Been There, Done That

by Mackey Chandler

  “OK, I’m open to any suggestions. What is our best course of action?”Delores asked. “Do we need to run, or sit as quiet as a mouse watching a cat?”

  “Sit silent and watch what they do. If they never see us then all to the good,” Alice said. “Gather intelligence and deny it to them at this stage.”

  “Set up to jump around to the next quadrant in case they do detect us,” Barak said. “If it’s like Weir’s ship, then they won’t have any idea how we did it, and can’t follow. They can’t possibly even know where we went until the speed of light lag both ways lets them see our new position. Assuming they can see us at a couple light hours range. We can still collect data on them and wait until we’re sure we won’t be leading them to go back home.”

  “What they both said,” April agreed. “Sit and watch, but go ahead and jump if they turn and paint us with their radar. If that happens I don’t want to sit in one spot to wait to see if they will shoot at us. They might have some speed of light beam weapon we’d never see coming.”

  “It all sounds good,” Delores agreed. “Setting up the jump and positioning us primed to go. Nav comp mic is open and not tagged to any one voice for safety. Nobody say the magic word unless you want the computer to actually do it.”

  “I have some low level pulses,” Alice said. After a bit she expanded on that. “There seems to be a belt with a few rocks ahead of where the vessel came in. I believe I am seeing their radar echo off a half dozen or so of those rocks without seeing the primary transmission. They appeared in a spread on the same general heading. That means they must have a very high power output for me to get a readable echo light minutes away. The frequency is a bit higher than ours. None of which gives us a hard base line to establish how far away they are from us or how fast they are going away from us.”

  “This is something Jeff and I have been discussing,” April revealed. “We need a radar system that can paint small passive targets across an entire star system. I don’t know how we can do it but we desperately need it.”

  “Yes, we’re like an explorer in a huge hanger with a small flashlight. We can see around us but have no idea where the walls are exactly and if there are any obstacles unless we just blunder onto them. The really big stuff like planets we can observe at optical frequencies passively, but other ships or tiny objects like a habitat are lost to us unless they radiate strongly.”

  “If that guy came in the system behind us, and had his drive turned off before he flew past, we’d have never seen him,” Barak thought out loud, “although we might have still felt the thump.”

  “If this ship hadn’t come in within a few degrees of our own heading we’d have still never seen him,” Alice pointed out. “Even if he has the ability to see our little radar emissions, as a matter of timing he might easily enter the system and exit without ever crossing our wave front. If he cuts back to that side of the star where we already were, he might run into our pulses, but if he goes the other way they will likely be too weak to pick up.”

  “I’m just as happy he didn’t come in behind us and see us with his forward looking radar before we even knew he was around,” Barak said. “We’ve got a blind spot back there too you know.”

  “OK, I just added a drone to be released after jumping in to look behind us as an absolute necessity on the equipment list before our next exploration,” April said. “Not an active transmitter, but a listening unit.”

  “If you are going to do that, make it the sensor pack for a big dish that unfolds and has some serious area to suck in a signal,” Delores said. “We can use it to look forward too, after checking our rear. That way we’ll get much more bang from what transmitter wattage we can carry. We don’t need a huge antenna to transmit.”

  “How much more range would that give us?” Barak wondered, looking at Alice who was his go to person for electronics.

  “I need to sit and do the numbers, but off the top of my head, if we have a long range mode for the transmitter that charges up and emits a single big pulse every minute or so and a dish that unfolds to ten or fifteen meters across, I bet we could see ship sized targets out to around a light hour.”

  “But a dish that big is going to be physically delicate and take time to deploy if it’s not going to mass too much,” Alice said. “It will be like be built like a spider web, and if we have to run for it without time to fold it up we’d just have to abandon it.”

  “Leave a demolition charge on the receiver to reduce all the circuitry to a molten blob if we ever have to abandon it,” April said.

  “Yes, the actual dish will have to be a clever design,” Delores agreed, “but nothing that would be too big a prize for a technological civilization. The receiver however will have to be some of our best stuff we wouldn’t want anyone to examine. Even if they already have better, it would tell them too much about us.”

  “Congratulations,” Barak said. “You sound as paranoid as April now.”

  “Given the choice between paranoid and stupid I’ll take paranoid.”

  The lights flickered and went out including their console screens. The main circuit breaker board within reach of Alice erupted in a staccato rush of clacks and the majority of the status lights on them went from green to orange.

  “Restore function on navigation and the drive first!” Delores demanded.

  “The reaction drive and jump drive never went down,” Alice replied, yelling a little even though there was no need. “Nav comp controls are rebooting, the screen looks normal and it should be hot to jump in fifteen more seconds… Live! If you need to jump it will do it, but we may have drifted off attitude slightly. Our position will be verified and a realigned in another thirty seconds or so.”

  “Was that an EMP attack?” Barak asked.

  “I think they rolled over to brake and that was just their normal radar looking back at us once the put their tail to the star,” Alice said.

  “Normal?” Barak asked indignantly.

