The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 6

by Diane Carey

  “It must be an unknown CANC ship, or…” But Corgan knew he was wrong, looking at the holographic image of the object, floating in the air in front of him. It was a steel-colored egg-shape—an egg hovering on its “side,” compared to the poles of Iapetus—which wasn’t an unknown vehicular design, but there were surface features on it that were like nothing he’d seen on a terrestrial spacecraft.

  And the instant he saw it, really got a good look at it, he knew that Nate was right: The Chinese/Asian-Nation Cooperative—the communist CANC—would kill everyone in this ship to get to that thing out there.

  “About two and a quarter kilometers around the middle,” Corgan muttered, reading the stats, written in dark purple letters and numbers floating in the air, under the image. He walked around it, saw the articulated patterns across its surface, like wavelength patterns but etched in, and other figures that were clearly writing of some kind—some kind he’d never seen. He looked back at the window panel, and squinted at the steely arc above the moon. Just then it began to descend below the Saturnian moon’s horizon. “We’re losing it!”

  “It does that, been doing that for at least half an hour, forty minutes,” Ashley said. “Then we track, push engines at low thrust, catch up a bit… and then it slips down around the moon again. Like it’s trying to keep Iapetus between us and it. We could catch up, I think, because it’s using one consistent low thrust, but we’d have to do it suddenly.”

  “Forty minutes? Why didn’t you wake me up before now, for Chris’sakes, Nate?”

  The others looked embarrassed. Nate cleared his throat. “We were so amazed—so caught up in the thing—I guess we lost track of time—and then we caught sight of the probe, just a few minutes ago—”

  Corgan shook his head in disgust. He was well into “Captain Mode” by this time. “Next time anything unusual comes up, you get me on the instant. That’s already a goddamn standing order.”

  “Yes, sir… Meant to… It’s just… I mean—look at it! We were a bit blown away.”

  “Yeah. You really think it’s hiding from us, Ashley?”

  “Navi-Grip has to work at it to keep up, yeah. We haven’t been able to catch it yet—though we haven’t exactly pushed hard.”

  “We’ve got to get there, send out a party, confirm it’s as artificial, and as alien as it seems…”

  Alien. The word made his heart pound. Could this be it? First contact with an alien race, at last?

  In 2058, it had become commonplace to use the Heim gravity-muting drive to shorten trips within the solar system— essentially creating a warping of space in a field in front of the vehicle, so that they were drawn into a gravitational-low-pressure zone, and so that they could elude the Einsteinian lethal-increase of mass that came with near-light speed— and lately UNIC had sent unmanned drones out to other star systems, using the Heim drive to get there in under a year. Everyone knew the aliens were out there somewhere. Could they have already found their way here? So it appeared.

  “And uh—do you think that thing is some kind of… of mothership, Nate?” Beresford asked. He liked to watch old, twentieth-century science fiction movies, quaint as they seemed now.

  “Could be,” Nate said. “But you notice, there—” He turned and pointed at a spot on the egg-shaped hologram of the alien craft. “That looks like an impact crater. And another… there.”

  Ashley nodded. “I had noticed. It implies that thing’s been out there a long time. The impact craters don’t seem to have penetrated the hull, I notice. They just—make a dent. But you can see the debris aureole…”

  “You can do a probable-age probe,” Corgan suggested.

  Nate nodded, and keyed it in: it was the long-range equivalent of carbon dating. The pulse went out, bounced from the anomaly, and returned. Nate scowled. His eyebrows bobbed. “That thing’s at least a thousand years old—the alloys have been alloys that long. The metals… some familiar, some unknown. There’s silicon-based synthetic material worked into the metal. Going to take a more direct analysis to really know what it’s made of.”

  “A thousand years!” Dorea muttered, gazing in wonder at the thing. Lieutenant Dorea Rondell, Navigation Specialist, was Basque-French, a tall, stolid woman with regulation-busting waist-length straight honey-brown hair and brown eyes. Corgan tolerated the long hair—he had learned not to “sweat the small stuff” with his crew. “Could they have been watching Earth all that time?” she asked. “From here?”

