The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative

by Mark Terence Chapman

“Crikey. You’re right. I hadn’t thought past the immediate effects on our pocketbooks. This’ll help considerably. And we can start on new colonies that much sooner.”

  “With what we have in our holds,” Guido piped up, “if we were a sovereign nation we’d be worth more than a few third-world countries.” That was good for a laugh, even if he was overstating matters considerably.

  “You’re forgetting that once we bring this load home, the price of tesserene will drop like a rock—supply and demand, don’tcha know?” Tom responded. “We could decimate the World Stock Exchange commodities index!”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about investing,” Guido threw back at Tom, “but our bonuses on this haul should be…well, astronomical—if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  On that note, we went back to work.

  * * * *

  While the extractor was scrounging around for the tesserene ore hiding in the strata below our feet, Guido and I took the opportunity to wander about and take a closer look at the crater beyond the mining pit. It was pretty typical of impact craters anywhere. The crater floor was littered with fragments of rock and cooled ejecta that fell back to the moon following various other nearby impacts. There were even minor craters inside the larger one, where smaller objects hit sometime after the one that caused the 800-meter wide depression we stood in. The light from Richie cast shadows on the nearest crater wall. Some of the shadows seemed deep enough that if I stepped in one I’d fall clear through the moon and out into space.

  As I looked around, I saw nothing in the “Richielight” except moon rocks and shadows. Sparkles reflected from specks of some sort of mineral—mica, perhaps—that was embedded in the crater walls and floor. I kept turning and looking. More of the same everywhere—except…. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something— I walked over to Guido, turned off my radio and touched helmets, which provided some sound conduction.

  “Guido?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Turn off your radio for a minute and look over there.” I pointed to a section of the crater wall several hundred meters in front of me. Guido looked puzzled, but complied.

  “Yeah, so? What am I supposed to see? There’s a wall and pieces of rock and shadows.”

  “Right. It’s what you don’t see that’s odd.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “See all that glittery rock?”

  “Yeah. Again, so what?”

  “See how it covers that whole rock face, except right over there?”

  “So? There must be a different kind of rock there.”

  “Why would there be? It’s the same kind everywhere else. Besides, it’s almost regular in shape—sort of curved.”

  “It’s just a shadow, Swede.”

  “What if it’s not? We didn’t see any sign of aliens when you and Tom did the overhead sweep. What if that’s because the alien base is hidden in the crater wall?”

  “Alien base? What alien base? Don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away?”

  “I’m just speculating, Guido. But what if the aliens did build a mining base, or a storage depot, or a listening post—or whatever—and didn’t want it to be found. Wouldn’t a hole carved into the wall be a perfect hiding place? Between the overhang and the shadow it would be perfectly hidden.”

  “I still think you’ve been watching too many bad sci-fi holos, but now you’re starting to give me the willies again. We’d better radio Cap and tell him.”

  “Tell him what, that I think a shadow looks suspicious? He’ll think I’m paranoid. How about if we take a closer look first? If we see anything suspicious we’ll call him then. If not, there’s no reason to call him at all and I won’t sound like an idiot.”

  “Okay…but if an alien zaps me with his death ray, I’ll never speak to you again!”

  I laughed and we turned our radios back on.

  “Shamu, the extractor has another hour or so to go down here. Guido and I are going to do a little exploring nearby.”

  “Acknowledged, Swede. Have fun. I know you’ll be careful.” Sparks was “wearing” his professional CSO persona. “Remember, if you run into any trouble down there we have no way to get to you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll bring you back some souvenirs if we find a trinket shop here.”

  Sparks laughed. “You do that.”

  With that, Guido and I set off in search of extraterrestrials.

  * * * *

  “I’m getting that spooky feeling again, Swede,” Guido said softly. “You don’t suppose we’ll find a black monolith out here, do you?” That was good for another chuckle.

  As we approached the crater wall, the blackness of the area that should have sparkled like the surrounding stone—but didn’t—only seemed to deepen. Even stranger was the feeling that the shadow seemed to have an almost physical presence, as if I could reach out and actually touch it.

  Finally, I couldn’t resist the temptation and did, in fact, reach out. I felt silly for a few paces—until my hand contacted something solid, more than thirty meters before we reached the crater wall. I looked over at Guido to see if he saw what I saw. There was a matte-black object hidden in the shadows. It appeared to absorb all light—like a black hole, but without the unfortunate consequences of approaching a singularity—making it detectable only by touch. My helmet light illuminated my suit glove, but not the object I was touching. There was quite simply nothing for the eyes to focus on.

  I felt a moment of vertigo, as if I’d fall into the object. I looked at Guido again and saw him staring back, eyes wide.

  I kept my hand on the black “wall,” or whatever it was, and followed it to my left. Guido did the same, going to his right. Gradually we disappeared from each other’s view as we went around the curve of the huge dome-like object. I still couldn’t see it, but by looking at the sky above, with Richie in the background, and seeing how much of it was “blacked out,” I estimated that the dome was fourteen meters high. Judging by how far away Guido was when he was lost to my view, the dome was at least seventy meters across. As we were only thirty meters from the crater wall, that meant more than half of the dome was inside the wall—if it was indeed a full hemisphere.

