"OK, understood. We're looking."
"How many floors to this place, Gabe?"
"Three."
"So, how do you get upstairs?"
"No clue."
Barnes heard this question as well and dispatched a couple Marines to see if they could find the access to the upper floors. "Gotta be a way," he told them, "But don't expect it to look like home."
Meantime, Gabrielle explored the stacks, looking for anything that looked familiar. Reference books, picture books, anything that might give them the key to unlock the alien language.
Greg called Joe Bowles into the conversation with Gabe. "Science books, Doctor Este. If we can get a chemistry or physics text, that would be real gold. Or a medical text."
"OK, Joe, we'll keep an eye out for that."
"Gabe, science books will have equations, drawings. I'm not sure how they will express their math, but it should look different than just text."
"Maybe I'll find a periodic table inside a cover."
"Sure, and maybe you'll find some unpublished Shakespeare."
The Marines found the route upstairs. It was a ladder built into an inconspicuous corner of the building. Three went up to check the next floor.
"Not exactly ADA compliant, you know?" Gabe commented.
"Well, they do look a little like a cross between a simian and some kind of big cat. Climbing that ladder may be as normal to them as walking is to us."
Gabrielle thought about this for a few seconds. "Joe, do we know if they walked on two legs or four?"
"Two, I think, based on the shapes of their doors and the height of openings like at the shelters, that kind of thing. The hip bones we saw at the battlefield also support that idea. If they moved predominately on four legs, all those would be much different."
"OK, thanks. Just wondering."
Gabe climbed the ladder to the second floor, which looked much the same as the one below, but here there were large low tables, apparently reading tables, in the center of the room.
"I wish I knew what I was looking at," she said, mostly to herself, as she pulled yet another volume off the shelf. As she flipped through the pages, she suddenly stopped.
"Uh, guys, I might have something here." She knelt down and laid the book out on one of the reading tables, then adjusted her helmet camera so Cordero and Bowles could see it. It was a drawing of the Beta Hydri system, with Big Blue, Little Gray, and the other planets in the system. There were arrows and annotations in the alphabet she was becoming used to seeing.
"Jesus, Gabe, that's amazing," Greg smiled, but Joe Bowles' face remained dead serious.
"Doctor Este, go back to that same shelf and let's see what else we can find."
"OK." She pulled the next book to the right and walked back to the table. She opened it and found the same dense text at the beginning. As she quickly paged through it, she came to another drawing.
"A parabola?" she asked.
"Yes, that's what it is," Bowles answered.
"So, even here, y is looking for its x?"
"Looks that way, yes."
She kept turning pages and found additional drawings and what might have been lists. "Math book?"
"I can't be sure," Bowles answered.
"You want another one?"
"Yes."
Gabrielle paged through the book she had just pulled from the shelf. She was beginning to see how the Beta Hydri culture expressed formulas. "So, Greg, look at this," she said, pointing. "I saw this same kind of pattern under the parabola. Those are numbers, right?"
"Yes, most of them are. But I don't recognize the rest. Might be part of the alphabet we haven't seen yet."
"Or, they could be math operators," Joe offered.
Cordero shrugged. "Could, sure. But I'd love to find an arithmetic book. You know, one plus one is two. Six divided by two is three. Something like that."
Bowles nodded. "Those probably exist, but we have no idea how their education system is structured. The Inori send the young off to school right after birth. We keep ours at home for five years or whatever and then send them for formal education. We don't know what they did here."
"But, Joe," Gabrielle interjected, "we still have simple instruction books at home, right? Our own children's books sound much like what you're talking about."
"So, maybe we should take another look at the library at the portrait house?"
"I think so, yes. What about the picture book?"
"It's scanned, but the inference engine is still grinding on it."
"We'll keep looking for a while, but Captain Barnes wants to move on."
"OK, bring back the three you've shown us, at least. If you find anything else that looks interesting, bring those, too."
"Will do."
Gabrielle dropped the comm link to Antares and brought the three volumes down the ladder. They wrapped them in sample bags and left them by the door to pick up on the way back. Meantime, the search party continued north along the street, stepping over the skeletons of the lost residents as they went.
Antares
Big Blue
Tuesday, October 10, 2078, 0230 UTC
Greg Cordero rushed out of the Intel workroom, almost running Kathy Stewart over as he did.
"Where's the fire?"
"Wayne and Gabe found a library. A whole building full of books. I need to get down there."
"Go see the Captain. I'll find Harris."
Greg moved quickly forward and found Terri Michael on the Bridge.
"Captain, the patrol Gabe and Wayne took down have found a library."
"So I've heard."
"I'd like to get down there, Captain. Today. Now, if possible."
Greg's excitement was obvious, and infectious. Terri looked at her ship status, seeing the shuttle was already back. Lieutenant Dean was just returning to the Surveillance station. She got up from her Command position and walked over to him.
"Lieutenant Dean?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Are you up for a return trip to the surface? Doctor Cordero would like to get down there as soon as possible."
"Sure, Captain, I can take him."
