Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (19 page)

Allen from engineering was waiting at the open shuttle hold with a net on a pole and a hooked gaff. He chose the gaff and hooked the net with some delicacy. He let the residual rotation pull him but not enough to lose the firm footing he had on the deck of the hold. He avoided ripping the net so they could save it and repack it.

"Wow, this is pretty much in one piece," Allen said of the basketball-sized piece. "It's smacked out of round but I think it started as a sphere, maybe a pressure vessel for maneuvering thrusters or something. It has a flange and stuff still attached, trailing wires."

By then Ming had returned close enough to get another net-gun. Allen tossed it to him with the effortless grace of someone used to no gravity. It sailed across with no rotation at all and just cancelled some of Ming Lee's motion toward the shuttle.

"There's another decent piece I saw beyond this one. Mr. Wong, can you nudge the shuttle along behind me, please?" Ming asked on com. "I'm afraid I may run out of line on that one. It was receding a little still when I grabbed this one."

"Sure right behind you. Lead off," Wong invited.

Ming Lee turned around and oriented himself to the star. He gave a little nudge on the thrusters. He had to get about a hundred meters out before he saw it on his suit radar, off center from where he was aimed but he corrected and changed the angle closing on it. He didn't bother to look back for the shuttle. Wong was a slick pilot. If he'd asked, Wong could scoop a piece up by sliding the shuttle over it so it went in the hatch. They hadn't found anything big enough to require that, but the man was that good.

This was the same piece he'd seen, long and skinny. It was barely turning by some random miracle. It was bent in the middle and tapered. If it wasn't massive he could catch it by hand and save the net packing. It showed smooth with even joints visible, and the smaller end was mushroomed out like a big handle. He eased up on it, timed the turn-over and gave a little thrust with his jets to give himself some opposite motion. If it was solid metal or something he'd have to let loose of it before it dragged him around. He'd done that before and wasn't scared of it.

The narrow part near the end went in his glove true, and he could reach around it enough to get a grip. It pulled him over but not hard, and it pivoted across his chest and just that slick he had it. He looked at the small end and it was a pad like a lander strut but of course much smaller. It wasn't broken, the bend in the middle was a deliberate joint. When he turned the big end towards his suit lights it was all ragged inside with fibrous strands.

Ming got an uneasy feeling and went back to the other end. The pad on the end was ribbed with a tread. It was a boot, wider than a human foot but definitely a boot, and the shape suddenly resolved as a leg. He swallowed hard against a sudden sick feeling. You don't want to throw up in a spacesuit.

"Ming Lee, are you OK?" Wong asked. "You gasped and made a funny noise.
Lee
?" he said again.

"I'm not exactly OK," Ming admitted. "I had a shock. I think this thing is a frigging leg," I mean, not just a loose leg, but in a... uh, probably a suit leg. It's pretty disgusting."

"Do you need recovered," Wong asked.

"No, no... I'm coming back in. It just rattled me. I think you better ask Fenton or Gordon what they want to do with this. I never thought about finding something
perishable
."

* * *

"There isn't anything that looks exotic," Alex Hillerman reported. "We've taken samples of all the materials, and have a bunch of little chips and shards of who knows what. It seems impossible to price things for a fair exchange, and I find it gruesome and ugly to consider selling
remains
. My suggestion is we pack all this up and take it over to the Caterpillars and let them have it. I'm not sure it will be of any value to them, but since they were collecting they have
some
interest. I think it would be a nice gesture."

"You're the one who mentioned selling it to them. You have any objection to doing as Alex suggested?" Gordon asked Lee.

"No, I thought maybe we'd find something super advanced," Lee admitted. "Maybe this will get the Caterpillars talking to us again. I worried they're scared of us now."

"Fine, Brownie, have whoever has a shuttle free and serviced consolidate this trash and take it over to the Caterpillars. We'll see if they aren't afraid to have us inboard again.

"Send Jon Burris again," Lee suggested. "They know him and he's good at it. Since you won't let me go," she added. Gordon ignored that.

