Endless possibilities still waited for her. Nothing was decided.
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17
Beyond Pluto, nearly 300 astronomical units from Earth, the Sun was only a bright star. Here bodies moved in stately orbits, strolling members of a whirlpool trillions of kilometers wide; dark, airless worlds by the thousands, asteroids, clumps of ice and frozen gas. The combined mass was probably greater than a dozen Jupiters.
Lissa watched as the asteroid slipped into a wide orbit around a black shape twice the size of Earth. Data runs at the bottom of the screen reported that the dark world had a large moon and a ring of debris. The alien signal was coming from somewhere on the moon’s equator.
An inset of the signal appeared in the lower left hand corner of the screen. The dancing line seemed unchanged. Lissa had discussed with Dr. Shastri the possibility that the signal was emanating from an alien probe that had landed on the moon of the dark planet. She was hoping that the device possessed a level of cybernetic intelligence that would enable it to communicate when approached.
She watched nervously now, hoping that the source would respond to their presence and reveal itself to be something more than an automatic program. She wanted very badly to be right in her prediction, even though she knew it was a long shot.
But as the asteroid swung around the black world, the signal remained unchanged, despite the greetings that were being beamed at it.
Dr. Shastri smiled at her and shrugged gently. The room quieted as he got up and turned to address the gathering. “There may be a lot to learn when we examine the design of whatever is down there, but there doesn’t seem to be an alien delegation waiting to meet us here.”
“When will some of us get to go?” Lissa asked.
“The landing coordinates are being established right now by a reconnaissance shuttle. As soon as the area is checked out, we’ll put in a team of initial observers. Some of you may go with them, or with later groups.”
“We’re coming in over a flat area now,” Alek’s voice said from the screen. The picture suddenly showed a rocky landscape under bright stars as the shuttle drifted in for a landing.
Lissa tensed in her chair. The crowd in the room became silent.
“It’ll be a routine landing,” Alek’s voice said finally, and she realized that she was probably the only one in the room who was worrying.
She knew that Alek wasn’t really in any danger. He was lucky to be making the landing. She wished for a moment that she were with him.
The picture jiggled for a moment as the shuttle fired its jets and set down on the surface. Bright search beams swept the rocky surface and fixed on a strange sluglike object.
“It’s a vehicle of some kind,” Alek said as the camera pulled in for a close view. The skin seemed pitted, scarred, and stained.
“It looks very old,” Dr. Shastri said.
Throughout the engineering level, Lissa knew, people were watching this picture. Here, finally, was the source of the alien signal. She felt a bit disappointed; the signal was still the same, and the problem of understanding more than a small portion of it had not changed.
“It doesn’t seem very large,” Alek said. “I bet we could pick it up and take it home. Maybe taking it apart will give us a clue about what kinds of minds built it.”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Shastri said.
“We’ll go out and take a look around,” Alek said; “then you can send in the next shuttle. I don’t think there’s any danger here.”
Lissa’s turn came to go down to the black moon. The first two teams had checked the surface around the alien object and had found no obvious dangers. Dr. Shastri was going, and Susan Falleta, and four specialists in metallurgy and electronics. It was the third day after the asteroid’s arrival.
Lissa finished putting on her space suit and followed her companions into the shuttle’s passenger cabin.
“All aboard?” the pilot’s voice asked over the intercom. She tensed, thinking that it might be Alek, but it wasn’t his voice at all.
She floated over to the empty couch next to Susan, pulled herself in, and strapped down. Susan reached over with a gloved hand and closed her faceplate for her.
“I was going to do it,” Lissa muttered over the suit com.
“Sure you were. What’s wrong? You’re too nervous. Still worrying about him?”
“I guess. For a moment I thought he was the pilot.”
“And you’re glad he’s not?” Susan chuckled.
“Why should it make any difference? Maybe he’s the copilot this trip.”
“Come on, don’t tease me. I guess I’m afraid that if I see him, I’ll start to feel different.”
“You mean you’ll like him again? Just like that!”
“I guess. Let’s not discuss it.”
“Here we go,” the pilot announced at last.
Lissa felt a gentle tug as the shuttle slipped out of the dock. A small screen lit up in front of them as the black planet came into view.
“There’s a lot of debris in this space,” the pilot said. “You may hear some micro-junk hitting our fenders.”
The shuttle accelerated gently to one half g. Lissa looked over at Dr. Shastri. His faceplate seemed to be a great eye looking at her.
“There it is,” the pilot said.
The small moon was on the screen, growing larger as the shuttle rushed toward it. Lissa saw the lights of the expedition base camp on the black surface.
“Coming in,” the pilot said.
The shuttle’s acceleration died suddenly, and Lissa felt as if her stomach had just fallen out. Slowly the craft turned around on its gyros, facing the engines toward the moon. After a moment the engines fired again, slowing the ship’s forward motion.
It was all automatic. The computer sent out radar tongues, constantly measuring angles and distances. The pilots were important only if something went wrong. They set course programs, made repairs, and waited to take over if a landing wasn’t going right.
