The Daedalus Incident

by Michael J. Martinez

  “All right. So apparently, we come down here, it’s an earthquake,” Shaila said.

  “Maybe, but we cannot say for sure,” Stephane cautioned. “We searched for Kaczynski after the last quake, and there were no more tremors during that. But it seems there may have been a tremor since then, with all the rock that has seemed to move around. And really, how could we three destabilize a cave of this size?”

  “Fine, we’re just having godawful luck,” Shaila said. “Let’s get everything in place and get the hell out of here, OK?”

  Despite the severity of the tremor—at least as severe, if not more so, than the one the previous day, according to Stephane—there seemed to be only slightly more rubble in the cave. If anything, the piles of existing rubble seemed bigger, especially toward the center of the cave.

  Their equipment survived nearly intact, with only a pair of lights and one sensor suite destroyed by falling rock. The rest of the gear was in its containers or still topside. They immediately got to work unpacking and placing the sensors. Unlike the handheld sensor packs, each of these sensor suites was far more advanced, with longer range and greater finesse in detection. Each suite was a bulky one-meter cube, with stubby little feet on the bottom and a light-and-camera mast sticking up another meter.

  The three of them spread out to place the sensors throughout the cavern. Ultimately, they ended up with a sensor suite of some kind or another every fifty meters or so, cloaking about a kilometer’s length of the cave in electronic monitoring.

  “Can we start it up?” Stephane said as he walked back from the edge of the sensor array.

  “Not yet,” Shaila said, crouching down over the main sensor control. “I’ve got to get it programmed first. Why don’t you go and play with your new toy?”

  “I have it all set up for you,” Yuna added. “Well, I think I do. I’ve never actually used a GPR imager before.”

  Stephane bounded over to the device, which looked oddly like an old-fashioned baby carriage with off-road tires and a computer screen and keyboard where the baby should be. A few minutes of twiddling and tapping later, Stephane was happily rolling the device across the floor of the cavern.

  “This is magnificent,” he said. “I’m getting far more data than I thought. What a wonderful imager!”

  “So happy for you,” Shaila deadpanned. “Does that mean you know what happened?”

  “Oh, no. No idea. The data makes no sense, of course.”

  Shaila looked over at the geologist, who was still pushing the imager around with a look of enthusiasm on his face. “Say again?”

  “I see the usual mix of basalt, clinopyroxenes, iron. The strata are tightly compacted. The matrixes around this cavern are all very stable.” Stephane paused a moment to check a reading. “Kaczynski was right. A core sample could not have caused this. What is more, I do not see any fault lines, fissures—barely a crack.” Stephane rolled over one of the smaller rocks that had fallen during the tremors. “See here? If this rock had fallen from the ceiling or the wall, it should have some stress fissures in its matrix. Yet the imager says it is solid.”

  “I’m no geologist, but it sounds like you’re saying there was no earthquake here,” Yuna said. “Or at least those rocks didn’t come from an earthquake.”

  Stephane shrugged, his eyes still glued to the imager’s readout. “I am saying nothing. I am hoping that I can find something I can explain before I run out of cave.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Yuna said, “this simply looks unusual to me.” She was using a holocamera to record their efforts, and was focusing closely on the walls and floors of the cave.

  “How?” Stephane asked.

  “Well, I’ve seen my fair share of Mars, you know,” she said. “And I’ve been in a few lava tubes and caves, some old canyons too. And the way these rocks are piled up, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to explain.”

  Shaila tapped the last few commands into the sensor array readout. “Well, we’re good to go. Sensors coming on line…now.”

  Shaila pressed the keypad and watched the diagnostic screen run through its final checks. One by one, each sensor in the tube came to life, bringing audio/video, seismic, electromagnetic and radiation sensors to bear on the mystery. The array was linked to the datapads they all carried, as well as the central computer back at McAuliffe. There were multiple fail-safes—Shaila was big on redundancy when it came to computers. No matter what happened, the data would be stored somewhere, somehow.

