Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (13 page)

"It may be a small machine for doing trials, that makes sense for them to have along. We don't carry heavy mining equipment either when prospecting. But if we can get it apart and understand the process maybe we can scale it up," Jon said.

"Mr. Burris, do you think you can induce him to process the other material? I suspect that would tell us a great deal more," Lord Byron said.

"I'll try," Jon said. He carefully closed the display. "Oh, I have nowhere to put the gold. Could you have somebody run me out a small plastic bag, please?"

They all waited while a crewman came out and gave him a small specimen bag and left immediately. He poured the gold into it and tapped the container on the deck to loosen any grains adhering. There didn't seem to be any.

"The little container seems to be very slick inside. None of the dust stuck to it. You might make a note to see if their non-stick surfaces are better than ours." When he put the tray back in the drawer it didn't close. Jon touched the end lightly and it powered itself shut.

"I'll try to do the same as he did with our bag. I'm assuming if I do something tremendously stupid he'll stop me. Do I have your permission to try that?" Jon asked.

"Sure, but if they all take off running I suggest you do the same," Lord Byron said. Perhaps he joked, but Jon wasn't sure. It was less funny so close to the machine.

"Indeed."

Jon took the bottle and tried to squeeze it with his fingertips in the groove sufficiently to open it. The groove was too narrow and he couldn't make it work. He considered handing it to the alien to open for him, but hated to do that. After a little thought he took out the same light he'd used before. It had a cord to keep him from losing it. He wrapped the lanyard around the groove and twisted it tight. The cap came right off with little drag. When he held it above the funnel the alien showed no distress so he poured about the same volume – a third of the bottle. The bag of dirt was actually easier for him to pour than the aliens. He also used about half. It might be a little less than their bag, but that was fine.

"I don't know if you realize, but it looks like you poured at least a half ounce of gold into that bag. That's really rich paydirt. Some places they'd process two ton of rock to get that," Lord Byron said.

"What's that in grams?" Jon asked.

"It's Troy ounces for gold, so at thirty one point one grams per ounce, around fifteen grams."

"I'm opening up the display again," It looked subtly different but Jon wasn't sure how. The alien rotated it again and pointed at a cluster of pillars that stood out from the rest.

"What sort of material is this we're processing?" Jon asked.

"It has a lot of rare earths. That's about all that's really useful in it," Lord Byron said.

"I trust what my buddy here is suggesting. It will be safe at least. Let's try this," Jon stabbed a finger at the taller one of the group, and was rewarded with it lighting briefly and a hoot. "You might as well run me out another bag. I think I'll need it."

"On the way," Lord Byron told him.

"I wonder what it does if you pick a gas?" Wong asked.

"Sticks a pipe out the side maybe," Lord Byron guessed.

"Sir, I thought of a reason why this may be easier for us to load than for the Caterpillars," Jon said.

"Well, it's going to take some time to process, Mr. Burris. I see no reason you can't share it with us."

"Perhaps they bought it from somebody more vertical, like us, and it isn't worth altering."

"An interesting idea. If so, they apparently know each others' devices well enough to alter the software more to the Caterpillars' liking with their own symbols," he said, expanding on the idea.

The machine gave a hoot and when Jon pulled the drawer open the was a mass of dark silvery needles. He emptied it in the new bag and said, "It will be interesting to see what this is."

"The crude laser assay indicated samarium was the most abundant of the rare earths in the crude material, so I'd be very surprised if it is anything else," Wong told him.

"Mr. Burris, I think that concludes our business with them. I'm sending out a couple crew to load the machine back up and sweep up the waste underneath. I'd appreciate it if you stand right there until they have it loaded. They're dropping off a couple gifts for the Caterpillars in appreciation of their instruction," Lord Byron said.

"Aye, sir," Jon agreed and waited. The two crewmen had the small wheeled wagons with a tow handle. They unloaded four wool blankets and an assortment of pencils, pens and industrial markers. The Caterpillars seemed more interested in the cleanup with a dust pan and brush. The man finished with a small hand-held vacuum that elicited a few appreciative hoots. When the wagons were loaded up and rolling Jon folded his chair and followed.

