The Asteroid

by M R Cates

  Sandra put a hand on Françoise's shoulder. “You have been very important to me, too, you know. But don't give me so much credit, Françoise. This is one hell of a situation we are in here. As you already said, it's unreal. It makes everything about it shine brighter than it really is.”

  “No, Sandra,” Françoise shook her head. “I know the difference, you see.”

  Sandra didn't answer, just leaned forward and gave the other a warm hug. “We're going to make this thing work,” she said quietly, almost directly into Françoise's right ear. “No more about me, okay?”

  Sandra released Françoise and leaned back. The French student's eyes were filled with tears. “I cannot ... say the correct thing,” she said, looking into Sandra's eyes steadfastly.

  “No words work,” Sandra said. “We don't have language for what we've done together and how we feel. But I can tell you this is the most human I have ever felt in my life.”

  Françoise ran a hand through her hair again. The breeze swept her eyes dry. “I wish ... you see, I could go with you, Sandra.”

  “I'd love it, too, Françoise. “Keeping myself company on that damn sailboat is not my favorite way to be on the ocean. But, look, you should know something. If I should, for some reason, not make it back, I'll expect you to take my place. I hope you understand that.”

  “I could not,” Françoise shook her head firmly, tears reappearing.

  “Damn straight you can. We have to be realistic, Françoise. And nobody is indispensable.”

  “To me ...” Françoise turned away, looking out to sea. “To me you are.”

  Sandra hesitated, holding her tongue. Something more about Françoise entered her consciousness. Then, with an internal grip on herself, she shoved it aside and said, “Let's go in and go over our plans, okay?”

  In the small room, the four sat around a table. Sandra went down a printed checklist that Jon Greenberg supplied for their perusal. Carl asked a few questions about some details. Françoise answered some of them for him, Sandra others. They were still speaking when the cutter's engines changed tone. It was evident they were stopping.

  “Guess we're about there,” Sandra said.

  Greenberg, listening to a communication from the cutter captain nodded his agreement. “They're ready for you on deck, Dr. Hu ..., er Sandra.”

  “Okay, let's do it,” she said, opening the door. Sandra exited without looking back.

  Chapter 37

  The Pacific Ocean bears one of history's greatest misnomers. Even on a calm day such as on that July 18th, and in the middle of summer when storm activity is rare, swells of six, eight, or ten feet were more the norm than the exception. Sandra had come to grips with that truth about ocean sailing the day before, but the lessons had been conducted within a few miles of shore. It seemed to her – immediately – that the sea was somehow bigger and meaner than it was supposed to be. The process of getting settled on the Devil Fish, checking all her various gear, and monitoring the first few dozen feet of released fiber optics cable held all the astronomer's attention for the first few minutes. The gyroscope had been carefully oriented on the cutter deck in the moments before, precisely aligned to the known but invisible location of the alien craft. Getting it arranged on the sailboat had taken most of Sandra's concentration. Afterwards, there were a series of communications checks with the fiber optic microphone, and a series of test two-color Morse Code sequences. The little screen where the flashes appeared was mounted firmly to the module where the fiber optics cable terminated. Sandra could see it easily from her position near the stern of the sailboat. The time, read by Greenberg to her from the cutter, was nine-twenty nine. She had a little built-in buffer. Good.

  Carl and Françoise were on deck to wave goodbye. Sandra waved back at them both then she let the Devil Fish begin to take more sail. The departing sailor managed another glance at those on the cutter deck before re-concentrating on the boom. She thought she heard Françoise's “Bon chance!” through the wind.

  Connie Smith had been right. The wind was steady. Great luck. Sandra concentrated, almost too much, on the gyroscope. She didn't want to find herself miles away from her destination. Yes, the monitoring aircraft and their telescopes would be watching and sending information about her course, but ... It was five minutes before she looked back. The cutter was nearly out of sight. The fiber cable, trailing off into the sea, was now her umbilical.

  “Jon, can you hear me okay still?” she asked.

