"There's some flash frosting." Devuyst checked her controls. "It should clear in a couple of minutes. Sensors are picking up heat and atmosphere out there."
"What kind of atmosphere?" I asked.
"The sensors are fluctuating. Or the atmosphere is. Mostly hydrogen, some carbon dioxide. Wait a sec-"
"I saw it too," said Cat. "A sudden spike of oxygen that wasn't there before. Nitrogen levels increasing too. Murph, it's replicating our atmosphere."
"How does IT know about our atmosphere?" Devuyst was immediately suspicious. "They haven't scanned us yet."
"How would you know if they had?" Chun was enjoying Devuyst's discomfort.
"External atmosphere and temperature now match ours within instrumentation limits," Cat announced. "I think we're being invited outside."
Chun tapped his control panel. "The pickups are clearing too."
I flipped through the optical feeds. We were in a chamber around three hundred meters long and perhaps a little under half that wide. At the far end a large flickering surface covered with strange patterns dominated the wall. It could have been a display screen, or—for all I knew—a meaningless piece of decoration. The walls were punctuated by a number of semi-transparent enclosures full of shadows that hinted at their contents.
"Are those...?" Devuyst tailed off.
"Lifeforms?" I zoomed in on the shadows in a useless attempt to make out more detail. How do you make sense of something that you can only partially see and have never seen before? "Maybe."
"Crew? A sleeper ship?" Cat asked.
"The crew are asleep?" Devuyst manipulated her own controls. "I can't get a good view."
"Infrared shows nothing, just ambient temperature." Cat said. "If they're alive, metabolizing that is, they're either shielded or doing so at levels below those we can detect."
"Suspended animation." Chun didn't look up. "Necessary for traveling astronomical distances."
"That would only be needed if this ship traveled at sub-light speeds though," Cat said. "Which it didn't. Otherwise we would have detected it before it-"
"You don't know that," Chun broke in. "How much faster than light can they travel? How far have they come?"
"Reasonable assumptions, based on what we know. If they can travel FTL, it should be effectively instantaneous-"
"Reasonable to us, maybe not for them. We can't make that kind of assumption. If space-time exists for them at all, we need to consider the possibility that-"
"Now who's making assumptions?"
The logic-chopping was fascinating, but I had more pressing concerns. "Can we leave this till later? Has anyone checked communications? Are we on our own?"
Devuyst ran through the comms channels, no doubt checking her super-secret lines as well as the regular channels. "Everything is blocked as we thought."
"In that case, we might as well have a look." Three serious faces turned towards me. "We're not going to achieve anything shut in here and we have less than seventy-five minutes left until we leave."
Devuyst nodded and popped the main hatch. A rush of air washed over us, but something wasn't quite right. It's amazing how you adapt to your environment. You can completely block out the combined body odor of four people shut inside a small Hopper for hours, but as soon as the hatch opens you realize what you've been living in. Here the air outside smelled the same as inside. IT had replicated the Hopper's atmosphere down to the very last detail, something that scared me.
Chun was the first to unfasten his restraints. He lifted himself cautiously, a reaction common to anyone who's worked in varying gravity fields, then hopped to his feet. "We have gravity." He bounced up and down. "Feels like one-gee."
"IT simulated everything else, why not gravity too?" Cat unbuckled herself and slid through the hatch.
"We carry our atmosphere with us—how would IT know our gravity?" Devuyst asked.
"Maybe they scanned Earth and made an assumption? Maybe they can tell from adaptations in our skeletal structure? Who knows?"
"Nobody here but us soy-chickens." Cat winked at me as I clambered through the narrow hatch with Devuyst bringing up the rear.
"Unless you count them." I gestured at the enclosures on the wall.
"Possibly..." said Cat. "I'm going to take a look."
Chun nodded toward the end of the chamber. "I want to check that out and-"
"Wait a second." I held up my hands. "We shouldn't wander around alone. Right, Lieutenant?"
"Stay in pairs. Full environmental gear. This atmosphere could disappear as fast as it came."
