The Eridani Convergence (Carson & Roberts Archeological Adventures in T-Space Book 3)

by Alastair Mayer

  He turned to Jackie. “Where did Tevnar find the artifact?”

  She checked the image again. “On the floor there,” she pointed. “It looks like it might have been attached to this.” She turned and showed Carson a rectangular arm angling down from what was probably the overhead when the ship was upright. Indeed, the cross section looked right for the rectangular opening on the back of the artifact he had been puzzling over for much of the last week.

  “I’d say you’re right.” He took several pictures of it, concentrating on the end where it had probably attached. “Hard to say with this mud over everything, but the style looks a bit different from the rest of the ship.”

  “Like I said, probably added on later.”

  “Yes,” Carson said, his voice weary. The gravity was taking its toll. He could keep going for a while, but it would be wise not to push it. When you were tired was when you started making mistakes.

  “I’d like to try excavating a bit, but I need to plan that. I’ve got enough pictures to look at for now. We should head back and get some rest. I’d like to take another look later.”

  “Good idea.”

  On the slog back, Carson turned and looked toward the wreck again. He had left the lights in place; their compact power source could keep them lit for days. He wondered what the Belize wreck had looked like when it crashed. Brown had mentioned some unusual stress patterns in some of the hull fragments, more characteristic of destruction by a high-brisance explosive than just crash or erosion damage.

  “Jackie, did you look at the outside of that much?” He himself hadn’t really looked at the outer surface of the wreck himself, he had been more curious about inside. He would check that before they left.

  “Not really. Mostly dirt-covered anyway. Why?”

  “Just wondering if there might be markings or signs of why it crashed. I’ll look tomorrow.”

  They were back at the Sophie now, and Carson gestured to the boarding ladder. “After you,” he said.

  CHAPTER 44: TOWARD DELTA PAVONIS

  Aboard the Razgon, half-way to Delta Pavonis

  “STAND BY FOR zero-gee,” Tevnar called back over her shoulder to Burnside. She had strapped herself into her command seat in the cockpit while he finished a cup of coffee in the galley.

  “Wait one,” he said. She heard him hastily drain his cup, rinse it, and secure the galley for free-fall. He walked forward to the cockpit, holding on to one of the handrails where the wall met the ceiling. “What’s going on?”

  “Just dropping out of warp for a mid-course position check.” Over the nineteen-plus light-years between 82 Eridani and Delta Pavonis, a tiny aiming error could build up to a significant distance. Better to make corrections mid-way, but that couldn’t be done while in warp. It would also correct for any stellar drift in the years it had taken for Delta Pavonis’s light to reach 82 Eridani.

  “Where are we?”

  “The middle of nowhere, if nowhere is the space between Tanith and Verdigris. Jackie and Carson should have reached Kapteyn’s Star by now.”

  “I wonder how they’re doing,” Burnside said.

  “Doing well, I’m sure. Jackie’s sharp, the Sophie is a good ship, and Carson seems like a decent chap. I guess Marten likes him. Are they mated?”

  “Who, Marten and Carson?” Burnside sounded confused.

  “What? No, Jackie and Carson. They seem an obvious match.”

  “She said not.”

  “And you believed her?” For an advanced species, Tevnar thought, humans could sure be stupid. She probably knew more about human females than he did. “Never mind.”

  Tevnar turned back to her task of triangulating their position against other stars, and then ensuring that the Razgon lined up properly on Delta Pavonis. “Got it. It’s nine-point-four light years to Delta Pavonis. Prepare for warp; gravity’s coming back.”

  CHAPTER 45: KAPTEYN'S II

  On the surface of Kapteyn’s II

  IT HAD BEEN mid-afternoon ship’s time when they had first landed, and the constant darkness outside didn’t do anything to encourage a change in the schedule, so it was close to three in the morning, or “oh-dark-thirty” as Jackie would put it, when Carson woke up, ready to go out again. By then he had had at least six hours sleep. Walking to the wreck and back had tired him out.