  The flashes returned. “Y. Copy OK?” The shorthand words were part of their worked-out code variants. Y and OK were obvious. They would use N for “no” and NN for “north” to avoid confusion.

  “Smooth, Jon,” she answered. “But I'm sure to get cross-eyed watching this damn screen.”

  By Sandra's estimate she had covered nearly a mile. “What's my reading, Jon. Has the Air Force sent you anything?”

  There was a brief hesitation. Greenberg was careful to craft his responses into short phrases. “AF says 0.91 mi. 2 deg off crs NN.”

  “Got you, Jon. Thanks. I'm going to concentrate for a while. Will talk again in five minutes.”

  “OK.”

  The wind was all Sandra could hear. It was bizarre to be carrying on this conversation with Jon, receiving his responses as green and red flashes. The Morse Code rate, already worked out, seemed just right. She was having almost no trouble. There was a pad of waterproof paper and crayon available if she needed to write anything down. Not used yet. With each passing minute Sandra Hughes was sinking deeper into her working mentality. Eyes went everywhere, checking and rechecking everything necessary. Her brain locked on the tasks. There was no time to ponder the aliens, to drift into thoughts about her friends and colleagues, or even to examine the stark grandeur of the rising and falling sea around her. The air was Hawaii-perfect, completely comfortable. This was her world, her sea, where beings like herself had evolved. She was natural here. All this Sandra knew, but continued to feel somehow out of place. Even as she focused her efforts, there was a sense that she was barging in on a realm in which she was not natural. It wasn't a concern she dwelt on. It didn't take away from her concentration, but it remained like a pall around her mind.

  An hour passed. The whizzing of water against the prow of the Devil Fish had a definite rhythm to it. Sandra had covered eight and a half miles, and was now within a degree of her correct course. She had already programmed – mentally – her gyroscope to help her make the gradual correction. I'm getting the hang of this, she thought. Nothing about the sea had changed. The cutter was well out of sight, and only an occasional glance back at Hawaii, whose heights were still visible, gave her any reference. The world was sea. Rising and falling slowly. Beautiful sea, yes. Deep sea, yes. Her world, yes, but she was a land creature. Pity. Were she a seal or porpoise, the task would be so easy.

  Sandra had established a routine. Some of her concentration could be released, allowing her to return to a kind of reality where she could sense herself, to a degree, from the outside. In the midst of her earlier concentration, she had no external vision of herself. Now, she could imagine this lone woman, on a sailboat made without metal, moving inexorably across a short – but surprisingly extensive – stretch of the vast Pacific. We human beings are so tiny! After another communications check with Greenberg, Sandra yawned. It was less that she was sleepy than that she needed to release a little tension. It was just after the yawn that she felt the first low buzz.

  On the note pad, Sandra wrote: “Dull buzz in my head. Directional. Something from the aliens, probably. Time from Jon: 10:48. To Jon she had said the same thing.

  He replied, “R U OK?”

  “Yes, Jon. It's electromagnetic, I think. But no sign of any effects around me.”

  The buzzing was unremitting. And gradually increased. Sandra was less uncomfortable than agitated. That was consistent with something electromagnetic. This had to be related to their concern about metal. Yet there were no discharges or sparks on any of t
he surfaces around her. The non-metallic world in which she floated should have given her some sign, perhaps a static buildup. There was no conductor available to drain off any charge. Except the ocean itself. That may be enough, she mused.

  “It's not an actual sound, Jon,” she reported. “It's a feeling, almost like an internal vibration.”

  Jon flashed, “Craft 35 mi, trk pt 3 deg NN.”

  Sandra considered things to be going very well, and said so. “The buzzing is not disabling, Jon, but very strange.” Reaching into her storage area she retrieved a pair of binoculars. They were fabricated of glass and plastic – fortunately someone had located a commercial product that only required a small adaptation to totally free it of metal – rated at 10 X 50. She scanned the forward horizon carefully, wondering when she might first make out the floating craft. There was a chance that at the top of one of the Pacific swells she'd be high enough. “Nothing visible in target direction,” she reported.

