by Thadd Evans
Chapter Twenty
A faint sound, a jet engine that was far away, roared louder.
I peered into the gorge.
A sixty-foot diameter galactic craft rose out of the mist, traveling at high speed.
I looked up. Far above me, the chrome ship, a vessel partially covered by oval facets, disappeared, hidden by fog. Hazy arcs, the mist itself, kept swirling, changing shapes. At the same time, the roaring noise became softer while the craft flew away.
“Yar, was that a Glemal ship?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Did they send you any messages?”
“No.”
I spoke into my tablet. “Greg, anyone, what kind of space vessel was that?”
Greg’s voice came out of the device. “Either Glemal or Embas. Unfortunately, they didn’t send me any messages. A second ago, Tia told me that she couldn’t identify it. She said that they didn’t respond to her email.”
Yeliv’s voice came out of my earplugs. “Paley and I can’t identify it. It didn’t send any videos, email or anything else. Maybe they’re suspicious.”
“I don’t know if they’re suspicious.” I continued on as icy wind blew against my knees.
Moments later, I listened for more engine noise, but only heard the sound of whistling gusts.
After climbing several feet, my chest and hips got warmer as the suit heated up. Though my arms and legs remained cold, I trudged on.
I stepped onto a flat, eleven-foot wide, thirty-foot long boulder—it slid to the right, several inches, toward the Bae Dy. I glanced to the left.
There was only the cliff, too steep to climb. I had to cross the boulder. I took one step while pebbles began rolling and toppled over the edge. Above me, ice cracked. A chunk of it fell off, ending up next to my heel. As my adrenaline pumped harder, I slid one boot forward and reached out, trying to grab a branch.
But it was too far away. I muttered, disappointed.
I advanced. Suddenly, rocks fell off the cliff and bounced across the boulder. Much to my surprise, the boulder lurched, an inch. At the same time, roots torn out of the ground by the loose boulder made a cracking sound. I grabbed a branch, stepped onto the trail, and exhaled, relieved.
I made it across the boulder. I pivoted and looked down the trail, wanting to make sure that everyone else would make it across safely.
Yar stepped onto the boulder.
“It might break loose any minute,” I announced. “Be careful.”
Yar nodded and took several steps. The boulder slid an inch toward the gorge. After hesitating, she got on her hands and knees and crawled. Soon pebbles rolled across the boulder and toppled over the edge.
When she was halfway across, the wind blew harder, almost knocking her down.
I removed a coiled rope from my belt and tossed one end—it landed.
Yar reached out, grabbed it, and tied it around her waist, a worried look on her face. Then she headed my way, on her hands and knees, advancing slowly toward my outstretched hand.
I attached this end of the rope to my belt-mounted loop and gripped the line. If Yar went over the edge, she wouldn’t go far.
Without warning, the boulder started moving. I sat down and shoved my heels into the snow. “You’re almost there.”
Her knee slipped. She yelled, “Help me!” and rolled over the edge.
The rope yanked me toward the Bae Dy. My boots dug more deeply into the ground and stopped, each heel inches from the edge. As my adrenaline started pumping, I lifted her slowly, too exhausted to do it any faster.
Chapter Twenty-One
Soon, Yar was closer to me, about fifteen feet away. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Greg.
He grabbed the rope, a section that was closer to the edge, and both of us tugged.
I tightened my grip. “I’m glad you made it across that boulder.”
“So am I.”
We lifted for several moments and stopped, our muscles aching.
I paused. “I need to rest for a few minutes. My hands hurt.”
He nodded while pulling, his dimly lit face partly obscured by late afternoon shadows.
I looked behind him.
Close to the opposite side of the boulder, Tia, Paley and Yeliv, all of them barely visible, crouched.
Yeliv announced, “Jason, it’s too dark to cross the boulder. Tia, Paley and I will do that tomorrow morning.”
“Good idea!”
Greg paused. “My shoulders are stiff.”
“Understood.” I peered over the edge.
