Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (12 page)

* * *

The machine was simple in form. It might have been a small potbellied stove or a beer keg with legs. The funnel on top was pretty obvious. There were some square lines with rounded corners on the side but it was impossible to tell if they were fitted pieces or just surface scribes.

Jon Burris was dressed in the normal work outfit for a ship that did a lot of zero G, a jumpsuit with zip-seal pockets and tight wristcuffs. Nothing on it would snag on a projection easily. The soft ankle boots were flexible enough to let get a toe under a take-hold bar to pivot or wedge your foot to locate you while you worked on something. The Caterpillars always looked the same, but they had seen Jon in pressure suit, suit liner and work fatigues with no reaction. Apparently they understood clothing.

The machine was removed from the wagon they used to pull it over from the new shuttle. Jon had walked over to accompany them and show them where he wanted it unloaded, carrying his usual chair. He hadn't realized the landing shuttles were named vessels too. The shuttle from the
Retribution
had just been mentioned as the number two shuttle when they were issuing orders. He couldn't remember it being used on com, but the shuttle from
The Champion William
had
Hildegard
written in ornate script near the forward viewports. He didn't want to ask about it now, but saved some pix of it for later.

The aliens didn't send out the usual group of six. Just two came out, but then Jon hadn't put a blanket down to show an interest in trading. They might very well wonder what they were up to with the second shuttle. It suddenly occurred to him they might think they were returning the machine. He's have to avoid doing anything to imply that.

The sack of alien dirt that came with the machine and the one they'd collected themselves were put on the deck near but not touching the device. The material they collected tested as having high concentrations of rare earths by laser vaporization. The aliens' material seemed to be a fine alluvial gravel of mixed minerals that could have easily come from Earth or any other water world. They had examined a small sample non-destructively and returned it to the bag.

Jon walked around the machine stopping and looking at it from various angles. The aliens watched impassively. He went around again and leaned over peering at the surface closer. When the two just stood there staring he stopped and held his hands to each side palm up in a classic human gesture of puzzlement.

"I know you might not understand, but I have no idea what to do with the stupid thing," he said. He picked up the bag of dirt they'd supplied and made as if he was going to pour it in the funnel on top but stopped and sat it back down.

"And we suspect you want us to pour it in the funnel, but where's the
on
button?" Jon asked, aloud. He went through the same routine with their own bag of dirt and again didn't complete it.

"Jon, there is some radio traffic again inside the hanger," Lord Byron told him.

The Caterpillars did lean close and put their heads together. He'd never seen them do that before. The hatch into the hold opened and admitted another Caterpillar carrying something. He joined the other two and there was a bit of subdued hooting but no leaning close again. Up close he was carrying a clear cylinder of some sort.

"Maybe I've driven them to drink and the new fellow has brought martinis," Jon speculated.

"Does that mean you can see the cylinder has fluid in it, Mr. Burris?" Lord Byron asked.

"I can't see anything sloshing around, but it has a cap on it of much less diameter than the body. I'd bet anything it's a bottle. The form just fits the function."

"A thousand Ceres dollars says you are anthropomorphizing," Wong challenged. "It could be a battery or an optical device for all you know."

"Ha! Done," Jon agreed.

The Caterpillar walked over to the machine and looked at Jon.

"Yes, I'm paying attention," Jon said out loud, and approached to demonstrate his interest.

The Caterpillar took the cap off the bottle but it didn't screw of. He rolled a tentacle around it and it popped off. He poured about a third of the clear liquid inside down the funnel on top of the alien machine, and sat the bottle on the deck.

"I can't smell anything. I think it's just water," Jon said.

"Well crap. But it
still
isn't martinis," Wong said, a bit grumpy.

The Caterpillar grabbed the sack with both main tentacles and supported the bottom with lots of the secondary tendrils. He lifted both of his front segments off the deck to get the sack up to the funnel and tip about half of the contents in. That was new and interesting.

