The Unearthing (24 page)

Working with runic icons they’d found in the dead Bug and retracing circuit pathways from the cockpit of the living Bug had allowed them to interpret most of the flight controls. Samples of runic script had been found in both vehicles years before and the Facility’s respective teams of engineers interpreters and investigators had had decades to begin unravelling the mystery of Shiplanguage.

“Roger that,” Bloom said. Air traffic reported in: their airspace was clear.

“You are cleared to leave the barn,” Bloom said. Bloom watched, feeling jealous, depressed, angry, empty all at once. She studied the displays around her as a dozen people worked consoles monitoring every nuance of this test flight. The Bug taxied from the hangar out onto the tarmac. She could see it from here out of the control tower’s windows: a green and gold object reflecting the morning’s sunlight.

“The Bee has left the Hive.”

“Roger that Moon Dog,” Bloom replied, “Throttle up and take her into the sky.” Almost immediately the Bug rose on a near-vertical. Bloom felt the windows start to rattle a fraction of a second before the sonic boom hit. Alarms were pinging and people were exclaiming harried status reports from their consoles. Bloom heard the hollering whoop coming over Harriman’s mic and felt that twinge again. She watched her readout. Impossibly the Bug was up to Mach 3 and climbing rapidly. She watched, stunned, as the Bug pulled a turn so steep that it should have been sheered in two.

“This can’t be right!” one of the operators called, “He didn’t even pull any gees on that turn!”

“Tower to Moon Dog!” Bloom exclaimed, “Reduce your speed! Reduce your speed!”

“Oh, man, this is
incredible
!” Harriman exclaimed as the Bug slowed and halted. He was almost five kilometres above sea level and more than halfway to California. The Bug was hovering effortlessly.

“Moon Dog, what happened when you executed that turn?”

“Nothing, Tower;
Nothing
! I can’t
believe
how this craft handles! And you should
see
the view from here!” Bloom could imagine. Harriman was hanging inside a spherical imaging chamber that rendered a perfect three dimensional image of the South-western continental United States directly below him.

“Tower I want to take this thing higher,” Harriman called, “I think I can get up into high orbit.”

“Negative Harriman,” Bloom called. “I don’t recommend—dammit!” Harriman wasn’t listening. A test pilot born and bred he, as Bloom would have done, was doing what he wanted to do, orders to the contrary be damned.

“Moon Dog!” Bloom called angrily, “Moon Dog! Abort! Return to base!” Part of her had to admit she would rather have
been
the pilot. The other part was planning Harriman’s dressing-down and the indefinite suspension of his flight privileges.

“Moon Dog to Tower do you copy?”

“Copy, Moon Dog. Over.”

“Are you reading my display? What is that?” Bloom hit a switch on her console. She was now seeing what Harriman and the video operator three chairs down from her were seeing. Something on the display screen of the Bug was being tracked. What Bloom could only describe as crosshairs were sliding across the starscape overhead.

“Are you reading my display?” Harriman asked, “The Bug’s tracking something. It’s…Cancel that Tower. The Bug is tracking my eye movement across the screen.”

“Hit the toggle key labelled
manual target
,” Bloom replied.

“Roger that.” Harriman found the key on the console and stabbed it. Suddenly the crosshairs locked on one of a distant point of light and brought the image forward. Harriman pulled back in his restraints as he watched a planet rush towards him.

“What in the fuck?”

“Moon Dog, you are on VOX,” Bloom came back, “We’re reading the image. You’re looking at…the Planet Uranus.”

“Say again?”

“The rune must have been mislabelled,” Bloom said, “You probably triggered some sort of onboard telescope.”

“Roger. How do I shut it off?”

“Hit the toggle switch again,” Bloom said. The planet receded and Harriman’s view shifted back to the orbital starscape of Earth.

“That did the trick,” Harriman said.

