Analog SFF, July-August 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Raven's hull sensors are tasting radioactive isotopes,” Lucas said, reading a chart-laden side display. “Traces of krypton-85 and iodine-131."

  “Typical of a fission reactor,” Joshua said.

  “How do you know that?"

  “I was an engineering mate, long ago. Some days I wish I hadn't made the career change.” Joshua stared at a bar graph on Lucas's screen. “The reactor must have been operating recently if the iodine-131 is still significant. The half-life is only eight days."

  “The reactor isn't being used for propulsion,” Ann said. “The asterie hasn't moved in two weeks."

  “It's being used for internal power requirements,” Joshua said. He nodded to the image on the screen. “You'll notice, no solar mirrors or panels."

  “A reactor presents a smaller radar cross-section,” Lucas said.

  “A nuke is a lot more expensive than solar arrays,” Ann said. “They're going out of their way to keep a low profile."

  “Gazing as I am upon this orb of mystery,” Lucas said, “I once more ponder our client's true motives."

  “The answers are inside,” Joshua said. “If there are any."

  * * * *

  They dispatched Hermes Junior and watched its telemetry on the control room main screen. The robot surveyed the asterie's shell at one hundred meters. The camera relayed images of dull, smooth metal, and of tiny, highly radioactive vent ports. It soon became apparent that the only humanly or robotly possible entry was through the hangar.

  Synchronizing with the hangar rotation, the barrel-like scout robot alighted on the deck, and rolled past the vacant docking berths to the main personnel airlock. The opening mechanism was a single button.

  Junior erected a transmission repeater. Elevating an appendage, it pressed the airlock button. The door slid open. The robot cycled inside.

  “Too easy,” Joshua said quietly. “For thirty thousand credits, that is."

  “Normal pressure and oxygen ratio,” Ann said, scanning her data-feed screen. “Radiation in the safe zone, biofilters clean. Temperature sixteen centigrade—sweater-wearing weather."

  Lucas cocked an eyebrow. “How does the unicorn get the sweater over its head?"

  Ann grinned and swatted his shoulder.

  “Carry on, Junior,” Joshua said.

  “Right-oh, Joshua,” Hermes Junior said.

  Unspooling a fiber optics cable after itself, the robot rolled deeper within the asterie. Its camera eyes relayed empty passages and barren compartments. Socks and shirts lay scattered haphazardly on the cabin floors.

  “They were in a hurry to leave,” Lucas said.

  “What are those?” Ann demanded.

  Lucas flipped on Junior's head lamp. Inside a dark room, a dozen pairs of yellow dots gleamed from floor level. Brown furry shapes the size of shoes scurried into the shadows. Over the speakers came squeaks and squeals.

  “Rats!” Ann said.

  “We've seen rats in abandoned asteries before,” Lucas replied.

  “These look different. Can you get closer?"

  Lucas drove Junior over the threshold, but just then a lamp crashed from a desktop, missing the robot by centimeters.

  “We're not here for rats,” Joshua said.

  Junior exited the cabin and continued down the passage. A rat waddled across an intersection, and more eyes blinked from darkened rooms.

  “A regular infestation,” Ann said.

  “In a way it's comforting,” Lucas said.

  They stared at him.

  “Regarding the maze,” he said. “If the rats solved the maze, how hard can it be?"

  Junior passed an elevator and, mindful of its trailing cable, trundled down a ramp instead. Then the walls changed, becoming uniform and smooth. The robot entered room after room filled with containers. Most of the containers were refrigerator and freezer units, plugged into wall outlets.

  “They carry a lot of cargo,” Lucas said.

  “A zoological asterie would,” Ann said. “As it orbits through the Belt, it passes asteries in neighboring orbits, and merchandise is transferred back and forth."

  “Like a mobile distribution center,” Joshua said. “Or flying warehouse."

  With Joshua wearing the teleoperations glove, Junior undid latches, twisted handles, and pushed open sliding doors. Each doorway led to another compartment, without intervening passages. Despite the sameness of the walls, the compartments followed a seemingly random geometry and were seldom the same size and shape.

