The Outback Stars

by Sandra McDonald

  Unexpectedly she began to laugh.

  “Lieutenant?” the RT beside her asked. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Jodenny stifled a giggle. “No worries.”

  When the birdie landed she expected Commander Picariello to be waiting for her with his one blue eye and one brown eye, but there was only the normal security checkpoint. Jodenny went directly to her cabin. It was as clean and orderly as she had left it. She took a long hot shower and told herself to relax, but when she checked her imail there was a summons from Commander Al-Banna.

  The message wasn’t marked urgent, but she headed for the Flats anyway. One of the AMs from Flight Services was sitting behind the counter.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” she said cheerfully. “Go right in.”

  The mate’s easy manner was obviously a ploy. No doubt a dozen armed security techs were waiting in Commander Al-Banna’s office. His hatch was open, though, and he was propping his prayer mat up in the corner. Muslims always knelt toward the bow while in space.

  “Sir? You wanted to see me?”

  “How was Mary River?”

  She chose her words carefully. “It was interesting, sir.”

  “I don’t see how. Mary River’s probably the most boring patch of self-righteous prudishness in the galaxy. You going to stand there or do you need an invitation to sit?”

  Jodenny sat.

  Al-Banna took his own chair and leaned back in it. He squeezed a hand vise in his left hand, methodically working the muscles. “Kal Ysten has asked to be transferred out of Food Services to Flight Support.”

  Jealousy stabbed through her. Ysten didn’t deserve Flight Support.

  “Don’t look so envious, Lieutenant. I told him he’s going to you instead. Apparently he’s desperate enough to get out of the galley that he accepted. If you can train the idiot properly, he’ll make a fine assistant for you.”

  She was so alarmed that she lost her sense of tact. “Sir, I have enough idiots of my own.”

  Al-Banna grinned and squeezed the vise a few more times. “You don’t have a choice. The minute we leave Mary River, he’s yours. Take young Ysten and mold him into a fine officer. Either that or beat him until he bleeds. I have no preference.”

  “Yes, sir.” She didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed, honored or burdened. The aches of the trip through the Mother Sphere still lingered in her bones and muscles, and she had hopes of crawling into her bed for about twenty hours’ sleep. She remembered the strength of Myell’s hand in hers, and a row of broken Mother Spheres in the green-tinted sunlight.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Sir?”

  Al-Banna put the vise down. “If Ysten gives you serious trouble, you can come to me. I hope you know that’s true about anything at all. You have questions, you have doubts, you tell me. Understood?”

  She swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. So what did you really think of Mary River?”

  For a moment she was tempted to tell him everything.

  “Just another day, another planet, sir,” she said, and left it at that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Myell had spent a restless night in the open-bay enlisted barracks, listening to other men snore and fart and mumble. Intermittent sleep brought visions of Mother Spheres stretching off into the mist, their stones crumbled and covered with moss. Yellow light followed, sending him spiraling into darkness and sickness. “Choose,” the shaman said, and the Rainbow Serpent hissed across the sky. By sunrise Myell was shaving bleary-eyed in a mirror, and at the spaceport he was first in line to board the birdie. Back on the Aral Sea he dumped his gear in his cabin. When he pulled out his mother’s jewelry box, Koo climbed up on the rock in her aquarium and peered down at it.

  “I told her I didn’t want it,” he muttered.

  Myell rested his hand on the box for a moment, then stashed it unopened in his locker and stretched out on his bunk. He could still feel the enervating effects of the yellow light, the weakness that made his bones feel like water. For the first time he let himself dwell on what they had found. A secret transportation system. A whole new Alcheringa. But he didn’t think it had been meant for mankind. Grabbing his gib, he started skimming Aboriginal mythology for references to the Rainbow Serpent. Some called it Almudj, others Ngalyod or Uluru, and many believed it was the bringer of rain, growth, and all fertility. The Great Creator.

  Crazy, mitzi stuff.

