Space rippled for what seemed a longer than usual time as the Peggy Sue slipped from one reality into another. The normally transparent panels in the ship's nose went opaque. The minutes crept by with glacial slowness as the crew marked the passage of time in silence. None wanted to consider what not emerging after the calculated interval would mean. Just over four interminable minutes later, the computer spoke again.
“Emergence in 5, 4, 3...”
Part Two
Devils In The Darkness
Chapter 7
Emergence, Gliese 667C
The ship shuddered and the normal Universe returned. The view forward was unexpectedly dark—it should have held a head on view of the red dwarf star that was their destination. Instead the view ahead was a starless black.
“What the bloody hell?” said Nigel.
“Shit!” said Bobby, hands dancing over the controls. “I need emergency power, now!”
The view forward spun to show the backlit limb of a planet. A very large planet that was far too close.
“Captain, we have emerged 2.36 seconds prematurely from alter-space,” the ship's computer announced as the collision alarm sounded.
“Not now, Peggy Sue,” replied the Captain in a dead calm voice. “Engineering, Bridge, we need emergency power to the engines.”
The looming planet continued to grow larger at an alarming rate as the ship's bow swung toward the backlit arc that was the planet's edge. Instruments showed that the emergency antimatter reactor was online and acceleration was edging above 60G.
“It might be a good idea to strengthen the forward and bottom shields,” Bobby said, while making small adjustments to the controls. “We are going to kiss the atmosphere.”
“Roger that, pardner,” replied Billy Ray, Navy protocol forgotten as the two friends struggled to save their ship. Seconds later glowing streaks formed around the bow, dim and flickering at first but rapidly turning into a bright cocoon of fire. The view outside the ship disappeared as the planet's atmosphere registered its outrage at being violated by an object traveling a thousand kilometers a second. Then, as quickly as it had started, the sheath of plasma vanished and the half lit disk of the planet visibly fell away in the ship's wake.
“Negative impact,” Bobby said, “the course ahead is clear, Captain.”
Across the bridge gasps could be heard as people who had been unconsciously holding their breath began breathing again.
“Very good, Helm,” acknowledged Billy Ray. “That entrance was a mite more exciting than I would have liked.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Bobby said with a smile. “We seem to have skipped off the atmosphere of 667Ce. I hope the science types got some good samples as we passed through.”
“Peggy Sue, care to explain how we came out of alter-space into a near collision with a planet?” the Captain asked.
“As I reported, Captain, we seem to have exited alter-space prematurely. I have no explanation for this except that GJ667C must have been in occultation with respect to our departure point by the planet we nearly collided with.”
“Captain,” interrupted Mizuki, “I think that the explanation lies in the distortion of local spacetime by the planet's mass. Evidently, the local distortion was severe enough to cause displacement of the terminal transit point. As a result, we came out of alter-space a million kilometers short.”
“What are the odds of that?” Beth said, still standing next to the Captain's chair.
“Based on the planet's diameter and orbit, the probability of emerging with the planet directly in front of the ship is roughly 5.8 times 10 to the -12,” the computer answered.
“That's longer odds than winning the old Powerball lottery,” said Bobby.
“It is worse than that,” added Mizuki, “667C is in orbit around the AB pair. As it moves the orientation of its ecliptic plane also changes. It is only aligned with a path from A twice every 3100 years or so. Add to that the fact that A and B are in an eccentric orbit around their center of mass every 41 years and the probability of an alignment becomes vanishingly small.”
“But evidently not zero,” Billy Ray noted.
“Not zero,” Mizuki agreed. “The Universe is really big, and it has been around a long time—anything that is possible is bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Great,” said Billy Ray, “we can all cross colliding with a planet off our bucket lists.”
“Perhaps we should have tee shirts made up,” Beth remarked dryly.
Billy Ray glanced sideways at his first officer and then said, “Helm, lay in a course for the second planet and let's get back to the business at hand.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” replied Bobby, turning back to his controls. Next to him, Nigel leaned over and whispered.
