The Power of the Dhin
Page 8
Chuck tabbed past a few slides, then said, “Well, um, yes. Now that we know, ah, are pretty sure, that the effect is specific to the Dhin engine, we can create a plan for rescue that looks like what you see here.”
He pointed to a diagram that showed points, lines, and dotted lines that described the paths of what were clearly several different craft.
“One idea is to take an orbiter without a Dhin engine along in one of the larger craft and jump to the system farther out. About here, and then send the smaller craft that will use only traditional thrust as a sort of tugboat to fetch Thys if he ends up stranded.”
“So you’re saying we risk another vessel—and one of the larger ones?”
“Risk? Well, again, we’ll have better data about how the gravity sink effect falls off over distance before we would do that, and our experimental results, which we’ve just been through, don’t suggest undue risk for a craft without a Dhin drive. Um, Anna, think of the possibilities here!”
“Possibilities, Dr. Wiedeman?”
“Ah, yes, Dr. Schaffer. Possibilities. If we can safely get to and from all the craft out in the graveyard, there are clearly many discoveries we might make! Some of these may not be Dhin ships, to start. What if they have different technology we haven’t seen yet?”
“Well, we’ll see, I suppose,” said Schaffer.
Chuck grimaced internally at the woman’s sour demeanor.
We have a plan. It’s a good plan. This will work.
Thys
The tubelike corridor curved away at an angle upward, the smooth bulges and distensions along the walls creating sweeping oval shadows as Thys looked around to find the best path to follow.
There were precious few handholds or other areas to use as anchors, so a poorly planned push or leap would mean sliding farther than desired. Thys couldn’t see that far ahead. It wouldn’t do to discover an unexpected opening that put him adrift, requiring the use of his suit’s jets to reorient and find purchase. No need to waste propellant, although he had plenty. Waste wasn’t the real concern.
The engine will be up ahead if it’s at the center of the ship.
He checked his oxygen and CO2 levels, then tapped lightly against the wall, adjusting his orientation. Satisfied, he pushed off with his feet, sending him sailing down the corridor at an angle that would intersect where the curve steepened and his line of sight ended.
As he drifted forward, he looked back and forth, checking for anything new in the area his helmet lights could illuminate as he moved forward. This far into the ship, there were far fewer holes. He’d only found one in this section of the hallway. Like the others toward the center, they didn’t seem to have followed a path straight inward, like a drill, but instead turned and moved like a drop of oil moving into gaps between dissimilar materials.
Like it was alive almost. And seeking something.
Now Thys could see farther along up the curve. He smiled. There was something different. The corridor split into two, at an initially acute angle, then spread more widely as the two halls curved apart. There, in each hallway, was an archway that opened up into what was clearly a much larger space. Thys’s smile widened. He could see a faint glow. And as he moved his head back and forth slightly, he saw a telltale shimmer in each archway.
“Control, look at this. There’s an active field up there. And see that glow?”
“Roger. Thys, there’s no question that there’s still power. But that gives more questions than answers. Why is the rest of the ship powered down? And no atmosphere? But in here, a field still on. Somehow it’s OK. It could still have atmosphere. Or automated defenses. Proceed with caution is an understatement. Over.”
“Understood, Control. If that’s what it looks like and there’s a field running, I might not be able to get in there anyway. Unless there’s someone there to let me in, or there’s a control on this side. Can’t see from here.”
Thys touched down gently against the wall where the corridors split, flexing his knees and grasping the rounded corner once he’d slowed. Turning to face down the hallway on his right, he evaluated the area near the archway, looking for a spot to gain purchase on arrival. He spied a flat oval protrusion that looked familiar.
“Hey. I see what looks like a control surface. Right there. It looks like something from the videos of Jake at the Dhin station. This might work.”
“Roger. Again, proceed with caution.”
Thys oriented himself with his planned landing spot, released his grip on the wall, and tapped the propellant controls to nudge him toward it. He didn’t stick to the landing but managed to wedge himself in place. The faint shimmer belied the presence of a broad-spectrum Dhin field. The Dhin had tuned the field generators given to humanity as prototypes, set to deflect and eliminate the momentum of any mass striking the field and absorbing any photons with wavelengths other than visible spectrum. This assistance had been generous, as the engineers found tuning the fields to be one of the tougher problems to solve.
He considered this as he assessed the faintly shimmering field, which likely created an impenetrable barrier. Or perhaps it was an air lock. Humans wouldn’t put one this far inside a ship, but who knew? A Dhin field could be entirely black, entirely reflective, or transparent. This one had a faint purple tinge and wasn’t as dark as sunglasses, but like a light window tint on a car.
He leaned over and looked straight in.
Let it be. It has to be. We have a Dhin field here. Or something close to it. Some sort of field. There’s power. There has to be something generating it.
Thys sucked in a breath as his eyes confirmed his guess. He’d known already, as Control had. The electric-blue light emanated from a fat cigar-shaped object in the center of the chamber. Several arches and rings that enclosed the area surrounding the alien engine obscured his view. But it was surely the same tech. Or something so similar that it made little difference.