  “Cap,” I radioed, “you’d better get down here.”

  * * * *

  It took some convincing to get Cap and Tom to come down. First, from orbit, Sparks ran every sort of sensor scan at his disposal on the area immediately in front of Guido and me and found nothing. As far as the sensors were concerned there was nothing here but more moon rock. However, Guido and I repeated our demonstration of the “disappearing spacer” trick for the helmet cams, this time with Cap watching the monitor. After seeing a dome-shaped arc of Richie disappear behind the “shadow,” Cap was convinced that there was something worth seeing—or not seeing, as it were—on the surface.

  Once again, the lack of Pod 1 caused us some inconvenience. We had the only pod down here with us, which meant that Guido and I had to shut off the extractor and lift off with the pod’s cargo hold only partially full to return to Shamu. Then we had to hook the pod up to the refinery to empty the pod’s cargo to make room for Cap and Tom, leaving poor Sparks out of the loop.

  “You guys better come back!” he joked into the radio. We floated out of the pod bay. “You’re not leaving me to fly home all by myself. Do you hear me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Cap responded. “We’re not leaving you alone with all that tesserene!”

  “Oh yeah! I forgot about that. Come to think of it, it’s too bad I can’t leave you down there and collect everyone’s share!”

  “Why do you think they set up the bonus plan the way they did? So backstabbers like you couldn’t benefit!” We all had a good laugh at that.

  We hovered briefly over the dome, and from the sky it looked like nothing more than an especially dark patch of shadow hidden in the general shadow of the crater wall.

  “I still don’t see anything,” Tom
declared.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You still won’t see anything when you’re standing there actually touching it.”

  “Set her down as close as you can to the dome,” Cap instructed Tom.

  “Roger.”

  Moments later we were again approaching the dome on foot. Humorously, to me at least, Cap duplicated my earlier blind-man routine by walking toward the dome with hand outstretched until he came in contact with the invisible wall. He looked at me with mouth agape.

  Stunned silences seemed to be the theme of the week. We all stood there for a moment, silently contemplating this mystery.

  “So…how do we get in?” Tom asked.

  Good question.

  CHAPTER 13

  History of Space Exploration: Shamu—Throughout the 22nd century, deepspace exploration and prospecting ships have explored the galaxy, searching for the minerals that Earth so desperately needs. Immense mining ships follow in the wake of the explorers and prospectors. The miners extract vast quantities of ore and process it onsite, so that when the ships return to Earth the minerals are already refined and ready for sale.

  One such exploration and mining company, Saleya Intergalactic (SI), was incorporated in the Republic of Europe in 2164. Three years later, SI acquired a ship called Shamu and put her in service as the third prospector in its fleet. By then, Shamu had already seen six decades of use. She joined dozens of other ships of exploration scattered throughout a sphere extending nearly two hundred light years from Earth.

  In 2185, Shamu embarked on the latest in a long series of deepspace prospecting missions and everything changed.

  — Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2194.

  * * * *

  We began by feeling all over the dome as high as we could reach, for hidden catches. Zilch. Zippo. As far as I could tell, the dome was entirely featureless.

  “What about digging under it with the extractor?” Guido offered.

  “It seems to me,” I ventured, “that the wall would have to be sealed to the floor of the dome to keep the air in. So you probably can’t just dig under it.”

  “If they even breathe air,” Tom interjected.

  “What do you think they breathe, vacuum?” I countered.

  Tom shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they’re silicon-based, instead of carbon. Maybe they don’t breathe at all.”

  “Then why have a dome? Why not just leave whatever’s inside open to the elements?”

  Again, he shrugged. “For protection from those elements—micrometeoroids and so forth.”

  “You’re certainly right about them protecting the contents,” interjected Guido. “Have you noticed that as long as the dome has presumably been here, there doesn’t appear to be a scratch anywhere on it?”

  That took me by surprise. “You’re right! I hadn’t noticed.”

  “If we try to dig into the dome,” Cap pointed out, “we’ll undoubtedly damage it; the residents might be somewhat miffed don’t you think?”

  “Assuming there are any residents,” I countered.

  “Even if there aren’t any, we wouldn’t want to destroy the contents. There’s no telling what we might find in there.”

  “Hey, don’t forget about me up here,” Sparks radioed.

  “Sorry, Sparks,” Cap replied. “Do you have a suggestion?”

  “Have you ever known me to be at a loss for words?” Those of us on the moon looked at one another and grinned.

  “So what’s your suggestion?” Cap continued.

  “It seems to me that any sophisticated civilization would have developed some sort of remote access for this sort of thing. All we have to do is figure out what method they used, and what the right key is to open it.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Guido snorted. “We don’t even know if the signal is supposed to be in the infrared range, or ultraviolet, radio, or x-ray. Hell, it might be magnetic or even gravitic. It could be anywhere in or out of the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe it’s simply three raps on the wall in just the right place. And even if we figure out what type of signal to use, what’s the secret password to get in? A million-digit base-12 number? The exact age of the universe, measured in glarts? The name of the alien emperor’s two-headed pet lizard? It could be anything—perhaps ‘open sesame’ in alien.”

