Earth Flight (32 page)

29

‘You could go to Gateway base, Fian,’ I said. ‘Just because I’m stuck on Earth, there’s no reason you …’

We were sitting on the luxuriously large couch in our apartment at Zulu base. Fian grabbed a cushion from beside him and threw it at me. ‘Say that one more time and I’ll strangle you. They’ve only got a skeleton field base on Gateway, not many people can go there, and they don’t need a clueless history student like me getting in their way.’

‘You aren’t clueless.’

‘Yes, I am. We’re talking about a field base on a world with an unbreathable atmosphere, Jarra. They’d have to assign someone to constantly nursemaid me, because I don’t even know what alarms sound if there’s a dome breach.’

‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘Yes, I suppose …’

‘Command may have gone to Gateway, but the Command Support and Research teams are still here. The secure command feed coming in from Gateway base has to include all the details for them, so we won’t miss anything that’s happening. Not that much
is
happening.’

He turned back to our wall vid. One of the group of three Military probes we now had at the edge of Fortuna system was facing an alien sphere. Neither of them were doing anything. They hadn’t done anything for the last ten minutes.

Fian sighed. ‘This isn’t much of a conversation.’

‘It’s hard to have a proper conversation when the only words … light signals … we understand are numbers and a few scientific terms,’ I said. ‘In theory, we should have learned their language properly before contacting them, but since the current estimates are that will take a century …’

‘Ninety-eight years, one month, and three days,’ said Fian, in a solemn imitation of Colonel Leveque’s voice.

I giggled.

‘I know we’ve only got a very limited vocabulary,’ Fian continued, ‘but we’ve been trying to talk for six hours now and we haven’t actually communicated anything yet.’

‘Yes we have,’ I said. ‘We’ve communicated that we aren’t shooting at them, and they aren’t shooting at us. That’s pretty important.’

‘True,’ said Fian, ‘but …’

‘Time to eat.’ Raven came over from the food dispenser, holding a plate in each hand.

‘Furniture command table get over here to position two,’ I said.

There was a low table parked by the wall. It obediently slid towards the couch, and Raven put the plates down on it.

Fian looked at my plate and sighed. ‘Raven, I wish you’d stop feeding Jarra cheese fluffle.’

I grabbed my plate of cheese fluffle and held on to it defensively. ‘You may not like cheese fluffle, Fian, but I do!’

Raven brought drinks and his own meal across to the table, and was just sitting down on a chair opposite us when there was a chime from the apartment door. He jumped up again and went to check the door controls. ‘It’s Captain Marston with a hover trolley full of our luggage.’

Raven checked the hover trolley with sensors for several minutes before he allowed Marston to bring it inside the apartment. Fian and I searched through the mountain of hover bags to find their two controlling key fobs and clicked them. There was a minor scuffle as the two sets of hover bags came to life, fought their way off the trolley, and organized themselves into two separate groups that bounced gently in midair next to us. Raven grabbed the sole remaining bag, which belonged to him.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘My pleasure, sir,’ said Captain Marston in an extremely unpleased voice.

He and his hover trolley vanished off down the corridor, and Raven closed the apartment door.

Fian looked at the hover bags and pulled a face. ‘We just asked Playdon and Dalmora to pack a few things, not everything we owned.’

‘I think Playdon’s guessed about the alien home world and is prepared for us to be away for ages,’ I said.

Fian nodded. ‘The way we suddenly dashed off was a bit suspicious. I hope Krath isn’t loudly discussing it with everyone.’

‘I’m sure Playdon will shut him up if necessary.’ I checked my lookup. ‘I knew it!’

‘What?’ asked Fian.

‘Playdon’s started sending us vids of his lectures,’ I said.

‘He’s sending them to me too,’ said Raven.

Fian and I laughed, clicked the key fobs, led our processions of luggage off to the bedroom, and left them there to be unpacked later. When we returned to the living room and checked the wall vid, the Military probe was running the light sculpture that represented the test sequences. All three of us could instantly recognize that by now.

Fian sighed. ‘I see they’re starting from the beginning for the sixth time.’

I piled up the dirty dishes and took them over to the cleanser slot of the food processor.

‘Now we’re back on a Military base, you should let me clear up the dishes, Jarra,’ said Raven.

