Earth Star (8 page)

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Fian.

‘Mail from Candace. I forgot I was supposed to call her at 18:00 hours.’

‘Well, you’ve still got time to …’

‘18:00 hours Earth Africa time, Fian! I’m over six hours late!’

Candace is my ProMum. When I became a ward of Hospital Earth as a baby, they allocated me a ProMum and a ProDad, to be mine for two hours a week for life. Candace was still mine for two hours a week, but my ProDad gave up on me after the fights about the school history club trips to dig sites.

I was always interested in pre-history, so I signed up to spend four weeks on the New York Fringe Dig Site when I was only 11. I’d done my gold safety award, but the club were worried about my age and insisted on my ProParents giving their consent.

I talked Candace into agreeing, but my ProDad called up one image of the New York ruins on his lookup and absolutely refused. I explained all about New York Fringe being much safer than New York Main Dig Site, but he still said little kids couldn’t go somewhere so dangerous and maybe when I was 16 he’d consider it. I was spitting furious, so I forged his consent and went anyway. He ignored me for weeks after the argument, so he didn’t find out until the day before we came back.

After that, he tried to get me thrown out of the history club, but was outvoted because I’d got glowing reports for my work on the dig site and Candace and the teacher were on my side. The next summer, I signed up to go to London Fringe Dig Site with the club. There was another huge argument, and my ProDad said he washed his hands of the whole business and me as well. I told him he could nuke off, and I’ve hardly seen him since then. When I got my leg fried, he showed up at the hospital, but only because he wanted to keep getting paid for being my ProDad.

Anyway, I didn’t care what my ProDad thought, if he thought anything at all, about me vanishing when Alien Contact grabbed me. Candace was a different matter. She really cared about me, and I didn’t want her to be worried.

‘I’d better call Candace right away, it’s past ten o’clock at night in Earth Europe and …’ I stopped. ‘Well, I’ll call her right after I change out of Military uniform. It wouldn’t be easy to explain why I’m suddenly a Military Captain.’

‘You do that,’ said Fian, ‘and I’ll send Playdon a mail to reassure him the Military understand you can’t portal off world.’

I grabbed my civilian lookup, and dashed into the bedroom to change before calling Candace. She’d probably be busy or in bed by now, but if she didn’t answer I could leave a message.

She did answer, and frowned anxiously at me. ‘Jarra! Are you all right? I’ve only known you miss your appointment with me twice, and both times you’d been taken to hospital.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry I didn’t call. We had to pack our bags and move in a hurry. There wasn’t any warning and …’

‘So long as you’re all right.’ She smiled, and looked her usual calm and relaxed self again. ‘Why has your class moved? You’d only just arrived at Eden Dig Site.’

‘It was a complete shock,’ I said. ‘I can’t explain the reason. It’s classified.’

‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘Like when they evacuated New York Fringe?’

I remembered the time she meant. Some buried stasis box must have had a containment field failure and released some very nasty contents, because there was a big radiation spike and Fringe Dig Site Command got everyone to evacuate at top speed. Our school history club were working on site at the time, so we left through the nearest emergency evac portal and ended up in a Hospital Earth America casualty unit getting checked for radiation exposure.

‘Not exactly like that, but yes.’

‘You’re sure you haven’t had a dose of radiation?’ she asked.

‘Perfectly sure,’ I said. ‘We had a whole batch of medical checks.’

‘So where have they sent you?’

I evaded her question. ‘I’ve got a room, but it may just be for tonight. It’s not clear what’s happening yet.’

The bedroom door opened, and Fian stuck his head cautiously into the room. He was still in uniform, but safely behind the lookup where Candace couldn’t see him. He came in and leaned against the wall, watching me.

I could see Candace looking around her limited view of the bedroom. ‘Your room looks much better than the ones you get in the dig site domes. Did they give you a larger room because you’re sharing it with Fian?’

I froze.

She laughed at my expression. ‘I don’t know why you’ve been trying to hide it from me, Jarra. You’re both 18, legally adult, and you’ve a Twoing contract. I’d have no justification for objecting, even if I didn’t approve of Fian, and I do. I’m very happy that you’re in a relationship with someone so dependable.’

Fian had his hand over his mouth, obviously finding this incredibly funny. I tried to ignore him.

