by Zach Hughes
Josh secured his disrupter and released the umbilical that had attached him to the Erin Kenner. Barkley followed suit. Both men then secured themselves to the alien with a magnetic clamp attached to a line fed from the suit's belt and began to crawl over the hull of the small ship. She was the size of the Erin Kenner's launch.
"Recognize the alloy?" Josh asked Barkley.
"No, sir," Barkley said.
There were no visible seams. The ship's hull was as smooth as an egg, and as integrated. Josh ordered the Erin Kenner to move away to a safe distance.
"Okay, Pat," Josh said, picking up his cutting torch, "let's see what she's made of."
They worked side by side. The object was to cut out a square of metal from the ship's hull without damaging the tightly packed electronics inside. Josh fired off his disrupter, aimed the beam at the ship's metal, and saw it being reflected outward in a flaring flower.
"Whoa," Pat Barkley said. "What have we here?"
"You tell me," Josh said.
"Whatever it is, it's damned strong," Pat said. "And it would resist the heat at the surface of a star. Hold on, sir, and let me try another setting."
Pat adjusted his instrument, making the beam so fine that it could split atoms. The force no longer flared out. Slowly a small cut was being made in the odd metal. Pat gave the captain the setting. Josh began his own cut three feet away and parallel to Pat's.
"You're set a little deep, Captain," Pat said. "Cut the beam back two marks."
Josh obeyed. It took them almost an hour to remove a square of metal and expose the interior. Pat Barkley was examining the edges of the cut.
"Captain, I think we'd better get Science to check out this metal. If I'm right, and if it's as heat resistant as I think it is, it might be very useful."
"In what way?"
Pat laughed. "Well, I'd guess in a lot of ways, but I have a one-track mind and can think of only one at the moment. Back home I have an atmospheric racer. If I could put a skin of this stuff on its hull, I'd win every race there is. As you know, sir, there's almost no limit to how fast you can push a ship in atmosphere so far as sheer power is concerned. The limiting factor is the ablation factor of the metal in the ship's hull. In agood, tight race I burn off a full quarter-inch of metal. With this stuff—"
An image leapt into Josh's mind. A fiery object made a downward arc into atmosphere, flared to within two thousand feet of X&A headquarters, and went vertically back into space. A hull that could withstand speeds measured in thousands of feet per second in atmosphere would have made possible the wild, buzzing approach to headquarters, but why? You don't get out of a ship going so fast that it's nothing more than a glowing fireball.
"Secure samples, Pat, and we'll turn them over to Science."
Beyond a thin layer of what looked like circuit boards there was a space of honeycomb construction. Each of the interstices was enclosed in a transparent material. Josh's initial efforts had not only sliced through the circuitry, but had opened one of the interstitial spaces. Liquid had condensed on the transparent surface. He inserted a test probe and the suit's tiny computer communicated information to the base unit aboard the Erin Kenner and reported almost instantly. Preliminary analysis indicated that the liquid was one of the amino acids.
Beyond the honeycomb was the solid metal side of the hydrogen fusion chamber. It wouldn't be healthy to cut into that.
"I think we've done about all we can without doing serious damage,"
Josh said.
"She's all engine, sir, with just a thin layer of electronics and the amino acid chambers under the outside hull."
"And the amino acid chambers are?"
Barkley shrugged inside his suit. "Computer storage chambers? Brain?"
"Primitive weaponry," Josh said. "Missiles that a city aircar could defeat. A rather stupid, head-on attack against a vastly superior ship. How do those things go with an alloy that could take a ship through sun flares and what seems to be an amino acid data storage system?"
They used shoulder jets to propel themselves back to the Erin Kenner.
It was always a bit spooky to be flying free in space, and both men sighed in relief when they eased up to the ship's air lock and clamped on withmagnetic spots.
Kirsty Girard was waiting for the captain on the bridge. "I've been running fine analysis on the metallic reading that lay closest to the surface," she said. "I want to show you two of them."
