Nebula (13 page)

“Look, the main thing is to plot a course that is as clear as possible before going to high speed and then to rely on the ship to defend itself. Once we’re traveling that fast, the relativistic time dilation doesn’t give us much time to react to anything, so being careless and hitting a large object is the main danger.”

“OK, I get it.”

“Let’s get started.”

“I assume that you’ll set the course for me.”

“We’ll go through that together, so you know how to do it next time.”

“And what if I do something wrong?”

Milo grinned. “Don’t worry. My controls override yours, and I’m not in any hurry to crash and burn. So, let’s go for the ride.”

Milo guided Harry through the steps to set the course toward Mars. The main thing was to pick a trajectory that avoided collisions with major bodies, most of which were clearly shown in a map that was presented on the large view screen in front, the one that would normally show the view in the direction that the ship pointed. The computer automatically plotted the course as if the ship were a beam of ligh
t, more or less a straight line with a bit of a curve due to the general relativistic distortion of space near heavy masses. It was almost impossible to get it wrong, since the computer did most of the work once the end point was identified.

Harry did most of the work to set the course, with Milo giving pointers. He seemed pleased with the speed at which Harry caught on. “Very good. Now push the speed button and let’s get moving.”

Harry pushed the button on the side of his seat and pushed the joystick forward. The ship immediately accelerated at an unbelievable rate, and the numbers went from black all the way to red in less than ten seconds.

“Now be careful with the joystick,” Milo warned. “We don’t want to go too fast. Bring the stick
back a bit, and we’ll keep accelerating until we get to 85%. When we hit 85, you want to back off on the acceleration a bit more, and then gradually taper it back until we reach 90. Then you bring it back to neutral, and we coast at 90%.”

Harry tried, but he overshot. The red number indicated 92 before it settled down. “Oops. It got away from me.”

“Not bad for the first time,” Milo replied. “You’ll get used to it. OK, now back it down a bit and take us to the end point that you selected. Try to stop as close to it as you can.”

This time, Harry did much better. He pulled the stick back to decelerate and brought the ship to a stop only a few hundred kilometers from where he intended, about one hundred thousand kilometers from Mars.

“Very good. That’s the best that I’ve seen in a beginner. Maybe it’s just luck, but it was nearly perfect. The computer was already computing an intervention point to prevent a collision with Mars, but you had another tenth of a second before it did anything. By the way, when you’re traveling at nearly the speed of light, if you reach the speed that you want, you can push the high speed button again, and it will pop back out. Then the joystick will revert to normal acceleration, and you can use it to make small adjustments without altering the relativistic speed that you already reached. The other option is to go on autopilot by pushing this button on the panel.” He pointed to a round button with an “A” in the middle. “Or you can continue with manual control.”

“So what next?” Harry asked.

“Use normal acceleration, and take us to about three hundred kilometers from Mars. I’ll take over from there.”

Even at “slow” speed, the ship made the last leg in only a few minutes, and Harry returned control to Milo. He guided the ship down to the surface, and Harry could see a structure in one of the level areas near a jagged rise. The ship settled onto the ground about twenty meters from the structure, and a few robots were clearly visible through the side view screen nearest to Harry. The sentry was recognizable immediately. It looked exactly like the one at Ops, but the others were much larger than the robots that were demonstrated to Harry on his first day there. They also were totally enclosed in outer skins that looked like the composite material that enclosed the sentry’s inner workings. None of them were moving.

Brad finally started speaking. He’d been silent since takeoff, while Milo gave Harry his lessons. “OK Harry. Let’s introduce you to our friends here and show you around.”

Brad took Harry to the rear of the spacecraft, where several space suits were hung on racks. “This one is yours,” he said as he took another off the rack. “There’s an atmosphere on Mars, but the pressure and oxygen content are much less than on Earth, so we need these suits. You’ll find it reasonably comfortable, at least for the few hours that we usually need outside. I can help you with it.”

Once they were both suited up, Brad opened a pressure hatch near the rack where the suits were hanging, and both of them stepped into a very small enclosure that was obviously an airlock. Brad shut the inner door, and they waited as the interior pressure equalized with the outside atmosphere. The airlock was large enough for the two of them, but just barely, and Harry was very happy when the outer door opened and they stepped out.

“Welcome to Mars. What do you think of it?”

“Wow,” Harry replied. “If someone told me that I’d be standing on Mars someday, I’d have said they were crazy. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything this desolate.”

“OK, let’s walk around to the other side of the ship. That’s where the robots are and where the aliens built their base. Be careful walking. It’s a bit different than on Earth, and the terrain is pretty rough in places. Try not to fall down. We don’t want any problems with punctures, but don’t worry. If you do get a puncture, we can get you back in the ship before you run into any problem. The suit has a self patch feature that can seal a hole almost completely, as long as it’s small enough. Even if it doesn’t seal, the leakage isn’t as bad as it would be in space.”

Harry walked carefully, following in Brad’s footsteps, and by the time that they reached the alien encampment, he felt confident in his ability to function outside the ship.

Brad went to the large sentry robot and explained that it and the other three were turned off, but that they would turn them back on when everything was ready for the arrival of the alien invaders.

“There are ten pathogen containers in the ship that we need to load into that storage building that the robots built.” He pointed to the large structure that Harry had noticed. “This is where the aliens were storing the biological material to prepare for the attack. We removed their containers and are replacing them with our own, the ones filled with the viruses that won’t cause us any problems.

