by S. H. Jucha
“We’ll need to test it sooner or later. Go ahead, Nate, but use a small stone.”
Nate picked up a thumbnail-sized rock and pitched it at the dome. “It bounced off the dome, Captain. No spark from the energy field or a launching of the rock back at me. It hit and dropped to the surface, like it hit a monolith.”
“Nate, look to the far right,” Kasey called out excitedly. “Someone’s rolling over. It’s Rules. Hey, it’s Rules.” Kasey was bouncing up and down a meter off the surface and waving his arms to get Rules’ attention.
“Rules has seen us, Captain,” Nate reported. “It looks like our people were asleep, waiting for us. Rules is crawling over to someone … it’s the captain. She’s waking the captain. Cinders is fine. He’s sitting up, and Rules is waking the others. Our people are fine, Captain! They’re fine!”
The two officers breathed enormous sighs of relief.
“Strange … the captain is waving his fingers at me, but it’s real odd-like,” Nate said.
Kasey started laughing. “He’s not talking to you, Nate. He’s talking to me. I was born deaf, and I had to wait until I was fifteen when my head was adult size before I could apply for aural implants. My Mom and I communicated by sign language and text on my comm unit. The captain wanted to learn how, so I taught him. Who knew we’d need it?”
“What’s he saying, Kasey?” Yohlin asked.
“Captain wants to know if we have communications with the ships. I told him yes,” Kasey reported.
“Ask him what happened,” Yohlin requested.
“Sorry, Captain, hold a minute,” Kasey replied.
Two minutes later, Yohlin repeated her question.
“Captain, we’ve a problem,” Nate sent. “We’re trying to communicate with two masters, and one of them is spelling out his commands and questions in sign language.”
“Understood, Nate. Captain Cinders has command. We’ll expect a running update from Kasey and you,” Yohlin said, relinquishing her place as the primary officer.
“The captain is asking how long we’ve been here,” Kasey said, beginning a running report of his observations and communication with Jessie. “Rules is speaking to him. He’s signing that Rules detected our excitement when we arrived, and that’s what woke her.”
“Wow, we can transmit our emotions through vacuum,” Nate commented.
“The captain is signing that he discovered Rules’ ability to do that when he hid her in the hold of the Spryte. Said he packed her into a vac suit in his cabin and stowed her in an equipment locker. She detected him, when he came to retrieve her.”
“Aha, that’s how he fooled the sniffers,” Ituau exclaimed.
“The captain is walking over to the … yikes —”
“This is where I translate for our young spacer,” Nate said. “The captain is pointing to a set of bodies on the metal deck. He’s indicating that there are small and large bodies.”
“What bodies, Nate?” Yohlin asked.
“Sorry, Captain, they’re alien bodies. One type is too small and oddly proportioned to be human, and the other type is much larger and more elongated.”
“How did they get there?” Yohlin asked.
“Hold a minute, Captain Erring. Captain Cinders is explaining that,” Kasey said.
“My apologies, men,” Yohlin said.
Ituau knew how Captain Erring felt. Questions were popping into her mind as fast as she could think, and it was frustrating to have communication reduced to the speed of sign language.
“The captain said the bodies were here. They were the rocky outcroppings we saw on the earlier imagery,” Kasey reported. “What?” he suddenly said.
“What do you mean, what?” Nate asked.
“I’m asking for more details. Hang a minute,” Kasey said.
“Okay, the captain says when power was restored to the dome, everything lit up, and the space dust and rock was sucked out of the inside of the structure. He says it was like a whirlwind. That exposed the bodies, which they had already discovered.”
“Kasey, ask if the captain knows how the dome got activated,” Ituau requested.
“Okay,” Kasey replied. A couple of minutes later, he said, “The captain says they did it … it was an oops!” Kasey chuckled, Nate frowned, and Yohlin swore.
“That’s my captain,” Ituau said laughing. “His people discover an alien site, and his team manages to activate it.”
