“Understood, sir. Shall I assume you’re going to speak with Doctor Grouse?”
Clayton inclined his head at that. “We need answers.”
“With all due respect, sir, what if we already have those answers?”
“Explain.”
She unbuckled and rose from her chair. “They escorted us out of their territory. No shots were fired. We killed one of theirs and they killed one of ours. Maybe that puts us even in their books. They’re not hostile per se, but they’re definitely territorial. The message seems pretty clear: Trappist-1 belongs to us. Stay away.”
Clayton smiled grimly at her assessment. “I agree, but then why all the interest in where we come from?”
“Intel.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Intel for what? You don’t gather intel on your friends. Certainly not by strapping them down and squeezing it out of their brains. So if we’re not their friends, then what are we?”
“Just because they know where we come from doesn’t mean they want to go there, sir.”
“It doesn’t mean that they don’t, either.”
“So why did they break off pursuit?” Devon asked.
Clayton snorted. “They might be waiting for reinforcements. It’s been over ninety years since we last saw Earth. By now our orbital defense fleet has probably doubled or tripled in size.”
“What could they possibly want from us?” Devon asked, shaking her head.
“That’s what I’m going to ask Dr. Grouse.”
Chapter 15
Dr. Grouse was awake and sitting up when Clayton walked in, but his skin was waxy and gray, his eyes half-lidded, and his hair was falling out in giant clumps. Even his arms and beard were bald in places.
Clayton stood off to one side, watching with Doctor Stevens as a fully-suited corpsman held a bucket for Dr. Grouse to puke his guts into.
“He’s been throwing up for the past six hours straight,” Doctor Stevens explained over a private comms channel. The doctor’s voice was loud inside Clayton helmet, but it wouldn’t carry to Dr. Grouse’s ears. “That’s why he looks so bad. Well, that, and the virus that’s causing it.”
“Virus?” Clayton asked. “You mean he’s infected with something?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve never seen anything like it. It spreads so fast you can literally watch it multiply, and it’s having a strange, morphological effect on Dr. Grouse’s DNA.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s making random genetic changes all over the place. Most of the cells it changes simply die, but others are thriving.”
“So Dr. Grouse was subjected to some kind of genetic experiment? How is that possible? We were only separated from him for an hour! You’re telling me those birds created a designer virus tailored to humans in less than sixty minutes?”
“I don’t think this virus was designed for us, sir. I believe it was adapted for us,” Stevens said.
“A smart virus?”
“Or at least a configurable one. Regardless, if it continues to progress at this rate, Dr. Grouse will be dead in a matter of hours.”
“There’s nothing you can do?”
Stevens shook his head. “We could freeze him—put him in cryo and wait to get home so the specialists on Earth can find a cure. Their tech will be far ahead of ours by the time we arrive. One hundred and eighty years ahead to be exact. That could be enough to save him.”
Clayton grimaced and absently rubbed his smart watch through the sleeve of his suit. Hopefully a hundred and eighty years would be enough to save his wife, too.
“Let’s do it, but first I need to speak with him.”
“Of course, sir.”
Clayton led the way to Dr. Grouse’s bedside. The man stopped dry-heaving into his bucket and lay back against the gurney with a groan.
“Hi, Captain.”
“It’s good to see you awake, Dr. Grouse.”
“Is it?”
“You’re alive.”
“I’d rather be dead.”
Clayton noticed that Dr. Grouse’s eyes were pink and striated with broken blood vessels. There was a lump on either side of his head, bulging from matching bald spots, as if horns were growing there, but the lumps were at the back of his head. The scalp over them was flaking and red. Clayton pointed to one of the growths. “What is that?” he asked over the comms.
Doctor Stevens shook his head and leaned in closer to examine one of them. “A tumor, perhaps?”
“You haven’t done a biopsy?”
“They weren’t there fifteen minutes ago.”