"They're taking the stuff," Lord Byron said before he made it back to the lock. Jon looked over his shoulder and verified it. That was good, they had earned it. He was starting to grow fond of his handler.

Chapter 10

Gordon let the alien separator go back to
The Champion William
. The 3D displays, however, he appropriated for the
High Hopes
. He really wanted better communications with the alien ship. What was their interest anyway? They seemed benign, but why, and would it stay that way? Sending video and a delay while they processed it to still frames was awkward and they had no idea how much was lost in translation. The aliens had sent them an actual line drawing before so they didn't have any convenient 2D image creating software. He suspected they had no convenient way to generate them from their own stream. That suggested they were very dissimilar formats.

"I can take it apart, or I can install it," Ernie Goddard told Gordon. "I don't give you a snowball’s chance in hell I can take it apart far enough to discover the really important stuff and get it back together running. If it's simple enough we might be able to fab a replacement once we understand how it works, but I wouldn't bet on it."

Ernie wasn't a native Fargoer, but he'd lived with them long enough to automatically state his case like one. Citing actual odds would have been even better, but in honesty he had no way to defend his numbers if Gordon asked.

"Very well, Mr. Goddard. This is critical enough to our current operations we shall use it and delay any further investigation until we can deliver it to a real electronics laboratory. I'd like it on the left side of my console here. You can put a camera looking at it over my shoulder. The image will be lacking the 3D aspect but I still want a channel showing a lower resolution monocular view for the others on the command circuit."

"I'll be right up with an assistant to take some measurements to fab a bracket for it. Once it is held I can start experimenting with splitting off an optical signal feed to the Caterpillars, and hopefully a return signal to their display too. I'm hoping they can receive the output at the same frequencies they used to send still images," Ernie said.

"It has enough bandwidth?" Lee asked.

"Easily," Ernie assured them. "The output port is optical, but the modulation doesn't require a laser. We figured that out pretty fast because it isn't invasive at all, and they used short millimeter range wavelengths to transmit it before. We can spare a replacement radar unit off a shuttle to send it. It should be simple to feed it unaltered to modulate the unit even though it is a lot of data. What will be hard is archiving all the return transmissions if they respond like we hope. I think that's very important at this early stage, and I already have a couple fabbers making lots of memory to get ahead of it."

"Proceed with the installation as you are able, Mr. Goddard," Gordon ordered. "We may not want you on the flight deck at certain times, like close to jump. So be flexible about breaking off and advise Brownie if any task will require an extended time frame to complete. Brownie, is everybody fueled up, and do you have a proposed target for our next jump?"

"Yes sir, and we have three possible targets on our present vector and none of them are unusual so I was going to take the center star. If I might suggest – we can accelerate at a moderate level and finish this shift. If we have the alternate crew do an extra hour, we'll be able to jump with the main bridge crew and still be relatively fresh for the scan on emergence."

"Sounds like a plan. Advise the other ships how you wish to configure the fleet, and send them the numbers. Maybe in the next system we'll be able to try out sending real time video to the Caterpillars."

* * *

After the alternate crew had a shift and an extra hour Gordon and the 'A' crew returned to the flight deck refreshed, having enjoyed breakfast not sitting at their duty stations. The fleet seemed in good shape with everybody in position and the clocks agreeing. They had five hours and a bit to jump.

"Sleeping at seven tenths of a G is sweet," Lee said. Nobody disagreed.

"What are the Caterpillars doing?" Gordon asked. "Do you have a report off the other shift?"

"They stayed with us until about two hours into the other shift, then took a different vector and aligned on one of the stars I rejected. They put on one of their usual bursts of acceleration and have jumped out already," Brownie said.

"No still images to us or unusual transmissions?" Gordon wondered.

