The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2)

by Alastair Mayer

  “Please.”

  “Might as well trim a few days off the trip anyway,” added Carson.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Inner Delta Pavonis system

  Verdigris was a green dot on the forward window when they de-warped again. Jackie rotated the Sophie to bring it overhead and smoothly applied power to the ventral thrusters, giving them an apparent gravity of one-third of a gee. She transferred the overhead view to the forward screen.

  “Why so green?” Marten asked. “The terraformed planets I’ve been to look blue from space.”

  “It depends on the season,” said Carson, who had visited the planet before. “Verdigris has an unusual concentration of phytoplankton which blooms aggressively when the winds are blowing nutrient-rich dust off the deserts. There’s an airborne form too, sometimes it makes the sky look green.”

  “Deserts? From what you told me of your last expedition, I thought it was heavy jungle.”

  “Different areas have different ecologies, like any terrestrial planet. But Verdigris is a bit different from Earth or Taprobane, or Sawyers, given the way its continents are laid out and the climate. Most of the jungle is fairly young, only a few hundred years.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not up on all the details,” Carson said. “There was something about a shift in ocean currents changing the rainfall patterns. A huge swath of what used to be desert is now jungle, and in fact the jungle is slowly moving inland. Eventually I suppose there might not be enough dust to maintain the phytoplankton as extensively as now, and the planet will start to look more normal. In the meantime, there’s a pretty significant local industry in exotic biologicals.”

  “And the ruins?”

  “They pre-date the desertification. It was probably the desertification that caused the collapse of the indigenous civilization. It certainly helped preserve the structures.” Stone buildings—at least, those of stone soft enough to be worked with primitive tools—didn’t last very long with jungle vegetation growing on them. Hundreds of years, perhaps, but not fifteen thousand.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Approaching Verdigris

  “So where do we look?” Jackie asked Carson as she prepared the ship for orbital insertion.

  “Can’t we just enter a polar orbit and scan the whole surface?”

  Jackie and Marten both turned to look directly at Carson. Jackie raised an eyebrow. Marten said “Please, Hannibal, I have no desire to spend two weeks in zero gee.”

  “Two weeks?” Carson had been thinking it would take a day or two at most.

  “We can scan a swath a hundred kilometers wide with the ten gigapixel scanner if we settle for a resolution of a meter.” Marten had worked extensively with remote sensing as a grad student. “The planet has a circumference of over thirty thousand kilometers. That’s over three hundred orbits, less if we skip the deep ocean.”

  “At an hour-and-a-half per orbit,” added Jackie.

  “But we’d have really, really good maps of the poles,” finished Marten, and grinned.

  Carson shook his head. “All right, all right. I wasn’t thinking it through.” He thought for a moment. “I doubt the spacefarers would place anything in the polar areas, it’d most likely be in one of the regions occupied by the indigenes. That’d be within about 45 degrees of the equator.”

  “Hannibal,” Marten said, “the pyramid we found on Chara III would stick up above the trees here, wouldn’t somebody have noticed it already?”

  “Unless the pyramid sank into soft ground. No, that doesn’t make sense. They wouldn’t build it in a swamp.”

  “What if the swamp came later?” asked Jackie.

  “How much later? It’s been desert for most of the last fifteen thousand years.”

  “Buried in sand dunes?” Jackie said.

  Carson doubted it. It took a long time for deserts to build up that much sand, and longer still for dunes to build up to any great height. But . . . “Not completely buried, but they might raise the ground level.”

  “Then when the climate shifted and the jungle advanced back over the desert—” Marten began.

  “—the pyramid might be low enough relative to the new ground level to be hidden amongst the trees,” finished Carson.

  “So do we have a place to look?” asked Jackie.

  “We need to check the maps and run some queries. It certainly narrows it down.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  On their ninth orbit the imagers detected a distinctive square outline through the vegetation. It was about 150 kilometers from the town of New Toronto, in an area which the geological database said had been desert up until 270 years ago.

