Impact

by Brandon Q Morris

  He went after her and could see the woman was trying to escape down the corridor. “No!” he yelled.

  It wasn’t easy to try helping someone when you couldn’t communicate with her. Now the airlock door started to creak. In this position, he would be easy to spot from the doorway, but he couldn’t hide from the visitor, because the unknown woman would try to run away again. He pointed the weapon in the direction of the airlock. The naked woman now held out her hand as if it were a weapon, her pointer finger the barrel and her thumb the release. Then she pointed with her left hand at the knuckle of her pointer finger.

  What was she trying to tell him? He looked at the weapon. There was a small lever on the side of the barrel. Did she want him to move the lever? The woman most likely knew weapons like this much better than he did. He pushed the lever back and she nodded. Then she crouched down and tried to cover herself with her arms.

  The airlock door opened. He was ready to fire the weapon.

  “Okay, little brother, don’t do anything stupid,” Anna shouted out to him.

  Boris hurried to her and gave her a hug.

  She quickly pushed him away. “Sorry, but it looks like someone wants to try to run away.”

  “Did you bring everything? Maybe it’d be better for you to try to help her—woman to woman. She must think I’m a monster. I’m sure Earthlings have never seen anything like a Snarushi before.”

  “Okay, let me do the rest, but leave me the weapon, okay? She seems to have a healthy respect for that, at least.”

  “Thanks, Anna.”

  “No need to thank me. Let’s see if we can figure out what you’ve caught here.”

  “She must’ve been there for months, at least, as malnourished as she is. Just look at her. Still, she doesn’t seem to be so thrilled about being rescued.”

  “You’d probably be the same way if you were woken up after several months by a mutant with shiny green skin.”

  “Yes, that’s true, Anna. I’ll see you outside.”

  He climbed into the airlock and closed the door. The air was pumped out and the coldness flooded in. Finally, he was back in his element. He would never be able to be together with a human for a long time, including Jenna.

  But before that fact mattered, he had to find her.

  A human in a spacesuit came out of the airlock half an hour later. Boris knew it had to be the unknown woman, but from a few meters away it could have been Jenna. His heart rate immediately began to increase. She was about the same size as his lost friend, and the woman’s face appeared just as white as Jenna’s in the sunlight. Not much more than that was visible behind the helmet visor.

  “Wo?” she asked.

  ‘Wo’ was an Old German question word that had been a popular slang word on Titan a long time ago. It meant ‘where.’ Apparently, Anna had identified a few words that they both knew. Geralt would have to translate the rest. He was the archeologist, after all.

  “Wo?” the woman asked again.

  “Sorry,” Boris said. “Up there!” He pointed in the general direction where the ship was following the asteroid.

  “Sorry, up there,” the woman repeated. Her pronunciation was excellent. She seemed to be quite skilled and well educated, maybe a scientist instead of a mining crewmember.

  “Sorry,” he said again, while raising his hand and bowing his head.

  “Entschuldigung,” she said, repeating the gesture.

  That word also sounded vaguely familiar to him. “Entschuldigung,” he repeated.

  “She’s good, right?” Anna said. “I’ve already learned more than ten words from her.”

  “You’re good, too,” Boris said. “You were always better than me at languages.”

  “Shall we launch?” Anna said. “Abschuss?”

  “Ja, Abschuss,” the woman said, “shall we launch.”

  Anna took a cable out of her tool belt and attached one of its carabiners to him, a second to the woman, and a third to herself. Then she adjusted the jet pack. “Hold on tight!” she cautioned.

  Boris gripped the cable and held out his right hand to the unknown woman. She grasped his hand tightly. Her tiny fingers, even covered by the spacesuit’s gloves, disappeared in his hand. Then they were all pulled abruptly up into the sky.

  4802.12

  It tore him apart every time he saw the new woman from behind. Her stature and size reminded him so much of Jenna, and they had the same feminine gait that no Snarushi could emulate, recognizable even in a spacesuit. And, she’d even gone and sat in the commander’s seat, where Jenna had always sat before, and then the Earthling waved to him.

  But any trace of illusion disappeared as soon as she spoke. Sara Renberg—her name, she’d told them—had an unusually deep, powerful voice, which would have suited a commander. When she spoke everyone listened, even when she spoke a little too quietly, which was often the case.

  They didn’t consider Sara Renberg to be a guest, but instead their prisoner. They weren’t about to let the Earthling go until they found Jenna. Maybe they could exchange her for Jenna. They were taking turns watching over her. They locked her in the garden to give her time to sleep.

  Anna had locked the radio in the Earthling woman’s spacesuit to the general channel. Whatever the woman said was broadcast throughout the entire ship. During his regeneration periods in the tank, Boris caught snippets of conversations now and then. He could tell that Geralt and Anna were slowly building up a basis for communicating with the woman.

  It was now time for him to take over for Anna so that she could get some desperately needed time in the tank. “Good morning!” he said.

  “Good Morgen!” Sara answered.

  “You’re a fast learner.”