  But if he was nuts then Jodenny was, too. Myell remembered carrying her back to the flit, her body soft and warm in his arms. He had wanted to sweep her away for good, to someplace where regulations held no sway. But she wasn’t Kay, wasn’t someone he could hold and love, and it was hell to keep torturing himself.

  Though he was dead tired, he pulled on his sneakers and headed for the gym. A few hard kilometers on the treadmill and maybe he’d forget what it was like to have had Jodenny in his arms and not be able to keep her.

  * * *

  Jodenny spent the day holed up in her cabin, inputting everything that had happened on Mary River into an encrypted log. She included the destruction of the warehouse robot and spending the night on Myell’s farm, but didn’t write down how Myell made her feel, or the way she’d wanted him to come to her door in the middle of the night. Of their remarkable trip she put in every detail she could remember: the feeling of the hard yellow light, the sickness it caused, the line of the broken Mother Spheres. Jesus Moon Christ, she might be sitting on the most amazing discovery since Jackie MacBride and the Little Alcheringa.

  “Holland,” she said, “has anyone ever found Wondjina Spheres in formations other than Father, Mother, and Child?”

  “No, Lieutenant,” Holland replied.

  Jodenny sketched out the symbols that had been inscribed within the ouroboros. “Can you identify the symbols on my gib?”

  “They don’t match anything in the ship’s databases.”

  She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or even more excited. “Do they match any known instances of Wondjina runes?”

  “No. Wondjina runes are usually straight lines, without any curves.”

  “Analyze the pictures I uploaded of the ground. Do you see anything other than dirt?”

  Holland was quiet for a second or two. “Lieutenant, are you joking with me?”

  “No.”

  Holland saw nothing that Jodenny didn’t see. No ultraviolet images, no images invisible to the human eye. She had bagged and stowed her boots at the bottom of her locker for later analysis. Chances were that any mud, grass, or microbes she had picked up on that other planet weren’t in any way unusual from those normally found in the Seven Sisters, and she couldn’t think of any easy way to get samples tested. Supply lieutenants didn’t have access to that kind of equipment or resources.

  But ship’s scientists did. Jodenny pinged Dr. Ng and waited for a callback, but her queue remained silent. Perhaps she’d scared him off too effectively.

  The ship departed Mary River early that evening. Dinner in the wardroom was a busy affair, with everyone full of tales about how they’d spent their shore leave. “Didn’t you get to go down at all, Jodenny?” Hultz asked, and Jodenny admitted yes, for a little while. Kal Ysten, she noted, didn’t put in an appearance at all. She sent him a note saying she expected him to be in her office at oh-six-thirty the next morning. He sauntered in just a minute or so late, his hair still wet from the shower.

  “I don’t think Underway Stores is a good match for my abilities,” he said.

  Jodenny shut down the vid she’d been reading about Major Jackie MacBride. “For someone who got fired from Food Services, that’s quite a bold statement.”

  “I didn’t get fired.” The tips of his ears turned red. “It was a mutual decision.”

  “I heard Lieutenant Commander Vu gave you your midterm counseling and you were failing in three categories.”

  “I don’t think this is the best way to start working together, Lieutenant.”


  Jodenny stood up. “We don’t work together. You work for me and you work for the people who serve under you. By tomorrow I want you to have memorized the names and faces of all division personnel. We’re going to quarters now, so you’ll get the chance to meet most of them anyway. For the rest of the day you’ll be visiting their work spaces and doing safety inspections.”

  Ysten rolled his eyes. “Safety inspections? Is that the best use of my time?”

  “Trust me.” Jodenny headed for the hatch. “You don’t want to know the other options I was considering.”

  Everyone had made it back from leave safely, although Nagarajan was sporting a pink hair streak and Nitta had an unsightly hickey on his neck. Jodenny tried not to stare at it, but wondered if maybe that was part of the business he and Quenger had been up to on Mary River. Myell, in the back row as usual, had dark circles under his eyes and wouldn’t meet her gaze. Jodenny introduced Ysten and announced that he would be coming around to conduct the inspections. The division looked no more excited at the prospect than Ysten had.

