Jim 88

by J G Clements

  Jim seemed immune to everyone’s looks, and seemed to focus on something far away. “If I understand what’s been done over the last several hundred years, we have never found a trace of them. We don’t know where they live, what their civilizations look like, what they eat, nothing. They are just ghosts to us, right?” It was rhetorical, and no one said a thing, for fear of interrupting his thought. “But we’ve mostly been searching ice-comets and the like out in the Oort clouds. What’s there? Like over a trillion bodies over a mile in diameter?” Again, no one disputed this. Though every sun seemed to have a dozen or so planets, it was clear that every sun also had trillions of captured asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, ice, and just about anything else you can think of. All orbiting way out from their suns, out in the darkness of interstellar space.

  “But I’m beginning to think we should be looking closer, like in the Kuiper belt.” Jack and Jake locked eyes, a silent question passed between them. Jake was about to ask why when Jim continued. “The more I think about this, the more I’m convinced that they must either be living on a larger planetary body than an asteroid, or I need to believe they are living totally detached from any solid surface at all, and are truly somehow able to live as a free floating society in space.”

  Everyone was paying attention, and tried to absorb these thoughts but his logic was not apparent to the other three members. Bringing his focus back to the table, it was clear that no one was buying it. “We’ve found nothing in the Oort cloud, so that fact alone ought to tell us we haven’t figured where to look. But the Oort cloud is largely icy bodies, with only a few rocky asteroids. Right?” Everyone nodded, nothing to argue about there. “But now that we have a better idea of the elements that they need to construct their ships, does anyone see a problem?” No one did.

  “Look, up till now, we’ve just assumed that the heavier elements in the Swarm ships were contaminants in the ice right?. But now we know the Swarms use all sorts of heavier elements…manganese, magnesium, some silver, nickel…to construct their ships. Stuff that may be hard to get from an icy meteor. It seems to me, they would really need to have some mines set up somewhere to get these metals, and I bet they use a dwarf planet or some other body big enough to have a decent amount of these elements.”

  He was on a roll. “And think about how they evolved. We know each ship has a life-form, mostly liquid methane. I can conjecture that a life-form could evolve, like a Queen bee, where the Queen is the important life form, and the other life forms are expendable, like worker bees. Put the worker bees in the ships and wish them luck. Or, alternatively, the life forms themselves are all intelligent, like the other intelligent races we know about. Either way, and in either extreme, they would need,” he searched for a term, “an ecological niche to evolve in. And I don’t see how you get that in the Oort cloud on a small icy body.”

  Everyone was interested in Jim’s conjecture, and they were buying it. Jack had been pretty much silent till now. “Do you think the niche would only contain a single organism, or do you think they would be sharing it with other lifeforms?”

  “Depends. They may not need lower organisms to get their energy.” Jack seemed about to ask about that, but Jim cut off his comment. “Plants don’t, for example, need to eat smaller plants. They may even have left their place of origin eons ago. But I’d bet they’d still want to mimic or find similar places to where they evolved.” He looked around. “Don’t we all at some point think about retiring back to Earth?”

  Jake’s turn. “I thought we believed that these creatures exist at only a couple degrees above absolute zero. What is that, like minus 450 F? Would the dwarf planets be too warm for them?”

  “I couldn’t find how anyone concluded that they need -450 F to survive. Methane is a solid at that point. If liquid methane is really the main biological fluid, they probably are happiest between minus 260 to minus 300 F. Methane freezes solid at -300, and boils at -260 so that’s probably the range they can exist in. Do you know the coldest point in our own solar system?” Both Jack and Jake shook their heads. “On the moon. South pole in a crater, the temp is around minus 380 F. Even too cold for the Swarm, probably.”

  With that far-away look that he adopted when he was more or less thinking out loud, “Unlike water, methane doesn’t expand when it freezes. I wonder if they can withstand being frozen?” Before anyone could respond to that thought, he shook his head and brought his attention back to the present again. He never noticed the look both Captains were giving each other.

