Solar Express (33 page)

 

43

HOTNEWS!

11 N
OVEMBER
2114

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Sinese Minister for Space Wong Mengyi—he's demanding that Noram and India share all their deep space discoveries! And without any Sinese sharing of theirs? Who could believe it? Maybe better said … who couldn't? Have to admire the man for his effrontery! The Sinese Minister for Space wants to be everyone's minister for space … and then some. Noram Prexy Dyana Yates is not amused.

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The latest realie of the year? That's—dare we say it—the full-bodied exposé
The Falwell Fiasco.
Producer Kuomo Allen-Farrow claims that every word is absolutely true. That may be true of the words, but what's full-bodied and exposed is anything but true. Too bad. Might have been interesting to see how the politician granddaughter of an evangelical colossus actually looked when she took Wall Street underwater, figuratively and literally.

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You want to read a book? Once this year? You could do worse than
Throne of Gamesters.
A bracing retelling of how one man united publishing and media by stooping to literary depths everyone thought were heights. Call it inverted perspective. Delightful, if horribly dated.

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Noram Secretary of Defense Olassen Trudeau has another rebellion to worry about. And it's not in Mongolia. This one's on his home territory. Rumor is that his military chief of staff is so exercised that DOEA's supposed nonmilitary fusionjets are getting refits—is that another word for militarized?—that he's gone straight to President Yates. Much good that's likely to do him.

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Here's one for you tree-cuddlers and squid-lovers! So much of Utah's Great Salt Lake has evaporated that the water's now too briny for even brine shrimp. In another fifteen years, all that will be left will be salt flats. It definitely won't be the place … if it ever was.

 

44

R
ECON
T
HREE

11 N
OVEMBER
2114

Sunday morning, Tavoian woke early, slaked his thirst with water from the squeezebottle, which he then had to refill, and immediately composed a message to the colonel, reporting the findings of the night before, essentially the fact that the small samples of free material inside the artifact seemed to represent some of the elements indicated by spectrographic analysis of light reflected from the object and possibly some elements that
might
indicate carbon-based life, but mostly represented an accumulation of circumstellar dust. He also attached all the analyses.

There were no messages, not that Tavoian had expected any, given the effective, if
de facto,
censorship and message management exercised over his communications by Donovan Base.

Since he hadn't done any exercises for the past four days, he ran through half an hour's worth, knowing that was far from sufficient, then ate while he considered what explorations might be most fruitful. With that in mind, once he finished eating he decided to take an inventory of resources. The efficiency of the solar cells had increased with the ever-decreasing distance to the sun, and that increase was even slightly more than projected. That had resulted in not having to use the auxiliary power unit, in turn meaning that the ship hadn't drawn down fuel supplies for shipkeeping.

The big surprise—except it really shouldn't have been one, Tavoian realized—was that the ISV and the rover had already gone through seven point three percent of the total thruster propellant stocks.
Because of the need to continually reposition themselves with relation to the artifact as it rotated.
Even so, going through seven percent of thruster propellant in the first three days of a mission projected to last almost another seven weeks …
At least.

Was there any way to anchor the ISV to a spot above the artifact, given the smoothness of every surface? Abruptly, he shook his head. There certainly was a means to anchor the ISV, if only over the partly “open” hexagons, one he should have thought of earlier.

He made his way back to the cargo section and the extruder. There he programmed it to produce three lengths of heavy-duty carbon/nanorod tubing, each rod three meters long, close to the maximum length possible with the formulator aboard Recon three, which was why he needed three lengths. Then he programmed in five meters of carbon cable. Leaving the extruder to do its job, he returned to the control area.

SHIP APPROACHING. ETA ESTIMATED AT 0709 UTC.

“Is that the Sinese longliner?”

THE SHIP FITS THE PROFILE FOR SINESE LONGLINER.