* * *

"They didn't even hesitate," Burt Wong said, pleased as the hatch rolled open again on the great ship. "Of course they may
keep
us for hostages this time," he added.

"Mr. Wong, your humor may not be a morale builder," Captain Fenton said while the hatch was still open to their com.

"You are correct sir, and I apologize for making it so dark."

"Goodbye, or hopefully until we meet again, Mr. Wo..." The hatch sealed and cut his words off.

Mr. Wong was in command but he had a pilot who eased it down to the deck and let the slight field bring it into contact. It was barely perceivable.

"Your show now Mr. Burris. Are you going to offer them more coffee?" Wong asked.

"As a matter of fact I brought two bags. Just in case they ask for it insistently. I think we'd face a mutiny if I tried to strip it all out of the fleet for them."

"I would object most strenuously to doing that. We have a synthesizer for flavors and extracts, but I've tasted the product it alleges is 'coffee'; even dried instant is better."

"The pressure is coming up pretty fast," the pilot called back to them.

"Well, I might as well get down to the lock," Jon said. He had to suit up because it had been decreed nobody would expose themselves to the alien artifacts. They had been held in isolation outside the environmental areas of the ships once biological remains were found. The material samples would be sterilized en mass to make them easier to work with.

What the Caterpillars would do with their gift was their concern, but from one leg they couldn't tell much about the crew of the aggressive plate builders. Even the common opinion they were bipods was uncertain. They had photographs and a small sample of tissue carefully sealed and kept frozen, but nobody felt up to removing it from what they were pretty sure was a space suit leg. Let the Caterpillars have the joy of it, their medical people said.

When the pressure neared the level at which the Caterpillars had entered the hold or hanger before Jon went out with two crewmen helping haul the assorted junk in two small pull carts. At the slight gravity the Caterpillars favored they found pushing them by the single handle gave them better traction than pulling them. Jon carried the leg separately in an thick insulated box. It was sealed in a thick plastic bag like the galley used for big slabs of meat, which it was sort of...

Six Caterpillars came out today, when the men reached halfway to the bulkhead and stopped. They had a couple of the floater carts with them, anticipating that what the Humans were bringing was for them.

Jon laid the box on the deck in front of the first Caterpillar to approach him. He was embarrassed he still didn't know if it was the same Caterpillar he'd dealt with before. He removed the lid and placed his hand briefly against the bag inside, hoping the fellow would do the same.

The Caterpillar took the hint and laid a longer tentacle on the plastic, but recoiled at the cold as if he'd been burned. A single hoot had another Caterpillar come put the lid in place and carry it to a waiting cart. They headed off out of the hold right away.

The critical transfer over, his helpers started laying the contents of the carts on the deck. The Caterpillars could do what they wanted with it. Gordon said to let them dispose of any they didn't want, so they weren't going to wait and haul any rejected pieces back with them.

The Caterpillars seemed a little less shy to Jon. They were lined up looking over the junk as it was laid out. A few of them were checking this or that out with some sort of hand scanner. The lighter pieces on top were all on the deck and then a crewman lifted the deformed sphere from the cart and placed it on the deck.

Caterpillars tended to be vocal. When Jon wasn't suited up their hooting hurt his ears a few times. So it was an anomaly when the Caterpillar scanning the sphere made a delicate little hoot that Jon barely heard. What was really weird was they all froze in position like a stop frame of video.

The fellow was holding the scanning instrument frozen like the rest of them, but then he repeated the quiet hoot three times. To Jon's ear they seemed all the same, but the others were jarred into a frenzy of motion. Everybody along the junk stepped back like it had turned into a pile of snakes. The two behind the Caterpillar attending Jon turned and ran straight into each other, the one bouncing off head to head and the other apparently knocking himself senseless.

Panic turned into rout and they all scrambled for the exit. The unconscious one in tow. The floaters were abandoned as well as a few odd personal items scattered on the deck. Only his personal Caterpillar remained and went over and picked the scanner up where the other caterpillar had dropped it and confirmed his reading.

