Echoes of an Alien Sky

by James P. Hogan

  He grinned behind his visor. "At least the gravity makes it easy on the bones where things stick out," he answered. "We've been doing a lot of work outside on the South Field and out at the pyramid. I guess I've gotten used to it."

  "Do you have any ideas how long you'll be here for?" Mirine asked.

  "At Triagon?"

  "Out here generally—Earthside."

  "Oh, we don't know yet. It depends on what we find. It's open-ended."

  "What part of Gallenda are you from?" Mirine asked.

  "A small town you'd never have heard of, originally. It's along the coast from Beaconcliff."

  "I know where Beaconcliff is. Lorili's has a younger brother who plays the polychord. His teacher was from there."

  "How long have you known Lorili?" Yorim asked. "Did you grow up together?"

  "Only since college in Korbisan. We got to be close friends then. When she accepted the offer from the State Institute to come out here, I thought it sounded like a great adventure and applied for a posting too."

  They emerged onto the surface. Fenzial nosed the tractor around, its headlamp beams following the tracks leading out of the gully in the crater wall where the Annexe doors were situated, around the ridge, and toward the pad area. Farside was away from the Sun, and the only light was from the stars, reducing the surroundings to ghostly highlights of crags and detached parts of ridges floating above black slabs of shadow.

  "Kyal says she was mixed up with the Progressives back then," Yorim said. "Were you involved in that too?"

  "No. It was never my kind of thing. What about you? Dodra thinks you're a Prog. She says she can tell because you're irreverent."

  Yorim laughed. "Is that what she said?"

  "She says you don't show the right sense of awe and respect toward the revered ways and hallowed customs."

  "Oh, a lot of people seem to think that. But politics is all about telling people what they should think and how they ought to be. I guess I'm too lazy. I just let 'em be how they want to be." He thought for a second. "I don't think people ever really change much underneath anyway."

  Mirine looked across at him curiously. His face was invisible now that they had come out from the light below in the Annexe. "Do you have anyone waiting for you back there—you know, anyone special?"

  "I hang around with a bunch of people . . . but no, not really."

  "Oh, I'm surprised. I'd have thought you'd have lots of girlfriends."

  Yorim snorted audibly. "It's hard work. I just said, I'm too lazy. And you?"

  "No." A short silence followed that needed filling. They were coming out from among the crags and shadows. The boxy form of the lander with its struts and tanks stood white in the pool of light bathing the pad area ahead. "How about Kyal?" Mirine asked. She was fishing on Lorili's behalf and made her voice casual.

  "Kyal? No. He's too much like his father—always up to his neck in his work. I was as surprised as anyone by this thing with Lorili. Never seen it happen with him before." Yorim answered matter-of-factly without trying to hide that he knew what she was doing. It singled him out as someone she could be frank with. Mirine felt reassured.

  "His father was quite a well-known name in Ulange, wasn't he?" she said.

  "That's right. Jarnor Reen. He was one of the big movers behind the Earth exploration effort. A pioneer in electromagnetic propulsion technology too. That's where Kyal's own work follows on from, of course."

  "And is that what you do too?"

  "Me? Not exactly. I'm more electrogravitics—related, but a different area. It's to do with how gravity emerges as a residual effect of electrical forces. How we go about synthesizing it. That kind of thing."

  "I've never really understood it," Mirine confessed. "Somebody told me it's what stops the Sun from collapsing."

  "That's right."

  "How come?"

  "The atomic nuclei distort under the pressure as you get deeper inside. That causes their electric charges to a polarize, creating internal repulsion forces. The Terrans thought it was due to nuclear fusion photon pressure—that the reactions going on in the photosphere happen deep in the interior."

  "They seem to have gotten a lot of things wrong," Mirine said. "The main reason Lorili wants to do the sequencing studies on these corpses is to see if she can make more sense out of the time scales. There's just too much in common between us and them biologically. She says they refused to see the evidence for the earlier unstable period in the Solar System—because of what they went through. Admitting it would have been too traumatic."

  "Yes, Kyal and Bryskek are looking at all that too. There's a guy called Frazin who has a theory that what was repressed came out as their religions, and maybe helps explain why Terrans were so compulsively warlike." Yorim fell silent for a moment. Then he went on, "They were obsessed by bombs. I never thought about it that way before. They had to resort to wild quantum improbabilities to convince themselves it could work. But maybe that was why they made the Sun into one."

  They arrived at the pads and switched back into the common circuit while the canisters were loaded aboard the lander. When the last one had been hoisted into the cargo bay and was being fastened down, Mirine moved to the edge of the lighted zone around the pads to look once more over the chilling desolation of the lunar surface by starlight. She and the two technicians would be returning to Explorer 6 with the load. In her mind, she tried to imagine the last Terrans who had left this very place long ago, heading for where? What story did the mutilated corpses, destroyed vehicles, and other signs of violence tell of? Probably no-one would ever know.

  A shadow darkened the light coming from behind. She realized that Yorim had joined her. "Bleak and lonely out there," he said.

