~*~
Professor Ricter found he did not like the suit, and his first order of business would be to get the life support up and running. The force field that surrounded him invoked a sensation of claustrophobia unlike anything he’d felt before.
Kel’s men managed to place a portable force field around the hole they had created, effectively sealing it. They needed to lower it for a brief moment while Ricter and Fran floated down toward the floor.
Kel met them with several of his troops floating about the corridor waiting for the next order. “Professor Ricter, what’s our next step?”
The inside of the comet, while still dark, didn’t seem to hide any real danger. According to his readings the air was sterile, which would make sense in a ship that hadn’t had any oxygen in it for who knows how many years. He turned to Fran and said, “Doctor Mercury, what do you think the odds are that we can find a power source and turn it on?”
“Finding it won’t be a problem,” she said. “The strong magnetic field we discovered has to be the source of the ship’s power.”
“Commander,” Ricter said, “would you please escort Doctor Mercury down to the source of that power and to get it working for the entire ship?”
“I’m going to call back to the Arwen first to supply us with the engineers to help.”
“Fine, please do. Once we have power, we’ll have to figure out how to get to the ship’s data banks. If we need to destroy it, I at least want to see what kind of information we can get before we do. It’s such a shame we don’t have much time to study it. I’m sure it would be fascinating.”
“Why don’t we tell the Regals that? I’m sure they’ll understand as the comet slams into their planet, Kel replied dryly
“Sarcasm. You and Fran are going to get along just fine. Commander, I’m going to explore the deck as best I can. Judging from the maps Thomas made, we need to start heading down. Of course, since this is a space ship, I’m going to assume you know when I say down I mean toward the core.”
“I got that,” Kel replied. “I’m going to keep a few guys with you to make sure there are no surprises you can’t handle.”
“Whatever helps you sleep, Commander.” Ricter pushed off a wall and down the hallway. Two guards followed close behind him.
He floated down the gray painted corridor. Most ships seemed to have nothing but long, boring hallways. A ship this size was sure to have a lot of long, boring hallways, but it would also have some very interesting things deeper inside.
Finally, he reached the first door. He stopped and looked at it. It was unlike any door he’d seen. It was a round with several triangles whose points met in the center. The only way he knew it was a door was because it stood out from the rest of the hallway. He pressed up against it trying to figure out a way to open it.
One of the guards said, “It could be a power door?”
“Not likely,” Ricter said. “I don’t know why anyone would have power doors knowing they wouldn’t have any power. There is just something we’re missing, something we’re not seeing.”
He carefully examined the door again. It had no handles or levers. The center of the star, however, was as small hole, a place where the points did not touch. Ricter placed his finger inside the hole and felt a small switch which he flicked up.
The star snapped opened and Ricter looked down another hallway. “Well, that was anticlimactic,” Ricter said stepping through the door and into the corridor.
~*~
“So,” Kel said as Fran and he floated down next to a ladder, “what do you really think of Professor Ricter?”
“Well, he’s a jerk. But, he is a brilliant man who, despite himself I’m sure, has taught me a lot in the past three weeks.”
“I don’t think it’s despite himself. I’m sure he’s doing it on purpose. From what I can tell, he is a jerk, but I think he really does care in his own way.”
“You cannot be serious?” Fran replied.
“I am. Like everyone else I’ve had my run-ins with him, but he’s been at least somewhat nice to me.”
“He must like you,” Fran replied. “Not hard to see why.”
Kel placed his hand on the ladder to stop his fall and looked at Fran as she kept floating by. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you seem like a nice person, that’s all,” she said with a girlish grin.
“Would Thomas approve of you flirting with me?” Kel asked, pushing himself down to catch up with her.
Her smile dropped. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“Well, I just thought you two were an item.”
“Thomas? Oh please!” She laughed. “He’s a nice enough guy but he’s not my type.”
“Oh?” Kel said as the two reached the bottom. He turned himself around and looked at Fran. She did her best to avoid his gaze but he easily saw a smile on her face. “What is your type?”
Fran ignored the question and said, “I think we’re near the generator now.” She pushed off the wall and toward a closed door. She pulled out her communicator and said, “Professor, we’ve reached a door.”
“Any indication of where it might lead?”
“I see some writing,” Fran said, looking at an inscription on the door. “This might sound crazy, but this writing looks familiar.”
“How?” Kel asked.
“Not sure. I’m not saying I’ve seen this writing before; I’m saying it looks close to something I’ve seen before. I better scan it for Ling to take a look.”
Kel reached into the hole and felt the switch. He flipped it and the pie pieces slid open.
He and Fran carefully floated into the large room. From the map, and his own eyes, Kel knew this was the main generator room. He felt, more than heard, the hum from the generators. “I think one of them is still on,” he said.
“I think so, too. Maybe they couldn’t have them all turned off?”
“Why would they keep them on to begin with if this is an empty ship?” Kel asked.
“I don’t know. Seems like we have more questions than answers now.”
