Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3)

by Laer Carroll

  AD: Of course not. It simply means that God is greater than our previous understanding of Him. In fact, to me it makes our God more awesome than before.

  CT: Will you try to bring the messages of Jesus Christ to any aliens we meet?

  AD: Of course. His words are true regardless of origin. I would not be surprised that the same words, in different languages, have by other means come to be delivered to alien races.

  CT: Doesn't that demote Jesus to just another messenger boy?

  AD: A messenger who spoke and witnessed despite death threats and finally the carrying out of those threats. No, if that's a messenger boy he was an extraordinary one.

  CT: Your faith doesn't seem to be shaken by these extraordinary discoveries.

  AD: Of course not. It may be modified as we come to better know the glories of the universe which God created. But shaken? Not in the least.

  <>

  Jane and her crew spent six weeks in Cat City, longer than she'd intended. They helped the two NASA crews explore the City and its technologies, insuring that the City would be safe to live in. A night or two each week she became a cyborg whose body included the entire city. SHE made a number of improvements to HERself, and initiated some which would not be completed months or even years in the future.

  Every one of her crew had a hand in that improvement effort, so much so that they objected when Jane announced it was time to continue on to their main mission. Jane stood firm.

  "I'll release anyone from your service to the four-station mission if you believe your job here is more important. Without prejudice--truly without prejudice. Some day you'll have to go on to other commands than mine. In fact, I've sometimes worried that I've held you back in your careers."

  Riku was usually the joker in any serious discussion. Not so this time.

  "The others will speak for themselves. But with you I've learned so much more than in any other command in the Air Force. You've not held me back. So quit with your worrying, Boss. At least on my account."

  He looked around at his three crew mates. Each nodded, Kate most vigorously.

  Jane's Exec said, "I suggest we stay on a week, maybe two, no more than that, and finish our part in whatever tasks we're working on. Then we can go without letting anyone one down."

  Jane had to pause for only a moment.

  "Agreed. Hard deadline. At the end of next week be done or stay behind."

  On the Saturday night before leave-taking the two NASA crews put on a party for Jane and her crew which lasted nearly to midnight. Then the Jane Gang went to their beds in Cat City for the last time.

  The next day they packed and were picked up by a runabout headed back to Seeker.

  <>

  The four camouflaged alien stations were spaced equally in an orbit beyond the Asteroid Belt and sunward of Jupiter. The nearest was ahead of Bastet in its orbit. Fresedo directed Seeker to catch up to it by accelerating at an Earth gravity, a pace she now felt was safe. Seeker's path took it in an arc above the Belt then back down to the equatorial orbit taken by the alien stations.

  At midpoint it reached a velocity far beyond escape velocity for the Solar System and a position much further out than the station's orbit. Slowing down it fell inward till it reached the station, now called Alien Station 1. The number was arbitrary, selected only because it was the first of the four Seeker would visit.

  During the three days of the trip Jane and Fresedo made plans for how to handle the investigation. The first step was to settle in place three miles behind it, a position Jane had requested. She'd given no reasons for that specific distance, but it was less than Robot's esoteric reach, now about 18,000 feet. From that distance it could snoop on or destroy, as far as Jane knew, anything.

  "Captain," said the pilot, "we are on station."

  "Very good, Pilot. Operations, designate a snooper drone as number One and launch it on a five-miles-per-hour approach to the target. At 500 yards it's to hold position until further notice. No activity, only passive observations."

  The operations officer echoed her commands and launched a "snooper" drone. These had passive surveillance equipment such as visual and infrared telescopes and active surveillance such as radar.

  The drone labeled SD1 took over an hour to slowly approach the hundred-foot long flattened potato shape of the fake asteroid. Then it floated at that distance and just observed, all the while sending back to Seeker its several kinds of views of the station.

  There was not much to see. The device just slowly tumbled end over end and even more slowly spun on its long axis.

  After a half hour Fresedo gave another command.

  "Operations, launch two more snoopers to a position 500 yards above and below the station."

  In gravityless space the convention was that solar north was "up" and "down" was toward solar south.

  The station took no apparent notice of the big object which had come up behind it and the three small objects near it.

  Fresedo turned toward Jane.

  "Science Officer, is it time to take active observations?"

  "I think so, Sir. I'd suggest we ping it with radar, a millisecond pulse."

  "Operations, you heard the Science Officer's suggestion. Make it so."

  "Aye, Aye, sir."

  Throughout the rest of the ship's day more observations both passive and active were made of the alien visitor to the Solar System. It made no obvious response to the actions of the investigators.

  At days end Jane suggested they cease all active observations of the alien.

  "We've been pestering this object for a full day. I think we should make it obvious that we're not going to continue this forever. Tomorrow we can do more, or do something else."

  "Observations, cease all active surveillance. Instruct passive to alert us of any changes in the object's activities."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. Done and...done."

  "Day crew, good job. Rotate stations till everyone has had another piss break and had chow. Brief the next shift on all of the day's activities when they come on."

  Jane said, "With your leave, Captain, I'll go join the rest of my crew."

  "You're relieved, Science Officer. We'll see you back here in the morning."