“Can they shut it down, Kasey?” Yohlin asked.
“Captain Cinders beat you to it, Captain,” Kasey reported. “He says they tried to shut it down and don’t have the tools. He’s signing more. Hold on.”
The next delay was extensive, as Jessie and Kasey went back and forth. The trapped team, originally excited by the discovery by their comrades, had sat back down. A couple of them stretched out and used the vac suit legs as pillows to await orders.
“Wow,” Kasey finally said. “Captain tells me that the small aliens are the attackers. One of them possesses a cutting tool of some type, probably beam, but it’s powered by its suit. Only problem is that a beam hole through the suit was centered on the control panel located on the chest. The strikes on each body are through the chest to take out the vac suit controls. Hold, please, more coming.”
“Um, captain says they discovered there was air by accident when his tanks ran dry. Says he snapped off his helmet and discovered he could breathe.” Kasey halted his conversation with an utterance too low to be intelligible, and those on the call were sympathetic. It was the worst nightmare of spacers to run their vac suit tanks dry in vacuum. It was nearly impossible to resist the temptation to pop the helmet to breathe. Jessie was describing the moment when he expected to die. Shivers ran through every one of those on the comm.
“Give us a few minutes, Captain,” Nate said. “Captain Cinders is directing us to come close and indicating some sort of effort on our part.”
The officers heard a constant stream of short questions and answers between Nate and Kasey that Yohlin and Ituau had difficulty following, but both remained silent.
“Okay, Captain,” Nate reported. “Captain Cinders indicated that if the small aliens are the attackers, it makes sense that the bigger aliens are the defenders. Furthermore, he surmises that the installation was never meant to be shut down. His final thought is that there must be some form of ingress-egress that the larger aliens used to enter the dome, and he wants us to search the outside of the dome for the entrance.”
“Hold,” Kasey said, interrupting Nate’s report. “The captain says that the entrance is probably covered in a layer of dust and rock from the explosion that created the crater. Says the crater was probably blown out by an alien weapon. Says we’ll need some cavity detection equipment to locate it. And, um … of course, they have no food, but they have water in their suits that will last maybe another day or two.”
“Kasey, please relay the following to Captain Cinders,” Yohlin said. “I’m ordering Nate and you to walk the perimeter and check for an entrance. We might get lucky and locate it quickly. While you two do that, I’ll be sending support. Ituau, recall your shuttle. Get it loaded with engineering crew and tools. Land it at the site and leave it there. I’ll contact the shelter and drop our shuttle with people to relocate it to the site and support the efforts at the dome. Once everything is reestablished, we can recover the shuttles.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Ituau replied. She transferred the bridge call to her comm unit, switched to a new channel on her hand unit, and contacted the people she required, while keeping Captain’s Erring’s channel in the listen mode. While she was ordering the recall of the shuttle and preparing engineers and techs for loading, the question shot through her mind: What type of tools did you need to free people from an alien installation with an unknown energy dome?
* * *
“That was pretty fancy, Captain,” Belinda said. “Some sort of communication that only Kasey understands?”
“Sign language, Belinda. Kasey
was born deaf, and that’s how he communicated with his mother until he received his implants before his sixteenth birthday,” Jessie explained.
“And you learned it because …?” Belinda asked.
“Just curious,” Jessie replied laconically. “Speaking of curious, did anyone notice the discrepancy between our tech inside and outside the dome?”
“Not sure what you mean, Captain,” Darrin said.
“I zoomed in on the cam on the crest after this place lit up. Its power light was out.”
“That unit should have been good for two more days,” Tully objected.
“On the other hand, our suit comms worked for us after the site powered up,” Jessie commented. “But we can’t communicate through the dome.”
“That makes Rules the only one who got a signal through that energy wall,” Belinda said.
“Guess the aliens didn’t think about filtering empaths,” Jessie said, shaking his head at the absurdity of the realization.
“What did you get across to Kasey, Captain?” Darrin asked.
