Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  Once through the alien airlock, he stowed his gear. The former occupants having been taller and broader even than Brad Morton, for once a locker offered a bit of spare storage space. From somewhere farther inside the base, heavy metal blared. Maybe Simon would have considered it music.

  In the short while Marcus had been outside, heaps had expanded along the walls of the main corridor: more rock and mooncrete shards; furniture from some of the presumed personal quarters; inert starfish robots; burst alien food containers; and other common, but as yet unidentified, items. After further sorting, the best preserved from each class would be analyzed, while others would be stored for future analysis or carried topside for eventual transport to Base Putin.

  Donna and Brad emerged from a nearby side tunnel, each holding an end of yet another alien platform-box. Brad asked, “How’d it go, Boss? How did your pontifical friend take to our move underground?”

  “About as well as you’d expect.” Marcus contributed to the din by closing his locker. “And how do things fare here?”

  Brad shrugged.

  “Problem?”

  “Things need to be better organized,” Brad said. “We move stuff to clear a room or at least tidy things up. The next thing you know, one of them has pulled something out of the pile or shifted the whole heap.”

  Them, Marcus interpreted, meant Russians and not aliens.

  “Even emptied,” Donna said, pushing on her end of the big box, “this thing is heavy. I’d kind of like to set it down.”

  She and Brad proceeded in tandem a few paces down the corridor. They set their burden atop a stack of similar units already approaching a meter high.

  “So neither of you is poking around in their piles?” Marcus prompted. “Scouting for the occasional alien souvenir?”

  “Well …,” Brad began.

  “Don’t bother,” Marcus snapped. “Before we’re allowed to rejoin civilization, our vehicles and gear will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb.” And, quite possibly, all that—and us—will go into the quarantine Tyler had threatened. That prospect could go unmentioned for awhile, as there was always the off chance Washington and Moscow would come to see reason. Even a stopped clock was right twice a day.

  “Ah, good. You’re back.”

  Turning, Marcus spotted Yevgeny at the mouth of another side tunnel, down which an emptied room served as their makeshift kitchen. Ilya was close behind. Both men held steaming mugs, the strings of teabags dangling. Marcus said, “Why? What’s going on?”

  “The sorting and straightening someone keeps messing up.” Yevgeny prodded the nearest low pile with a boot tip. “We need to decide where aboveground to stockpile everything we will be removing, and what, if anything, going out should be covered or disguised. Also, we should discuss what, besides consumables, to request for the next supply flight.”

  “Well,” Marcus began, “to pick something easy, I’m sick to death of instant coffee. A coffeemaker would be—”

  “It changed!” Ilya interrupted.

  “What changed?” Brad asked.

  Where Ilya pointed, low on the wall between the stack of platform-boxes and an untidy heap of starfish bots, Marcus saw only the narrow bead of clear caulk with which one of them had sealed a meandering crack. “The caulk?”

  “Yes and no. Take this.” Ilya handed Marcus his tea mug, then squatted close to the wall. “There is black over the edges of caulk one of us applied. The alien paint is … growing. Healing?”

  Marcus bent for a closer look. The fresh caulk was partially covered. “How is that possible?”

  “Alien tech, it would seem.” Yevgeny sounded … brittle. Marcus wondered what the man’s problem was.

  “Nanotech,” Brad said. “Dollars to doughnuts, it’s some kind of nanotech material.”

  If only they had doughnuts. Marcus took a mental note to add those to the grocery list. “Those are mere labels, guys. Let’s stick with the basics. Is the ancient wall cover thinning out, extending itself over the caulk? If there’s new paint, what’s it made from? How does the stuff, whether old or new, move around? That takes energy.” And then there was the most basic question of all: if alien “paint” could seal small cracks, why hadn’t it sealed this crack eons ago?

  Ilya, with a small blade of his pocketknife, shaved flecks of paint off the concrete onto a scrap of paper. He folded the paper several times to enclose the scrapings, then stood. “I’ll have a look.”