‘I thought the Military happily swapped between acting formally and informally,’ I said. ‘We’re being informal here.’

‘I know,’ said Raven, ‘but even when things are informal, you wouldn’t expect General Torrek to clear away dirty plates.’

‘Of course not, but there’s a big difference between a Commander and a General.’

‘Well, there’s a big difference between a Captain and a Commander too,’ said Raven.

‘Captain Marston didn’t seem impressed by me being a Commander,’ I said. ‘He was openly sulking about being kept waiting.’

Raven shrugged. ‘Qwin Marston’s in a foul mood because Rayne Tar Cameron’s broken their betrothal and dumped him. He’s been thrown out of the Tar clan, and he’ll be transferred to another base as soon as General Torrek’s back to authorize it.’

Fian had been frowning at the wall vid, but now he joined in the conversation. ‘I can see why Qwin Marston couldn’t stay in the Tar clan, but it seems unfair that he gets transferred as well. That’s because he’s the lower rank?’

‘The Military are both a professional organization and a family,’ said Raven, ‘and combining the two sometimes gets complicated. Official policy is to arrange assignments that keep couples together, but also to split them up when relationships go sour. Who moves isn’t to do with rank as much as how easy someone is to replace. Qwin Marston is just a supply clerk. He was only assigned to this base because of his betrothal to Rayne, so there’s no question about who gets transferred now.’

‘What would General Torrek do if Colonel Stone and Colonel Leveque split up?’ asked Fian.

‘Throw a fit,’ said Raven. ‘The Alien Contact programme can’t afford to lose either of them, so he’d probably order them to have counselling. The same thing would happen if you two split up. The General Marshal has said he approves of your relationship.’

I frowned. ‘The Military can’t order people to have psychological counselling.’

Raven grinned. ‘You could try telling the General Marshal that, but …’

‘We’re definitely not splitting up then,’ said Fian. ‘Jarra would do anything to avoid psychologists.’

I pulled a rude face at him, and turned back to the wall vid to see what was happening. The Military probe had run the light sculpture of the test sequences, including the very complicated flickering section at the end that seemed to be nothing to do with the tests and no one had managed to translate yet. The alien sphere had responded with the same thing. The Military probe had displayed the light sculpture of the alien system. The alien sphere had responded with the same light sculpture, but with the second planet and its moon flashing brightly, obviously indicating that was the alien home world.

The alien sphere was now continuing with a complex light display. It looked like exactly the same one it had played the previous five times. Nobody had the faintest idea what it meant, apart from the fact it included a couple of numbers.

The alien light display ended, and the Military probe started a new light sequence. I recognized the patterns for two, followed by four, but got muddled after that. I glanced at Fian, who was better at deciphering the patterns than I was. ‘What are we saying this time?’

‘We’re just counting up even numbers,’ said Fian. ‘I bet we stop at sixteen, and the alien sphere just sits there and does nothing. Again.’

We waited. He was right.

‘Talking to aliens was never going to be easy,’ I said.

Fian sighed. ‘I know, but basic mathematics should work.’

He changed the wall vid from the command feed to Colonel Leveque’s science feed. I didn’t even try to understand that, just waited quietly while Fian frowned at it for several minutes.

‘There’s something wrong,’ he said at last. ‘The sphere in Earth orbit is 4.71 metres in diameter. So is this one. They’re also the same colour, and unfolded in exactly the same way to start displaying their light sculptures. The way they manoeuvre matches perfectly as well. As far as we can tell, they’re identical.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked.

‘They shouldn’t be,’ said Fian. ‘Think about it, Jarra. Our dating techniques give wildly varying results on the alien artefact we found in Earth Africa, but we know the tunnel the artefact was found in was at least three thousand years old. The sphere here should be far more advanced than the one in Earth orbit.’

I thought for a minute. ‘When we dig up a stasis box in one of Earth’s ruined cities, and find an old data chip inside, we have to use a converter to read it. The aliens could be using an old style sphere to talk to us, because it has to be able to recognize and display the old signal sequences.’

‘That’s possible,’ said Fian. ‘Now tell me why their sphere gives the same response every time we try and talk to it, and ignores anything new, even the simplest mathematical sequence.’

I couldn’t. I groaned, and put the grim truth into words. ‘You think the alien civilization has fallen?’

