by S. H. Jucha
3: Below Deck
Miriam watched Mickey hurriedly switch between views from various SADEs, as they descended below the console. She noted his elevated biorhythms, and sent,
Mickey sighed heavily. For a moment, the excitement of Kasie’s discovery had him regretting his stricture to limit humans in the dome’s investigation. However, Miriam was right. There would be time and opportunity to be involved in the development of the gates. Right now, the next steps could be extremely dangerous.
Alliance races had donated operating credits to the outpost, which paid for many of the alien members working aboard the station. So, while Pyreans and Earthers along with select individuals were linked to the outpost’s controller to view the proceedings, individuals without implants were glued to monitors.
Mickey had anticipated the discovery of a compact single support level below the deck. He was amazed at the extent of his estimate’s error.
At the bottom of the ramp, Luther stopped, and his eyes recorded a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the cavernous space for his audience. His visual’s final position showed steps descending another level.
Engineers par excellence, Mickey thought with admiration and a touch of envy. With time, energy, and SADEs, we’ll emulate your work, was his next thought.
Edmas and Kasie couldn’t help their tendencies to edge closer to the stairwell. They approached the steep end to show the SADEs that they didn’t intend to descend. Compared to Luther’s location, their views were disappointing.
Kasie heard the last segment of Jess’s sending, while she raced below.
The audience had a view from Edmas of Kasie’s hair bouncing, as she disappeared down the steps. Then they heard Edmas chuckle, before he muttered an elongated, “Ahhh.”
Kasie shot back. When her brother remained silent, Kasie realized she’d crossed the line.
The artificial cavern was a study in an interrupted engineering project, awaiting its next iteration.
The SADE shifted his gaze from overhead, where a circular base funneled into the broad opening of a cone. The material appeared to be made of a milky-white translucent ceramic. The cone narrowed to twenty centimeters. Then it entered the lower deck.
Knowing Mickey’s question, Edmas examined the overhead. There were no indications of potential openings above for the five gates that sat on the deck on which they stood.
Miriam directed a SADE to focus on the overhead, and the image magnification revealed subtle circular etchings in the metal.
Kasie pouted. Then she turned to wander the deck. The physical processes necessary to install a platform didn’t interest her. They would be procedures that Mickey’s team accomplished. She wanted to learn more of the dome’s secrets.
A SADE hurried to the gate deck, snatched a device, and returned below. She pressed the piece of equipment to the ceramic funnel, and the molecular composition was recorded.
Mickey was briefly chagrined that he’d forgotten that point. He’d been too focused on the investigation and had made the mistake of micromanaging. Request the tests, and let others decide how to execute them, he thought.
Humans and SADEs climbed the stairs, and a single SADE returned and set a recording device on the steps.
When everyone was on the gate deck, Edmas and the SADEs stared at Kasie.
“Oh,” Kasie muttered. Then she carefully edged around the open stairway to stand at the console. She felt Edmas’ hand on the small of her back to prevent her from stepping backward.
They touched the primary and secondary control panels in the same two-step process as before and were rewarded with the large window popping up. Edmas placed his hand in the second panel’s window, and then Kasie repeated the operation in her primary panel.
A glyph appeared on the primary panel. It was abruptly replaced by a second symbol, and then a third appeared.
When the glyph countdown finished, the console slid in place.
A SADE leapt on the platform, and Kasie sent him on his journey. In less than a minute, he returned.
As the dome’s blue light faded, Kasie nodded at Edmas, and the pair repeated their discovery, uncovering the stairsteps.
The SADE who’d set the recording device descended, grabbed it, and returned to the upper deck. She signaled the device to play and allowed the vid to stream to the wider audience.
As the audience of engineers expected, the ceramic material funneled the energy from beneath the lower deck to the platform. The instrumentation was unable to detect the nature of the
energy, but it was presumed to be similar to what had been recorded by the SADEs on the platform deck.
Humans on the conference link and who were in Mickey’s presence hid their grins and smiles.
After permission was given, Kasie was disappointed to find the strictures were still in place. The humans were blocked, as the SADEs made their way below.
Kasie hurried below, and Edmas swiftly followed, both of them stopping where instructed.
The staircase didn’t stop at the first landing. It continued to switch back, dropping nearly forty meters.
As the SADEs descended, their activity tripped illumination that sprang from the cavern’s walls, much as the glyphs lit the corridors. Of course, the color was blue.
Huge structures rose tens of meters high from the base of the giant space. An open lift was attached to the overhead, ran beside the stairs, and reached the depth below. Obviously, it was meant to haul engineers, heavy equipment, and cargo.
