Nebula (14 page)

“OK. Now we’ll load those final ten containers, and then I can take you into the alien ops center. Then we can go home.”

When they got back to the ship, Milo had already unloaded the ten containers and put them outside the airlock. They were wrapped in a transparent plastic that kept them isolated from the oxygen atmosphere on Earth and in the ship. Brad explained that one of the difficult parts of the process was manufacturing and loading the containers in an atmosphere that was 100% nitrogen. They had special rooms at Nebula Two that were built just for that purpose, and once the containers were loaded, they were wrapped in this tough plastic material. Brad and Harry used a special tool to undo the wrappers and then made several trips back and forth from the ship to the storage cabinet, loading the last containers onto their shelves. Then Brad led the way to the entrance to the alien ops center.

“I’ll go in first, and you follow me. It’s pretty tight in there. They’re a lot smaller than us, but the interior rooms are large enough for a couple of us to explore. Just watch out for bumping your head on the doors between rooms. We need to bend pretty low to get through the airlock, but at least they left it open, so that makes it a lot easier. I usually just crawl the few meters until we get to where we can stand.”

Harry followed Brad’s lead, crawling through the open airlock and then arriving in the first room, where he could stand without hitting the ceiling, but with only a little headroom to spare. The two of them were now in the room, and as Brad had said, there was enough room for them to walk around without bumping into anything.

“So how come they left the airlock open?” Harry asked. “And why did they build it underground? They didn’t need to hide it.”

“They didn’t know how long they’d have to spend here, so they wanted to protect themselves from cosmic rays and other things in this harsh environment. The ground makes a reasonably good shield. At least, that’s what we figured when we found it. Leaving it open to the Martian atmosphere was just done for convenience. There was no need to maintain internal air and temperature when no one was here, and they can easily reestablish the proper conditions when they need to. Also, when the air locks are left open, they can get in and out without worrying about something going wrong with the door controls and making it hard to get in to fix the problem. It also suits our needs, since we don’t want to expose the pathogen containers to an oxygen-rich atmosphere before they start on their way to the alien fleet.”

They then went into the next room, and Harry could see that it was a work room, with equipment similar to what they had in their own base. The living quarters and the kitchen also looked similar, with the usual types of bunks and food storage and preparation equipment. Everything was scaled down in size, but the overall functionality was almost identical with what humans would provide in this sort of facility.

“They really seem to be a lot like us,” Harry remarked. “Everything is pretty much the same as what we have at our base. I expected something much different.”

“Well, they are like us in most ways. You can see some small differences, probably due to the six fingers instead of five. Tools and appliances have a different feel to them, but all in all, we could use things interchangeably. OK. Let’s get back to the ship. We need to get back to Earth and finish our work back there.”

They walked the short distance to the ship and rejoined Milo, who had been reading a book to pass the time. When they were all settled into their seats, Milo asked Harry if he’d like to take control for the takeoff. “I think that you’re ready to take us most of the way back,” he said. “The best technique is to do a vertical lift to a few thousand meters and then fly out beyond the orbits of the two moons. Then I’ll watch when you plot the course to Earth, but you can do everything, and I won’t interfere unless you do something that could get us killed. OK?”

“OK,” Harry replied. “Here goes.” He pushed the button to turn power on and manipulated the controls to rise vertically. He’d got the hang of it on the trip from Earth, and it seemed pretty easy. He even controlled the pitch to rise vertically without tipping the nose up until they were three thousand meters above the ground. It was like a helicopter lifting off. Then he allowed the automatic attitude control to point the ship in the direction of motion and flew out beyond the orbits of the moons, at which point he stopped the ship and let it hover in space while he programmed the flight path back to Earth.

“Good,” Milo said as Harry finished the programming. “You learned fast. I’ll have to watch out or you’ll have my job.”

“Not a chance,” Harry replied with a grin. “I can do the easy things, but I’ll leave the aerobatics to you.”

Harry then pressed the button on the side of his seat to engage the high speed drive, and off they went, rapidly accelerating to 99.9% of light speed. He was gaining confidence and chose the fast pace instead of a more conservative speed. Milo didn’t object, but Harry could see that he was paying close attention to the displays and was on the alert for any problem.

