McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (10 page)

“Ensign Palmer, sir. Welcome to
Amy.
”

“She’s a new ship, I see.” Actually, he
smelled.
There was still that trace odor of paint drying that permeates a ship for the first couple of years out of the yards. It wasn’t that the paint had not yet dried, but rather that human body and other odors had not yet built up to overpower the volatile chemicals still being given off by the walls.

“Yes, sir. We came out of construction dock a month before we took the Big Jump.”

“First time?” he asked. The Big Jump was what the crews called the voyage from Sol to Hideout.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve made it three times now. Trust me; it doesn’t get any shorter with practice.”

“No, sir. Would you like an escort to take you to the captain, sir?”

“Please. I’ve never been aboard this model cruiser before,” Mark replied, pretending not to notice the expression that flashed across the features of a couple of Marines still standing at attention. As Executive Officer, the ship’s Marine detachment would be his responsibility, as indeed, would the entire crew. He resolved to demonstrate at the first opportunity that the look had been unwarranted.

“You can unsuit over there, sir,” the ensign said, pointing out the long bank of coffin-shaped suit lockers that disappeared down a curved passageway. The requisite array of holding fixtures projected from the bulkhead opposite the airlock.

Mark spent the next five minutes removing his suit. First he backed into the upper holding clamp until he heard the ‘click’ of his backpack seating into the anchor point. Next, secured to the bulkhead, he reached down and opened the waist ring, before shoving the pants down to half staff. He then raised his arms over his head, anchored his boots to the deck cleats, and slowly went into a deep squat to extract his trunk from the hard upper torso assembly. As soon as his head cleared the waist ring, he pivoted in the deck cleats like a skier reversing direction on a downhill run. That allowed him to ‘stand’ at an angle, while avoiding collision with the torso. A quick release of his boots from the cleats and he was floating in mid-air. He jackknifed to bring the boot rings into range of his outstretched fingers. A quick gesture released the boots, allowing him to ease his feet free. He then pushed the suit pants off his legs in a maneuver reminiscent of the way women once peeled off their girdles. A few quick reconnections put the entire assembly back together, sans its wearer. Finally, he removed his ship shoes from a pouch and slipped them on.

Turning to the waiting ensign, he said, “Lead on.”

Palmer led him through the corridors of the ship toward the control room, which was amidships rather than in the bow. They passed an open hatch through which people in acceleration couches were doing various things while watching lighted screens. Mark and Ensign Palmer floated down the corridor to where a Marine stood anchored.

“Kurosaki, this is Commander Rykand, the new Exec. Please announce him to the captain.”

The relay of orders wasn’t strictly necessary, but the Navy had its traditions. The Marine on guard keyed his comm unit and announced that Commander Rykand, the new Exec, would like to see the captain. He listened to the reply and then said, “You can go in, Sir.”

The hatch powered open and Mark used handholds to pull himself through. Once again he levered himself into a vertical orientation, snapped off a salute with his right hand while holding himself steady with his left, and said, “Commander Mark Rykand, reporting for duty, sir!”

Captain Borsman was strapped into his desk. He looked up at Mark’s entry and waited for the announcement before responding.

“Welcome aboard, Commander. Take a chair and strap yourself in.”

Mark did as he was told, securing himself to a visitor’s chair bolted to the deck.

“I’ve been looking over your record. You aren’t regular navy, are you?”

“No, sir. I came to the service by a rather circuitous route.”

“Tell me about it, Mister.”

Mark quickly sketched how he had been notified of his sister’s death aboard
Magellan
, had felt they weren’t telling him everything, and set out to find the truth. He recounted how he had made an illegal approach to PoleStar, been chased by security, and in attempting to elude them, happened to look in a port beyond which he’d found a yellow-eyed alien looking back at him.

“After that, I was given the choice of joining the project or spending my days in the lunar prison. I chose to join.”

“Can’t say I approve of a man with such a cavalier attitude toward authority,” Captain Borsman replied. “There will be none of that aboard my ship.”

“No, sir.”