"We have radio traffic and the pressure is dropping," Jon was informed by the pilot on com.

"I suggest you recall my helpers," Jon said. "Something weird is happening here."

"Agreed," Wong said. The two started back although the order wasn't on the general com channel.

"We see them freaking out over the ball. Any idea why?" Wong asked.

"No clue, and my personal liaison is sticking it out even if the pressure is dropping. I wonder how low the pressure can go before he keels over?" Jon wondered.

"Well
that's
new!" Wong said.

Jon looked up at Wong's exclamation, and there was a Caterpillar entering the hold in a space suit. That was interesting. Jon had wondered how they'd accommodate all those legs underneath. In a suit they looked more like a Caterpillar than ever, because the legs were gathered in batches. There were flexible cones to hold groups of legs acting together spaced along the edges, even more like an Earth caterpillar.

The new fellow had a floater with quite a bit of equipment and another space suit. Jon's personal Caterpillar wasted no time getting in it, taking much less time than a Human suiting up. The front was like a massive helmet with a large clear faceplate and two flexible tapered tubes for his principal tentacles. However there were also four larger mechanical tentacles of segmented polished metal.

He flowed into the suit – walked into it really – from the rear, and it sealed itself from the helmet back. There was a shiny small block like a zipper pull that traveled the length of the seam closing it and sealing it. The motion had that constant speed to it that said it was powered.

One of the tugs they had seen push ships around came from somewhere behind Jon and hovered by the sphere. It wasn't that much different than the floater carts, just bigger.

"Did you see where that came from?" Jon asked. "They must have some kind of storage for them in here."

"Nope, we were all looking at what you are doing and don't have any cameras active to the other side. I guess we should have," Wong admitted. "Don't get all distracted and forget to close
your
faceplate," Wong reminded him.

"Oh, yeah." Jon reached up and latched it, tested it and double checked his suit settings. His ears popped and he had to swallow, because the pressure was already under the suit's settings.

"The gravity is easing off too," their pilot warned. Be aware you may push off the deck easily."

"I wonder why?" Jon asked.

The Caterpillar did the oddest thing. He took a canister and sprayed a ring of yellowish foam right on the top of the tug drone. He waited maybe thirty seconds and filled the center with a swirling motion, but lower. The two Caterpillars then went over to the sphere, the drone tagging along like a dog at heel.

One alien tested the foam with a mechanical tentacle and was apparently satisfied it wasn't tacky. The other Caterpillar squirted a small blob of foam on the sphere and they lifted it between them. They treated it like a soap bubble, moving with exaggerated care to place it with the fresh foam blob down on the nest of foam.

"The pressure is dropping faster now," Jon was told on com. "There was quite a bit of audio – hooting – on the radio spectrum when they were moving the ball," Wong said.

The caterpillar with the canister sprayed foam around the ball working in a circle until the nest was transformed into a complete covering with ridges like an old fashioned bee hive. When the foam stopped he shook the canister and got one last blob from it before discarding it to the deck.

When the hanger door started to slide open Wong was pretty sure what was next and warned the fleet outside. "I believe they are sending one of those tugs out pretty quickly," Wong said on the open channel. I suggest you back off and stay well away from its flight path."

"Roger that," Gordon said. "They aren't pushing
you
out?"

"No, they seem very leery of the deformed ball we brought them. Scared shitless is closer to it."

"Oh, I guess we should have X-rayed it," Gordon said abashed.

"
No
, no I
really
don't think so," Jon said heartfelt.

"It's starting to move. They are treating it like a big egg they don't want to crack," Wong said.

The drone moved so painfully slow it was moving at a walking pace when it cleared the hatch. It wasn't until it was half a kilometer off that the Caterpillars hooted again on the radio.

"It's picking up acceleration just a little, but still nothing rough," Brownie reported from the
High Hopes
after a few more minutes.

When the drone was about twenty kilometers away it disappeared in an eye searing explosion.