"Lead on," Josh said.
Kirsty activated a screen. First she showed Josh the overall view of an icy plain below a rise. "Here, the instruments detected metal quite close to the surface," she said. "I ran it through enhancement while you were E.V.A."
"And?" Josh asked.
"It's durametal, sir," Kirsty said. "Two durametal objects close enough together to show as one large metallic deposit on general scan."
"Two spaceships?" Josh asked, his heart pounding as he anticipated her answer.
"That's my guess, sir."
"Angela, have someone put a homing beacon on that ship out there so we can find it again when we want it," Josh ordered. "Kirsty, as soon as that's been done, take us down."
* * *
The Erin Kenner hovered two hundred feet above the elongated mound of ice and snow that hid two objects made of durametal. Josh, Angela, and Sheba were on the bridge, watching nervously as Kirsty tilted ship to play the exhaust of the flux drive over the mound. Water began to run down the slope of the mound only to refreeze quickly. It took two hours to expose the distinctive contours of a Zede luxury liner, another hour to melt away the ice that hid the name, Fran Webster.
"All right, Kirsty," Josh said, his voice low. "Secure. Lift to orbit."
"But we haven't seen the other ship," Sheba protested. Her large emerald eyes were red with weeping.
"I don't think we have to, Queenie," Josh said. "I think you can bet thatthe other ship is the Old Folks."
"They must have violated the first rule of exploration," Angela said.
"What's that?" Sheba asked.
"Even if you discover a place that looks, smells, and states in large print that it's the Garden of Eden and there's a fellow there in a long white robe blessing you, don't land until Science has checked it out," Josh said.
From a stable orbit a robotic probe lowered itself on a tiny column of flux force. It landed near the Fran Webster. Already a white film was forming on the exposed metal of David Webster's Zede Starliner. The probe crawled past the luxury liner and began to play a heat beam over the mound of ice next to it. Optics aboard the probe soon showed an open hatch, and, on the ship's bow, the words Old Folks. Heat melted away ice that blocked the open hatch and soon the transmitter on the probe was beaming up a holoimage. Two humanoid forms lay side by side. Dan Webster had thrown his arm over Fran and that pose had been preserved in death.
"But I was told that they were alive," Sheba protested through tears.
The robot crawled back to the Fran Webster. The cutting properties of a molecular disrupter had to be used to gain entry. Sheba was still weeping silently, but when the hololens focused on the two humanoid forms encased in a sheen of ice she gasped and turned away. Both faces were recognizable. There was no doubt that the dead were David and Ruth Webster.
"Something's wrong," Sheba whispered.
"Yes, very wrong," Josh said bitterly. "They're dead."
"No, that's not what I mean," Sheba said, but she did not have to explain. Angela's face was flushed. Josh averted his eyes. Only Sheba continued to stare in horror at the screen where her brother and sister were frozen in an obscene coital embrace.
CHAPTER TEN
Ordinarily a major vessel from the Department of Exploration and Alien Search would not have spent time and effort in the examination of an ice world. Most frozen planets were located far from the life-giving radiation of their star. The reference books were rich in examples ranging from the eighth and ninth planets of Sol, the sun of Old Earth, to hundreds of other lifeless or
bs scattered throughout that relatively small zone of the galaxy which bounded the Confederation of the United Planets. After the reunion, when the mutated men of Old Earth became an integral part of the race, it was de rigueur for every institution of higher learning to end expeditions to Sol's solar system. No system in U.P. space had been more studied, and with the archaeological discovery of the original names of the nine planets there had developed a fad of applying the Old English names for the home planets as a generic label. Thus there were Mercurian planets and Saturnine planets and Plutonian planets.
