Fundamental Force Episode Two

by Albert Sartison

  Zach opened an imaginary jar and took out a small piece of his imagined delicacy.

  “So you take out this real dried banana and... and... well, you eat it. It tastes so marvelous, you think you’re in heaven...”

  He fell silent, trying to imagine the taste of this divine treat. They say that those who have tried these magical bananas, costing as much as a decent apartment in a floating city, describe how after trying them you become addicted for life. By night you dream of the sweet delicacy and by day all your thoughts revolve around the precious jar...

  However much Zach tried to imagine this divine taste, his imagination could get no further than various degrees of sweetness. The hell with these bananas. They were about as stupid as expensive wines. Those gourmets who pay a hundred thousand a bottle for that lousy year 2024 are total idiots. The year there was a flare on the Sun and most of the grape harvest dried up in the fields. Only a few were left, but they really did ripen well.

  When he had ‘borrowed’ a cargo ship a few years ago, there had been a few bottles of that vintage inside. Curiosity had overcome his greed for profit and instead of selling them all, he and his gang had opened one and tried that wine for taste. Well it was wine, just wine, nothing special. In brief, those gourmets are sick in the head. They simply don’t know what to do with their money. But at least there’s alcohol in wine, so you’ll get something back on it. But these lousy bananas...

  Suddenly a thought flashed through his mind. There ought to be a captain’s mini-bar somewhere on board, so how about a drink?

  He looked around. The door of one of the cupboards next to the coffee machine was glass. Behind it, in a dim reddish light, he could see a forest of small bottle necks.

  After opening the first that came to hand, he took a careful trial sip.

  The high-proof drink burned his mouth like fire, passed into his throat and then down to run on playful feet into his stomach.

  “Hmm,” muttered Zach, looking at the holographic label on the bottle before sitting back in his seat. “Not bad. Just what I needed. A lot better than those stupid bananas.”

  He opened the space atlas. In front of him lay the Gliese system. The star burned in the center, with several planets orbiting around it. What he, or rather his employers were looking for was somewhere on the planet denoted by the letter ‘c’. So the radius of his search was limited by the orbit of that planet. So, its orbit. A question arose. Could that thing be in the near-planet space?

  Assuming it is, then it must be small enough to fit into the cargo compartment or, as a worst-case scenario, to be towed. In that case, the object could be the size of a house or a small asteroid...

  “Do you observe any objects around the planet? Asteroids? Or maybe satellites?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “

  No objects in stable orbit around the planet have been recorded. But there is one strange phenomenon that might interest you...”

  4

  A holographic projection of the latest BFG7900 cannon for fixed land, ship and orbital mounting hung in the air in front of MacQueen’s face. He looked at it, turning the image from side to side as if a real miniature version of it were before his eyes.

  According to its technical specifications, the new gun charged faster compared with the previous model, was capable of longer continuous fire, and focused the antimatter cloud better along the path of the shot.

  Taking into account the incident with the first incomer, when aiming had been made difficult due to a gravity anomaly, the new weapon had a device to identify and correct such interference. As a bonus, it enabled the possibility of hitting a target in the direct vicinity of massive cosmic bodies the size of a medium star. A very useful thing that had arrived just in time, considering that mankind had just sent its first expedition to another star system...

  The gun was a great success. All the general had to do now was sign the procurement contract and by the end of the year, thirty-two of these new toys would be supplied to arm his fleet. This was in addition to the experimental three with which the first space interceptors were now fitted. They had acquired the reputation of being extremely effective.

  MacQueen closed up the holographic picture, opened the electronic document on the next page and added his cryptographic signature to it. The deed was done; the order was signed.

  He closed the file and leaned back in his chair, glancing at his watch. The time was approaching noon. The general stood up and did a few exercises to stretch his neck, shoulders and back. This desk work was contrary to human nature. It made the body soft and loose. But a mission like a military patrol in deep space, where the stress hormone made the blood seethe every second, does not allow you to slacken. After eight hours on patrol, you flop into bed and literally switch off from fatigue. But here, after sitting in a comfortable chair all day, you only feel your will rusting and weakening, turning its bodily shell into a weak, lazy mass.

  He turned in his chair and switched on the link to his reception room.

  “I’ll receive the intelligence chief.”

  It was the turn of the head of military intelligence, Lieutenant General Stark. Without rising from his seat, MacQueen pointed the newcomer to the chair next to him. Stark saluted and sat down, opening his tablet in front of him.

  “Level of activity?” asked MacQueen.

  “In near-Earth space, 23 points; around Mars, 26; Venus 32; and in the near-Sun zone, 41.”

  “It’s staying like that?”

  “Yes, sir. It was down slightly after the expedition was dispatched, but it remains anomalously high, particularly in the Solar region.”

  MacQueen impassively made notes on his tablet, then leafed through several pages with tables consisting of columns of figures intermingled with graphics.