  “Good,” Marcus said. “Ilya, keep us in the loop.”

  “We will have a look,” Donna corrected. “If the paint is nanotech—or if it’s alive, life being the first growing thing that came to my mind—I want to know how it reacts to terrestrial cells.”

  Tyler’s disapproval of the teams’ move underground suddenly did not seem so absurd.

  * * *

  Four days, Yevgeny had decided. Four excruciatingly long days before a Russians-only gathering in his new quarters. It was delay enough, he felt, to seem casual. To not seem the direct result of Ilya’s prodigious blunder. If only that were so.

  Of the Base Putin four, Ekatrina was, predictably, the last to arrive. “So what is this …” trailing off as she awoke to the tension in the room.

  At Yevgeny’s abrupt gesture, she shut the door behind her. He asked, “What is our purpose in this place?”

  “This place?” Ekatrina echoed. “The exploration, I suppose you mean. This alien facility. To study the Moon’s ancient visitors.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  She stared back at him. Puzzled? Or defiant?

  “Gentlemen?” he prompted.

  Nikolay shrugged. Ilya looked away.

  “And to preserve what may be learned here for the benefit of Mother Russia.” Yevgeny’s voice rose as he explained, to end in a loud near-snarl. “Do none of you understand why I am angry?”

  At Yevgeny’s (staged) outburst, Ekatrina, arms crossed across her chest, glared right back. Nikolay retreated a step. And Ilya ….

  “I am sorry, Yevgeny,” Ilya said.

  “Sorry for?”

  Ilya took a deep breath. “The alien paint. I should not have blurted out what I had noticed, not around the Americans. But I was excited.”

  Justly excited, because the paint was … astonishing. Much remained mysterious, but already it was clear that the surface treatment—taking in carbon dioxide from the air, extracting silicates and trace elements from the underlying rock and concrete (and any regolith that got tracked in), powered by the ambient light—acted to sustain a continuous, airtight film. Barring catastrophic blowouts, of course.

  “That is so wrong,” Ekatrina snapped. “Active alien tech could have been dangerous. It does not appear to be, but we could not have known that then.”

  “There is a reason,” Yevgeny responded coldly, “for the bonus pay you all have been drawing.” Hazardous-duty pay, that meant. “And as you all, it would seem, are too naïve to have realized, what I report to my superiors will make—or break—your careers. Unless you aspire to mucking out barns in Siberia, I suggest no one ever again disclose technology that could be Russia’s alone.”

  “Sorry,” Ilya offered again.

  “These rules apply to everyone,” Yevgeny said. “Nothing more gets blurted out. You all think before you speak. Understood?”

  In response, he got silent nods.

  “Understood?” he repeated.

  Nikolay seemed fascinated with his boots, even as Ilya fidgeted. “All right, Nikolay,” Yevgeny asked, “what aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing,” Nikolay mumbled.

  “It is okay, Kolya.” Ilya straightened, turning to meet Yevgeny’s gaze. “Okay, something else, or rather the apparent absence of something, did happen to catch my eye. I mentioned this to Nikolay, and only to him, so he could help me investigate. Yevgeny, it may mean nothing.”


  “So. This something that might mean nothing. What is it?”

  Eventually, the truth emerged: they might hope to uncover alien fusion technology! If nothing more came from these ancient ruins, that would more than justify the sacrifices and expense. At the least, the four of them would receive the Order of Honour and the career boosts such recognition would entail. And for Yevgeny himself? For he who had ferreted out the truth behind the American “prospecting” expedition? Doubtless he would have earned the gratitude of the president himself!

  How much greater still might be his reward if they kept alien fusion technology from the Americans?

  Yevgeny stared at Nikolay. “How long have you been surveying for these perhaps nonexistent ancient solar panels?”

  “Well ….” Nikolay shuffled his feet. “I have had other things to do, too.”

  “How long?” Yevgeny asked again.

  “On and off for eight days.”