“Good. Now, bring her back in,
slowly
and try some more manoeuvres,” Bloom said, “That’s an order, understand?”

“Yes, mother,” Harriman said, “The Bee is returning to the Hive. Engaging afterburners.” She watched his view shift to the console. Harriman keyed the engines.

“What the hell?” Harriman muttered. The image suddenly broke up into static and then cleared.

“What the
hell
?” Harriman said, more alarmed. Static again…dissipating, leaving behind a much less well-defined image.

“Tower to Moon Dog. Do you copy? What is your status?”

“OH MY GOD!” they heard Harriman scream. Then static; horrible, silent static.

“Get me telemetry,” Bloom snapped, “I want everything we have! I want to know what the fuck just happened!” And in the back of her mind, for the first time since being grounded, Bloom wasn’t sure she was so envious of Captain Harriman, anymore.

♦♦♦

There was a moment of disorientation when he woke up. Looking around as the apartment began coming into focus, James remembered where he was and how he had come to be here. The sofa bed creaked beneath him as he shifted into a sitting position and memories of the previous evening found their way to his conscious waking mind. He and Laura had stayed up most of the night talking, occasionally joined by Laura’s roommate Allison. They smoked up and hung out, though James found it awkward opening up around Allison at first. He soon discovered that she was both sympathetic and insightful. In Laura and Allison both James had found peers, people he could talk to who could empathize and not analyze.

Allison stayed silent or was absent for much of the conversation about Echohawk, for it could not include her. Laura was his daughter, James one of his graduate students and his primary assistant. Allison had met him all of three times. But Echohawk and his death weren’t the only subjects they discussed nor were James’ and Laura’s reactions to it (which were polar opposites: Laura was finding her own faith strengthened, where he was rapidly losing his). But they also had reminisced about their early years together, discussed school life.

James climbed from the bed, which creaked and groaned beneath him. Even the sofa bed had a story: Laura had bought it from a grizzled old man of indeterminate age, who’d claimed to have owned it along with he’d described as “the world’s most comfortable waterbed” for almost a hundred years. Despite the implausibility of that statement, Laura claimed to have believed him.

James made his way into the kitchen and began to rummage for breakfast. As alike in age and background as James Allison and Laura were, James had one set of experiences with which they could not yet hope to compare: He had seen the Ship up close and personal. He had survived what almost certainly would have been his own extinction by the hand of one killer and witnessed the death of his mentor at the hands of another. The coffee began percolating as he made this reflection. He admired the old-fashioned coffee percolator that Laura used. It made a better brew; a richer tasting coffee than a drip brewer. The scent of coffee soon brought the sound of a door opening and closing. Moments later a bleary-eyed Allison shuffled into the kitchen.

“James,” She said, clearly not expecting him. Habit dictated that it was Laura who’d make the coffee. She squinted and looked at the wall display.

“Fuck,” She said, “It’s only four.”

“I still haven’t adjusted to California time,” He said, “It’s five, to me.”

“James? Five O’clock is still too early.”

“You’re up; it’s four.”

“The coffee James; the smell of coffee always gets me up.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“S’all right,” She said, sitting down, “I’ll be happier when I’ve had a cup.” She lit a cigarette. He joined her as the coffee brewed.

“James?”

“Yeah?”

“You really have to learn to sleep in.”

♦♦♦

Bloom crossed the threshold into General Harrod’s office and saluted sharply. He gestured for her to sit down.

“Our teams finished putting together what happened, out there,” Bloom said, sliding an optic slip across his desk, “Based on observations from satellites, space and ground-based telescopes and telemetry, what we came up with is pretty surprising.” Harrod took the slip and dropped it into the reader of one of the consoles on his desk.

“Summarize,” He said.

“How much do you know about wormholes?” Harrod stared at her a long moment and shrugged.

“We did some work on the subject at Cheyenne Mountain,” Harrod said, “They’re a class of quantum string, as I understand it. Theoretically, one could be stretched open and form a gateway between two different points in space and time. Practically, however, it’s impossible.”

