Trade World Saga 1: Manual Interpretation (21 page)

The team wished to use their time to the greatest advantage so they flew high to get a better look of their deserted city. This should be described as a city because there were thousands of one and two story dwellings or businesses or whatever. Most of these still were intact except along the outskirts where erosion had caused many breaks in the building walls and roofs. Dark sand almost totally covered many of these buildings.

The team, even from the air, could see no sign of life, either animal or plant. These buildings were on a higher order of technology than those they first explored. Here there were still sections of tiled, narrow roadways between the buildings. They carefully searched several buildings only to find them stripped of any furnishings. Inside they were more elaborate, with signs of some type of interior plumbing, though there was no metal in evidence. At the center of this city was another large building, much larger than any of the surrounding ones. The roads leading to it were much wider and the street tiles were of different colors in soothing swirling patterns.

Again, there were no doors to open. They had eroded or been taken away, but the building had several large entranceways. Natural lighting still lit most of the building well and here they found row upon row of stone benches with stone slab tables in front of them. Series of ramps led up to the second level and here they found closely packed rows of two-meter high shelves and etched or chiseled at the ends of all shelves were symbols or numbers or both.

Ivan recorded as much as possible and they then went back down the ramps to the first floor. They explored further and found an atrium in the center...about ten meters, square. This was open to the roof.

The roof opening was about fifteen meters square to let in sunlight. At the center was a meter-wide globe. This was quite sophisticated architecture. Around the globe base were stone boxes obviously designed for plants, but the thing that held all their attention was the globe. It was magnificent. It looked like stone, but when the dust was wiped off, it still showed a shiny luster. It appeared to be a globe to represent the planet and the sphere was a ceramic or closely akin with markings still visible in its surface.

"It's a world map. Look at this dot and symbol. This must be right here. What happened here? Look at all the rivers and lakes that are marked. It even shows polar ice caps and we didn't see any coming in," Fran said.

"What could have happened?" Ivan asked, "This planet has almost no axial tilt to speak of, thus no real seasons."

"I don't see how it could have been catastrophic land faults and volcanic activity because we didn't see any sign of that coming down. This place gives me the creeps. I feel uneasy even though it
appears
deserted," Brad said.

Susan was lost to most of this conversation because she was intently studying the globe.

"I don't know what this material is," she said, "but it's by far the most advanced sign of technology we've seen on this planet. We don't have much time left before dark. We'll come back tomorrow with more equipment. I've got so much stuff in my samples bag that I can hardly move," Susan said commenting on the multi-pocketed bag awkwardly hanging on her hip.

"I know what this place is!" Fran exclaimed. "It's a library. It's obvious once you think about it. I kept thinking of this place as a meeting hall or temple. You know, it's simple once you think about it."

"How stupid," Ivan said. "I've got to go to those shelves again with this equipment and record the symbols in sequence. That way we've got an alphabet or numeral system or even both."

"As soon as he finishes that, we're going back to the ship," Susan said. “I’d like to stay and study all this, but I'm not fond of spending the night in this place."

"Here, here," Brad said using some archaic saying he had learned somewhere.

The group lifted smoothly together to a height of about one hundred meters and then they started off back to the ship. Susan was falling a little behind with a samples bag that uncomfortably pressed her hip. In an effort to speed up and adjust her sample bag she pulled at her waist control too hard and she shot ahead as her pressor unit control shorted out in a burst of power.

Susan shot straight forward for only about three or four seconds before she could disconnect the pressor unit. She had had to disconnect the whole control and it was useless.

Good thing my field unit still works she thought to herself when she started breathing again. It was almost dark, as she was extremely high above the planet. She had almost left the atmosphere at a tangent to the point her unit had broken.

Susan felt bad about staying so high without any means of movement or contact so she decided to get down. Lowering the intensity of the belt's field, she was affected by gravity and shot toward the ground. Careful stops and starts finally got her down to the ground in one of the vegetated areas. At least she had been on line with the ship. This was probably the area next to the ship so she used good sense and recorded direction and all data on her Mem-Dex.

"You are between fifty to one hundred kilometers from the ship," said the Mem-Dex after Susan had fed it information about the waist belt, mass, direction of travel, and apparent height over land.

Susan didn't relish a walk in the dark and her suit radio only had an effective line-of-sight range of less than thirty kilometers. Besides, she had had a busy day and wanted some rest and she didn't know anything that could get through her suit; much less her suit with the field on full strength.

She headed to the only cover near her...a sparse forest of tree like vegetation. She had hardly gotten comfortable next to a large "tree" when she was fast asleep in spite of all the noises that filtered through her suit helmet.

Susan woke feeling hungry and kept blinking her eyes at the darkness all around her until she realized that it was still night. The foliage overhead even kept out the starlight and this planet didn't have a moon. It was a very lonely feeling that would have made a lesser personality a quavering lump of flesh.

She attempted to sit up several times before she realized she would have to lower the intensity of her belt field before she had some traction. Doing this, she sat up, turned on her helmet light (which made her feel vulnerable), and ate some suit rations. She then began to study the plants around her. At least, she wouldn't go back to the ship without knowledge of her experience, she thought.

Many of the plants were waxy, leafed plants which grew like vines. The "tree" she had slept against was actually a large vine and swinging her light upward, showed her hundreds of pear-like fruits. All were high up and she couldn't get to them but that was doubly interesting. As she swung her light down, she heard movement behind her and spun around. As she did, she didn't see anything but heard a rushing, crashing movement away from her. She was glad "it" had been scared off by the light but now didn't feel sleepy or feel like exploring so she put her back against a "tree" and propped her chin on top of her knees. She tried her radio again but only got static. It was a long wait until dawn.

