. They turned black, and continued to drift through space while the five surviving pods changed course and headed for the planet.
“Ignore them, Ganfer,” she said, a few seconds later. “I only care about the readings on the ones who make it to the planet. Compare the differences between the dead three and the other five.”
“Comparisons ready,” the ship-brain responded, moments later.
“Can you extrapolate Mashrami life-signs?”
“Speculation only.”
“Record the data. Update it as new information comes in.”
Bain watched the strings of numbers and blocks of scientific notations changed on the screens between him and Lin. That jumble of half-understood signs held the key to understanding Mashrami biology. Someone would be able to decode it, someday.
“Two are approaching the atmosphere at too shallow an angle. They will be deflected,” Ganfer announced.
Bain held his breath, counting his heartbeats, and tried to guess which ones would be deflected. He chose the life-pod in the lead, and the second from the last. They rode lower in the line of pods, if the simulation was correct.
He almost cheered when the dots did indeed ‘bounce’ off the atmosphere. Bain's breath caught in his throat when the golden glow of energy immediately winked out, and the two life-pods vanished from the screen.
“Structural damage,” Ganfer reported. “Internal atmospheric loss was immediate.”
Bain felt a little sick. Massive decompression wasn't a quick way to die, no matter what the adventure videos showed. There were a few seconds where the victims felt themselves rupture internally, and knew what was happening to them.
Only three pods remained. How many Mashrami were in each one? Did they know that the other five pods that escaped the ship had lost energy or been destroyed?
“Any attempt at communication?” Lin asked, waiting until the three pods had entered the atmosphere and were on their way down to the surface.
“None.”
“That's mighty odd. I know I'd want landing instructions if I was making an emergency landing.”
“Maybe they aren't allowed to ask?” Bain said.
“That makes sense, I suppose. Why do you think so?”
“Well.... “He squirmed a little in his chair. “I read this story where being stronger was the most important thing. Nobody was allowed to ask for help, and nobody was allowed to help. People who got sick or asked for help or got hurt were thrown out of the tribe. Maybe the Mashrami on the planet won't talk to the other ones until they land safely.”
“Maybe.” She nodded, and a momentary smile lit her face. “Maybe we should make a cultural anthropologist out of you.”
“I don't want to leave Sunsinger,” he hurried to say.
“Who says you have to? We'll get some independent study courses from the Upper University, and get you a degree, or two or three, once you finish your basic courses. When this war is ove
r, Bain, ordinary space travel is going to be boring without some hobby or course of study. You have to keep busy, or go space-crazy.”
“That sounds good.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn't it?” She winked, and her smile grew a little wider.
The three pods came in for a landing on a flat plain near one of the clusters Lin had designated as a ‘city.’ One suddenly jerked off course and exploded in mid-air. The simulated pod on the screen flared bright red, then faded to black, and hung there for two seconds before it vanished. The other two pods continued toward the landing site.
Bain wondered if the pilots of the other two pods knew, or if they even cared. Maybe the pods didn't have pilots, but went on automatic controls? He thought that was rather stupid—why trust their safety to machines? Landing couldn't be that hard, could it? Lin let him do most of the work of landing Sunsinger, when traffic wasn't too heavy in a spaceport, or the field was wide open.
The other two pods made it to landing. For a moment, nothing happened. Bain didn't know what he was waiting for, but a tight sensation in his stomach and a breathless feeling in his lungs told him something was about to change.
“Will you look at that!” Lin yelped.
The two safely-landed pods lit up bright golden white with power. Ganfer changed the simulation colors. The landing field became pale blue, the pods yellow with orange outlines.
“Distance makes accurate analysis and simulation impossible,” the ship-brain said almost immediately.
“Don't you even suggest getting closer,” Lin said, with a chuckle. “Well, that's definitely a landing field, and not a makeshift spot. They plugged into something pretty powerful the moment they touched down. Interesting.”
“The planet will occlude observation in another twenty-eight minutes.”
“I don't think we should break orbit for the sake of observation. Adjust orbit, though, so we go directly over that spot again.” She thought a minute, frowning so that two ridges appeared between her eyes. “Increase speed, too. Just in case.”
Dead World [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 3] Page 11