by Blaze Ward
“No signal from Fairchild?”
Chike felt the first pangs of nervousness. He liked the crazy pilot. It was unimaginable that the odds had finally caught up with her.
Chike had a hard time thinking of any other person he had ever met who was more alive.
“Calypso has an emergency beacon triangulated,” Ann–Marta said quietly. “Roughly one hundred kilometers north–northwest of here. Says that the shuttle craft hit hard.”
“Hard?” Chike probed.
“Straight–down, angled slightly backwards for the wind. Free fall,” Ann–Marta continued. “I’m working on the presumption that Fairchild lost all power up there and bailed out. She would have.”
“So we just need to backtrack from the wreckage?” Chike felt the first glitter of hope.
Jumping from the shuttle into that storm would have been insane.
Right up Fairchild’s alley.
Hell, she might turn it into a sport on this planet, if left to her own devices.
If she had survived it.
Stop thinking like that. She made it out fine. You’ll find her soon.
You did not send her to her death.
“Something like that,” Ann–Marta agreed with a growl. She was in full–on Viking bad–ass mode now. Going to jump in her longboat and go loot Ireland, or something.
“And it will probably take Giles six to ten hours to get the backup shuttle ready to fly?” Chike guessed.
“Call it a whole day before they can land here,” Ann–Marta growled. “Longer if we have them do any sort of search pattern before they come for my people.”
Her opinion of the operations staff on Calypso was much lower than his. But then, she tended to run an entire crew of long–serving, planet–side experts on missions like this, rather than relying on undergrads looking for experience, credits, or a good time, like the academic side of the Expedition did.
She rounded on him suddenly, that Viking glare taking over her whole face, her whole body.
“What’s the weather forecast look like?” she said.
“Hmm?”
Chike was a little lost.
“That storm was not on the briefing materials,” she continued. “I would have planned better. What are the chances it happens again in short order?”
Good question. Frightfully, bloody good question.
Rather than speak, Chike strode forward suddenly. He had the correct expert sitting thirty meters away, probably discussing that very topic, if he knew her.
Hadley was facing towards him as he approached, one silent eyebrow up. The rest of the small group fell silent as Chike’s shadow fell across them, the chocolate Viking a stride back and to one side, like a dragon on his wing.
Chike suppressed a grin at the image.
Serious business. Or something to that effect.
“Ann–Marta had an interesting question,” he announced. “How soon until we see another one of those storms?”
Hadley smiled like she had just won a bet with the students around her. Knowing that woman, she probably had.
“Scientific Wild–Ass Guess time, Dr. Odille?” she smiled up at him.
He nodded. Her SWAG was still going to be better than anyone else’s. Probably by orders of magnitude.
“This terrain favors the formation of big storms,” she said. “Warm, moist air gets funneled in from the west by a slowly converging pair of low mountain ranges. When it hits the bottom of the bottle, there is nowhere to go but up, causing the storm to form and drop whatever rain it had. At the same time, winds from both northeast and southeast swirl in on this side of the ridgeline, adding to the instability and drying out the remaining air. Throw in the right temperature differentials, and odds are you get a big storm fairly often. What I don’t know is the surface geology over there. What causes the electromagnetic surge?”
Yes, what would?
All dust storms created a static charge. It was in their nature. This one had gone off the charts, suggesting something magnetic in the dust itself. Chike slid onto one end of the bench, sat down, and leaned forward to think, elbows on the tabletop and chin on fists.
They had only barely begun to scratch the surface of Escudra VI, as it were. It was an Earth–like world with a water cycle, a plant/oxygen cycle, and killer–awesome lightning storms.
The dust under his elbows got his attention.
Chike blinked in surprise.
He had been thinking in terms of iron, such as made up the core of the planet. The gold–pink hue of the dust piled everywhere suggested something more interesting.
Chike reached back and cursed under his breath that he had left his portable laser spectrometer back in his tent instead of in a back pocket, where it normally lived.
When in doubt, fall back on the ancient methods, as his first professor of field surveys had always said.
Chike grinned at the weathermen around him and licked the end of his right index finger. He ran it across the dirty, scarred picnic table top in front of him, picking up a thin film of that pinkish, goldish dust. He stuck his finger in his mouth and tasted the sand, treating it like a good wine.
Everybody else blanched in shock.
Nobody ever said geologists were sane people.
“I’m guessing you have an oxide of copper in here, bonded with something else that makes it a little less stable and a little more conductive, as well as change the color from the deep red it would be, were it pure,” Chike replied to the shocked student with a smile. “I’ll run it through some tests this evening, but let’s assume that any storm in the vicinity will conduct a static charge at higher than Earth rates, as a starting hypothesis.”
He rose and nodded, his face threatening to break into a massive grin at the open mouths and wide eyes around him. Only Ann–Marta was cool, but she’d seen him pull stunts like this on unsuspecting undergrads before.