  “I think that’s it,” agreed Carson. “Captain, let’s land at New Toronto, it’s a lot closer than Verdigris City.”

  “Finally,” said Marten.

  “Okay.” Roberts checked their position and trajectory. “We’ll do the de-orbit burn on the far side. Get things stowed for entry.”

  13: Rico Has a Plan

  Denver, Earth

  “So, Brown, have you come up with anything?” Rico was back in Denver.

  “I had heard that the original material was with the National Archives secondary facility here in Denver. I checked that and it turns out they only have the original microfilm, not the paper.” The disgust in Brown’s tone was clear. Rico already knew how Brown felt about microfilm, he’d mentioned it before. “That has all been digitized anyway. What about you? How was your trip to St. Louis?”

  “Interesting. I know where the original files are. At least, I think I do.”

  “Where? Can we get them?”

  “That’s going to be tricky. They’re in a commercial facility in Pennsylvania, an old hard rock mine converted for archival and offsite storage. I don’t suppose you can just officially request them?”

  “Not a chance, not those records. It was all I could do to get confirmation that the microfilm still existed. A top level request from the UDT council to the US government might get somebody a look, but it would take weeks or months and raise flags everywhere. Something less sensitive, I could get.”

  “Then never mind. Don’t mention it to anybody; I don’t want anyone’s guard up.”

  “You’re planning on stealing them? From a mine? This should be good.”

  “How much do you really need? Most of it is already online, right?”

  “That’s true. There are some missing files that were supposedly microfilmed—they’re listed on the indexes—but aren’t in the online data. Mostly what I want is the photographs and the original Betty Hill map.”

  Rico had seen some of the images in the online data. Apparently the old microfilm technology rendered everything in strict black or white; no gray shades at all, let alone color, and the microfilm scans of photos or drawings were useless, even with image enhancement. There was just not enough image to enhance.

  “How much would that be? A file box? Two?”

  “That sounds about right, but it won’t be all together, some of it will be interspersed with the original reports, although I think there were some separate files for photographs. They weren’t consistent over the life of the project.”

  That made things a little more complicated. He might have come up with a way to get a single box out undetected; there was no way to do that with the whole collection. Then there was the matter of whoever tagged him on the train, and possibly his second contact.

  “There’s something else,” Rico said. “Someone tried to tag me. I took care of it but my guess is that somebody else knows we’re here. There was also something smelly about the follow-up contact. Possibly the bad guys.”

  “The Velkaryans? What do you suppose they want?”

  “Probably the same thing we do, or to stop us from getting it. But they may be able to help us.”

  “Help how?”

  “They’ve probably got resources we don’t, religious followers and political sympathizers in useful positions and such, and they’ll make goo
d fall guys if things go wrong.”

  “You’re going to steal the files and frame them for it?” Brown raised an eyebrow. “You seriously expect to be able to pull that off?”

  “I haven’t figured out the details yet.” Brown’s obvious disbelief didn’t bother Rico. If Brown didn’t think he could do it, then the Velkaryans weren’t likely to either. They’d be off their guard. “Maybe I’ll get them to steal the files and then I’ll steal what you want from them.”

  Brown looked as though he were about to say something derisive, then stopped himself and peered at Rico, his eyes narrowing. Then he shook his head slightly and grinned. “I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to think I see what Ducayne likes about you.”

  14: New Toronto

  Above Verdigris

  “Damn,” muttered Jackie as the ship cleared the layer of cirrostratus cloud high over their destination. Below her, skyweed drifted above New Toronto like a malachite blanket, all streaky swirling greens. That would make the approach and landing interesting, but if she had wanted boring she wouldn’t be out here, despite what she’d said to Carson.

  “New Toronto approach, this is Sapphire-class ship Sophie entering the zone from 265 at ten thousand meters, requesting an update and landing instructions.”

