Event Horizon (Hellgate) (78 page)

The navtank load was based on the
Aenestra
data, but Lai’a was already surveying, amending, correcting. Rusch and Jazinsky murmured in surprise and delight as new information became available, but a chill had settled in Marin’s bones. He joined Travers and Vaurien and took a cup of steaming green tea as Vidal returned from the ’chef.

“You all right, Curt?” Vidal asked softly. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Maybe I did.” Marin wrapped his hands around the cup. “Am I the only one who’s looking at those stars and thinking, everything –
everything
we know, every Deep Sky world, every human and Resalq soul – is so far away, if something happened and we couldn’t get back into transspace, we’d be traveling at lunatic speeds for five
years
to get home. Am I the only one who feels a tad bit intimidated?”

Vaurien lifted a brow at him. “Lai’a, how was the transit?”

“Orion Gate transit was normal,” it reported. “The transspace drive is operating at 0.34% below optimum, which is well within acceptable parameters. Weimann engines are at peak performance. The navtank load is satisfactory; I am extending it at this time. Orion 521 is 5.8 light years distant – a K3 dwarf, comparatively cool and small. Information regarding its planetary system will be available shortly.”

“Which should put your mind at ease, Curtis,” Vaurien observed. “Lai’a, kick up to high-cruise, let’s make this quick.”

“I am already at high-cruise, Captain Vaurien,” Lai’a told him mildly. “Did you wish to place higher priority on speed? I can bring number 3 generator online for fifteen percent Weimann overdrive.”

“Within established safety parameters?” Vaurien asked shrewdly.

“You may option 10% Weimann overdrive within those parameters,” Lai’a allowed.

“Then, consider it optioned,” Vaurien said aridly. “Give me a buzz when you drop out insystem … Harrison, Jon, will you join us for lunch?”

“If you can eat, do it now,” Jazinsky added darkly. “I’ve a feeling you won’t be in the mood later.”

They headed out to the lounge but Marin hung back, watching the tank, mesmerized by it, till Travers asked quietly, “You okay, Curt?”

“Yes. I suppose. Just –” He gestured at the strange constellations. “You ever think about the early explorers? Magellan, Drake, Cook. They’d land on the far side of the planet in a flimsy little shell made of wood and rope and canvas, two
years
out from home and at the mercy of the wind, the sea. I think,” he said ruefully, “I’m feeling a little bit mortal just now.”

Vidal’s voice surprised them both. He had been working with a flatscreen, out of the main lights “You’d be weird if you didn’t,” he told Marin. “But you know what else I feel?” He came up to the tank, where its illumination threw macabre, distorted shadows around his face. “I feel alive,” he whispered, and then laughed shortly. “You ever notice, the closer to heaven you get, the more insecure you feel.”

He made a good point, and Marin shared the moment’s wry humor until Travers draped an arm over his shoulders. “Eat,” he advised. “If I’m right about what Jazinsky means, you
won’t
feel like it later.”

He was right. When Joss called them back to Operations the tale of woe was already streaming through the navtank. They had all seen similar images in the
Aenestra
data, but the reality was a body blow. Lai’a cut a line into the system that would have approximated one of the original shipping lanes. It was marked by an old but still viable comm beacon dropped by the Resalq science team. The
Aenestra
itself had
traveled
this way, and had imaged the same devastation.

The star was orange rather than yellow, much cooler than the warm, bright suns of the new colonial homeworlds. The system was made more inviting only because the star was also large, for a dwarf, and its planets were numerous. The
Aenestra
spent a week here and recorded fourteen major worlds and three times as many moons, some of them as large as small worlds like Ulrand and Celeste, and one of them a shade under the size of Velcastra. But only the inner four planets were close enough to the star to be warm enough to permit life; and of them, two were too small to hold an atmosphere. One was a pocket-sized gas giant like Shikoku, orbiting on the outer fringe of the clement zone, where its warmth came mostly from its own compression-heated core and its moons were balls of blue ice.

Signs of Zunshu activity were everywhere. For once Dario, Tor and Leon were silent, haunted by vistas of devastation which could have been the Resalq worlds, a thousand years ago. Mark knew far too much about that era, and his voice was rasp.

“There’s no evidence to suggest this civilization ever got out of its home system – the
Aenestra
recorded no colonization in nearby systems, at any rate. These people certainly developed an excellent interplanetary drive, but even something like the Auriga engine was ahead of them when the Zunshu arrived. They were utterly helpless. The
Aenestra
cataloged
six worlds in this system, as well as numerous moons, where mining colonies were established. On two of the closer worlds cities must have existed, since the Zunshu deployed what we came to call planet-wreckers. It’s possible one of the closer worlds might even have had an atmosphere before Zunshu intervention, but more likely the cities were domed or built underground, like those of Mars. And it’s entirely probable these worlds were employed as dockyards, ship-building facilities. Even research labs where the Auriga drive technology would have been developed, given another century.

“All gone,” Mark finished bleakly. “These worlds, these people, have been so completely obliterated, we weren’t even able to find a trace of who they were. They might have been humanoid. They might have been very different. I’m afraid we may never know.”

“I’m seeing a … a debris field,” Dario added. “There must have been something rather like Sanmarco Space City, or perhaps an enormous transit platform serving the big ships that connected the outer worlds. It’s just so much metal confetti now, too corroded to yield useful information.”

“Do we know when?” Vidal wondered. “How long since the Zunshu hit this system? Not recently, surely.”