Almost without exception all known planets could be classified by comparison with one of the nine pups of Old Sol. The planet which some of the crew of the Erin Kenner called Deep Freeze, the world that had killed four members of the Webster family, was that exception. She was encased in ice much like Pluto or the small moons of Uranus, but she was not at all like Pluto. Her core was molten, heavy metal, mostly iron. She had geological features which indicated that she had not always been buried beneath a blanket of snow and ice, which was interesting enough, but the feature of the planet that was most difficult to explain was illustrated by the blinding reflection of the sun from her white surface. She swam her orbit in a glare of light. So much solar energy fell on the surface that, according to Kirsty Girard's calculations, there should have been tropical jungles at her waist and great forests in her temperate areas, for the planet was definitely in the life zone of her sun.
The Erin Kenner kept a respectful distance above the surface. Before Captain Josh Webster allowed anyone to set foot on the planet, there were some things to be explained. The inept attack on the Erin Kenner by an unmanned ship was a physical manifestation of the overall mystery of the planet. The failure of two well-engineered and maintained spaceships and the deaths of four people aboard them was a sobering reminder that there were things unknown encased in the ice.
Both Josh and Sheba were achingly aware that their parents and siblings lay locked in the planet's frigid embrace. In the case of Ruth and David their shame was there for any observer to witness, and that bothered Josh almost as much as the basic question which was: Why the hell was the planet so cold when enough solar radiation poured down on her to melt all ice except, perhaps, for small areas near the poles?
The Erin Kenner was not equipped for efficient probings beneath the ice. In the normal course of events the X&A ship would have run a surface survey of the planet while conducting a thorough scan for life readings.
Finding none in the ice, she would have recorded the ice planet's basic measurements, characteristics, and position in space in a claim of discovery for the people of the United Planets. Any utilization of the planet's resources would have been left to private sector prospectors and miners. A mining ship would be equipped with drill drones and probes that could, with relative ease, examine the metallic deposits under the ice.
Josh had three robotic exploration and test drones at his disposal, none of which was designed to burrow through ice. All three of the drones were at work. They measured a temperature well below zero at the surface of the ice while air temperatures a few feet above the ground indicated the strength of the sea of energy poured onto the planet by her sun. The drones began to pinpoint strong readings of metal beneath the ice and an interesting pattern emerged.
Kirsty Girard, in her role as science officer, called the captain into a small space packed with screens and dials and recording devices. "It gets a bit weird," she said, as she punched up a graphic on a monitor. "These large, pink areas are ore fields, some of them quite deep. They're pretty typical of a planet in the life zone."
"And those bright red spots?" Josh asked.
"I'm getting to that," Kirsty said. "That's the weird part." She punched buttons and the graphic expanded to take in a wider area. "So far the drones have covered most of the southern half of this large land mass.
Take a look at the distribution of the red dots."
The dots formed a grid.
"The distance from dot to dot is uniform, almost exactly two hundred miles," Kirsty said. "As you can see by the color, each dot represents ahighly concentrated mass of metal. Each one seems to be identical."
"Emanations? Electrical? Other?"
"None that we can detect," Kirsty said.
"How thick is the ice covering?"
"It varies, but there's at least two hundred feet of ice over the shallowest of the masses."
"Any doubt in your mind, Lieutenant Girard, that we've encountered the work of intelligent beings?"
A shiver went up and down Kirsty's spine. "None at all, sir."
"How long will it take to get the drones aboard?"
"Three hours."
"Okay. Start 'em up."
"Aye, sir," Kirsty said. "I wonder, sir, if I might have just a couple of hours?"
Josh waited.
"I've just started moving one of the drones." She pushed buttons and the image of the planet turned on the screen. A pointer stabbed toward an area of featureless white. "Here's another major land mass on the opposite side of the globe. I'd like to have a drone work there for a couple of hours to see if the same grid pattern of installations is in place."
Josh nodded. "I see no problem with that."
Sheba was with Angela on the control bridge. When Josh told them that they'd be blinking out toward the Rimfire route in about five hours, Angela sighed deeply. It had become apparent, with the attack of the unmanned drone, that the Erin Kenner had encountered an alien intelligence. She had not questioned Josh openly, but she'd felt then that it was time to back off and call in the headquarters boffins with their elaborate equipment and stringent safeguards.
