Solar Express

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  FOCUSING.

  Tavoian waited.

  THE DECREASE IN EXPECTED REFLECTIVITY WHEN THE LASER BEAM MATCHED THE COLOR OF THE SURFACE BESIDE THE OPENING WAS ELEVEN POINT FOUR PERCENT. SURFACE TEMPERATURE REMAINS UNCHANGED. THERE IS NO RADIATION OR HEAT.

  More than eleven percent? Where are those photons going?

  “Is there enough fiber-optic line to reach the next lower opening?”

  THE REMAINING LINE IS ADEQUATE IN LENGTH.

  “Then direct the ISV there.”

  The ISV moved down another of the passageways set at sixty degrees from the junction … and the image went black.

  “Frig!” Tavoian immediately checked the screens displaying the Sinese longliner. “What happened?”

  THE SIGNAL WAS LOST. THE FIBER-OPTIC LINE INTO THE ARTIFACT REMAINS INTACT. OBSERVATION INDICATES IT HAS LOST TENSION.

  “Cut off by another sharp edge.”

  THAT IS THE MOST LIKELY PROBABILITY.

  Tavoian just hoped that the ISV followed its programming. He kept watching the monitors.

  Eighteen minutes later, the image from the ISV resumed, showing a view of the signal repeater as the ISV approached it.

  “Have the ISV and rover pick up the signal repeater and then return to Recon three.”

  RECOVERY UNDER WAY.

  As the ship’s AI handled the recovery, Tavoian drafted another message to Donovan Base, reporting the latest results, and the apparent lack of anything but miniature probe scouting by the Sinese longliner. Once he’d dispatched it, he wondered why he’d received no messages, especially from Alayna, but if the colonel hadn’t relayed his message to Alayna, there was no way he was going to get a reply. He would have liked her insights. He would have liked insights from anyone. The way things were going, the colonel wanted results, but he wasn’t exactly a font of suggestions, and so far, Tavoian wasn’t getting any help in addressing the problems he faced.

  One thing he did know. He needed more carbon cable if he wanted to do more explorations, even of the eighteen partly open hexagons. So he pulled and maneuvered his way down to the fabricator and set it to extruding more cable. He could reclaim the space anchors and reuse them.

  With that done, he decided to get back to exercising, something that he’d skipped far too much for a pilot going to be in weightless conditions for far too long. It wasn’t his favorite occupation, unlike some Space Service types, who gloried in it, but he definitely didn’t want to pay the deferred price for not exercising.

  He checked the message queue a last time.

  Still no messages.

  45

  DAEDALUS BASE

  11 NOVEMBER 2114

  Sunday morning hadn’t found Alayna any closer to discovering anything more about the multi-fractals. Although Marcel had recorded and classified more than fifty additional near-matches, not a single pair showed enough similarity that she could have claimed, or even indirectly hinted, that the repeated closeness of matches suggested something beyond coincidence. During the last lunar day, she’d had the AI take sample image comparisons and detailed measurements at higher solar latitudes as well, but the results were what any astronomer would have expected—that the convection activity tended to slow at higher latitudes, and that there were fewer examples of the multi-fractals. The only change was the slightly higher number of sunspots over the past few days, although sunspot numbers did vary considerably, even during a solar minimum.

  When she checked the messages that morning immediately after getting to the control center, she’d noted only the news summaries, HotNews!, and a single personal message—from her father. She didn’t expect anything from the Foundation on a Sunday, and if anyone there had sent a message on a weekend, the odds were high that the contents wouldn’t be good. The news summaries were routinely ominous. HotNews! was worse, with the story about brine shrimp not surviving in what remained of the Great Salt Lake being the least foreboding. She still hadn’t heard anything recently from either Chris or the Foundation, and she wasn’t sure which silence was more worrisome.

  She’d waited to read the message from her father until she’d checked all the systems and made certain that all the arrays were operating as they should be, which was especially important now that Farside was full dark. She didn’t need anything else to go wrong, not with both Director Wrae and the Director-Generale apparently less than pleased with her performance … and her failure to act as politically astutely as they thought they would have. In addition, although her father responded quickly most of the time, getting a reply from him in little more than a day after her last message worried her.