  Despite what Jake had heard, he kept a good separation in his mind between proven facts and provisional conjecture. Still, both men sitting here were technically educated, and had applied their minds to a problem that had not been forthcoming. Nodding toward the men, both Jim and Phil seemed to interpret it as a dismissal. As they got up to leave, it was Jake who asked Jim, “Do you know what our next step should be?”

  Confidently, Jim nodded. “I’d like to run a set of initiatives. Can I brief you tomorrow?

  “Absolutely. Tell the AI to schedule an appointment.” As the men left, Jake and Jack remained a few minutes, neither man saying anything. Finally, Jake said half to himself. “I guess I’d better let the Crekie know that I’ll be modifying my operational orders.” Jack sort of half-smiled, and both men left the mess hall.

  Jim was satisfied with how his presentation to the Captains went. But there was someone else he wanted to speak to.

  Chapter 16. Briefing.

  Ceres Report: Prospecting

  I’ve decided to wait awhile on deploying the tents. Instead, I’ve started learning how to prospect for minerals. After a few false starts, I got it figured out.

  For starters, there are some gases stuck in the soil. I removed one of the smaller tanks off my ship, and converted it to a crucible. I can put in a cubic foot or so of the soil, and heat it up. When I do, I get an immediate pressure spike in the tank, so right now I just vent it. Keep heating it until you’ve boiled the water off…you can tell by closing the exhaust valve and no longer getting a pressure spike…then let it cool.

  Whats left pretty much looks like coarse sand. It doesn’t turn into a brick like I was afraid it might. Now, I only need to see what it’s good for.

  When not wearing my sinister black clothes, I keep them neatly folded in my cabin’s closet. It wouldn’t pay to be seen as a wrinkled or unkempt sinister person. No, I needed to be as crisp and neat as possible. For about the fourth time I made a note to have some meaningless…I mean enigmatic…emblem made for myself. I not only had to invent a rank for myself, I had to invent its insignia. I was thinking about a stylized horses ass when a knock came on the door.

  I had a berth next to the Captain’s on the Sisk. Or, for public consumption, the Captain had a berth next to me. After a few days of only being able to say goodnight to Helen, I was looking forward to getting back to Earth. But it crossed my mind, briefly, that maybe she had errands to run out of Earth system and she might not be there to greet me.

  I thought about what she said, that emotions could still transfer at these distances, but I didn’t want to be the one to initiate it. Instead, I found myself sort of listening, to see if any emotional feelings were being sent to me. Either they were too weak for me to recognize, or they weren’t there.

  A knock on the door surprised me, no one was expected to visit me here. Hopefully, some Ambassador hadn’t figured out where I was. I briefly realized my cabin was large enough to hide in, but thought of the humiliation if someone did come into the room and found me hiding under the bed. I decided I had no choice but to say come in.

  To my surprise, it was Jim. I didn’t feel the need to maintain the ruse with him. Instead, I had a completely different ruse. I’d been given strict orders…no, suggestions…to study Jim-88 and report back to Helen on what I thought of him. Rising, I pulled out a chair and shook his hand at the same time. “Glad to see you. What brings you here?”

  “Did the Captain fill you in on wh
at we think we discovered about the Swarm?” I must have had a blank look…something Helen tells me I’m good at… so Jim filled me in. I sat silently, relaxed and alert, mastering my emotions, and listened. Jim would probably get the impression that I was practicing meditation. But I absorbed every word he said. When he finished, I sat perfectly still for a few seconds while I tried to order everything I had just learned, and Jim was smart enough to wait for me to ask the right question.

  “Are the elements unusual? Anything rare?”

  “Yeah, but the rare ones are there in smaller quantities than the more common elements.”

  I had thought he was going to tell me he had a way to cut them off from some element or mineral they needed. “Do you think they have trouble finding the elements they need? Any chance that something is so rare we can try to find its source and destroy it?”