“You were bloody brilliant, mate.”
Deck Three, Peggy Sue
On third deck, a party of crewmembers were readying robot probes under the supervision of Will Krenshaw. Dr. Krenshaw had spent time at NASA working on robotic missions to Mars and other prime destinations in the solar system. His specialty was hunting for life on other worlds, a task that had yielded no rewards thus far in his career. The work party was busily running diagnostics on the probes that would survey their destination when the collision alarm sounded.
“What's that?” Will asked, looking up at the viewing screen on the wall. The screen went from black to red to bright yellow in the course of a few seconds, and then back to black.
Matt consulted the display on his jumpsuit sleeve, which was monitoring activity on the bridge. Looking up he said. “Its nothing, Doc. We just bounced off a planet is all.”
“What!” the microbiologist exclaimed. “Is that normal?”
“Oh sure,” said Steve Hitch, “happens almost every time we arrive in a new system.”
Matt Jacobs shot his friend a look and murmured in a low voice, “and so the fun begins.”
Two types of survey drone were being sent to the surface of GJ667Cc—one terrestrial and one aquatic. The aquatic robot was more conventional, consisting of a dozen cylindrical metal segments, each ten centimeters in diameter and twenty long, joined by flexible, pleated joints. The head and tail segments tapered, giving the contraption a worm like appearance. Four fins protruded from the otherwise smooth, barrel like body segments at 90º angles. A centimeter tall, they ran the length of each segment, their purpose to give purchase on land and aid in swimming.
Powered by a cold fusion fuel cell modeled on those used in the Marines' battle armor, the robosnake was meant to swim or crawl around in harsh environments, exploring its surroundings with a multitude of sensors and cameras. On land it either used serpentine locomotion, slithering slowly through rough sections, or sidewinding on clearer ground, hitting speeds as high as six km/hr. Swimming in water the same undulating motion translated to 1.5 km/hr. Not fast, but persistent.
The other robot explorer, dubbed a flexibot, did not look much like a robot at all. It was, in fact, a deformable, flexible robotic exoskeleton originally developed by NASA researchers. Based on tensegrity—a design principle that employs a discontinuous set of compression elements, balanced by a continuous tensile force that creates internal stress, to stabilize a structure. The term was coined by architect Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome and other novel structures. As a result, the land roving robot looked more like a kinetic sculpture than a scientific probe.
For shipment, the structure was collapsed into a compact bundle. When deployed, the robot itself was a mostly open, roughly spherical collection of cable and crisscrossing pipe segments around two meters in diameter. Its expanded structure could absorb shocks that would destroy more seemingly solid devices. Possessing no wheels or legs, it had no axles or hinges, no single points of failure that needed strengthening to withstand stress. It moved by shortening and lengthening the cables that connect its rigid components. The cables themselves were similar to the electroreactive “muscles” in the crew's armored space suit
s. This deformable structure allowed it to roll on smooth surfaces and climb over broken terrain. The force of an impact—whether bouncing down a hill or a fall off a cliff—was absorbed and diffused throughout its structure by multiple paths, protecting the scientific instruments suspended within.
Two robosnakes would be dropped in the planet's seas; three flexibots would be dropped, one each for the three largest continents. In preparation for deployment, the crew were running the robots through their paces.
“And this pile of junk is supposed to explore the mystery planet on its own?” asked a skeptical Hitch.
“It does look like a piece of modern art,” said Kate, who was running diagnostics on the robot from her tablet. The flexibot quivered and deformed, assuming a number of distorted shapes.
“Yeah, art creeps me out a lot too.”
“It's not as creepy as the robosnakes,” said Matt. “I had to take two of them to the bear quarters and have them swim around in the pool. Umky looked at me like I was crazy.”
“Hey, I've known you were crazy for years.”