  Dearest Alayna,

  I was extraordinarily relieved when I received your latest missive, especially after learning that the Sinese Federation has threatened to retaliate against all Noram space facilities if any weaponry is used by anyone against Sinese territory or facilities anywhere in the solar system …

  Where did he get that idea? It had to have come from one of his friends in the Justice Department or somewhere in government. Except, Alayna realized, it wasn’t an idea. It was a warning. She hadn’t seen a word about that kind of threat in the news summaries over the last week, and she’d been perusing them down to the last word, mainly to see what news might have shown up about her discovery and to see when anyone reported Chris’s ship. Were the Sinese that deluded? Or were they deluded at all? Did they really think the rest of the world would back down? Except everyone else has, except for the Indians. Yet, from Chris’s messages, it didn’t sound like the Noram Space Service was backing down.

  … with what sounds like an attempt to establish a military installation on Europa, as well as an attempt to corner another source of deuterium, the Sinese are acting in a fashion congruent to the first Chinese empires. They have decided, it would seem, that their attempts to develop a commerce-based world hegemony will continue to be thwarted by the Indian-UAAS trade and technology alliance and by the residual inventiveness of Noram, not to mention Noram’s unparalleled skills in financial chicanery and manipulation. They have avoided the worst effects of their twenty-first-century population decline by absorbing almost all of east and south Asia, but the comparative prosperity they created is leaving them, again, with a declining population. Thus, it is and has been with most empires, whether they have styled themselves as such or not …

  Alayna smiled. She remembered all too many impromptu lectures on the lessons of history.

  … One can only hope that saner minds will prevail, as they often have, but there have been enough times when few listened to the dry words of sanity. One way or another, you may be in one of the better locales as this scenario plays out, although I cannot imagine anyone wasting weapons on Lincoln, Nebraska, either. Even more I cannot imagine the Sinese spending resources on an isolated research installation on the far side of the Moon when there are other military and pseudo-military targets whose destruction and/or impairment would serve what they believe to be their ends more effectively.

  You were always destined for discoveries, and although you downplay your efforts, it appears that you have discovered something very special, either an astronomical oddity or a potential alien artifact. I know I’m pontificating, but there are always new discoveries if you persevere, and not persevering would be a waste of your abilities …

  She’d certainly heard those words before.

  … The Court of Appeals still has not set a hearing date on the case dealing with the residual groundwater rights in the Ogallala Aquifer. It may be a most pedestrian suit in these times of high drama and potential alien artifacts, but most of life is pedestrian indeed, and should be addressed with as much care and industry as the most exciting and entertaining events flogged into oblivion by the media, not that I, or most truly thoughtful individuals, find much of what is flogged to be either useful or entertaining …

  Alayna smiled again, despite the scores of times that she had heard various phrasings of those words.

  … and fo
r all of my pedantries, you must know that they are among the few ways I can express my concerns, my love, and my support for you and for your dreams … and you should know that in these parlous times.

  Her father hadn’t offered an effusive closing. He hadn’t needed to. She swallowed several times, then blotted eyes that she hadn’t realized, at first, were watering.

  He’s worried. Truly worried. She’d never gotten a message quite like that from him.

  After several moments, she blew her nose and checked her messages. Still nothing from the Foundation or from Chris, and it would be almost two weeks before the Moon and the optical array would be in position for her to confirm for herself that her alien object had company. There had been enough media reports about both Noram and Sinese probes, with no denials, that she was fairly certain of what she’d see. There might even have been images in the Earthside media, but without a change in comm systems and protocols, the only image comm traffic from COFAR was one-way—back to Earth. But since there were no references to images, she had doubts that any had yet appeared.

  In the meantime … Her lips quirked. For all of her father’s often heavy-handed advice, he was right about continuing to seek new discoveries, and that meant coming up with either another approach to her solar conundrum, or a new way of looking at or interpreting the images and data that she already had.