  “Let’s talk about the Solar region. Is there anything interesting?” he asked, after a short pause to acquaint himself with the latest intelligence, and for thought.

  “We pinpointed three of them, start position unknown. Cargo ships, piloting fully automatic. We checked all of them. The guys boarded them and looked around inside. At first glance, nothing suspicious, but there’s one ‘but’. All three have empty holds and had only come off the stocks quite recently. It looks as if they haven’t even taken a crew on board yet. All the same, there are scratches on the cargo locks...”

  “So they have already transported cargo?”

  “Yes, sir. Strange that they were running empty.”

  “Did they drop something into the Sun?”

  “It looks very much like it and it wouldn’t be the first time. It could just be some ordinary criminal getting rid of something, which isn’t unusual, but these ships were brand new. You don’t use ships like that for dumping garbage in the Sun.”

  “Did you test for biological traces?”

  “There weren’t any. After sterilization before the first space voyage, there were no living organisms inside.”

  “So they hadn’t yet taken a crew on board...”

  “No, sir.”

  “If there were no people on board, who loaded and unloaded the cargo?”

  “They are fitted with robotic systems; they must have handled it all.”

  “What do the recorders on board say?”

  “They were switched off.”

  “Where are the ships registered? Who owns them?”

  “Various space industry firms. Mining, haulage...”

  “Have you talked to them yet?”

  “We’re doing that right now, under the guise of a planned check through the civil space authority. We don’t want it known that military intelligence is involved.”

  “Good. What do the wise men say? Are they seeing any connections to other events?”

  “Yes, sir. And there is one, of medium probability, with the industry on Mercury and the traffic between the second and third zones.” Stark paused briefly in silence. “And another, of low probability, with
the expedition.”

  MacQueen listened, making notes on his tablet. After the last sentence, he raised his eyes.

  “Since when have low-probability events been relevant?”

  “You know how the wise men work. We feed some AIs with all the data there is, they chew it over and spit out a result. The algorithm does not think, it simply searches for similarities. If you know how the algorithm is constructed, you can turn a weak dependence into a strong one and vice versa. In this case the machine is saying the connection is weak, but I don’t believe it. I think it’s just been tuned to make it look that way.”

  “Arguments in favor?”

  “None so far.”

  “Intuition...”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “You know what I think of intuition.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put two of your most tenacious analysts on it. Let them bring it to a conclusion.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What else?”

  “The second packet has arrived,” replied Stark, and handed MacQueen a holographic cube.

  “Permission to leave?”

  “Permission granted.”

  MacQueen folded back the cover of the transparent tube of the reading device standing in the center of his desk and slid the cube into it. Almost as soon as the cover closed, the glass tube beeped softly as the magnetic field built up. The cube stopped tumbling, did a half-turn and stopped stock-still as if frozen. A moment later a laser beam slid along it, reading the contents and making it shine barely noticeably with a red light.

  MacQueen ran his eyes rapidly over the pages of the dossier, leafing through them with a wave of the hand. With his other hand, he switched on the intercom to the reception room.

  “Sir?”

  “Find out when the president can accept an invitation to a video conference. On a high priority subject. Invite Professor Shelby too. You know, the Galileo guy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Video conferences with the president usually meant hours of waiting. This time, the reply was immediate.

  “Video conference in 30 seconds, sir.”

  On one of the walls, into which a huge screen was built, the president’s badge appeared and a digital countdown began. MacQueen calmly returned to the file and continued reading it. When the countdown reached five, he straightened up, coughed, and fastened the top button of his tunic. He smoothed out his uniform, picked a few non-existent hairs off his sleeves and, folding his hands on the table, looked toward one of the cameras.

  The countdown reached zero and was replaced by an image of the president on board Space Force One. Next to him sat his advisor, LeRoy. They were discussing something, but there was no sound since the microphones were switched off. The images kept shaking slightly from the turbulence outside the aircraft. MacQueen waited with an impassive face.

  Shelby joined the conference. Seeing that MacQueen was waiting for the president, who was still talking to LeRoy, he nodded in greeting to the general, who replied with a brief smile.

  The president appeared to have been waiting for Shelby. He cut short his conversation with LeRoy and signaled for his microphone to be switched on. The office was filled with the soft roar of SF1’s turbines.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” said MacQueen in greeting.

  “So, what’s new?” replied the president, with only a nod of acknowledgement.

  “At 0008 Star Time, we received the second packet. It reports that the expedition is continuing its course toward Gliese 581-c, the planet which in our opinion is inhabited by a local intelligent race...”

  “Has contact taken place yet?” asked the president impatiently.

  “Our ships have tried to initiate contact, but there has been no reply so far.”

  The president wrinkled his brow slightly and threw a brief glance at his advisor, who was sitting next to him observing the discussion without any particular interest.

  “How exactly are we calling them?”

  “We are using all the technical means of communication at our disposal. In general, the first contact protocol is based on our experience with the aliens five years ago.”