“Funny, Stevie. It wasn't me who helped smuggle a live walrus into the polar bear habitat back on Farside.”
“He did what?” asked Kate, not sure if the two American sailors were joking.
“Never mind, Katrin, Matt has a tendency to embellish the truth. Don't trust anything he says about me. Besides, that was a great day for human polar bear relations.”
“Not so good for the walrus.”
“You two have been on the Peggy Sue for a long time, haven't you?” said Kate.
“Since the first voyage,” Matt said proudly. “Took a little side trip on the M'tak Ka'fek but Peggy Sue's our ship.”
“She's never let us down,” added Steve.
“Scheisse!” Kate said.
“No, its true,” said Steve, a bit defensively.
“Nein, I was not referring to the ship,” she replied. “One of the cables failed to pass the test, we will have to replace it.”
“I'm half afraid to take it apart,” said Matt. “How can we tell if we put it back together right?”
“The computer will tell us,” said Will, looking up from his own tablet. “You two stop flirting with Ms. Hamm and get back to work. We still need to bake the probes in the sterilization oven for a couple of hours.”
“There's always one guy who spoils the party,” muttered Steve. Kate shot him a sideways glance and then winked, causing his hopes to soar. Matt just shook his head.
Peggy Sue, Orbit around GJ667Cc
It took a half a day to match orbital velocity with 667Cc, which everyone was now just calling “C”. The officers and science staff were holding a planning meeting in the main lounge, the only comfortable space that could accommodate the crowd present. Out the large eye-shaped porthole on the starboard side their destination could be seen slowly turning.
It was a mostly dun colored planet, with a number of sizable seas, dark in contrast with the land. Tufts of white cloud dotted both water and land, and an impressive cyclonic storm was moving from the largest visible body of water onto an adjacent continent. The survey probe sent from Earth had been orbiting the planet for almost five months and had fully mapped the surface optically and with ground penetrating radar. Geo-neutrinographic images of the planet's magmatic reservoirs and the deep structure of its mantle showed that this was still a geologically active world. The Peggy Sue downloaded that information as a starting point for its investigation.
“This place is screwy, I tell you,” proclaimed Joe Rogers, the expedition climatologist. “There doesn't seem to be any biological activity at all yet the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with about 18% oxygen.”
“Isn't that about perfect for humans?” asked Beth.
“Yes, but it shouldn't be there!”
“What Dr. Rogers is trying to say is that oxygen is hard to keep around,” said Will Krenshaw, the microbiologist. “It's the third most abundant element in the Universe but it's highly reactive. It will combine with almost every other element on the periodic table.”
“You're saying the planet should not have free oxygen in its atmosphere?” asked Captain Vincent.
“Captain, Earth started out without oxygen in its atmosphere. Something like 2.8 billion years ago cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, evolved and started polluting the air. It took another billion years to change from a mixture poisonous to animal life to the oxygen rich environment we evolved in.”
“Yes,” said Joe, trying to finish his explanation. “Because oxygen is so reactive it should not be present in such quantity without some form of life to free it and replenish the supply. Yet the reports from the survey drone show no signs of life, at all!”
“Maybe it's hiding in the oceans?” offered Sami Hosseini. “It is certain, based on observations from orbit, that a number of the geologic formations show signs of uplifted sedimentary limestones. That is a pretty sure sign of microbial life at some point in the planet's past.”
“That is what our experience on Earth and Mars indicates,” said Gerard Leclerc, a chemist. “Perhaps there is some new geophysical process at work here.”
“No way to tell until we can get to the surface and examine the strata more closely,” said Sami.
“And take some soil samples,” added Joe.
“I wonder,” said Ahnah, the only bear in attendance. “If life used to be present, as indicated by the oxygen rich atmosphere, what happened to it? The probe data indicates nothing—no forests, no ground cover, no organisms in the sea—it is like the planet has been sterilized.”
“Multispectral scans by the survey drone even revealed a number of sites that could be long abandoned settlements,” Mizuki added.
