Amongst themselves she and her scientist colleagues quietly conjectured. That it was a wormhole manifestation at its heart was a given. How it came to be and from where, those were the questions upon which they informally speculated. All discarded the notion that the origins were on Earth, despite its original discovery there.
She recalled one theory: that it came through a tear in the fabric of space-time. The man went no further with his theory, beyond his obvious declaration. It was such an insubstantial statement; she could not believe that the man had said it with a straight face, let alone the amount of conviction that he put behind such an indemonstrable assertion. She’d laughed at that, though not to the fellow’s face; she had not wanted to cause tears in the fabric of her work environment.
Tasimov had never dared put forth her own suppositions. Considering that there had never before been any effort in this direction of discovery, there had been no opportunity to perform any type of experiment to lend confidence to her suspicions. She had a much more esoteric view on the situation, though.
It became infinitely clear that her reluctance to share her thoughts had served her, when one of her male colleagues, Bridge Cooper, had published a theory that shadowed some of her postulates. It also took the spacetime tear through a proof in his new math equation. The collective laughter had been loud, despite its conservative scientist tone, and the subsequent ostracization was disturbing to behold.
Tasimov had felt sorry for the scientist. He was older like her, yet he seemed largely unaffected by the separation that came about. One day, not more than a week later, he disappeared. She hadn’t made much of it for a couple of days, but his absence stretched on. The same fellow-scientists who had mocked him also took note of his absence with an air of introspective concern. His disappearance was not the topic of any discussion, though, as if it were forbidden. They also abruptly distanced themselves from their mockery of the man, as if that conversation had never existed.
This event had been responsible, in part, for her decision to leave the role she had played for so long. It would have happened in any case, it just happened sooner. And now she was back too quickly.
It was clear that she had been cornered here. She could do nothing but act to discover what had been asked for, and then she could go home. She did not like Swan one bit, and it seemed to be a mutual feeling.
The sooner done, the better.
She decided that the first thing she would do would be to attempt contact with Cooper, the banished scientist.
She entered his name on a touchpad, preferring the tactile to vocal or sub-vocal commands. “Access Restricted” came the response. She had more than half expected this.
She wanted to have as little to do with the admiral as possible; who could get her the access? She might try a more direct approach; her clearance was high enough to allow entry just about anywhere on the station, though she’d been blocked from returning to Earth. She assumed that’s where Coop was.
She requested the files of her former colleagues. Surface data was available, but no specific contact information, and none remained on-station. All transferred? And to different places. Hmmm. Who else might know Coop? Or even might be able to retrieve him from where he was being kept?
The man had clearly been detained in some way; largely erased, other than his file. She hoped that he still lived. The only thing that she could think of was to check with the Brig; maybe Cooper had passed through there before being transferred elsewhere in his odd disappearing act.
She made her way to the spindeck’s detention block, flashing her opticals into the scanners, walking though one checkpoint after another. Finally, she arrived at the file room, one of many around M&M slice, this one dedicated to all transactions and records regarding detentions and prisoners that had moved through the station’s brigs.
She checked in with the file clerk and was set up with a reader terminal, wherefrom she could scan the carbon nano-memory structures. She picked the time frame, about two years ago, when Coop had disappeared from her work group. She quickly ran into impassible clearance restrictions. She was ready for that. She was looking for the absence of information, not exact answers.
Tasimov’s mind worked in an interesting way, which contributed to her success as a researcher. She had the ability to look at a situation, or a set of datum, and see the halo of missing facts that led beyond the main nucleus of things already known. It was like having clear sight in the peripheral field of view. Where most researchers had only a hazy idea of what lay there, she could make better-than-educated guesses about how things would add up. She was nearly always right.
This ability had led her toward correct conclusions about the military’s secret propulsion and the intelligence that she associated with it. In the interests of her daughter and granddaughter, she had kept her insights to herself. After leaving the research field, she had not expected to return in any capacity, let alone in the conscripted way that she had been pulled back.
As she approached the blocked data trail, which she had followed from multiple directions, it began to form a sort of pointer in her mind. The new trail led to a certain Earthside brig. After that it went cold. That was still okay. She went on to information that had no prohibitions; the historical duty rosters, for instance.
Now she loaded the roster of that brig into a search. And she struck pay dirt. This was unexpected. One of the jailers during that time, a sergeant by the name of Bellamy Amio, had been transferred to this station recently. He worked security detail, and… he reported directly to Swan.
Tasimov swore aloud. The clerk looked her way, a blank look on his face. He obviously did not speak Russian, or it would have been a shocked look.
If this security officer was reporting to Swan, he might not be the resource she hoped for. Her distaste for the admiral colored her expectations with a gloom. She wanted to get this done with minimal interactions with him. Based on the relationship so far, it seemed likely that the admiral would block her avenues to the answer that he sought, just to spite her. There was something evil about the man. This sergeant would likely be one of his minions.
