So no pressure, then.
Sensor probes of the alien vehicle’s interior revealed a structure resembling an ant nest, with twisting, narrow tunnels dug through the thing. There were no obvious things that might be bodies floating around. Also, there were no straight lines or right angles or anything suggesting a familiarity with geometry as we knew it, except in the rear of the vessel, with the drive system. This featured a great deal of precision engineering involving a number of unknown alloys.
More puzzling was that there was no obvious way in.
Grantleigh looked at the captain, a thick white eyebrow arched. To me he said, “Very good answer, Mr. Dunne. As it happens we have chosen you to join the expedition to visit and attempt to enter the artifact and to make first-hand observations. We think it will be good experience for you. Bit of a feather in your cap.”
I tried to control my breathing. They were really going to try to enter this thing. Good God. “Very good, sir. When should I be ready?”
Grantleigh turned to the other officer present whom I didn’t know, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back tight. Her eyes were severe and dark. I imagined ferocious concentration and an icy, unwavering scrutiny. She was introduced as Janet Blackmore, SSO5, Planetary Science Team Leader. She said to me, “We’re having a ship’s boat modified as we speak to handle the requirements of the operation. We expect said modifications to be complete by 0700 tomorrow. Departure will be at 0800.”
I nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. I will be ready.” I will be crapping my pants, but ready.
Grantleigh said, “We will also be taking a team of enlisted men for support operations.”
Enlisted men? Disposables? I paused a moment, thinking, and shot a surreptitious glance at the captain and Ferguson. They looked businesslike, competent.
“Very … very good, sir.”
“Do you have any questions, Mr. Dunne?” This was from Captain Rudyard, leaning forward to look down the table at me. He was still fondling that white pawn. I stared at it, frowning, but tried to think of an intelligent question. It was unusual for senior officers to ask for input like this from juniors like me.
“What do we do, sir” I asked, “if there are living … uh, creatures on that vessel, and they are hostile?”
Ferguson smiled a nasty smile. “That, Mr. Dunne, is why we are taking along a squad of enlisted men for support.”
I understood — the enlisted men would be armed to the teeth.
Ferguson added, “Of course, we estimate there is a negligible, though possible, chance of encountering hostile life forms over there. However, every piece of data we have thus far suggests the vessel is quite inert and has been so quite a long while now.”
“I see, sir. Permission to ask another question?”
Rudyard nodded. I said to Grantleigh and Blackmore: “Excuse me for asking, sir, ma’am, but I am curious about one thing.”
Grantleigh smiled, “Yes, son?”
“Do we know where this vessel might have come from?”
Blackmore glanced at Grantleigh; he nodded to her. She said to me, looking tense, “We are backtracking a probable course, which will take time.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, showing proper deference, and feeling amazed that they were willing to answer any of my questions. But why were they looking so cagey, like there was something they were hiding?
That brought the meeting to a close. Grantleigh and Blackmore disappeared from the cloud. Before I was dismissed, the captain and Ferguson exchanged a look, then the captain said to me, “Mr. Ferguson would like a private word, Mr. Dunne, if you would be so kind as to stay a few moments longer.”
I swallowed. Oh no, here it comes, a little chat about last night. I nodded, “Of course, sir.” Rudyard disappeared.
Ferguson toyed with his black pawn a moment, then put it aside where it looked very small next to his large, thick hands. “Mr. Dunne, I’m told you had a small accident in your quarters last night.”
I fought an urge to touch my still-tender nose; the delicate bones in there were still knitting; I could still feel a faint tingling from the nanobots doing the work. “Yes, sir. That’s true.” Looking him straight in the eye.
“That is most unfortunate. These things do sometimes happen to new crewmen, however. Takes a little while to settle in to the new routine, get acclimatized to the way things are done.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Quite a different thing, starship duty out here, Mr. Dunne. Do you not agree?”
“Aspects of it, sir, seem quite familiar, if you will pardon my saying so.” This was risky.