“Continue.”

Mark recounted the first expedition to Broan space and how he had learned Sar-Say’s true identity, and of the utter despair they felt as they fled Klys’kra’t. He spoke of how he had come up with the idea of using Earth’s anonymity as protection while humanity worked to eliminate the Broa as a threat.

“Yes, the Admiral told me that this whole shooting match is pretty much your idea.”

“I made the initial suggestion, Captain. It is far from my idea.”

“Modest, eh?” Borsman asked, regarding him with a stern visage and a gimlet eye. “I’m not sure I like that in an officer, either.”

“Not modest, sir. Just being realistic. I came up with an approach and several thousand other people fleshed it out.”

“So you didn’t attend the Academy?”

“No, sir. I received my commission before we launched the second expedition. I earned it en route.”

One of the things about a year spent in transit, it left plenty of time for study. Both he and Lisa worked hard to absorb all of the online studies required to justify their wearing the uniform of the Space Navy.

“So why have they saddled me with you?”

The question surprised Mark. “This ship has been assigned to the stargate project, sir. Haven’t you received your orders?”

“I have. But why you, Mister?”

“My wife, sir. She will be coming aboard with the scientists. She’s ‘Essential Personnel.’ Official policy is not to break up couples except for ‘extreme need.’”

Borsman nodded. “And if the experiment works, you’ll probably be ordered off my ship so that you can accompany your wife on her next assignment.”

“Probably, Captain, when we reach Earth.”

“If we reach Earth,” Helperin responded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Does the notion bother you, Commander?”

“What, sir?”

“Your secondary status in all of this.”

“No, sir. Lisa is the best Broan translator we have. She is worth a hundred naval officers, possibly more.”

The sound Helperin made was noncommittal. The Captain continued:

“I hope the transient nature of this assignment doesn’t affect the diligence with which you perform your duties.”

“I will do my job the best I know how,” Mark replied, his tone suddenly formal, with a hint of frost in it. “You will have to judge how well I do.”

To his surprise, the captain laughed. “You can be sure of that, Commander. I would have preferred an academy man, but the admiral made it clear that you’ve earned your place.”

He reached across the desk and extended his hand, which Mark grasped. “Welcome aboard. I have a good crew here. I expect you to make them better.”

#

Lisa was lonely. It had been a week since Mark reported aboard his ship and she was tired of sleeping alone. She was also busy. In fact, she couldn’t remember being busier in her whole life, not even the heady period when she had studied Sar-Say round-the-clock.

Technically, her job was to translate the information in the stargate computers. The problem was that there was a significant difference between the trade speech Sar-Say had taught her and technical Broan.

She would be reading along, comprehending what was being said well enough, and then encounter a word, phrase, or entire thought that seemed gibberish. Stymied, she would hunt for other usages of the word/phrase to divine meaning from multiple contexts. Having done so, often imperfectly, she would add that word to the project database and begin all over again.

It was tedious work, and no less boring for the fact that it was a necessary precursor to enabling the physicists to do their jobs. She imagined her current situation analogous to the original work on the Rosetta stone, the stone tablet inscribed in both Greek letters and Egyptian hieroglyphics that provided the key to deciphering the writing of the pharaohs.

Nor were her troubles simply of the Broan-to-Standard variety. Earlier in the week, she spent hours tracking down a particularly vexing Broan term. Even after listing a dozen sentences that used the concept, the meaning was still unclear. Frustrated, she sent a note to the technical team asking if anyone could assist. The note came back in less than a minute. Dr. Phonouvong responded, “The word translates as
hysteresis.”

Intrigued, she called up the definition of “hysteresis,” and two days later, she still had no idea what the word meant. Whatever it was, apparently it was a big problem when forming the wormhole that connected stargates to one another.

At that moment, her office door opened, emitting the high-pitched squeak that seemed all too common for Sutton-produced hinges.

“Got a moment?”

She looked up to see a gaunt, white-haired figure enter.

“Certainly, Dr. Svenson.”