  "That's just what I was thinking. And about the things that went on right here, all that time back. . . . Do you think they ever got there—to Providence, wherever it was?"

  "Who can say? We only know that they left. If any ship that all this hardware was for were still here on Luna, we'd have found it by now."

  Mirine looked up at the shining canopy of stars. In the clarity of the lunar night, their different colors and shades were easily discernible, embedded in places in patches of wispy nebulas, crimson and violet. "Just imagine, their descendants could be out there somewhere right now," she said. We have Venus to return to—a world with people, towns, a civilization, security. . . . They had nothing, did they? They were heading into a complete unknown. And even if they came back, what kind of prospect would they have faced to come back to? The aftermath of a worldwide war. And if it had been later still, their race extinct. Or was it the war that wiped them out, do you think? Nobody knows for sure, do they? . . . Yorim?" He had moved around so that the light from the pad illuminated his face through his visor, and was staring at her with a strange, fixed expression. "What's the matter?" Mirine asked him.

  "Say that again." His voice was odd, distant, as if his mind were racing over something.

  "What?"

  "About them coming back."

  "I said that if they came back, it would have been just to the survivors of a war. Or maybe to nobody at all. . . . Why?"

  "Before that. You said we have security and things to return to. . . . It's so obvious, isn't it? The same thoughts would have occurred to them too. They would have known that when the time came for them to return, it might be to a world that had been destroyed. So they'd leave behind some means to ensure their own survival, wouldn't they. That huge inventory of equipment and materials! It makes sense now."

  "Yorim, what are you talking about?"

  "Providence. Maybe it wasn't a stockpile to take with them—or even anything ever brought to Luna at all. Now it all makes sense. It was a survival cache that they left behind, to draw on if they needed it, and get them started again when they came back! Especially with a major war breaking out. All of a sudden I think those navigational directions that Kyal and I were looking at might be a lot more significant than we thought. They're not t
alking about any supplier's location or forwarding consolidation point. They point to Providence itself. Providence is somewhere Earth!"

  * * *

  Yorim sought out Kyal as soon as he was back inside, and put the idea to him. Kyal was immediately convinced, and together they began reviewing other outstanding questions in this new light. A lot of things seemed to fit. Kyal called Casselo, who was still at Explorer 6, and went through it again. Casselo took the matter to Sherven, who agreed that it represented a breakthrough. After discussing it further, Sherven decided to call the principal scientific section leaders and department heads together up on Explorer 6 for Kyal and Yorim to present their new theory. Casselo set things up accordingly, and Kyal and Yorim booked themselves onto the next transport due to leave Luna."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Amingas Quarles had read an article somewhere by a biologist who thought the climate of Earth was better suited to Venusians than that of Venus itself, and predicted mass migrations, the founding of cities and nations, and a general population explosion over the next fifty years. He felt he could believe it too, as he and the pilot who had brought him made their way up the short but steep trail from the sandy flat where the helicopter had landed to the jumble of tents and trucks beyond the scarp of rock above them that was designated Camp 27. The air was bracing and clean, coming in as a breeze over the blue waters visible below to the west. The views had been as clear all the way from the Regional Base two hundred miles to the north, where the office for coordinating geological surveys of the western side of northern America was located.

  Uzef, who had been supervising the diggings, was waiting at the top of the trail, with a broad grin showing strong white teeth, which he emphasized with an exaggerated welcoming bow. He was wearing a floppy brimmed hat, stained bush shirt, shorts, and heavy work boots, and had acquired a deep tan from the Terran sun. Quarles exchanged greetings and introduced the pilot.

  "You look like one of the natives, resurrected," he told Uzef. "You'll end up settling here. I'd bet on it."

  "One could do worse," Uzef said. He turned to lead the way back toward the camp. "How long has it been now? Two months? Three?"

  "I'm really not sure. I've lost track too. Are we getting old, Uzef? Or us it just the work keeping us busy?"

  "Well, you don't look any older, so it must be the work. They say it keeps us young, anyway. Did you have a good flight down?"

  "Smooth all the way. Great views of the mountains. There's the man I'd recommend if you decide to get your own chopper added to the unit." Quarles gestured at the pilot. "Knows how to handle one. Someone told me once that flying a chopper is like being on top of a slippery invisible ball, and the thing is trying to slide off one way or another all the time. The job is to keep it there. Well, this fellow has the trick. Is that right?" he asked the pilot.

  "It's like everything else, I guess. Just takes a bit of practice."

  "Would you like to stop off at the camp first?" Uzef asked. "Cool off with a beer, maybe? Or we can go straight on up."

  Quarles drew in a lungful of the air. "Oh, let's go straight on up and see it. I was just thinking to myself how invigorating it is here. No wonder you're looking so fit, out in it all the time. The beer will go down better afterward."

  "That's because I don't get chauffeured around in helicopters all the time," Uzef gibed. He looked across at the pilot. "They live too soft a life, you see—these people up at Regional Base." The pilot grinned.

  "Well, I don't know so much about that," Quarles said. "You should try coming out and spending some time at the place we've been working in. A mile deep and over twenty across. The Terrans called it the Grand Canyon."

