Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure)

by Laughter, Jim

  After double-checking his coordinates, Ian calibrated his targeting sensors to keep him on a course relative to the platform. This way he could also know when he was approaching the atmosphere he could not see by simply watching his time and speed. Advancing the throttle, he started downward, his eyes and sensors still registering nothing—nothing but the star field far in the distance.

  The Cahill Express drew closer and closer to the position he should first be able to detect an atmosphere. Suddenly a friction glow began to appear at the outer edge of his repulsion field. Glancing at his chronometer, Ian noted it was just about right. Impatient to resolve this mystery, he accelerated the ship. The glow of friction with the atmosphere brightened noticeably. He was now almost to the point where the rocks disappeared.

  Ian peered excitedly through the forward windows of the Express. He did not know what he would find but all the clues definitely pointed toward something interesting.

  Without warning, a defined quiver ran through the ship. Ian glanced at the instruments, trying to figure out what might have caused it. He reached for the switch to engage the extra power supplies when everything went dead. Lights, instruments, equipment, and more importantly the drive and repulsion fields were down. In that instant, Ian realized that he and the Cahill Express were helpless and hurtling toward the unseen surface below.

  ∞∞∞

  The nearest stars were but distant pinpricks of light when Piaffè emerged from his cocoon. Eyeing his instruments, he found satisfaction in their readings. His small ship was on the correct trajectory for one of the transit tubes. Velocity and trajectory were important when one entered if a ship were to survive the journey. Many a brave Jibbah explorer had met an untimely end before that was well understood.

  The Jibbah had discovered the transit tubes between galaxies by accident in the early centuries of their expansion into space. It had been a wayward ship that first stumbled into the first tube. There had been nothing to warn the unwary traveler that the tubes existed back then. By some miracle of the Unseen One, that early explorer had not only survived but also returned to tell the tale. The potential for exploration was immediately apparent and the curious Jibbah took it upon themselves to study this phenomena.

  It took time but the rewards paid off as the Jibbah discovered the method to detect and traverse the tubes. They discovered that they were not as rare as first believed. Transit tubes reaching out in all directions from their galaxy were found and cataloged. Ships, many larger and faster than Piaffè’s, went out by the thousands exploring everywhere.

  Then the day came when the Jibbah discovered how to manipulate the tubes. Although they had also discovered how to create their own tubes, this took more power than it was worth when there were so many natural tubes available. Nudging the natural tubes to go where they wanted, the Jibbah were able to explore outward. That was how they came to our galaxy. That was how they met the mighty and elusive Horicon.

  Chapter Seven

  This could prove interesting! Ian thought as he rapidly ran through every possible way he could think of to restore power to the Cahill Express. He even tried a few new tricks he had been thinking about lately. Nothing worked. The front windows of the Express revealed the glow of friction as the now unprotected skin of the ship met a still unseen atmosphere.

  With a final glance at the dead power meters, Ian grabbed the throttle control bar and slammed it fully off. Instantly, the lights came back on and ship systems powered up. He saw the repulsion field reestablish itself and move the fiery dance of friction a safe distance from the skin of his ship. He breathed a sigh of relief. He may still crash headlong into whatever was below him but at least he wouldn’t burn up in the process.

  Ian always figured he’d die in some spectacular way when his time came. Maybe this was it. It was definitely irregular, and with no audience to watch either.

  Curiosity got the best of him. Reaching up, he grasped the throttle bar and fed a minimum amount of power to the drive. Nothing worked. On the other hand, perhaps everything still did work; there just wasn’t enough power to stop his downward plunge. He hesitantly added a second notch of power. Everything went dead again. He pulled the throttle back to off and his systems were again restored.

  Very interesting! Ian thought.

  Then something else caught his eye. His navigational console was still operating normally. According to its readout, there was nothing out there. But it showed a steady acceleration of the ship in one direction. If the ship had been just hurtling along the vector of its last movement, the speed should remain steady, just like the rocks. But here was clear evidence of something else. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

  “There!” Ian exclaimed aloud. “The acceleration has stopped and the ship’s speed remains steady.”

  That was also against the natural laws of physics as he understood them. Ian pondered this for a moment. With the repulsion field intact, he and his ship weren’t going to burn up. But there were forces here he couldn’t readily explain.

  A quiver ran through the ship. He scanned the instruments and noted the changes. Power and ship systems remained operational, only the direction of the ship had changed. Now it was on a divergent vector from the course he had originally chosen toward whatever lay hidden behind the ring of old weapons platforms.

  “Someone wants me to get there in one piece,” Ian muttered to himself. And what’s worse, I’m talking to myself, he thought.

  Watching the nav board, Ian noted the ship slowing again. The glow of friction on the repulsion field diminished to nothing. Still, all Ian could see was the star field that had been there all along. And then while watched, the edge of the repulsion field began to fog. In seconds, the Cahill Express was totally enveloped in clouds.

  ∞∞∞

  It was in the second wave of exploratory ships into our galaxy that the Jibbah met the Horicon. Or more precisely, they were allowed to find evidence of the Horicon.

