Alien Enigma (2 page)

"So what will you do, Dad?"

"I believe our only option, and the only way to keep the secret, is to turn it over to the United States Navy. I really hate it. The technology there surely would have given the company a boost after losing so much money trying to land on Xanadu. I don't see much choice, though, do you?"

"But Dad, how will that help restore our cash flow? That last explorer took just about all our reserve." Although he had come up through engineering, Brian Olson had been transferred to the financial end of
Wannstead Industries
after shepherding the latest class of ships through the design and manufacturing stages.

For the first time after breaking the news to his son, he smiled. "I believe the recordings we took of Xanadu that first voyage will suffice."

"How so?"

"We're just bringing the more expensive C class ships on line after the fine job you did with them, and after seeing the Xanadu recordings, I'm pretty sure President Jensen and the government will put up the money to purchase the first ship off the assembly line for the Navy, and if they're satisfied they'll be more after that. Once the Navy gets the first one refitted, I believe it will head toward the Bolt Cluster and try finding out why none of our ships ever came back. Like any military, they don't like potential threats they know nothing about. Unlike most others, they have the means to try to do something about it. All we need to do is try to make them keep the objective secret, and Jensen promised me that so far as he's able, he'll do just that. It will go from him directly to the Secretary of the Navy only, I sincerely hope, and from there only to Admiral Mullins. At least it would stay in American hands this way."

"And what do we get out of it?" asked Brian, thinking of the cash his old man was spending on recent adventures.

Olsen smiled. "President Jensen promised to give us part of any proceeds that come out of Xanadu by right of original discovery."

"Can he do that? Promise that, I mean?"

"Not alone, but with the Space Navy's backing, it should be possible."

"Do you really think it's that important to keep it under wraps? We sure haven't realized any profit from it so far! In fact, we've lost three of our ships, four if you count the one overdue."

"Son, I know we've lost money, but everything I've ever learned in my life tells me that if the secret of Xanadu leaks out it will mean war between nations vying for the alien technology." He sighed, wishing he could leave now and turn the business over to Brian or his partner Lance. More than twenty years of tension from trying to keep a secret of the magnitude of Xanadu, and prevent a full scale global war, made for excessive wear on both the body and the soul. He was tired of it but the inner strength that had carried him this far would have to hold for a while longer.

"Okay, Dad, but what makes you think the Navy can land on Xanadu when we couldn't? It'll be essentially the same kind of ship even if it is our latest class. I doubt the increased laser power, or the larger size ship, will keep it from being captured or destroyed, or whatever the hell happens there."

"It probably wouldn't but I suspect the Navy will want it delivered directly to the Skunk Works. DARPA has been working on some improvements in interstellar ship weaponry. You know about them, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. The Skunk Works is where they dream up new weapons. I didn't know DARPA was involved with them, though."

"They are. Hand and foot, and have been almost since its inception. I've learned a little of what they're doing, but not much. They run a tight ship, if you'll excuse the pun."

"I've always wondered why you didn't just let the United States in on it and allow the government to help us, Dad. Why not?"

"Because every instinct and every bit of history I know tells me to never trust politicians with crucial information. They'd sell their own goddamned souls to stay in office or keep their own party in power. Something like Xanadu would probably have put the Progressives in power a decade ago and they'd have given it to the U.N. in a heartbeat. And the U.N. wouldn't have been able to keep control because every major nation would have broken the treaties keeping spaceship construction here. By now, we'd have already had a war. Xanadu might have - probably would have - been destroyed, if that's at all possible." He sighed heavily again, wishing human nature wasn't so damned capricious. With that thought, a laugh escaped him.

"What, Dad?"

"Nothing. Just laughing at a silly notion I just had." He glanced at his watch. "Isn't it about time for you to see Watkins?"

"Oh yeah. I'd better hustle. Later, Dad." He rose, gave his father a mock salute and hurried out.

Olson Wannstead remained in the den. He sipped at his glass of scotch while musing over the past. As a young man he knew he would inherit control of
Wannstead Industries,
but never in his wildest dreams did he think the financial empire he would build from his father's discoveries of the quantum drive, and its associated gravitational technology, would reach such heights. Without doubt, he was now the richest man in the world despite the loss of three, probably four, tremendously expensive starships. It hadn't been hard to gain that status when
Wannstead Industries
sold single interstellar ships for more than three hundred billion dollars, making a tremendous profit on each of them. Part of the markup was simply to keep countries he didn't care for out of space. He was proud of what he'd accomplished with the technology, too, despite the grinding pressure of handling all its implications and the guilt over the shortened lives of the men and women manning the inquisitive ships his orders had caused to be lost.

He knew he would never be as brilliant in the physical sciences as his father had been. Hardly anyone could match him in that area, now or in the past, but the old man had a corresponding lack of understanding of human temperament and psychology, particularly the type associated with those in positions of power. His father would have released his technology to anyone who could afford it, or perhaps even given it to the government in order to turn the nation into a superpower again. He had no inkling that such steps would inevitably lead to devastating wars with other nations that wouldn't stand for such a potentially overwhelming technological edge over them.

When he died suddenly, the first experimental interstellar ship had just returned from its test flight with himself and five others as the sole crew, the same test flight that discovered the planet they had named Xanadu, the same as the unfinished alien city discovered on it. At least one edge of the circular city looked as if it hadn't been completed. It was hard to be sure because of the distance when the recording was taken, but it looked as if large machines were going about tasks that looked suspiciously like building or maintenance in that one area. Again because of distance, nothing much smaller than different types of edifices in the city could be discerned. It was thought aliens had to be present but there had been no replies to considerable attempts at communication.