  She looked up to see the lamps atop each of the sensor suites lighting up, one by one, better illuminating the cave. Seeing the lava tube’s full immensity, and its inky depths still far off, made her feel like she was in the gullet of some giant Martian worm. Shaking her head, she turned back to her readout.

  “And we’re on,” she said, standing up straight and working the kink out of her back. “If there’s anything here, we’ll find it.”

  “Thank you,” Stephane said. Even over the comm, his response sounded genuinely grateful. If only he wasn’t such a…

  Shaila’s datapad beeped. “That was fast,” she said. The sensors had picked up a radiation signature that she didn’t recognize.

  Her heart skipped a beat, but quickly she saw that it was non-ionized radiation. That was good—it was the ionized radiation that would kill you. Non-ionized radiation was pretty much everything else, from radio waves to light and heat sources. Shaila wasn’t a physicist, but it seemed to her that this particular radiation should be somewhere on the visual light spectrum. Whether the light was the only radiation or just a byproduct of some other activity remained to be seen.

  It was also weak, which was another good sign. But the sensors couldn’t pin down a source; it seemed to permeate the entire cavern.

  “Yuna, you ever see anything like this?” Shaila said, sending the rad signature data to the older woman’s datapad.

  Yuna studied the signature for several long moments, pressing buttons on her datapad. “Seems familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  “Well, the cavern’s full of it,” Shaila said. “Doesn’t seem dangerous, but doesn’t seem normal, that’s for sure. I wonder—”

  A couple of small pebbles rolled by Shaila’s boot, derailing her train of thought. It took a moment for her to figure out why.

  “Steve, you picking up any seismic activity?” Shaila asked.

  Stephane stopped pushing the imager around and pulled out his datapad. “I do not see any. Why?”

  A couple more pebbles rolled slowly past her. “I’m seeing movement here.”

  “What kind?” he asked.

  “Just some rubble, nothing big. But if these are moving, wouldn’t there be more?” Shaila saw a few more roll past her, almost languidly, while others—both larger and smaller—remained still.

  “The rock piles may be settling,” Stephane said. “Though we would see that on the sensors. Hang on. I am coming over. I—wait. I see them here too.”

  Shaila stood and moved to the center of the cavern, where Stephane had joined Yuna. They watched as a handful of rocks—some barely a centimeter in diameter, some nearing ten centimeters—continued to roll northward into the darker part of the cave.

  “Seismic activity is rising,” Stephane said, his voice stuttering slightly. “It is not a spike. A very small rise, sustained.”

  Shaila looked at her feet again just in time to see two rocks—one just a pebble, another the size of her fist—roll past her boot, leaving several other bits of rubble behind. “Guys, what’s the slope here?” she asked.

  Stephane pressed a few buttons. “The cave slopes up that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the northern, dark end of the cave. “The rocks are rolling…uphill.”

  They stared for several long moments, processing the scene before them. Shaila was the first to react, and only because she felt something strike the back of her boot.

  She turned and saw a larger rock, one the size of a basketball, start rolling again as sh
e lifted her foot up.

  “They’re getting bigger,” Yuna said quietly as she panned the holocam to follow the rock up the tunnel.

  “Yeah,” Shaila said, willing herself to think clearly. She checked the readouts from the equipment they had set up; everything was still functioning normally. And both the low-level seismic activity and ambient radiation were creeping higher. “Harry, get some more ropes down here. Now. We’re leaving,” she said.

  Nobody argued with her.

  CHAPTER 5

  March 1, 1779

  In order to make the time necessary to investigate upon the Green Planet, Captain Morrow opted to have the crew complete repairs from our ill-fated engagement en route, rather than at the Elizabeth Mercuris dockyards. Thus, our work is doubled, but at least we are away from that abysmal place. It is cheerfully debaucherous on the surface of things, but the sadness and desperation of many of its denizens was all too apparent beneath.

