by Ken Pence
The colonel’s chief of staff nodded at appropriate times to his commanders diatribe and made the appropriate “Yes sir” when the silence stretched out.
“We’ve got to get an IFF (Identify Friend or foe) systems for all Earth ships so we can enforce this treaty. I want to know who we can blow out of the water...the ether...Colonel. Make a note and get the legal branch to draft legislation through the World Government that mandates IFF systems for all ships from Earth and makes any ship without proper identification to be listed as a smuggler. I don’t care, at this stage, what anybody ships as long as we know who is doing it. Have intelligence track down who is giving this information to those people.
The chief of staff sighed, quietly and said, “Sir.” He left.
Brad reached for his Jack Black.
Life Extension
“Wow,” Desire said to Ling. “Look at this from the Washington seizure. A trainer with Trade...finally we have an official, Trade language training cylinder, instead of the bastard version we’ve been using. Did you figure what the little box is all about?”
Ling looked up from her study of manuals. “What species was it that had all this stuff?”
“Not sure but it may have been some offshoot of the Tros but the description wasn’t great...it was at night. I’m not sure I would have done much better a few years ago in the middle of the night if I had seen an alien ship landing wanting apples. Features seem, pretty much, like Rett. Did those manuals help?”
Ling’s brow furrowed and she said, “This little manual seems to be about how to synthesize the chemicals in the tubes in the little box. It’s designed for humanoids – I think. Another of the larger manuals appears to be a basic chemistry manual – lord – and I thought I had a hard time with Earth chemistry – they have a totally different outlook on stuff but some of it made sense. I had a great bootleg imprint from some researcher at Cal Tech. University of Arizona had zilch on that...”
“Chemistry,” Desiree said. “That’s cool. Zilch?”
“It means nothing,” Ling said. “I like archaic words...you, of all people, ought to know that one.
“Guess I missed that one. What about the other books?”
“They all seem like manufacturing manuals and such. This little one seems to be about...umlou towli... umwhe towli... life... life extension?”
Desiree hopped out of her chair, “Umwhe towli...that is life extension but how do they mean it...no offense but would you let me see that?”
Ling handed it over. She knew that Desiree was even better with Trade than she was...and Ling knew she, herself, was good. “Holy Cow!” Desiree said.
Ling looked perplexed, “Holy Cow?”
Desiree grinned. “You don’t think I’m going to let you get me one up on archaic expressions do you? This is big, Ling. We better let Andrew know but let’s get the rest of these manuals scanned into memory first.”
***
Bradley Phillips looked at the latest report from his informant at the Earth Regulatory Force base. Heaven knew he paid enough to get this stuff. He scanned down the report. Life extension. That would a good idea to exploit. He touched his comm and told his assistant to arrange a meeting with his patent lawyers and scientists – today.
***
Andrew looked at the summary from Ling and Desiree. “Life extension? Do you think it’ll work for our species...the literature says it will if we can identify certain genetic markers. That work was pretty advanced until fifty years ago. I’ll bet that Phillips has people he can put on it.”
“Phillips!” Desiree said. “Didn’t he try to steal plans for our ship? He’s got a high creepiest factor for me.”
“Me too,” Ling said.
“I don’t like him either but we don’t have the expertise. We really need a bio geneticist on our team. Maybe you’re right. Let’s ask Fran and see if we can hire a team. If that fails – we’ll contact Phillips. Will that work?”
Desiree and Ling both nodded but Desiree couldn’t help herself. “I don’t like him.”
“Noted,” Andrew said and left to go see Fran and let her safeguard their literature and samples.
Andrew blew into Fran’s lab like a storm and started talking right when he entered. Fran looked up from her stool and said, “...and GOOD MORNING to you too.”
Andrew looked a bit chagrined, “Sorry. I just have something on my mind and I don’t think it can wait.”
“Obviously,” Fran said with a lopsided grin. “Well. Have out with it. What’s so important you want to frighten my daisies?”
Andrew looked around at all the plants and chuckled. “Life extension.”
Fran lifted an eyebrow.
When she didn’t say anything further, he elaborated. “We had an interdiction, after the fact, in Washington State, where a farmer traded for some apples and a few seeds.”
“They’re getting smarter...takes a bit more than seeds to produce apples though. They’ll have a hard time pollinating those trees when they get large enough. How much information did they get on growing them?”
“Some primers,” Andrew said, “But that’s not why I’m here. They traded the farmer pretty detailed information on how to prolong life. I think we could apply it to humans and extend our lifespan from 80 years to a lot longer. They left some samples,” he said and handed her the box. Desiree and Ling should have the book scanned any time now. I looked at the summary they put together. It’s pretty impressive.”
“...and you want me to...?” Fran asked.
“Find someone...or a team of someones to get this moving. Do you know anyone in the field?” Andrew asked.
“Several someones in fact. I’ll contact them. Payment? Chain of command?”
“We have a large discretionary fund from the consulting on the power supplies and military. Pay them whatever it takes and they’ll work directly under you.”