Ferguson’s face darkened a moment. “SCO Janning seems quite taken with you, boy. He says you show considerable promise as a helm officer.”
“Very kind of Mr. Janning to say so, sir.”
He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands together across his taut belly. For a long, long moment he looked at me deliberately letting the silence pile up into a crushing weight. I tried matching his stare, but failed; I looked away. He snorted a soft laugh.
“Why do you think,” he said, his voice quiet, but with an edge to it I didn’t like, “why do you think you were chosen for this assignment, Mr. Dunne?”
I thought it important to keep calm. “Would you be referring to the rendezvous with the foreign vessel, sir?”
Ferguson clucked his tongue, scratched at his moustache. “Yes, of course the alien vessel!”
I said nothing, nothing at all. Now I let my silence stretch out for a few moments, interested in seeing how Ferguson handled it. His face looked a lot less friendly than it had last night when he was offering Sorcha a cup of hot chocolate. Right now he looked like an overcast sky thinking about lightning. His lips were pressed together.
I said, lying, “I’m quite sure I don’t have any idea why I might have been chosen for this assignment. Sir.”
Ferguson said, “You can dispense with the insolent tone, Mr. Dunne, right now.”
“I assure you, sir, I meant no insolence.” Which was true. Apart from what various people had told me about why I’d been chosen for the mission, I still really did not know, not for certain.
He said little for a moment, then, “A career Service officer needs experience in dealing with challenges, Mr. Dunne. Do you understand? There’s more to Service life than is taught at the Academy. Much more.”
“Yes, sir.” I kept my voice as toneless as possible, remembering only too vividly all the extracurricular things one learned at the Academy these days.
“Mr. Dunne, the captain and I think you need a little seasoning.”
Images of roast meat filled my mind, and I suppressed a smile. “I appreciate this, sir.”
Ferguson flashed a smile that shouldn’t have looked so predatory. “I’ve decided to make you my project. You could be a fine career Service officer.”
“I appreciate this, sir. It sounds like a fine opportunity.” I suppressed a shudder at the prospect. It was becoming increasingly clear that my inclusion in the mission was a form of covert punishment. I could indeed become a fine officer — once I’d had all my troublemaking tendencies beaten out of me, and Ferguson was just the man for that job.
Ferguson now looked a little troubled. “There is one small thing, however, and I hesitate to mention this, as we try to avoid unpleasantness on this ship.”
Ah, I thought, at last the kick in the teeth. “Sir?”
“The captain and I have some concerns about the quality of guidance you are receiving from Mr. Janning.”
I blinked, and immediately regretted it. Damn, he had surprised me. “Mr. Janning, sir?”
He picked up the pawn, fiddled with it a bit, then said, “Mr. Janning has been on active space duty for a long time. Do you understand, Mr. Dunne?”
I frowned, thinking I knew where this might be going but hoping I was wrong. “I’m not sure I do, sir.”
“I will confide to you a small secret, son.”
He went on, “The captain is considering transferring Mr. Janning back to Ganymede for a few months. Spend some time at the Academy, see his family. They miss him very much, hmm?”
Uh-oh… “The Academy?”
“It’s a good thing, I think, for an officer in the Service to visit his or her roots from time to time, to reflect back on why they joined the Service. That kind of thing.”
I put the rest together: I was to play along as a good officer and try not to follow Janning’s advice about thinking for myself. If Ferguson wasn’t satisfied with my efforts to blend in, he’d have my only ally transferred home.
Damn, I felt cold.
Ferguson said, “I see you take my meaning, Mr. Dunne.”
“Uh, yes, sir. I am receiving you loud and clear. Thank you.”
He smiled, looking more avuncular again. It was creepy the way he could switch back and forth. “It’s always good to talk things out, I think. Clear the air.”
