Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (5 page)

"That may be, keep observing. We're switching bridge crews in a few minutes," Gordon said from the
High Hopes
, "We'll review all the data tomorrow and entertain other suggestions. How is your bridge crew switch staggered from ours, Captain Fenton?" They deliberately staggered shift changes so no unexpected event caught all of their vessels at a shift change.

"We switch shifts a half hour after you," Priceless said.

"That will work fine then," Gordon said, "I'll be on my second coffee by then. I'm off com here."

"Is caffeine a stimulant for Derf too?" Burt Wong asked, after Gordon was gone.

"In sufficient quantity," Priceless told him. "A Derf mug is usually two liters. And if they stop drinking it they get a headache and irritable just like humans, but for about five days instead of three."

"Then one hopes they brought along plenty," Burt decided.

* * *

The world had time to turn under them fully by the time Gordon was sitting in his command chair again. As promised he was on his second big mug of dark strong coffee, patiently waiting for Captain Fenton to start his shift on
The Champion William
, to discuss the radar mapping and what limited optical observations they could make at a distance. He wondered how dark their biscuits had gotten in the turned-off oven, but it seemed petty to ask when they had a planetary survey to discuss.

"Sir, we have a short series of radar pulses and a hail in what we assume is Caterpillar language."

"But no entry radiation observed?" Gordon asked Brownie.

"No, sir. They must have come in on the other side of the star."

"I wonder if they thought we'd be gone on or close to jump? They might not have anticipated how interested we'd be in a water world," Gordon speculated. "Assuming they know the neighborhood and had any idea it was here. This does seem to be the edge of their reach or beyond."

"You have to wonder how far they range the other way," his Xo said. "Is their civilization as mature as their technology? Have they been at it longer than we have, to be ahead of us in ship design?"

"Indeed," Gordon agreed. There was simply no way to speculate.

"Let off a couple hard pings from our radar," Gordon instructed. "I consider them friendly and we're not trying to hide from them."

"Aye, sir," Brownie said. "We could send voice, but there is no indication they understand it."

"You could send images," Thor suggested.

"Why not video?" Brownie asked. "They responded to video before."

"Yes, they responded, but when we send video they sent back still images. I think they just analyzed our video and extracted images," Thor said. "They have never sent video back to us. For some reason they seem uncomfortable with the format. It may be quite incompatible."

"Good morning, Commander," Captain Fenton said on the command band.

"Ah, good morning, Captain. Do your people have a report ready?" Gordon inquired.

"Yes, and I'm sending a text version with some images. I'll leave it to you who you wish to allow see it," Captain Fenton said. "There's nothing particularly disturbing, but it's interesting."

"I'll probably post it to the fleet net, but after your summary and looking myself," Gordon said.

"We know now there is no land. Not even under the hurricane. There is definitely life. We see mats of what we assume is vegetation. We've identified three distinct types by color. Although one of my crew pointed out they might be seasonal variations or groups that mature together and are at different stages. None of them however project from the water more than a few centimeters. There are large organisms that surface and submerge. We saw them on radar and then were able to train the telescope on them. Observe," he said sending the video over.

The scene appeared to be from a height as there were clouds below. There was also a fine grid of lines on the image with numbers at the edge. As the view zoomed down it found a gap in the clouds. Eventually a pattern of waves became visible and then a sprinkling of dark grey dashes in the water. At the highest magnification the dashes were tiny streamlined shapes. When they broke through the surface there was just enough white around them to tell they splashed up foam. They would show white around one and then it went under again. It would still be visible from above, but the image blurred a little. One could presume because it dropped beneath the surface a bit.

"How big are those?" Gordon asked.

"Thirty-five meters average," Fenton said. "A few small ones that might be young, or the sexes might be radically different in size. They only show as breaching the surface three or four meters on radar. We haven't seen one jump out of the water like Earth whales."