  In the lift afterward, Nitta asked, “You want company, Ensign? I can show you how everything works in Underway Stores.”

  Jodenny shuddered at the possible heights of irresponsibility the two of them might reach if she sent them off together. “He doesn’t need company. You need to get those overdue COSALs into my queue.”

  Nitta gave Ysten a wink. “Lieutenant Scott’s strict that way.”

  She ignored him. Back in her office she grew concerned about Mrs. Mullaly, who had left a message saying she was at the doctor’s office and would be late to work. But when Mrs. Mullaly arrived midmorning she had a wide smile on her face. “Guess what, Lieutenant! I’m pregnant. Eight weeks along.”

  Caldicot gave her a hug. “That’s wonderful!”

  Jodenny patted Mrs. Mullaly’s arm but held off on the hugging. The pregnancy had to have been assisted. Medical science still had a hard time extending a woman’s ovulation past menopause. “I’m very happy for you,” she told Mrs. Mullaly, though for herself she couldn’t imagine midnight feedings or arranging child care or dealing with all the stresses of parenthood. She was saved from further baby talk by a call from Master Chief DiSola.

  “I’ve got good news, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “You’re pregnant, too?” she asked.

  DiSola gave her a quizzical look. “The ECP list was announced. Strayborn made it, as did Kesnicki in Food Services. I already called them both. Officer indoctrination starts this afternoon and will last just over two weeks.”

  “This afternoon?” Jodenny tried not to sound too dismayed. The last thing she needed was to lose yet another member of the division. And once Strayborn was commissioned, there was no guarantee he would return to Underway Stores.

  “There’s going to be a party tonight to celebrate,” DiSola said. “Hope to see you there.”

  Jodenny hung up. She reminded herself that personnel problems were small and inconsequential compared to the larger issues at hand. She told Caldicot and Mrs. Mullaly that she’d be out of the office for a short time, and headed off to find Dr. Ng.

  The Space Sciences labs were on F-Deck. When Jodenny got off the lift she stopped, bothered by an odd uneasiness. She pushed the feeling aside, passed the officers’ gym, and for several minutes wandered around a maze of workbenches, labs, and cubicles, passing geologists, astrophysicists, climatologists, and engineers, peeking into offices full of expensive equipment and colorful charts. She located Ng in a tiny corner warren that was scrupulously neat. Star vids covered all the walls—nebulae and comets and galaxies, blue and white and sparkling in the absence of overhead lights. A large tropical fish tank sat on one table, casting shimmering light through the room.

  “Dr. Ng,” Jodenny said from the hatchway.

  Ng rolled back from his desk. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

  “I need to talk to you.” Jodenny moved inside and waited for the hatch to close. “I’ve done some checking. You have a doctorate in astronomy, specializing in the structure and destruction of globular star clusters. You’ve published in very good journals on Fortune, and your research on galactic tides is widely lauded. But you’re also an amateur archaeologist, and have participated in some unorthodox public discussions about the origins of Spheres. Some might call you a Wondjinologist.”

  Ng stood up, crossed to the aquarium, and lifted a small part of its lid. “The usual term is ‘crackpot.’”

  Jodenny sat down in a chair. The Large Magellanic Cloud spun lazily over her head. “You’re on record as saying there’s no way the Spheres could have been some kind of transportation devices.”

  Ng shook some fish food into his hand. A dozen gold and silver fish swam up in anticipation. “That’s truly an unsupported theory. No one’s ever found any kind of technology in the Spheres—not under them, not in their stone walls, nothing, nowhere. There’s never been anything found at all except for the structures themselves and their runes.”

  “Isn’t that odd?” Jodenny asked. “If they were sites of religious worship, you’d expect to find things like broken wine jugs or sacrificial offerings. If they were places where people actually lived, you’d dig up bowls or utensils. They’re not tombs because there are no bodies, and they’re not astronomical calendars because they don’t line up with things like solstices.”

  Ng sprinkled the food into the fish tank. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. You just summed up the great mystery of our age. What are they, and who exactly built them?”