  At that moment, the comm chimed, indicating an incoming message. She immediately called it up, smiling as much in relief as with pleasure when she saw the sender.

  She immediately began to read.

  Alayna—

  As you must know by now, I’m part of the Noram effort to investigate your discovery. It is definitely an artifact, and does not appear to be anything created by any known human civilization …

  Despite her speculations, her mouth opened. It was one thing to think that he was there. It was another to have it confirmed by him. She kept reading. Then she got to the attachments—or rather the statement that prefaced them in bold lettering.

  THE ATTACHED FILES ARE CLASSIFIED MATERIALS INTENDED FOR THE RECIPIENT SOLELY FOR PROFESSIONAL USE. THEY ARE NOT TO BE RETRANSMITTED OR COPIED. NOR ARE THEY TO REMAIN IN PERMANENT STORAGE. FAILURE TO OBSERVE THESE PRECAUTIONS COULD RESULT IN PROSECUTION UNDER THE NORTH AMERICAN SECURITY ACT OF 2109.

  Alayna immediately created a special temporary directory in her own personal directory and shifted the files there, rather than copied them, although technically she knew she’d actually copied and then destroyed.

  She was speechless as she read the report Chris had sent, as well as the images. A fragment, just a section, of an immense spacecraft … and who knows how long … She stopped.

  “Marcel … what do your calculations show now for the probable orbital period of 2114 FQ5?”

  “Thirteen thousand fifty-three years.”

  “I thought you had calculated eleven thousand…”

  “There is more observational data. The object’s speed is also faster than originally calculated.”

  Alayna frowned. “There shouldn’t be that much difference. Even if the object is more massive, gravitational acceleration doesn’t vary. Albedo might…” She shook her head. Reflecting shouldn’t matter with the number of observations they had.

  The AI usually wasn’t that far off in calculations. Then again, neither she nor the AI had ever run across an alien artifact before. No one had.

  After her first quick reading of the attachments and another reading of Chris’s message, she had even more questions. His message to her had been delayed almost a full day, and the preface to the attachments was official, and in a different type style, suggesting that either someone else had added it … or that Chris had done so in a way to suggest that. She had her doubts that he would have done that, but the delay did indicate to her that his messages were being scanned before being transmitted, and that suggested they had been initially sent by a more secure means.

  So why are they letting you see this material? Alayna feared very much that it was because the Space Service didn’t have any good suggestions for Chris. The problem was that, at least at first, and second, reading she didn’t either. Materials so hard lasers couldn’t leave a mark on them, but materials doped or modified so sections exhibited selective photosensitivity, linked to a wavelength differential of perhaps as little as a nanometer? After more than fourteen thousand years?

  Who or what built something like that? And who or what was so much more powerful than those builders that it could slice through such materials? Alayna shivered, very conscious of just how insignificant she felt after considering those questions.

  She also had no answers for Chris—or for whoever had let her see all the documentation, an indication of how worried and desperate the Space Service had to be. Yet … she had to see if she could come up with something … somehow.

  46

  HOTNEWS!

  12 NOVEMBER 2114

  [Image Deleted For Off-Earth Transmission]

  There’s an alien spaceship headed our way. Does it have real aliens? That glittering white object you see is what’s left of an ancient spacecraft. You heard it here first! It’s just a piece, and it’s two kilometers across! The Sinese and Noram exploratory ships are both circling the remnant. No one’s saying anything. Maybe they can’t. Meanwhile, it’s headed toward our sun at more than one hundred forty thousand kilometers per hour and accelerating. Might better be called the Solar Express. Did we say that before? It’s worth repeating …

  [Image Deleted]

  T’Yara Dya claims she’s the first Mongolian of the realies. The first most highly exposed diva from Mongolia—that she can claim. With what she shows, anyone can see why she’s a refugee. She’s also said that there is no such thing as Mongolia First! She wants to expose that as a Sinese fabrication to justify killing successful Mongolian businesspeople and blaming the Indians. Did we mention that Dya has had her own tiffs with the execs in Bollywood … over exposure, no less?