The engines fired. Deceleration pressed her into the couch. She felt a jolt, and the engines shut down.
“We’re here,” the pilot’s voice said in her ear. “Next tour begins in five minutes,” he added jokingly.
The distant Sun was an ordinary star, and all the noise of human history was silenced by distance. Lissa looked up at the stars of the Milky Way and saw where the moon’s dark parent blotted out the stars. The planet was a half million kilometers above her, yet it seemed close, even threatening.
Dr. Shastri and the others were a dozen meters ahead of her, moving slowly in their suits. She caught up easily in the light gravity, and together they approached the alien object.
It was a large drum lying on its side. She guessed that it was ten meters tall, perhaps twenty long. She came up to it and touched it as if it were a living thing. No one had found a way inside yet, and no one would really try until it was decided what to do with the artifact—whether to bring it aboard the asteroid or study it right there.
Behind them stood the three domes of the base camp, looking every bit as strange as the alien drum. Powerful lights were fixed on the artifact, but the dull surface was not very reflective. The flat surface of the moon around the object was cracked and cratered.
Lissa heard a laugh in her ear. It was Harry Gillies, one of the metallurgists. “Looks like a parade went by and left an instrument.” He laughed again. Lissa remembered that his hobby was the history of magic and alchemy, and she wondered if the alien metal’s structure would seem magical to him.
“It might not be safe here,” Lissa said, looking around at the small impact craters.
“That’s true,” Dr. Shastri agreed. “It may very well be prudent to take the artifact aboard the asteroid, where we won’t risk the chance of damage while we study it.”
Lissa made a fist with her gloved hand and struck the side of the drum. It was hard. She put her helmet against it and struck again. There was no resonance inside h
er helmet.
“It’s as if the whole thing is solid throughout, she said.
“It may in fact be,” Dr. Shastri replied.
A sudden thought came to her. “They made it in one continuous process, completely solid, with patterns of function built in. We would only destroy it if we took it apart.”
“At least we’ll have it safe,” Susan said, “even if for some time all we’ll be able to do is listen to its signal.”
“It’s that or going to the expense of keeping a permanent base here,” Dr. Shastri added.
Lissa felt disappointed. But then what had she expected—that the alien device would suddenly give up all its secrets when she confronted it? Dr. Shastri had brought his students face to face with the alien as an ultimate exercise in the nature of difficulty. He wanted to confront young minds with the awesome fact of the alien device’s existence. Again, Lissa made a fist and struck the drum, realizing that here was a challenge of understanding that humankind might not be able to meet.
“Maybe it’s a toy,” Susan said, “sent to develop the minds of a youthful civilization.”
“Why do you think that?” Dr. Shastri asked.
“Because that’s what it’s doing,” Lissa answered, impressed by Susan’s insightful speculation. “It sits here, singing, driving us crazy with curiosity. Look what we’ve done to get out here!”
“Interesting,” Dr. Shastri replied.
Lissa got up one morning, a week after her visit to the black moon, and saw workers bringing the alien drum up into the hollow. A massive elevator platform rose from the engineering level, and the alien artifact was wheeled off on a giant carriage. Lissa sat in her window and watched as the carriage traveled a distance into a green field and stopped.
A hundred meters away, a radio dish was pointed toward the artifact, so that its signal would continue to be received as clearly as possible.
Lissa felt a thrill at the strangeness of the scene: a large bowl confronting a gray-black drum in a green field, inside a spinning hollow rock where the sun was a flat disk …
After a while she went back to her desk and punched up the signal on her screen. It was the same dancing line that she had first seen inside the mountain on Earth. She watched for a while, then got up and went back to sit in the window. It was all so difficult and disappointing, she thought. Part of the signal seemed to warn of a possible danger to Earth in the future, but there was certainly much more in the signal than frustrating pictures. She felt impatient and confused. It would take her forever to learn enough to contribute to the project, and others might do all the most important work before she could even complete her education. She felt that she was losing herself again, and that nothing would ever turn out according to her dreams.
She sat in the window for a long time, watching the silent confrontation between Earth’s ear and the alien drum. Time slowed as her feelings played within her. Memories combined with strange shapes. Alek smiled at her. Her mother looked worried. Her father looked thoughtful. Bernal One’s inner world was a garden turning slowly among the stars.…
After a long while she saw a glint of light flash from one of the elevator kiosks at the end of the road that led up to the barracks complex. She watched as Susan stepped out and started up the road very quickly.
As she watched her friend approach, Lissa realized that she had never seen her walk so quickly, or gaze so fixedly ahead. Halfway up the road, Susan kicked a stone angrily.
Lissa sat perfectly still until Susan came up to the stairs and noticed her in the window.
“Hi,” Lissa said.
Susan tensed, as if caught in an unkind thought.
“What’s the matter?” Lissa asked, feeling strange and shadowy.
Susan stuck her hands into her coverall pockets and stared up at Lissa with tear-filled eyes.
“Alek’s shuttle doesn’t answer,” Susan said with a stutter.
“What?” Lissa sat up and put her feet down over the window sill.