He dismissed me. I snapped back into the tight confines of the simulator egg, staring at the black panels around me, devoid of instrumentation. I spent several minutes sitting there, staring around at the rows of sim eggs glowing in the light, and took in the cool, fresh air. I felt like the whole ship was trying to smother me. The walls that had yesterday conveyed such a feeling of roominess now held me tightly in place. My heart pounded hard and fast and I was sweating. My shirt was wet down the back; it felt disgusting, like a skin I wanted to shed.
And this was only my second day aboard Eclipse.
That night I ate space chunder by myself, feeling doomed. The wall displays were alive with all the latest images and data from the alien vessel; we had long since matched course with it, and had a swarm of bots all around it, harvesting information at a prodigious rate. Much of this information was pouring into my head, where I felt it filling my buffers and intruding on my thoughts. It was hard to imagine myself being among the first to visit the thing the following morning.
Other members of the crew came up to me while I tried to eat, clapping me on the shoulder, telling me how lucky I was, going to make history, set foot where nobody had set foot before. All of which was true, of course. It was a staggering opportunity. My name would be remembered in the history books. And it was, like I’d told Janning, exactly what I’d signed up to do. Even so, at this moment, all I could think about was how I’d screwed up everything since I came aboard. Self-pity is never a good look on a person, but at the time I thought it suited me pretty well.
“Hey, Genius!”
I looked up, and had time to say, “Huh?” before Sorcha tipped a plateful of cold space chunder on my head. As it dripped down my face, down my uniform, and as other crew around us laughed their guts out, Sorcha set about rubbing the vile muck over my face, into my cropped hair, into my uniform, down my shirt, and was doing a fine job of trying to get it down the front of my pants before I stopped her. Gasping, shocked, I looked up at her.
Sorcha scowled at me for a moment, then broke out in her own wild fit of laughter. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Every time she seemed to finish, and get herself together, drying her eyes on her short sleeves, she’d look at me as I wiped at the gunk on my face, point at me and burst out laughing all over again. Others joined in. Even the food preparation officers from the galley stood at the door, having a good laugh at this entertaining use of their despised food.
At some point I sputtered, “What the—?”
And she burst with laughter all over again. Somebody yelled out, “Hey, I’ve got a fresh plate — want some more?” Yet more laughter.
As the laughter accumulated and I tried to clear my eyes, my nose, and scrape the food out of my clothes, I forgot my embarrassment and my own personal feelings about what had happened to Sorcha and me and I began to giggle. I was holding a hand in front of my face, seeing how much I’d scraped out of my hair, and somehow the sight of all that icky stuff made me laugh, too.
Sorcha sat down across from me after a while and handed me a damp towel. She had a gorgeous smile. Her rich eyes shone. She said, “Now we’re even, more or less.”
That wiped the smile off my face. “Sorcha? I thought—”
“Look,” she said, “I chose to go along with it. You didn’t make me; I knew the risks.”
I said nothing for a moment, waiting to hear her say “but…” She didn’t. “I felt so guilty, when I saw you…” I wondered briefly if I’d have felt quite as guilty if it had been a male cadet who had been attacked. I think I would have felt some guilt over it, but not as much. There wouldn’t have been such a sense of acute embarrassment.
She rolled her eyes. “How charmingly old-fashioned of you. Stupid, but charming. Please, no need to feel guilty. Maybe I should give you a little after-hours defensive work, get you toned up a bit.”
“They said you fought them off.”
Sorcha grinned again. “James, James, James. I wasted their stupid disposable asses before they had time to think.”
“But you were unconscious when I…”
“They had me out while the bots did their thing. I was fine. Angry, but fine.”
“You really killed those things?”
“James, sometimes…” she looked grim and sad for a moment, staring at the display panels, “sometimes, you just have to do what’s necessary to save your ass, you know? There are times when you can’t just talk your way out of trouble. And Christ, they were just disposable grunts, right?” But she wasn’t smiling as she said this. I remembered her at the Academy, the one on the pedestal everyone wanted to knock down and who made everyone else look bad by comparison.