“Donaldson thinks he’s found the mother-lode and we’d like your opinion.”

“Mother-lode?”

“The stored specifications for the gate’s aiming system. If he’s got those, we can begin translating the operating system and get on with writing our own interface. Would you check to see if he’s truly found it this time?”

“Glenn Powers would be better at that, Doctor.”

“Powers is busy with Rod Cranston.”

“What is Dr. Cranston complaining about this time?”

“His model of how stargates work isn’t tracking again. He says that all of the detected gravity wave distortions can be accounted for except those from that star due east of us. No matter what he does, he can’t match the waveform to the known stellar cartography. He has Powers helping him search for an explanation.”

Lisa nodded. From discussions during team meetings, she vaguely understood that gravity waves were affected by the gravitational pull of the stars they encountered as they swept through the universe. By measuring the distortion of the wave front, one could map the gravity fields back to a wave’s point of origin. It was an essential ability if one expected to drive a wormhole across the galaxy and have it exit anywhere near the aim point.

Dr. Cranston’s team was trying to validate the stargate theoretical model by comparing the distortion in the waves detected by Brinks’ array of gravtennas to the local star charts. For nearly a week, Cranston had complained the waves from one particular Broan system didn’t match his predictions. He kept muttering something about a missing star.

“If Galen is busy, I’d be pleased to help you, Doctor Svenson. What reference?”

He gave it to her and she keyed in the data. What popped up on her screen was a display very unlike the simple, if dry, jargon-filled explanation she had been working on.

After a moment’s study, she said, “Some sort of four-dimensional table, possibly star coordinates. This last column seems to be a time coordinate. We can check the rest of the numbers against the planetary database to see if they are known systems.”

“Already being done,” Svenson replied. “What about the interspersed text?”

She scrolled through the first few screens of data, all written in the base-12 numbering system the Broa used, interspersed with their dot-and-curl script.

“Hard to say. The jargon level is high, which makes it technical writing. Broan engineers, it seems, have the same tendency as human engineers in that respect.”

 “How long before you can confirm Dr. Donaldson’s conclusion or invalidate it?”

“Eight hours, if I don’t get interrupted.”

“You won’t. I’ve put out the word that if anyone disturbs you, he loses his privileges on the Big Brain for a week.”

She sighed. “Then I’d best get started.”

#

Chapter Ten

Dos-Val of the Broan Ministry of Science, gazed at the report that scrolled up his workscreen and flapped his ears in irritation. It had been a quarter-cycle since he had been assigned by the Prime Councilor to look into the case of the wild bipeds and their mysteriously exploding stargate in the Etnarii agricultural system. The deeper he delved into the mystery, the more confused he became.

The facts were not in dispute. A shipload of aliens in a Type Seven freighter had cheated a species of triped ocean-dwellers out of value for services rendered. Later, they reappeared on a distant agricultural world. When a Broan naval vessel entered the system, the miscreants fled.

The naval vessel gave chase, but the freighter managed to reach the local stargate ahead of its pursuer. However, as it prepared to jump, it exploded, leaving not one atom of its own substance to mix with those of the vaporized gate.

There was a time in the Race’s history when the masses believed in disembodied intelligences. Those days were but a distant memory. Ancestor reverence was well and good, but belief in ghosts had died ages past. Still, how else to explain the disappearance of a shipload of garishly pigmented, hairless bipeds?

Having wrung all of the information he could from Pas-Tek’s report and having assured himself the ship commander omitted nothing, Dos-Val approached the problem from a new direction.

He turned to the data the Ruling Council retrieved from the two worlds the bipeds were known to have visited. Some were visual records of their interactions with the locals. More importantly, he reviewed data on the bipeds’ physiology obtained when they underwent examination prior to entry into the local biosphere.

Civilization contained more than 12
5
races, with a population on the order of 12
16
individuals. Each of those beings carried within them an indelible record of the planet on which their species evolved. The most useful indicator was a species’ optical receptors. By determining the wavelengths to which an individual’s eyes were most sensitive, the spectrum of his home star could be extrapolated.