“That may be doable. How soon do you need them?” she asked.
“Fast as you can. This should be an enclosure project.”
“You are serious about time. Don’t know where we’ll find the room but – Aye, aye, Captain,” she said. “Whoever we get may balk at working in there but we’ll see. They might just get the extra years of lifespan to make up for what they’ll spend on the project. I’ll ask Brad to help.”
“Sounds good...Let me know who you get.” Andrew responded to Fran’s nod and breezed on out.”
Fran smiled when she thought about how much Andrew had grown up in the last fifteen years...fifteen years for her anyway. She quickly read the summary; then read it again. She lifted her MemDex, and started her inquiries.
***
Eugene Bradley Phillips shut off his comm and turned to his current, senior advisor, Ramon. “Lubeck and his team are acquired as are Pao Yeng Xu and his staff. Now we will try for Demi Harrison. She’s the one I want most, as she’s a real looker and the only one with...how shall I say? ...Flexibility in her moral outlook.”
“Mister Phillips. This is costing us a fortune. Lubeck’s team acquisition and lab setup, alone, cost as much as five percent of last years profit. Are you sure...” Ramon was cut off.
“How old are you Ramon?” Phillips asked.
“Seventy-five sir,” he responded.
“How would you like to be able to live another seventy-five years, or more, with an apparent chronological age of say...35?” Phillips asked. “How much would pay for that?”
Ramon sighed. “Physical age like I was 35. Dios. I would pay almost everything I had for that. But wouldn’t everyone?”
“Anyone getting the anti-aging would be a select few of our choosing. Those individuals would have the ability to accumulate more and, hence, control more.”
“Wouldn’t the masses want it?” Ramon asked.
“They’d find out only about the massive failures, the rapidly spreading cancers the treatments would cause. The select few would keep family names but would be cousins or such who keep reinventing identities. I ima
gine the Rothchild’s would like to improve their current, anti-aging treatments they are already using – archaic as their methods are,” Phillips explained.
Ramon paused and looked thoughtful. He was leery of asking the next question. “How old are you now sir? There seems to be uncertainty in your records. I don’t mean to pry but this seems like an appropriate time for this question.”
“How old do you think I am, Ramon?” Phillips asked.
Ramon shifted uneasily from foot to foot with this one. This type question was like when a woman asks, Does this make me look fat...no good way to answer but Ramon was not shy – hence he was the personal assistant to Bradley Phillips, one of the most powerful men on Earth. “Sir. I’d say, conservatively that you look about ten years younger than me.” Ramon saw that Phillips was waiting for a number. “About 65 sir...a youthful sixty-five.”
Phillips was utterly passive looking and then one corner of his mouth turned up...quirked? He said, “I’ll turn ninety in a few months.”
Ramon was floored. “Dios. Noventa.” There was a long pause. “How?”
“Current technology has done what it can for me but this research promises almost double that...much more than the Tau Ceti group expects,” Phillips explained using the popular name given to Andrew’s team from the Net. “How do you feel about these expenditures now?”
Ramon couldn’t quite bring himself to ask the question he wanted. He started to ask but couldn’t.
Phillips noted his discomfiture and let him stew a bit longer. “Ramon. You will be in the first group to receive the benefits of whatever the research accrues.”
“I am your man, sir.” Ramon said. “I will find a way to acquire this Doctor Demi Harrison. Anything else, sir.”
Phillips shook his head and his advisor slid out. Phillips chortled a bit at his thoughts. Yes, Ramon, he thought. You will be one of the first to get whatever we turn up – I’ll need a lot of guinea pigs before I try anything on myself. This is a good way to keep people loyal too. There are other things than money to tie people to me. Phillips reached for the comm to find out the progress of his intellectual property project.
Leaks
Colonel Brad Kyger was disturbed. Several ships had entered Earth space and actually landed and traded before he could stop them. Someone was getting accurate information to these traders, but he couldn’t figure how anyone from Earth was communicating with extraterrestrials. Hell. Hardly anyone even knew there really were any aliens. How would they know what species wanted which items or information? How could he stop these incursions? The Earth ES treaty, as it was detailed, set out that Earth would police its own solar system. He’d been trying but the volume of space was enormous. Most people couldn’t grasp the scale. He could detect their stressed space fields at enormous distances but they were somehow masking their presence until the last minute. Did they have some stealth technology? He asked Joel and Tod to run some simulations of the last few incursions. Maybe they’d have enough data to actually do something with it. He decided he visit their lab.
Joel greeted the colonel at the door and appeared quite excited. “I think we’ve finally got something.”
“Hi Brad,” Tod said. “Let me finishing get this set up for you. I think we figured out what they were doing. Still don’t know exactly how they do it but it fits all the data we have.”
“What kind of set up is this? Don’t recognize it?” Brad said.
Joel spoke up. “My team has been trying to miniaturize and commercialize the navigation/control systems for our newest ships. This is a result of four years of effort (several months in the enclosure I should say). It’s our new 3D representation system. It does everything that we had on the first ship plus is a lot more robust, compact and feature packed. He manually switched it on. “Still some flickers but we’re ironing those out fast.” The lights dimmed and Joel controlled the display with his MemDex.