  Roberts was still in her cabin. He walked quietly to the galley—his small cabin had no work area—and laid out on the table some of the small specimens he had gathered, then grabbed a protein bar to eat while he worked.

  The samples were an odd mix: a few pieces of wire, mostly corroded but for the insulation; some metal fragments in various shapes and states of (poor) preservation; and several chunks of the hardened sediment which had filled the lower part of the cabin and surrounded the wreck. The sediment from inside was finer-grained than the rest, he noted. That made sense. Only smaller, lighter silt grains would easily drift into the wreck. He had photographed each before picking them up. Now he took his omni and, using it as a magnifier, looked at each piece closely, taking additional pictures as he did so, and making short notes about each specimen.

  His omni had some sophisticated instruments built into it, and several apps useful in archeology, but they hadn’t been intended for working with artifacts of an advanced technological civilization. Forensic software might be better. And without more-detailed knowledge about the seasons on this planet and how often the lake rose and receded, even the sedimentology app wouldn’t help much. How long did it take for different layers to build up here?

  He sighed. He had expected it, but to get the maximum knowledge out of this site, it would be best to leave it until he could come back with an experienced team and a full suite of dig gear. He still wanted a closer look at the outside of it, though. What he had in mind would be exhausting. He should get some more rest.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Next ship-day

  Roberts and Carson repeated the previous ship day’s drill of gearing up and locking out onto the surface, then plodding heavily toward the wreck. The water level didn’t seem to have changed; if anything, it was down a little. That would be fine, so long as it was still deep enough at the ship for his purposes.

  The lights Carson had set up earlier were still there. There was a breeze blowing, but he’d anchored them in the damp muddy sand, and the higher gravity also helped hold them down. He had brought two more, to set up on the other side of the ship, which he proceeded to do. The water was a bit more than ankle deep at the point the wreck extended furthest into the water. Well, at least at the surface; they had no idea how far below ground it extended, although Carson thought not very far, based on the shapes and angles of what protruded.

  “You have the pump?” Carson asked.

  “Of course,” Roberts said, “right here.” She pulled a compact motorized turbopump from her shoulder bag. “Just run the intake hose and filter out into the water, like I did yesterday to refuel. I’ll set the pump down here.” She gestured at a spot above the waterline where it was relatively dry.

  “Okay.” Carson ran the hose out to where it stood a chance of pulling in reasonably clear water without a lot of sediment. He wanted to wash as much dried mud and dirt off the wreck as he could, not pour fresh mud onto it. Although, he realized, that might not be a bad idea if we want to try to camouflage it while we’re gone. The intake hose set, Carson picked up the output hose and pointed the nozzle toward the lake.

  “Start it up!” he called.

  Roberts started the pump, and Carson turned the stream of water to the outside of the wreck’s hull. The stream was low-pressure, at least for now, since he didn’t want to risk damaging the wreck further. The dirt resisted at first. It had dried to a hard solid over the many years it had been exposed, but some of it started to slake off once it had absorbed enough water. It was tricky working in the dark; the work lights helped but the water stream cast awkward shadows.

  The hull had its share of dents and crumples and tears.
Carson avoided the latter to minimize the risk of damage. Finally, with the dirt down to a stubborn layer that wasn’t rinsing off, he increased the pressure to blast away at a section that looked reasonably free of damage. The grime cleared, revealing the white hull surface beneath. It looked like painted metal or a heat-resistant ceramic of some kind. He only cleared a couple of square meters; he was tiring of holding the spray nozzle against both its own pressure and the heavy gravity. He would be back. He shut off the water flow and signaled Roberts to stop the pump.

  With it now quieter, she said to him, “Nice job. I should ask you to give the Sophie a wash sometime.”

  Carson chuckled at that, then leaned in to examine what he had washed clean. The white surface looked almost like eggshell, which it obviously wasn’t, but it seemed to have fine pores in its surface. They were probably some side-effect of its construction, and their distribution was uneven, as though the surface had worn more in some areas than others. Which was quite likely, Carson thought.