"Why would they build this machine so high when it's obviously difficult to dump the stuff in it? Why not build it low to the ground and make it easy on themselves?" Lord Byron wondered.

"I've no idea, but I can see something interesting about the cap. It has a groove in the middle. I bet that is a lock to keep it on the bottle instead of screwing it on like we would," Jon said.

"Please, stop saying '
I bet
'," Lord Byron requested. "It gets the Fargoers all excited and distracts us from the business at hand. Besides, I predict you will keep winning and some may resent it."

"I'm sorry," Jon said, "it's a fairly common meaningless interjection where I'm from. It's a mannerism nobody normally takes it as a formal offer. I admit it's almost as bad as, '
You know
'."

"Thank you, Mr. Burris, we... Oh, my!

The Caterpillar centered itself on the section that had squares marked and did the two-tentacle motion they'd seen used on the aliens' video display. Jon sidled over as close as he could to try to get within the viewing angle. The other aliens behind him gave a little hoot and the one working the machine stopped and put both main tentacles upright in the center of the projected display. Then he formed an arch with both of them and rotated the away from each other. The image expanded and was visible now over a much wider angle.

"I hope you saw how he did that," Lord Byron said.

"I think so, but hey, we have it on video," Jon said.

"Your feed is good, but we can't see much from the ship cameras. What do you make of that?" Lord Byron asked. "It's in 3D right? I don't think we're getting the full effect through your camera."

"Yes, it's like a bar graph. In 3d it's like square pillars of different heights. Almost like looking down on a city with skyscrapers of various heights. Ah, he made a motion and it rotated. That put the short ones toward us and the high ones to the rear. There are also a couple smaller clusters like the main one to the sides." There were symbols on the top of each, but he had no idea what they meant.

The Caterpillar made a much more obvious gesture, pointing a straightened tentacle at the display. One of the shorter square pillars brightened and the machine gave a hoot. It was clearly the machine not the alien, and made Jon jump. Then he laughed, as much at himself as the machine.

The alien closed the screen and went back to his companions. Jon took that for a signal and retreated to his chair. The tree alien stood heads together and if they were communicating it had to be in a whisper. The machine didn't have a light to show it was doing anything or make noise.

"I think I understand what the graph might be," Wonk volunteered.

"Do tell," Lord Byron invited, but he wasn't being sarcastic.

"We'll have to look at it in detail, and whatever the machine does may help to verify it, but I think it may be a periodic chart of the elements," Wong said.

"Hmm... maybe," Lord Byron allowed. “We need to count the pillars. What do you suppose the side groups might be then?"

"I'm not sure. But one of them looked quite, uh,
tall
."

"Yes, but I'm no mind reader, what do you think that
means
?" Lord Byron asked.

"If the taller ones are very large atomic numbers or atomic weight it might be an island of stability in high atomic numbers that we've never been able to create, sir," Wong suggested.

"What an interesting theory. If it pans out I'll ask a share bonus for you of Commander Gordon."

"Thank you, sir. I won't turn that down. It can offset my bet with Mr. Burris."

"And then some!" Lord Byron agreed.

* * *

"Mr. Goddard, when they conclude the other business with the alien machine and bring that 3D video gear out I want you to investigate it, but primarily I want it installed on our bridge so we can communicate with the Caterpillars," Gordon requested. "It has to have some output we can transmit to them, even if we need to amplify it."

"I'll do my best, sir," Ernie Goddard said. He sounded intimidated.

"It's just technology, Mr. Goddard," Gordon reminded him, "They may be a little ahead of us, but it's not like we are savages and have no hope of duplicating their magic."

"Aye sir," Ernie agreed, but there was no confidence in his voice.

* * *

One of the aliens was so still Jon Burris wondered if he was taking a little nap. He didn't think he could be that comfortable around them even if he had others out here with him. When the machine gave another hoot the fellow twitched, reinforcing his suspicion.

The one he was pretty sure was his handler looked at him and went over to the machine, so he went along. The alien very patiently drew a square in the air around the square outline he'd used before to call up the display, and then stood back.