  “Maybe. You won’t find a lot of these elements out in the cloud. No, I suspect you have to prospect much further in a solar system to get a decent amount, the metals in particular.” He nodded to himself as he said that, then seemed to reflect for some time before he continued. “What I think I understand is that no one has ever found any trace of the Swarm out in the cloud, and I’m assuming over the thousand-year plus length of time, they must have looked. Yet we now think that their ships are probably more sophisticated than we have believed. My conclusion is that they can detect us before we can detect them, and either they avoid us, or attack us.” He wasn’t really even speaking to me, more for himself. “What do you think?”

  “I’ve been told that we have lost ships, usually ones in deep space that we’ve sent looking for the Swarm. But statistically, no one is wiling to make a definite conclusion that the losses were Swarm related, or just due to collisions with meteors or something. Do you have an opinion?”

  “Yeah I do. Flip it the other way. Of the thousands…no, tens of thousands of ships…we sent out looking for the Swarm, none had found them. Or rather, none that came back.” He let that sink in, then seeing the look on my face, he continued. “There is no way, statistically, that we shouldn’t have been able to find some home base or even a mining operation. We’ve never found any of the launchers that they used to accelerate rocks. There is only one way that could have happened: They can hear us coming.”

  I was about to say something, but Jim summed it up perfectly. “If they have us out gunned, they destroy us. If they don’t, they run and get out of our way. Except the one-man Swarmers who stay and fight to the death.”

  I looked at Jim, then used an old trick of leadership. Lowering my voce a bit I offered a comment. “For a long time, I was asked to find fighter pilots and warriors better experienced at ‘hot’ combat. Then about a dozen years ago, the Crekie had me looking for submarine Captains. Stealth.” We both knew what I was about to say, but I said it anyway. “The Crekie must have also decided that stealth was more important.” Then a second later I asked Jim another questions. “I wonder if the Crekie know about the trace-elements in Swarm ships?”

  He grinned at me, delighted to have some data that the Crekie didn’t have yet.

  I was about to give Jim a test, one he wouldn’t see coming. The Crekie knew he had amazing deductive powers, but I needed to find out if he was biased toward action, or merely content to study. “What’s your next step?”

  Jim maintained his grin. “I know exactly what my next move is going to be. It’s going to keep the Sisk out here for around four months. I’m told you are close to the Crekie, that you will probably brief them in person?

  “Yeah. I will. That’s why I’m going back to Earth on the Oddjob.

  “Then tell them we need to look much closer in-system for their mines. Forget about trying to find them in deep space.”

  I didn’t say another word. I nodded, stood up and shook his hand. He took the hint to leave, but just before he closed the door he said thanks. I nodded again, but what crossed my mind was, “thanks for what?”

  *****

  Sue remained on the Tether while the Ambassadors were being ferried back to the Oddjob, and though she was usually happy to eves-drop on them, the events of the last several days had exhausted her. Instead of returning with them, she let Jack know that she was going to the Sisk, and suggested that Jennifer could receive the Ambassadors upon their arrival. Jack could tell by her tone that she was tired, due to in no little part to the burdens he placed on her. He made it clear that everything was fine here, and she should take as much time as she wanted. After hanging up, he dialed Jake over on the Sisk. “Jake…she’s on the way over. She has my full recommendation.” Listening for a second to what Jake had to say, he nodded to no on in particular then cut the link.

  Sue found it easy to get a skiff to take her to the Sisk. She had thought they’d be busy taking the Ambassadors back to the Oddjob, but a skiff pilot volunteered to take her right away. She got the impression that the skiff pilots were as tired of the dignitaries as she was, and any excuse to do something else was seized upon. Sue was so tired she didn’t even make an effort to sit in one of the empty navigation chairs. Instead, she sat, all alone in the main cabin. This had the odd effect, though, of somehow increasing her stature in the eyes of the Pilot. She was no longer a Pilot-in-training. She was now a VIP.

  Once on board the Sisk, she asked where Jim was and was told that he was speaking with the Recruiter, then the crewman explained where that berth was. She thought about what she should do, but the crewman volunteered that there were several unassigned berths up there, so maybe she could go claim one for herself? She nodded, but he wasn’t fooled, and insisted on escorting her there himself. She was overwhelmed on how large the Sisk really was, and if the crewman hadn’t helped her she would have gotten lost.