  “Maybe this is the maze,” Ann said. “I'm confused already!"

  “Hermes will remember the way out,” Lucas said. “But how are we going to find the lab? The compartments aren't labeled. How did the people who worked here find their way around?"

  Joshua said: “The keeper must have directed—"

  “Whoa!” Lucas said.

  The wall in front of Junior bore coin-sized punctures, set in a curving line.

  “Automatic rifle fire,” Joshua said.

  Lucas panned the camera. The other walls were similarly strafed.

  “An all-out battle,” Lucas said. “But why? Pirates? Mutiny?"

  “Hey, guys,” Ann said. “Does it seem like there's more rats?"

  Lucas panned again. From each corner, behind every container, a pair of beady yellow eyes blinked. Joshua had seen plenty of rats aboard derelicts. Yet these were different. They were larger, bulkier, and their fixed stares prickled his neck hairs.

  Just then, the screen went blank. Lucas barked at the control room camera: “Hermes, report!"

  “Scout telemetry lost,” Hermes replied. “Comm cable break indicated."

  Joshua stroked his chin. “Let's contact the keeper."

  “I'll get voice this time,” Lucas said.

  A moment of frenetic typing later, and a male-sounding voice said over the control room speakers, “This is the keeper of Daedalus."

  The voice was calm, almost deferential. Joshua realized he had assumed from the capital letters of the plain-text transmission that the keeper had been shouting.

  “Keeper,” Joshua said. “I am Joshua. I am captain of the spaceship Raven."

  “Hello, Joshua."

  “Keeper, what have you done to our scout robot?"

  “I have not harmed your property, Joshua."

  “Then what happened to it?"

  “Nothing has happened to it, Joshua. It is unharmed."

  “Then what caused its communications cable to break?"

  “The cable was broken by the maze."

  “The maze? How?"

  “No further information will be provided. However, there is no escape from—"

  Joshua disconnected. He zoomed the telescopic view on the main screen. For a long moment, he gazed at the asterie's revolving, uninformative shell.

  “Our turn now,” he said.

  * * * *

  “Nonviolent and nondestructive,” Ann said, watching Joshua load a snub-nosed automatic rifle into each of their personal carrybags.

  “We won't start trouble,” Joshua replied.

  “Those bullet holes.” Ann shuddered. “I'm a single mom! If I didn't need the money so badly—"

  “Are you staying here?"

  A long pause. “No. Of course not."

  Lucas opened the explosives locker and loaded his carrybag with his hand-made charge packs.

  “Plan on blasting your way through the maze?” Ann asked.

  “It's one solution,” Lucas replied. From a strongbox within the locker, he removed several candy bars in red-and-white foil wrappers. Meeting their gazes, he said, “Hey, supposing we do get trapped!"

  Once fully suited, they boarded the skiff, broke from the de-spun ship, and flitted toward the asterie.

  “Joshua,” Hermes said over the radio. “The keeper of Daedalus is calling for you."

  “Something about no escape from the maze?"

  “Yes, Joshua."

  “Let me know if it has something else to say."
/>   Minutes of crossing open space, and the skiff alighted in the hangar. They dismounted and, with Joshua leading in a show of decisiveness that he didn't quite feel, they cycled through the airlock.

  The inner door slid open. Their helmet lamp beams revealed an unlit compartment whose rows of lockers and shelves burgeoned with space suits and helmets and other outside-the-hull equipment.

  “Pretty pricey stuff to abandon,” Lucas said. “And in good condition. Too bad we're not here to salvage. Our financial problems would be solved with this one room."

  “Keep your suits on,” Joshua said. “They may have evacuated because of a plague."

  “I doubt it,” Ann said. “If they were doing macroscopic genetic engineering here, they wouldn't mess with viruses. It would endanger breeding stocks."

  “I hope you're right, Ann."

  Lucas scrunched his mouth at his computer tablet, which was connected to a Geiger-Müller-style radiation detector on his belt. “Radiation is registering safe levels. No alpha or beta, very low gamma."

  “Keep monitoring,” Joshua said. “A reactor problem is another possible reason for evacuation."

