Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (6 page)

"Good idea.
Sharp Claws
, are you prepared to do quick burn and head out there to see what they found?" Gordon sent to the destroyer.

"We can boost in fifteen minutes if we can take time to close up the galley for hot meals and secure duty stations for a two G boost. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes, do it, but don't break any legs or damage equipment pressing an arbitrary dead line," Gordon added.

"All hands, secure for acceleration in fifteen minutes," they heard the Derf Captain announce on ship com. His customary human name was Frost, as in Robert Frost, who he admired. "We shall ramp up to one G as soon as the horn is sounded. Secure all personal possessions and configure your duty station for acceleration. At five minutes a second horn will sound and you will be prepared for two G acceleration. Only special duty stations will be permitted tethered vertical personnel outside an acceleration couch. Off duty crew
must
be in their bunks. You are expected to have bottled water and urinals. Acceleration will not be eased for anything but a serious emergency. Heavier acceleration or an abrupt cessation of  drive are both possible unannounced. All department heads acknowledge when prepared and report any failure to conform and why."

"Thank you,
Sharp Claws
, you'll be our eyes out there now," Gordon sent to them.

"Do you think we should disperse further or take any defensive measures?" Thor asked.

"I think whatever bounced our signal back was there from the moment we entered the system and hasn't given us any trouble. I expect some sort of artifact, but honestly no active alien presence," Gordon assured him.

"Alright, let's just stand our normal watches and wait to see what they report," Thor agreed. "I'm glad you didn't rush us all out there though, I like having one ship poke its nose in for us."

* * *

"Commander Gordon, we have images of the first object. It appears to be entirely passive. It's just an old fashioned corner reflector. It's only a couple meters across and it doesn't have any sophisticated geometry to boost the signal when it is oriented unfavorably. It is anchored to a fairly large asteroid with a stout mast. I'm assuming something about the asteroid makes it worth finding again. We don't have the testing equipment of one of the DSEs, but I can test a few points with the laser and see what sort of emissions we get. If anything looks interesting we'll cut off a sample."

The image they sent was well lit with a flood lamp. The radar reflector was crude, thick sheet metal just tacked at a couple points with a rude unpolished weld. The surface was aged, the metal smoother deep in the corner and frosted by micrometeorite abrasion nearer the edges. There were even a few visible pock marks where larger grains struck it and one actual hole four or five millimeters across drilled right through the metal.

"Before we go check out the other site I intend to cut off a piece of this reflector. I'm not a hundred percent sure that's what you'd want, but I'm going to chance it on my own initiative rather than wait for orders at the speed of light lag both ways at this distance. I'd hate to waste a full shift waiting for instructions. Several people have said this has to be
old
, as in thousands of years old. I'm going to put a sample locker for this on our outer hull of the
Sharp Claws
. I don't want to take the piece we cut off in atmosphere and ruin it by contamination for some sort of testing."

"This just in from my crew out there examining this rock. The rock shows it has very high cobalt content. I'd guess it was marked as an ore source," Frost said, "but nobody every came back and worked it. If it is fairly homogenous we're looking at a several million kilograms of cobalt. I'll get a sample and move on to the next location. I expect to find another marker just like this one."

"You're doing  just fine," Gordon transmitted to them. "Your sampling procedure is exactly what I'd have done. If you find an identical reflector on the other asteroid no need to cut into it. Just sample the rock. I'm sending
The Champion William
and
Murphy's Law
around the star to do a radar survey of the opposite side of the system. I'd like to know if there are more reflectors outside our viewing angle here. Since we'll be several days doing that there is no rush to get to the other reflector at high acceleration. Take your time to avoid stressing your crew needlessly. I'd add that my personal guess is the erosion on the reflectors indicates a time frame of hundreds of thousands of years, not just thousands, so we have a mystery here why the miners never came back."

"The fellows who cut a chunk off the reflector say it's pretty pure titanium,"
Sharp Claws
transmitted. "I'll leave the other alone until I hear from you. We're looking forward to hearing your take on it and instructions. We'll plan to leave for the other reflector when we have our crew recovered from outside and soon after getting your transmission. Until later,
Sharp Claws
out," Frost ended.

"That reflector is crude, it isn't designed to fold up and be carried aboard a ship," Thor suggested. "I'd say it was made on site, as a field expedient. So, yeah, I agree the aliens marked them to find again easily and then never came back. Why? Did they find an easier source to work, or closer to home? Or was the ship lost and never reported their find back home, or did something even bigger happen to their entire civilization?"

"Maybe we'll find out as we go deeper," Gordon hoped.

In the end
The Champion William
and
Murphy's Law
found three more reflectors on the other side of the star. One was on another cobalt rich rock. One they weren't very sure about, but it might have been the vanadium content. Two were so thick with native silver they mounted their own claim beacons on those rocks. The entire body of asteroids warranted a closer examination given the richness of the alien finds. They did a close fly-by of both rocky inner planets and a couple sizable moons around the gas giants. If there was a alien base or machinery anywhere else in the system it didn't show up on radar down to a half meter resolution. It was a mystery.

* * *

The Little Fleet did their first tight five ship jump into the next system. Everything went smoothly with all of them in a circle less than a kilometer across. There was nothing of interest. No alien reflectors. No rich asteroid belts or worlds worth claiming. This continued for five jumps until they took another break. Gordon wondered if they might have found something by jumping to one of the other systems accessible from the one with the alien artifacts. But it went against the general doctrine Gordon had established to stop and investigate a globe around one star. They intended to continue along the same general heading, going as deep away from Human and Derf space as possible without side excursions to slow them down.