The room was dark and then it appeared that they were floating above the Earth. They could see the Sun and some of the planets and asteroids.
“Whoa,” Brad said. “I’ll never get over how beautiful this is...it still takes my breath away.”
“It’s still a show stopper when we show anyone this representation. Here are the last two incursions from the time we spotted them ‘til we ran them off afterward. I’ll run them a couple of times,” Tod said.
“Okay. I see them appearing and near the moon’s orbit and landing. I see our guys responding and it seems like they don’t disappear quite as fast. They just cut off. Stealth tech?” Brad asked.
Tod spoke up, “That’s what we thought at first. Let me run the Washington State incursion for you from the ship that chased them.”
The display flickered and it looked like a ship appeared near the moon’s orbit and then hurtled down to land in Washington State. It was there a few minutes and shot away as soon as the Earth Regulatory Patrol ship came close.
“I don’t see where this helps us. It just appears and then disappears,” Brad said.
“Ah ha...” Tod said. “Look at it from the point of view of our second patrol craft coming around the equator.”
“Okay. I see it taking off and our ship following. As we move in to join the chase, it just disappears again. Are they shielding a rear view only? Wait...why wouldn’t we see it coming inbound if it can only shield its rear view...wait...maybe it can only shield one view at a time,” Brad conjectured.
“We were thinking along those lines too ‘til we saw this later recording from our equatorial patrol ship. Watch closely,” Tod said.
They saw a ship appear near Mars orbit and proceed rapidly out of the system.
“When was that taken?” Brad asked.
“That was three days later,” Joel said.
“Now look at a representation from a perspective outside the view of those two ships,” Tod said.
“What are those black cones? Oh...those are the blind spots of the two ships! They cover huge volumes of space,” Brad exclaimed.
“Not that large a volume. The Earth and moon block a huge coverage area when we’re this close. We’ve always maintained a fairly close relationship to planets or moons – always good to have a surface to land on...or so we thought. Now watch a simulation of a ship approaching and landing in Washington. We know the species from the description and know where they might be coming from so we added our speculations to our recordings...by the way. Thank you for starting to record all patrol data – that was what we needed. Okay – watch this part,” Tod said and stopped the simulation as he explained.
Tod restarted the simulation. ”You see the cones representing the blind spots where a planet or moon blocks the view of areas of space by our ships. Now look at this. The orange icons are the simulated approach vectors of the intruders and the icons turn green when there are actual detections.”
The display showed a ship rapidly approaching the system, pausing at Neptune and Saturn and Jupiter and then a mad dash to near the far side of our moon and then a sprint to Washington State. As the ship departed, its icon would turn orange as soon as it could put a planetary body between itself and its pursuer or pursuers.
“Wait a minute. No way can they detect our ships before we detect theirs. Our sensors are way better...unless they have another information source,” Brad said.
“Bingo,” Tod said. “They either have passive sensors – in or close to our system or someone is leaking our patrol schedules from Earth Regulatory Forces itself...or both.”
“Yep,” Joel said. “We’ve got a mole or three with access to our most secure information.”
“We’ll have to change a lot of our procedures, but I don’t want to give up our planetary bases. Do you think giving sealed orders to captains, instituting random patrols and deep space-passive sensor platforms will help? We can’t do it at once or we’ll just drive the mole underground,” Brad said. “Besides we’ll need to sweep all the offices.”
Tod indicated in an arc with his
arm: “This lab is secure but Intelligence will need to do a better job on the others. I’ll make sure we’re clean here. You tell Andrew and Susan.”
“That’s it. We can disclose different information to different areas and examine the responses. Then we can place passive sensors covering those approaches. That will narrow it down, I hope to a particular section. How do you think they are communicating the information? Tight beam laser? Can we find that?” Brad queried.
“Maybe,” Joel said. I’ll run all our data to see locations where there might be hostile sensor arrays...ones that can communicate with Earth or any commercial moon sites. Private companies are starting to launch ships and plant mining and manufacture sites. I’ll cross index those and see what we can see. Now we have some data and a theory to work on -- it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I’ll let you know if I turn up anything.”
End Runs
Captain UmBllatt’s brother, UmUff, was the first ship turned away from Earth before trading had even been officially started. The Earth ships had been a surprise but his brother UmBllatt’s later success had made all the traders crazy to return. UmUff had seen how much financial gain his brother had made. His brother had refurbished his own ship and even bought a half share in this one. Others were trading with Earth too but a few had made it to the surface – at great risk according to the ES treaty, which allowed for destruction or confiscation. The other traders had used the information provided by an unusual source – they were using information from Earth to skirt the patrols from Earth. Insane as it may be – beings on Earth (probably Tros) were supplying information on Earth Regulatory Force patrol schedules in exchange for...heavy metals. Ha...Heavy metals, which were not rare at all from asteroid mining in other systems.