The distance from Mars to Earth was about one hundred fifty million kilometers and the trip took only about ten minutes as measured on Earth and much less as measured on the ship because of the relativistic time dilation. Harry had programmed the course to stop just beyond the orbit of the Moon. Then Milo took over and flew the complicated approach to avoid detection as they reentered the atmosphere and then flew into the ocean, back to Nebula Ops.

“We’re home,” Milo said as they approached the undersea entry to the base and maneuvered through the door that opened to receive them. Milo maneuvered the ship through the airlock chamber and parked it near one of the walls in the docking area. Then they all got out and went to the dining room. Harry hadn’t realized how hungry he was until they got there. They’d been gone for about four hours without anything to eat, and it was way past lunchtime.

“So, how did you like the trip,” Brad asked as they settled in at one of the tables and began to eat.

“Great,” Harry answered. “It’s got to be one of the most exciting experiences that I ever had. I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy living there for more than a day or two, but being a tourist today was easy to take.”

They then chatted about the trip and the upcoming operation as they finished their meal. All the chatter was between Harry and Brad. Milo ate but seemed to lapse back into his “silent man” persona. The difference between his behavior now and during the trip to Mars was remarkable, and Harry figured that he was just basically an introvert and only opened up when he was doing what he loved best, flying the ship and teaching someone how to fly.

The rest of the day for Harry and Brad was spent back in the lab, getting up to speed on what had gone on in their absence. It seemed that everything was just about ready to deploy to Mars, where they’d do the final work on the hardware and software to interface with the alien robots and do a complete test of all systems. The schedule called for wrapping up this phase of Nebula’s mission in ten days and then taking everything to the forward operations base on Mars.

The only remaining technical problem was to be able to reactivate the sentry and the three other robots on Mars and to have them appear normal to the aliens while they were actually under supervision by the AFO team at the forward operating base. They had to respond to the aliens without any indication of human tinkering, and the records of human arrivals and insertion of new software had to be hidden. It was a technical challenge of the first order and was absolutely essential to the mission.

This was the main reason that Harry had been recruited so forcefully, and he’d been working with Yuri and Ludmila on it since his arrival. They made rapid progress, based to a large extent on the work that Lars had done before his death. Harry was almost in the same class as Lars, and within one week after his return from Mars, he and Yuri were able to finish development of the logic and algorithms to interleave the human and alien interactive processes. Ludmila and her associates then wrote the software in less than two weeks and had it running in all the robots at Ops. It worked almost perfectly in the first tests, and the few minor bugs were easily fixed.

Harry, Yuri, Ludmila, and Brad put the software through a number of exercises where two of them played the roles of humans and the other two played as aliens. They used a large experimental area at Ops that was able to simulate a good part of the alien base on Mars, so the activities were representative of what they would have to do once the operation began. Everything seemed to work as planned. The robots all responded to both human and “alien” direction, and the “aliens” were unable to see any evidence of the human interactions or see any other clues that something might be wrong. After several of these exercises, they did a thorough readout of all the records that were stored. When they used the data retrieval processes that the aliens would use, only data related to the alien interactions could be extracted. Now they were confident that all the development and testing in the lab was complete, so the technology was ready to go for the final tests to be done with the real alien robots on Mars. It was with a mix of satisfaction, confidence, and a bit of nervousness that they loaded the final software onto disks to take with them to Mars.

The few remaining preparations on Earth were completed without a hitch, and the day for the initial operational mission on Mars finally arrived. Everyone was a bit on edge, since this was the start of the real operation. All of them had been to Mars at least once before, but now they were going to activate the alien robots and prepare the forward base for a longer term visit. They’d be there only for a day or two this time, only long enough to check out all the equipment, put everything in place, and assure themselves that they could work smoothly with the robots. But it was still a lot longer than the few hours in previous visits, and even more important, it was the final preparation for the operation that would take them there for a much longer time and a much more important and dangerous mission, up close to live aliens and their warships.