  “Roger Sophie. Ceiling is heavy overcast at a thousand, no winds, pressure 751. Set transponder to 7320 and squawk ident.”

  “7320 and squawk, roger.” She keyed in the transponder code and touched the IDENT pad. That would not only highlight her on their radar, it would also download the ship’s registration information.

  “Got you, Sophie. At your discretion descend to and maintain 800 meters. No traffic, but watch for weed.”

  Yeah, thought Jackie, I’d kind of got that. She also caught the note of irony in the controller’s otherwise deadpan recitation.

  She slowed her glide and powered up the ventral thrusters, coming in belly first and letting the exhaust blow a path through the floating aerophytoplankton. She didn’t want that stuff smearing her hull any more than could be helped.

  “Sophie, this is Approach. We don’t have a flight plan for you; if you filed one it hasn’t gotten here yet.” Quite possible; with no FTL radio the only way for it to have reached here before them is if another ship had left for Verdigris between the time she’d filed it—which she hadn’t—and when they’d left themselves. “Please identify yourself, your departure point and your crew and passengers.”

  “Roger, Approach. This is Jackie Roberts, captain/owner of the Sophie, a Sapphire class late out of Sawyers, no other crew. Two passengers: Dr. Hannibal Carson of Sawyer’s World, and Professor Marten, a timoan. Both archeologists.”

  The radio fell silent for a few minutes, then: “Negative, Sophie. This field is closed, please divert to Verdigris City.”

  “Verdigris? That’s halfway around the planet!” Well, only a third, but close enough. “What’s the problem?”

  “We’ve got drifting weed down to ground level, zero visibility and ceiling.”

  “My landing radar works fine.” Jackie had landed at night in thick fog, a bit of drifting algae shouldn’t matter.

  “Sorry Sophie. I’m betting this is your first time on Verdigris.” It was hardly that. “The skyweed will mess up your radar. You’ll have to divert to Verdigris City, it’s clear there. Unless you’re declaring an emergency. Are you?”

  When they got into that mode, there was no use arguing with them. “No, Toronto, no emergency. Diverting to Verdigris City.” She pulled up and banked, turning north. “Sophie out.” She pushed the throttle forward and pressed back into the seat as the ship boosted into a suborbital arc toward Verdigris City.

  “What was all that about?” asked Carson.

  “A lot of bullshit about the skyweed. If it were that thick why did they give me initial clearance to land? But I couldn’t argue. If I landed anyway they could impound the ship ‘pending investigation’.”

  15: Communication

  Velkaryan HQ, Earth

  “Signal from Verdigris, sir.” Reid waved the hardcopy in his hand; for security reasons, there were strict limits on which electronic devices were allowed to store messages sent over the Communicator.

  The Communicator, as it was called by the few Velkaryans who knew of it, was one of their deepest secrets. A pair of alien communication devices, one in the Delta Pavonis system and one here—or rather, in orbit around Neptune to reduce interference from ships going in and out of warp in the inner system—which, somehow, could exchange messages at far beyond lightspeed. It had taken over a year to figure out what they were and how to make them work, and even that knowledge was limited to “apply power to these connections; signal goes in comes out those.” Hubble had project teams working to duplicate or find more of the devices, so far without success.

  “Go ahead,” said Hubble.

  “‘Ship Sophie has arrived in system. Roberts and Carson aboard,’ Reid read aloud. “It says that New Toronto denied them landing, and they diverted to Verdigris City.”

  “New Toronto? So they’ve probably spotted the pyramid.” Hubble considered this. It shouldn’t be a problem, but apparently they had underestimated Carson before. “Okay, have someone there keep an eye on whatever Carson is up to, but don’t make it too obvious. The last thing we need is to stir up suspicion about our operations there.”

  “Of course. Right away.”