"Earth whales jump
out
of the water?" Gordon asked, clearly surprised, making an appropriate gesture with his true hand cupped.

"Indeed they do, although these are about half again as big as most Earth whales. But on Earth whales occasionally jump out of the water unaware and land across a small boat. It doesn't do the whale or the boat, either one, a whole lot of good."

"As we mentioned a couple shifts back, we don't want to land any sort of shuttle until we know more. Seeing these, that now means until we're sure something bigger than the shuttle isn't going to playfully jump on it, or pull it under. We'll put that in our reports for sure," Gordon said.

"There was one area where we had three bumps sticking up out of the water," Fenton said. "They were approximately round and about a meter and a half high in the middle. We'd have missed them in the background variations if it wasn't a fairly calm area, but there was cloud cover so we couldn't eyeball them. I'm hoping we can turn the telescope on them in another local day or two."

"What is different about those? They don't go back under like the whale thingies?" Gordon asked.

"No they stay up, and as close as we can resolve with the radar they are at the points of a triangle with equal sides," Fenton said, his eyebrows said he found that significant.

"Ah, so you think they are artificial?" Gordon guessed.

"It seems at least possible," Fenton agreed.

"Keep surveying, noting any changes in particular," Gordon ordered. "We'll examine the material you've given us. I'm going to send the
Sharp Claws
off
,
she isn't needed for escort now in my opinion. The
Dart
can go along if they wish, to examine the other planets in the system in more detail since we'll be here a few days. We'll hold another meeting when we both start a new shift. Meanwhile I'd like the various engineers to make suggestions to Mr. Ellis on the
Retribution
about what sort of a soft lander we can construct. They have the biggest fabbers and the most material. I want something that can be finished in a day or two, not a week-long project."

"Aye sir," Fenton agreed. "We'll keep updating the data as we get it as well as summarizing it when we have another meeting."

"That's fine," Gordon agreed. "It's always good to keep running backups."

That nudged Fenton's paranoia again. What did Gordon think might happen to them?

Chapter 5

Gordon had the
Sharp Claws
safely away, the
Dart
agreeing to accompany them. He studied the data from the world, sending a copy to Lee's and Thor's boards without discussing it out loud on the bridge.

Lee suggested they use a balloon after a parachute to drop it slowly. When it was low enough to drop the last couple meters, the balloon would be cut loose. After it lifted clear the hydrogen would be ignited to destroy it. Thor suggested they not drop any technology they didn't want to give to unknown sapients. At a minimum he suggested enclosing all critical items such as electronics in a sealed container with a non-explosive self destruct. A thermite compound should do the trick.

That made sense to Gordon and he swapped the suggestions to each of them without telling them the source to prejudice them. Both endorsed the other's ideas. He forwarded them to engineering and added his own idea to use the tanks from filling the balloon as float pontoons once empty. Again he didn't identify the sources so nobody would feel constrained from criticizing an idea because it was from the commander or rejecting one because they didn't like Thor. It never occurred to him that anyone might not like Lee.

After reviewing the collected data Gordon asked Lee and Thor, "See any reason not to put this project on the fleet web for anybody who is interested?"

"Not at all," Thor said. "It's going to be a greenie in everybody's ear. It may be a long time before it puts money in their pocket, but we're not exactly going home broke."

"I see no harm," Lee agreed. "Most will just listen to a news summary channel and skip wading through the whole thing. They're too tired after their shift or busy meeting up for poker."

"And it's posted... " Gordon said, as soon as he touched the key. "I'm off for some lunch. You have the conn, Thor. Can I have them send you anything?"

"I have the conn," Thor acknowledged. "I'll order direct. I haven't looked at what they already made today. I hate to make extra work for them with a custom order if the special of the day sounds good."

"I'd like to tag along if you aren't meeting somebody," Lee said.

"I'm meeting
you
," Gordon said, unlatching the belts they all kept loosely engaged at stations.