“It’s hard to say,” Mark told him. “Based on information returned by the
Aenestra
, an educated guess would be about twelve hundred years. This devastation is … old. What’s worse is, this is probably not the only killing field. I’d be prepared to wager that if we dropped out at the next gate up the gravity express, and the next, we’ll find similar scenes.”

“Why?” Shapiro was pale in the instrument lights. “In the name of anybody’s god,
why
would a species intelligent enough to master gravity physics and fly transspace destroy every civilization they can reach?”

“Now, there’s the real question.” Mark’s brows arched as he watched the navtank image of a ruined world where a hemisphere had been smashed, the atmosphere torn away. Any work ever built there by an intelligent species was gone. “Our philosophers and physicists have been trying to answer this question since the pinnacle of your people’s technology was the musket, Harrison. I’ve never heard a really convincing argument.”

“No?” Shapiro closed his arms about himself, as if he were cold. “What was the most compelling answer your philosophers suggested?”

It was Dario who said, “Racial purism. The theory was, the Zunshu were so elitist they refused to share the universe with anyone or anything different from themselves. And, incidentally, I don’t buy it.”

“You don’t?” Vidal gestured at Midani Kulich, who hovered around the Resalq group, following their conversation with the aid of a handy. “Forgive me if I notice, you people have a history of racism. His brother – and yes, I know it’s the wrong term! – is a son of a bitch about it. And before you get all bent out of shape, humans have been a thousand percent more racist, sexist and prejudiced against every other religion, ethnicity and caste than Resalq ever were!”

“Oh, we know your history,” Mark said darkly. “And yes, we’ve had our elitists, like Emil Kulich. But as a species matures, develops, the old primal baggage is eventually left behind. Long before a race reaches the level of technology needed to fly transspace, prejudice, much less any tendency to commit genocide, would be left far behind.”

The argument was sound but a thread of doubt niggled at Marin. “And suppose the Zunshu didn’t develop the transspace physics.” Most heads swivelled toward him. “They use it,” he said slowly, “but suppose they were a comparatively young – dumb, prejudiced, violent – species when they stumbled over alien tech, the way we do. They researched it, figured it out. Factor in a big element of luck. They’re still driven by primitive,
xenocidal
urges, and transspace gives them a reach so long, they can kill at whim, maybe ten thousand light years from home.”

“Well, shit, it’s … interesting,” Vidal whispered. “Mark?”

“It’s been suggested,” Mark admitted, “and there’s no way to refute it, of course. It’s not impossible, but we think it’s unlikely. The level of technology required to even
begin
to understand gravity physics, horizon dynamics and transspace, is so high, we believe this level of science and
xenocidal
tendencies are mutually exclusive.”

“You believe?” Travers echoed.

Mark could only shrug. “There’s no way to be sure. You can be as faultlessly logical as a calculator, and still be dead wrong.”

As they spoke, Lai’a had left behind the ruined world. Ahead, the blue-gray sphere of the most terrestrial planet this system possessed had swelled to a globe in the navtank. Marin watched it grow as the old
Aenestra
data streamed beside it. It was Shapiro who asked,

“The
Aenestra
didn’t record any sign of Resalq escape pods?”

“No – but then, no one knew to look for them,” Dario said thoughtfully. “The ship stood off and performed a routine planetary survey, which doesn’t probe deeply enough to register small objects or individual life forms. Basically, if they didn’t receive at least broadcast radio from the surface, they’d assume the highest life forms were animals, or perhaps some kind of pre-industrial civilization – best left alone. On your world and ours, there was a damned nasty history of primitives being jeopardized by premature contact with technology.”

“And the
Aenestra
found nothing even as simple as radio,” Shapiro mused. “Meaning, if Resalq are survivors here, they’re off the air. And speaking of air, what does the
Aenestra
say of an atmosphere on this world?”

The planet was large enough in the navtank now for Marin to see land masses, mountains, small oceans, the high fleece of dusky clouds. The world looked as dry as Ulrand; not quite as arid as Celeste.

“There’s an atmosphere,” Mark was saying, “but it’s very thin – as you’d expect. The craters where at least two Zunshu devices erased the major cities are on the far side. The damage done to the ecosystem couldn’t have been any worse if a comet or large metallic asteroid had impacted. A global extinction event, leaving just enough of a biosphere for a few hardy forms to hang on. In similar circumstances, on devastated worlds, we’ve found insects, worms in the deep ocean, a kind of arachnid in the polar ice, hibernating ninety percent of the time and emerging – in fact, thawing! – for just long enough to accommodate a reproduction cycle before it literally freezes back into the ice.” He sighed over the planet. “Years of so-called nuclear winter, and then … this. Thin air, little liquid water.”

“And it’s cold, dim,” Vidal said quietly. “The people who were native to this
mudball
would’ve evolved to be comfortable in the cold and dimness under this sun, but – shit, Mahak, any Resalq who landed here must’ve wondered what they’d done to be dumped down here for their sins!”

And if any Resalq were here, Marin saw at once, they were absolutely off the air. Lai’a had been looking for any faintest sign of activity from the planet, but had not detected even a humble carrier wave suggestive of wireless telegraphy. The scan parameters reset as he watched and another search began, this time looking for concentrations of metals common to Resalq industry.

“It’s hunting for the pods now,” Tor growled. “We’ll slingshot around the entire planet, but … damn, Mark, it looks crappy from where I’m standing.”

“It does,” Mark agreed. “We always knew this was an incredible longshot.”