  “I met someone who claimed to have traveled through a Sphere to another planet.”

  “I’ve met people who claim the Wondjina have kidnapped them and beamed them into spaceships for colonoscopies. It’s not as rare as you would think.”

  Jodenny offered him a piece of paper. “How about these symbols? Ever seen them?”

  Ng secured the aquarium lid and took the paper. Instantly he said, “They’re not Wondjina runes. Where did you see them?”

  “Someone found them in a Sphere.”

  “Did not.”

  Jodenny folded her arms. “Did so.”

  He stared at the symbols a moment longer. “I may have seen something similar. Give me some time to dig around.”

  “We have plenty of time,” Jodenny said. They hadn’t dropped into the Alcheringa yet, and it would be almost a month before the Aral Sea reached Warramala. “But just so you know, I still don’t believe in your theories. Those symbols have nothing to do with what happened to my ship. I just figured you’d appreciate a good mystery.”

  Distracted, Ng sat at his desk and began typing on his deskgib. “I’ll call you.”

  Maybe later, if he proved himself trustworthy, she would tell him about the ouroboros and ask him to get her boots analyzed. But for now Jodenny would settle for any information she could get, so that her report about the trip through the Mother Sphere would be complete.

  * * *

  One of the Class IIs had damaged herself in a collision on level thirty-six, and none of the other DNGOs were successful in extricating her. Come midmorning Myell climbed into an EV suit to do it himself, even though he was fuzzy-headed from staying up late reading. He’d had no idea how many tribes had constituted Aboriginal Australia, how many overlapping and divergent beliefs they held. He might actually have to seek out an expert to make sense of it all. Chaplain Mow led the ship’s Gagudjun services and was the most obvious choice, but he was hesitant to call her. Once he started talking he might not be able to stop, and would confide in her the story of what he and Jodenny had found in the Mother Sphere.

  “Everything’s locked down,” Hosaka said over the comm. “You’re clear to go.”

  He powered down the shaft and entered the slots. Memories of his last trip were still sharp enough to keep him peering over his shoulder every now and then. He didn’t see any suspicious movement, but his torch made odd shadows on the slot bulkheads: a curved shape like a snake, a silhouette like t
he shaman’s head. The Class II, Airmid, appeared up ahead with one of her grappling hooks stuck in a bin grating.

  “Got it,” he said, but that was premature. He spent nearly twenty minutes trying to pry the hook free. It was slow, laborious work, and he was starting to sweat inside the suit when a commotion came over his headset. Someone was cheering triumphantly in the command module, and someone else was clapping.

  “What’s going on?” Myell asked.

  No one answered right away. Stuck in the dark, cold slots with only the dead DNGO for company, Myell tried again. “What happened?”

  “Sergeant Strayborn made the ECP list,” Hosaka said.

  Strayborn sounded overjoyed. “That’s soon-to-be ensign to you!”

  “Congratulations,” Myell said. “Good job, Gordon.”

  He was glad for Strayborn. The man had worked hard for his achievements. While Myell struggled to free Airmid, Nitta came by the command module with more congratulations. Maybe they didn’t know the comm was open, or perhaps they didn’t care, but when Strayborn joked, “Who’s going to take over all my good work here?” Nitta’s immediate response was, “VanAmsal.”

  Myell told himself that was no problem. He could work for VanAmsal well enough now that she no longer believed Ford’s accusation. Once Airmid was free he tugged her into the shaft and took her to the command module. There was no way he could repair the damage to her arm and hook with his own tools. The DNGO would have to go to the Repair Shop, and he remembered all too clearly what had happened last time he ventured that way.

  “You want me to go, Sergeant?” Hosaka asked.

  “No,” he said, hanging up the EV. “I’ll do it.”

  Dread accompanied him all the way to the shop, his palms sweaty on the DNGO’s leash. To his relief only RT Sorenson was at the counter. She wasn’t the most cheerful sailor he had ever met, but as far as he knew she wasn’t involved in Chiba’s dirty work, either.