She looked further for any other possibilities but this connection was the best by far, since she, herself, could not leave the station to search for Coop.
On her way out, she casually asked the clerk about Sgt. Amio’s current duty schedule. He was not on duty at the moment. She would query a vidisplay terminal for his quarters’ location. She had no intention of calling on him directly, but planned an “accidental” interception.
CHAPTER 53
EVENT: DAY 15, 1730 UT
The Light Skipper drifted in through the atmospheric boundary layers.
Moving at subsonic speed, they avoided the ear shattering hull noise and forge heat of a standard reentry. The ship’s sophisticated intelligence selected an atmospheric-dependent maximum speed for reentry. It would do so automatically when pointed into any atmosphere-shrouded planet or moon. Where there was no atmosphere, control fell back to the vessel’s captain.
The captains were busy with other tasks. The noise of turbulence was still loud, and Garrison yelled to be heard above it. “I’ve got the escape pod on the scan, we’re right on target. Looks like a good landing. Good site.” The surface was a host of plains and canyons, white and blue. He had pulled an info check, and a caution to “avoid during eclipse” flashed at the head of the data scoll. Not a problem. These only occurred every few hundred years in the dynamics of the orbit cycles. When the moon cut off light to the planet, a cataclysmic reaction, to which the warning referred, occurred with the return of the sunlight, as the solidified oxygen pools underwent explosive expansion.
Dominique searched for any life signatures in the area around the site as they approached. Considering the brain tissue found in the scientist’s SciPod, the captains were dubious as to the man’s survival. There were no signs in or around the
emergency craft. “We may be too late for whatever landed here,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any way someone in their right mind would have left the pod. Check out these temperatures.”
Garrison wished she hadn’t said “whatever,” but had to agree as he watched the landscape temperature read-out; it averaged—190°C. “If he survived that head-shot by some miracle, I don’t think he’d be in his right mind. Accidental suicide. But maybe the life-support failed?” Garrison figured that this man was dead by one twist of fate or another.
“No,” she contradicted, as she focused more tightly on the pod. “It shows two degrees internal temperature. Above freezing. Vacancy temperature. I think we will find a corpse in that refrigerator.”
“Alright, prepare for touch-down.” She chose a site that was clear but still walking distance to the pod. Their xeno-advanced craft warned of combustion and explosion hazards due to the extreme oxygen levels. The ship automatically chose compressed gas jets in concert with some mysterious, gravity-defying attributes, to achieve a vertical landing in the near-earth-standard gravity.
The surface was serenely calm until their approach created a momentary fog bank from the small amount of moisture in the compressed gas. As fast as it appeared, the fog froze out of the frigid atmosphere. Falling to the ground like a sparkling, magic dust, the air around the ship was left crystal clear once more.
Dominique studied the readings again. “The pod has been here for about a week and a half. If he was alive when he got into it, the pod would’ve reverted to vacancy setting if life signs zeroed out. Could have died of some other cause besides the head wound.” They were both thinking of the fetal shapes drifting in the pirate scow. To banish the image from her mind, she added, “If the pod was stuck on that interior temperature, a suit heater failure would lead to eventual death by hypothermia.”
This combination of circumstances was improbable, but they filled the nervous space with conjecture. Deprived of complete freedom of information exchange, both of their heads were filled with questions they wished to voice to one another. They could only read each other’s eyes.
They were safely down, and needed to do an investigation of the pod. He volunteered for the first outing. He planned to ask her to suit-up ‘as a precaution’. Their conversation would finally be free of restriction when she sealed the helmet. He’d make sure that she did, using the excuse that she’d be ready if there were any reason to have her follow him out.
As if someone had read his mind, the order came in from Center: take a trans-recorder. The conversation would be recorded from his end and transmitted to the ship simultaneously. Center picked up on the solution that had been overlooked the first time.
It would make it tricky, but he could still work out a way to have that talk with Dominique.
Before he suited up, he took a brief few minutes to do a simple, additional repair on the damaged EVA suits, allowing the announcement speaker/audio pick-up, on the suit’s exterior, to function again. It would seem routine to anyone watching, given the disrepair of the damaged suits. He left her suit next to her on his flight couch.
The fact that there was an atmosphere, however frigid, allowed for sound transmission outside the suit. He took the mandated recorder into the airlock with him. After he made the personal connections, he taped a sheet of insulation to the front of his suit. Instead of mounting the recorder inside the helmet, he secured it behind the sheet and against the external speaker. Dominique did not relay any complaint from Center.
The idea of both of them suiting-up would be typical planetside protocol, and Center should feel unthreatened by that fact, as long as he was transmitting their cross-talk in real-time.
He locked his helmet on, and started the suit systems and scrubbers. He opened the suit mike to the external speaker. “Dominique, are you reading me?”
He watched through the small window in the now closed airlock door as she held her helmet next to her ear. “Yes, fine.” She reached over the control board speaker, which monitored the trans-record, and waved it to silence.