Sheba said, "What about the bodies of our folks?"
"Queenie, they're a part of the whole. We couldn't touch them, even if I disobeyed regulations and common sense and sent a manned launch down to the surface."
"Josh, they'll see," Sheba said. "Everyone who comes here will see what Ruth and David were doing."
Josh shook his head regretfully. "Can't be helped, Queenie."
"My father and mother are down there," Sheba said with emotion. "He was born on Tigian II, and he loved it. You were sent a copy of his will. If you read it, you might remember that he provided that his and Mother's ashes be placed in the family memorial at T-Town. That meant a lot to him, because that memorial holds the ashes of six generations of Websters. He provided a place for each of us, too, Josh. There are niches for Ruth and David."
"We can request that the remains be sent there when X&A has completed its investigation," Josh said.
"Josh, damnit, I don't know what kind of a place this is, or what the hell went on down there, but I know damned well that what Ruth and David were doing when they died was not their idea."
"No, I guess not," Josh said.
"You could separate them with one of the drones," Sheba said.
"Queenie, if a drone touches them, they'll shatter. We haven't been able to get exact temperature readings of frozen objects such as a bone, or the metal of the ships. We know that objects alien to this planet are much colder than the very thin air around them. Kirsty Girard thinks that it's close to absolute zero in the interior of the metals that shattered on touch, and that would hold true for the bodies. At that temperature durasteel crumbles like a cracker. Try to separate David and Ruth and we'd have a pile of frozen chips of flesh and bone."
"Which could be decently cremated," Sheba said.
"No," Josh said. "I'm sorry."
"Captain," said Kirsty Girard's voice on the communicator, "can you come to Science and Navigation?"
"On my way, Kirsty," Josh said.
Both Angela and Sheba followed him to stand in the door to Kirsty's
"office" as Josh leaned over a monitor. They could both see a darkness in a field of white ice.
As Josh watched, the dark spot resolved itself into a square cube of metal. The drone was airborne, and was closing on the structure.
"Why didn't we s
pot this before?" Josh asked.
"Because up until about one hour ago it was covered by two hundred feet of ice," Kirsty said. "I had the area on camera, a wide view, when the ice began to melt. The computer alerted me to the change in image. It took only sixteen minutes for the ice cover to be removed."
Josh felt a prickle of alarm at the nape of his neck. She had phrased her words to indicate that she believed that the dull metal square had been deliberately revealed by someone or by something.
"Keep the drone at two miles distance," Josh ordered. "Readout?"
Kirsty was controlling the drone with eye and head movements inside a snug-fitting helmet. She hovered the drone and ordered use of all of its sensors.
"No emissions. No radiation. No heat," she said.
"Bring the drone home," Josh said.
"Wait," Kirsty said, with excitement in her voice. "The shell of that square is made of the same metal that was in the hull of the ship that attacked us. No wonder we're getting no readings. That stuff would keep heat or any emissions inside."
"Bring it home, Kirsty," Josh ordered calmly.
"Yes, sir," Kirsty said. She thought the order.
The drone moved swiftly, darting directly toward the metal cubeprotruding above the ice.
"Watch it," Josh said.
"Come back, damn you," Kirsty grated between her teeth as the drone settled onto the smooth top of the cube. She looked up at Josh, her eyes wide. "It's all right," she said. "There's no danger."
Josh felt a sense of relief. A great peace settled over him. "No," he said,
"there is no danger."
"We can get Ruth and David now," Sheba said.
For a moment Angela felt protest rising in her, but she, too, felt the great sense of peace and rightness. She smiled.
"Kirsty, send a drone down to the Fran Webster. Use the earth sampler scoop to gather up the two bodies. Seal them in a specimen bag."
"They'll be mixed together," Sheba said.
"They died together," Angela said.
"We can try to gather them in separately," Josh said.