Edmas signaled the audience to watch his view. He looked overhead and scanned six umbilical lines that connected under the platforms on the deck above. Then he followed one of the flexible tubes to a central power plant that resided on the deck below. The power plant’s spherical shape gave the SADEs the idea that magnetics were used to contain the energy’s force.
Luther’s view scanned the periphery below. Large cylinders reached halfway to the overhead.
On Luther’s signal, the other SADEs fanned out to search for an access to a deeper level. Meanwhile, Luther approached the power plant. It was an enormous sphere.
Luther ran diagnostics on the information his sensors received. That data was carefully monitored by the engineering teams.
Mickey’s response didn’t give Jess any comfort. In the planning stages, he’d presumed that the SADEs would attempt to investigate the power supply remotely. Thereby reducing the exposure to danger. It wasn’t long before he’d been disabused of that idea.
A thought occurred to Lucia, and she chose Miriam to ask.
Lucia shared her conversation with Jess, which only added to his concerns for his sister. He was a believer in Kasie’s interpretation of the nature of Messinants. They’d had too much proof of that already. The alliance races, except for humans, were biological experiments. Nothing more than that to the exalted Messinants.
Unlike the uppermost deck and the corridors, which were covered with glyphs and tests to the races, there were few glyphs in these two levels beneath the console.
The SADE had used a glyph to open a door, which recessed much as those that hid the dorm rooms. An entire space lit, revealing shelves of supplies on one side of a deep room and cabinets along the other side.
Edmas leaned toward Kasie and whispered, “That’s code for humans will become bored while the SADEs work.”
“I recognized it,” Kasie commented. “Do you want to wait here or get some paste?” she asked.
“I don’t know how you can continue to eat that stuff over a period of many cycles,” Edmas replied, shuddering at the thought.
“Priorities,” Kasie said. “I eat it as quickly as possible so that I can get back to work. So, staying or going?”
“If you’re staying, you might need me,” Edmas replied, indicating with a thumb toward the console above.
“Then let’s break for a midday meal and some rest,” Kasie offered. She signaled Luther, and the pair climbed the stairs to the surface.
While the SADEs conducted an inventory of the treasure trove of material they’d found, most humans aboard the outpost fell off the conference link and went about their assignments. Mickey, Jess, and Lucia stayed and watched the SADEs examine and test pieces of equipment and investigate supplies.
To humans, the failure to understand the purpose of an item was frustrating. To the SADEs, it was about collecting data. Eventually, the purposes would be revealed.
A SADE opened a heavy crate that required three SADEs to pull off a shelf. The SADE imaged the contents and created a potential assembly.
While SADEs closed the crate, hoisted it, and carried it to the stairs, Luther examined the open lift. Several glyphs were evident on a small panel that stood on a pole a meter-and-a-half above the base. The glyphs weren’t found in the SADEs’ assembled Messinant lexicon.
What gave Luther a hint of the operational choices was that one glyph on the panel was brighter than the other two.
Under Luther’s direction, the SADEs loaded the crate on the platform and climbed on. When Luther joined them, he touched the bright glyph. The lift rose swiftly and silently before it came to a halt next to the stairway’s first landing. From there, the SADEs carried the crate to the next level.
While humans conversed, they kept an eye on the SADEs assembling the crate’s contents. Four arcs of metal rings easily assembled to complete a circle.
Luther examined the
finished ring. Then he walked to a platform that lay on the deck. This unit was located sixty degrees clockwise from the active gate.
The SADEs hoisted the ring, walked it to the platform where Luther stood, and fitted it over the platform.
Mickey was about to ask how the device would be powered, when abruptly the edge of the assembled ring lit with blue light. Then the platform rose in the air.
When the ring reached the overhead, the blue light glowed brightly and cut through the metal alloy of the gate deck. Then the combined installation returned to the lower deck, and the ring’s light extinguished.
As soon as the cutting device cleared the platform, it rose again. The platform sealed to the upper deck, and the hoist lowered. When the hoist collapsed to the deck, it sunk farther, and disappeared as a cover slid over it.
A second Trident had waited in the system occupied by Luther. It accelerated, dropped below the ecliptic, deployed its interstellar drive, and shot forward toward a transit. It would deploy a traveler, a group of SADEs, and comm relay devices at the second or target dome.
Lucia chuckled. She had a view of Jess’s face. Jodlyne’s announcement was unequivocal, and Jess was at a loss for a response, as was Mickey.