  “Damn it!” This time, Yevgeny’s anger was unfeigned. “Eight days? Just how long did you plan to spend searching for what you do not even expect exists to be found?”

  “There is much terrain to cover, and most of it is rough. Two, maybe three more weeks.”

  “You have one week,” Yevgeny barked, “and be glad for that. Keep me informed. And this goes for the lot of you. Do not mention anything about alien fusion, or as much as speculate about the possibility, to or around the Americans, or in any communication sent from this place.

  “And Ilya …?”

  “Yes?” the physicist responded with uncharacteristic, soft-spoken timidity.

  “Do not ever again withhold information from me.”

  Chapter 20

  “Time to open up one of these bad boys,” Marcus said, resting a hand on an alien computer. “This one, I think.”

  Not that Marcus knew this was a computer. True, the horseshoe arc of equipment in what Yevgeny had dubbed, and that they had all come to call, the control room suggested operator consoles, at least if the aliens had worked standing. The horizontal ledges—chest-high, for the aliens; almost eye-level for Marcus—if powered up, might once have been touch-sensitive input devices. The vertical surfaces above those ledges might have been small display screens. Or vice versa. Or both. None of these speculations precluded the “consoles” having been entertainment centers, arcade games, or apparatuses whose purpose he had yet to imagine.

  At the alien airlock, the control panel had responded as soon as Ekatrina supplied power at a proper DC voltage. Providing power to these (presumed) workstations had produced exactly zero discernable effect. Still, if they could somehow manage to wake up even one of these boxes, just maybe they could elicit some informative imagery. This room had big honking wall displays for a reason.

  But be these computer consoles or pinball games, whoever stood behind this unit, at the center of the arc, had the only straight-on view of those big wall displays. If this wasn’t where an alien leader would have chosen to stand, well, Marcus could come up with no better basis for selecting a particular cabinet for a closer look.

  “I do not know that we’re there yet,” Ekatrina said.

  “And why not?”

  Apart from her helmet, stowed in an otherwise empty corner, Ekatrina was in full vacuum gear lest Nikolay radio from the surface for assistance. As for their other colleagues, all were busy elsewhere in the base. Each, to Marcus’s unvoiced jealousy, at tasks more productive than anything he had done in days.

  Ilya and Donna, in their improvised bio-and-nano lab, continued to study the alien paint—which had proven to be so much more than a smart sealant. Under illumination from American and Russian lamps, the paint exhibited photovoltaic properties. Which, as soon as they realized it, was no surprise. Growing and moving required energy.

  Which had begged the question: if every wall, floor, and ceiling soaking up room light generated electrical energy, where did all that energy go? It turned out that dribbles of electrical current flowed through a dense network of carbon nanotubes beneath the wall paint. Here and there, those trickles of power had begun to evoke feeble airflows from the fans in alien air ducts and faint glows from alien ceiling-light panels.

  When they doused the bright white LED bulbs Ekatrina had installed, that new alien glow skewed orange for his taste. That might have been a clue to the star beneath whose light the aliens had evolved. Only not much of a clue, according to Val. Orange stars were common enough. Among the Sun’s neighbors (not that they knew these aliens had come from nearby) about one star in eight fell into that category. And if the orange glow was not a perfect match for the aliens’ home star? The vast majority of stars in the Milky Way were red dwarfs.

  Brad and Yevgeny were mapping that concealed nanotube network, or as much of it as was within the habitable portion of the base. Only part of that network, they had recently determined, distributed power. Many branches of the mesh, at least one node in every room and corridor, terminated in an infrared photodetector/LED device. That suggested a onetime, base-wide, local area network—and indeed, a hybrid wired/wireless network, especially an optical one, made perfect sense. Metal cabinets, metal shelving units, and rebar in every concrete wall played havoc with the WiFi comms Ekatrina had printed and installed. The human technology, in this particular environment, often ended up less reliable than shouting.

