Day of the Dragonstar (7 page)

IT TOOK ALL
of Ian Coopersmith’s professional training to stay calm, to continue concentrating on the problem before him and not the immensity and majesty of the thing called Artifact One. There it was now in the viewscreen, Iending part of its reflected light to the dimness of the lASA
Heinlein’s
control room. Scattered about him, either in their flight positions or simply strapped down to observe, were the other members of the expedition, the lights from the screen and the control boards playing over their intent features in odd patterns. He’d come to know them all in the days of the journey. Traveling in space tended to do that with a group. You learned your insignificance real quick against the backdrop of the universe, and you let more of your defensive barriers down to others, if only for the company that as so vital.

Coopersmith stared down again at his operations panel, wanting to check his figures again, but knowing they were right. A trace of the old neuroticism again, huh chappie? he asked himself.

In this situation, who could blame him?

Lieutenant Huff leaned over and said in his usual mild voice, “Channel clear, sir.”

“Right. Thanks.” Coopersmith cleared his voice, and snapped on his headphone mike. “Copernicus Base. This is the
Heinlein.
Coopersmith here.”

He glanced over his shoulders and gave a wink of reassurance to the others. That was important at this point, and Coopersmith tried to maintain a spirit of bonhomie with everyone to try and relax them. All except two remained expressionless. Doctor Hagar was frowning with intense concentration, as though it was his will power alone that made this expedition possible. He’d said almost as much once, allowing that if it weren’t for his efforts amidst the public in the past years, the space program might have been extremely curtailed. The bounds of the man’s egotism never failed to astound Coopersmith. He studied science the way a person obsessed with genealogy might study his family tree, and with the assumption that he was indeed at the uppermost branches of intelligent development. Doctor Thalberg smiled pleasantly at him, which was a welcome relief. He could use
that
kind of space medicine anytime.

“Affirmative,
Heinlein,”
came a voice, deep and crackling, from the speaker grille. “What is it, Captain?”

“We are prepared to start the disarming operation. Request check on telemetered data. Do you get a good make on the visual?”

“One moment,
Heinlein.”

Coopersmith waited along with the others in silence.

Waiting, thought Coopersmith. There was a lot of that in Deep Space.

They’d waited awhile to get here. The IASA Planetary Probeship
Heinlein
had hurtled through the light-shot darkness of space on a course here that formed a great, quasi-linear trajectory. Powered by high-thrust, continuous-impulse Lukodyanov engines, the ship had made a continuous-thrust hyperbolic transfer to rendezvous.

The
Heinlein,
by IASA standards, was a moderately large ship
—
more than a hundred meters in length. Since it was a Deep-Space vessel which would never fly in any planet’s atmosphere, no thought had been given to aerodynamic design. The control section, located at the bow, resembled the head of a mako shark, but without the smoothed edges. Below the forward viewport yawned a large ram-scoop, which enforced the shark image. Trailing off behind the control section was a thinner, rectilinear fuselage which contained flier cells, crew quarters, equipment hold, launch bays for planetary probes and lander, life-support modules, and the energy converters. Beyond the fuselage, at the aft end, were the engines
—
large conical funnels in four groups of three. All along the hull, ungainly superstructure dishes and radio-receiving parabolas were placed. In terms of sophistication, the
Heinlein
made the old LEM modules of the first moon landings look like the Wright Brothers’ gas-powered kite.

As grand a vessel as the
Heinlein
was, it was dwarfed into insignificance alongside the alien cylinder. So immense was Artifact One, that if viewed from a distance, the
Heinlein
alongside appeared no larger than a dust-mote trying to attach itself to the alien hull.

As they waited, Commander Douglas Fratz just gazed at the ship, shaking his head slowly. “My God, those engines . . . Can you imagine the
thrust
they must have in them?” His voice was surprisingly soft for his build, which was large and muscular. He wore his reddish-blond hair long although it was beginning to thin at an early age. He sported a neatly trimmed beard that Iooked like a chin strap to keep on his hair. He’d accompanied Colonel Phineas Kemp on the first manned probe to Pluto, earning a commendation for his service during the long, arduous journey.

“I think what interests IASA most,” said Coopersmith, “is the drive.”

“Hmm?” returned Fratz.

“Drive!” Doctor Hagar said, like a teacher talking to a small child. “Interstellar drive! By what method did this ship get here? Obviously, the intelligence that constructed this was also able to figure out how to cheat the speed-of-light barrier. If we get ahold of that”
—
His voice was excited
—
“the universe will open up to us. Mankind will spread to distant planets, as we were meant to. A glorious dream, fulfilled.”

“Yeah,” said Fratz. “The glorious dream that I want to fulfill right now is to complete this mission and get out of here alive. You can spread your seed over the stars as much as you want, Hagar. I just want to keep my ass intact.”

Coopersmith and Thalberg were the only ones to laugh at that. But inside, Coopersmith agreed entirely with the commander. He had a wife and a family who, he’d long since realized, were a lot more important to him than his job. Coppersmith was a tall, tightly-constructed man of forty-two. His bronze-tan complexion was not born of sunbathing, but of his parentage. His father had been a British factory worker, and his mother a West Indies Black who’d worked as a salesclerk in London.
“You’ve more than a touch of the tarbrush in ye, Ian,”
his father had once told him.
Your mum and me dumped the whole bloody barrel on ye!”

“Yes, well, that’s what all of this preliminary stuff is about, isn’t it, Commander?” said Coopersmith.

