Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (58 page)

I don’t understand anything!

Day 331
:

Today another extraordinary discovery: the anti-matter tool now completed, a test was performed on one of the metal floor plates removed from the temple. An anti-matter device releases ten times the amount of energy as a nuclear blade but does it more finely and slowly. Xue’s invention (or reinvention) used a minute quantity of anti-matter injected into a subcritical mass of plutonium—a rather antiquated working fuel, but one that proved to be effective.

Both plate and machine were flown to a site within the central range, hundreds of kilometers north of AS-VT, a deep gorge embraced by sheer mountain walls, a natural fortress that would help contain possible negative effects. The tool was operated by remote control at a safe distance. It slowly, relentlessly made an incision of molecular thinness, cutting the plate in half. There were neither explosions nor implosions, nor the disappearance of anything more than a thread of matter along the cut line. Xue had done his work well.

The tool was flown back to the temple, and there it began its painstaking labor of slicing away the veneer covering the ship. The first incision was made at midpoint along its length, four lines around the rectangle of fine grooves, which many people believed was a portal. The work was slow-going, with frequent changes to the speed of cut, as the machine continually adjusted itself to the varying relationship between protons and anti-protons in the black veneer. Unlike the nuclear scalpel, the tool did not overload and shut itself down. The veneer was found to be (on average, with minor irregularities in the surface) 0.03179 meters deep.

By the end of the day, the incision was completed and then the great moment arrived: the outer plate was affixed with suctions, removed easily, and then lowered to the floor. Behind it was what looked very much like a portal. The metal surface was featureless, and the seams were so tight that nothing could be inserted into them. Now the nuclear scalpel went to work, slicing into the seams with relative ease. The portal was cut and removed, revealing that the hull was over two meters thick, with layers of walls enclosing the dark cavity within. Now probes with mobile eyes were sent inside for a preliminary look. As we watched on the panorama screens, the vidlights lit up a cavernous interior that was, at first glance, an enormous empty tube.

Closer inspection revealed that the walls were covered with a maze of tracks that looked like computer circuits, and numerous pipes that ran the length of the chamber. The whole appeared to be colored uniformly dull gray. When the cameras pointed to the left, or nose, of the ship, we saw that the cavity ended some distance from the portal at a floor-to-ceiling bulkhead. This was broken by several doors at three equally spaced heights, with cross-walks at each level and a central staircase uniting them all. It much resembled the atrium of an ocean-going liner. Little by little, more details came into view:

Instruments reported that the atmosphere inside was normal air. There were no toxins present, only a minute quantity of dust, which was composed of degenerated mineral elements with no biological content, living or dead. The dust was faintly radioactive, below the level dangerous to human health. The entire atmosphere was suctioned out and replaced with clean air suctioned in from the valley.

Along both sides of the base of the central chamber were numerous connected metal cubicles with open doorways, like two rows of cheap apartments divided by a street. The probe went into one of them and found it empty, with the exception of a metal shelf on one wall, low and wide enough to be a sleeping platform. It also sent out readings of the interior dimensions, which proved to be precisely the same as those of the dwellings in the cities. If these were passengers’ rooms, they had been cramped quarters. The probe entered several other cubicles (there are a total of ninety in the chamber) and found them to be identical. There were no windows in any of them.

At three levels above the cubicles, flanges ran the length of the chamber, each with evenly spaced sockets, which may have once supported floors for bearing cargo. The chamber’s length was one third of the ship’s, with another third in the unexplored forward section, and the final third in the aft. Another bulkhead closed off this latter section, and like the forward bulkhead, it was punctuated with matching doors. Here, by contrast, the surface was covered with the veneer of black metallic substance, including the doors, which were identifiable because they are slightly recessed.

By the end of the day, specialists in aeronautics, nuclear engineering, and archaeology entered the ship and inspected the central chamber. No artifacts were found.

Day 332
:

I ate breakfast with Xue in the cafeteria this morning. He is “upstairs” with us for a couple of days in order to take a break from weeks of hard mind-work and the constant tension of the watchdog. He needs to relax in his serene living space in the company of his little poet on the deer.