  [Image Deleted]

  The Nielsen-Kelly Religious Freedom Foundation has been sued by a woman claiming to be the great-grandniece of one of the women for whom the Foundation was named. Seraphina Nielsen sought damages for defamation of her family name—or did until Hot Phoenix outed her, for the simplest of reasons. The original Nielsen was a scarlet woman—that is, she was a redhead—but she repudiated the LDS faith early in life. That’s religious freedom. No one’s heard of Seraphina since the court summarily dismissed her suit as frivolous, and won’t, unless she wants to make a personal exposé. She might not be up for that kind of freedom.

  [Image Deleted]

  Indian Prime Minister Narahaj Ravindra isn’t saying much. No one in New Delhi is. But the preparation of hardened command centers across India says enough. Did we mention a deep space impregnable fortress armed with doomsday missiles? Perhaps Sinese Head of State Jiang Qining should reconsider? Except he keeps saying that he’s only protecting Sinese interests and property. Could it be he thinks the entire solar system is Sinese property?

  [Image Deleted]

  Those oily slicks seen in the middle of the North Pacific? They’re the work of a rogue GMO outfit called Clean Earth. Seems that they’ve successfully engineered microbes that feed on plastic, especially on tiny grains. The only problem is that they break down the plastics into a version of the petrochemicals from which they were initially made. No more plastics, it appears, just natural oil slicks. But what happens if they reach Ottawa? No problem, claims Clean Earth. Those little bugs can only survive in salt water … for now, anyway.

  47

  RECON THREE

  12 NOVEMBER 2114

  When he woke up, for several moments, Tavoian had no idea what day of the week or month it was, and for a moment, as he found himself weightless, he even wondered what had stopped Donovan Base from rotating—before his memories dropped into place and he recalled that he was aboard Recon three, struggling to find a way to discover something meaningful about the alien ar
tifact. Before he did much of anything, he fumbled with the pressurized heating tube that substituted for a kettle and made a strong batch of tea. After the third long swallow from the squeezebottle, when he felt as though his thoughts were slightly more focused, he checked all the monitors and systems, even though he knew the ship’s AI would have alerted him if anything had been seriously amiss. Still, he was thinking fuzzily, and he immediately checked the CO2 level. According to the monitors, the level was point five percent, below the long-term Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentration standard of point seven percent. So his problem wasn’t CO2. That, at least, was good.

  There were no new messages, and the Sinese longliner remained in the same position as it had been relative to the artifact and to Recon three.

  “Report on anything that the Sinese ship has done.”

  AT 0140 UTC, THE SINESE SHIP LAUNCHED A SMALL CRAFT SIMILAR TO THE ISV. IT HAS BEEN METHODICALLY SCANNING EVERY EXPOSED SURFACE OF THE ARTIFACT. AT THE PRESENT RATE OF COVERAGE, IT WILL TAKE 206 HOURS TO SCAN THE ENTIRE EXTERIOR.

  “That long?”

  IT COVERS THIRTY THOUSAND SQUARE METERS AN HOUR. THE EXTERIOR SURFACE OF THE FLAT SIDE EXCEEDS THREE MILLION SQUARE METERS, WITH THE CURVATURE—

  “Enough. I trust your calculations.” Again, Tavoian hadn’t been alert enough to recall just how huge the artifact was, especially for being just a part of a spacecraft. “What else?”

  THE SINESE LAUNCHED SMALL EXPLORATORY MODULES. THEY ATTEMPTED TO SETTLE ON THE ARTIFACT. THEY WERE NOT SUCCESSFUL.

  “What happened?”

  THE ARTIFACT ROTATED OUT FROM UNDER THEM. SOME WERE STRUCK BY THE SURFACES AND WERE PROPELLED AWAY FROM THE ARTIFACT. OTHERS REMAIN IN ORBIT AROUND THE ARTIFACT.

  Tavoian couldn’t help but smile, recalling what had happened with the AI rover’s first attempted excursion. The artifact might show the Sinese that they don’t know as much as they think they do. Tavoian had already been made well aware of his own shortcomings—and that of the technology he was using—in dealing with the artifact. “How many did they launch?”