  “Well it could be a narrow steerable beam,” Alice admitted. “That would up the power density too. So they are about ten light minutes in system from us if it took them a couple minutes to roll over to reverse thrust. We have a fix and a good aim at our next position if you want to bug out before that wave front gets back to them and they say, “What’s this?” They will ping us again for sure.”

  “Lord yes, execute!” Delores said, and the star light did the same instant swap through ninety degrees. They aligned nose to the star again and gave everybody a bathroom break before starting an x-ray scan for pulsars. The less fussy optical scan Alice started immediately.

  “Well, if that scared it out of anybody you can go first,” Delores joked, but it wasn’t far off the truth.

  “Anybody want drinks?” Barak offered after he took the last turn. They had enough jitters without the caffeine; he brought two bottles of water back.

  “Double checking, the radar didn’t accidentally get turned back on in resetting everything did it?” Delores asked.

  Alice checked carefully before replying. “No ma’am, it’s dead.”

  “Let’s sit tight, have a light supper, and rather than jump again right away I’d like to see if the aliens give any indication they can locate us here. Alice, how long would it take them to see us here if they can see us on their radar?”

  “It depends, like we were discussing, they may be using a wide angle search radar or a very narrow beam radar. If they went to a narrow beam that would indicate they had some other means of determining approximately where we were to scan that area of the sky. If it was a wide angle search, I’d be even more impressed at the energy level. However, I’d be just as happy if they don’t have a narrow steerable beam radar, because in my mind that’s targeting radar.

  “They aren’t that far off our previous position, and opening at a slight angle, so they’re still about two point seven light hours away. It’ll be another couple hours before we could see a signal bounce off us here, and a bit over five hours before
it returns and they could relocate us here. That would be impressive tech way beyond ours. We can’t see them maneuver from here. We’ll have no idea if they saw us and decided to ignore us and keep going or if they will go into a long braking burn that will carry them around the star.

  “If they decide to go look at that odd radar return we won’t be there next time they look of course. If they continued to intercept that point anyway, it could take them days to get there and we’d only know it if they keep running their radar. Their protocol might be to shut it down to investigate any odd return. They might not be aggressive. They might be just as concerned as us to meet somebody and shut down that radar and bug out of the system instead looking for us.”

  “Why do you assume aliens?” Barak objected.

  “What else could it be?” Alice asked.

  “Other humans?” Barak asked back. At her skeptical look Barak expanded. “We snuck out of the Solar System without anybody knowing. Why couldn’t somebody else have done the same? It seemed like at least a possibility worth considering, since we are so close to home.

  “We were looking down the business end of a huge plasma drive,” April said. “I can’t see somebody secretly building a gigantic vessel with the current shortage of materials and lack of space building capacity. Certainly not build something in secret way bigger than anything that’s ever been built before. Where would they even do it? You couldn’t hide it anywhere in Earth orbit.”

  “OK, that makes sense,” Barak admitted. “Scratch that idea.”

  “We’re going to need some better software,” Alice complained. “I can’t pin it down to exactly what star they came from with my current astronomical data and the rough heading we saw them on. That alone is a pretty good indication they aren’t humans though. They came in from the other side of the sky than Earth. Somebody would have had to build a secret big ship, with a drive less effective than ours, and have taken it out far deeper than us already.”

  “I’m conflicted,” Delores said. “I don’t especially want to keep station here for days watching for some indication they saw us that might not even happen. Neither, if we do see them coming out to meet us, am I sure I want to let them get a close look at us even if they aren’t hostile. I’d rather survive for sure to get the report back home.”

  “Report to whom?” April asked

  “Well, humanity,” Delores said, like it was obvious.

  “Oh, Honey, no, not a good idea,” Barak surprised them by saying.

  “Jeez, this has been a difficult cruise. Do you want to tell me why, Barak?”

  “First of all, if they do believe you, it undoes all our plans for quietly exploring and setting claims for ourselves. Then, as a consequence of our telling them, you can bet the Earthies will demand all our tech and data for free as their God given right. Instead of being grateful we shared it, they’ll be mad at us that it was kept hidden before, and you won’t get so much as a thank you if you do give it to them on a silver platter. They’ll make all sorts of big noises about the common heritage of mankind, human racial loyalty, and how it’s for the children to excuse stealing it under duress, even if we have no indication at all these people are hostile to us for them to need it.

  “But the most likely response would be to demand all this information including how to build their own star drives, and our mission recordings, and still deny our story.”

  “That would be insane,” Delores objected.

  “I didn’t say the ones who matter wouldn’t believe it. But the majority of them are still denying James Weir jumped out and vanished,” Barak said. “Tell me that’s sane. Last time I saw a poll it was well over half the people in the developed countries said it was a publicity stunt and a fraud. That seems to be what the governments want them to believe.”