  The men pressed on Mercury to replace our fallen comrades have taken to their tasks surprisingly well, given they were rousted from their homes and taken aboard with little notice. Even the landsman has been seen laughing with his new mates, and has taken to learning his duty with, if not fervor, then a certain pragmatism. I imagine life aboard ship in the Royal Navy, with steady pay and a chance at prize money, is more attractive than life aboard an oaken scaffold above a hot coal of a world.

  Our voyage through the Void is not unlike travel upon the seas of Earth, or any other world. The sun-currents that link the planets carry us along quickly, whilst our sails catch the light-motes of the solar wind, further hastening our journey. But for all this, we may as well be upon the ocean itself. There are eddies and wakes within the currents, and occasionally we shall encounter solar storms that, instead of water, rain down glittering motes. It would be pretty, save for the winds that would threaten to shunt us out into the broader Void, if not for a steady hand upon the wheel. Were the Sun not shining brightly through the night watch, we might actually mistake ourselves for being in the Channel itself.

  It is but two weeks from Mercury to Venus, including the time we might spend upon the Green Planet’s seas; the worlds are close together here, whereas the transit from Mars to Jupiter is far longer, depending on the currents. We do hope to make a rapid descent to Venus and complete our inquiries quickly, for none of us besides our new alchemist, Dr. Finch, have taken to our new mission with fervor.

  That passion for the lost Mercurium seems to be fueling Dr. Finch in lieu of his preferred vices. The doctor had a rough time of it for the first few days of our journey, and I had thought it a touch of Void-sickness. Yet seeing the rapidity of his improvement since, I cannot help but wonder if the loss of his hookah was more to blame. He looks well enough now, though, and has performed his duties with competence—and only minimal reticence.

  Our other newcomer, Miss Baker, has no duties, but is rather a duty to the rest of us. However, I do not consider accompanying her as such, for I find myself looking forward to my watch with her each day…

  “Do you happen to know, Mr. Weatherby, the alchemical formula for the solution applied to the sails that allow us to catch the Sun’s winds?” Miss Baker asked as they walked along the main deck after the midday meal.

  Weatherby smiled. Every watch he stood accompanying Miss Baker reminded him of his lieutenant’s test at the Admiralty. She was curious to the point of being intellectually voracious, asking questions about the operations of the ship, travel in the Void and the life of an officer in the Royal Navy. Yesterday, he had practically given the midshipmen’s lecture on the flow of currents from the Sun to each planet, and how the ship uses its ruddersail and planesails to navigate them. Indeed, he had finally invited her to listen in on the midshipmen’s class he ran, so that, if nothing else, he would not be forced to repeat himself.

  “I’m afraid, Miss Baker, that Dr. Finch could give you a better answer than I,” Weatherby said, regarding the sails. “The formula need only be applied a few times each year, and its creation and composition is generally left to the ship’s alchemist, or to any alchemists in port.”

  She nodded, her gaze still fixed upon the square-rigged sails upon the mainmast. “I would imagine some alchemical Essence of Air is involved, though some extract of Jovian gases would do the job nicely. I will ask Dr. Finch, then. I cannot imagine how the early explorers managed to reach the Moon, let alone other planets, without modern means.”

  “Dr. Finch tells me you have some knowledge of the Great Work yourself,” Weatherby said. “Does that stem from your service to Dr. McDonnell?”

  Miss Baker looked down, a brief flicker of pain in her eyes, and Weatherby immediately regretted bringing up her deceased employer. She was truly a dedicated servant, and Weatherby felt sure McDonnell had been an outstanding employer.

  “Dr. McDonnell was most kind to me,” she finally said. “Yes, I kept his laboratory and library organized, but he also saw fit, in his spare time, to educate me on the rudimentaries of alchemy.” She noted the surprise on Weatherby’s face and smiled. “Come now, Mr. Weatherby, it is not entirely unknown for women to have some faculty with the Art, now is it?”

  Weatherby knew, of course, that she was quite literate, for she was particularly delighted to learn of Weatherby’s predilection for reading, and had already drawn from him the promise of borrowing some of his small collection of books aboard. “Well, no, there have been some,” he allowed as he guided her past a group of crewmen scrubbing the deck. “But it is my understanding that solitary alchemists such as Dr. McDonnell guard their secrets jealously.”