  Lucas attached his spool of fiber optics cable to the same repeater that Junior had erected on the interior side of the airlock. He unspooled his cable behind them as they progressed down the passage, their helmet lamp beams bobbing spots upon the walls.

  They managed only a few steps when the overhead lights gleamed on.

  “It's making us welcome,” Ann said. “Even though it wants us to leave."

  “Don't human hosts show courtesy toward their unwanted guests?” Lucas asked.

  Ahead lay a brightly illuminated, spotlessly clean ship's corridor. Joshua listened with his suit's external microphones at maximum. The lights hummed and the ventilators purred. Far off came a creak.

  “Let's go,” he said.

  Switching off their helmet lamps, they followed Junior's cable. In every compartment, eyes blinked from behind the storage containers.

  “Joshua,” Hermes announced. “The keeper is saying something else."

  “Pipe it in."

  The keeper's words bounced from the asterie to Raven, to the antennas and repeaters at the hangar airlock, down the fiber optics cable in the passages to the transmitter that Lucas carried, and into Joshua's space suit earphones.

  “Joshua,” the keeper said in its always-calm voice. “I request that you not deface the property of Daedalus Genetics, LTD."

  “We're not defacing anything,” Joshua said.

  “There is a person in your party who is defacing the walls."

  Joshua looked around. Ann stood by the portal, lipstick dispenser in hand. A red wedge was scrawled on the adjacent wall.

  “I got the idea from a movie,” Ann said. “You want me to stop?"

  Lucas wiggled his tablet. “I'm video-logging our journey. And anyway, all we have to do is follow the cable out."

  “Keeper,” Joshua said. “The marks will wipe off.” To Ann: “Keep doing it. I like having back-up procedures."

  They continued down ramps and through passages, tracking Junior's cable. Joshua raised his eyes to the ceiling. In every compartment, he saw the same arrangement of light fixtures, ventilator grids—and little black hemispheres.

  Cameras, he thought. It's watching.

  Lucas viewed his tablet. “This next room is where Junior's cable broke."

  Joshua halted at the portal. Unzipping his carrybag, he removed his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Ann and Lucas imitated. Squeezing the rifle grip, breath heavy and heart pounding, Joshua crept to the frame and peered through.

  On the floor, between container pallets and rat eyes, Junior's cable extended to the opposite wall—and terminated.

  Lucas examined the cable end. “Look how frayed this is."

  “Rat chews?” Ann asked.

  “Looks like it was severed by something blunt. And powerful."

  Ann did a full turn. “Where does the cable continue?"

  A freezer unit occupied the center of the compartment. An electrical cord trailed from the side. Its plug lay on the floor. Joshua looked for an outlet. There wasn't any nearby. He pointed his laser-beam temperature sensor at the freezer unit's door seal.

  “This freezer was running until recently,” he said. “Then it was unplugged."

  “By who?” Lucas asked.

  “That is the question. Keeper, are you still on the line?"

  “On what line, Joshua?"

  “Never mind. Got a question for you. Besides us in this room, are there any other humans aboard this asterie?"

  “No, Joshua. They have all been evacuated."

  “What about robots?"

  “My robots have been evacuated. There is also your robot. There are also five unidentified robots which entered the maze unauthorized thirty-seven days ago."

  “Those sound like Hamilton's doing,” Joshua said to Lewis and Ann. To the keeper: “The unidentified robots. What is their status?"

  “They have not moved in thirty days. Analysis indicates loss of battery power."

  “So, Keeper,” Lucas said. “Who unplugged this freezer?"

  “No further information will be provided,” the keeper replied.

  “You know, Keeper,” Lucas said, “that refrain is starting to annoy."

  The keeper remained silent.

  “Maybe the rats unplugged the freezer,” Ann said. “I realize that sounds like I'm obsessing over them—but they do have the ability."

  “I can't see their motive,” Joshua replied.

  Ann crossed her arms. “Well, do we have a search plan? I mean, this place is creeping me out—the evacuation, the rats, the bullets. I'd like to get done as soon as possible."