  The president sighed in frustration.

  “Why such a modest result?” he asked after a pause.

  “So far we are only in the first phase of contact, Mr. President,” replied Shelby. “At the present moment, we know nothing about the infrastructure of the civilization there, so it is possible that not all of our signals are reaching their destination...”

  “Why do we know so little?”

  “We are visitors and are trying to behave accordingly. Up to now we have only been using passive methods for detecting the space infrastructure in the Gliese system. This means that we are searching the space there with telescopes and scanning the ether in the hope of finding a source of radiation. This is no easy task, considering the distance involved.”

  “If the method is not working, we must seek other ways. How could the process be speeded up?”

  “We could scan the system if the ships used their radars,” suggested MacQueen calmly, “but the protocol stipulates that this method should only be used in the second phase, if the first phase is unsuccessful.”

  “I don’t think we should breach the rules of interstellar diplomacy,” said LeRoy, unexpectedly coming to life.

  The president looked at his advisor.

  “Since when have you been bothered about diplomatic niceties?”

  “I don’t know the race there, so I think we should be all the more cautious.”

  “Okay, we won’t hurry events along,” agreed the president. “So it’s telescopes. What else?”

  “We are keeping our ears open and listening for radio communications in Gliese, but all we hear is silence,” replied MacQueen.

  “Strange. How can this be, Professor?” said the president to Shelby.

  “It’s extremely strange, Mr. President. As we see it, an advanced civilization should always be immersed in lively economy activities. And that is hardly possible in conditions of radio silence.”

  “And what guesses are they making about this in academic circles?”

  “It could be assumed that communication there is taking place in some other waveband, the gravity one, for example. But that version seems highly unlikely to me.

  “As a carrier medium, gravity waves do undoubtedly have certain advantages, but within the limits of a single star system, particularly such a small one as Gliese 581, they could hardly be of any significance. After all, radio communication is a simple, cheap and reliable method and, what’s more, it has a high throughput capacity.”

  “The first alien used radio communication, isn’t that so?”

  “Only for communicating with us. I don’t recall that we ever registered them in radio communication with each other. But it could be that the reason is not to be found in the technical aspect of the matter at all...”

  “I’m listening.”

  “On the basis of the Andromeda incident, we suspect that their civilization has collapsed. We could have underestimated the scale of it.”

  “You mean their race has ceased to exist?”

  “Complete extermination is unlikely, but withdrawal from their remote frontiers, if that is what Gliese 581 is to them, is quite credible. Alaska once belonged to the Russians, but they had to give it up, because the Russia of those days could not hold on to such a remote territory. History teaches us that it is much easier to seize new territory than to hold on to it.

  “The collapse of a civilization is always followed by an economic slump. Assets and possibilities melt away like snow under the spring sun, and you have to grit your teeth and give up a great deal...”

  “It was reported to me that the aliens came across another system in Gliese, they did not simply find it empty and colonize it.”

  “Yes, that is our working thesis. But it does not contradict my theory. It could be that the native race of Gliese was fully a
ssimilated by the incomers. Who knows, perhaps the inter-racial boundary was wiped out many millennia ago. The fall of the empire led to a deterioration of the situation in the colonies, which caused an outflow of the merged population to the metropolis to the extent of leaving the whole system until times improved. We have ghost towns on Earth. Our expedition may have entered a ghost star system.”

  The turbines of SF1 rose to a higher pitch and objects slid along the president’s table to the right. It appeared that the spaceship was starting to gain altitude. The president put his hand on the table irritably to stop things sliding.

  “So, let’s set the fantastic theories aside. When does the second phase begin?”

  “Four days from now,” replied the general.

  “Why so long?”

  “Our ships are still a considerable distance from the planets. The possibilities of radar are limited at such long range, particularly when searching and detecting barely noticeable objects like ships and small stations.”

  “

  Right, we’ll just have to be patient. As soon as the next packet comes in, let me know. Immediately. For me, this project has the highest possible priority.”

  5

  “Chuck. Chuck! CHUCK!”

  “Eh? What?”

  “Don’t tell me you nodded off.”

  “Nodded off? Who? Me?”

  “Who else...”

  Chuck sat sprawled in a chair, immersed in his thoughts. It felt as if they were physically covering him, like autumn leaves that have fallen from the tree of truth. He shook himself, throwing them off, and took a gulp from a mug covered in dark, dried-on coffee stains.

  “Ugh. Honestly, Chuck, you might try washing it once in a while.”

  “Want some?” asked Chuck, holding the mug out.

  “No thanks...” replied the newcomer, pushing it away in disgust. He went over to Chuck’s table and tried to find a free place to sit. “Jesus, your table’s not a workstation, it’s the epicenter of galactic chaos!”

  Chuck put the mug down and, after a moment’s thought, pushed it back to its original place marked by several unsightly coffee rings.