Hex (14 page)

“Yes or no,” Cayce said impatiently. “Can you do it or can't you?”

“Sure.” Mark was barely able to hide his annoyance. “Piece of cake.”

Sean pursed his lips together. Cayce had bullied Mark into giving an immediate answer. If he knew his friend, though, Mark would have preferred to spend a few more minutes studying the problem before committing himself. But it wasn't Sean's place to object, so all he could do was accept the situation and hope for the best.

“Very well, then,”
Andromeda said.
“But take it easy, and abort at once if you don't think you can make it.”
Another pause, then she added,
“I don't think that I should have to remind you that rescue is going to be very difficult if you run into any problems.”

Sean knew what she meant, and that she'd intended her words more for Cayce than anyone else. Although the
Montero
was equipped with an EVA pod, the tiny one-man craft was only meant for repair work, not search-and-rescue operations. And since the
Montero
itself was hard to maneuver in tight situations, any attempt to steer it through that cable-net would be treacherous at best.

“We copy,
Montero
.” Mark took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Okay, folks, hold on to your butts. I'm going to take us in.”

One hand on the throttle bar, he carefully inched the yoke forward. Through the cockpit windows, Sean watched as the hexagon hove into view. “I'll try going through near one of the pods,” Mark said. “The cables don't seem to be as closely strung together at the edges as they are at the center.”

No one objected. They trusted the pilot to know what he was doing. All the same, Sean couldn't help but notice that Mark's lips silently moved as he recited a
Sa'Tong
ian prayer to himself.

The lander was closing in on the cables when they heard from D'Anguilo again.
“Can you switch on your wing cams, please? I'd like to get another look at them before you go through.”

Sean knew what he meant. From his seat on the cabin's starboard side, he wouldn't be able to supply D'Anguilo with a clear view of the cables until the
Reese
was actually among them. Mark nodded to Cayce, and the lieutenant reached up to the overhead consoles and pushed a couple of buttons. “Sixty-five miles and approaching,” the pilot said. “We should be going through in another minute or so.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”
D'Anguilo sounded satisfied. Another few moments went by, then he spoke again.
“Kyra, I'm picking up something strange. Looks like there are some objects attached to those cables. Can you... ?”

A sudden rush of static blurred his voice, making the rest unintelligible. “Damn,” Cayce muttered as he reached up to the com panel. “
Montero
, this is
Reese
, do you copy? We're getting interference here. Please respond if you...”

Almost as if a switch had been thrown, the static abruptly ceased. But when the comlink became active again, the next voice they heard wasn't human, but a high-pitched string of clicks and squeals.

“What the hell?” Almost as if stung, Cayce quickly pulled his hand away from the panel. “I don't...”

“Oh, my God!” Kyra exclaimed. Sean looked at her, saw that her eyes were wide. “I don't know what they're saying, but... that's
danui
!”

T
HE STUNNED SILENCE IN
MONTERO
'S COMMAND CENTER lasted only a couple of moments. Then Jason spoke up. “I don't know what they're saying,” the first officer said, “but it sounds like they're pissed off.”

Andromeda glanced over her shoulder at Tom D'Anguilo. He shook his head; no, he didn't understand the
danui
transmission either. She turned to Anne and gestured for her to patch her into the comlink. Anne tapped a couple of commands into her touch screen, then gave her captain a quick thumbs-up. Andromeda prodded her headset mike.

“This is Captain Andromeda Carson of the Coyote Federation merchant vessel
Carlos Montero
,” she said. “We've received your message, but we do not understand what you're saying. Please repeat in our own language or that of another Talus race. Over.”

There was no immediate response. The wallscreen displayed three overlapping images. The largest was the view of Hex as seen from
Montero
's bow cameras, a vast plain of hexagons stretching as far as the eye could see. At the top right side of the screen was a straight-ahead view of the hexagon that the
Reese
was approaching as seen through the lander's wing cameras; on the top left side was Sean's close-up view of the cables stretched across its center. The last jiggled constantly—her son was having trouble holding the camera—nonetheless, it was the most detailed of the three images.

“Montero
, this is
Reese.” Cayce's voice came through her earpiece.
“We just received a signal from . . . ”

“I know. We got the same thing.” Andromeda looked at Anne again; the com officer met her gaze, shook her head. “We've asked them to repeat what they said in Anglo, but haven't heard anything yet.”

“Roger.”
A pause.
“I'd like to continue our approach unless specifically told otherwise.”

“I'm not sure I'd recommend that, Captain.” D'Anguilo turned around in his seat. “Mr. Ressler is right. We may not know what the
danui
was saying, but the tone suggests that it may be a warning . . .”

“Do you know what an angry
danui
sounds like?” Andromeda muted her mike as she looked at D'Anguilo again. He didn't reply, and she went on. “Neither do I. For all we know, it could have been a welcome, or landing instructions, or anything at all. If they want us to stay away, though, they've had plenty of chances to tell us before now. And I'm tired of waiting for them to make up their minds.”