About six feet below it, Yar stuck out her hand, and grasped a rock, one that was sticking out of the cliff. She slipped—fell.
The rope yanked Greg toward the edge. “Watch out!”
I grabbed the line and sat down, both heels dug in. “That was close. We almost lost her.”
“Yes.” Greg frowned.
I kept lifting. “Yar, are okay or did you break an arm or a leg?”
She didn’t say anything.
Within a couple of minutes, I said, “Greg, if you’re tired, rest for a while.”
“We’ll see.” He let go and peeked over the edge. “She’s only a couple of feet below the trail.” He lay on his chest, his head over the edge, and reached down. “I’ve got her hand.”
“Can you hold onto it?”
“I think so.” He exhaled, tired.
I let go of the rope, holding onto it with the other hand, then peered over the edge, grabbed Yar’s other outstretched hand, and lifted. As my muscles jerked, exhausted, we pulled her onto the trail.
She grinned. “Thank you.” The statement was mixed with humming sounds, melodic ones that were part of the Niil language.
Both of us smiled.
Greg exhaled. “I’m tired. It’s time for a break.”
I nodded and walked away. “Yeliv, can you catch this ACD sensor if I throw it to you?”
“I think so. Place it inside a bag, tie a rope to it and toss it.”
“Good idea.” I did as he said, and threw it, aiming carefully.
Yeliv raised both arms, trying to catch it. He scowled. “Sorry, the bag came off, and bounced over the edge.”
I paused, disappointed. The bag was too small, the thick line couldn’t be tied securely to it. “I only have four left. If we lose any of them, the Dwate will eventually kill us.”
“Hold onto them. Paley, Tia and I will take turns watching out for the beast.”
“Okay.” I went up the trail and placed an ACD in the dirt. After examining my hands, noticing they weren’t bleeding, I hiked toward my sleeping bag.
After aiming the palm of her hand at me, a friendly Niil gesture, Yar crawled inside her bag.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Next morning, I woke up.
Not far away, Greg called out, “You can make it!”
My face mask closed. I crawled out of my sleeping bag.
Near the middle of the boulder, Tia grabbed a root, trying to maintain her balance. “I’m scared!”
As the sound of cracking ice grew louder, Greg reached out. “Keep going.”
Tia, a terrified expression on her face, flinched.
Greg leaned forward, grasped her hand, and she stepped onto the trail.
Several yards behind her, Yeliv slid one boot forward, inching toward Greg. Then Yeliv climbed onto the trail.
The boulder slid a few feet, making a grinding sound—plunged into the gorge!
Greg shouted, “Be careful!”
Paley, a determined expression on his face, remained silent as he stepped into a deep cavity, an empty space left by the boulder and headed toward Yeliv’s outstretched hand.
Yeliv scowled. “Greg, it’s going to be a lot harder for Paley to get across.”
Greg nodded, a sullen expression on his face.
Paley climbed over pebbles while they rolled downhill. As more tumbled down, he stuck out his hand. Yeliv pulled him up.
Y
eliv wiped sweat from his face. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”
Paley pointed down. “There is a lot of loose dirt. Luckily, most of it is frozen and it won’t move.”
Yar and I climbed, the others behind us.
In the late morning, after rounding a bend, I heard a faint droning sound, a plasma-fusion engine, a noise that was far away. It grew louder. I peeked over the edge.
In the center of the Bae Dy, two hazy disk shapes, Dseo ships, spacecrafts that were partly obscured by fog, accelerated, went straight up and vanished, hidden by mist.
I listened, wondering if I could hear them return.
The wind whistled louder. Both ships were gone.
I said, “Ret.sig.allbandwidths.”
In the corner of my screen, meaningless dots came into view. No one aboard either vessel acknowledged my signal.
Yar turned toward me, frowning. “Jason, I used the entire microwave bandwidth, from three hundred megahertz to three hundred gigahertz, but they wouldn’t respond to my messages.”