  Toward one edge of the cleared surface, there were a few flecks of red. Paint? Carson rubbed at a spot with his finger. No, it looked more like the color was part of the material. “Turn the pump back on for a moment,” he called to Roberts, and then pressure-washed another square meter where the red traces were. There were more of them.

  With the pump stopped again, he took another look. There were scattered areas, each some ten to twenty square centimeters, and irregular, of the red surface. Close examination showed the color to be as though something had dyed the material of the hull, the color soaking into the surface but, as a crack in the hull showed, penetrating it only a millimeter or less. The surface had clearly worn unevenly, or perhaps the color tended to burn off during reentry. The gaps were where it had worn more.

  He stepped back, sloshing in the shallow water. Did the scattered blotches make a pattern? A few of them had clean edges. There wasn’t enough of it to be sure. Maybe a chemical or multi-frequency analysis of the surface would reveal traces where the paint or dye had otherwise worn to invisibility. The vague pattern was ambiguous. Carson had the nagging feeling he couldn’t rule out what Lonnie Zamora had described as painted on the side of the craft he’d seen landed in the Socorro desert, except that this was much bigger than what Zamora had described.

  “You okay?” Roberts asked. “You’ve been staring at that thing for a while now. Does it have some special significance?”

  “It’s too faded and irregular to be sure,” Carson said. “Could be something I heard described once, but it could be lots of other things too.”

  “Okay. Come around here, I have something else to show you.”

  “Oh?” Carson said as he waded out of where he’d been standing in the water and around the side of the shipwreck where she was beckoning. “What have you got?”

  “These gaps and marks here,” she said, pointing at a gap a few centimeters wide and roughly a meter long, in line with a similar gap farther up the hull. It was not part of the original structure, it had been cut or burned into the hull later. “Do you think it might have something to do with why it crashed?”

  The edges of the cuts were eroded away in a peculiar pattern, like it had been partially burnt or dissolved. Again, he couldn’t be sure, what with different hull materials and this wreck having been exposed to the elements for so long, but Carson felt his gut tightening and the hair on the back of his neck standing up. It looked familiar.

  “Yes, I do.” He paused. Might as well tell her. “I’ve seen something like this before,” he said, his voice dead. “Not as big.”

  “Carson? What’s wrong? Where have you seen this?”

  “On the hull of the Carcharodon, after it was hit by an alien particle-beam weapon. I think it’s time to leave.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Aboard the Sophie

  After Carson’s disturbing realization, they packed up quickly. There may have been no need to rush, but nor was there a reason to linger. If an automated defense had caused the other ship to crash, it might still be active, even after a thousand years or more. Neither Carson nor Roberts wanted to find out the hard way.

  “Get everything stowed,” Roberts said as she put the Sophie though its pre-flight checks. “Take-off is going to be interesting.”

  “Working on it.” Carson was just getting the last of the loose equipment secured when Roberts began taxiing the ship to where she’d have a good long flat run into the light breeze.

  “Everything secure?” she asked him as he came forward and strapped himself in.

  “Affirmative. Let’s get this show off the ground.”

  “Rolling,” she said, and powered up the thrusters. The Sophie surged forward, and Carson felt himself pressed into the back of his chair.

  The craft lumbered forward into the dark, the path in front illuminated by their landing lights. As their speed built, the rumbling from the slight irregularities in the surface rose in pitch but smoothed out. Carson felt his seat vibrating.

  Roberts cut in the lifting thrusters as the Sophie reached the flying speed of its stubby wings, and the ride smoothed. She pitched up into a twenty-degree climb. The wind had been blowing from the west, so once aloft Roberts gently banked the craft around to face back in the direction they had come, to take advantage of whatever slight rotational speed the planet offered. They were three kilometers above the lake when they passed the wreck site, and Roberts pitched the ship up farther, continuing to accelerate.