D'Anguilo's expression suggested that he didn't agree with her, but when Andromeda gave him a chance to make his case, he chose to remain quiet.
Some expert you're turning out to be,
she thought as she activated her mike again. “Affirmative,
Reese
. Continue your present course. Over.”

Crossing her legs, Andromeda returned her attention to the wallscreen. By then, the lander was only a couple of miles from the hexagon, and it was clear that the cables of its inner perimeter were as thick as those of a suspension bridge. Although they reflected the distant sun, the objects attached to them seemed to absorb the light.

“What are those things?” she asked aloud.

Arranged in rows on either side of each cable were large black rectangles, their major axes running parallel to the cables themselves and their ends nearly touching one another. Several hundred feet long, the rectangles were thin, flat surfaces that appeared to be rigged to the cables by slender wires. Although they were slanted inward, no two had exactly the same angle; instead, they seemed to be oriented toward the sun in an almost random order.

“Radiators?” Jason asked. Sitting quietly beside Andromeda, the first officer absently rubbed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger.

“I don't think so,” Rolf replied. “We spotted radiators already, on the outer surface of the biopods. No point in being redundant for no reason. Those look kinda like . . .” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “Solar collectors!”

“Yeah, that might make sense, but . . .” Jason pointed at the upper-left screen. “Look at the way they're been rigged. They're not all facing directly toward the sun. Most are, but some aren't. And it looks like they're mounted on gimbals. If those are solarcell arrays, that's a pretty haphazard way of placing them, don't you think?”

Rolf scowled at Jason, as if to ask
Since when did you become an engineer?
From the other side of the compartment, Zeus Brandt chuckled softly. “Now, boys . . .”

Andromeda tapped her mike again. “Sean, can you point your camera straight at one of those big black things and zoom in, please? We're trying to figure out what they are.”

“Yes, ma'am,”
he said, and again Andromeda bristled at the not-well-disguised sarcasm in her son's voice.

“We'll be making a close pass in just a few seconds,”
Mark Dupree said.
“I think we should be able to give you a good shot then. But”
—a moment of hesitation—“
judging from what I'm seeing here, I think I've got an idea what they are.”

“Love to hear it, Sergeant.” Andromeda smiled. “Someone here thinks they're photovoltaic arrays, but the jury's still out.”

Rolf and Jason traded looks; apparently that thought hadn't occurred to them. “It would make sense,” Rolf said grudgingly. “You'd need some sort of attitude-control system to keep Hex in proper alignment as it rotates. You could mount engines all over the thing, but that would use a lot of energy. If you had a passive system . . .”

“You could use the solar wind instead.” Andromeda nodded. “The magnetic charge attracts it to the cables, then the sails harness it. You'd need a lot of 'em, of course, but I suppose it's plausible.”

The lander was beginning to make its passage through the hexagon's center. Andromeda used her fingertips to manipulate a trackball on her lapboard; the image on the upper-left side of the wallscreen expanded, displaying Sean's close-up view of the nearest cable. The black panels did indeed look very much like the thin polymer of solar sails, but she noticed that they also had the hexagonal patterns of photovoltaic arrays. Perhaps Dupree's theory was correct; the panels might serve two functions at once. If so, then it was further proof of
danui
ingenuity . . . as if any more proof were needed.

“Don't get too close to those panels,” D'Anguilo said, apparently addressing the lander pilot. “You don't know how . . .”

“I'm getting another transmission!” Anne snapped. “A text message this time . . . in
hjadd
!”

“Send it over to Tom,” Andromeda said, “and put it up on the screen. Tom, can you translate, please? I want Anne to concentrate on maintaining contact with the lander.”

“I'm on it.” D'Anguilo quickly turned back to his console, where the new message was already appearing on one of his comp screens. A second later, a window appeared at the bottom of the wallscreen, and the message unscrolled in vertical bars upon it:

Andromeda had seen
hjadd
script before. As always, she considered it to be strangely beautiful, more a work of art than an alien language. She had no idea what it meant, though, but she barely had time to wonder why the
danui
had sent something in
hjadd
before D'Anguilo used the translation program to divine its meaning.

“I've got an approximate translation,” he said, his voice low, “but you're not going to like it.”

“Let's see it,” Andromeda said, and a second later several lines of Anglo text appeared beneath the
hjadd
script:

“Oh, hell,” Jason murmured. “This is not good.”

“Tell me about it,” Andromeda said. But the warning seemed to confirm Kyra's theory that the
danui
were allowing different races to occupy various hexagons.
So this is what they meant when they told us that there was a habitable world in their system,
she thought.
We assumed that they meant a planet . . . not this!

No time to consider that now. She started to prod her mike before she remembered that the comlink was still active.
“Reese
, this is
Montero
. We've just translated that message from the
danui
. . . at least we think it's the
danui
. . . and they're ordering us to withdraw the lander at once. Do you copy?” Not waiting for a reply, she looked at Anne. “Replay that on the same frequency you received the warning. I want the
danui
to hear it.”

“Already done,” Anne said.

Cayce's voice came over the comlink. “Montero
, this is
Reese
. We copy, but couldn't you have told us this fifteen minutes ago? We're already . . .”