“Internal force field activated,” chamber management said. “All airlocks closed and sealed. Walls to neutral. Thermal shunts on-line. We have status one.”
Oscar could just see the ramp in front of the gateway sinking back down into the chamber floor. He felt an electric tingle begin deep in his stomach. No matter how long the human race had been doing this, how far they’d traveled into the universe, opening a door onto the unknown was always an exciting risk. “Astrogration, I want a wormhole destination on star AFR98-2B, five AUs galactic north from target.”
“Yes, sir, loading now.”
He watched the RI portal display as it registered the coordinate lock. AFR98-2B was an F2 spectral-class star, twenty-seven light-years out from Merredin. CST’s long-range examination from the orbiting telescope indicated the existence of a solar system of at least five planets. With the coordinate confirmed by astrogration, the RI took over the opening procedure, a vast program composite capable of handling the billion variable factors that governed the gateway machinery and power flow. Normally software that powerful would swiftly evolve up to full SI status, but this one had been formatted by the SI with strategic limiters written in to prevent any outbreak of self-determination. Even though it incorporated genetic algorithms the RI was essentially stable, it would never develop alternative interests and goals in the middle of its operations as some large array software had done in the past, with often disastrous consequences.
Behind the window, the dull silver rim of the oval gateway began to flicker with dusky turquoise shadows. They quickly expanded to merge together, at which point focusing on them became immensely difficult for the human eye. They shifted constantly while staying in the same place. In the center of the gateway, depth arrived with a giddy lurch. As always, Oscar got the impression he was abruptly hurtling forward through an infinitely long tunnel. Not a bad interpretation for beleaguered human senses. He knew he was holding his breath just like any rookie console operator. But this was the moment of greatest reward, the reason he committed himself to his job with such passion, the reason he’d made it all the way up to Operations Director. Despite all the commercial and political crap that was CST, this was a new world they were searching for today. Chances were, the human settlers would make it just another poor clone of the majority society within the Commonwealth. But there was always the possibility it would be something new and inspiring.It can’t always be the same.
The instability at the center of the gateway mechanism stabilized and cleared, darkening immediately. Stars appeared amid the blackness. A beam of brilliant white light stabbed through the opening, angled so it struck the chamber to the left of the windows.
A few digits jumped on the digital displays, registering the small electromagnetic infall. “Have we got a clear exit?” Oscar asked.
“Negative on gravity distortion sweep,” sensors said. “There’s no solid matter above particle level within a million klicks of the opening.”
“Thank you. Chamber Management, vent the chamber, please.”
A hole opened at the center of the secondary force field covering the gateway, and slowly expanded back toward the rim. The chamber’s atmosphere streaked out. It was visible at first, a thick jet of gray vapor playing across the starfield. After a minute, and with the force field withdrawn, there was nothing left but a few glittering grains of ice slowly dispersing.
“Vacuum confirmed,” chamber management said.
“Sensors, deploy the star tracker,” Oscar ordered. “Astronomy, tell us where we are, please.”
One of the recesses on the chamber ceiling silently irised open. A long tentaclelike arm of electromuscle uncoiled out of it, holding a two-meter metal bulb on the end. It was studded with small gold lenses. Oscar watched the arm slowly reach forward, its careful sinuous motion pushing the star-tracker mechanism out through the open gateway and into space beyond. A standard camera on the collar of the star tracker sent its image up to one of the five big screens above the windows. An ordinary star was revealed, its small disk shining bright amid the constellations. To Oscar it looked about the right size for an F2 at five AUs. Nonetheless, he waited patiently as information flowed in from the star tracker. Hasty decisions were just as dangerous as hesitation; one of the main requirements of his job was to keep calm in all circumstances. It was a trait he’d learned early in his first life, it just got misapplied back then.
“The spectrum matches AFR98-2B, sir,” short-range astronomy said. “Acquiring marker stars and measuring emergence point location.”