Fifteen minutes. This virus, whatever it was, was moving very fast. Clayton switched back to external speakers. “Dr. Grouse, I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure,” he rasped, eyes closing in a wince. His Adam’s apple bobbed slowly up and down in his throat.
“What did they do to you?”
“I already told Lori.”
“You said to her that they wanted to know where Earth was. What made you think that?”
“You watch holovids, Captain?”
He frowned. “Of course...”
“Imagine watching one in your head. It’s playing on a loop, over and over again, flashing in front of your eyes at ten times speed. Everything you know about Earth flashes through your mind’s eye in an instant. And then it happens again, and again, and—” Dr. Grouse cut himself off, his stomach heaving visibly as his whole body spasmed, making him buck off the gurney. His cheeks bulged and his mouth parted, but nothing came out. He subsided with a whimper and a ragged cry: “Just kill me!”
Clayton shook his head. “We’re going to get you back to Earth and get you the help you need. You’re going into cryo before this gets any worse.”
Dr. Grouse’s head lolled from side to side on the cushioned gurney. “Then hurry up and freeze me...” he whispered. “I can’t...”
“Dr. Grouse, we will. I promise, but this is important: what did the creatures who took you want?”
“There was just one. A flying thing with a mask...”
“We killed him.”
“Good,” Dr. Grouse croaked.
“What did he want?”
“I told you. He wanted to know where Earth is.”
“And? That’s it? Did he tell you anything about them?”
Dr. Grouse rocked his head from side to side.
“Nothing, not even a vague impression?” Clayton insisted. “Anything that could help us to characterize their motives would be helpful.”
Dr. Grouse’s eyelids fluttered, and his heart monitor began beeping frantically. Thin lines of blood trickled from his eyes. Doctor Stevens leapt into action.
“Get the crash cart!” he barked at the corpsman who’d been holding the bucket for Dr. Grouse.
And then the monitor flat-lined, and Clayton backed away, watching as Doctor Stevens charged a pair of paddles and ripped Dr. Grouse’s suit open to expose his bare chest.
Clayton’s eyes bulged at the sight of Dr. Grouse’s hairless chest—not just because he was bald where before he’d been hairy enough to rival a gorilla, but because the skin and bones over his chest had become translucent. Dr. Grouse’s arteries and his heart were clearly visible inside of his chest.
“Clear!” Stevens yelled, and then shocked Dr. Grouse. His body skipped with that jolt. Stevens waited a beat then shouted, “Clear!” again. Stevens shocked him twice more after that to no effect.
A chill coursed down Clayton’s spine. A virus that could kill a person in twenty four hours. Whatever it was, they couldn’t let it escape quarantine.
He began turning away—
But then a soft, wretched beep escaped from the heart monitor, followed by another, and then a quick succession of them as Dr. Grouse’s pulse raced back up to speed. Clayton could actually see Dr. Grouse’s heart fluttering inside of his chest.
The man’s eyes flew wide, looking more bloodshot than ever, and a gut-wrenching scream tore from his lips. He grabbed
Doctor Stevens and pulled him down close, wrapping both hands around Stevens’ throat and baring his teeth in a manic, blood-spattered snarl.
Clayton blinked in shock.
“Sedate him!” Doctor Stevens cried.
The corpsman fumbled for a nearby syringe and struggled with shaking hands to fill it from a vial of clear fluid. Clayton ran back over to the gurney and pried at Dr. Grouse’s hands—
He was wickedly strong for a dying man.
Stevens’ face was turning purple inside his helmet, and he was slapping Dr. Grouse’s thigh repeatedly, as if trying to tap out of a fight.
“Dr. Grouse, let him go!” Clayton screamed.
A watery hiccup escaped Dr. Grouse’s lips. Was that a laugh? He coughed up a giant clot of black blood that splattered Clayton’s faceplate.
And then suddenly Dr. Grouse’s arms went slack and fell away from Doctor Stevens’ throat. The doctor collapsed to the deck, choking and coughing, gasping for air.