  “Could be,” Ashley said. “Might be some kind of surveillance device—to keep track of us. See if we’re a threat to whatever civilization they represent.”

  “How far away is the CANC probe?” Corgan asked.

  “About three thousand klicks out, and it’s on a plane to intersect with the anomaly,” Beresford answered, looking at the 3-D stats floating in the air. He tapped the keyboard—an outdated term for what was actually a flexible sheet of respondent materials that lit up with the words and numbers the user was looking for.

  “We’ll prompt Navi-Grip, Dorea, to try to close within eight hundred meters of the anomaly,” Corgan said. “And Ashley—we’ll organize a landing team. I’ll be there myself.”

  Dorea had tapped her wrist control and a workstation emerged from its niche in the wall behind them, floating to her—it would stop or circle around any obstacles—and she set about giving Navi-Grip the instructions. The ship responded, shuddering briefly, then accelerating smoothly toward the alien craft.

  This wasn’t an emergency yet—but Corgan knew it might well become one. The danger was quite real. Besides the danger from the CANC expedition, presumably just outside detection range, there was the anomaly itself. He was operating on the assumption that the alien ship, being a thousand years old, was a derelict of some kind. It seemed somewhat operational—but it was dented, scarred by meteors. The Hornblower used a force field to deflect smaller meteors, and advance tracking to avoid the big ones; surely a fully operational alien spacecraft, presumably from another solar system, would have better defenses.

  Derelict or not, the anomaly could easily have defenses for repelling intruders—anything from robotic weapons systems to a self-detonation command. Could be they’d exterminate the intruders.

  It was Nate, with his by-the-book tendency, who voiced the inevitable next question. “What about getting orders before we go in? I mean—it’s not as if this is our mission. We’re supposed to be doing a radar reading of the interior of Saturn, and a brief survey of Iapetus…”

  “Actually,” Corgan said, “if you go back and look at our mission statement closely, it includes an order to check this moon’s ‘high concentration of metals’ reading. Which suggests that UNIC did have some indication it was here.”

  “Sure,” Nate said shrugging, “they want us to check out Iapetus as a possible military base—and a high-metal ore deposit would make it useful that way. That doesn’t mean they want us to land on any damned alien spacecraft.”

  “I think they knew it might be something of the kind— the reading must’ve seemed pretty outlandish,” Corgan insisted. He knew he was making wild assumptions. He was personally caught up in this, now—he had a yen to explore that thing and he was looking for excuses. But there was another term for that: initiative.

  Something else nagged at him: Who was actually behind this mission? It could be “The Company”—that was the colloquial term for the octopally outspread, increasingly powerful conglomerate that had eaten or assimilated a thousand other multinationals, a global corporation whose ghostly presence behind too many UN and UNIC initiatives had always troubled Corgan. Various representatives to the United Nations had been caught taking bribes from The Company. Lately, they’d become more skilled at hiding those bribes. But increasingly, it was growing apparent where the real power would be in the next century. The tension between business and social interests had been building for a hundred and fifty years, and now it was at last reaching the bursting point—when he’d left Earth it had begun
to look as if The Company was going to win: the multinational was going to be allowed its own representatives at the UN General Council. Meanwhile there were rumors The Company was pushing for a space-based war with China; the discovery of the alien anomaly—a trove of new technologies—could be the spark that would ignite that war. The Company built weapons, supplied armies with food and services. War profiteering was definitely in The Company’s unofficial resumé…

  He dismissed the thought for now. Too many imponderables. He had to believe he was working exclusively for the United Nations, if for no other reason than his own peace of mind. This discovery was so exciting it should transcend The Company’s intrigues, Corgan thought. Shouldn’t it?

  “So why not ask for permission?” Nate asked, shrugging. “If landing on that thing is what they want you to do, then confirm it. I mean—as security officer I have to tell you there’s risks, big risks in busting into that thing…”

  “To be honest, I don’t want to ask permission,” Corgan said, shrugging, “because we’d have to move into position outside the Saturn system, to transmit to mission central. And then we’d have to wait for a response. And by the time that comes back, and we get back here, the CANC ship will already be here, and that’ll mean we lose the whole thing.”