“They can’t get an answer! He went to pick up the last group from the base camp, but he never got there. They think the shuttle might have been hit by orbital debris from the ring, stuff too small to guard against on scanners, and gone down on the black moon. It doesn’t seem to be anywhere in nearby space. His radio is out.”
Lissa grasped the window frame with both hands as Susan recited the facts. It just couldn’t be, she thought, suddenly seeing Alek’s body in the shuttle’s wreckage. “What are they doing about it?” she demanded coldly.
Susan threw up her hands. “They’ve sent out automatic search drones, hoping to pick up a signal, but it’s been hours already. There’s a team in the search-and-rescue operations room, but they’re only waiting.”
As the other girl went up the stairs, blood rushed into Lissa’s face. Tears pushed out of her eyes, and she realized suddenly that she had never known anyone who had died. She had imagined, vaguely, that Alek would be there always, waiting for her, no matter what she did. She had put him away for later, selfishly, with almost no regard for his feelings. Now he was gone and would never return. He had lost himself coming after her. He would not grow to become his full self, he would not be there for her, or for anyone else.
Susan entered the room and came up to the window. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said softly. “He knew what he was doing. It might have been any of the other shuttles.”
Lissa turned suddenly and faced her. “Then why wasn’t it! Now I’ll never be able to make it right.”
Susan put her arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” Lissa said, crying, “I’m so sorry.…”
“So am I, kid.”
“I ignored him,” Lissa whispered.
They were silent for a few moments. Lissa stopped crying and just held on to her friend.
“Maybe they’ll find him,” Susan said finally, but there was no belief in her voice.
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18
Lissa went with Susan to the elevator kiosk. The door slid open, and they stepped inside. The lift dropped down gently to the engineering level. Lissa sniffled as the door opened. They stepped out into the passageway and turned left toward the rescue operations room.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Susan asked. “They’ll let us know if they find him.”
Lissa shook her head in denial.
“I could stay for you,” Susan added.
“No,” Lissa replied, quickening her pace.
The doors slid open for them as they approached. Inside, they went up to the railing that ran around the work pit. Below, the large screen displayed the view from the searching drones’ eyes. Insets revealed infrared patterns on the surface of the black moon, but these were very weak readings. There were only three people at the consoles, a man and two women.
Lissa grasped the rail with both hands and closed her eyes, remembering her first meeting with Alek. He had seemed so rude, so smiling, yet something in her had responded. She recalled his touch, his kiss, his laugh.
It was a moment before she noticed that Dr. Shastri had arrived and was staring intently at the screen. Suddenly she wanted to shout at him, to reproach him for interfering with her life. Why couldn’t he have left Alek on Earth, where he would have been safe and waiting for her? Why did he have to meddle?
Dr. Shastri looked at her calmly, then embraced her. I’m hopeless, she thought, selfish and unfair. He patted her on the back and stepped away.
“It may be only their communications equipment, my dear. They might have set down somewhere quite safely, or be adrift.”
He didn’t sound as if he believed it.
“These shuttles have plenty of supplies,” he continued, “and their air-water recyclers can work indefinitely.”
“If they haven’t been damaged,” Lissa muttered.
“The craft has many fine backup systems.”
Lissa nodded and tried to hope.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, “truly I am
. I suspect I know what you must be thinking, but please believe me when I say that Alek wanted very much to come with us, and he wanted so much to pilot spacecraft.”
Lissa nodded again. She clenched her teeth and held back tears. “He’s a good pilot,” Dr. Shastri said, “and so is his partner. They’ll come out of this, if anyone can.”
But the search dragged on. Lissa sat cross-legged by the rail, watching the mindless screen displays of the black moon, preparing herself for the worst. Susan brought hot drinks regularly and kept her company.
“You’ve been here six hours,” she said finally. “You should go home and lie down for a while. They’ll call us if anything happens.”
“No, I’ll be here until it’s over, one way or the other.”
Susan touched her hand. “Come on, you’ll collapse.”
“So I’ll collapse.”
“Lissa, start making sense.”
Lissa glared at her.
“I’m sorry, but I’m trying to be your friend, so I have to think of you, even if you won’t. You know I cared about him, too.”
“I know,” Lissa admitted.Maybe he should have chosen you, she thought.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Susan said. “Stop blaming yourself. He probably would have come even if he’d never met us. You didn’t think of that, did you?”
“You’re right. But I wish there were something more we could do,” Lissa said.
“We can’t outdo the drones, and we’re not trained to pilot, even if they were sending out shuttles.”
Susan went and brought back two sleeping bags. Lissa crawled inside hers and tried to rest, but she woke up once every hour to stare at the screen.
The shift changed in the pit, but still the drones found no trace of the lost shuttle. Lissa began to think that the craft might have crashed on the big planet, rather than on its moon. Toward morning, when she at last began to doze for longer periods, she dreamed of the shuttle going down, unable to fire its braking engines. Without retros, that type of craft had no chance of surviving a hard landing on an airless world. The drones had found nothing because there was nothing left for them to find.
The Sunspacers Trilogy Page 33