“What the hell was that?” Clayton demanded, wiping the blood from his faceplate on his sleeve and staring through a smeary crimson haze at Dr. Grouse’s now-placid features.
“I don’t...” Stevens trailed off with another cough.
Clayton’s comms crackled. “Captain, Devon here. I have an urgent update for you. Are you secure?”
Clayton walked away from the gurney and mentally killed the comms channel with Doctor Stevens. “I am now,” he said. “What’s going on, Devon?”
“The ships that were chasing us, sir. They just vanished.”
“Vanished? What do you mean vanished? They passed out of scanning range already?”
“No, sir. They were well within range, only a few million klicks away. One minute they were there, burning away at five Gs, and the next minute they were gone.”
Clayton’s guts clenched and churned. A cold weight settled inside of him, and he felt the blood draining from his face. He remembered the blips that he and Commander Taylor had been secretly tracking on their approach to Trappist-1. The same thing had happened then, too: there one minute, gone the next.
“They jumped out,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Jumped out, sir?” Lieutenant Devon replied.
“FTL, Lieutenant. They have faster-than-light propulsion systems. That, or cloaking tech. Or both.” He let that sink in for a second before stating the obvious. “They don’t need to follow us to Earth, Devon. They already know where it is thanks to Dr. Grouse, so why wait ninety years for us to lead the way when they can beat us there by decades? For all we know, they could reach Earth inside a month.”
Silence and static answered that pronouncement. A long minute passed, and Clayton stumbled over to the nearest bulkhead and leaned heavily against it. There was nothing either of them could say. All Clayton could think about was those images that the Trappans had shown them. The before and after pictures of their world—how it had looked before the fire and brimstone had rained down from orbit... and how it now looked after: pocked with craters from the attack.
What would the before and after pictures of Earth look like? Clayton sank to the deck, staring at his hands through the smeary crimson veil of Dr. Grouse’s blood.
“Let’s not assume the worst, sir,” Lieutenant Devon whispered. “We don’t know that it’s FTL. It could be cloaking as you say.”
“Then for all we know they could have turned back around to follow us again. That’s not any better, Lieutenant.”
We were fools to come here, he thought. Fools to aspire to meeting other civilizations. Humanity’s greatest hubris was to reach for the stars and now it would be their downfall. History had taught them better than this. But we never learn.
Lieutenant Devon’s voice came low and rasping to Clayton’s ears, interrupted by rapid, shallow breaths. It sounded like she was in the middle of a panic attack.
“What are your orders, sir?”
Clayton just shook his head. Orders? The word rattled around in his brain. His instincts took over, supplying the answer from the deepest, most animal recesses of his brain. They had just two options. Fight or flight. Go home and fight, or run away and hide on some other world. If the latter, they would just have to hope and pray to God that these bird-creatures never found them. And that was no way to live.
“We go home, Lieutenant. We go home and we warn Earth before it’s too late.”
“Yes, sir, plotting course for—”
“No. Plot a course for Proxima. We’ll go there first and send a message ahead. Just in case we are being followed.”
“Understood, sir.”
Clayton eased up onto wooden legs. “One more thing, Lieutenant.”
“Sir?”
“Not a word of this gets out. We don’t want to incite a panic.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 16
As soon as Clayton entered the cryo chamber, Ambassador Morgan came striding over. He grabbed Clayton’s arm and pulled him aside.
“Captain, you and I both know what could be out there,” he whispered. “You need to add me to the crew rotations.”
Clayton glared at Ambassador Morgan’s hand where it held onto his arm. The ambassador seemed to realize that he’d gone too far and removed it.
“You’re still a civilian on this ship, Ambassador,” Clayton explained. “Only the crew will be rotating in and out of cryo.”
“I represent the UNE. I need to be the first to handle any additional interactions with the Avari.”
Clayton frowned at the name. The ambassador had taken it upon himself to name them. It was better than Birdmen, but not by much. At least it’s less sexist, he thought.
“We’ll wake you if we encounter anything,” Clayton replied.