“As protocol dictates, and since Center has full audio now, I’d like you to be suited and ready with your helmet sealed, in case I need your immediate assistance.” He could continue any private discussions by cutting off the external speaker. Center would never know that they weren’t hearing all of what was being said.
She responded in his ear. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful. We still don’t know about the source of the slaughter aboard that scow. We might just find that it came here with this pod.”
Garrison looked in at her and gave a thoughtful nod and said, “Okay, you get your suit on, just in case.” She nodded back. He turned to go, then lingered for a moment, turning back to watch her rise from her couch and open the crotch panel in her flight suit to don the EVA suit with its intimate personal system attachments. He was glad that his suit wasn’t transmitting physio-information back to Center, as his arousal pressed into his own suit connections. He turned away, storing the image, and activated the exterior airlock door.
A whoosh of atmosphere rushed in, equalizing the minor pressure difference, simultaneously condensing a thick fog. Again, it fell quickly like a curtain dropping, the flash-frozen ice crystals appearing like a fine silica dust on the floor of the lock. For a moment he couldn’t see past his faceplate, and he used his gloved hand to clumsily wipe away the frost that had formed.
He stepped out into a dimly lit, monotone-blue world. The ineffectual, far-away sun broke the environment’s single color into bluescale shades, from midnight blue-black, to cyan and cerulean… the color of Taylor’s eyes; her face floated into his inner vision. He set a pang of worry aside, and brought his attention back to the surroundings.
The impression was of a planet built from diamonds saturated with blue light; crystalline structures from a half-meter to a hundred meters high. There were bright glimmers of reflected light in the deeper shadows, amidst pockets in the jagged and broken water-ice. These must be small puddles of liquid oxygen. From the repaired suit pick-up he could hear occasional loud cracks, echoing like gunshots, as the sunlight worked its damage on the super-frozen H2O ice.
In the larger vista, he could see that there was a ridge of blue wall one hundred meters distant, and halfway to that was the escape pod. In the crystal clear atmosphere, he stepped carefully towards it around blue boulders. The surface he walked across was granite-like in texture, and as he moved toward the pod, some bits of fractured water-rock rolled under his step. He bent carefully, and scraped some into his glove. It was a mixture of white ice-sand and crystal pebbles, similar in appearance to a highly clarified quartz. “It looks valuable,” he said absently, then remembered that he wanted to take advantage of this time to talk clandestinely with Dominique.
He explained his last spoken remark for the audio record. “I’m speaking about the water-based rock and gravel,” and then carefully turned off the suit speaker, depressing the contact silently, and asked, “Dominique, is your helmet sealed?” She acknowledged that it was. He threw his handful of the non-precious gems towards a shady clump of ice, and resumed his walk. His external pick-up was still on, and he could hear his boots scuffing, and the soft sound of the thrown pebbles as some landed in shaded LOX puddles. With a glance, he saw solvent-like oxygen droplets splash up into the direct light of the weak sun. Thereupon, they instantly puffed into gas—a quickly disappearing ball of white smoke.
“I’ve got us on a private conversation. I’ll talk fast. You’ve guessed that Pirate Patrol One saw the same fate as that pirate scow, the entire crew except the one. You probably don’t know that there were some survivors as fetuses, and they are regrowing them.”
There was an exceptionally loud crack, it came up from the ice-plain under his feet. He froze, switching the speaker back on after he warned Dominique. “Can you give me a location on that, it sounded like a crevasse just open
ed up?” He stood still waiting, not wanting to risk a misstep.
He marveled at what a resource this world represented. It was probably protected, but it was tantamount to a fuel depot. He wondered about their liquid oxygen stores on QB1. The gaseous oxygen concentration would be too rich to breathe, were it at a breathable temperature. It would have a toxic effect on human lungs and other organs. Garrison wondered whether it would cause damage to their equipment. He held up his suited arm and hand in front of his faceplate, not seeing any points of concern there.
What about the ship? He was almost ten meters from the Butterfly, as he rounded to give it a glance. Mid-turn, a frightened Dominique’s voice came shouting into his helmet, “Look out, Garry. Behind you!”
The suddenness of the loud shout hit him like a blow as he turned. In the same instant, a hulking, unfamiliar moving form swung into his field of view. It moved toward him. His automatic reaction to her warning was to turn more quickly, while attempting a retreat from whatever the approaching threat might be. This upset his balance a bit, as he moved and leaned backwards. He had to take one quick step after another to keep from falling on his rear.
As he scrambled backward, praying not to fall, he saw, full on, the thing that her warning had been about. It was hulking, but still, it was humanoid. His mind quickly assembled the pieces as Dominique’s voice came again, “Oh, Garrison, I’m sorry…” and he landed, finally, on his butt, staring at the figure in the hibernation suit. The missing terrologist.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 30