“No black holes, Owly?” I asked.

He wiped symbolic sweat off his brow and cracked a Xueic smile. “None so far, Nil, though there’s always hope.”

He tells me that duplicates of the tool have been made. Two are now busily peeling away strips of veneer from the ship. A third is cutting into the floor of Tower 1 (the one we discovered).

He says that penetration of forward and aft sections through the bulkheads is being delayed until more of the ship’s outer covering is off. The experts want to see a good deal of the exterior exposed before doing any internal surgery. Though there is no guarantee, this may help avoid making mistakes with the anti-matter tool blindly cutting into sensitive material—there will surely be some kind of crucial technology inside. The rear third will be examined last, since the black alloy’s resistance to radioactivity may be shielding us from lethal doses.

Day 335
:

A mountain of veneer sections is growing in the entry hall of the temple. The ship is nearly two-thirds exposed now, with only another ten or fifteen meters, over the nose, to go. The ship is beginning to shine, silver in color and reflectivity. Its surface is being cleaned by swarms of engineers, metallurgists, and maintenance people on hover platforms. Some oxidization, very light. As is the case with the outer veneer, this alloy is unknown to us, extremely hard, and probably of equal or greater heat / friction resistance than the metalloid alloys of the
Kosmos
’ outer hull. Again, there is a lot of head-scratching over the strange mixture of the “aliens’ ” highly developed technology and their less-developed social order and culture. In the media presentations, there is not a word about their planet of origin. No public discussions on the nature of their religion. No mention of human sacrifice. No analyses of the appalling depersonalized cities. Where are the anthropologists when we need them!

Dariush and I met for supper in the Mexican bistro this evening. I asked him the above questions. He did not reply directly, but after some silent musing, he said, “Neil, behind every anthropology there is the lure of ideology. By the same token, behind every ideology you will find a determining anthropology—and this latter is the more dangerous.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Fearing an abstract lecture, I changed the subject.

Day 336
:

The nose of the ship is now completely exposed. Its tip is an embedded crystal cone that resembles white quartz. It is not natural quartz as we know it, but something like it in the mineral realm. A kind of synthetic diamond perhaps, polished to a shine, displaying no facets or cracks or other flaws. The metal surrounding the gem is pitted with innumerable microscopic impact holes, as is the ship’s skin a long way down the body, the pattern tapering off gradually.

Day 337
:

The floor of Tower 1 is not a floor. It is a ceiling. Beneath it, there is another circular chamber with the same dimensions as the upper section of the tower. It was discovered when a piece of the floor / ceiling was cut and removed, large enough for probes to enter. Ongoing excavation of the surrounding terrain reveals that the tower extends well below the mountain’s rubble surface.

Probe cameras reveal a complexity of machinery below, as well as all manner of unidentified objects. At this early stage, it is conjectured that the floor / ceiling was lowered and raised by hydraulic mechanisms that elevated it to the level of the shelf I spotted on that first day, immediately below the circular window. On the walls, equidistant from each other, three tubular metal columns support the floor / ceiling. They appear to be telescopic in the sense of cylinders within cylinders.

Day 339
:

Excavations on Tower 2’s exterior, as well as cutting of its floor / ceiling, reveal that it is an identical twin of the other.

Today, a team went below, through the hole in T-1’s floor, armed with plenty of lights and audio / visual remotes. Within this lower chamber, they found innumerable small mechanisms neatly arranged on shelves inset into the walls. The instruments were composed of ground glass lenses integrated with calibrated rods, and were in all likelihood used for astronomical purposes. Taking up the remaining wall space, open archival shelves contained a large number of bronze tablets similar to the ones found in the Temple of the Ship. These, however, were mainly what appear to be stellar diagrams, each with its symbols and a line or two of script—yet to be translated. The room also had a set of hydraulic columns (let us call them that for the time being). There was another singular oddity: in the center of the chamber, resting on a vertical support rod of black metal, was a perfect crystal sphere, transparent except for a faceted red gem in its core.