  “Ihre language ist a mixing of German, Russian, Danish, and English. I am knowing three of those languages schon. I am just needing to work on my, uh, Wortschatz... oh, vocabulary. Sometimes I still don’t, um, understand everything.”

  That was also very practical for her, of course. If they asked her something she didn’t want to answer, she could simply claim that she couldn’t understand them. On the other hand, it was close to miraculous that they had so quickly developed a way to communicate at all. Sara had to be quite gifted with languages. It was hard to imagine she was just ‘an ordinary member of an ordinary mining crew,’ as she claimed.

  “I found you while I was looking for one of our crewmembers,” Boris exclaimed.

  “I know. Anna told me of Jenna. I’m sorry, I know nothing about her.”

  “How did you get on the asteroid?” Geralt had previously asked the question, but it was interesting to see if she would change her answer when answering him.

  “With a shuttle. We are mining people.”

  “Miners. Where is your shuttle?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I don’t know. I was, uh, nonconscious, until you found me.”

  “Unconscious, yes. It looked like a machine was keeping you alive. Who built that machine?”

  “I don’t know. It is not our technology.”

  “It’s not ours, either.”

  “If I believe you, then there must be someone else here, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  How could he know if what she was saying was the truth? The machines and the coffin-like box she had been in had definitely been adapted for human physiology. But it wasn’t the Earthlings’ technology? That seemed unbelievable.

  “Let me talk to my people, please. They miss me. They will be so happy that I am alive, and they will be happy to let me help you to find Jenna.”

  She got tripped up with longer sentences, but despite the fact that she had just started learning Titanic yesterday, she spoke fabulously. Was she perhaps an AI cleverly disguised in human form? Had Anna already examined her more closely? He would have to ask her after she came out of the tank again. He was probably just being paranoid. The fact that they had still not heard anything from Jenna
was making him more worried than he cared to admit.

  “There’ll be time for that later,” he said. “First, we want to talk to you ourselves.”

  Sara sighed and slid a little deeper into the seat. It looked as if she was freezing, even in a spacesuit, and it had to be at least 260 degrees in the command center. She wouldn’t be good for anything if they were on Titan. “Okay,” she said.

  “What happened when you got here? What do you remember?”

  “I... the asteroid flew off.”

  “The asteroid changed its orbit when you got here? You said you were part of a mining crew? What did you do before that happened?”

  “More slow, please, I cannot understand you too fast.”

  Boris slowed his words. “What did you do before the asteroid flew off?”

  “Nothing. Normal things that a miner does. Mining. Watch the machines.”

  “But there aren’t any mining machines here anymore.”

  “They are in the core of the asteroid. That is where the best raw materials are.”

  “But how did you survive here? We’ve found airlocks, underground rooms, and a system of corridors, but there’s nothing that points to the presence of people there. You’d need food, hygiene, water.”

  “It is all there.”

  “You’re saying that before your long sleep, those underground rooms were all inhabited?”

  “Yes. We lived there.”

  “We’ve found no traces of DNA. The rooms are all as clean as operating theaters.”

  That was a lie. They hadn’t even looked for any traces of DNA yet. But what the woman had said couldn’t be true. He was sure that the rooms had never been inhabited. Humans always left behind traces—holes in walls, scratches in the floors. The rooms looked as if they had just been carved out of the rock.

  “It has been long time,” the woman said. “Who knows what has happened from then until now?”

  “We’ve lost one of our crewmembers down there, that’s what’s happened.”

  “I am sorry. You must believe me.”

  His throat constricted involuntarily. He very much would have liked to grab the woman and shake the truth out of her.

  She was hiding something. Boris swallowed loudly. “How did the asteroid fly off?”

  “It... very small. Slight. Like now. Acceleration.”

  “Exactly like now?”

  “Exactly.”

  That would support the theory of a magnetic sail. It would only be able to impart minimal but constant acceleration. But where would the asteroid get the necessary energy?

  “Did you notice anything unusual or special with this asteroid?”

  “That was not our job. We just did our work, that’s all.”

  The woman wasn’t telling him everything. She hadn’t looked at him once while he was talking with her. “How did you get into that box?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know? What do you remember?”

  The woman closed her eyes, as if turning her gaze inward. “I had dreams, terrible dreams,” she said.

  Her face had changed. Now she was telling the truth. Two deep creases formed in her forehead, her eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together.

  “Tell me about your dreams.”

  Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “Dreams of machines. Terrible, awful dreams.”

  “Okay, I understand,” Boris said quickly. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have to talk about them. Your dreams can’t tell us what really happened.”

  Then he thought of the mesh net that had fallen off Sara’s head. He had to still have it somewhere. He should take a closer look at it. Maybe there was an actual, physical basis for the woman’s dreams.

  “Can I talk to my people now?”

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t allow that yet. We need to clear up a few things first.”

  He called Anna on the radio in the afternoon. He was sitting on the end of the folded-down door in the storage room with the tank. His legs were hanging off into the infinite.

  “I’d like to show you something,” his sister said.