  <>

  Jane made a stop in the suite dedicated to the Gang's science studies.

  "Let's take a bathroom break and get take-out from the mess hall."

  Her crew followed her to the ship's dining area. There they got prepared meals from the dispensing machines, heating some of them, and sealed containers one could drink from in zero gravity. It would be a few days, at least, before Fresedo put Seeker in spin mode.

  Back in the science room everyone seated themselves around a table, placed their meals and drinks in the shallow recesses on the table which would hold them securely, broke open their meal packets, and began to eat. This took a bit of skill in zero gravity, but by now those skills were automatic.

  Jane said, "So, what did we learn?"

  "Not a Hell of a lot," said Riku.

  Klaus said, "Nothing big. But lots of little facts. I analyzed the tumble and spin of the object and how it is affected by gravitation. We've got several significant forces. Further from the sun the biggest is Jupiter and to a lesser extent Saturn. The Belt has several asteroids big enough to have some effects as they come up from behind and go further past us. A little bit from Mars and Earth."

  He took a bite of his food, chewed, and swallowed as the others watched him and waited for more.

  "Basically, that thing is hollow and a lot less massy than its appearance would suggest."

  "That matches my observations," said Riku. "What I got from analyzing the radar and optical bounces is that underneath its surface is something which isn't rock. It's something a lot harder. I got zero penetration from the radar, and zero spectrographic data."

  Kate said, "Instead of 'zero' I'd say 'weak' penetration and 'weak' spectro. Just enough data to suggest that they used a thin layer of rock to simula
te the surface of an asteroid. That matches the fact that there are 95 years of mini-meteoroid craters."

  Riku nodded as he deftly captured a tiny errant breadcrumb with a small squeeze-bulb vacuum cleaner supplied with every food packet. It and the debris from the meal and its packet would be recycled by the ship's 3D printer feedstock equipment.

  "Any evidence of propulsion mechanisms?" said Jane. "Maybe something just small enough to keep it on station for all those years."

  "Nothing visible," said Klaus. "No openings for rocket exhaust unless they're covered and closed. No outside structures such as solar sails or magnetic-resonance station-keeping booms."

  Jane said, "I'd guess there is some kind of propulsion to keep it on station. Maybe something we can't imagine yet.

  "So let's sleep on it. Don't keep obsessing on this matter. Get a good night's sleep and maybe come up with some ideas tomorrow on other investigation avenues.

  "Now I want to see if I got any emails from back home and to write a few of my own."

  <>

  Jane never ceased to be amazed that in deep space, where light itself took over an hour to reach Seeker from Earth in its present position, the ship and Earth could communicate. That she knew all the technical processes that made this possible added to her amazement.

  Nevertheless she could receive text-based emails from people back home and send such emails to them. These and other such messages were piggybacked onto the other communications Seeker received and sent each ship day at noon and midnight.

  This night she had one from Phil. He was appropriately downcast from missing her but had made up for it by taking her parents out to dinner.

  She also sent a fatter email to her Space Force boss about the day's findings.

  Done, she got ready for bed and went to her sleeping bag. But not, at first, to sleep. Instead she merged with Robot and Seeker.

  The massive cyborg turned HER attention to HER own and HER inhabitants' wellbeing. Assured all was right with them SHE looked outward.

  At three miles distance was Alien Station One. JANE ignored it for the time being and expanded HER attention further and further out, as far as the nearest edge of the Asteroid Belt.

  In that sphere nothing was moving that would intersect Seeker for the next several dozen years. By that time SHE would have moved elsewhere.

  For a time SHE luxuriated in all the sensations of the several solar winds, cosmic and solar particle tides, and the flood of light from the Sun, much weakened at this distance from it but still strong enough to charge Seeker's solar panels if SHE needed to unfurl them.

  Then SHE turned HER attention to AS1, adding to all Seeker's observations Robot's esoteric senses. This included a form of gravity sense. It confirmed Klaus's observations: the object was hollow. JANE saw complex shapes inside it, none of which SHE understood.

  The spaceship cyborg contemplated the object for many hundreds of thousands of milliseconds. When no better understanding arose out of HER thinking SHE dropped wholly back into HER biological part and went to sleep.

  <>

  "Good morning, Science Officer. Did you and your crew come up with any significant conclusions last night?"

  "Some, Sir. It's hollow, artificial, and we've confirmed it's around 95 years old. There are no signs of propulsion mechanisms. If there are any they are hidden or based on principals beyond our understanding."

  "Any ideas how to proceed further?"

  "We can begin to beam a request for communication on all radio and laser-optical bands, both voice and digital."

  "Your team can create such a request?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Anything else?"

  "I want to open up a hole in hyperspace and begin monitoring anything coming from the object. We have a special piece of equipment installed in Seeker for that purpose."

  "This won't interfere with our regular hypercom, will it?"

  "No, Sir. It was designed to coexist with regular equipment. Keeping a hole opened up eats up a lot of power, though. An hour is about the maximum time I'd recommend."