“I’ll get someone to run it all through a mass spectrometer tonight and have you a breakdown in a few hours.”
Or he might do it himself. Hadley Swain wasn’t the only person who might end up writing award–winning papers from this planet.
Chike winked at Ann–Marta as he turned. She had the decency to not roll her eyes as she turned to follow him away from the sudden gabble that had broken out at the table behind him.
“So now what?” he asked, after the two of them had moved off a bit. In places, it was like walking on a beach now, with soft, gritty sand blown everywhere over what had been reasonably–packed soil yesterday.
“Food for my crews first,” Ann–Marta countered. “They’ll be up early getting everything organized and setting out to look for Fairchild. Your kids will be up all night going through logs and samples, so they can be fed later and won’t want an early breakfast. You?”
Chike nodded. She had done this before. And she was still in charge, until they rescued Fairchild, or at least located her.
“Off to brief Giles, and maybe snag some coffee,” he said. “And then I owe Hadley a readout so she can plan for the next storm better. You suppose we should move the camp farther out?”
“No,” Ann–Marta said decisively. “If Fairchild comes this way, she needs to be able to find us. We weathered the last storm just fine. By end of day tomorrow, we’ll come through an even bigger one like that without any trouble, now that I know what to expect.”
Chike shuddered at the thought of another one like that. While the mass spectrometer was running, he planned to see if the automated survey stations had picked up anything like this over the last few years.
Escudra VI had always promised to be interesting, especially in the quest to find artifacts or concrete evidence of the Elder Race. He wondered how such a race would have responded, but nobody had ever been able to even prove they existed, except as a result of all the terraformed, inhabitable, and empty planets humans had found to their liking in this corner of the galaxy.
At least Fairchild wouldn’t have to worry about little, green men
.
He hoped.
Fairchild
Walking downhill was a lot harder than it looked. Or maybe, Dani hadn’t walked a significant distance by herself in a long time.
You could always take a taxi to the club, or catch a ride with a friend. Something.
This putting one foot in front of the other for hours was a total bummer. Absolutely useless, because there wasn’t even a nice drop–off she could use as a ramp to throw herself into the sky and catch some thermals or something so she could glide there.
No, just this stupid mountain.
God, her feet hurt. And her calves. And her thighs. And everything else.
But that spot way over there wasn’t going to magically fly over and meet her.
Dani knew she was lazy, but damned if she wasn’t more stubborn.
“So,” Dani said aloud, hoping for something useful in the way of conversation.
Even getting lectured by Eleanor was preferable to the silence in her own head.
“Are there any alien remains on this rock?” Dani continued.
Eleanor grunted in response. After this long, that was a placeholder while the AI Governess tried to decide if Dani was serious, or just grumbling, and how much of an answer to provide.
“No,” Eleanor finally granted. “All evidence suggests that Escudra VI will be as empty and bereft of signs of intelligent, star–faring aliens, as every other planet human have yet explored.”
Really? None?
“Why not?” Dani asked after a bit. The joy of a conversation with an AI was that long gaps could pass without words. Eleanor might grow bored, but she was already thinking at several times Dani’s speed, so she might not even notice.
“Do you remember The Fermi Paradox from school, dear?” Eleanor asked in a nice voice.
So, not a lecture. Or, at least, not a hectoring one.
Anything to break up the monotony of walking down a soft slope towards a bunch of rocks that didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
“Let’s assume I slept through that lecture,” Dani said.
It was a safe enough assumption. She had always been able to study the night before a final for a couple of hours, maybe skim through a textbook or two, and ace the test. Not that she retained any of it for more than week afterwards.
But that wasn’t her problem.
“So in the Twentieth Century, a scientist named Enrico Fermi famously asked the question Where is everyone? at the point where astronomers could scan the heavens with advanced, technological systems, looking for signs of intelligent life.”
“They weren’t there,” Dani replied. Everyone knew that.
“Correct,” Eleanor agreed readily, settling her tone into schoolmarm mode. “Since humanity has begun to explore the nearby galaxy, there have been no intelligent life forms located. But there are a large number of worlds that humans could inhabit with only minimal adaptations.”
“Not seeing it, yet,” Dani grunted, concentrating on not flipping ass over teakettle over a large rock outcropping as she walked. Her legs were killing her, but she was really tired of this mountain and wanted off.
“So all theories suggest that there should be intelligent life out there, dear,” Eleanor continued. “Somewhere. And many of these worlds bear evidence of terra–forming, that is, being artificially altered to make them habitable, mostly by introducing simple, DNA–like life forms that would establish the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles necessary to sustain biospheres.”
“How long would that take?” Dani mused aloud, forgetting that she had an audience. Or a witness, depending on how you wanted to interpret it.
“The current estimates range from ten thousand to over one hundred thousand years, dear, depending on the level of technology evinced by these theoretical beings commonly referred to simply as The Elder Race,” Eleanor answered. “For scale, that is from before iron became a human tool, back to almost as long as we have existed as a species.”