  Collectively, Marcus decided with satisfaction, we’re making real progress here. We’re finding stuff out, getting things done. After Ilya had shared his observation of the self-sealing paint, even Tyler had become, if not optimistic, at least less skeptical of the Russians. We’re a team.

  But team or no, the lengthening silence was deafening. Marcus prompted, “Hello? You awake?”

  “We just understand so little.” Ekatrina sighed. “Maybe these consoles are trying to turn on, but we do not see their responses. Maybe there is more to startup than flipping the obvious power switches. It could be we need to enter a password or other authorization. I mean, we think these are computers.”

  He raised an eyebrow at an alien ceiling panel glimmering overhead. “Their room lighting is similar ours, if dimmer and a little cooler. The open/close colors of their airlock controls are visible enough. Don’t you suppose we’d see a response or a prompt—if there were one to be seen?”

  “Hold that thought. And stay put.” Ekatrina put on her helmet without bothering to seat and seal it, then flicked off the bright work lamps they had brought with them. “Suit. Night vision.” Reduced to a shadowy profile in the dim glow of the room’s lone functioning alien ceiling panel, she stepped up onto a crate to where she could view the ledge surfaces. After awhile, she stepped back down, restored the work lamps, and dispensed with the helmet. “ ‘Cooler’ gave me an idea. Their ceiling panels give off a fair amount of infrared in addition to the human-visible light.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “And nothing. I didn’t see any prompts in IR, either.”

  “So, no password prompt. But suppose you were right about ‘or something.’ If authentication is required, it might be biometric.”

  Close-ups of Goliath’s mummified eyeballs, images taken through his helmet visor before shipping that ancient corpse to Base Putin, seemed not to impress any of the alien gear. Which hadn’t surprised Marcus. Those sunken, shrunken orbs looked more like cheddar-cheese puffs than eyes.

  “What if they used fingerprints?” Ekatrina asked.

  “Goliath doesn’t have fingerprints,” Marcus reminded her. So, anyway, one of their recent biological reports had indicated. Had the alien had anything like fingerprints before mummification? How could they know?

  But DNA? Maybe—like his CIA datasheet—these dormant computers authenticated biochemically. Goliath and friends hadn’t had DNA, not exactly, but they had something similar. Something enough like terrestrial DNA that standard med-lab gear could copy it. Using sta
ndard polymerase chain reactions, both Donna here and the medical team back at Base Putin had replicated plenty of the “DNA” snippets recovered from the alien personal quarters.

  “Be right back.” Marcus retrieved several bio samples from Donna and Ilya’s lab—both had stepped out, so he was unable to ask if their day had been any more productive than his—and returned to the control room.

  Sprinkling alien “DNA” all around did not awaken the consoles, either.

  “Not our finest hour,” Ekatrina said.

  “Bringing us back to opening up one of these boxes.” Marcus rooted through his toolbox for the spindly doodad—part Allen wrench, part Phillips-head screwdriver, part ratcheting socket handle—he had collected, days earlier, from an alien storeroom. “This should do the trick.”

  She took the tool from his hand. “Just happened to have this with you?”

  “No comment.” He patted the console at the apex of the horseshoe. “This one.”

  The odd tool opened the console right up, with the equally odd not-quite bolts remaining captive to the removable back panel. She moved aside, leaning the panel against the nearest wall, giving him an unobstructed view.

  Marcus squatted for a closer look. “Chips on boards. Here and there, wires. It looks like … solid-state electronics.”

  “Yes, in the way that your datasheet is like an original iPhone. No, make that like your first flip phone.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “That the alien electronics are far in advance of ours? Why wouldn’t they be? Their space-travel capabilities are.”

  “No. I’m amazed that in Murmansk you had an original iPhone.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I did not say when.”

  “Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood. Anyway, what do you suppose this console did, once upon a time?”

  Ekatrina shrugged.

  They had sent Base Putin crates of alien gear for analysis, to, so far, little avail. What was it Harry Truman had said? “Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say, ‘On the one hand … on the other.’ ” Too many of the experts supporting them had been just as noncommittal.