It didn’t have the doughnut shapes at each end of the drive as the prototypes had. There were transparent sections along the central cigar shape that, like those on the engines provided by the Dhin, emitted the glaring, washed-out neon-azure glow. The sections, like the framework around the engine, didn’t have the same shapes as what the Dhin had provided.
But heck, we can’t doubt it. Look at it. That’s what it is. Now can I get in there? Do I want to?
Forcing himself to look away, Thys examined the rest of the chamber he could see through the arched shielded portal. Now that he looked beyond the glow, there was something very different here than in the rest of the ship.
What is that stuff?
He realized the walls, the nearby floor, and other surfaces away from the drive had something like black and gray dust and dirt on them. Swept away from the chamber’s center. There were tiny lines where there was less of the grit and powder, and lines radiating outward where there was less. A pattern. Like something had blown this dirt away from the drive. Out toward the edge.
“Control, can you see this? The resolution may not be quite enough. Here.”
Thys crouched down and leaned in, close to what served as the floor in his current orientation.
“See this?” He continued, “There’s something in there all over the place. It’s not out here.”
From this closer view Thys could see that the black and neutral gray particles were of various sizes, but all close to that of coarse sand and ranging up to that of small ball bearings.
“We can make something out. Are those scorch marks, Thys? Zoom in and use the close-up view on your camera.”
“Don’t look like scorch marks, Control. This isn’t a coating. Look now,” he said as he switched the camera to the requested zoom mode.
“Aha,” said the engineer on the comm, “that’s weird. You haven’t found anything like that throughout the rest of the ship.”
“No, Control,” replied Thys, “and Jake didn’t have dust and dirt all over the Dhin station either.”
“That’s right,
Thys,” said Jake. “This is something new. We have to think about how this affects our course of action. If we can get this shield down, are we sure we want to? We don’t know what that stuff is. Over.”
“Roger, Control. Well, it doesn’t look like it’s eaten into the surface in there, and there aren’t signs that this is residue from a blast or an incineration, I don’t think. What would metal look like in that case? We don’t know if it’s hot on that side of the field, I suppose.”
An engineer from the physics team replied, “Thys, of course we’re not sure, but we can’t know from here. It could be that it’s corrosive but the surfaces in there are impervious. It could just be elemental residue from something that someone left there. Degraded by some process we haven’t seen.”
“Right,” said Jake. “We haven’t seen any weapons, as we all know. This could be the first.”
“It doesn’t look like fly ash, though,” said the engineer, “but we don’t know what the original material composition was. They’d have had to use an incredibly high temperature, but anything organic wouldn’t look like this. I don’t think that’s what it is.”
“So it’s something else. Maybe,” said Thys. “Control, see the slightly larger bits? They look spherical. There aren’t any irregular shapes in the largest grains. It’s not dirt.”
“Yes. We can see that now that you’ve zoomed in.”
“Well,” Jake said, “if it isn’t caustic, acidic, or gooey, do we think the stuff will foul up anything on his suit? There’s no atmosphere on this side. None is floating in there, but we can’t know if there’s atmosphere until we manage to drop that field—if we do.”
“So what do we think?” asked Thys. “Are we going to risk it? Do you need to have a debate on your end, Control? It would stink to get this far and then fall foul of some black oil alien monster or some weapon that I shouldn’t have messed with.”
“But if it’s inert,” said Jake, “we can of course try to learn more about what happened. That drive in there is bigger than any we’ve made. The propulsion team here is drooling. I’m thinking try to get that field turned off and then risk sacrificing your multitool. Touch the stuff with that. We don’t know if there’s atmosphere over there, but if there is, it might be safe—like it was for me on the alien space station.”
Thys heard other voices before the mic cut off on the other end. Jake would have the final word, and with his experience he was the best equipped to assess the situation. No one else had set foot on an alien-built structure out here. Thys focused his thoughts and tried to remain steady.
There don’t seem to be any crew in there on the defensive. Heck, we wanted this. We’ve wanted this since we started exploring.
He straightened up and began examining what ought to be the controls on this side. It was only an assumption—and a biased one—that what was here would control the field.
No need to wait for their decision to see what’s up. Exposure to some contaminant is a moot point if I can’t get in there.
He focused on the oval panel. It had rounded geometric shapes inlaid in it. Triangular, circular, and oval. None glowed or had a transparent or translucent character. This wasn’t quite the same as the control surface on the prototypes, nor like what Jake had encountered on the station.
Well, not that easy, then.
He looked at the shapes, relaxing his mind to see whether a pattern jumped out at him.
Who knows what an alien would think?
Thys waited. Jake would have a decision soon enough. Only two minutes later, the wait was over.
“Thys, if we can turn that field off, we’re moving forward with this exploration. First, make a circuit of the chamber. Just because that panel’s not lit up doesn’t mean there’s not one somewhere else in there that is.”