Ron Harris arrived on the Bridge as they were talking.
"Are you able to get Cordero back down there?"
Terri nodded. "Sure. Ensign Dean will take him."
"I'm going, too."
Harris had not worked out on the SLUGs on the way out, the assumption being that he would not be going to the surface.
"Admiral, need I remind —"
"I know, Commander, I know. I didn't train. But I need to go."
She was the Captain, and it was ultimately Terri's call whether Harris could go or not. She leaned in close to him.
"You're sure about this, sir? You're sure?"
"I am."
She waited just a second more, noticing Cordero and Dean watching this very close conversation from a short distance away.
"OK, then. Go. Take Ballard with you to get you suited up."
It was a quick trip down, with Jayvon Dean moving as fast as he dared in order to give Cordero as much surface time as possible. Jake spent that time wrestling Harris, who was tall and muscular, into an isolation suit and SLUG. Before they left, Terri Michael called Barnes and let him know Harris and Cordero were on their way. Once on the ground, Jake slipped into the cockpit and sealed the door before Jayvon opened the hatch to let the passengers out.
Gabe met them at the library.
They stepped carefully into the building. There was just the three of them now; the Marines were already a kilometer north, still looking in windows and snooping around to see what might be found. There were windows in the rear of the library as well as an opening in the floor above. which gave plenty of natural light to the room. They had wondered about basic utilities like electricity or natural gas or whatever, but today that research was secondary to Cordero's work to crack the language.
Greg and Ron walked the stacks, looking at a book here or there
on each shelf. It all seemed so comfortable, so much like a library back home. Each of them pulled volumes off the shelves and scanned them for anything familiar. They could recognize numbers now, at least, and obviously the arithmetic book Greg was so desirous of would be full of them. Greg was starting to recognize words, but only that they were words, not what they meant.
Harris looked around and then said, "I'm going upstairs." As he got to the top of the ladder, he called back to them. "Did anyone go up to the third floor?"
"No, Admiral," Gabrielle replied, "at least, I didn't. I think the Marines may have gone up to check it."
"OK, I'm going up." Ron took a moment to catch his breath once he got up the second ladder. He was in pretty good shape for a guy with a star on his collar, but the extra weight he was carrying in Big Blue's stronger gravity was noticeable. He walked around the room, just as he had done on the second floor, looking for something familiar, something he could latch on to and understand. As he moved around, he pulled a few books out and quickly scanned them. Very few had any images, and those that did were drawings that Ron didn't recognize. He added them to the pile to take back to the ship.
Big Blue
The Battlefield
Tuesday, October 11, 2078, 1845 UTC
Joe Bowles wanted to look further outside the main battlefield and to revisit some odd images he hadn't captured well the first day. So, a few minutes after sunrise, Antares' shuttle dropped back onto the PCH near the battlefield to deliver him, with Marcia Soto along to assist. The older, sometimes cranky pathologist was finding Soto to be a very useful second set of eyes.
Jack Ballard dropped Bowles and Soto, then took off again to transport Carol and himself to the 'farms' about ten kilometers to the east. As they got out into an intersection of two roads, the sound of their feet crunching on the gravel road reminded Carol of Inoria and its fine-grained stone streets. That prompted another memory of Marty Baker. Marty deserves to be remembered, she thought to herself. Maybe something to put on my prayer list.
"Carol?" Jack asked, shaking her out of her memory and back to reality.
"Sorry, Jack. Just had a thought of Marty."
"I understand. He was a good guy."
"He was." She took a deep breath, then seemed to perk up. "Shall we?"
"Yes, let's go."
They headed east along the road. On both sides, they found low metal fences that had not rusted. They had some cutters in the shuttle and would come back for a sample, but based on its appearance they agreed it was probably aluminum or an alloy similar to it. Analysis back on Earth might tell them something about the industry and technology of the culture. Shortly they came to an open gate. Looking across the road, the corresponding gate on the other side was also open.
"Jack, the gates are open."
"So?"
"So, well, I don't know what. I guess I just expected them to be closed."
"You're the farm girl, so, why would they leave them open?"
"Maybe to give the livestock a chance? Otherwise, whatever was penned up in here would probably have died."
"I take it you think these are, well, farms for meat, not some kind of crop."
"Yes, these look like pastures to me, not crops." She walked through the open gate and twenty meters into the field, which was covered by grass perhaps a quarter of a meter high. Carol knelt down to look at it, noticing that it was very different from the low, tight, clover-like ground cover they had found on the battlefield. This was much more a grass, with long, thin leaves.
As she stood, she could see a small group of animals in the far corner, several hundred meters away. They were light brown, about the size of a large dog or small goat. From this distance, she couldn't make out much detail as they were head-down, grazing.
"So, some clearly survived! How many would you suppose?"
"We saw several groups in the surveillance pictures. We didn't get a count, but it only takes two, Jack, at least on Earth, plus a little time for nature to do what it does."
"But they're still here? Why didn't they move on?"