The Advanced Force Operations team would use two ships this time, even though they could all fit easily into one. Brad explained that they wanted to test the approach procedures with the alien sentry robot activated, but they wanted to play it safe in case things didn’t work as planned. The sentry and the other robots were still in their “sleep” modes, so there was no problem with the initial approach. They would reactivate the robots when they landed. Then they would keep one ship and its crew on Mars, while the other ship departed and negotiated with the sentry for its return. If something went wrong, the crew on Mars could deactivate the sentry and fix the problem. Everyone nodded their agreement that Brad’s plan made sense. Besides, there was essentially no real cost in flying two ships instead of one. Energy wasn’t an issue with the gravity-induced fusion generators.

*

The trip to Mars was quick and uneventful. Brad piloted one of the ships and Milo piloted the other. Brad’s crew consisted of Harry, Judith, Ludmila, and Nigel. Yuri, Mikio, Gladys, and Doug were in Milo’s ship. The two ships landed near the forward operating base, and everyone went inside to prepare equipment to reactivate the alien robots and also to look around and make sure that everything was ready for the long term occupancy.

Brad summarized the situation. They were here to replace the software in the robots with the new software that Ludmila’s team had developed. Until now, every interaction with the robots had used the alien messages and processes, and all the records stored in the robots’ memories were the actual events. The initial interactions were accomplished many years ago, when Nebula first visited Mars. They used knowledge learned from the memories in the robots and ships that crashed on Earth to make it seem as if they were aliens returning to Mars. That was necessary to deal with the sentry before they deactivated it and to be able to take control of the worker robots and direct them to build the forward operating base.

All records of these interactions were stored in the robots’ memories and would now be erased and replaced with fabricated records to fool the aliens into thinking that the robots had been preparing for the arrival of the invasion force and had loaded the storage cabinet with pathogens to be taken back to the fleet. The new software would also partition the robots’ memories so that any record of human interactions from that point on would be in an area of memory hidden from the aliens, and it would insert the features that Harry and Yuri had developed. The new records would also give a credible explanation of why the original exploratory team was missing. It would say that they had left Earth once the preparations were completed and were traveling at near light speed to a point about fifty light years away and would then return at near light speed so that they wouldn’t grow old and die as they awaited the arrival of the main fleet.

The plan was to have one of the ships leave Mars once the update process started. It would loiter nearby and await word that the work had been completed and the robots had all been reactivated. The ship would then test its ability to contact the sentry and obtain clearance to land. The other ship, and most of the team, would remain on Mars to do the update and to be near the sentry when the test was conducted. They would be able to deactivate the sentry if something went wrong. It should view them as aliens who belonged there, so they should have total control. But Ludmila and Judith also wanted to take an extra precaution of retaining a fiber optic link to the sentry’s main processor, just to cover all bets. If the worst happened, and the sentry’s updated memory didn’t recognize them as its legitimate alien masters, they could deactivate it through the override protocols built into its control processes.

Everything started out according to plan. The four robots were moved into the forward operations base and into a large room where the work could be done without having to wear space suits. The weaker gravity on Mars and the use of motorized hand carts made that part of the job easy. When the robots were reactivated, they’d move back out under their own power.

Judith and Ludmila began with one of the worker robots. Judith removed the alien equivalent of bolts from the hatch near the bottom of the robot’s body and opened the electronics compartment that contained the interface connections. Judith confirmed that the connections were identical with what they had found in the robots on Earth. There was an eight-pin connector for the data inputs and outputs and a single serial port that interfaced with the supervisory functions. Both of them provided physical connections to the internal electronics, including the processors, sensors, and actuators. The aliens used these when the hatch was open and they wanted to connect directly, without using the radio that was embedded in the hatch. When the hatch was closed, a matching pair of connectors on its inner side made the connection to the radio. Judith had seen all this before and knew what to do to get things ready for Ludmila. The serial port was the one that she needed to connect to first.

The supervisory I/O port used a fiber optic link that wasn’t too dissimilar from the fiber optic links used on Earth. It seemed that advanced technologies tended to move to a common optimized way to do things, and that made life easier for Nebula when it worked with the robots. Binary data and the standard powers of two were also chosen by the aliens, and the forms of modulation were also very similar. Judith explained that this was to be expected since the basic mathematics, electromagnetics, and other principles didn’t care if you were human, or alien, or anything else. They just obeyed fundamental laws of mathematics and physics.