“You can see them searching,” Jessie replied, indicating Nate and Kasey, who were walking in opposite directions around the dome, scraping at the surface with their boots. “Captain Erring is moving the shelter to this site, and Ituau is loading the Spryte’s shuttle with engineers, techs, and tools. I relayed our belief that the small aliens were the attackers and the big ones were the defenders. The dome appears to be impermeable, which means the larger aliens required a means of ingress and egress. I think it will be a deck section that moves on a signal from the console.”
Jessie’s words sent Hamoi hurrying over to the console to scan the icons.
“You, Hamoi, are forbidden to do anything but look,” Darrin said forcefully. “You keep your hands at your side, and, if you have a stroke or something, you make sure you fall backwards. Do you read me?”
“Aye, sir,” Hamoi replied meekly, cowed by the reprimand.
“Let’s make ourselves useful,” Jessie said. “Each of us is going to walk around this dome’s deck. I realize it’s covered with symbols that don’t mean anything to us, but I want you to think about an exit or entrance, as you look. Maybe you’ll find something helpful to our efforts to get out of here.”
The trapped team spent hours searching the deck, checking it section by section, often walking from one to another to compare a line of symbols. Jessie called for a rest and a few sips of water when he saw his people’s attention flagging.
Belinda was sipping on her suit’s water tube, when she said, “If I close my eyes, I can see bright alien symbols swirling in the dark.”
“I’m wondering how long it will take to forget my images,” Tully grumped.
While Jessie’s team was taking their break, the engineers and techs from the Spryte and Annie arrived, carrying portable equipment. Jessie worked through Kasey to tell Tobias Samuels, the lead excavation engineer from the Annie, to survey the ground around the dome.
“Ask the captain what he hopes we’ll find,” Tobias asked Kasey.
“You mean besides a way out?” Kasey quipped. “Okay, okay, just joshing,” exclaimed Kasey, when Tobias turned hard eyes on him. After a short conversation, Kasey reported, “Captain believes you’ll locate a tunnel that extends from under the dome to an entrance point beyond the dome.”
“What if these aliens never came aboveground except to enjoy the view of the stars?” Tobias asked.
Kasey translated the question to Jessie. “Captain says if that’s the case, the team is probably screwed.”
“Best get to it then,” Tobias commented. He sent the Spryte team to the left, and he took the Annie’s team to the right. They swept the ground, looking for anything besides aggregate.
Jessie let his people rest, while he followed the rescue crews with his eyes. Progress was slow. No one knew how deep a tunnel might be located beneath the surface, and they didn’t want to miss it. Jessie broke from his observations to look at his team. They appeared calm, relaxing against their suits. It wasn’t until he turned around and saw Aurelia in her cross-legged pose, eyes closed, and the corners of her lips turned up in a tiny smile that he understood how his people’s attitudes were possible. He examined his own feelings, surprised to find he wasn’t anxious, as if he was sure they would get free of the place. His lips tweaked in a smile. You were right, Yohlin, and I think I need an empath for each ship, Jessie thought.
Tobias’ team reached the halfway point around the dome when the lead engineer, who had been carrying a portable monitor, touched a tech’s arm, who was swinging a ground sensor on a wand. Tobias indicated several areas around the tech’s feet.
Jessie got up, signaled Kasey to walk around the dome, and hurried over to watch the proceedings. He could see Tobias speaking to him before the engineer realized his mistake.
Tobias looked around and spotted Kasey bouncing toward him. They spoke for a few seconds, and then Tobias directed his tech on a line away from the dome and followed him. The Annie’s crew planted small markers in the ground to indicate what they found, and the Spryte’s team hurried to join them.
Kasey communicated to Jessie, indicating the growing line of markers that led away from the dome. His smile was evident through his faceplate. Jessie turned to call to his people but found them standing behind him, waiting for a translation.
“The engineers have found a metal casement the width of what you can see by those markers,” said Jessie, pointing to the rocky ground beyond the dome. “The good news is that it’s not too deep, which means we can probably expect an entrance nearby.”