* * *

Lee grabbed two pre-made cold sandwiches. They had a bit of green hanging out of them, a luxury from their experimental gardens. Nobody had tried growing even limited fresh food on a ship for some years. An unusually long voyage seemed a good time to try again. The equipment had improved. The little bit of crunch was a huge boost to morale.

Gordon took two of the large submarine sandwiches, adding enough mayonnaise to the cold one to make it drip, and sufficient hot mustard to the hot one that it would be inedible to Lee. That and another big mug of coffee was a light lunch for him.

"What do they want to measure with a soft lander?" Lee asked. She had to wait for Gordon to swallow. It looked like it was a four bite sandwich.

"The salts present in the water is the biggie. They'll boil off the water on a heated pan and then vaporize the residue with a laser. That will give them the relative abundance of various elements," Gordon said. "That is a start at understanding both what the core down under the water may be like and what biological processes are possible living in that water."

"What about retrieving an actual sample?" Lee said.

"I've seen a couple proposals. All of them risk a shuttle crew, and I'm not going to do that."

"How did they want to do it?" Lee said. She seemed very interested.

"One proposed dipping a small sample with a scoop at the end of a long line. The shuttle would have to go far lower and slower than I can accept," Gordon said. "The other idea was to drop a modified anti-missile missile as part of the soft lander. A very small sample could be pumped aboard. With the weight of the warhead and guidance electronics removed it could achieve a low orbit by remote control."

"I'm betting if there is anybody down there, thinking creatures that is, you don't want to light a rocket off in their face. That's
almost
as bad as setting of a charge to check the depth," Lee said. "I think the thermite destruct charge is pretty risky too."

"Worse," Gordon told her. "If there is any intelligent life down there I don't want to send them a very sophisticated missile to reverse engineer. Even without a warhead."

"But we're going to recover it," Lee objected.

"We would
intend
to recover it," Gordon corrected. "What happens when something gets bumped too hard or gets wet, or our brilliant engineers don't get a wire connected tight, and it doesn't fire? Also it has to float there long enough to pump water into the rocket and the testing chamber to be boiled off and laser vaporized. It makes me nervous. What if some huge thing like we've seen decides to
swallow
it? "

"We've got good guys and military grade hardware," Lee argued. "I'd bet on an alien submarine snatching it before a mechanical failure."

"Even worse!" Gordon agreed. But he smiled.

"How about this? You can fill a small tank with a sample of the sea water, and loft it with a balloon up to where a shuttle can snatch it out of mid-air? I looked on the net-fraction and they did that with airplanes years and years ago," Lee said. "They grabbed the line under the balloon."

"Ah-ha! I
thought
you had some idea to propose," Gordon said. "You do like balloons don't you? How would we
snatch
it in mid-air? Our shuttles don't hover well. The exhaust tends to vaporize anything they would stream behind them on a line. We are
not
hanging a crewman out the lock with a pole and hook. Not even near stall speed. I don't like the idea of our shuttle deliberately trying to run into something in the air. Pilots go to a great deal of trouble
not
to do that. I'm not even sure I'd want to give strange sapients the idea how to make balloons."

Lee frowned. "I'll try to think of something else. The airplanes put a big 'Y' shaped thing on the nose, but engineering wouldn't even talk to me about putting one on a shuttle. He said no and then
no
, and then he got rude. And anyway, a guy in the lock would have a safety line on!"

Gordon just rolled his eyes.

* * *

"We can have it ready by the middle of next shift," Jeremiah Ellis promised. He was head of engineering on the
Retribution
, which was best equipped to make the soft lander.

"That's fine," Gordon said, "but I couldn't sleep wondering if it was going to work. I don't want it to land until the main bridge crew is seated and can watch it live."

"Oh... what exactly do you want to be able to see?" Ellis asked.

"Cameras are cheap and rugged. Weren't you planning on streaming all kinds of video off this thing when it lands? As easy as it is, why
not
?" Gordon demanded.