  16: Landing

  Starship Sophie, orbiting above Delta Pavonis III

  Roberts surveyed the sky below them with disgust. The air above Verdigris City was also thick with skyweed, although perhaps patchier and thinner than above New Toronto. “Dammit, Carson, I hate flying through this crap! Sophie’s going to get covered in green slime.”

  “It’ll wash off. And it’s not slime, it’s aerophytoplankton.”

  “Yeah, and it smells like recycler sludge. Why did it have to be bloom season?” That last was rhetorical, there were only a couple of times a year when it wasn’t bloom season somewhere on Verdigris—she’d heard they were both on different Thursdays—and the huge clouds of airborne algae drifted over large swaths of the planet. There were parts of the planet that weren’t the green that had given it its name, but the polar caps and deserts were relatively small and not hospitable to much of anything.

  Jackie chatted on the radio for a few minutes with Verdigris Control, then announced: “Okay, I’ve got clearance. We’re going in.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The entry was routine until they hit the skyweed. The air had been clear and smooth once the orange plasma glow of their high-speed entry had faded. As they descended toward Verdigris City, outlying clouds of aerophytoplankton began leaving green streaks on the windows, although not enough to interfere with Jackie’s piloting. Then they hit the denser clouds.

  The windows went completely green in a matter of seconds. Jackie muttered a curse and flipped a screen to a radar display, leaving another on visual.

  “You sure you can land in this?” Carson asked.

  “Piece of cake,” said Jackie, but there was an edge to her voice. “I’ve got the spaceport’s ILS beacon. What really worries me is—”

  The ship jerked suddenly and pitched up. Carson thought he saw a flash of light through the green on the window, and then looked back at Jackie as she fought the controls to stabilize the ship. The ride smoothed out, and he looked up again to see brief flashes of yellow flame through the window. The green slime was now a charred brown and was flaking off in the slipstream.

  “What was that?”

  “As I was about to say, what worries me is that the skyweed is buoyed by gas cells, and they’re flammable. It’s usually not a problem, but sometimes there’ll be a patch which is dry enough and concentrated enough to ignite. We must have set one off.” She’d been scanning the instruments as she spoke. “No damage, just turbulence.”

  “Can we expect more of that?” Marten asked.

  “Probably not,” she said.<
br />
  Jackie was focused on her flying, that was probably all the answer they were going to get from her right now. Carson thought about it. “I think the drier stuff will be near the top, it’ll be lighter,” he said to Marten. “As we descend, the weed will be heavier, more moist. Probably less flammable.”

  “Right.” Jackie confirmed.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Clearing the port authorities in Verdigris City had been routine; whatever had gotten into the folks at New Toronto hadn’t spread. After getting the Sophie hosed down, they hunkered around the galley table looking at the scans of the square structure they’d seen from orbit.

  “You’re crazy, Carson. We can’t get the Sophie in there,” Roberts said, “there’s nowhere to land. With that foliage you couldn’t even go in with a one-man jetpack, let alone a starship.”

  “We don’t have any jetpacks. But I do know how to clear a landing area.”

  “You are crazy. It would take a—” Roberts stopped, eyes widening. He couldn’t be thinking of . . . but Carson was nodding slowly, a wry smile on his face. “A daisy cutter? Are you serious?” She knew of the huge bombs used to instantly clear landing areas in heavily forested or jungle terrain, even seen one deployed once. It was the kind of thing you didn’t forget—kind of like an exploding Spacefarer disintegrator, but with a larger fireball and perhaps a slightly more gentle ground shock.

  “That’s how we did it last time I was here. If we can get hold of one, do you have a way to drop it?”

  Roberts thought that over. She could rig something off an external tie-down loop, or worst case, just shove it out the aft cargo hatch if it wasn’t too big. “It’ll depend on the weight and configuration, but probably, yeah.”

  “Okay, then let’s see what we can find,” he said, rising from his seat at the table.

  “Carson, a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “I really want to see you write up a paper: Applications of High Explosives in Archaeology. Can I see it when you’re done?”