The wait dragged on for the trapped team, as the engineers tracked the metal structure that they had detected below, and they returned to their vac suits to wait. Kasey signaled that he needed fresh tanks, and he headed off to the shelter.
To expedite the detection process, Tobias’ team tracked the right-hand edge of the underground object, and Nate’s team stayed with the left side. Within 60 meters, the crews came to a ledge. It was a 7-meter drop to a flat plain, visible for kilometers.
“The depth of the metal has barely changed since the dome,” Tobias said to Nate. “The opening has to be under this ledge. I think we should contact the shelter for the survey rover. We’ll need its tools and hoist arm to lower us. We certainly can’t take a chance on someone jumping down there, only to discover that there’s a thin crust over some cavern.”
“That small rover can’t make it through the cut or around the dome without us clearing a bunch of rock,” Nate replied. “And that will take too long.”
“You have a better plan?” Tobias asked.
“Maybe,” Nate replied. “I say we get back to base, load the survey rover on your shuttle, and have it transport us to that plain. Then we drive the rover to whatever is under this ledge.”
“I like that plan,” Tobias said, smiling through his faceplate, and tapping Nate’s vac-suited shoulder with a gloved hand. He called to a tech to plant a beacon at the edge of the ledge, centered between the markers.
“Everyone back to the shelter,” Nate sent over the general channel. “Kasey, when you get back here, I want you to explain what’s happening to the captain and then get back to base for some food and rest.”
“Going to be dark soon,” Nate commented, as the group hustled to the shuttle.
“And our portable lights won’t last the night, unless they’re hooked to a generator, shuttle, or rover,” Tobias replied.
Nate grunted in reply, and Tobias gave Yohlin and Ituau an update.
“I like your idea, Nate,” Yohlin replied. “Good thinking!”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“How are our people looking?” Ituau asked, with concern.
“Jessie talks to Kasey with his fingers for a bit,” Tobias said. “Then he relays the message to the crew, and everyone lies back down. I’m thinking Captain Cinders is having them conserve their energy to reduce water consumption. And, of course, you see Rules sitting in h
er favorite position.”
When Tobias and Yohlin laughed softly, Ituau asked, “What’s the position?”
Nate jumped into the conversation, saying, “I’ve seen her sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, Nate,” Yohlin replied. “When Rules is sitting like that, it seems to calm her and allow her to maximize her broadcast. She’s soothing the crew.”
“Why is it that Rules possesses the only means of sending and receiving through the dome?” Ituau asked.
“You’ll have to ask the aliens,” Nate replied. “Oh, you can’t. They’re dead.”
“As captain,” Yohlin replied, “I have privileges, Ituau. I get to smack him first, and then you can have a go at him.”
“You’re in trouble now, spacer,” Tobias commented, chuckling through his breathing exertions, as the teams bounced their way quickly toward the shuttle.”
It was dark when the shuttle, carrying the crew and the survey rover, with its hoist arm, lifted for the flat plain. It wasn’t so dark for the trapped crew members. They lay down and did their best to cover their eyes with their arms or the sleeves of vac suits to shut out the dome’s persistent glow.
At one point, Belinda tried to find a more comfortable position and a better means of covering her eyes. She quipped, “Whoever was the last one up, turn off the lights.” The chuckles she received were halfhearted. Time was ticking down for the crew, and it was measured by their limited supply of water.”
The rescue shuttle set down on the flat plain, and the crew offloaded the survey rover in record time. They didn’t need the beacon to guide them. The blue energy field of the dome shone brightly in the distance. The rover was limited in speed by the rocks and boulders that were strewn across the plains. Progress was slow enough that the crew members, forced to walk, reached the ledge face far in advance of those riding.
“We’ve got a pair of doors,” Nate sent over the general comm to Tobias, who was riding. “They’re metal and covered in symbols like the deck under the dome.” Nate started laughing.