  “What do we need to make orbit?” Carson asked.

  “We’re not going to orbit; that’s a waste of delta-vee. I’m going to warp as soon as we clear the atmosphere.”

  Carson remembered Roberts and Tevnar had discussed take-off from high-gravity worlds. As he thought about it, it made sense. The gravity was less than twice Earth’s, but the bigger radius meant it tapered off more slowly with distance. The escape velocity here was probably three or four times what it was on Earth.

  The sound and buffeting from the ship’s passage through atmosphere faded and the ride smoothed, although the roar from the thrusters aft and the continued pressure told him they were still accelerating. The ship was pointed nearly straight up now; with no need to establish an orbit, that was the quickest way to space.

  “Standby,” Roberts said, then cut the engines.

  They were now falling upward on a ballistic trajectory, losing velocity but still gaining altitude. Roberts pitched the Sophie over so that it pointed out of the orbital plane of this system, moved a hand to the warp-engage control.

  “Going to warp.” She activated it, and normal gravity came back.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Five minutes later, she warned “Zero-gee again.” and turned off the warp.

  “What’s wrong?” said Carson.

  “I have no idea where we’re pointed,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure we were clear of the system. We should be three hundred AU away. Now to find our next stop.” She put the ship in a slow roll so its sensors could get a good look at the stars and identify their position.

  “Of course. Well, that was fun.”

  “No extra charge,” Roberts said. She checked a screen on her panel. “Okay, give me a minute to get the Sophie lined up, and we’ll have gravity again. And I could stand to eat something, all that rushing around in high-gee gave me an appetite.”

  Five minutes later, they were back in warp, en route to Epsilon Indi. Ten minutes after that they were enjoying brunch in the galley.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Aboard Sophie, deep space

  Carson sat looking over the images he had taken of the wreckage of the alien ship. “Jackie,” he said, “how big would you say that ship was originally?”

  She looked over his shoulder at the images. “Hard to say, we don’t know how much is buried. But just a wild guess from the curves on what we can see, maybe fifteen meters long? A bit smaller than a Sapphire.”

  That was what Carson would have guessed, although there was too
much data missing to have any confidence in that. “And what would the range on that be?”

  “Depends on their tech. If they had antimatter—”

  “Assume not,” Carson said, recalling what she had said about the Kesh reaction when she told them she had antimatter aboard the Sophie.

  “Okay, then roughly the same as the Sophie. Maybe less, maybe a little more depending on the efficiency of their engines. Assuming it was about the same size. So, twenty light years, give or take?”

  “How far is it from Zeta Reticuli to Sol, or to Alpha Centauri?”

  “Forty-some light-years. You want an exact number?”

  “No, that’s close enough. So, a Sapphire-class couldn’t do that in a single jump?”

  “Not even close. Not even with drop tanks. Ditto for a Sandquist or anything else in that size range. Not without antimatter. Why?”

  “I’m going to want to check your star charts, if I may.”

  “No problem, but again, why?”

  “Whoever built that ship, if they were on a route I think they may have been, would have needed a refueling stop around here somewhere.”

  “Here? Kapteyn’s? This isn’t exactly an ideal refueling spot if you’ve got a choice.”

  “No, I meant within a few light years of here. 82 Eridani might work. What else? Delta Pavonis?”

  “Depends where you’re coming from and where you’re going to. For Zeta Reticuli to Sol, Delta Pavonis works if you refuel somewhere like Alpha Mensae first. Not a single jump.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But yes. Possibly Delta Pavonis, or Zeta Tucanae. And definitely yes for 82 Eridani.”

  There was a pyramid at Delta Pavonis, and he and Marten had found a high-tech artifact at each of Delta Pavonis and Zeta Tucanae. But those were Spacefarer artifacts, not Kesh. Was there another connection?

  “Do you have scans of Tanith?” Carson asked her. It might be worth taking a closer look.