Oscar could remember the first stellar exploration he’d worked on, decades ago back on Augusta; as one of the junior prep crew he’d stood in the observation gallery for nine hours after his shift ended at handover. Nine hours that passed in no time the excitement he felt was so strong. It was the day he knew he’d made the right choice; that in some obscure way this was how he could make amends for what he’d done. This way he could bring the hope of a fresh start to other people’s lives as well as his own.
“Confirming location of wormhole exit,” short-range astronomy said. “Distance to AFR98-2B is seventeen-point-three million klicks out from the projected coordinate.”
Oscar allowed himself to relax a little, seeing the smiles springing up around the ground crew. That wasn’t a bad margin of error for a newly recommissioned gateway, well within acceptable limits. “Well done, Astrogration; load in the new figures please. Sensors, let’s get the planetary survey scope out there.”
While the new, bulkier telescope mechanism was deployed out through the confinement chamber, Oscar went around the control center loop again, verifying that everything was holding steady. Then it was an hour-long wait while short-range astronomy analyzed the images from the planetary survey scope. The procedure was simple enough: they scanned the plane of the ecliptic for any light source above first magnitude. When it found one, the telescope observed it for movement. If it was a planet, then its orbital motion should become apparent almost straightaway.
The results flashed up on the screens above the window. Short-range astronomy located five planets. Two were gas giants, Saturn-sized, orbiting eleven and fifteen AUs out from the star. The inner three were solids. The first and smallest, a lunar-sized rock one hundred million kilometers out from the star, had a high-viscosity plastic lava mantle moving in sluggish ripples generated by the star’s massive tidal pull. Second was a large solid, seventeen thousand eight hundred kilometers in diameter, and orbiting a hundred twelve million kilometers out. With its high gravity, Venusian-style atmosphere, and close proximity to the sun, it didn’t come anywhere near qualifying as H-congruous. But the third was a hundred ninety-nine million kilometers distant from the star, and measured fourteen thousand three hundred kilometers in diameter. Cheers and a patter of applause went around gateway control as the data slowly built up. Spectrographic results showed a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with a high water vapor content. Given its distance from the star, it was somewhat cool, with the equator having the same temperature as Earth’s temperate zones in autumn or spring. But the information was sufficient for Oscar to award it a preliminary H-congruous status, which brought another round of applause. First time out with a recommissioned gateway, and they’d struck gold already. A good omen.
“Sensors, let’s get the dish out there,” Oscar said. “Check for emissions.”
Another electromuscle arm snaked out from its ceiling recess, carrying a furled dish. It went through the gateway beside the planetary survey scope, and extended its metal mesh.
“No radio signals detected,” sensors reported.
“All right, bring both the arms back in,” Oscar said. “Astrogration, move the wormhole exit to geosynchronous height above the third planet’s daylight terminator.”
When the arms were back in their recesses, the starfield winked out. A moment later, the gateway opened again, revealing the crescent of a planet directly ahead. Its radiance washed across the confinement cham
ber and in through the windows. Oscar smiled in welcome as the soft light fell across his console. The cloud cover was above average, cloaking a good seventy percent of the hemisphere. But he could see the blue of oceans, and the grubby red-brown of land, even the crisp white of polar caps was visible in that first glimpse.
“All right, people, let’s concentrate on the job,” Oscar said as excited conversation buzzed through the loop. “We’ve all seen this before. Sensors, I want a full electromagnetic sweep. Launch seven geophysics satellites, get me some global coverage. Planetary Science, you’re on; preliminary survey results in three hours, please. Alien encounter office, start hunting. Emergency Defense, you’re on stand-by alert, and now have full wormhole shutdown authority; acknowledge that, please.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
The launch rail telescoped out from its storage bay below the control center windows, extending a good ten meters through the wormhole exit. Satellites accelerated down the rail, riding the magnetic pulses before whirling away along different trajectories. Once they’d fallen a kilometer from the gateway, their ion drives came on, pushing them into high-inclination orbits that would provide coverage of the planet’s whole surface. As they went, each released a swarm of subsatellites like golden butterflies, expanding their observation baseline. Tracking dishes were deployed to keep in contact. The big dish came out again, scouring the continents for any electromagnetic activity. A two-meter telescope peered down inquisitively.