“Yeah, seems that way.” Kel pushed off the wall and tried to follow the hum to its location. In the dark, a series of lights stood out a swarm of fireflies on a moonless night. “There is some power,” he said and floated over to the lights. “I wish I knew what these buttons said.”
“I’ll send an image over to the Arwen.” Fran walked over and looked at the buttons. A sensor on her suit took several detailed scans and then sent them to the Arwen. “All right, let’s keep looking. Hopefully we’ll know more by the end of the day.”
“We should wait for the engineers to arrive,” Kel said, then added, “Before we push any buttons. We can still look around.”
“I didn’t plan on having you stop me, Commander,” Fran replied in a playful tone that left Kel wondering if she was always a tease, or if she was just teasing him.
~*~
Ling looked over the letters on her screen carefully. Just looking at them took her to a familiar place in her head, a place beyond Regal and the ambassador. She was, above all things, a translator. Translating a newly discovered language normally took years of careful study by a team of linguistics experts. She had the confidence in her skill to make a few educated guesses. She looked over the text and tried to find something familiar in it. She looked for patterns, hoping to recognize syntax which would lead to some rudimentary understanding of grammar. When she first saw the scans the Arwen sent her she thought it was some sort of joke. She knew this mission was too important and there would be no way Captain Cook would play a joke on her. Yet, what she saw couldn’t be possible. “It looks Ulliam,” she said to herself.
“Excuse me, Ambassador.” Blueic’s voice startled her out of the trance she was in. “Did you say something?”
Blueic and she shared the same office. He had walked over from his desk when he heard her speak. “It was nothing, Blueic. I was just saying that this language looks a lot like Ullia
m.”
“They’re your friends, right?” he asked.
“They were the first race we encountered who didn’t want to blow us back home. Most races seem to be very xenophobic, but the Ulliam were nice. They had just reached the jet age when we showed up. Which is why I don’t think this is Ulliam, but it sure looks like it.”
“How can you be sure this isn’t Ulliam?”
“It doesn’t seem possible. Do you think I should run it through a translator program and see what the computer can make out of it?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try.”
She pulled up a program and had it analyze the markings. She stared at the results, dumbfounded. “That just can’t be right.”
“I think we need to talk the Captain about this,” Blueic said.
~*~
“Ulliam? Are you sure?” Ambassador Mia’s image appeared on one of the many screens Captain Cook monitored.
“Not with one hundred percent certainty, no. But the computer and my own observation agree this writing is very similar to Ulliam. There is no mistaking it.”
“How similar?”
“About eighty percent. Now, it’s possible for many cultures that had no contact with each other to have identical letters. The letter A from common looks a lot like the letter Lujak from Semitrya. But, they are both pronounced and used differently.”
“Give me this in context; what are the odds of two races have an eighty percent similarity?”
“It’s never been heard of. I’d say the odds are impossible.”
Marjorie leaned back in her captain chair and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Blueic, do you have a way to get Ling up here?”
Ling gave a look of shock. “You want me on the Arwen?”
“No, I want you on the comet helping them translate. Our engineers almost have it powered up, once we do that, we’re going to get the computer running.”
“I’ll get myself together.”
“Thank you, Ambassador Mia. Ambassador Blueic, I’d like to be able to call on you should I need advice on how to deal with the Plooma. Will you be available?”
“I will do all I can, Captain Cook.”
“Thank you, Cook out.” She turned the image off, and then paged Thomas. Within minutes, his young face appeared on the screen. “Thomas, how far back have you run those simulations?”
“Far enough to know it passed through at least two systems. The computer is still working on it from there. I really don’t think it’s old enough to go back much farther than that.”
“Would it be possible for this comet to come from Ulliam?”
Thomas opened his mouth to talk, and then closed it. He looked over to his right at a computer monitor. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“I want you to tell me it’s a complete impossibility.”
“I’ll need to run the simulation back even farther than I have to see if the comet passed through-”
“No, Thomas not ‘passed through’ but ‘came from’.”
“Captain, I don’t even know how that would be possible.”
“Give me proof that it’s not possible. I have a translator telling me that the she thinks it came from there; I need you to tell me it didn’t. Then I’ll figure out on my own what to do.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
~*~
“You know what I really don’t understand?” Fran asked as she and Kel floated above the engineers who were working on the engine.
“What’s that?”
“Why does this ship have any power at all? We know there’s something on because of the magnetic field we picked up, but why? What is it powering?”
“I don’t know. Maybe these kinds of generators can’t do a cold start? Maybe the last person forgot to turn them off? We know it has artificial gravity on the surface; chances are it’s powering that.”
Shaking her head she said, “No, I don’t think it’s that. The magnetic field was too strong for just a gravity generator.”
“You think that they were powering something else?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Kel looked up at the ceiling and flicked his wrist twice. His helmet’s dark vision display brought up a second image, that of a long, green, flickering line. “Well, I am picking up some live wires in the ceiling leading up.”
