Earth Star (42 page)

Now I had the memory of my suit torturing me on Eden Dig Site, and the grim knowledge that I wasn’t invincible, indestructible and immortal. Teenagers could die. Joth had died. Fian and I could die too. Was that what my impact suit phobia was really about? Had it been an excuse to avoid taking risks that might kill me?

I tried telling myself I was a nardle. My suit had just saved me from injury or death in the cave-in, and was my friend not my enemy. Fian and I weren’t going to die here. We were only under a thin layer of rocks, with rescuers already working to get us out.

That didn’t help one little bit, so I lay there, concentrating on just one thing. Keep quiet. I mustn’t say a word, or make a sound, because if I did then I might start screaming. A few times, someone asked a question on the broadcast channel that was clearly aimed at me, but Fian answered them all. He must have guessed I was in trouble after I didn’t reply to the first question, and was saving my neck again the way he always did.

It seemed like a lifetime before I could suddenly see light, and an impact suit clad figure bending over me. It was a Military suit, with a rope harness clipped around it.

‘Just a couple more minutes, Jarra,’ said Drago’s voice. ‘We’ll free you first, and then Fian.’

Most of me was still buried, still trapped, but I could see and I could move one arm, and for some nardle reason that was enough. My panic vanished, like a chimera running from sunlight. If it wasn’t for the rocks still holding me down, I’d have hugged Drago Tell Dramis right then. Chaos take it, I’d have hugged a Cassandrian skunk at that moment.

‘Nice of you to drop in, Drago,’ I said, inadequately.

Time had been crawling by, but now it suddenly accelerated. I seemed to be free within seconds, and helping to dig out Fian.

‘Well, that was interesting,’ he said, when he was able to sit up. ‘Jarra’s usually buried by herself.’

‘You wanted us to be in things together, Fian.’

I heard him laugh in response, and indulged myself by gripping his hand for a moment. Since we were both in impact suits, there was no warmth of human skin against skin, but the gesture was still comforting. I forced myself to be practical after that. ‘What’s left of the roof can’t be too stable. We’d better move from here.’

As we walked along the passageway, there was the hum of a private channel opening, and Colonel Torrek’s voice spoke. ‘Jarra, Fian, I’m talking to you on a private channel, and we’ve arranged a slight problem with the vid bee link so no one else can hear us. I’d like a situation check. Are you in a fit state to continue with this?’

‘I’m fine, sir,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Fian.

‘You’re sure, Jarra? Medical reported adrenalin readings from your suit hit orbit level for a while back there. I made sure Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon were the ones who dug you out, so if you’ve hit your limit, they can take over. No one need know it was for any other reason than injuries from the cave-in.’

Colonel Torrek was handing me the chance to run away and keep my dignity. I could do that, turn my back on being Military and an archaeologist, and find myself a nice safe life where I’d never be afraid again. Nuke that! I wasn’t running away from one of the most dramatic moments in history.

‘Thank you, sir. That’s not necessary. I’m no Tellon Blaze, so I got a bit scared for a moment back there, but I’m fine now and I want to continue.’

‘Everyone has their moments when they get scared, Jarra. Forgive me for interfering. As I said before, I’m very aware that I drafted you into the Military.’

The hum vanished as the Colonel closed the private channel. I guessed the problems with the vid link were suddenly cured at the same moment.

‘We’ve brought spare lights, sensors and hover belts,’ said Drago. ‘Your lookups should have survived the cave-in, since they’re designed to be shock proof.’

‘What happened to our equipment cases?’ Fian looked around. ‘Oh, you’ve got them.’

‘The cases weren’t damaged,’ said Marlise.

We sorted out our lights and hover belts, then Drago and Marlise wished us luck, went back to clip their harnesses to two dangling ropes, and were lifted upwards through the hole. Fian and I moved on down the tunnel, warily checking the state of the roof. Two replacement vid bees trailed after us, the original ones still buried somewhere under the rockfall.

‘The tunnel seems quite solid again,’ I said.

We reached the next black door, and Fian set up another of his pyramids. This time we were prepared for the glowing patterns to appear.