“Roger. I’m going to need help with deciphering the panel symbols. You see ’em. They’re new. You have images of this set from the feed. Too bad we don’t have an AI to help.”
“Heh. Right. ‘Help.’ Well, there’s one thing to try before you move on and make your circuit. Tap it. We may wind up getting nowhere with that. Some of the other controls, as you know, expect galvanic response from flesh. Your glove tips work for touch screens, but we don’t know if that would work here.”
“I’m not taking a glove off in a vacuum. That’s a deal breaker,” Thys said.
“And we’re not asking you to,” replied Jake.
“OK. Let’s see.”
He reached out and tapped the panel, touching a triangular shape on the left side of the oval. The surface didn’t flex. It was hard and smooth. Thys blinked in surprise. The rim of the oval flashed, then lit with a deep-green glow.
“Hah! Well, here we go!” Thys exclaimed.
“Yeah, Thys. That’s great, but stop for now and make the circuit of the room. We know this one’s active. There still might be something different elsewhere,” cautioned Jake.
Thys heard the excited murmuring from the various team members in the control room.
“Roger, Control. Heading around to the right. Starboard, I suppose, given the orientation of that engine. This way goes up and then curves across the top of that chamber.”
“Roger, Thys. Proceed,” said an engineer. “Starboard. Noted.”
Thys pushed and guided his way up the tubular corridor. He knew what the path had to take at a minimum to go above the ceiling of the shielded chamber. He hadn’t seen any ports or openings in that area of the ceiling. So while a control surface wasn’t expected, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be one.
He looked back and forth, up and down, in a controlled fashion, taking in all of the view as he moved up and around the curve. Once at the point along the way that was at the maximum height of the arch to clear that part of the ceiling, the way before him split again, like it had on his approach below, but bearing off at between thirty-three and forty-five degrees in each direction.
So not entirely symmetrical. Well, to port has to keep me headed along the outside of the engine room.
No protrusions or indentations stood out here other than the usual grooves and ribbons that ran parallel with the direction of the halls or around them. After looking slowly up, around, and across the area, he headed to the left with a puff of propellant from his suit, the light from his helmet illuminating the curve ahead.
When he reached the point where the other side of the chamber was in line, he saw this area too was different. The way ahead split again, left and right, but with another corridor heading forward along the axis of the ship. Thys smiled as he looked down toward where the floor of this hall became the outer wall of the engine room. Two openings there would access the chamber. He saw clearly the blue electric glow and the faint shimmer of the field he expected would be here too, enclosing the chamber entirely. Dhin fields were always ellipsoid.
He grinned as he saw two more protrusions on the walls alongside the arched portals.
At least two here.
Thys proceeded toward the arches, aiming carefully. Once he landed between the two, he began his slow visual sweep of the area, looking first across the three hallways leading away, saving the portals and panels for last. The way to port had more of the scattered holes present, although still randomly scattered in the area. There were also more present as his view moved toward the centerline of the ship and the corridor there. For whatever reason, he’d seen fewer on his transit above the engine room.
Before his gaze left the center corridor, he blinked.
What’s that?
“Control, I see something. Different. Where the light from my headlamp starts to dim due to the curve upward. Over.”
“Roger, Thys. Agreed. There’s something there. Two things. Floating. Over.”
“Control, we may have found crew. Deceased. Those things are drifting. Moving very slowly relative to the ship. The objects themselves aren’t flexing or anything. Continue sweep and come back to this for a decision to investigate? Your call. Over.”
“Roger, Jake. Confirmed. Over.”
Thys broke his focus away from the apparently deceased crew and continued his visual sweep around the area. On completing the rotation, he slowed and focused on the nearest protruding panel and portal.
“Control, it looks the same in the engine room as it did from the other side. That stuff is spread out on the surfaces in there symmetrically all the way round. It’s what we expected. Well, I did. Examining these controls. After I look at the other panel, shall I tap on one of them? Over.”
“Thys, this is Chuck. Let’s look at both of them. We may want time to try to sort out what those symbols are, but probably not long. They can only mean so many things, but the translation could be so odd that it’s not doable without seeing what things happen.”
Jake’s voice followed with, “Look, then we’ll have you poke them. Over.”
“Roger, Control.”
Thys held his view on the surface, noting that from his memory, the same few indentations comprised the panel. He then looked to the one to port, on the far side of the other archway.
“Control, these look the same. Poke at this one? Over.”
“Thys, one minute. Over.”
He resisted the urge to poke at the panel before him. It did look the same as the other two. Whether that was helpful remained to be seen. The complementary desire to turn and head down the hallway to the fore and explore their find—evidence of crew—called to him.
Patience.
Thys busied himself with his heads-up display, checking his rebreather, suit diagnostics, and environmental data. Less than one minute passed before the comm clicked on again.
“Thys, Chuck here. Jake and I agree. Poke away. Pick a panel.”
“Roger, Control.”
He oriented on the closer panel, to port, and straightened out, moving his body so that he could see into the engine room but wasn’t in front of the portal and next to the field.