“How did you do that?” she asked.
He grabbed her hand and flicked her wrist twice. She looked around. “Are those green lines what you’re talking about?”
“Yeah, the helmet is picking up the electromagnetic pulse from the wires. I bet those are the only thing with power in them, so we shouldn’t have a problem following. Care to take a trip with me?”
“Well, Commander, is that a date?”
Floating down the hallways and ladders of the comet, they followed the only live wire like Hansel and Gretel following a trail of bread crumbs.
“I’ll be very disappointed if all we find is a refrigerator,” Fran said.
“It’s probably just a computer. I really don’t think we’ll find anything all that important.”
“Well, at least it gives us something to do. Tell me, what do you think this ship is for? Give me your best theory.”
“I don’t know. It could be a probe, or a failed experiment by some race we’re not familiar with.”
“Could it be a weapon aimed at Regal?”
“No, most military races don’t think in the terms of thousands of years.”
They approached a door and opened it. The green line continued along the top of the ceiling and behind another door. “Plus,” Kel continued, “no one knew about the Regals until about a hundred years ago, and none of the systems around the area have any life that would have discovered them. This ship, whatever its purpose, can’t be a weapon.”
They opened the door in the next room. Both let out a gasp and stood with their mouths agape in surprise.
They floated in front of rows of coffin-sized, stacked boxes. Thousands of them neatly piled one on top of the other, up to the impossible tall ceiling. The boxes, white and unmarked, had tiny amber lights which blinked in a hypnotic rhythm. There was a faint smell of ozone. Condensed water vapor formed a rolling cloud of white mist.
“I think we found something important,” Kel said. “I’m going to alert the Professor.”
“I’m going to look around.” Fran replied.
The lights flickered for a second and then cracked on. Along with the lights came gravity. Fran and Kel fell from their free floating position onto the ground with a comical thud. “Hey! Warn us the next time you do that!” Kel yelled into his radio.
“I’m sorry, Sir, we didn’t expect that switch would turn everything on at once. Are you guys okay?”
“I’m fine,” Fran said.
“Me, too. Just be careful okay?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Professor Ricter, are you okay?” Fran asked.
“I’m fine, just checking out what looks like a control room of some sort. This ship used to be occupied, and this is proof of that.”
“Well, Sir, you better get to where we are. I think you’ll find even more proof.”
“Why? What did you find?”
“I’m not sure. We opened a door into a huge room with stacks of boxes. We haven’t had the chance to open any of them yet. I figured you’d want to be here to supervise us in that endeavor.” She looked over at Kel and winked.
“Good idea. Commander, could you send some of your crew to this room? Now that we have power, I want to see what we can do to get the computers up and running.”
~*~
Professor Ricter rubbed his shoulder as he walked down the hallway toward Fran and Kel. He landed hard when the gravity returned and now planed on making a formal complaint about that once he got back to the Arwen.
Now the ship has real light and not the enhanced vision from his visor the details of the hallway became clearer. Etched into the metal walls were complex hieroglyphics. He bent d
own to take a look at some, and then shook his head. There was no way he could understand what they were; language and symbols wasn’t his specialty. A pit of regret burned in his belly. He didn’t like not understanding something and made a mental note to become a language expert when he returned from this mission. One can never have too many skills. He continued down the hallway toward Kel and Fran. He found them standing in front of the room; two security guards had met them there and were talking to Kel. “Hello Professor,” he said, “I had security check the room; there are no traps or any danger. They didn’t open any of the crates. We figured we’d let you do that first.”
“Thank you, Commander. Doctor, please follow me.” He walked into the room with Fran following behind him.
As he approached the first create, he noticed they looked a bit more complicated than just normal boxes. A small monitor showed several flat, multi-colored electronic lines. Each line had a symbol next to it. “Doesn’t that look like some sort of monitoring system?” Fran asked.
“It does. I wonder what it could be monitoring.” He rubbed his hand against the surface of the crate. “It’s cold. . . maybe a food supply of some sort? Fran, take a picture of these icons and send them to the translator.”
“All ready done. I’m waiting to hear back from her really soon.”
“Good. Would you like to take a walk?”
“Only if our big body guard comes with us,” she said as she looked at Kel.
“All right,” Professor Ricter sighed at the too obvious flirting. “Come on. Let’s take a walk down the corridors. Fran, I want you to record everything you find and if possible give me a count as to how many containers we have.”
“Well, before you got here, we did a quick scan of the room and the boxes. Not taking the little hallways here into account, we figured this room could hold about ten thousand boxes.”
Professor Ricter let out a whistle. “That’s a lot of stuff. Almost an entire culture could be fit inside that many boxes.”
“It would take us years to sift through all this,” Fran said. “Too bad we only have a few hours.”
“Once we figure out just what these are, we’ll have to try and make the tough choice which containers to take with us and which to leave. I just hope the Captain has an idea on how to move the comet and not destroy it.”
The Arwen Box Set Page 7