Carol shrugged. "The pasture grass is what they were raised on. It's probably good for them. If there's water nearby, there's a good chance to survive here."
The structures Carol had seen in the early overhead images were nearby, and they walked to them, the long grass pulling at their feet.
On the battlefield, Joe Bowles stopped at the skeleton that had caught his eye.
"Look at this, Marcia," he said. "Look how the upper arm is severed. Part of it is missing." They found the lower part of the arm, hand still more or less attached, a meter away.
"That wasn't shot off. It isn't burned. It's cut."
"More like bitten, I think."
"Post-mortem predation?"
"If there were predators around, scavengers, we'd see a lot more of this. It should be all over the field. I've only seen about ten or twelve with these kinds of wounds."
"I see. And, why the arm?"
"Right. Back home, a predator goes for the organs first, then the muscle tissue. They're more nutritious."
"Well, not enough to get me to eat liver!" Soto said, laughing.
"Me, either, Marcia, me either. Somehow crunching down the body's main garbage processing facility and toxic waste dump is strangely unappetizing."
"But not in the wild."
"Right."
"So, did the enemy do this? Could they have eaten them?"
"That would be my guess."
"What the hell are we dealing with, Joe?"
"Someone very alien, Marcia, someone who thinks nothing like we do."
As Carol and Jack came out of the 'barn,' as Carol had labeled it, they were surprised by the feed animals, which had made their way across the pasture and now rubbed their heads against the humans' thighs through the isolation suits. Instinctively, Carol reached down and petted their round heads, and the animals responded with quiet, low rumbling sounds which she interpreted as expressing pleasure.
Their coat was plain brown, without variation. Their ears were small and triangular, set very far back on their heads. They had no nose, but Carol could hear air moving in and out of openings in the sides of their necks. Carol got several close-up images, including one with Jack kneeling next to one for scale.
"They don't have the eyes, Jack."
Ballard looked more carefully at the 'goats' faces and realized they had narrow horizonal pupils in their dark eyes.
"Oh, you're right. Missed that. But look at those pupils!"
Carol looked at the eyes closely. "Hmm. Horizontal. Interesting."
"Why?"
"Well, back home grazing animals like deer and goats have horizontal pupils. My Dad told me once it gives them better vision to avoid predators. Seems nature found that same solution here."
"Ready to go back for Doc Bowles and Marcia?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Carol took a long look around before pulling herself back into the shuttle cockpit. It all looked so familiar: the fences, a little different, but for the same purpose; gates not all that different than what she had seen back home; and a barn that was, well, a barn. Inside there were a few stalls and tools she didn't recognize. Still, she was surprised at how much it felt her own family farm. The pasture needed cutting and the barn could use some maintenance, but she could almost see herself working these fields. It was a strange feeling to have twenty-four light years from Lancaster.
Columbia
Near GL 876
Wednesday, October 12, 2078, 1325 UTC
SLT Mazablaska 'Maz' Dawes stood his shift at the Conn watching the 'blink scan' occultation search display from behind the Surveillance position, just ahead and to the right of the raised command position. A red circle was flashing where three stars had gone dark, remained dark for a time, and then came back on in quick succession. From the display, he knew the stars were just off to his left and slightly below him. Whatever it was, it was not far off Columbia's course.
> They had been here a week already, and so far, they'd only seen small debris, stuff maybe a meter or two in size. They'd considered picking some of that up for examination, but Dan decided against it, keeping to the main mission of finding 'the wreck' and, hopefully, remains.
"Chief, let's get the narrowband radar up on that," Maz requested.
"Moving now." It took a few seconds for the massive antenna to slew over to the direction of the blink. Chief Allen started it in long range mode. Nothing appeared on the radar display. He waited a full minute, then switched to short range mode. Still nothing. He was wondering what to tell Dawes when Hughes and Powell came rushing in.
"What is it?" Melinda asked, looking at the blink scan.
"An occultation, Lieutenant," Allen answered, "and a very long one. But, there's nothing on the long-range radar."
"What?"
"I put the narrowband on it, and it's not showing up."
Melinda looked at Powell as she picked up the ship phone. "Captain."
"Planning to go full power?" David asked.
She nodded as she started to speak. "Yes, sir, we have an occultation that looks like it might be far away. And, sir, I think it's pretty big…Nothing on radar but I would like to go full power and see if we can find it... Yes, will do." She hung up and turned to her techs.
"Full power, longest range. Go."
Chief Allen didn't hesitate to adjust his settings and restart the radar. As he did, the phone at the Conn workstation rang. Maz hustled back to answer, and after a short conversation, he instructed the Nav techs to head directly for the contact.
"There it is...very faint, Lieutenant Hughes, but it's there. Four hundred thousand kilometers."
"Four hundred thousand? Can we get a visual?" Allen pointed the long-range telescope at the target the radar was showing. There wasn't much. A smudge, maybe.
"OK, put the visual in accumulation mode. Maybe with time, we'll get something." They watched the visual display freeze, then fill in, pixel by pixel.
"IR is negative, ma'am," her other tech reported.
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