  “Hermes calculated there's over half a billion cubic meters here,” Lucas said. “If we just bumble around, it'll take forever."

  Joshua thought for a moment. The direct approach, he decided, was often best.

  “Keeper."

  “Yes, Joshua."

  “You're watching us, aren't you?"

  “Yes, Joshua. I have been ordered to monitor intruders. I regret the compromise of your privacy."

  “That's all right. So you know where we are. Keeper, I have a request."

  “Yes, Joshua."

  “Can you guide us to the main lab?"

  “No, Joshua. I have been ordered not to direct intruders there."

  Lucas smiled. “Guess that was worth a try."

  Joshua thought again. People rushing to evacuate, forgetting that computers are often literal-minded when it comes to interpreting commands—

  “Keeper. Can you guide us to the room in front of the main lab?"

  “Yes, Joshua."

  “Keeper, guide us to the room in front of the main lab."

  “Yes, Joshua. Please go through the door on your right."

  Lucas dropped his jaw. “Joshua, next election for captain—you've got my vote!"

  Joshua released the rifle grip. Mindful of the overhead camera and the possibility that the telemetry might someday be viewed by a court-of-arbitrage jury, he stuffed his weapon back into his carrybag.

  “Okay. Let's head—"

  He saw Lucas frowning at the wall where the cable had broken. Lucas ran his gloves along the surface, and pounded.

  “What's up?” Joshua asked.

  “According to Junior's telemetry,” Lucas said, “there should be a doorway here."

  “Portal,” Joshua said, reflexively giving the standard space-freighter terminology. “I don't see one."

  “Well, I thought I reviewed the video correctly.” Lucas shrugged. “Maybe I made a mistake. Been known to happen."

  Joshua found he couldn't let it go that easily.

  * * * *

  To Joshua, the main lab was merely boxes of lights and switches juxtaposed with liquid-filled tanks and interconnecting tubes. Ann's eyes were aglow.

  “I wish we could salvage this just to play with it!” she said.
“This is the best gene-editing equipment I've seen in the Belt."

  Batting Lucas's hands away from a workstation keyboard, Joshua inspected a wall with shelves of transparent jars like inverted space suit helmets. The bowl interiors seemed coated with sea salt and slime.

  “Artificial wombs,” Ann said. “A little small for unicorns, though."

  “Guys!” Lucas called.

  They joined him at the other end of the lab. From a second-story perch, a picture window overlooked a chamber larger than a terrestrial city's sports stadium.

  Beneath the light fixtures that dangled scores of meters overhead stretched a vista of hundreds of meters. The chamber contained a forest of gnarled, barren trees, prickling a landscape of hillocks and gullies. Clearings of yellowing grass broke the treelines.

  The largest clearing, on the right, had a dried lake bed, orange with rust. The lake bed abutted the only wall visible from the laboratory window. The curvature of the asterie hid the other ends of the forest from their sight.

  “An ecosystem module,” Ann said. “This must be where they tended the grown specimens."

  “It hasn't been watered for a while,” Lucas said.

  “Gloomy, too,” Ann said. “Half the lights are burnt out."

  “Let's find the storage unit,” Joshua said.

  The main room of the lab diverged into short hallways lined with doors. Joshua read the door plaques.

  “Fifty-four alpha. This is it."

  The door was locked, the first time they'd encountered a locked door since coming aboard. A brief whir of Joshua's drill annihilated the lock mechanism. Joshua entered the storage unit and, cutting the refrigerator padlocks, compared the serial number on Hamilton's purchase order with the labels on the embryo packs. He immediately frowned.

  “There are two different serial numbers here,” he said.

  They withdrew a finger-sized bottle from each pack. Ann inserted the needle of her DNA comparator into both.

  “This first one registers as genus Equus—which is right for horses,” she said. “I wish I could be more specific, but unicorn DNA is proprietary, so it's not in my comparator's genome library."

  “How about the other pack?” Joshua asked.

  “Definitely not Equus ... wow, whatever it is, it's been heavily modified. But my educated guess would be ... order Rodentia."

  “Rodentia,” Lucas said. “Rodents?"