“How do I know that’s true?” Morgan countered, his eyes cinching down to slits.
He was right to be suspicious. Clayton had no intention of waking him. They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Clayton was tempted to leave it at that, but he gave in with a sigh and a nod. He would have to answer to UNE command when he got home. Keeping Morgan out of the loop wasn’t worth it. Besides, what was the worst that Morgan could do if they woke him up a few times a year?
Clayton turned to look around for Lieutenant Devon, scanning the myriad heads and faces of colonists and crew crowding the cryo chamber. He spotted her fire-red hair clear across on the other side of the deck. Mentally activating his comms, he contacted her. “Devon. I have the Ambassador here saying he wants to be on the active duty roster. Slot him into the same rotations as me.” That meant they’d both be awake once every six months for one week at a time.
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Not much choice. He is in charge, after all,” Clayton added that with a dry twist of his lips. “I’m sure he and I will have great fun together.”
Morgan smiled thinly and said, “Add Dr. Reed to the rotation as well. She’s the first contact specialist.”
“Dr. Reed?” Clayton asked, feeling his brow scrunch up like an accordion. “She’s pregnant!”
“Exactly.”
“She’ll wind up giving birth before we get home. We can’t put babies in cryo.”
The ambassador nodded. “But you can put toddlers in. When she’s ready to give birth, we’ll stay awake for the next two years and then all three of us will go back into cryo.”
Clayton was getting ready to put his foot down when Morgan added, “I’m not asking, Captain. I wouldn’t want to have to put insubordination in my report to the UNE when we get home.”
“Devon... add Dr. Reed to the same rotation schedule,” Clayton said.
“Copy, sir,” Devon replied.
“Captain Cross out.” He ended the call. “Satisfied?”
“Yes.” Morgan smiled. “Your cooperation has been noted.”
Clayton watched as the ambassador turned and walked away, melting back into the crowds of colonists and crew busy lining up for cryo.
Two weeks per year for ninety years
. Clayton did the math in his head. That meant he was going to have put up with Morgan for a combined total of over three years. At least it was only for a week at a time.
And Dr. Reed... she would reach full term after just eighteen years of rotations—assuming she carried the baby to term. They wouldn’t even be a quarter of the way back to Earth by the time she gave birth.
Clayton shook his head to clear it and quickly crossed the cryo chamber, pushing through the waiting crowds to reach Doctor Stevens. The doc was busy directing corpsmen as they guided the crew into their cryo pods. Blue lights illuminated the tubes from within. Covers swung shut and loud hissing sounds escaped as the occupants were placed in cryonic suspension.
Clayton bumped into Dr. Reed before he could reach Stevens.
“Captain,” she said. “Did Richard—I mean Ambassador Morgan have a chance to speak with you?”
“Yes.” Clayton flattened his mouth and shook his head.
She looked crestfallen. Her hands fell self-consciously to her abdomen. “Please. I have to have her before we get back.”
“Her?” Clayton asked. “Isn’t it too soon to tell what she is?”
Dr. Reed’s lips quirked into a tentative smile. “Well, I think it’s a her, but I guess we’ll see.”
“If you have her on board, you’ll be stuck on The Wheel with her for two whole years.”
Dr. Reed nodded. “I know.”
The Wheel was exactly what it sounded like. A giant, spinning wheel with spokes to connect it to the middle of the ship. It was usually empty, but for long voyages where the crew would be awake for extended periods, The Wheel could be spun up to simulate Earth’s gravity. It was the only way for Dr. Reed and Morgan to raise their child on the ship until it was old enough to rotate in and out of cryo.
“Are you sure about this?” Clayton asked.
“Positive.”
“Then I guess we’ll see each other in six months.”
“Six months?”
“I had Devon add you and Ambassador Morgan to my rotations. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other before that baby is born—and after, I suppose.”
Dr. Reed smiled and nodded, rubbing her flat stomach. “Thank you, sir. You have no idea how much this means to me—to us.”
First Encounter Page 9