It was fortunate there were so few persons on that first voyage. It allowed his father to compensate the others with enough money and other considerations in order to keep the secret. Two had since died, two more were still employed as vice presidents on the production side of
Wannstead Industries
, and the other was retired.

From that first successful voyage, even though that ship hadn't been designed to land on a planet like the ones that followed, the fortune left to him by his father multiplied almost logarithmically. He was still in his early thirties when he negotiated the agreements that changed the political and military distribution of power on Earth and set mankind on its way to the stars. It hadn't been easy. It took almost two years of haggling before he pulled all the parties into far-reaching agreements.

It hadn't turned out all to his liking, but with his own country and other major nations clamoring and threatening war if not given access to the technology invented and developed by his father, his choices had been limited. Nevertheless he negotiated ceaselessly, ruthlessly and with the almost certain knowledge of what failure would mean-driving him until he got most of what he wanted. Access to the stars was hard to beat as a bargaining chip. Nations that could afford them were allowed to purchase interstellar space ships, along with a very strict international treaty agreement to keep manufacture of the ships in the United States for a period of twenty years.

The United Nations was reformed; its bloated bureaucracy cut mercilessly down to a slimmer and more efficient version of its former self, and the veto was abolished. The most ticklish negotiating point had been giving the U.N. a source of tax income in order for it to purchase its own ships, and allowing it to form a modest military force drawn from many nations in order to protect the colonies discovered by its ships. He hoped it would be enough to keep tempers in check when major nations began competing for newly discovered worlds suitable for colonization. It was the best he could do and fortunately, although earth-like planets weren't all that common, enough had been found to keep squabbling to a minimum. Theoretically, any inhabitable planets discovered were open to colonization by anyone, but the financial burden of the starships meant that nations owning them tended to dominate the worlds they discovered. Along with those agreements came a promise of non-interference with any colonies established by
Wannstead Industries
. It was just that, though. A promise. It had held so far, though, perhaps because he hadn't been very forthcoming with the exact location of the two star systems where Wannstead colonies were established.

And last of all he had convinced Congress to scrap the labyrinthine tax laws in favor of a flat tax with a mild escalation for high incomes. That step had been possible only when he convinced a majority of the members of both houses how much money the sale of starships and goods from colony worlds would add to the nation's coffers during the years when the country held a monopoly on starship manufacture.

He didn't expect that bargaining point to last and it hadn't. Congress was gradually returning to its old habits of using taxes to form social policies, or anything else to get votes for the party in power. Damned if he intended to see anything like that happen on Xanadu, not with the alien city to be exploited, not if he could get the Navy to back up his claim to colonization rights even if he did have to share any alien technology discovered. He had done what he could for Earth and the United States and, surprisingly, it actually turned out to be greater than anything he expected, if not all that he'd hoped for.

Perhaps the recordings of the two earth-like planets besides Xanadu brought back by that first test flight had much to do with it, even if no one knew they were far removed from the ones observed in the Bolt Cluster, including Xanadu-the one he
hadn't
reported. He didn't want anyone else even close to there. Most amusingly, the United States and a good portion of the rest of the world still thought of him as a great statesman, one of the giants of history. He supposed he was, in a way. He had, after all, figured out a system of expanding mankind's reach to the stars without the savage competition and wars over territory which nations had been prone to since humans first came down from the trees. So far, at least. He often wondered, though, what the public would think of him if they knew how long he'd been keeping Xanadu to himself and his cohorts. His statesmanlike stature would probably suffer a bit, he thought. Or more than a bit.

It wasn't perfect but it wasn't a bad system he'd fought for and won. All that bargaining led to the present day grouping of exploration by the United Nations on the one hand and individual nations on the other, with colonies formed under U.N. auspices coming under its jurisdiction and the U.N. also having a relatively benign role in keeping the peace between those established by the various nations. He was allowed ships of his own to conduct exploration, although even with his almost inestimable wealth he could afford very few. Of those, the fourth had now apparently been lost.

Luckily,
Wannstead Industries
owned a colony world that was returning some of the Wannstead investment, and the other was very promising. That planet's population was growing rapidly, fueled by his own small fleet of interstellar ships and driven by his own ideas of what kind of persons should hold power and status, and how governments should function. His own son had set up the selection committee for immigrants for their two colonies which were
not
in the Bolt Cluster. Those helped to throw off suspicion since it would have looked peculiar not to have colonized a world after insisting on permission to do so.

He intended the Wannstead colonies to be a reservoir of all the best humanity held within itself, a place of individual freedom with its concomitant responsibility, even if the Xanadu enigma was never cracked. Eventually, if he lived long enough or his son did, he intended for them and perhaps others to be the leaders of a star-spanning peaceful confederation of worlds that were all governed along the same principles.

In the meantime, the vast unfinished alien city of Xanadu was apparently in pristine condition, although they had been unable to tell whether it had been built recently or if the robotic machinery had been simply maintaining its unfinished glory for untold millennia. He had at first thought it was the latter until his ships began vanishing. After that he began thinking the city might have been completed between the first visit and the next. Regardless, if word of its existence and its advanced technology ever got out, it would lead to war between competing nations just as surely as competition for petroleum had led to a seemingly endless series of conflicts on Earth until alternative sources of energy were developed. Even the U.N. would not be able to stop it. He knew that as certainly as he knew politicians first and foremost looked after their own interests. It was the principal reason behind all his political and financial maneuvers and the source of the eternal worry that filled his days and led to nightmares at night.