Using the coordinates and telemetered data from the ill-fated Snipe, Captain Coopersmith had guided Fratz along the hull, delicately scanning the alien surface in search of anything that appeared to resemble an entrance hatch, or perhaps a launch bay. After a careful survey of the ship’s surface, several likely configurations were located, mapped, and more intensely studied.

If Artifact One possessed more than three hatchways, they were well hidden. Coopersmith would have preferred to enter at one of the ends, but no accessway was immediately apparent. There were, however, hatches in the middle of the cylinder, each of a different size.

An intense study of the device which had destroyed the Snipe had advised the lASA to equip the
Heinlein
with a phased array of active screens which should effectively neutralize tile amplified light weapons of the alien ship. After an in-depth survey, Captain Coopersmith selected the best landing and entrance site for the
Heinlein’s
lander module. The first step, however, was to disarm the geometrically placed blisters which covered the hull.

Coopersmith and his assistant, Thomas Valdone, had assumed that the defensive blisters were arranged in the observed pattern because each had limited range. To test this theory, dummy probes
—
small gas-powered rockets
—
were directed towards the hull. Within twenty meters, a tight beam of light flicked out from the closest blisters. End of rockets. Coopersmith’s theory seemed to test true. And so he devised, a battery of small, shaped thermonuclear warheads with controlled explosive characteristics, protected by energy screens. By computer guidance, each warhead was directed to a defensive blister within range of the selected entrance hatch. The controlled explosions should, theoretically, eliminate the defensive blisters without causing more than superficial damage to the alien ship’s hull, thereby providing a safe work-corridor for the landing module and the EVA team which would be working to open the hatch.

A risky operation, this, mused Ian Coopersmith. Although all available data indicated that the alien ship was dead in space, and had been so for an indefinite amount of time, there was no guarantee that an extraterrestrial intelligence was not observing them and would interpret the shaped-charge explosions as acts of aggression.

Colonel Kemp had pointed out, though, that there had been no response from the alien vessel to any human communications attempts. There was no alternative but to attempt entrance by force. Quite simply, it was a risk which had to be taken,

The warheads were armed. All that was necessary now was word from Copernicus Base.

It arrived.

“Affirmative, Captain. Colonel Kemp’s given the go-ahead. Any time you guys are ready.”

“Launching warheads now. Stand by, Copernicus . . .”

Coopersmith nodded to Commander Fratz, who keyed in the launch order to the
Heinlein’s
on-board computer. The ship shuddered slightly as the warheads were hunched. Instantly, tracking instruments displayed their data on the console screens. Small, three-dimensional blips closed in on a schematic representation of the targets. No
one spoke save for Coopersmith, who reported the closing distances in a half-whisper: “Trajectories are on-line . . . closing nicely . . . twenty meters and closing . . . ten . . . we have detonation!”

In the vacuum of space, the explosions on the surface of the alien ship transmitted no sound. They looked like brilliant crimson buds suddenly blossoming. The display grids of the console flickered as the sensors collected new information. Coopersmith could see that the first phase of the operation had been successful. The controlled explosions had obliterated the defensive blisters without seriously affecting the alien’s hull.

“Copernicus, this is Coopersmith. So far, so good. Scanners indicate no loss of pressure on Artifact One. We are launching a dummy probe. Stand by.”

Fratz waited for Coopersmith’s nod, then keyed in the launch.

Heads turned to watch as the small torpedo-shaped probe, equipped with shock-absorbing landing legs, slowly descended toward the surface of the alien ship. No one spoke as it closed within range of the defensive systems. Closer and closer it descended until its automatic devices fired off a short burst of retrofire and the probe settled gently upon the surface, holding fast with magnetic seals,

“Copernicus, we have a touchdown!” cried Coopersmith, exultant.

“Affirmative, Captain. Congratulations,” returned the communications man from Copernicus.

The crew cheered, and Coopersmith swept off his communications helmet, and turned blue eyes upon the company.

“I do believe that we’re next!” he said.

* * *

Ian Coopersmith kept his thick dark hair cut short for moments such as these. Long hair could be rather a problem sometimes in an EVA suit. Coopersmith tried to keep his problems down to bare minimum.

“Ready, Valdone?”

The dark Italian turned amused eyes and Sicilian nose toward Coopersmith. “I’ve been ready for this for a long time, Captain.”

Coopersmith gave him a thumb’s up signal. They donned their helmets and switched on the life-support equipment.

After a quick jump through the airlock of the
Heinlein’s
number one lander, which had drifted down from the Probeship and effected a perfect landing near the outlines of what appeared to be an entrance bay, they floated cautiously down to the hull.

Led by Coopersmith, they carefully walked with magnetic boots across the surface of the alien ship. The lander
—
which looked to Ian rather like an overfed tarantula
—
waited patiently behind them

A historic occasion, thought Coopersmith. Yes indeed. Man’s first physical contact with an extraterrestrial craft. But there was no trumpet fanfare, no live TV
coverage to Earth’s billions, no eloquently-rigged speeches for the history books. There would be time for such things later, maybe. History books were not on Coopersmith’s mind as he appraised the contours of the hatch below their feet.

The outlining seam of the hatch was quite large: approximately ten meters wide and fifteen high. Several small rectangles that measured slightly more than two meters each were on each side of the hatch. Their function or relationship to the larger, seamed configuration was not clear. Coopersmith used a sensory instrument which resembled a fluoroscope: Mark 8 Betatron Scanner, which allowed the user to view the interior of metallic objects of varying degrees of density and opacity.