More than an hour earlier than the colonel had expected.
Tavoian immediately composed a short message to the colonel, noting the anticipated arrival, sent it, and then thought about what he should do next. “Focus scanners and optical imagers on incoming ship once it's in range for clear identification. Relay those images to Donovan Base.”

COMMENCING TRANSMISSION.

Tavoian checked his two torps, making sure both were ready, if necessary. He wasn't about to undertake any immediate explorations, not with the Sinese approaching and not until he had his makeshift “space anchor” in place. As he waited for the Sinese vessel, he considered where else he might be able to position the ISV, besides over the hexagonal chambers whose “doors” had frozen in partly open positions. Finally, he asked the ship's AI, “How many openings has the rover encountered in the artifact that have widths of about a meter? Where are they?”

NINETEEN OPENINGS MEET THAT CRITERION. EIGHTEEN ARE IN THE HEXAGONAL CHAMBERS ADJOINING THOSE WHERE THE ROVER TOOK SAMPLES. ONE IS AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE LARGE CHAMBER ON ONE SIDE OF THE HULL THAT YOU SPECULATED MIGHT BE A LAUNCHING BAY FOR SOME FORM OF SPACECRAFT.

Tavoian wanted to shake his head. The only places where he could really anchor the ISV were near the chambers he had already investigated.
No one said this was going to be easy.
At the same time, he doubted any of those who had prepared Recon three had had any idea just how advanced the technology and materials seemingly used by the builders of the artifact really appeared to be.

Still … he might be able to investigate the photosensitivity to a greater extent. The “door frames” off the center shaft that had not been directly exposed to the force of whatever had sheared away the artifact showed greater photosensitivity than those that had. But the “doors” on the inner levels he had been able to reach were sealed closed. Before he tried there, given how much thruster propellant it would take, it might be better to test the idea on the partly open lower doors of the eighteen hexagonal chambers. The most obvious problem was that only the ISV was large enough to carry the tunable laser, but it was too large to enter any of the largely intact hexagons with open doors to get to the doors on the lower side. Going around the hexagon through the passageways bordering the hexagons was possible, but not without losing contact. He'd only been able to maintain contact with the ISV using two repeaters for a short time when he'd investigated the chamber doors right off the central shaft. Trying to go around the outside of those hexagons would take much longer, long enough that using the repeaters as he had before would result in losing contact long before he could do a test.
Unless you do some creative engineering and programming.

As he headed back down to the crew area to make some changes and additions, he smiled wryly. He should have thought about reverse engineering sooner.
You've been thinking like a pilot, not a problem solver.
That brought up another thought. Wasn't there anyone more suited at Donovan Base? He shook his head. They'd all been trained for every possible set of problems dealing with fusionjets and space installations, not alien artifacts and high-technology archaeology.

The first thing he needed was three more of the long rods and almost fifty meters of the carbon cable, the fabricating of which would take a good hour more, if not longer. He programmed the additional items into the fabricator, and then set to work reprogramming, if slightly, one of the signal repeaters. Then he set up contingency programming for the ISV, largely along the lines of returning the way it had come until it reached a signal, or Recon three. Finally, he assembled the first “space anchor” by fastening the three rods already completed by the extruding fabricator together at their midpoints and with each set at sixty degrees from the next. Then he sealed the rods in position to form a spindly-looking starburst shape.

By that time, the second set of carbon rods was ready, and he fastened them into the second anchor. When he finished, with nothing more he could do to implement his preparations until more of the cable was fabricated and extruded, he returned to the controls, watching the monitors that showed the approach of the Sinese craft.

He couldn't see it on the visual screen until it was almost opposite Recon three, on the far side of the alien artifact. The Sinese longliner was a good two hundred meters in length, almost twice the size of Recon three. Tavoian watched for a moment longer, then dispatched a short message to the colonel announcing the arrival of the Sinese ship. There were no attempts at communication, and the other vessel appeared inert, although Recon three's systems detected scattered light, radiation, and other indicators that the Sinese unscrewed probe, if that was what it was, was busy scanning and trying to analyze the artifact.