More cutting into the floor of this level revealed yet another chamber below. It too contained a set of hydraulic columns, with the addition of metal housing for a machine that apparently powered the columns. There was nothing more in the room. Its floor is the bedrock of the mountain.

In short, there are three chambers: the lowest contains the fundamental hydraulics of the whole system, lifting the ceiling / floor above it, and the uppermost ceiling / floor above that. In the middle chamber is the second set of columns, the crystal sphere, instruments, bronze tablets. Above that is the roofless open section we first discovered months ago.

Day 340
:

The machinery in the basement is a single unit the size of a small car. It once had access or service doors, but these long ago seized shut. One was cut open, and inside was found a complex mechanism of cylindrical pistons and valves designed by a long-dead engineering genius. There were crystals that may have been light nodes, hieroglyphics inscribed in the metal in which they were embedded, levers that could not be moved, and embedded circuits similar to our computer circuits on Earth, though the conduction tracks are much larger than ours. There was a single hollow compartment the size of a thumb, where a fuel pellet would have been deposited. The compartment is believed to have held atomic fuel, since a trace of radioactive dust remains there.

Engineers are fascinated by the mechanism and say it all makes sense (at least to them). They believe that with a little rewiring, plus reoiling of the hydraulic pistons and application of a power source, the columns might be made to function. We have no atomic fuel pellets that would fit, and the danger and time cost in producing one is prohibitive. Instead, the engineers want to bring in a mobile generator and hook it up to see if the system still works. The columns themselves are a fairly simple matter, since they each have valves for injection of lubrication fluid.

Day 342
:

The forward section of the ship was entered today, after technicians cut into the central door on the lowest tier of the bulkhead. Here is a first survey report on what was found:

Three floors still intact.

The lowest floor:

It contains ten chambers or “apartments” that were probably residences for priority passengers or crew. Each unit has two or three connecting rooms. They are bare except for the sleeping platform. No artifacts of any kind. Inscribed in the metal walls in a few of the rooms is a solar system, clearly our own, with the sun and eight main planets in proper proportion, plus the five main planetoids, including Pluto and Charon. Inscribed on the wall of every room is an animal form—reptilian with wings. Wide hallways separate the rooms.

There is a large dining area, with a stainless steel table and benches still intact. Next to it is a kitchen with a variety of cooking machines. The latter had their energy source in a circuit umbilical rooted in the wall, a square wire covered with a thick glassine substance that crumbles at the touch. (Was electricity the primary energy grid for the ship? If so, is the harnessing of electricity another universal product of intelligence?) In this room, there are also round sinks made of a metal similar to stainless steel, as well as pipes, taps, and drains—all displaying minute quantities of oxidation, which is minimal due to the near-zero moisture content of the air. There were countless empty shelves on every wall, and a pantry with more empty shelves.

A room across the central hallway contained toilets, ten side-by-side holes in a single, seat-high metal shelf, the holes funneling into conduits beneath the bottom floor. There were no windows anywhere throughout this level. There were no elevators for transport from floor to floor, only staircases.

Middle floor:

The entire space is coated with a thin black substance (a paint, not hard metal). The room is devoid of artifacts or furnishings. The floor is flagged with black stone tiles (our usual dimensions).

At the end of the room closest to the ship’s nose sits a black stone cube the same size as the one outside, though lacking symbols and runnels. Inscribed on the wall above the ship’s internal “altar” is a reptile with wings.

Immediately above the head of the reptile are three holes, each measuring 3.179 centimeters in diameter. When a light probe was inserted into the central hole, it was discovered that the opening is the mouth of a tubular channel leading to the tip of the “quartz” cone in the nose. There are faceted transparent crystals along the path, which measures 3.179 meters in length. Shouts came from outside the ship; observers standing on the temple floor noticed that a brilliant beam of light shot from the cone and continued in a concentrated line toward the distant wall of the outer temple gate, kilometers away from the ship. The probe light was turned off, and the beam died. The probe light was low strength, and thus we have learned that this device (for lack of a better word) amplifies light dramatically.