‘Pi,’ said Leveque, almost instantly. ‘Well, actually they’ve doubled the value of pi, so their formulae would be correspondingly different. Sending you the answer sequence now, Captain Eklund.’

Fian entered the next symbols in the sequence, the door opened, and we moved on towards where a third door awaited us.

‘The doors seem to be equally spaced,’ said Leveque. ‘We can expect two more after this one.’

‘There’s another line of white crystals,’ I said. ‘It seems to be glowing very faintly now. Perhaps it’s a failed lighting system.’

‘Or possibly it’s working,’ said Leveque, ‘and the aliens are nocturnal and require low lighting levels.’

Door three was another mathematical test. Door four took the experts longer to work out, and Fian had to make two attempts to get the sequence right. Leveque’s team seemed to have been happily predicting possible mathematical sequences, and this one took them by surprise because it wasn’t just based on physics, but something quite obscure as well. Door five was faster again, and something to do with chemical elements.

I was feeling pretty powered as the fifth door opened. Our position was now directly under the alien sphere. Whatever we’d come to find, would surely be in here. I stepped through the door into a circular chamber. The walls had the usual white crystal line, and in the centre of the room was a pillar, triangular rather than round, and made of the same black glass as the doors.

‘We power it up?’ Fian’s voice sounded oddly breathless.

‘We don’t know how the sphere may respond,’ I said. ‘Do we have a fighter shift in orbit?’

‘They’ve already pulled back to the portals, Major,’ said Leveque. ‘Earth Africa solar array is on standby. You can go ahead.’

Fian did the pyramid thing, and scrolling symbols appeared on the side of the column closest to us. I blinked, took a second look, and strolled slowly around to inspect the three sides. Well, this was different. We didn’t just have one set of scrolling symbols, we had three, one on each side.

‘A final test,’ said Leveque. ‘Clearly rather more complex.’

There was a pause. A very long pause. After ten or fifteen minutes, I started getting restless. Fian was staring at the symbols and working on his lookup. I knew I couldn’t figure it out, so I didn’t even go through the motions of trying.

‘We’re looking at all three sequences, as well as the sequence achieved by combining them,’ said Leveque. ‘None of them match any of our predictions.’

There was another wait of at least twenty minutes before he spoke again. ‘This doesn’t seem to be mathematical. It’s probably based on some sort of science, but we can’t work out what. There is, unfortunately, the possibility it’s a branch of science we haven’t yet discovered.’

Even more time passed. I was bone tired by now, and aching from impact suit bruising after the cave-in. I gave up worrying about looking good for the vid bees, sat on the floor, and leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. Whether we managed to solve the final test or not, my main worries were over. The alien sphere was obviously here to communicate with us. There wouldn’t be a war. Earth was safe. I wasn’t going to be a laughing stock. I could join the Tell clan and be part of a family.

I was actually dozing when my lookup chimed. I jerked awake and looked down at it in surprise. Why was someone calling me on my Military lookup, rather than using a comms channel? I tapped it, frowned, carefully turned off all my comms channels and answered.

‘Uh, Candace, I’m a little busy,’ I said.

My ProMum smiled at me from the lookup. ‘I realize that, Jarra. I’ve got a call from Keon that I need to transfer to you. He couldn’t get a call through to you himself, but he worked out I could use my ProMum authority to do it.’

I was bewildered. Earth gave ProParents huge authority where the wellbeing of their ProChildren was concerned, but … why?

‘I’m transferring Keon to you now,’ said Candace.

Her image was replaced by Keon, with Issette peering over his shoulder. ‘Hi Jarra,’ he said, in his usual lazy tones. ‘I know the answers to your problem.’

‘What? How?’

‘They’re three sequences you use in laser light sculptures. You use the patterns to combine light beams and create special effects. I’ve no idea why aliens should set us a test about it, but I’m transmitting the answers to you now.’

I checked what he’d sent, and saw he’d translated the answers into the alien symbols for me. I stared at them for a moment. Did I take this seriously? Did I believe Keon? Yes, I did. If someone as lazy as Keon had gone to this much effort to send me these symbols, he had to be very, very sure he was right.

‘Do we enter one full sequence at a time, or one answer from each?’ I asked.