  “Well, we have to start somewhere.”

  “Sure, but where?”

  “Cap, do you remember way back to when you took command of Shamu?” Sparks asked.

  “Well, I know I’m getting senile,” Cap joked, “but I think I can remember that far back.” The rest of us snickered.

  “Do you remember during final command training when they told you about the first-contact protocols programmed into the computer?”

  “Of course, but wha— Oh, you’re thinking about using that ancient bit of programming to open the dome?”

  “It’s actually not all that ancient. Every year or two, the computer wonks at the Company update the program with the latest thinking in xenocomm techniques. I don’t know all the details, but perhaps if we get our computer talking to their computer the two can work something out. The program does all the usual stuff, broadcasting the first hundred prime numbers, pi taken to a million decimals—that sort of thing—to get the aliens’ attention and prove the signals aren’t just random noise. Then it goes about trying to teach them our language and other things about us. Intelligent aliens might be able to figure us out even if we can’t figure them out.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Cap agreed. “What do we have to lose? Assuming the dome isn’t dead, and it has a working computer, and it has the equivalent of a first-contact protocol programmed into it, and the aliens are friendly and didn’t booby-trap the dome, and the computer isn’t looking for a million-digit base-12 password—we might just get lucky.” He chuckled. “Get to it, and the rest of us will keep looking for a low-tech solution down here. Maybe the door is in the rock wall and not the dome.”

  Booby traps? I hadn’t thought of that possibility. The idea had me looking over my shoulder. What if the aliens didn’t want to be bothered? What if they really didn’t want to be bothered?

  * * * *

  Three days after we found the dome, and long after we ran out of the tesserene ore within reach of the extractor, we were still trying to break in. The only thing keeping us from going home to fame and fortune was the dome. We were starting to get fidgety. The physical approach hadn’t worked, and so far the computer approach hadn’t been any more successful. But at least nothing had blown up in our faces. My fears of booby traps had diminished somewhat. Of course, the traps might simply be inside the dome.

  Maybe there was no way in, short of having Scotty “beam us up.” Maybe there was nothing of interest in there anyway. Maybe we should have just given up and gone home and let the anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, linguists, xenologists, and other science-types, take over. Maybe we should have just taken the money and run. It really wasn’t our area of expertise anyway.

  Perhaps not, but maybe we were just too ornery to give up and go home with our tails between our legs. Besides, we’d all gotten over our initial apprehension at the idea of meeting aliens. Even Guido was starting to get excited about seeing one in person—assuming their idea of saying hello didn’t involve proton cannons.

  * * * *

  Every so often over the next few days, as someone thought of a new approach to try, we went back to the dome to attempt another break-in. Eventually we ran out of nondestructive ideas and resorted to brute force methods. Plasma welders, laser cutters and the extractor had no more effect on the dome than any other method. It seemed to absorb all forms of energy directed at it.

  While the ship’s computer was busy trying all the forms of communication programmed into it, Sparks had little to do but monitor its progress and occasionally change some parameters to try another approach. To stave off boredom, he listened to his music collection. Eventually, he took to pumping the tunes through the radio
to keep those of us on the moon entertained.

  To say that Sparks had eclectic tastes is to grossly underestimate the scope of his interests. We were treated to an odd mix of favorites from the nineteenth through the twenty-second centuries. It was hard to keep up as Sparks jumped from a Liszt concerto to Chinese “martial rap,” to Nat King Cole crooning “Unforgettable,” to Irish folk songs played on bouzouki and harmonica, to that god-awful synthochant stuff the kids went for. The mixture of sixteen-part synthesized atonal dissonance combined with Gregorian chants always set my teeth on edge. Teenagers—somehow they always manage to find something their parents will hate.

  I was standing in front of the dome, staring at it in frustration, when Sparks started to play some more of that “synthocrap,” as a good friend of mine aboard the Aurora liked to call it. I was annoyed enough at my total lack of progress that I almost snapped at him to shut it off. I turned to Tom to say something sarcastic about the so-called “music” when I thought I caught a flicker out of the corner of my eye. I looked back at the dome, but saw nothing unusual.

  “Did you notice anything odd just now?” I asked.

  “Odd? No. What do you mean?”

  “I’d swear I saw a…shimmer or something, on the dome—over there.” I waved vaguely.

  “No, sorry. I didn’t see it.”

  “Did you do anything out of the ordinary just then?”

  “No. I was just standing here staring at it. Maybe it was the sheer power of my will,” Tom waggled his eyebrows at me for effect.

  “Ha bloody ha.” Sometimes my witty rejoinders are simply awe-inspiring. “Hey, Sparks,” I called on the radio.

  “Yeah, Swede.”

  “Did you just change communication protocols or anything else in the last couple of minutes?”

  “No. The program is in the middle of some trinary number transpositions and forward and inverse Fourier transforms. It’s been doing that for over an hour.”