"Right." I pointed at Cat and she grabbed her helmet from the floor. "How about you and the Lieutenant investigate the 'things', while me and Chun take a look at the 'screen'?"
Devuyst stiffened. "I'd be more productive working with Chun."
Cat shrugged, but said nothing.
"Okay. Let's do that." I rushed to catch up with Cat.
"She's insufferable, Murph."
"I've worked with better people." I kept my voice low as well. "It's only one mission though. After this we can go back to building SpaceHabs. Do you think those really are lifeforms?"
"If it annoys the military bitch, I do." She giggled a little too loudly. "Cat by name, cat by nature. Come on, let's take a look."
The shapes were no clearer as we approached; in fact they seemed less distinct. At arm's length they were just a mass of dark and light blotches behind clear panels and did nothing to ease my concerns.
"Those are only a few centimeters deep aren't they?" Cat reached out and ran her hand over the clear material. "Not hot or cold. Just a covering..."
"Covering nothing?" The whole thing gave me the creeps.
"Exactly. Like a movie set that makes you think there's something there but isn't."
"Could it be artistic or decorative?"
"Sure, but how would we know?"
I heard a metallic sound from the other side of the Hopper.
"Hey... don't!" Chun said.
"I'm not going to hurt it. Don't worry."
We rushed round the ship and saw Devuyst working a pry-bar at a small panel near the bottom of the "screen." It seemed futile and I was about to say so when a blue-white flash engulfed her. She was silhouetted momentarily as her scream filled the chamber.
I'll give her credit; Cat didn't hesitate and ran forward to pull Devuyst away from the panel. She rolled her on to her back and checked her vitals.
"Oh jeez... that hurts... do something, please." Devuyst moaned, thrashing on the floor as Cat tried to hold her still.
I reached out and turned her hands over. Her environment suit gloves were charred all the way through and when I probed deeper it was clear her hands had suffered a similar fate. "Chun, get the medical pack. Cat, we're going to have to get these gloves off."
She nodded and held Devuyst tighter.
"Wha ya... doing?" Devuyst responded to the pressure, but didn't really seem very aware.
"Shush. We're taking care of you."
I unlocked the wrist seals, pinched the tattered remnants and with a quick jerk pulled both gloves off. Devuyst screamed, twisting in Cat's arms but didn't break free.
Chun dropped to his knees, already tearing open the medical pack, and placed a Dexofentanil inhaler cup over Devuyst's nose and mouth. Rummaging through the rest of the supplies with his spare hand he tossed me a pair of sterile gloves and a tube of burns cream.
Devuyst grew still, her breath turning shallow and a little ragged. I rubbed half the tube over her fingers, then squirted the remainder into the gloves before slipping them onto her discolored hands.
"How long does that last?" I indicated the inhaler.
Chun checked. "It says seven to nine hours."
"That's plenty. Okay, let's get her in the ship and the rest of us. We don't have long."
We made Devuyst as comfortable as we could in one of the Hopper seats and I took the pistol from her belt. The last thing we needed was her armed in a drug-induced haze.
Then we waited, the uncomfortable silence seeming to stretch for hours. Eventually I checked the time; we were a long way past the ninety-three minute mark.
I swore quietly and scrambled out of the Hopper, followed by Chun and Cat. "Looks like we're not going home yet. What happened, Chun?"
Chun explained that they'd decided that the wall area might provide a communication function. Devuyst had spotted the panel and decided it must conceal an interface. Chun warned her it was unlikely, but she'd gone ahead and tried to get the cover off anyway.
"Did you get anything?" I asked.
"I've not really started. It's not like any technology I've seen—no surprise there—but my gut tells me it's some kind of comms system. Those patterns, they're not just random."
"Language?" asked Cat.
"I have to work on that assumption. Translation, which may not be possible, would take years. With no common reference points it would be harder to decipher than Etruscan—at least they were human."
"Not a good bet. Could we fly out?"
"I doubt it, Murph." Cat chewed her lip. "The Hopper hasn't got the boost to overcome one-gee. Do we even know how we got in?"