The next system along their approximate line of flight was a bit over seven light years away, that was on the fringe of their radio detection ability, but Gordon had the
Sharp Claws
standoff, far enough from any natural emitters in the system and wide enough from their view of the star to examine the next system. There was a lot of unnatural noise, some suggesting audio and several frequencies suggesting video, but not clearly and not on any scan rate or pixel count used by Human equipment.

In conference the captains advised against giving away their present location as it gave too obvious a vector back to their home planets. Several wondered why there was no evidence of an alien presence in this system, only one jump away from an occupied system. Several suggested they might not have star flight, others pointed out that Survey System 418 was not much further from Earth then this next jump, but manned ships from Earth never attempted it. They always jumped in from one of two other nearby systems with greater stellar masses and a higher jump probability. Nobody wanted to risk a jump with even a one in a hundred thousand chance of not emerging. No one had any idea what happened to a ship that failed to achieve a quantum emergence and nobody especially wanted to find out the hard way.

They all did two jumps to a system off at about ninety degrees from their established line of flight. A known inhabited system was cause enough to make them hold back from pushing straight forward. They looked carefully and with caution, but neither system showed any signs of having been visited.

The
Roadrunner
was equipped with extra sensors and cameras, radios and recording systems. Mostly from the DSEs. Some of it might stay installed. She'd jump in, coast through on a long slow look at the system and then take an exit line that went on to a different system on the far side of their entry, behind the star from the planet, minimizing their drive signature as seen from the planet. It might take three or more jumps into virgin systems and a week to circle around back to them, but it seemed worth it to stay somewhat unexposed. They would do a minimal survey of each system in transit to rejoin their fleet, but stop in none. They expanded their crew to four pilots, all qualified to bring her back, so they never had to drop boost and rest.

* * *

Waiting was the hard part. It wasn't at all like stopping for a rest period. Eight days later there was a familiar burst of uncommon particles, decaying and making a electromagnetic chirp as
Roadrunner
rejoined their universe from its indeterminate state. They were very happy to see her and happier yet to hear her quickly sent signal instead of an alien ship.

"We have no indication we were detected,"
Roadrunner
reported. They were wrong, but they had no idea. "There were radars active in the system, but none of them changed mode or steered a beam to examine the
Roadrunner
closer." The system was dirty, full of lots of small objects and the planetary surface subject to a constant rain of small meteors. The native radar was likely to give warning for the bigger more dangerous pieces.

The recordings were interesting. The video took awhile to figure out. It was analog. There were additional signals that had to be audio. The scan rate told them something about the native's vision. It wasn't hard to estimate the frequency of the sound track. The real bonus came with the understanding that the other channel was a universal text captioning signal, on a separate display. They appeared to have only one language.

The natives were bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical and had binocular vision. The eyes were large compared to Humans or Deft, on a par with the Hinth. Their hands were three fingered with double thumbs, as were their feet, much more dexterous than Humans or Derf, but having nothing on the ability of Hinth to use their feet, even though the Hinth appeared to have less delicate and suitable feet. Watching them shuffle and deal cards dispelled any idea Hinth feet were not very capable of subtle manipulation.

A fine short coat of fur ran down their backs, ranging from tan to black, but their skin was semi nude from the chin to crotch, with very fine hair. There was much variation among individuals. They wore clothing but didn't appear to have as strong a taboo against nudity. Part of that might be because their genitals were carried tucked away in folds so it was hard to tell at a glance if one was male or female for sure.  Also the climate was moderate and they did have fur but not a shaggy insulting coat.

The hair on the alien's heads was just as short and fine as on their backs, but they had tufts of hair on the face, more prominent in the males, which looked somewhat like a set of mutton chop whiskers on a human, running from upright triangular ear to chin. Those tended to be a lighter white or yellowish color than the body hair. The nose was broad, cleft and active. The females carried mammary glands, but the nipple tucked in a fold by the hip, not by the arm pit. They looked sleek and carried a thin long tail.

There was a lot of display by these people of what they took for status symbols. There was a profusion of hats, some simple knit affairs, some with ear holes, to elaborate hats with molded shapes and decorations. The clothing ranged from full jumpsuits that appeared to be serious protection for professions doing manual labor to frilly decoration. The one item everybody wore was some sort of collar, even if otherwise naked. Some fancy with studs and jewels, some simple chains.

"The videos are odd. I don't know what to make of it. There isn't anything that looks like advertising. There are short local stories, but they aren't man in the street type videos with normal stuff happening in the background," Thor said.

"How do you know what's normal?" Lee asked.

"Good point, but I've seen broadcast news from Humans, Derf and Hinth. They all had similar elements these lack. These videos never have traffic behind the aliens on camera or crowds in the city. The actors all look stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. And I've noticed anytime one says "Teen" they all give a little jerk of the head, almost like bow."

"OK, we need to figure that word out," Gordon said. "I'm going to make this available to everybody in the fleet and see what people get from it. I want everybody to give me ideas what these videos are meant to convey and assign their opinion a numerical probability. For example, this video looks to be in front of a field and the one fellow points off  camera and says something. Is he pointing out the way to town or showing which way his livestock took off or what? Ten percent probability or ninety? Don't be afraid to reach a bit."

* * *

Three days later they had their first all hands fleet conference. "Give me two items first," Gordon requested. "I'd like any item on which a large number of people had consensus and I'd like anything an individual assigned a higher probability than ninety percent."

"We have forty-eight people who concluded that anyone wearing that dark orange color is some sort of official," Thor read, "with some mentioning government and some identifying it as a religious order. Thirty two people noted that in three scenes the wearers of orange are the only natives we see carrying weapons. In two videos they carry swords and in the third they have both swords and two of them have spears."