SUIT MALFUNCTION

"What do you mean, she just disappeared?" Andrew roared at Brad. "You were in charge of protection for this group. What happened?"

"Her belt must have malfunctioned. She was out of sight before we could react. We followed the line-of-sight to the ship and when she was still out of radio range, we, I, decided it was best to come down and report," Brad stated.

"Why didn't you go forward and continue looking?" Andrew demanded.

"It was getting dark and I thought the ship's sensors could find her faster than our eyes," Brad countered.

"You're probably right. I’m sorry I blew up at you Brad. I'm
just worried," Andrew said.

"We all are," Brad said sympathetically.

Andrew turned to Steve, "Well, I thought you once said that our new sensor system could spot an artificial field like a torch on a dark night."

"No problem, but I'll have to make sure the computer understands to include those artificially produced fields," Steve said as he keyed the console. "Project a scan including artificially produced fields," Steve said into the pickup.

The main viewscreen came to life showing, a full-range sensor scan of all planetary, and stellar masses within range.

"Look," Ling said. "There's a field in the Sun's system and one here in Tau Ceti."

"Somebody must have built one on Earth while we were gone. Now let me get this projection scaled down to a more reasonable scale. Computer, adjust scale downward from one-tenth of one standard A.U. in ten increments," Steve remarked. "Ah, there she is. You were right Brad. This is much better than rushing around blindly. Computer, what is the range from this ship to the indicated field."

"Sixty-five kilometers on land," replied the computer.

"Well, at least we know she is down close to the ship. I doubt she was hurt but her pressor unit is probably burnt out since she obviously can't fly back here. We can form a search party and go get her," Andrew said. “At least her field is still on and she has quite a bit of power left.”

"Captain, it's pitch black out there now. There isn't any moon to see by on this planet. Our crew is tired and with that suit on, nothing is going to hurt her. She's down in that dense foliage and you wouldn't have a scanner with you that could indicate closer than five kilometers. That's a big area in the daytime; it's too big at night. We should sleep tonight and go out in the morning," Brad put in.

"You're probably right. I don't want to lose anyone else in a search. We'll take a more powerful transceiver with us and move the ship to the area in the morning. If we get anywhere close, she can give us a fix on her with a flare or her suit radio.

MICROELECTRONICS 101

The planet’s inhabitants puzzled the E.S. Officer. This planet's race could travel into space and had many satellites circling. Acting on his orders, the crew had risked detection by taking the ship closer to the blue-green planet where they intercepted a 'minor' satellite, much smaller than most others but still active in sending out microwave transmissions and brought it aboard.

Everything was so miniature and there seemed to be no wasted space in it. At least this one didn't have large gossamer wing sections like some of the other satellites. The Chief Technician had difficulty finding the satellite's power source since the output was so feeble. He finally separated it into sections and was amazed at how neatly everything had been put together. But if it had been easy to take apart; it wasn't easy to figure out how it worked.

The Chief Technician was able to decipher the power supply but only after radiation burns from an intensely radioactive fission reactor. No one would believe the directed signal strength of the unit was as strong as it was and no amount of fine chipping could unravel the gray and tan blocks of ceramic-like material. One suddenly faced with microprocessors in epoxy blocks was not likely to understand much more by chipping them into bits.

One must understand that many planets near the galaxy's core obtained fusion power and inertia-reduction fields prior to any spaceflight. They certainly didn't start by using the chemical reaction principles in multi-ton rockets. Therefore, they never were concerned about how much something weighed or how little space a device would take so it could fit into a nosecone of a rocket. The Exploration Service had computers but nothing approaching the memory density, speed, or ability of any Earth computer. A common Mem-Dex was faster and had more memory storage than any computer on board the E. S. ship. A common Mem-Dex had more processing power than any E.S. computer – bar none.

The officers and crew of the E. S. ship could not comprehend how Earth microelectronics worked, but they were willing to appreciate it for the advance in technology it was. A being may not understand how a piece of intricate jewelry is made but that doesn't lessen the fact that the being values the beauty of it.

The officer attempted to secure the information again from the Tros, Rett, to no avail. In fact, the Tros learned more from the officer than the officer learned from the Tros.

Rett sat in his compartment prison and reconsidered his encounter with the native. Maybe the device he had observed wasn't just a radio receiver after all. If that device actually was verbally, answering problems put to it, what a find! He must not let anyone know of this.

If a Tros could get excited, this was an excited Tros.

Rett cast aside ideas of resigning into apathy and began planning for his escape.

The E. S. officer was working on plans to salvage his career. Culture contamination of a race this advanced would end any career. On this planet, there seemed no cheap simple energy source like their cold-fusion power plants so they might trade that information for the skills necessary to build those amazing electronic devices. At least, there was no evidence of these cold fusion power plants among the satellites orbiting the planet. The officer decided to press his linguists for translation of those broadcasts because he wanted to better understand these natives. Soon he would have to decide if he should attempt contact or quarantine of this system.

HLLOUGE

As an apprentice record keeper, he was required to be an aggressive, survivor type. That explained his slinking through the undergrowth in search of the renegade who had been raiding the village food stocks. Now he found distinct signs of an interloper but they were oddly confusing. Where the trail he had been following was faint, with attempts to mask it; now the trail was as wide as a slunderbeasts. He approached the freshest part of the trail and saw the 'creature'. It was a full head taller than he and had a shiny golden head. The creature even wore a tool belt.