"No sir. They know we have their equipment. My take on it is they will wait until we transmit to use that frequency and system," Brownie said. "There's no spontaneous hooting either."

The jump was uneventful, Lee and Gordon each having their usual internal thrill and relief but not sharing it with anyone. The star was Sol sized, a little bluer but unremarkable. There were more rocky inner planets as was common and one planet in the potential life zone. They swung that way to investigate it closer. There were three gas giants none of which were remarkable or with the complex moon systems of the place they'd left.

The planet that should have moderate temperatures showed spectral lines for free water. It had an enormous moon, so big they turned around a center well away from the surface of the larger body. It might be more accurate to call them a binary planetary system. The smaller one had atmosphere too but very thin. Gordon decided to split the fleet up and orbit the two bodies separately. The
High Hopes
took the primary. They went off shift before getting near them and let the other flight crew orbit and start a survey.

* * *

Alternate shift commander Vigilant Botrel had a little information when Gordon's crew was rested and returned. The world now filled most of the view through the forward viewports, Vigilant having left the
High Hopes
oriented to view it directly. It was a rose or dusky pink color.

"Both bodies have a significant magnetic fields. That's likely why the smaller one has retained any atmosphere at all. We have a lot of differing opinions on how they interact, and if they flip back and forth like the field does on Earth."

"There's surface water?" Gordon asked, before scanning the report.

"Yes, although nothing big like Earth's oceans, nor even the seas of Derfhome. More like scattered salt lakes, and quite a few of them have salt flats or salt beaches around them," Vigilant said. "It also has quite a few volcanoes, but nothing huge like Kilimanjaro or Olympus Mons, just lots of little cinder cones in lines across the plains."

"No life then," Gordon said dismissively.

"That isn't certain at all," Vigilant told him. "We do have some free oxygen and much less carbon dioxide than we expected, given the volcanoes. There may be some bacterial life in the water. Some of the lakes display strong coloring. It could be minerals or it could be organisms."

"Alright, I'll read the whole thing carefully. Do you think there is anything down there worth a shuttle landing?" Gordon wondered.

"I can't imagine there are any minerals to exploit we couldn't get cheaper from the brown dwarf sites we've found. The salt deposits are mixed and likely common," Vigilant agreed.

"If there are any bacteria they might be worth having cultures," Thor said. "Some of our most important bacteria for industrial processes have come from extreme environments. Places like deep-sea thermal vents or thermal springs. We could patent them and not even file a claim on this planet if you don't think it is worth it."

"This is a pretty tame landing. No fauna, no hurricanes or anything. I'd like to go down with a sampling crew and get to walk around outside a bit," Lee requested.

Gordon didn't even argue. "You'll be in a pressure suit. There's not enough oxygen to breathe, but if that sounds like fun knock yourself out."

"Yeah, I can turn my mics on and hear the wind even if I can't feel it. Who knows, maybe we'll find diamonds laying around or something," Lee joked.

"If you do, just be sure to bring enough back for all of us," Thor reminded her.

"Take Ernie Goddard," Gordon decided. "He isn't really into planetology, but he's insightful."

* * *

Alex, their shuttle pilot, was smooth. Better than Lee remembered Gordon or either of her parents ever being at landing. She wasn't even sure exactly when they touched down. He had all three pads touching the ground but most of the shuttle's weight still held against the thrust.

Outside a storm of salt blew away in their exhaust. It calmed down quickly as the loosed surface blew away. The salt a few centimeters down was much more consolidated, and the jet was hot enough to melt the surface of the salt that didn't blow away easily, sealing it.

The noise subsided as he eased the throttle back, putting more weight on the landing jacks. His fingers stayed hooked over the T handle, ready to jerk it back hard if the surface was just a crust and gave way. He watched the cameras showing the flat pads at the end of the struts rather than try to feel a drop by the seat of his pants. When the full weight didn't make it sink he blipped the throttle twice with his finger tips making the lander bounce against the suspension. It seemed solid.