He nodded. ‘It’s happened over and over again in our own history. We build up civilizations and they fall. Remember how close humanity was to going back to barbarism after Exodus century.’

‘We answered their invitation, but we came too late.’ I shook my head. ‘That’s …’

‘I know,’ said Fian.

I forced away my emotion and tried to be practical. ‘One of their ancient spheres is talking to us, but it isn’t getting any new instructions from them. That probably means the aliens are confined to their own planet these days, and don’t have communications technology any longer.’

I turned to Raven. ‘We need to talk to Colonel Stone. She’s in Zeta sector so …?’

‘Major Tar Cameron is still here,’ said Raven. ‘Call her and ask her to set up a secure link with Gateway base.’

I did that and Rayne Tar Cameron replied in a briskly efficient voice. ‘Yes, sir. We’ll route the link to the wall vid in your quarters.’

It was ten minutes before we saw Colonel Stone and Colonel Leveque looking out at us from the wall vid. They were in a tiny room, sitting on the same sort of grey flexiplas chairs that we had in our dig site dome. Brightly coloured crates were stacked against one wall. Most of them were labelled with incomprehensible jumbles of letters and numbers, but the black lettering on the heap of red crates just said ‘OXYGEN’.

‘You have a habit of throwing drastic things at us, Jarra,’ said Colonel Stone, ‘so I thought we’d better take this call in a side room. What have you thought of this time?’

‘It’s not my idea, sir. It’s Fian’s. He’ll explain.’

There was a twelve-second pause while my words went through the comms portal relays to Zeta sector, and Colonel Stone’s reply was sent back. ‘Go ahead Fian.’

It was strange watching the faces on the wall vid react to Fian’s explanation with that delay. It underlined exactly why Colonel Stone needed to be in Zeta sector right now rather than on Earth. Finally, Fian stopped talking. Twelve seconds later, Colonel Stone spoke.

‘If you’re right, this is wonderful news. We need to confirm it as soon as possible, so we’ll set up a drop portal to send a probe to take a look at Fortuna itself.’ She glanced at Leveque. ‘Risk assessment?’

‘Minimal if the probe arrives at a reasonable distance from Fortuna and instantly displays the light sculpture of the test sequences,’ he said.

Stone nodded. ‘Thank you Fian, Jarra.’

The wall vid went blank. There was a short silence before Fian spoke. ‘That was a bit of a brutal reaction.’

I sighed. ‘I know, but we’re reacting like history students, grieving for a fallen civilization and lost knowledge. Colonel Stone’s not a historian; she’s the acting commander of the Alien Contact programme. If the alien civilization has fallen, then they can’t harm us. If I was sitting in her command chair, knowing the survival of the human race could depend on my decisions, then I’d feel nothing but relief too.’

‘You’re right,’ said Fian. ‘The collapse must have happened thousands of years ago. The aliens obviously lost space travel entirely, but it’s surprising they haven’t regained it by now.’

‘If it was thousands of years ago, they could have rebuilt their civilization and had it collapse several times since then,’ I said. ‘Humanity had one major collapse after colonizing too many new worlds in Exodus century, spent a century rebuilding, and then the chimera of Thetis caused more problems.’

A thought suddenly nagged at me. A ridiculous idea, but worrying enough that I had to prove it wrong. The alien ship had passed through Beta sector on its way to Earth, and Thetis had been in Beta sector. I used my lookup to project a holo of the three concentric spheres of humanity’s space, and added a bright line running from Fortuna in Zeta sector, to Earth at the centre of the holo.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Fian.

I didn’t explain, just told my lookup to add the dot that marked the position of Thetis. That was supposed to prove me wrong, so I could stop worrying, but it did the opposite. Thetis was on the edge of Beta sector that bordered on Zeta sector, directly positioned on the bright line of the alien ship’s course.

‘Oh nuke!’ I stared at my holo, had a sudden moment of relief as I saw the flaw in my logic, and then felt sick as I realized I’d had it backwards. The real answer was … ‘Oh nuking hell!’

30

I was vaguely aware of Fian frowning at me, and Raven looking utterly shocked at my swearing. I couldn’t make myself explain to them. I just cancelled the holo image, and called Major Rayne Tar Cameron.