‘I think you work around, entering one answer from each,’ said Keon, ‘but I’m just making a guess based on the way they’re used.’

‘Thanks, Keon. Stay with me while I work on this.’

I thought frantically for a moment. Commander Leveque was co-ordinating things, and making the decisions on the test solutions. I should send Keon’s answer to him for checking. On the other hand, Leveque wouldn’t understand it either, so his only option would be to pass it on to the Physics team, the team that had included Gaius Devon. They’d know nothing about laser light sculptures, and they’d probably laugh at this solution just because it came from some unqualified ape kid who was studying art.

I stood up and headed for the pillar. Forget consulting anyone else, I was Field Commander, this was my decision to make and I’d made it. If I was wrong to trust Keon, I’d look a bit of a nardle, but I didn’t care. I waited for the scrolling sequence nearest me to reach the right point, and started touching symbols.

‘Major Tell Morrath?’ Leveque’s voice sounded startled. ‘What are you doing? We can’t afford to guess answers, because …’

He stopped talking, because the symbols were flashing as the first answer was accepted. I moved around to the next sequence, entered the first answer for that, and it was accepted as well. I laughed as I moved on to the third sequence. Two correct answers couldn’t be coincidence.

‘An expert has given me a solution,’ I said. ‘I’ll transfer his call to you.’

There was a yelp of protest from my lookup. ‘Jarra, don’t you dare!’

‘Sorry, Keon.’ I laughed again, transferred the call, and beckoned Fian over. ‘Double-check me on this. It would be easy to get muddled about which answer belongs in which sequence, and have to start all over again.’

We entered the symbols together. Tension must have been doing odd things to my head, because this process seemed to take both hours and only a few seconds. As I reached the last one, I paused. ‘Completing sequence now.’

I entered the last set of symbols, they flashed, and then the pillar went black apart from one glowing circle.

‘I think we can assume you touch the circle, Major, and that sends the transmission to the sphere,’ said Leveque.

I took a deep breath. ‘Are we ready for this?’

‘This is Colonel Torrek. Go ahead, Major.’

In the old pictures of the first successful portal experiment, Wallam-Crane says some words he stole from the first moon landing. ‘One small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity.’ Maybe I should have said that at this point too, but it never occurred to me at the time. I was just thinking about all the people who’d helped me to get here and do this. The Military, the dig teams, my classmates, my lecturer, Keon and Candace, but particularly Fian. I turned to him, and held out a hand.

‘We’re in this together.’

He hesitated for a second, and then stepped forward. We linked hands and I counted it down in a breathless voice. ‘Three. Two. One.’

We reached out together and touched the circle. I was tense, expecting an instant response, but seconds slowly passed and nothing seemed to happen. More seconds, a minute now, and still nothing. I wondered if we’d done something wrong, or if the device was broken. I was about to ask Leveque for advice, when swirling ribbons of red, green and blue coloured light suddenly appeared above the pillar, plaiting themselves together in a column that reached up into the rock ceiling.

I gasped with delight, and forgot all about the viewing billions, and the need to act Military, professional and adult. ‘Hoo eee!’

‘Look!’ Fian tugged at my arm, turning me to face the wall. He’d set his lookup to project images from the Military vid feed against it. It showed the plaited column of light appearing out of the ground above us and continuing up into the night sky. I stared at it in utter disbelief.

‘The light went straight through solid rock and into space?’

‘It appears so,’ said Leveque. ‘The aliens have obviously developed laser light technology to …’ He dropped that sentence to start another, his voice finally shaking off its habitual calm to sound human and eager. ‘The sphere is responding.’

The image on the wall changed to show a close-up of the alien sphere. I couldn’t see what Leveque meant for a second, but then I realized the strange curved markings on the sphere were growing deeper. Whole sections began to unfurl, like the petals of a strange alien flower opening to the sun. When they reached their fullest extent, light suddenly blazed around the sphere. Not just a simple twisted column like the signal we’d sent, this was an incredibly intricate, multicoloured light sculpture, formed of literally thousands of light strands that were constantly revolving and changing.

‘The sphere is talking to us,’ said Leveque. ‘We’ve no idea how to disentangle the multiple light signals, let alone translate them, but it’s definitely talking.’