THE SINESE SHIP HAS LAUNCHED HUNDREDS OF TINY PROBES. ALL ARE DIRECTED AT THE ARTIFACT.

Tavoian couldn't make out any of them visually even as he looked at an enlarged view of the longliner. “Let me know if it launches anything else, moves toward us, or does anything but sit there and monitor matters.”

He went back to the passenger/work area to check on the cabling, but had barely reached it when the AI pulsed him.

YOU HAVE AN URGENT MESSAGE.

“From whom?”

COLONEL ANSON.

Tavoian hurried back to the controls and called up the transmittal, skipping over the headings and addresses to the body of the message.

Continue investigations with deliberate haste. Do not attempt contact with Sinese craft, believed to be uncrewed. Do not initiate any maneuvers or actions that could be construed as hostile or provocative.

Do stand ready to retaliate with all means at your disposal if the Sinese craft or any other vessel initiates measures against you or your equipment …

Any other vessel?

 … At present, we have no knowledge of other nations undertaking investigations of the alien artifact. That does not mean that others may not be doing so.

The Sinese are preparing a much larger vessel, sixty percent larger than the standard longliner, which appears to be a crewed mission. Should Noram decide to follow up with such a mission, it would be helpful to have your recommendations for what equipment might be most important …

A super laser or particle beam that can cut through something harder than anything human beings have ever created …
Tavoian couldn't put it quite that way, he knew.

 … speed in supplying such recommendations would be appreciated … Report all observed activity relative to Sinese craft …

When he finished reading the message, he looked up at the screens, but the longliner still appeared inert. “Has the fabricating extruder finished?”

IT IS FABRICATING CARBON CABLE. IT WILL FINISH IN TWENTY-TWO MINUTES.

“Thank you,” Tavoian said dryly.

He might as well try to write up his recommendations in polite officialese while he was waiting. The first thing was to report the release of the hundreds of minute objects. The second was his evaluation of necessary equipment.

 … the laser employed in the initial evaluation of the artifact triggered a limited photosensitivity in what appeared to be mechanisms surrounding openings functioning as doors, the amount of that sensitivity apparently proportional to some degree to the intensity of the light, as reported earlier. Given the limited power of the tunable laser sent with Recon three, a far more powerful laser might better probe that photo-response …

 … the extraordinary durability of all surfaces of the artifact has presented another problem, since no equipment aboard Recon three has been able to scratch, much less penetrate, sealed spaces in the artifact …

 … the artifact appears, at least in terms of exteriors of surfaces, to be opaque to all electromagnetic radiation and may well, as part of its photosensitivity, actually absorb free radiation. Thus, any exploration within the artifact has required fiber-optic line as a means of control and conveyance of information on a real-time basis …

In the end, it took Tavoian more than forty minutes to craft and dispatch his observations and recommendations. During the entire time, the Sinese ship remained on the opposite side of the alien artifact, apparently scanning the artifact and receiving information from its miniatures.

“Can you detect what is being sent from the miniatures to the Sinese ship?”

THE SIGNALS ARE SO LOW-POWERED AND DIRECT-BEAMED THAT NOT ALL ARE DETECTABLE. RECORDING AND TRANSMITTING THOSE THAT ARE IS NOT POSSIBLE BECAUSE RESOLVING THE ENCRYPTION WOULD EXCEED SYSTEM PARAMETERS.

“You can't do that?”

THAT LEVEL OF ENCRYPTION WOULD DIVERT ESSENTIAL RESOURCES FROM THE MISSION.

Tavoian decided to get on with his next attempts at finding something else new about the artifact. He went back to the passenger/work space and continued preparing the ISV, which included removing the sampler gear, in order to have enough space for the AI rover, so that it could position the starbursts in place inside the two of the meter-wide openings in two of the adjoining hexagons that had traces of what was most likely fused equipment of some sort. Then he loaded the rover, the starburst assemblies he had constructed, with the heavier carbon cord.