Oscar sat back and had his first in situ break of the day. A trolleybot slid along the console rows, distributing drinks and snacks. He claimed a cheese and smoked bacon sandwich and a couple of bottles of natural mineral water. As he ate, the screens above the windows came alive with images from the satellites. Details were gradually sketched in by the data tables and graphics in the console portals.
The planet had five major continents, accounting for thirty-two percent of the surface. Temperature was lower than strictly favorable, resulting in huge ice caps that between them covered a third of the planet. One and a half continents were completely buried beneath ice. That left a lot less usable land than average. The magnetic field was stronger than Earth’s, which gave it a very large Van Allen radiation belt.
“There is no evidence of sentient life at this time,” alien encounter said. “No large-scale structures, no electromagnetic activity, no visible cultivation, and no artificial thermal sources.”
“Thank you,” Oscar said. The last factor was the clincher for him. The ability to start and use fire was deemed the litmus test of sentience. If anything on the planet was capable of sentient thought, it was currently below Neanderthal-equivalent. “Sensors, you can switch to active scanning now.”
Radar sweeps started to penetrate the pervasive cloud. The images on the big screens began to develop a lot quicker, with detailed layers building on the provisional outlines. Lasers swept through the atmosphere, plotting its composition. The RI manipulated the energy flow through the gateway mechanism, manufacturing tiny gravity wave distortions at the wormhole exit. They rippled through the planet’s crust, allowing the satellites to determine its internal layout.
At fifteen hundred hours, Oscar called an intraloop conference with his station heads. So far, they agreed, the planet appeared to be hospitable. There was definitely no sign of an indigenous sentience. No animals above two meters in length had been spotted by the infrared sensors. Its geology was standard. Its biochemistry, as far as could be deduced from spectrography, was an ordinary carbon-based multicellular form.
“So, is it aggressive or passive?” Oscar asked. The problem was common enough. On a colder world such as this, most life would be slow-growing, a trait that inclined toward a more passive animal nature. Although there were cases where the opposite was true, and evolution had produced some very tough life-forms geared for survival at all costs. “Best guesses please.”
“The geology is stable,” planetary science said. “The current bio-epoch is probably about eighty million years old if we’re reading the stellar cycle right. We can’t detect any previous ice ages, so there’s been no sudden climate change to throw their evolution off-kilter. Everything growing down there is stable and adjusted. I’d say passive.”
“I have to agree,” xenobiology said. “We’re seeing small movable thermal spots indicative of animals, but nothing larger than a dog. Certainly nothing we normally associate with carnivorous predators. Botany is also reasonably standard, though there are few large plants, and what passes for trees are solitary, they don’t congregate in forests, which is unusual.”
“Very well.” Oscar swiveled his seat until he could see McClain Gilbert, the forward crew chief, sitting at the front of the observation gallery. “Mac, I’m giving you an initial encounter authorization. Get your first contact team suited up.”
“Thank you, sir.” McClain Gilbert gave him a thumbs-up from behind the glass.
Oscar switched back to the full loop. “We’re going for a ground encounter. Sensors, put the geophysics satellites to automatic, and withdraw all the arms. Astrogration, I want the exit moved to a five-hundred-kilometer equatorial altitude, then give it an orbital velocity. When we’re established, launch the low-orbit surveillance satellite fleet; I’ll need constant coverage of the ground contact site. We’re aiming for ground opening in one hour, people, get ready for that. Planetary Science, find me a suitable dawn site at that time.”