  The Horicon had taken a different path to exploration—automation. Excelling in manipulation of matter, the Horicon had created an entire society structured around what we would call thinking machines. Whereas our computers are collections of many parts, the Horicon machines were not. We think we are so advanced when we design thousands of circuits on a single chip. Now imagine instead of thousands, consider trillions crammed on a chip the size of a human fingernail. With that same density, now imagine a single chip the size of a small house. This was average technology for the Horicon.

  The Horicon applied this technology to everything they did, including exploration. Untold numbers of probes went forth from the Horicon home world out across the galaxy and beyond. The veritable cascade of information that flooded back was carefully recorded and cross-referenced in machines whose mass measured in the megaton range.

  Although the Horicon were not able to travel physically through space, they found it satisfactory to send their created envoys instead. It was these probes that first spotted the Jibbah when they emerged from the transit tubes.

  The curiosity of the Horicon was piqued and they set some of their probes to follow the visitors. Probes that were sent through the tubes back to their home galaxy augmented the information about the Jibbah. Their civilization was studied and their society weighed in the balance. Finally, the Horicon decided that it would be advantageous to both races to reveal themselves.

  Bait was set out in the form of unusual phenomena to attract the curious Jibbah toward a Horicon probe station far from its planet of origin. Then it was just a matter of time until the Jibbah found it. The wait began and the Horicon were very good at waiting.

  Eventually it happened. A Jibbah scout discovered the bait and followed the trail like a bird following a trail of breadcrumbs. Hidden on what appeared to be a desolate planet, the Horicon watched as the small ship landed and disgorged its small crew of alien creatures.

  So as not to intimidate the visitors, the Horicon sent out a small machine to open the relat
ionship. The Horicon had surmised that to appear by holographic projection would possibly frighten the Jibbah since one Horicon being was larger than an entire Jibbah ship. But their study of the Jibbah paid off. The explorers, though cautious, were intrigued by the small (to a Horicon) machine and what it represented. Communications were established and the Horicon had taken great pains to not only learn the Jibbah language but understand its nuances as well.

  For their part, the Jibbah were delighted to find neighbors in this region of space. To this point in their travels, they had found life but much of it was wild and uncivilized. The Horicon, on the other hand, were nearly equal with the Jibbah in age and outlook. Only a few million years separated their evolutions. Both were young races and very curious. They could learn much from each other but the necessary hurdle of actually meeting had to be faced. The Jibbah were eager to meet the creators of this communication machine sent out to greet them. The Horicon were also eager but their enthusiasm was also tempered by fear.

  At the same moment the tiny Jibbah ship entered the transit tube, Ert found himself considering the joint history of the Jibbah and the Horicon. If he’d had a face, Ert would have smiled. Although he had been mainly designed for management of the infrastructure on Horicon, deep within Ert’s memory banks were millions of files detailing the relationship of the two civilizations.

  Though far different in appearance, both races shared a common curiosity. The Horicon fed that trait through probes sent throughout the galaxy and beyond. The Jibbah did it by personal exploration. Using technology only now being discovered by humans, both forms of exploration traveled everywhere across the cosmos.

  But each way of exploring had its limitation. Although the Horicon had engineered sentient computers, they were still governed by the directives programmed into them. Unusual and unexpected phenomena could cause systems failures without the flexibility of personal interaction.

  On the other hand, living explorers were also prone to accidents and failure. Many a Jibbah lost its life in their lust for knowledge. Often this would happen suddenly and without any recourse. Lives and information were lost and mistakes repeated as the tiny wanderers learned the hard way about an impersonal universe.

  After their initial contact, the two races advanced in slow careful steps to an actual meeting. The Horicon were cautious. Once a visitor discovered their only home in the universe, there was no turning back. Planet-bound, the Horicon could not leave for a safer place.

  For their own part, the Jibbah were consumed with curiosity. Ships fanned out in all directions from that initial meeting place. With a determination nearly equaling that of the Horicon, the Jibbah wanted to learn where this probe had come from. The fact that they didn’t learn it until the Horicon chose to reveal it was a testament to the care the Horicon had taken. This would later have ramifications to the benefit of both races.

  At first, all the Jibbah found were more probes waiting for them. Their placement was in a deliberately random fashion so that where they’d come from could not be inferred. Decoys were also placed on the off chance the Jibbah did detect a pattern.

  But despite their precautions, the Jibbah did detect a pattern to their encounters with the probes from Horicon—information. The Horicon had placed only a certain amount of data in each of the probes. The plan was for the Jibbah to digest the information being fed to them before more information was revealed. But the Jibbah caught on to this and by inference determined the pattern.

  Armed with this knowledge, the Jibbah narrowed their search. On maps going out with each ship, concentric rings of the probes were marked according to the level of information contained in each. As more probes were found and analyzed, the picture became clearer and the search area grew smaller. Persistent to a fault, the Jibbah soon narrowed it down to a dozen star systems.