“They may be ignoring us or using radio interferometric telescopes, equipment that won’t detect our signals.”
“It’s hard to say.”
Greg’s voice, an irritated one, came out of my tablet. “Jason, did those Dseo respond to your messages?”
“No.” I mentioned Yar’s failed attempts.
Greg announced, “A moment ago, Yeliv told me that he just changed his tablet’s mode to radio interferometric. The next time a ship flies by, the tablet will send them a message.”
I paused, thinking. “Good idea.”
Yar nodded. “I agree.”
On my screen, our current altitude enlarged. 18,211 feet. We had climbed much higher than I expected because the trail hadn’t ended.
Beneath the altitude, dots, useless information, brightened. My tablet couldn’t scan beyond a nearby cliff.
“Greg, have you updated MMAK?”
“Yes. I added four hundred loops and eighty object methods.”
“Did you debug all of them?”
“No. I only had enough time to debug ninety loops and twenty methods.”
Greg had created COLL, an object method that assembled RGB, visible to the naked eye light, scans. Unfortunately, when they interacted with D24’s magnetosphere, many electrons, particles inside those scans, dissipated. As a result, the tablet received hazy, useless trail maps.
Several years ago, he had created RETRI and RECO, two object methods. Both of them should have created superior trail maps. But they didn’t because the strong force, a field inside the atom, couldn’t hold onto electrons and photons.
A message from ST7 appeared on my screen. High Density Mass 10 interference. This meant that the ship’s transmitter had tried to send topographic trail maps to us. Unfortunately, most of the particles inside the message disintegrated as they went through nearby mountains.
I shook my head, disgusted. Our tablets wouldn’t receive any maps from ST7’s radio interferometric telescopes until we returned to our ship. “Greg, did you see the HD message?”
“Yes, more rotten luck! Damn it!”
HDM10 interference also meant that the radio interferometric telescope signals weren’t bouncing off the atmosphere. They had collided with it and dispersed. As a result, our tablets wouldn’t pick up those signals.
I was going to mention the bouncing problem to Greg, but he probably knew about it.
I stepped on a patch of ice—it cracked. To my right, a foot wide section of the trail broke off and plummeted into the gorge, taking several rocks with it.
I flinched and glanced over my shoulder. “Yar, are you okay?”
Down the trail, she aimed the palm of her hand at me, all three fingers straight, a Niil expression saying that she was fine.
I looked straight ahead and kept going, my nerves frayed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My tablet whirred louder, a specific pitch, a tone indicating that software was trying to create a route from recent scans. Feeling curious, I spoke, “Yar, tell me more about your planet, your home town and family.”
“Dusik is a dark world with heavy cloud cover. I come from Ast. It’s near the Bgis River. My mother and father said that teaching others about Oist, the art of listening closely, is important.”
“Interesting.”
“I want to say more. However, we must reach our goal soon.”
I nodded and peeked over my shoulder.
Behind us, Greg called out, “Paley, Yeliv, Tia and I need to stop and rest for awhile.”
I announced, “Understood.
“Yar, I’d like to keep going. Would you like to join me?”
“Yes.”
Greg called out, “We’ll catch up with you soon.”
I offered a thumbs up. Yar and I resumed our journey.
Within two hours, after rounding a bend, I glanced at the bottom of a nearby cliff.
In front of it, a six-foot tall humanoid silhouette, a dimly lit figure that was standing at attention, intrigued me. “Yar, can you tell what or who it is?”
“No.”
We hiked toward it. “Is that a woman or a man?” I squinted, trying to see the figure more clearly.
“I’m not sure.”
We paused, facing this Mlaan stranger, a man in a tattered umber coat.
From the top of his smooth forehead to the tip of his nose, I noticed two vertical, parallel ridges. Near the center of his cracked cheek, inside a hole, a spot where skin had broken off, thousands of tiny biopolymer tendons kept moving.
Yar, a surprised expression on her face, took one step toward him. “He is a robot, an ML, a multi-lingual prototype, one I’ve heard about, but never seen before.”