  Unlike the smaller ships like the Oddjob…though a short time ago she realized she thought the Oddjob was huge…the Sisk was so large that the living quarters were actually spread around the ship. Though most everyone went to a central mess, they slept in berths closer to their assigned duty stations: When the Klaxons go off, it pays to be close to where you need to be. The effect of this arrangement was that the crew ended up forming ‘tribes’, assigned to whatever duty station they had volunteered for.

  Claiming a berth, she was content to rest, leaving her door open. Only a few cabins from where the Recruiter was speaking with Jim, she hoped to know when the meeting was over. And as if on schedule, Jim was out the door and walking down the hall when he glanced in and saw her. “Sue!” Genuinely glad to see her, “What are you doing on the Sisk? Aren’t the Ambassadors on the “Oddjob?”

  Sue fixed him with one of her best sardonic smiles. “Exactly.”

  Not needing any further explanation, he plopped down next to her. “I don’t see any luggage. Moving in, or just visiting?”

  “Moving in, I think. Jack said that it’s time to work for Jake and learn how to command a dreadnought. Someone seems to be grooming me for command.” She leaned against him, too tired to do anything more. “Is it really true that anyone who wants a ship can have one?”

  “Absolutely. Ships are built by the millions. But space is so empty. If you try to put millions of ships randomly around this part of the galaxy, the chance of any two finding each other is mathematically zero.” He could tell Sue wasn’t interested. “Let me get your stuff sent over from the Oddjob, and you can remain here. The Recruiter is going back to Earth on the Oddjob to brief his Crekie contact. The data we have on the elemental analysis of the Swarm ships should be a big surprise to them. And I think he really wants to see the look on their faces when he briefs them.”

  Sue, not someone to duck any task, was about to explain about the Ambassadors, but Jim cut her off. “Between the Recruiter, Ag and Kor, they probably won’t miss you.” Sue looked him in the face and he knew what she wanted to hear. “But I’ll miss you. So stay. Please?” The deal was clinched. It was Jennifer who packed Sue’s stuff and sent it over on a skiff. It was also Jennifer who found one of the skimpiest b
ikini’s and pinned a note on it. ‘You never know when it might come in handy’.

  A day later, the Oddjob with the Recruiter aboard jumped back toward Earth, unescorted. Jake Dubois, Captain of the Sisk and originally recruited by the Recruiter, had been given specific orders from the Recruiter, and they were very simple. Anything Jim wanted to do, Jake was to go along with it. Jake was already a big fan of Jim, and couldn’t wait to see what he had in mind. Even better, along with Jim came a very promising second-in-command. If only he could have convinced her friend, Jennifer, to transfer to the Sisk. Apparently, though, she was happy on the Oddjob. Still, Jake was very satisfied with the additions to his crew and several of the Bridge crew caught him whistling some song from the 1940s. The communication offer recorded it, and later figured it out. Something called ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’.

  Chapter 17. Search.

  Ceres Report: Hydrogen Harvesting

  It’s not efficient, but it works for me. With all the ice I have more water than I know what to do with. With the excess electrical power from the reactor I’ve been hydrolizing the water into hydrogen and oxygen. I used fuel tubing to take each gas to separate containers, and at these temperatures, both gases become liquid pretty quickly. I now have a pretty good supply of both components.

  To be honest, I’ve looked at what it would take to put everything back together, and blast off for Earth. With such a low gravity, I’d have plenty of fuel to get back. But that would undermine everything I set out to do.

  At the last minute, the Oddjob had decided not to jump alone toward Earth. Though the Sisk was to remain, the Tether would escort it. There was speculation that more humans needed to meet Ants, or maybe more Ants needed to meet Humans. One crewman quipped it would be unfortunate if the Ants formed their opinions of Humans soley from the Ambassadors. Once free of gravity-lock, both ships jumped. There was another dreadnought waiting for them after their jump, so the Sisk found itself officially relieved of escort duty. That suited Jake just fine, since he was more than interested in what initiatives Jim was working on.