With the exit positioned five hundred kilometers above the ground, the clouds below seemed a lot brighter. The small squadron of low-orbit satellites shot off the launch rail, curving down to an even lower altitude and spreading out to form a chain around the planet’s equator. Images from their high-res cameras appeared on the screens, revealing a wealth of details. Stones a mere five centimeters across were visible amid the carpet of vermilion grass-equivalent. Squirrellike rodents, with gray scales rather than fur, bounded about, scuttling into burrows and swimming along streams. All the small independent trees had peculiar zigzag branches.
“Confirming low-orbit satellite fleet in position,” sensors reported. “We have full coverage.”
“Coming up to dawn on the landing site,” planetary science said.
“Withdraw sensor arms,” Oscar said. “Chamber Management, establish a force field across the gateway. Astrogration, reposition the exit one kilometer above designated contact site, horizontal axis.”
The wormhole blinked, and they were looking down on a gently crumpled landscape of thin burgundy grass and twisted carmine bushes. A low dawn light was casting long gloomy shadows across the ground. Pools of dense mist clung to hollows and depressions with oily tenacity.
“Chamber Management, equalize pressure. Sensors, deploy the atmospheric probe and exposure samples.”
The force field reconfigured itself to allow the sampler arm through. It didn’t find any immediately lethal particles missed by the scans from orbit.
Oscar waited the designated hour for the exposure and micro-analysis processes to run. “Xenobiology?” he asked eventually.
“Some spores—probably plant life. Small bacterial count in the water vapor. Nothing abnormal, and no adverse reactions to our sample materials.”
“Thank you.” It would take months of laboratory testing to discover if any of the microbial life was dangerous to humans. Until they were given the all-clear, the forward crews would all be in suits anyway. It was the other biological reactions that worried Oscar. A century ago CST had opened a wormhole to a planet where the local fungus ate polymers. Quite how that evolved was still a puzzle for the xenobiologists. Now a whole spectrum of materials was exposed to the planet first. “Astrogration, please take us down to the surface.”
The exit began to move, drifting downward with the same sedate lack of urgency as a hot air balloon. Oscar could even guess the point that astrogration had chosen for contact. A flat patch of ground clear of any trees, with a stream three hundred meters away. Ground search radar confirmed the
area was solid. At a hundred meters up, the oval exit began to rotate around its long axis, tilting to the vertical. A light blue sky slid into view, with wispy clouds high above the horizon, glowing pink in the rising sunlight. Astrogration halted the descent when the bottom rim was a couple of centimeters above the fluffy leaves of the cochineal-tinted grass-equivalent.
Oscar let out a breath as he watched the landscape for any sign of movement. If there were any Silfen on this world, now was the moment they appeared. Stupid lanky humanoids ambling up to the opening and waving gamely at all the ground crew behind their consoles. “Welcome,” they sang in their own language. “Welcome to a new world.” He’d seen it once himself, twelve years ago when he was chamber management station head on Augusta. There had been so much amusement in their smooth voices, laughter for the serious humans and their clunky machinery. He’d wanted to pick up a rock and throw it at the smug mystics.
But this time the chilly red and blue terrain could have been a painting it was so still. There were no Silfen here.
He wasn’t the only one waiting, anticipating. A number of sighs were released around the control center.
Oscar went around the loop again, confirming every station was stable. “Forward crew, initiate contact,” he said.
The floor of the confinement chamber rose up into a ramp. Airlock two irised open. McClain Gilbert and the four members of his first contact team were standing just inside. They wore their magenta insulation suits, a close-fitting onepiece with a flexible hood that clung to the skull; a broad transparent visor dominated the front. The backpack was slim, containing a lightweight air recycling unit and the superconductor batteries for the force field armor they wore unseen underneath the fabric. It was a precaution against any newfound native animal that was hostile enough to try to find out what the invaders tasted like.
Cameras mounted on the sides of their hoods relayed images to the big screens above the windows. A quick check showed Oscar that several hundred million people were accessing this moment through the unisphere. They would be exploration addicts, the stay-at-homes who couldn’t get enough of alien worlds and the expanding human frontier.
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