  “There a side to it you don’t know that’s even worse,” April told them. “Jeff can only get a limited amount of critical materials our drive uses from his mom. There simply isn’t any other source, and he hasn’t figured out how to make it himself. So even if we literally gave them the build files to fabricate the damn thing they still couldn’t do it. How likely do you think it is that the Earthies are going to believe that, and not assume that Jeff’s just holding out on them?”

  “It would be war,” Alice said. “A stupid pointless war that would be the death of millions over refusing to give them something we simply can’t deliver. I’m not sure we could win it.”

  “I don’t want to win it,” April assured her. “I know what just we three hold for weapons, and the rest of Home has added a lot more capacity than anybody is talking about. It would be a several billion dead and we’d still lose. I could destroy China, or I could destroy North America, but we never wanted to be able to do both. Even then, if we took both big countries down, that leaves a lot of pissed off Earthies in all the other smaller countries who have their own lift capacity now. They still outnumber us. You’d have to kill the planet to win, and as hard as I can be, I’m not willing to do that.”

  “Forget I ever said anything,” Delores said.

  “If they never see us that seems all to the good to me,” Alice said. “If they did locate us, we’d have to sit here a long time to see them maneuver around the star to try to come to rest near us,” Alice repeated. “We’d probably decide to bug out before letting them get too close, and even doing that tells them too much about us, that we have a drive that doesn’t require a long fast run to jump.

  “With a little luck they may decide that one pulse they bounced off us was some sort of system error or anomaly. If they’ve sent a big radar signal propagating across the system why don’t we bug out before it gets here? Two returns that don’t make sense are much harder to ignore than one. A jump on around the star again would put us on the opposite side of the star from them.”

  “I tend to agree,” Delores said. “We aren’t equipped to learn that much more about them, but we could reveal a lot about us. Unless someone sees a problem, I’d like to proceed to the next quadrant and take a good reading. That will give us enough to give the next crew here a pretty decent map of the system. Then I’d like to jump out far enough out toward the edge of the system that these folks aren’t ever going to catch a radar return off us. Not even if they come around the star almost straight at us. They’ll jump out before the return ever gets back to them. Comments?”

  “We know what frequency to watch,” Alice reminded her. “We could even sit there an extra day. We might get lucky and see their exit. It might be nice to know where they are visiting next.”

  “Anybody have any problems or objections to being bored out of your gourds for a day?” Delores asked.

  “I always have stuff on my pad to work on,” April said with a wave.

  “I’ll just sing for you all,” Barak said. Nobody responded to his threat.

  “I have a book,” Alice said.

  “That good, but I have a problem for you,” Delores was quick to tell Alice. “I’d like you to examine our star charts and see, if we must, if there is an alternative two jump solution to get back to Earth.”

  “Oh, that sounds more interesting anyway,” Alice agreed.

  “Setting the jump up then,” Delores said. “She’s yours to run the survey when we arrive, then if you need any help from any of us with that navigation problem feel free to speak up. Slave your sensor board to mine and I’ll take a three hour bridge watch when we arrive, then April, then Barak, Alice last in rotation only if she has had enough rest since coming off duty.”

  “Execute,” she told the ship and the miracle happened again.

  They never saw the aliens again, and returned home the easy short way, without needing Alice’s two jump solution, after wasting a day.

  April was pretty sure if Kurt had been along, instead of her, they could have found better ways to pass most of a day hiding on the system fringe than reading a book. She wondered, had Barak ever mentioned in general or in detail staying over at her apartment? It was th
e sort of pillow talk the four of them were close enough to have shared, and that wouldn’t bother her. It could be that her being one of the ship owners and technically their boss was too great a divide for them to ignore. They did have private channels in the com consoles and their private devices to discuss it privately if they never thought to do so before the trip. April wasn’t quite sure if she was more relieved or disappointed that it never came up.

  Chapter 19

  “It’s not a virus, it’s a Helicobacter,” his chief physician told Director Schober. “I know we suspected Noro virus the first few days, but we eliminated that pretty quickly. Eliminating Noro didn’t mean we found out what it was easily. It’s been very difficult, and if Ed Kearney hadn’t gotten much sicker than everybody else we still might be struggling to ID it. It showed up in his blood after we failed to culture it any other way.

  “I thought bacterial infections were pretty easy to control,” Schober said. “Can’t you treat it with antibiotics?”

  “If it were a common strain, like the one that causes stomach ulcers, we could cure it. Although, we would run out of sufficient antibiotics before we could treat everyone. We never expected to need sufficient drugs for anything to treat every single person on the base. The only thing we stock sufficient to do that are anti-viral drugs for influenza. We have three specific drugs that should work for Helicobacter and I administered all three to Kearney and two other patients. Kearney improved briefly and relapsed. The other two it made no difference at all.”

  “Is this something new then, something that mutated?” Schober asked.

  Dr. Manson took a deep breath and let it out, visibly uncomfortable at what he had to say.

  “In my professional opinion, based on the DNA scans of the organism, and comparing it to the known genome of the entire class of bacteria, it appears to me to be an engineered organism.”

  “Surely, if it were a gene engineered plague we’d all be dead,” Schober objected.