  "I think we'll try the conventional attempts for an hour then the hypercom attempts for another hour. Agreed?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Operations, coordinate with the Science Team and make it so."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  AS1 was unmoved by Seeker's request to talk. The hyperspace monitor showed no activity from medium-frequency radio all the way up to far ultraviolet. Until minutes before the Team shut it down.

  There was a great blast of energy from the object. The monitor instantly shut down.

  "Science Officer, are we under attack?!" Fresedo's voice was loud but not frantically so.

  "Negative, Sir! Negative, negative. Give me a few seconds to analyze that."

  JANE had instantly gone to cyborg mode. It took HER only a few dozen milliseconds to analyze the electromagnetic burst but SHE dropped back to being only Jane and frowned at the readouts for several minutes before raising her head and turning toward the Captain.

  "The hyper monitor shut down to protect itself but then came back up at very low levels. I mean millionths of the sensitivity of the regular levels. Then it adjusted upward till it could operate safely.

  "What's happening is that the alien station is broadcasting on several bands at a power level that can be heard out to a big fraction of a light year."

  "Saying what?"

  "No idea. Could be 'NO TRESSPASING' to 'POSITION BEACON SO AND SO' to 'DR. SCHOLES FOOT PADS.'"

  "So our monitor picked up radiation leakage?"

  "It would seem so. With that much power if the alien wanted to kill the monitor the emergency shutdown would have been overwhelmed."

  For the rest of the day Seeker sent an invitation to talk for an hour, then the next hour monitoring Hyperspace Three. The positive results of the first H3 listening effort made the big power needed to open a hole in hyperspace worth it.

  AS1 continued to ignore Seeker's attempts to talk. If it was aware of the hyperspace monitoring it didn't care to act either.

  Eventually it was established that the alien object blasted out its message every 3.35 hours, a time period that made no sense to anyone. The message was always exactly the same, no slightest deviation suggesting it was sending more than a rote message.

  At the end of the day Seeker ceased all active efforts to observe or talk to AS1 though it kept up its automatic passive observations.

  The third day Jane had a suggestion. She made it shortly after she'd taken over as Science Officer on the bridge.

  "I'd like to take a runabout in nearer the object and do some observations close up. I suspect that it will pay more attention to a biological visitor than to purely mechanical ones."

  "If it can even observe that the runabout has a passenger."

  "When I get up to 50 yards away I'll stop and do an EVA."

  "This sounds awfully risky, Kuznetsov."

  "I'm willing to take that risk. I'll record that willingness. I'll also record that it is my decision. Unless you're willing to override my actions, as is your right, you are required to carry them out."

  Fresedo tented her hands, her elbows on her chair's armrests, and rested her chin on them. She thought for several minutes.

  "Very well. I'll record my doubts as to its advisability, but permit it."

  "Very well. With your permission, I'll leave this post and begin my trip."

  "Good luck, Major Kuznetsov."

  <>

  Back in the Mission Observations room Jane's crew insisted they go along with her to a closer approach to AS1. They were quite insistent.

  "Negative. It's my decision and responsibility to do this and I'll take all the risk. I'd put you at risk too if I felt it necessary. But it isn't."

  Her crew was military, trained to unpleasant and dangerous actions. They quit their verbal objections but their expressions made it clear they did not like her decision.

  Jane had the runabout she rode in take the
same slow approach as with the approaches of the three drones. Finally she drifted ever more slowly to a stop at 50 yards distance. There she triggered the runabout's communications system to beam the science team's multispectral request to talk at the alien object. She let that run for an hour.

  When she got no response she sent the request via hypercom.

  Still no response.

  Jane went to the air lock and into it. Her helmet was open and tilted back but she did not close it after she locked the door into the airlock. She wanted to try something, which was the real reason she had refused to have her crew accompany her.

  Robot's still improving recovery of its memory suggested that it could project a force-field spacesuit around her. The knowledge was still imperfect so she'd need to test its function carefully before adopting it fully.

  She reduced the air pressure in the airlock by 10%, then 20%. She had to breathe faster and deeper but felt no response from Robot at those levels.

  Then at 30%, as it became harder to breathe, suddenly it became easy again. All about her an invisible force field popped into existence. She had also been merged with Robot so that SHE could more quickly judge if SHE were in danger.

  SHE was not but SHE now knew that the invisible suit was triggered into existence by HER biological body's need.

  SHE became fully Jane once more and experimented with turning the suit on and off consciously, exploring its nature until she was satisfied it worked as Robot's memory described and that she was fully in control of it.

  In the process she'd removed her mechanical spacesuit, closed it, and locked it against one of the walls of the runabout. Now she evacuated the airlock completely and opened its door to the outside.

  The blackness of space was visible through the oval doorway. She triggered a feature of the force-field spacesuit, its propulsion system, and drifted out into the void.

  Robot's esoteric senses came online and she saw/felt/heard everything around her.

  Behind was the runabout. She saw inside it, a momentarily peculiar sensation as she could not see it with her physical eyes. Before her was the alien object. She saw inside it, complex machinery whose nature teased her curiosity.

  At 500 yards behind, above, and below her were the familiar drones with their various sensors trained on the object. Further back was Seeker. Robot could sense inside the spaceship as easily as it did everything else.