"Climb out?" Chun gestured at the airlock.
It was at least ten meters up and I didn't see much in the way of hand or footholds. "That looks impossible in an environmental suit and even if we made it, then what?"
"Four hours in the suits maybe. Someone might pick up our signals in time..." Cat didn't sound optimistic.
"And the Lieutenant?"
Cat breathed out slowly. "She'd need gloves..."
***
"There!" Chun jumped closer to the screen. "I've definitely seen that pattern before. It has to be language."
"If IT wanted to communicate, wouldn't it just use a language we'd understand?" I waved my hands. "It adapted to our environmental needs, couldn't it just pluck Standard English from our minds?"
"Language is a lot harder than biochemistry." Chun studied the patterns intensely. "Who knows what IT can do though. Maybe it just needs more data..."
"You mean language?" Cat frowned. "What are you going to do? Talk to IT?"
"Sure, why not? What do you think, Murph? Worth a shot?"
I had to admit I was bewildered by the idea too, but our options were limited.
"Okay. You talk to the wall. Cat, take a closer look at the airlock. Maybe it has a reverse. But make sure you don't trip it! I'll check on the Lieutenant."
Devuyst opened her eyes as I approached.
"How do you feel?"
"Numb. No pain. Am I going to be okay?" Her mouth trembled. "This was supposed to be my last assignment. I'd applied to the maternity board for a double license."
"You'll be fine, the doctors will fix you up in no time."
"You're a very bad liar, Murphy. I wish-"
The Hopper lurched and I jumped through the hatch without thinking.
"Cat? Chun?"
"Wasn't me, Murphy. Owwwww!" Cat limped around the Hopper. "I think I twisted my ankle when I fell."
"I touched the screen." Chun bounded over.
"And when you did, IT moved?"
Chun nodded.
"I'd guess IT's preparing to leave orbit. We didn't see it coming so its departure might be just as abrupt. Hell, we may have already left."
"Murphy? I feel strange..."
Cat keeled over. I reached out to catch her but found myself falling too. The thump behind me had to be Chun. I could only lie helplessly on my side as a glowing blue mist filled the chamber. My mouth tasted like I'd been sucking on a power cell. Then I blacked out.
***
I jerked upright gasping, almost butting heads with Cat. My chest felt as if someone had been dancing on it and I realized that she'd given me CPR.
"Glad to see you're still with us, Murphy."
On a scale of one to ten where one is a genuine heart-felt smile and ten is completely forced, Cat's rated a twelve or thirteen.
"Glad to be here. Any idea where here is, by the way?" I looked around. "How are the others?"
"Chun is fine, he's checking on Devuyst."
As she spoke Chun emerged from the Hopper and raised his thumbs. Cat turned back to me.
"Was that some kind of space jump? What else could it be?"
Her suggestion fit the facts. IT had to be capable of superluminal flight and we knew from the start that it might move while we were inside it. It was reasonable to assume we were a long way from home.
"If we're at the IT homeworld, where are the owners? Shouldn't they be greeting us or something?" Chun frowned. "Maybe they have a different time perception; they may not know we're here yet."
"Or maybe they don't care," said Cat, stuffing her hands deep into her pockets.
"What kind of ship is this?" Maybe some debate would provide a distraction. "No crew from what we know. Probes create no reaction, but we trigger something in minutes. Flashing lights, those 'things' on the walls. Probes get in and out. But we get trapped?"
"Some kind of probe or sampling system?" Cat asked, scanning the entire room.
"To gather samples across interstellar distances?" Chun frowned. "That's crazy. Think of the time and resources needed to build it."
"How do we know what effort is involved?" I pointed around us. "This would be a huge commitment for us, but to them it could be trivial. Think about it. What do you do when you want to set up a trap? You make it attractive to the prey. You put in triggers to make sure it doesn't activate until you've caught something. If you're sampling intelligent life, what better bait than showing them other potential intelligence?"
