Rosetta (Maura's Gate Book 2)
Page 5
“Good to see you, Devin!” A voice came from his back.
Devin turned around to look at the woman standing at the door. The base was under the command of Vice Admiral Theo Crawford. On the trip here he learned there was also a mission commander in charge of this operation, possibly in the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and possibly the one being referred in Thurman’s “Boss said this, boss said that.” But he never thought it would be an old friend.
Mina extended her right hand as she approached him. She hadn’t changed much since he first met her seven years ago. Neither the unblemished skin nor the limpid dark eyes. Trim as an officer should be. Slim like a teenage girl. But aside from the fact that she had abandoned the black-framed glasses, something else was different, like the way she walked, stood, and attended to others. In short, she had become one of those who would come to Devin’s mind when he heard the term “national security”. Yes, it was our fellow humans who were protecting us, not weapons.
Devin shook her hand. Now he knew why he was chosen for this mission. It wasn’t about him being a Jupiter fan.
Mina sat in the chair next to him and asked, “How’s Roland doing?”
“You didn’t get a copy of our conversation?” Devin said ironically.
She smiled. “I did, but I’d rather hear it from you.”
As Devin recounted the story about the second moon, it occurred to him that Roland normally wasn’t a person short of speculations. Maybe he had some hypothesis in mind, but didn’t want to speak it out in a conversation deprived of privacy.
Mina nodded without making comments. Then she sat straight and gave him a recap of the situation. The last time they received the message was two days before Cassiopeia arrived. Since then, they had set up a direction-finding system that should be able to locate the source of the signal with a resolution of three kilos on Jupiter’s cloud surface, which was roughly equivalent to 0.01% of the longitude of the Great Red Spot. But since then, the other side had remained silent. The all-wave search-and-track system had also failed to distinguish anything unusual inside the Storm King.
“Who are they?” Mina asked, the question half directed to Devin and half to herself. “Aliens who understand English?”
“Could it be a prank?” Devin asked, not that he believed it but he was hoping so. Say, a competitor who contrived to draw out the US’s most advanced warship before it was ready to be deployed.
“The message was embedded in an image.” Mina tapped on the table in front of her, and a touch screen lit up beneath the table’s transparent coating. “Here it is.”
Devin looked away from the table and studied the colorful image on the wall straight ahead. The sentence, the day is coming, was written in a simple black font similar to Arial. The background was a photograph of a pyramid being constructed in the distance—Devin knew it was half-built, not half-torn, because the stones scattering in front of it were shiny and freshly cut. Raggedly-dressed Egyptians stood in groups, mostly workers, with a few spectators who had kids sitting on their shoulders. Closer to where the camera should have been were two men dressed in shirts and pants, which somehow resembled the modern business-casual attire, though not identical.
“Does this look like a Hollywood movie studio to you?” Mina asked.
Devin shook his head. Intuition told him this was a real picture taken thousands of years ago. The worker who was sucking on his bleeding finger, the baby wrapped in his mother’s veil, one of the two outlanders turning and frowning in the camera’s direction … Truth has its power. There are things that simply can’t be replicated.
“We’ve been sending all kinds of signals back, including the same image with our message. If whoever inside were trying to contact us, why are they silent now?”
Because you got a hundred missiles aiming at them? Devin wanted to say.
“Any suggestion?” Mina raised her long eyebrows.
Devin hesitated. The best strategy was to send in a ship, preferably one that lacked the ability to offend, and pray that the initiator would reveal themselves. But if he brought it up, most likely he’d be the one to carry out the task. However enamored with Jupiter, he was not keen on taking a closer look.
“Well, if you think of anything later …” Mina stood up, seemingly ready to leave.
“I’ll go there,” Devin said with a sigh. Did he have a choice? This wasn’t for scientific discoveries any more. The day is coming. What day? In a message from someone who visited Earth at least four thousand years ago, it could not be a cheerful holiday.
“How are you going to find them?”
“I’m counting on them to find me. If not, I know my way out.”
As he said the words, he remembered the dream last night and couldn’t help glancing at the windows. The simulated wind seemed to have intensified. The raindrops were not made of water but a mixture of helium and neon …
“I’m going with you, then.” Mina’s voice left no room for objections.
(End of Excerpt)
Books by Fiona Rawsontile
Science-fiction novel: The Starlight Fortress (Aug 2013)
Science-fiction series: Maura’s Gate
1. Clam (Jul 2014)
2. Rosetta (Nov 2014)
3. The Lost Jupiter (Mar 2015)
4. Strands (Aug 2015)
Fiona Rawsontile graduated from Syracuse University with a Ph.D. in Bioengineering. She currently works as a neuroscientist in Missouri.