The ML smiled faintly while he raised one arm, greeting us. Much to my surprise, he spoke in a robotic tone, offering a recorded message. Ben tah, me tel gah. Bi ri. Welcome to Solo, the only town on D24. Solo has over twenty-four SA’s, the latest PRM’s, mapmaking software, photonic software, fuel, and food. Len ahs morl. He lapsed into silence, though both eyes kept shifting back and forth.
“Does Solo sell MMAK?” I listened closely.
Ben tah, me tel gah. Bi ri. The ML went silent.
Near the center of my screen, meaningless dashes scrolled. My tablet couldn’t translate his last message.
Ben tah, me tel gah. Bi ri. Im ki mek.
“Yar, what is he talking about?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll ask him a question. Il mek reh?” In the last sentence, her words were mixed with subtle whistling sounds, some soft, others loud.
Lin mih. His eyes opened wider, a friendly expression on his countenance.
“What did you say to him?” I turned toward her, curious.
“I asked him if he spoke Niil. He said that Haiw, a storeowner in Solo, could help me. But, he wouldn’t say anything else.”
“Did you translate the rest of what he was saying?”
“Just a little. It’s an esoteric Mlaan dialect that refers to Lake Noin, a body of water on Loi, the Aito home world. Noin is well known because the Philosopher, Mathematician, Na Seit, lived there.”
“Why we were sprayed with TG Sixty-Eight?” I stared at the ML.
FAQ four.
“FAQ four?” I rubbed my chin, perplexed. “What does that mean?”
The ML remained quiet, motionless.
I kept staring at the android, waiting for a better answer, “He won’t respond. He seems to be damaged.”
“He slurred most of his words. He is damaged.”
I peeked behind the ML, searching for a computer housing. A nearby server might be sending messages into the robot’s hard drive. At the bottom of a thousand foot high cliff, I noticed boulders, no housings.
“Where is Solo?” I waited.
Ta Je. The ML pointed to my right.
Yar and I hiked, advancing in that direction.
I shook my head. “That robot wasn’t much help.”
Chapter Tw
enty-Four
We stepped onto a trail, a path that curved left, winding around the peak. To my right, beyond the edge of the trail, there was only the gorge, no other routes.
As my tablet beeped softly, scanning the Bae Dy, an ivory weasel crawled over the edge, hopped across the trail and darted inside a crack that was near the bottom of the cliff.
Near the edge of my screen, close to the bottom, crimson text turned yellow. 5.1222112 miles to Solo, It faded and was replaced by new information. 3.314777 miles to Solo.
I sighed, disappointed. “MMAK isn’t working.” I slid the tablet into my chest pocket.
“Perhaps the solar winds are distorting the scans.”
“Who knows?”
After climbing around a boulder, I glanced up.
On the opposite side of a large open space, a location that was surrounded on three sides by cliffs, I spotted a mountain. At the top of the mountain, mist blew over a huge circular building, a structure with a landing pad on its roof. “That’s Solo.” I pointed at it.
Yar raised her chin. “Now I see it. I hope there’s a trail that goes all the way to the top.”
“I hope so too.” We hiked.
“This is the coldest place we been to so far.” Vapor, Yar’s breath, came out of a hole, one that was at the bottom of her face mask.
“Definitely. “ I rubbed both gloves together, trying to warm my hands.
Far above us, beyond my peripheral vision, a plasma engine droned louder.
Wondering what was making the noise, I glanced up.
I saw a small triangular interplanetary schooner, a vessel with a round bow. It flew over the edge of the platform, then disappeared, hidden by it.
I assumed the craft had reached the landing pad, but it was impossible to tell because the pad itself was blocking my view.
I aimed my tablet at Solo and a floating screen appeared. Near the edge of the screen, the bottom of the building, part of its foundation, a flat surface, magnified. I cleared my throat, frustrated. “There doesn’t seem to be a trail anywhere.”
“Let’s search for one.”