‘I know you like Fian, it’s just …’

‘You’re always very defensive about your private affairs, Jarra. I understand if you aren’t comfortable discussing this with me.’

‘It’s not just that,’ I said. ‘We have to keep quiet about sharing a room, because Fian’s parents are from Delta sector and attitudes there are rather strict.’

‘Oh.’ Candace considered this. ‘I didn’t realize that. How does Fian feel about it? I hope you didn’t push him into anything.’

Fian slowly slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his hand over his mouth, struggling not to burst out laughing.

‘Fian makes his own decisions,’ I said.

He pulled a face at me and cowered, indicating that I terrorized him. There are times when Fian is utterly impossible.

‘It’s very late in your time zone, so I’d better go now,’ I said to Candace. ‘We can talk about Fian and his parents next week. I’ll mail you about what times I’ll be free.’

I turned off the lookup and glared at Fian. ‘Get up off the floor and stop laughing! How dare you pull faces at me when I’m talking to Candace?’

He grinned happily. ‘She approves of me. I’m dependable. I’m a nice Deltan boy who you forced into sharing a room with you.’

I sighed. Candace and my friends all think I bully poor downtrodden Fian. They have absolutely no idea. I’d have more luck trying to bully a concraz wall.

‘You’re a shockingly badly-behaved Deltan boy, who only kept pushing for a Twoing contract because he wanted to tumble me.’

He grinned. ‘That wasn’t my only reason, but it was definitely one of them. I behaved very badly while you were talking to Candace. I think you should throw me across the room and teach me my place.’

With Fian dressed up as Arrack San Domex, the thought was very tempting, but I shook my head. ‘There isn’t time to indulge you by playing
Stalea of the Jungle
games. We have to change into dress uniforms and go for dinner with the Colonel.’

Fian sighed and got out his dress uniform. ‘Maybe after that?’

I watched Arrack San Domex taking off his clothes. ‘Definitely.’

I was scared stiff when we arrived at the door of Colonel Riak Torrek’s quarters. I’d seen vid scenes of formal Military dinners, with tables large enough to land a fighter on, covered with gleaming genuine glassware and surrounded by hundreds of officers. My own dining experience was limited to the chattering chaos of eating with the other kids in Commons at our Next Step, and with my classmates in our dome hall.

Once inside the door, I was hugely relieved to find only three officers lounging in comfortable chairs. There was a table, but it was tucked away against a wall, and just held drinks, a stack of flexiplas plates, and some trays of food. I’d been a nardle to panic. The Colonel wouldn’t be holding fancy dinner parties when Alien Contact programme was active.

There might only be three other officers in the room, but Fian and I were in very select company. One Colonel and two Commanders. Colonel Riak Torrek looked extremely tired, and was wearing a rather crumpled standard uniform. As commanding officer, he could wear whatever he liked of course.

The two Commanders were in dress uniform. One of them was the woman from the briefing, Commander Nia Stone. The other was a dark man with an angular, thoughtful face.

Fian and I saluted, Colonel Torrek pointed at a couple of empty chairs, and we sat down.

‘Jarra Tell Morrath and Fian Eklund, I think you know my deputy, Nia Stone, already. This is her husband, Mason Leveque, our Threat team leader.’

We exchanged nods to acknowledge the introductions.

Colonel Torrek looked at me with amusement. ‘Jarra Tell Morrath causes as much chaos as her grandmother. Since your suggestion at the briefing, we’ve created an Ark team, and we have any number of people working on preparations to portal the civilian population into Ark if the situation worsens. You’ll notice I haven’t had time to shower or change.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Don’t be. I was having nightmares because we couldn’t portal the Handicapped off world. In the event of hostilities, they wouldn’t just be vulnerable to alien attack, but there could be casualties from our own weapons’ fire. Ark has its own self-contained atmosphere and a shield of solid rock. If you have any more bright ideas, I want to hear them.’

He paused. ‘What’s your situation analysis, Jarra?’

I was grazzed by the question, and needed a moment to organize my thoughts. ‘In theory, Earth is the best defended of all our planets, because it has five solar power arrays instead of the usual one. If the sphere’s hostile and came here deliberately, it must have defences that can stand up to planetary power beams.’