“Wow,” Dani said. She had to stop as a rogue thought threatened to make her brain explode. “So where are they?”
Again, the pause. Probably rendering it down into simple soundbites. Eleanor certainly knew her charge.
“There are three theories. Would you like to hear them?”
Is that better than hours of silence, broken only by the crunch of gravel? Are you stupid?
“Yes, please,” Dani said finally, politely even.
Not really, but seriously, better than being alone in her own head.
“First, they might have retreated from the galaxy, possibly to a homeworld somewhere, and continue to live quietly,” Eleanor continued, her tone floating back and forth enough to actually keep Dani enthralled, something few professors had ever managed for long.
“Second, they died out, either of old age or internal warfare. This theory has less proponents, because there would be an expectation of ruins, none of which have ever been reliably identified as old enough and the product of intelligent life.”
Huh. Yeah, imagine finding my room a thousand years from now, with empty and decayed food wrappers, half–full bottles of whiskey, and dirty clothes. Proof of intelligent life? Something, anyway.
“Lastly, they simply evolved beyond a merely material form and decided to clean up after themselves before they left, like good galactic stewards.”
“What?” Dani blinked hard. “Like gods or something?”
“Who knows, dear?” Eleanor responded.
“Wow,” Dani repeated. “So what makes this dry, desolate rock so interesting?”
Again the pause.
“Just tell me, Eleanor,” Dani snapped at her. “I’m smart enough to understand. Most of the time I’m just too damned lazy to care. But right now, I’m stuck out here with nobody to talk to but you, so I need some damned thing to keep me stimulated.”
“Well,” Eleanor replied, a shade frostily. “Since you asked so nicely: the terraforming on Escudra VI seems to be failing. If Dr. Jones–Parker and Dr. Odille and their teams can understand the rate and possible acceleration of that failure pattern, they believe that humans can use that as a reliable timetable to estimate when the Elder Race left.”
“Shit, really?” Dani was aghast. This was real science, not just tinkering around with wells and excavations. Big stuff. Important things.
Way more interesting than just flying a shuttle into storms and orbital insertions for money. Maybe she should have paid a little better attention to the briefings.
Or something.
“Have they found anything?” Dani finally asked, aware that Eleanor was ignoring her random outbursts. Did AIs get bored? Miffed?
Eleanor had certainly been programmed to imitate stubborn, but how much of that was real? How much of her Governess was just an incredibly sophisticated computer program, reacting to external stimulus within known response patterns?
But then again, how much was Dani?
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool…
She bit her tongue before speaking out loud and damning herself for all eternity. Eleanor was probably a better human, a better person, than one Danielle Cooper. Certainly to speak from experience.
And she was trapped in the middle of an alien planet right now and couldn’t go get drunk to wash away the memory of self–realization.
This sucked.
One foot in front of the other. One boot forward, then the next.
Keep the eyes down and then up and then down. Scan the horizon, scan the path. Look for rescuers, try not to faceplant on stone.
“At present, they have not,” Eleanor said out of the blue.
“Not what?”
Dani was lost, then realized that Eleanor had answered Dani’s question, albeit after a gap of thirty seconds.
“Not found any aliens, artifacts, or signals indicating such aliens existed in a recent timeframe,” Eleanor said.
“Define recent,” Dani stated, aware that she sounded like a barracks lawyer looking for an
out, something, distraction before she wandered down into her head and got trapped.
“The last major Ice Age ended on Earth approximately twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, and lasted for well over one hundred thousand years before that,” the Governess responded smugly, obviously waiting for that question.
Dani was beginning to think she was getting predictable. Never a good sign.
“And how long have we been around?” Dani hesitated, afraid she might learn something today. Also, probably never a good sign. Pretty soon, she’d be using her brains to solve problems instead of her cute butt.
“Anatomically modern humans date back approximately two hundred thousand years, dear,” Eleanor said. “Theories of the Elder Race posit that they left the galactic scene around one hundred thousand years ago, plus or minus fifty thousand.”
“And the farthest edge of the galaxy from here is only seventy–five or eighty thousand light years from here,” Dani observed. She did pay attention to the finer details of astrogation. Anything dealing with space. “So any signals they may have sent have probably long since passed us by and evaporated into deep space.”
Dani hadn’t realized that an AI Governess could gasp in shock until she heard the sound emerge from the pocket on her chest.
“I’m not stupid, Eleanor,” Dani growled, hurt and little defensive. “Lazy, but not stupid.”
“No one ever called you stupid, dear,” the Governess replied. “Your father doesn’t count because he was angry at you and said many things he really didn’t mean.”
No, he probably did mean them, knowing Alphonse Cooper. Dani couldn’t say.
She had been in deep space for as much as she could of the last four years, except for occasional forays home to visit her siblings and spoil her nieces and nephews. That way, visits didn’t involve her going to the family estate and getting into any more screaming matches about bad choices and embarrassing the family.