  Another hour passed. No strengthening in the buzzing she could determine. Sandra considered the likelihood that she had simply accommodated the sensation, like the adjustment of olfactory senses to an undesired odor, eventually masking it. Nearly nine more miles had been covered. She was no more than about 25 miles from her destination. Though it still remained unseen. The last check of time from Jon was 11:52. About four hours away from something totally unimaginable. The wind was a smooth and continuous companion, washing her face and arms. Sandra's ponytail, tied with a rubber band instead of a commercial elastic tie (to avoid any possibility of metallic content), fluttered unnoticed behind her head. Various stray strands of damp hair had to be brushed away from her face, but she had no intention of re-tying the ponytail. That was low on her list of priorities. Shifting a little in place to relieve cramping in the thighs, Sandra looked back at empty ocean. She thought she could still see Hawaii at times, but not always. The wind seemed more erratic than earlier, gusting occasionally. Holding the rudder to accommodate her mental adjustments from the gyroscope reading was not only difficult but causing her arms to ache a little.

  Greenberg tapped in: “R U OK?” reminding her she had not spoken in a while.

  Sandra said, “Wind is erratic now. Tends to gust away from prevailing direction. Buzzing the same. How's my position?”

  A few seconds later, he sent back, “Pt 5 deg S of trk. 24 pt 5 mi out.”

  Doing okay, she thought to herself. “Thanks,” she said aloud. Sandra had less stamina than she had figured. The adjustment taken from her internal calibration of the gyroscope took longer than she’d expected, and the Devil Fish skittered a little from the wind fluctuation. All in all, however, she still felt firmly in command of the little sailboat. It was, in a certain way, home for her. It was a human creation entering the presence of something totally non-human.

  How odd that she should be proceeding forward without that most important symbol of human technology, metal. So little free metal had been available to the tribes of primitive homo sapiens. Their precious treasures of small amounts of gold and silver must have been seen, indeed, as creations from the gods. So unlike anything else in human experience. Reflective, ductile, strong. There was probably considerable truth to the idea that human civilization was made possible by learning to extract metals from their ores. The first great rise of cities, after all, had been a byproduct of the Bronze Age. And the smelting of iron had made it possible for so much more, particularly more efficient killing. Had these aliens, whatever they were, had such a strange evolutionary history? Probably, she figured. But probably very different in detail. Certainly in outcome. They had come here to see us, hadn't they? We're still here, and won't be out looking for others for a long time, if ever, given our biological conditions.

  Configuring the Devil Fish without metal had been a non-trivial task. Up until a few hours before her departure the technicians had repeatedly gone over the sailboat and her gear with metal detectors, looking for the stray item that had not been thought about. Two or three traces had been found and removed. Sandra's jeans – originally with brass reinforcements, buttons and zipper – had been modified during the day before, while she was in sailing lessons. Now they were buttoned up the front, all plastic. Her sneakers had, fortunately, passed the metal detector test without modification. A safety pin she'd kept on her shirt's bottom hem – for emergencies – had been removed, allowing the shirt to pass muster. She'd planned ahead on underwear, selecting appropriately.

  Sandra had no weapons. The closest thing she had was a ceramic-bladed knife, but she thought of it as a tool. The tool kit with her, in fact, was rather strange, but fascinating. Besides the ceramic knife (mounted in a Dacron polyester hilt), there were several plastic pick-like objects, a pair of nylon tweezers, several coils of cord – of different diameters – a set of eating utensils to go with her food rations, rubber bands and bungee cords, a magnifying glass, a strong ceramic file and small emery fingernail file, two kinds of glue in plastic tubes, some fiberglass sheeting and adhesive (in case of boat damage), and a pair of nylon pliers with ceramic jaws. It had been discussed, during preparations, whether silicon qualified as a metal. Sandra decided it was a moot point, since any silicon device they might try to send along would have metal conductors – albeit rather tiny, in some cases – associated with it. The communication system they had cooked up so quickly would not have been necessary otherwise. The stringing out of 48 miles of fiber optic cable sounded a lot more unreliable than it was, since both the cable material and the high purity silica of the optical fibers themselves were exceedingly strong, much stronger than steel..