"Oh, you want me to try it?" Jon asked. It was small so he just used his index fingers to do the opening command and worked perfectly. He decided to go for broke and made an arch of his hands in the middle and rolled them each way. It didn't open up the angle of the display like it had for the alien.

"Well, crud, I tried," Jon muttered.

The alien reached in and did something complicated too fast for him to follow, then closed the display up and retraced the square shape again.

"Ah, back to square one again?" Jon asked, amused. He opened it again and looked at the alien. The alien did the gesture of rolling two arched tentacle tips away from each other again like he'd used to open the angle on the display, but he directed it at Jon instead of the machine.

"Oh, I'm being dense again," Jon said, embarrassed. He made the same gesture with his hands again and was rewarded with a wide display they could both lean in and see together.

"That's interesting," Jon reported over com. "He adjusted it for hands, so the machine recognized the gesture. It's apparently programmable."

"Yeah, like assigning special keys on a board," Lord Byron agreed.

The alien aligned a single tentacle along the left side of the screen and swiped it like a squeegee. The screen with the pillar shapes slid off to the right and was replaced with a new one.

"It's like a touch screen!" Jon exclaimed.

"Saw that," Lord Byron said.

The new screen showed just two bars in a graph, one much bigger than the other. His alien pointed and almost touched the smaller bar. It illuminated and a drawer popped open in the side of the machine. It had a tray in it that was much bigger than it needed to be, a rectangular shape again with rounded corners. The aliens seemed to find that aesthetically pleasing. There was some debris in the bottom, but it was rather dim in the hold and the tray itself was a matte dark gray. It had a tentacle loop, however, which served just fine for fingers. Jon removed the tray and still couldn't see much, so he took a small light from his pocket and shone it inside.

"Well, what is it?" Lord Byron asked after he stared and didn't seem disposed to report.

"I think it's gold," Jon said. "At least it's a bunch of little blobs and flecks that look like gold and some black powder."

"Gold looks dark if it's finely divided," Lord Byron said. "I had a friend who refined his own gold from panning and dredging, and he got a dark powder he had to flux and melt."

"It probably is then, but where did all the rest of it go?" Jon wondered.

"I see the other bar on the screen. Maybe if you touch it the machine will deliver up the rest of it?"

"It better have a lot bigger drawer," Jon said. But he poked a finger at the larger bar, doing so slowly enough that the alien could stop him if he needed to. The bar didn't light up like the other and no drawer opened.

The alien didn't hoot, but did an interesting little flourish with a main tentacle and pointed very plainly. Not at the display but low. So low Jon had to step back to see at what he was pointing. There was a pile of fine powder under the machine.

"OK, this makes sense," Jon said. "They know we value gold, so they gave us a machine that separates gold from other rock. It seems the waste is dumped under the machine. If I'd known that I'd have put a pan down there to make cleanup easier." He leaned over and poked it with a finger tip. It was as fine as flour and dry.

"Where did the water go?" Jon asked. Lord Byron wasn't sure if he was just speaking out loud again or thought they might know. The alien wasn't going to answer.

"Perhaps the water is necessary to the process," Wong said. "It may evaporate. There is no external power connected. Unless it has some sort of batteries maybe it uses the water for power."

"Oh my. If it uses plain hydrogen from the water for power it must do it by fusion. If so, they have no idea that it's
much
more valuable to us for that than as a gold separator."

"Yes, but I don't think it is a gold separator," Wong said. "He didn't just dump it in and turn it on. He needed to make a selection from that first menu. I think it's a general purpose machine."

"You know, I think you're right. The gold mining friend I was talking about would carry a machine around that separated out alluvial gold by gravity. He didn't use it to work the whole deposit, but he'd use it to test a spot to see if the whole area was worth working with the big machines. I think this is something similar," Lord Byron said. "And much more efficient than his. His took hours and a lot more water, besides needing a generator to run the motor."