"Even if you're right, Murph, it still doesn't make sense." Cat said. "Wouldn't they process us or something? We wouldn't take a sample and just ignore it."
I was going to say that people left animals in traps, sometimes till they died, but Chun pointed at the screen.
"Look!"
The pattern was fixed now and the background cycled between a sickly green and an almost equally repulsive shade of purple. The most interesting thing though was an entirely familiar "shape": the English word "Automatic."
"It's translating for us..." Chun's voice was hushed with childlike awe.
"That's not possible." I moved closer as another word appeared. "Does 'Krimanth' mean anything to anyone?"
The others shook their heads and I had to laugh. Maybe IT wasn't as smart as we'd given it credit for.
"IT needs our help," said Cat, ignoring my skepticism.
"Give it more words?" Chun pinched his chin. "Nice idea, but they likely have all the words we use. We'd need to supply context, but how? We don't know what things mean to IT."
"Charades?" Cat suggested.
"Anything is worth a try," I agreed.
"A condition or state that is dangerous or potentially damaging, this could lead to an Automatic reaction. Describes the situation when something fails or malfunctions."
"It's an emergency." Chun picked it up. "Something that represents a wider group. One from many. You can use this to sample and compare..."
I'm not really sure how long we continued, but I was hoarse and Cat was red-eyed with fatigue. Even Chun, despite his initial excitement, was flagging and slouched against the wall.
The screen hadn't changed since the first two words. Then it blanked out completely before flashing three times. It cycled through a rainbow of different combinations until settling into a red and yellow pulsing, but there was still no message.
"Damn it!" I rubbed my forehead, trying to ease the pressure. My stress fuses were well and truly blown. Then I heard a bitter laugh and looked up.
"This Xanzziflp automatic samples retrieve system has malfunctioning. Codes Q19753H - Warp Drive fails. Please return to Xanzziflp Products Division on Krimanth Four a consolation or otherwise optional grateful repayment."
"We're stuck? In a sample jar? Is this a joke?" Cat said.
"There must be something we can do. We have air, it doesn't seem to be run
ning out. We're not done yet."
"Food? Water?" Chun glanced around. "There are limited supplies in the Hopper. Enough for a few days at most."
"We could take another look at the airlock. Maybe we could make it eject us." I didn't even convince myself.
"Where are we? Where's the nearest place we can dock with?" Cat's voice was now level and controlled. "The Hopper isn't built for atmospheric operations."
"There has to be something..." A half-forgotten weight hefted at my pocket and I pulled out the Lieutenant's pistol.
"Murphy!" Cat turned away, her features white.
"It might be for the best," Chun whispered. "What a choice—death by starvation, asphyxiation, or decompression. A bullet would be quick and relatively painless."
"Sorry. That's not an option." Devuyst clambered out of the Hopper, her face sweat-sheened and pasty. "The gun is keyed to my fingerprints for safety."
She held up her bandaged hands.
Cat's whistle was low. "Talk about Murphy's L-"
I jammed my fingers in my ears.
***
So there you have it. I'm recording this on the Hopper log system in hopes that somebody will find it one day. Will they understand this? Who knows. Will they be human? Unlikely. It's been two days since the message appeared and Chun believes he's managed to re-rig the quantum comm system to send a repeating broadcast. Bog knows who might pick it up.
Nobody will speak my name now. They always said it was a curse. I hope someone proves them wrong.
Soon.
The End
Humanity makes a great deal of use of sample capture and return systems. From simple systems that trap creatures to the complex ones used to return samples from the moon, comets and other planets. I wondered if an alien civilization more advanced than we are, might also use have the same idea. Like Murphy, I seem to have had a great deal of bad luck, despite trying to plan to avoid it. Mix together these two ideas and throw in a little military/civilian oil and water and Murphy's Law was born.
Reboot
Commissioner Bellarbi turned away from the reports and savored the earthy flavors of his herbal tea as he gazed at the majestic skyscrapers of the city skyline. Usually the subtly spiced drink was relaxing, but not today. After all, she was coming.
Dead Reckoning and Other Stories Page 10