He nodded.

‘It may not be hostile though,’ I continued. ‘The sphere could be a random exploration probe. Perhaps it isn’t trying to communicate because the aliens don’t expect there to be other intelligent life in the universe.’

Colonel Torrek leaned forward in his chair. ‘No one has suggested that before. Is it credible? Surely if they’re exploring space they’d realize there’s at least a possibility of meeting another civilization.’

I shook my head. ‘Not necessarily. During most of pre-history, humanity believed it was totally alone in the universe. Once we had drop portals, we discovered hundreds of thousands of worlds with varying forms of life, only a small percentage of which were suitable for human colonization. Our mathematicians decided centuries ago that intelligent aliens had to exist, and we’ve already discovered two planets with neo-intelligent life forms.’

I shrugged. ‘We’re naturally prepared to meet intelligent aliens, but aliens will have a different historical perspective. They could have developed technology far in advance of ours, without stumbling across the key to basic portal travel, let alone drop portals. If they’ve been limited to conventional space travel, they may have very little information on other worlds.’

‘We’re naturally considering the possibility they don’t have interstellar portals,’ said Colonel Torrek, ‘but to actually believe they’re the only intelligent life in the universe …’

He glanced across at Mason Leveque, who nodded and spoke in a deep, relaxed voice. ‘Minimal effect on our current numbers, sir, but still worth incorporating into the probability analysis. At any moment, we may have new information that radically changes the weighting factors of the zonal nets.’

I didn’t understand a word of that. There was a moment of silence, so I risked speaking again.

‘Since you’re recruiting a History team, sir, it’s obvious you’ve already thought of another possibility. Aliens could have visited here before, at a time when humanity only lived on Earth, and they’ve simply come back to the same place to see how we’re progressing.’

The Colonel smiled. ‘You’re absolutely right, Jarra.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Fian, hesitantly. ‘You say you’re considering the possibility the aliens don’t have interstellar portal travel?’

Colonel Torrek turned to him. ‘Yes, we don’t know if the sphere portalled into Sol system or travelled here conventionally. Monitoring team are watching for the energy bursts of drop portals now, but we don’t know what we missed earlier.’

‘But …’ Fian shook his head. ‘Physical laws limit the size of portals. We’ve only managed to create them 4 metres in diameter so far, and 4.4 metres is possible, but the sphere is 4.71 metres. That’s over the maximum limit. The sphere definitely didn’t portal here. That must mean the aliens didn’t have drop portal technology when it was launched, or they’d have made their sphere a bit smaller and used a drop portal to send it at least part of the way here.’

Mason Leveque raised an eyebrow. ‘Captain Eklund, are you by any chance related to the Jorgen Eklund who wrote “Physical Constraints on Portal Development”?’

‘He was my great-grandfather,’ said Fian, looking surprisingly defensive about the admission.

‘Interesting,’ said Leveque. ‘Our Physics team seems to have rejected his work in favour of the more recent Devon theory which would allow portals to reach in excess of 16 metres. Possibly they’re swayed by the fact Gaius Devon is on the Physics team and has a forceful personality.’

Fian shrugged. ‘Gaius Adem Devon the third … Well, if you think it’s good science to introduce a constant from nowhere just to make your equations add up … My uncle says it shouldn’t be called the Gaius constant, but the garbage constant.’

Since I’d always struggled with science at school and given up studying it as soon as possible, I didn’t know about any of this, but I was naturally on Fian’s side against the unknown Devon.

‘I must admit to being intrigued, Captain Eklund,’ said Leveque. ‘Why is a descendant of Jorgen Eklund studying history? Please don’t tell me you’re working on time travel. I’ve always been deeply grateful that it’s supposed to be impossible.’

Fian flushed, with either embarrassment or annoyance, possibly both. ‘My great-grandfather may have been a brilliant physicist, but I’m not, and I happen to like history.’

He paused and his chin developed a familiar stubborn tilt. I watched anxiously as he continued speaking in a determined voice.

‘I understand the Military like the idea of bigger portals, so you could have battleships rather than just fighters, but it isn’t possible. That’s very important right now, because if that sphere came to Earth conventionally, it took a long time to do it. I assume you’re already double-checking the star systems closest to Earth for signs of intelligent alien life?’