  “‘Tis true enough, though if all alchemists kept their knowledge so closely, there would be no future generations of alchemists, would there?”

  Weatherby readily conceded the point with a smile, and the two resumed their stroll. Her questions continued, whether they were on the formulation of alchemical shot, the history of the Royal Navy beyond the Earth, how long it would take to visit Saturn and its unseen, mysterious alien denizens—were they actually to permit visitors, of course—and even the slave trade of the diminutive Venusian lizard-men at their next destination.

  While answering as best he could, Weatherby also kept an eye on the men as they walked across the deck. Two days out from Mercury, a seaman by the name of Matthew Weaver wiggled his eyebrows at Miss Baker in a most unseemly manner, and was caught in the act by Midshipman O’Brian. The mid, all of thirteen years old, bravely stood up to the much older seaman; Weaver later received six lashes for his trouble. Order was restored, O’Brian garnered new respect from the crew despite his age, and Miss Baker had gone untroubled since.

  “Mr. Weatherby,” came a voice from behind. He turned to find the bo’sun, James, saluting him. “Dr. Finch says he’s ready to tend the lodestones, sir.”

  Weatherby had been looking forward to this. “Very good, James. Please inform the doctor I am on my way. Mr. Forester!” Weatherby had seen the older mid passing by. “Would you be so kind as to relieve me and accompany Miss Baker on deck for a short time? I have business with Dr. Finch.”

  “Could I not see the operation upon the lodestones?” Miss Baker asked. “I would be most keen to understand the working involved.”

  Weatherby thought a moment. “Perhaps another time, Miss Baker. This is Dr. Finch’s first time performing this duty, and I need have my full attention upon him.”

  Weatherby took his leave and proceeded below decks, trying to put the echo of her face out of his memory. She was, of course, part of his duty. More importantly, despite her intellect and charm, she was but a household maid. Weatherby knew his future in the Royal Navy depended as much on improving his social standing as it did on his skills as an officer. Weatherby had sworn to make his mark in the service, and would be undeterred in his goals. Even if presented with someone like Miss Baker.

  Or Finch, for that matter. Weatherby had thought it prudent to keep the alchemist as busy as humanly possible. Thus, in addition to replen
ishing the ship’s sail treatments, alchemical shot and curative stores, Weatherby ordered the doctor to likewise attend the daily classes given by the officers for the benefit of the midshipmen. Weatherby felt it wise to give Finch at least a working knowledge of seamanship if he were to be an officer aboard ship. And it amused him to see the tall, lanky man tucked in between five boys, some of whom had yet to begin shaving, and a housemaid who, he was gratified to note, hung upon his every word.

  Weatherby rendezvoused with Finch at the stairwell to the hold. From there, they made their way downward toward the bilges, where the ship’s lodestones were kept. While it was easy enough to sail between Earth and the Moon without such innovations, long voyages between the planets became much more difficult without them. Both air and gravity dissipated the further from a planet one voyaged. In the early 1500s, Spanish alchemists discovered that the mystic properties of common lodestones, once properly treated, could allow a vessel to retain air and gravity almost indefinitely—so long as the stones were regularly rejuvenated with the appropriate workings.

  “My God, what is that smell?” Finch said when they ventured below the hold and into the cramped bilges, which were no greater than four feet in height. “I should have hoped never to smell such filth!”

  “It is seawater, Doctor, likely combined with rats and their leavings, and possibly some small amount of the men’s waste as well,” Weatherby replied, giving an honest assessment of a typical ship’s bilges.

  “And I am to come down here regularly?” Finch asked with incredulity.

  Weatherby could not help but smile. “That is one of your assigned duties, Doctor. If you do not, we shall lose our air entirely, and perhaps even drift off the very decks of the ship!”

  “Surely one of the men can be assigned this task with proper guidance from me,” Finch said as his bright-polished shoes dipped tentatively into the murk of the bilges.