As expected, the small integrated circuit that Judith’s team had built to connect Nebula’s supervisory computer with the robot worked just as it had on Earth. When the robot was activated, the supervisory handshakes were exchanged, and Judith turned the computer over to Ludmila so that she could take control of the main processor and prepare to install the new software.

It took Ludmila about half an hour to complete her task. First she had to put the processor into a state similar to a coma so she could manipulate some of the memory and replace the original system with hers. Then, when she brought the processor back up, she was able to create the partitioned data storage and load her new software to provide the simultaneous human and alien interfaces and also provide the new applications that Yuri and Harry had developed. She’d done this before with the robots on Earth, so there were no surprises. “So far, so good,” Ludmila said as she finished and disconnected Nebula’s computer and Judith’s integrated circuit.

Judith then installed nearly-invisible conductive material between all the I/O connections and a tiny, paper-thin integrated circuit that she hid beneath a structural protrusion at the rear of the electronics compartment. She made one more connection of conductive material between the tiny circuit and the robot’s frame and then rechecked the connections to make sure that all of them were solid and provided good electrical connectivity.

“Done,” Judith said as she closed the hatch and verified that everything was perfect.

The first update was completed in about an hour, and they then moved on to the second worker. Here’s where they encountered the big problem. It was different from the ones on Earth.

“Oh shit,” Judith muttered when she opened the hatch and peered into the electronics bay. “This one is different. It looks like it’s a newer model. It has completely different types of connectors and three additional serial I/O ports in addition to the eight-pin connector. The alien model numbers on the control module also show that it’s a later series. Now what should we do?”

Brad came over to look. “Do you think that you can work around the differences?”

“Not here. This is a big difference. I have no idea what these three ports do, and I won’t be able to tell without a lot of measurements. I’m not even sure that the eight-pin connector is the same. We’ll need to take the robot back to Earth and start almost from scratch. I estimate that it will take us at least a month to sort things out, and that assumes that the basic design is pretty much the same.”

Brad kept his composure, but it was clear that he was very concerned. He knew that this was probably only the first of many surprises yet to come, but that’s what they’d been training for. “OK,” he said. “Then let’s move on to the next one and hope that we don’t run into this problem again. If we can get two robots and the sentry working, that should be good enough. We can disable this one and make it look like a normal failure.”

The third worker robot was identical to the first one, to everyone’s relief, so the update went smoothly. Now it was time to deal with the sentry. With fingers crossed, everyone watched silently as Judith undid the bolts and carefully pulled the hatch off.

“Bad news,” she said as she opened the hatch and inspected the electronics. “This one is like that second one. It’s the newer model. I don’t want to even touch it here. I have no idea what would happen. Besides, if the electronic interfaces are so different, the computer system may also be different. I don’t know if Ludmila’s software would work in it.”

“Judith is right,” Ludmila concurred. “So, what’s plan B?”

Brad was totally silent for several seconds. This was completely unexpected, and he silently cursed himself and the other Nebula operations planners for not considering that something like it could happen. They should have inspected all the robots more thoroughly when they first found them years ago. They all looked exactly the same and responded to commands the same way. There were no apparent differences, so they just assumed that the inner workings were all the same. They had many years to do further inspections. It would have been easy, but instead of doing the extra work on Mars, they proceeded on that bad assumption. It was a colossal blunder, and now they were going to have to figure out how to get around the problem and do it fast. Time was becoming a critical element in the operation, since the aliens could begin to arrive very soon and they had to be ready before that.

“OK, “he finally said. “We have a problem. Any suggestions?”

“Shouldn’t we tell Milo that the test is off?” Ludmila replied.

“Yeah, please contact him and ask him to return to Earth. There’s no need for him to waste his time here.”

Harry then offered a suggestion. “Why don’t we swap the sentry on Earth with the one here? Isn’t that one the right model?”

“A brilliant flash of the obvious,” Brad replied, clearly relieved to be getting down to a possible solution. “We’ve already done a lot of work with that one. Didn’t you already test the new software on it, Ludmila?”