“Our containers are almost identical to the ones that they use. They’re made of the same composite that the aliens use. It’s similar to the composites that were developed on Earth for all sorts of commercial purposes. We made our containers to match theirs physically and chemically, with a few very subtle differences. The walls contain the chemical and biological material that Gladys, Mikio, and Nigel developed. It’s hidden within the chemistry of the composite structure, and it won’t get out until Gladys’ chemicals do their job and create the pores for the pathogens to leak out through. We brought the last of the containers with us, and you and I are going to load them into a cabinet in the storage building.”

The next two hours were spent showing Harry around. The alien site was relatively simple. It contained the sentry and the other three robots, all of them eerily silent and still, and seeming to stare at Harry through their many sensors. The storage building was also very simple. It was like a self-storage unit of the type used on Earth, and inside were various types of racks and cabinets for tools and equipment that the aliens and robots used to build and maintain the base and its facilities. The biological warfare containers were stored in a cabinet on top of a large table near the front door. It appeared to be built precisely to accommodate the containers and had shelves that were just high enough and deep enough to hold them. It also had a mechanism to lock them in place so that the entire cabinet could be transported with the containers secured inside. The shelves were wide enough to store twelve containers. There were six shelves, so seventy two containers would fill the chamber. All but ten were now in place. Harry assumed that this was where they’d put the remaining ten.

“This is the transport container that the aliens had built for the pathogens that they were developing. The robots started fabricating it before the aliens crashed on Earth, and they just went on after that and completed it along with all the other tasks that they’d been given.”

“Is there any reason for the twelve container width and the six shelves?” Harry asked. “They seem to have a thing for the numbers six and twelve.”

“Like we have a thing for the number ten,” Brad replied. “Remember that they have six fingers on each hand. Their number system is base twelve, and twelve
is to them what ten is to us.”

“Right. I forgot.”

“OK, we can load the last ten later, and then I want to show you the alien ops center. It’s over there, by that small hill behind the storage building.” He pointed off toward a nearby hill, and Harry could see what looked like a cave mouth that he assumed was the entry to the alien ops center.

“But first, let’s go to our own forward ops base. That’s where we’ll have to live for a bit when the action starts.”

Harry was surprised at the size and general construction of the forward ops base. It was underground, and it was big. Brad explained that Nebula was able to take control of the robots a long time ago and got them to build the base. It had to be close enough to the aliens to be able to observe and link with the robots, but it also had to be hidden from them. That was why it was built underground and so near the alien base. He also said that it had to be able to accommodate fifteen people for at least one month, even though the expeditionary team had only nine members. They needed to prepare for the possibility that more would be required when the time came. The underground base also had to accommodate all the equipment that they might need to work through any unexpected change in plans. That included communications equipment that provided a covert link back to Nebula Prime and Nebula Ops and a good set of tools and test equipment in case they had to repair or modify anything. And, of course, there was a rack with a number of weapons of various types.

The accommodations were impressive, a bit cramped if fifteen people were there, but more than adequate for the nine who would probably be all that was needed. Aside from the ops center with all the equipment to conduct operations, there were a large common room with equipment for relaxation and entertainment, three fully equipped bathrooms, and five sets of sleeping quarters with a total of fifteen bunks. The kitchen and pantry had food supplies that would keep them alive, but Brad had to admit that it didn’t appear to be the most appetizing food. It would keep them alive and healthy, but they’d miss real Earth food after a few days. There was even a small medical room that seemed well stocked for most normal types of illness or injury.

“Do you really think that we’ll have to live here for more than a few days?” Harry asked as he explored the rooms and examined the food and other contents. “I think that we’d go crazy being cooped up with nothing to do but watch what the aliens are doing. Have the psychological factors really been thought out?”

“We were a bit concerned about that, but we did what we could to prevent boredom or cabin fever. The computers in the common room serve as entertainment centers. We’ve loaded all sorts of reading material, movies, games, and everything that we could think of. Each of us will have our own computer to do whatever we want to entertain ourselves. It should be like living on a submarine, except for the meals. Those won’t be as good as the sailors get, but everything else should keep us reasonably content.”

“So what’s our job while we wait here? I thought that we’d put the pathogenic containers here and just let the aliens take them back to their fleet.”

“Like I said before, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. That’s one of the first principles of warfare. If everything goes as planned, we won’t have to do anything but watch and inform Nebula. But we can’t take a chance that everything will work out as planned. We have one shot to get it right. If the aliens do something unexpected, we need to be able to see what they’re doing, and we have the covert communications to consult with headquarters and decide what to do about it. We might be able to do something to get things back on track, or if necessary, we could attack the aliens at the base. You saw that we have weapons here, and we can also take overt control of the robots, but that would be a last resort.”

“When do you expect us to deploy? Is there some cue that tells us that it’s time?”

“That’s what the sentry is for,” Brad responded. “We’ll turn the sentry and the other robots back on as soon as everything is prepared. The normal alien procedure is to broadcast a message to sentries when they are about to start on their approach, usually at least a few light hours out. Then they wait for the replies from all sentries in the region of space near the destination before proceeding. That way the sentries are forewarned of the approach, and the replies also give the approaching ships information about local conditions and navigation data for approach and landing. We disabled the base on Titan and all its robots, so the only reply will be from the sentry here on Mars. That will lead them to this base on Mars and will inform them of the biological warfare containers that they will think were prepared by their own people. When our sentry receives the message that they’ll be coming, it will tell the sentry where they are coming from and when they expect to arrive. So we’ll know when to expect them, and we’ll deploy to be here in time to settle in before they get here. This part of the plan is pretty simple. Let’s hope that the rest of the operation is just as simple.