  And this was where their search stopped. Expecting a civilization similar to their own, the Jibbah were looking for a large coalition of planets, not one single orb. Such a concentration of planets would naturally be easy to spot once you knew where to look. But they didn’t find such a concentration. In fact, acting on their assumption, the Jibbah actually flew past Horicon twice without realizing it.

  Knowing that it would be preferable to meet the Jibbah on their own terms rather than by chance, the Horicon sent out a probe aimed directly at a passing Jibbah ship. The reaction was immediate. The growing pattern of searching Jibbah ships stopped. Then rather than arrive at Horicon in mass, the Jibbah sent only one ship to the designated coordinates.

  The day the Jibbah ship touched down on Horicon was a memorable one. Ert had been operational only a very short time but was nonetheless aware of what was happening. Deep within Ert’s earliest memories were images from that fateful day.

  All organic and inorganic life on Horicon focused on this one single event—the arrival of visitors from outer space. When the Jibbah emerged, they were again met by a probe of sorts. Aware of the caution of their hosts, the Jibbah visitors (there were two) waited patiently.

  Dialogue was established and then when the hosts felt ready, they projected a holographic image of a Horicon. Although briefly startled by the size of their hosts, the Jibbah took it in stride. Then the Horicon sent out an actual member of their race for the historic meeting.

  Ert again watched the record he had of that moment. The giant Horicon—the tiny Jibbah. Although they still communicated of necessity through machines, the two races had now officially met. Thus began a partnership in the mutual quest for knowledge of the universe.

  New ships were developed incorporating Horicon technology with that of the Jibbah. Although efforts were unsuccessful to develop a means of transporting the Horicon off their planet, this did not stop or even slow the ever-searching, ever-curious explorers of the Jibbah. With Horicon as a convenient base, Jibbah ships traveled farther and faster on their quest for information. Coupled with the Jibbah’s understanding of the transit tubes, the Horicon’s own vast fleet of probes sailed ever outward.

  Then the day came when new life was detected in a galaxy neighboring that of the Horicon. A curiosity at first, these red life forms soon began to alarm the observers as they surged into space. The few Jibbah ships that encountered this new species directly met with tragic ends. The threat was real and growing. Thus began the joint effort to hide and protect both the Horicon and the Jibbah from this dangerous threat.

  Chapter Eight

  “Wow!” Ian exclaimed as he watched the clouds surrounding his ship give way to clear sky. Through the front windows of the Cahill Express, he could see the inviting surface of a planet far below. Just above him showing through gaps in the clouds was the darkness of space. From this angle, however, Ian saw the nearly invisible shimmer of something between his ship and the stars.

  But other than the view, his situation had not changed appreciably. Ian still had no control of his ship, which seemed to be in the grip of some sort of tractor ray. Who controlled that ray, and their intentions were also unknowns, but the trader was not too worried. Obviously, if they had wanted him dead, they would not have gone to the trouble of bringing him and his ship down intact.

  All I have to do is wait, Ian reasoned. Eventually, he would meet whoever was behind this fascinating technology.

  A glance at his nav board showed that he was still on a vector paralleling the surface below and he felt an almost imperceptible change in the tractor effect. Considering the distance he had already traveled horizontally, a hand-off from one ray to another would make sense. No ray that he knew of could operate on anything but line-of-sight. Except at extremely low frequencies, electromagnetic waves could not bend around the curved surface of a planet.

  Angling down, the Cahill Express slowed when it entered the lower reaches of the atmosphere. Ian was able to discern towns and highways scattered across the land mass. He was admiring a bustling seaport when a pair of interceptors appeared, one on each side of him. Surprisingly, the markings on their sides were in blo
ck letters of Axia standard. His comm system indicated that a signal was being broadcast at him. At a flip of a switch, his comm adjusted itself to the incoming transmission.

  Immediately, the signal came through over the speaker. “...alien craft, do not attempt to use your controls,” the accented voice said from the speaker.

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” Ian said while he watched the two craft warily through his side windows. Their piloting skill in maintaining formation bespoke of them being professional pilots. Clearly, he and his ship were being evaluated. Was he a threat or not? Ian glanced at his weapons console.

  “Use of your weapons will be considered a hostile act and will be dealt with accordingly,” the voice on the speaker intoned. Ian flinched.

  Deciding to respond, he grabbed the mic. “Attention escorts. You have my cooperation. What preparations should I make for landing?”

  “That should get ‘em,” Ian said aloud after releasing the key on his microphone. “Agree with them and then ask questions. Gives you control of the conversation every time!” Apparently it worked.

  “Alien craft...,” the escort replied and then there was a long pause. “...please stand by.”

  Ian grinned. He could imagine all the crosstalk between the escorts and their controller on the ground. He was tempted to try to tap into their channel but decided it might not be worth the risk. Anyone who could mask an entire planet and had tractor rays of this power might also be able to detect his eavesdropping on their signals.

  Through the front windows of his ship, Ian made out what appeared to be some sort of landing field in the distance. He could tell from the movements of his escorts and his own trajectory that this was their probable destination. From this distance, he could not discern any sort of antenna station that might be the source of this tractor ray.