  At 12:35, Sandra took in some sail, slowing the boat considerably. Now only about 20 miles from the goal she was both ahead of schedule and needed a break. “Jon,” she said, “am slowing, and will drift for a few minutes. Time for a pit stop and snack. Okay?”

  The reply was: “O K. We monitor ur pos.”

  Sandra didn't know whether any telescope up and out there could actually make her out, but she did have a kind of camp toilet which she was able to use in a little screened area. She used it and got it over with. Waste products are a real bother, she thought. Wonder how our little green men manage? Afterwards, she wolfed down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then unfurled her sail again, feeling strengthened. It was now 12:58. The buzzing was still there and the astronomer began to believe there was some directionality associated with it. Looking straight toward her destination seemed to generate a kind of resonance, causing something like a beat note process to be felt, lower frequencies and higher amplitudes, as if both ears or sides of her brain were combining effects somewhat in or out of phase with one another.

  The wind behaved better again, blowing more steadily from the northeast, but it slowed to around six knots. Jon sent her word. The load on Sandra's arms was a little lessened and she was able to lock on bearing quite well, staying directly on course to plus or minus a degree or so. Sandra wished she could have shown Connie Smith her handiwork. How nice to have a gyroscope. Better, in a way, than a compass, given that Sandra could effectively interpolate between readings off course and appropriately compensate. At their present rate of progress the Devil Fish should arrive just on time. But what did “on time” mean, in the context of the aliens? Would it matter if she were late or early? Did these aliens hold time in some sacred esteem? She remembered that they had landed their craft to the second of when they said. Human time, that is. No threats had been given or any contingency that would be implemented if she didn't show up exactly on time. Did they guess or determine that I'd have to come by sailboat? No answers, of course, but Sandra wanted to time her arrival as precisely as possible.

  Just before three o'clock, she got her first glimpse of the floating doughnut. Estimating that the rock was floating with its top surface about forty-five feet above the water meant that, on a perfectly flat ocean, she could have seen it at some distance, maybe as far away as twenty or more miles. But the gray-blue Pacific was anything but fl
at. Had Sandra been constantly examining the forward horizon she might well have seen the brown object sooner. Distinguishing the profile from other transient surfaces wasn't terribly easy, especially with the sun setting in that general direction, but when the Devil Fish skipper saw the profile she knew what it was.

  “I see the alien rock,” she announced. “Right on course. Can't tell anything about it yet. Where am I? About five or six miles out, right?”

  The answer from Greenberg, after a pause, was, “Y. 5 pt 5 mi. 7 pt 5 to rok”

  Sandra said, “Thanks, Jon. Monitors still see me and it?”

  “Y. Rok unchged.”

  “Not surprised,” she muttered. “They don't seem to want to either help or hinder. Am I moving at about six knots? Have trimmed a little.”

  “6 pt 5,” was his reply.

  “Okay,” Sandra said. “I'm going to talk as much as I can from now on. Hope I won't bore you, Jon. So here goes.”

  Eyes forward, the astronomer began describing everything around her. The sea was basically unchanged, but she reported the shape of the spray pattern off the Devil Fish bow, the occasional fluctuations in the steady buzzing, and the hard-to-discern interface between the ocean and the floating rock. She turned the microphone outward two or three times to give the cutter crew a few seconds each time of wind noise, including whistling rigging and whizzing of water against fiberglass. Gradually, but steadily, the alien rock became more discernible.

  “The rock is brown from this angle, too,” Sandra reported. “Mottled a little. The central slice is underwater, but the water around it looks like it might be foaming or steaming. Monitors see that?”

  “Y.”

  “In the binoculars,” she continued, “I can now make out some degree of lumpiness. No indication from this angle of any vents or cracks along the upper surface. Any sign from above? Anything opened up or changed at all?”