“Basically,” Bloom replied, “The physics are beyond me. But it looks like the Bug was able to open a wormhole between Earth and Uranus.”

“How?”

“If we still had the Bug here I still couldn’t tell you,” Bloom replied, referring to her notepad, “We didn’t even think it was
possible
to open a wormhole. The chain of events is like this: What we took for a targeting computer is in fact part of an elaborate navigational system tied directly to the Bug’s engines. When Harriman tried to key off the image of Uranus and power up the afterburners, he in fact started the sequence. His cameras and a nearby observation satellite recorded a flash of light near to the craft. The image you’re looking at now is particularly interesting.” On Harrod’s screen was the view from the satellite. The Bug was a green and gold speck just outside of Earth’s domineering form. The surrounding space was black, but there appeared to be an area even darker, ahead of the Bug. The visual was very poor; light and colour seemed to bleed out from the image.

“What happened?” Harrod said, “This picture is shit.”

“What we’re looking at is light from the nearby objects being drawn towards the event horizon of the Bug’s wormhole,” Bloom explained, “The next series of images records the Bug’s engines driving it toward and then into the wormhole.” Harrod watched the stills.

“We have video on this?”

“It’s still being analyzed,” Bloom explained, “What we have here is groundbreaking; revolutionary. An electromagnetic flux was recorded everywhere we have monitoring systems in the solar system. The Aurora Borealis was recorded over Utah, in broad daylight. By a stroke of luck, a science experiment measuring the solar system’s gravitational field recorded a micron-wide super gravitational string extending away from the Earth and out towards Uranus.”

“And what happened to the Bug? To Harriman?”

“We’re still collecting images from Uranus from one of the Earth orbital telescopes. We recorded a flash of extremely bright light in orbit around Uranus and it looks like it occurred a few seconds after the Bug disappeared from Earth orbit,” Bloom explained, “But we can’t say for sure what happened. We don’t know. Harriman’s a good pilot. If he’s still alive, and I think it possible that he is, he could even get the Bug back home. We hope.”

“In any event Lieutenant-Colonel, the whole matter is no longer of your concern,” Harrod said, with finality.

“What?” Bloom exclaimed, anger and outrage boiling up within her. He glanced up at her and regarded her for a long moment.

“You seem to attract attention Lieutenant-Colonel,” He said, “Early yesterday morning the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff contacted me. It appears you were recommended to the World Ship Summit by someone in the Pentagon. The Summit has asked that you be assigned to the Ship Survey Expedition.”

“What? Me?”

“Your work as an aerospace engineer seems to have qualified you for the position,” Harrod explained, “Someone from the Pentagon will be coming in this afternoon to collect you and brief you. You are going to the Ship Survey as an officer of the United States Armed Forces. As such, there will be certain…directives you will be expected to fulfill.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You have the rest of the morning to get your gear together,” Harrod said, “Dismissed.”

♦♦♦

TRANSCRIPT

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INN<> HEADLINES >>INVESTIGATION INTO THE LAGUNA MURDERS ><

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Good morning and welcome to the Interactive News Network. The name of the assassin of Professors Scott and Echohawk has been released. Francis George Franck aged thirty-nine, formerly of Phoenix, Arizona. According to authorities Franck has been a member of the United Trinity Observants for the last ten years. INN reporters in Arizona were unable to learn much else about the man, who kept mainly to himself before joining the Church of the United Trinity Observants. Authorities are now working on determining whether or not the United Trinity Observants were directly involved in any way with the assassination despite denials issued by the cult and despite the condemnation of Franck’s attack by Gabriel Ashe, leader of the United Trinity Observants.

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<>RELATED STORIES >>THE SHIP >>WORLD SHIP SUMMIT NAMES NEW HEAD OF THE SHIP SURVEY EXPEDITION ><