“Not to be a buzz kill here,” said Bobby, “but we know there are aliens who take a dim view of our kind of life.”
“We cannot know if the Dark Lords or their minions caused this anomaly until we send out probes to the surface or, even better, travel to the surface our selves,” Mizuki replied. She was well aware of how much Bobby loved a good alien conspiracy.
“I'm just throwing it out as something to keep in mind,” he said.
“Bobby has a good point,” said Beth. “Though I'm sure finding natural causes for the state of the planet would be more interesting scientifically, we do have incontrovertible evidence that aliens have meddled with the environments of several planets.”
“More than that,” added the Captain, “we have no idea what we might find down there so we are going to take it slow.”
This remark caused looks of disappointment among the science staff, who were champing at the bit to study the planet up close. Fortunately for all involved, Billy Ray had learned to be careful on previous voyages.
“We will launch probes to survey both land and sea. If they turn up nothing dangerous, we will then send a shuttle to the surface. Those on the shuttle will be in suits—armored suits—just in case.”
“Armor! What's going to attack us on a lifeless planet?” said Joe.
“I don't know, Dr. Rogers, but the first surface expedition will be armed and armored,” the Captain said. “'The universe is relentlessly, catastrophically dangerous, on scales that menace not just communities, but civilizations and our species as well'.”
“Hai, Captain,” said Mizuki. Then, turning to her staff, “I believe we all have tasks to accomplish.”
Joe and Sami looked like they wished to continue the argument but Mizuki's tone made it clear that the discussion was over. As the meeting broke up Beth privately asked her husband, “who were you quoting about the dangerous Universe?”
“John Tooby, an American anthropologist,” he replied. “I have read things other than Chaucer, Shakespeare and the literary canon of dead white men.”
“I thought it summed the situation up nicely, love.”
Captain's Sea Cabin, Two Days Later
“So the survey results turned up no sign of life?” Billy Ray asked his scien
ce officer.
“The surveybots found nothing, Captain, in the seas or on land,” said Mizuki. “The place is a desert, except that even deserts harbor life.”
“It seems like a real mystery, Captain,” Bobby chimed in, “an otherwise livable planet with no life to be found.”
“There are some patches that look like they might be ruins, particularly off the coasts,” said Beth.
“Maybe they were an aquatic race?” suggested Billy Ray. “We have encountered aquatic creatures before.”
Beth shook her head. “Probing with terahertz radar shows similar, but smaller areas inland.”
“Dr. Rogers speculates that the planet's climate has changed in the recent past, melting much of its polar ice caps. This would cause the sea levels to rise, drowning any coastal cities.” Mizuki's tone indicated less than enthusiastic agreement with that hypothesis.
“That would explain why the largest ruins seem to be offshore,” Bobby agreed.
“What's with this Rogers character?” asked Billy Ray. “He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about something.”
“Dr. Rogers used to be a prominent advocate for anthropogenic global warming, Captain,” said Mizuki. “After the alien bombardment any chance of proving that theory correct was lost.”
“You don't believe in AGW, Mizuki?”
“Science is not about belief, it is about observation and evidence. I did not find the evidence behind the AGW theory compelling.”
“Earth's temperature had been going up,” said Beth.
“Climate scientists had too short a view of the subject. A century of data is insufficient to predict a planet's climate—a complex system that operates over thousands and millions of years. The temperature variation measured was well within historical norms, and any signal caused by human activity was lost in the noise of that natural variation.”
“When it comes to backing a theory with hard evidence, Mizuki is a real stickler,” Bobby said, “I can't convince her that aliens helped build the pyramids either.”
Beth raised a single eyebrow and Billy Ray suppressed a grin, both imagining private arguments between the strictly rational astrophysicist and the ardent conspiracy theorist. How they fell in love was hard to fathom, but then, love has very little to do with logic.
T'aafhal Legacy 1: Ghosts of Orion Page 9