  "Yes, I've seen some of the reports. An arc discharge gouge that long. Amazing."

  "Running up and down there for a week or two will get you into shape, I can tell you."

  "How are things going otherwise up north?" Uzef asked. "Are you finding anything interesting these days?"

  "Not so much in the major cities," Quarles replied. "Most of them were targeted in the final war and pretty totally devastated. That Altian that we met, Xervon, he told me they estimated that the Los Angles area alone was hit by at least forty nuclear bombs."

  "Vizek!"

  "The smaller towns are better when it comes to yielding anything useful. Some of the space bases were farther north too. But I'm not sure what they've been finding there. That's more for the archeologists and archeotechnlogists than geologists." Quarles gave Uzef a nudge. "You might be needing some of them up here if this is what you think, eh?"

  "Well, let's see what you make of it first, anyway."

  They came over a rise of sand and rocks. Quarles halted to take in a general impression before going closer. The peak stood on the far side of a depression that bore the vaguely discernible lines of a dried-up creek bed meandering along its center. It had been taken as a natural part of the ridge and attracted little attention from aerial survey photographs. And then, a couple of weeks, Uzef's team had arrived in the area on a ground exploration tour of the coast.

  The mounds of sand piled along the base of the peak below a hollowed-out amphitheater showed where the slide had occurred. It had uncovered part of a flat, sloping surface that didn't look natural at all. Further digging and clearing on the south and west faces had established the general form and revealed that it had a layered and ribbed structure.

  Uzef tilted his hat forward to shield the glare from the sun and gestured with an arm. "You can see the general lines there, and there. . . . And that digging up there is where we've located the summit. I don't think there's any doubt that it's a pyramid."

  Quarles stared, taking it in for a while. "I think you might have a first here, Uzef," he said at last. "None of the ones found so far in the Americas has been this far north. I'm fairly sure that goes for the ones across the eastern ocean on the main land mass too."

  Uzef shook his head. "This is much more recent than any of those, Amingas," he said. "From what we've been able to make out, it seems to have had an electrical function." He took off his hat and mopped his forehead with a bright red handkerchief that he took from the pocket of his bush shirt. "You know, if the Terrans had possessed that kind of technology, and I had to guess, I would have said it's a spacecraft discharge attractor."

  Nostreny said that Jenyn had been called away in connection with some business that needed attending to up on Explorer 6. He hadn't volunteered any more, and since it was really none of his business, Elundi hadn't asked. But it had been very sudden and was certainly very strange. The bad feelings between them over the Lornod affair had been about to boil over after simmering all morning; then Jenyn had received a call on the internal line, got up and left without a word, and not been seen since. Elundi learned later from the receptionist at the front desk that he had left with a visitor. The receptionist's description left little doubt that the visitor had been Derlen. But when Elundi called Derlen to find out what was going on, she had been evasive, said she couldn't meet him, and she hadn't returned his further calls since. Compounding the mystery, Tyarla didn't seem to be available either.

  Elundi could only conclude that Tyarla had indeed gone to the provosts, and that she and Jenyn were now involved in some kind of investigation or whatever other procedures had been initiated up on Explorer 6 as a consequence. He could only attribute the abrupt change in Derlen's behavior to her having formed some kind of involvement with Jenyn that she hadn't told him about. If it pointed to a more fickle and less stable and reliable side to her than he had, in his fond enthusiasm, imagined, he would rather find out about it now than after an inordinate investment of time, wherewithal, and emotional energy, he told himself philosophically. But she was a great dancer nonetheless.

  Iwon was unable to provided any further information other than that Lorili's request for a transfer to Explorer 6 had gone through surprisingly quickly. Not only was she already there, but her assistant, Mirine, who had gone with her from Rhombus, h
ad just joined her after a detour via Luna. They were setting up to work with some Terran corpses discovered on Farside, and Mirine had gone there to arrange their shipment to Explorer 6. In the process, she had brought news of a new theory that was causing considerable excitement there. Iwon wasn't really clear why himself, but apparently Lorili and Mirine referred to it jokingly as Mirine's theory. The essence of it was that the "Providence" code word that everyone had been expressing so much interest in was now thought to refer not to some destination that the Terrans had been migrating to, but a repository somewhere down on Earth. Shortly afterward, a memo came down through the official channels asking Linguistics to make a special compilation of any recent findings and references pertaining to "Providence," for a scientific meeting that was being organized up on Explorer 6.

  As well as going through his own files, Elundi took it upon himself to check also for any items that Jenyn might have been working on at the time of his sudden disappearance. He came across the piece that he himself had passed over to Jenyn concerning the engineering inspector who had flown from Santa Cruz to perform post-delivery tests and been back in the Bay area by evening. It had been flagged for inclusion on a report but not processed. If Providence had been on Earth, the reference to "post-delivery tests" perhaps carried even more significance than had been evident then, Elundi noted with interest. In any case, the item clearly warranted action. He attached it to the others that he had collected and forwarded the package to Kyal Reen, which was the name specified on the departmental memorandum.