  He thought of the mesh that had been on Sara’s head. He should’ve looked at it a long time ago. “Me, too,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “The armory.”

  He found Anna kneeling on the floor in the weapons’ storage room. Hundreds of small parts were spread out, elements that belonged to a weapon at one time. The former shape of the weapon was still visible, except its area had tripled. She had left some space between all the different parts, reminding him of a still-life, like an exploded-view drawing come to life.

  “Wow, this is very nice,” Boris said. “Very artistic. Did you do it?”

  “What? The weapon here? It’s a rail gun, or at least it was.”

  “No, how it’s all taken apart and then arranged so neatly again. It looks like a piece of art. I’d call it ‘Dark Energy.’”

  “Dark Energy?”

  “You can just imagine how dark energy increased the space between all these parts. You’re showing the innermost core of all the things. You’re an artist.”

  “I just disassembled a rail gun and then arranged the individual parts so that I could put the thing back together again.”

  “Well, it looks amazing. But why’d you do all this?”

  “That’s what I wanted to show you. A rail gun accelerates projectiles with the help of a magnetic field. It has a set of coils that you can see.” She pointed to several meter-long, shiny golden rods. “Here. When current flows through them, it produces a magnetic field,” she continued. “But we can also invert that. An external magnetic field induces a current in the coils. And we can measure that.”

  “With the rail gun?”

  “No, I’ll have to add a sensor when I reassemble the weapon. That shouldn’t be too complicated, though. There’s plenty of space in the barrel,” she said as she pointed to a gray piece with a multi-chamber interior.

  “Good. So, when will this magnetic field detector be ready?”

  “It should be ready to go tomorrow.”

  “Will we be able to use it from the ship?”

  “I doubt it. The ship will cause interference. We’ll have to go back to the surface.”

  “That should work nicely. I’d like to take the Earthling with us. Maybe it’d help jog her memory if she saw the room where I found her.”

  “Good idea, although I have the feeling that she’s keeping something from us. Right now, she’s with Geralt, going through the ship’s logs. He’s hoping that she’ll be able to help him find out more about our past. But it’d be better if the three of us go down there, anyway,” Anna said. “Not that we’re going to lose anyone else.”

  “So, will we still be able to use the rail gun as a weapon, even after your modification?”

  “You can bet on it.”

  4802.13

  This time he could use the jet pack again. They still hadn’t found any signs of the presence of Earthlings on the asteroid, and they weren’t trying to keep their plans secret from anyone this time, either. They wanted to figure out how the asteroid was breaking the laws of nature to propel itself.

  Jenna would have corrected that thought, because nothing could violate the rules of nature, not even the asteroid. Jenna would have said, “We’re going to find out what laws are governing the motion of (1288) Santa.”

  “I would feel better if I could fly with my own jet pack,” the Earthling said.

  “Feel better,” Boris echoed. “I suppose, but that’s too dangerous. To be honest, I don’t believe that you’ve told us everything that you know.”

  “Have you told me everything, then?” Sara pointed to the bulky device that Anna was carrying. “That is a weapon, unless you’re trying to trick me.”

  “Trick you. Yes, you’re right. It’s a rail gun,” Boris said.

  “Are you expecting bad guys?”

  “We want to use it to measure
the asteroid’s magnetic field.”

  “Ah, yes.” Even through the helmet’s visor he could see how the woman’s face brightened. “Magnetic induction. The coils of the rail gun are very sensitive. What are you thinking? Asteroids don’t have a magnetic field.”

  She was not just a member of a standard mining crew. He would bet that she was an expert research scientist, one of the best in her field. Why had the Earthlings sent her here? Because the asteroid had moved out of its orbit? That couldn’t be it. She’d already been here before that.

  It wouldn’t do any good to lie to her. If she really was a scientist, maybe she could even help them. “We think that the asteroid is using some kind of magnetic sail to move,” Boris said.

  “A magnetic sail?” She knit her eyebrows together. “I... I don’t know.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. Or maybe she knew something that they didn’t. Why didn’t she just come out and say whatever it was? If she continued to be silent, he might forget his manners and teach her that silence could be painful. No, he could not let himself go that far. Then he would no longer have the right to call himself a man. The woman was their captive. Why should she share her knowledge with them?

  “What’s wrong with the theory?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing. Maybe you’re right. Let’s do the measurements. Then we can see what to do next.”

  Sara Renberg let out a sharp yelp when the cable pulled her off the terrace and into the darkness. Boris had suggested that she launch herself and then orient herself to the sun, but she had declined. They would now see how she handled being in a world without an up or down.

  Over the radio he heard her voice fade away. She was panting and breathing loudly, but then she quieted. The woman wouldn’t give him any problems. She’d even acclimated very quickly to being immersed in this colorless sea without any point of reference. That was how it felt to be gliding through space after he switched off the jets and they were moving at a constant rate.

  Boris braked almost to a stop just above the surface. Sara flew right past him. She couldn’t brake herself, but he tightened his grip on the cable, pulled her toward him, and rotated her by 180 degrees.