  Ashley chuckled dourly and put in, “And what you want to bet mission central blames us for that?”

  Dorea nodded and said wryly, “They’ll blame us if we don’t ask permission and it comes out badly—and they’ll blame us if we delay to ask permission and the Communists get it.”

  Ashley walked around the hologram of the steel egg, staring at it as she spoke: “And who knows what CANC might find inside that thing? There could be a weapons system that’ll give CANC the edge on us. They could use it to flatten the western world.”

  Corgan nodded. “So we’re going in.”

  “On your responsibility, Captain,” Nate said softly. Nate was Corgan’s friend—but he put duty first: it kept Nate sane, somehow. Duty was a compass he could count on. “You write that down, okay?”

  Corgan swallowed. This could be a career-wrecking choice he was making. If it didn’t kill him first.

  But looking again at the hologram of the anomaly he said, “Yeah—my responsibility. We’re going in.”

  2

  “You didn’t wake Reynolds up?” Corgan asked, feigning surprise as he checked the lander’s fuel load and Ashley checked the landing-craft’s transmitters. They were in the hangar bay, at the aft of the ship, working alone. The others were suiting up. Ashley and Corgan were suited up already except for the pressure helmets and gloves.

  Ashley shook her head ruefully. “Come on—you know why I didn’t get Reynolds up.” She squinted at her instruments, adding, “Transmitters are go.”

  “Still—he’s the exobiologist. Fully fueled, here.”

  One of two civilians on the Hornblower, Reynolds was the only really detested member of the crew. Cyril Dix and Don Bayfield were both irritants at times, especially Bayfield when he got hold of something to get a buzz on. Bayfield was a minor expert at brewing homemade booze. But sober, he wasn’t a bad guy. Reynolds, though, was a royal pain in the ass. The ship’s psych files suggested that he might have a “possible personality disorder”—vague enough to hint at a host of problems and ominous enough to make Corgan wonder how Eli Reynolds had gotten cleared for any kind of crew, anywhere.

  Bayfield, Reynolds, Dix—all three of them had been rushed onto the ship’s enlistment rolls. The whole mission had been rushed, Corgan decided, when he thought back on it. UNIC had picked the first available crew—even the ones with problematic backgrounds—just to get them out here. Which suggested that they’d suspected something special was to be found on Iapetus. And it also suggested the shady hand of The Company might be moving pieces on the chess board when everyone’s back was turned. People re-assigned for hidden reasons was usually a sign The Company was involved…

  “Captain!” Reynolds barked shrilly, stalking into the hangar bay. “What’s the meaning of these connivances!” He was a pallid, ungainly man with a sharp little nose, eyes a tad too close together, and a high forehead that seemed to go on forever because his unruly brown hair had receded halfway to the back of his head. His hands, when he wasn’t working, were always wringing—and if he wasn’t wringing them he was chewing at their ends, or dusting his clothing with them: he was very particular about keeping his exobiologist’s white coveralls a blinding, immaculate white.

  “Connivances?” Corgan asked, as innocently as he could manage.

  “You people are nearly ready to debark to the anomaly!” He flicked dust from his coveralls as he went on, his voice gratingly shrill. “You’re going to an alien spacecraft— without me!”

  “We’re not going without you. You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “I was not informed until ten minutes ago! I am the ship’s exobiologist! I should have been the first one informed, after you, Captain Corgan!”

  Corgan nodded, compressing his lips. “You are right, you are so right, Reynolds, I apologize. I just assumed you’d been informed. It was an oversight—”

  “An oversight? Like the time two of your crew spilled coffee on my uniform at once? As if that wasn’t coordinated!”

  “It was coincidence—they collided with each other at the corner of corridor C and you happened to be—”

  “Rubbish!” Reynolds interrupted.

  Corgan sighed. “Reynolds, you can’t be bellowing rubbish at the captain. I keep it pretty informal here. But there are limits.”

  Reynolds glared at him, his lips pushing out, sucking in, pushing out, sucking in, his hands wringing—then he put on a sunny smile, his eyes going blank. A familiar passive-aggressive attempt to mimic cheerful obedience—a mockery.

  “Sorry Captain! I do apologize!”