And I couldn’t forget my own beating last night, how I hadn’t had time to fight back. I told myself it was because the enlisted men pulled me out of a sound sleep and took care of me before I was even awake. If I’d had a few minutes warning…
“Okay, so when can we start training?”
“Tonight, if you want. Hey,” she added, “you might need some slick moves to fight off the evil aliens, huh?” She grinned again, punched my shoulder lightly, and, despite the cold food congealing all over my uniform, I didn’t feel quite so awful. In fact, I thought, enjoying her radiant smile, I even felt a speck of hope.
Six
We almost didn’t find the aliens.
Once a team of our engineers had stopped the alien vessel’s tumbling, we took a ship’s boat over there and locked onto the side of the alien vessel. Soon we’d extended a vactight workdome and an access tunnel leading from the cargo bay. We could crawl through this passageway and float in the dome, facing the naked hull of the ship. The surface was cold and dark, and damp with condensed water vapor from the dome’s atmosphere; I was reminded of the pitted surfaces of ferrous asteroids I had seen up close. Under the bright halogen lights in the white workdome, the material looked ancient and impregnable. Other than the sounds of my suit systems, it was unpleasantly silent. When Ferguson spoke over a head channel it seemed too loud, an interruption. I felt as though I was in some kind of museum exhibit and that I should be as quiet and respectful as possible. Grantleigh and Blackmore stared at the naked rockface as if they were looking at the face of the Holy Redeemer.
The scientists took soundings, compared the results with data taken during the boat’s approach and orbit. We were in a good spot, where the hull wall was thinnest, towards what we thought of as the vessel’s bow.
We launched nanobots tailored to digest the material of the hull, and waited. The scientists ran endless tests, going over their data again and again.
“The interior tunnels are clearly too narrow for human bodies to enter,” Blackmore observed. She, Gra
ntleigh, Ferguson, and I were in the cloud, trying to work out what to do about entering the vessel. The nanobots estimated they would punch through the rocky outer layers and then the inner-hull in about four hours. We had until then to decide how to explore the ship.
Ferguson said, looking impatient, “No problem, then. We can send in a swarm of sensorbots to find out what they can and scout the reticula.” That was what the team called the warren of twisting, coiling tunnels. “They can cover the whole ship in a matter of days, and we can sit back here, monitoring data, and guiding the bots when they find something of interest.”
I could see the two scientists swapping skeptical looks. Blackmore said, “That would be an excellent plan for an initial survey of the reticula, to build a map of the internal structures and so forth…” She said this in what was obviously her idea of an extremely diplomatic tone, but to me she sounded a little condescending. Her eyes looked sharp and a little mocking towards the executive officer.
Ferguson did not miss this tone. “I’m not letting any of my people in there, not even the enlisted men, Dr. Blackmore. No bloody way.”
Blackmore went to object, but Grantleigh interjected, “Mr. Ferguson, we have designed a digger that would enter these tunnels and enlarge them, making them suitable for human access.”
Ferguson had leaned back in his chair, affecting a pose of calm reflection, but the sheen of rendered sweat on his forehead and glistening around his narrow little moustache betrayed his anxiety. “I don’t care if you can make room for the bloody Coldstream Guards to march twelve abreast in there in full kit. We’re not sending humans in until we know it’s totally safe.”
They came to a rough compromise, though I could see Ferguson was a worried man. A screw-up, a loss of life, or any similar disaster would look bad on his record. He was probably having nightmares about boards of inquiry.
I figured he was welcome to all the suffering in the world.
The nanobots finished their primary excavation, opening a tunnel large enough to allow us through to the reticula. We hovered around the tunnel entrance in our thin orange environment suits, staring into the hole. Instruments showed whatever was down there was giving off lethal quantities of vapor, laced with organic materials and heavy metals. I found myself holding my breath before realizing that this was pointless in my suit. The lights we aimed stopped at a plug of something black and oozing. Ferguson ordered a field barrier erected to keep the ooze from entering the workdome.
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