  Corgan—feeling pressured already—was close to ordering Reynolds to his quarters. But they needed an exobiologist on the expedition to the ET vessel. “Just… get suited up. Quickly. We’ve caught up with the thing, and we’re going down in two landers. You’ll be in Lander One with me and Ashley and Beresford.”

  Ashley grimaced at that but said nothing.

  * * *

  Half an hour later the two landers were retro-braking toward the surface of the gigantic extraterrestrial construct. Lander One was piloted by Ashley Norton, Corgan co-piloting, Beresford and Reynolds in back. Beresford, at the communications panel, patiently filled Reynolds in on what little they knew about the ET craft. Lander Two was piloted by Dorea Rondell, with “Immy” Cruz, a phlegmatic Cuban engineer, as her co-pilot; Jim O’Neil, their blond, taciturn, bodybuilding medic, was in back with their exogeologist: stocky, coal-black, analytical Horus Collindale. Nate, in charge of ship’s security, was put in command while Corgan was absent. On the Hornblower with Nate Eusebius on board were the rest of the crew: Julie Murteno, Life Support (Corgan still regretted his brief, painful affair with the young, naïve Murteno); Collin Hesse, ship’s computers; Joel Dinswood, ship’s electronics; John Chang, engines and Heim drive; Bayfield and Dix, maintenance and mechanical upkeep.

  The landers, descending side by side toward the alien hull, were each shaped like an arrowhead, with extendable, shiftable jets on the underside; the retros now burning, now cutting out, as they slowed the descent.

  Corgan glanced through the observation panel in the ceiling, at the long, narrow, and suddenly fragile-seeming shape of the Hornblower. It was a series of sphere-linked cylinders, three times bigger than the old space shuttles had been, with a flat disk, turned sideways to the cylinders, at the prow: the bridge. It looked toylike just now, compared to the tremendous bulk of the alien ship and the unspeakably immense globe of Saturn. The Hornblower was a little traveling den for humanity; a tiny, warm, safe place in the endless cold reaches of space.

  Corgan himself felt cold—maybe because the landers weren’t as efficient in temperature control as the ship, with the deep cold of Saturn-regio
n space aching around the little vehicle, or maybe because he was a bit unnerved by the responsibility he’d taken on. But then they all felt nervous and exposed whenever they went out in the landers, or had to do extravehicular work in their spacesuits. Without miles of a planetary atmosphere above you, you seemed to feel the sucking vastness of outer space almost palpably.

  Corgan tried to shrug the feeling away. He was committed, now. “Any doubts in your mind that thing is extraterrestrial, Dr. Reynolds?” Corgan asked, trying to make Reynolds feel more included.

  “Impossible to say for certain,” Reynolds replied. He added bitterly, “Especially when one considers that I had less time to consider the matter—not being privy to the discovery till the last minute.” But staring down at the craft through the outscreens, he muttered, at last, “Still—it does not seem like a production of our planet…”

  Corgan too felt the slowly rotating craft’s alienness. There were no visible numbers, letters, flags, or other markings you’d expect to see on the hull of a terrestrial space vehicle. More importantly, the hull’s markings exuded a shocking unfamiliarity; it was covered end to end with closely packed, etched-in “wavelength-lines”; only, when he tried to confirm that they were, in fact, an overall wavelength pattern, the lines would seem to jog and ripple into something else entirely. He could see that they were incised into the metal of the hull—flattened and warped in the places where meteors had scored it— and somehow he was sure they weren’t decorations, or merely writing. They were physically functional. He felt intuitively that the rippling markings related both to the alien ship’s mobility and to its scanning mechanisms. “There is no visible rocketry,” Beresford was telling Reynolds. “Chang and Cruz both looked it over—they don’t see how it moves, when it moves on its own. We’re getting no strong radiation emission from it, no strong microwaves, no indication of Heim drive. But there— up ahead. You see that place where the lines swirl into a kind of whirlpool shape? We think that might be the hull entrance. It does go down there, kinda like a navel, and we get a probe reading suggesting there’s a shaft under that spot. Maybe an elevator shaft… So that’s where we’re setting down, right on the edge of that navel…”