McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (26 page)

“You’re pregnant!”

“What?” she asked, laughing. “After being away from my husband for seven months, it would be obvious if I were. Or are you accusing me of something?”

“Then what is it? Why are you really here?”

“I’m following the advice of a mutual friend.”

“What friend?”

“Susan Ahrendt.”

This time it was Lisa who watched her husband’s face carefully. A mix of emotions flashed across his features too quickly to catalog and he seemed at a loss for words.

“Is that a guilty look I see, my love?”

“Guilty of what?” he asked.

“According to Susan, nothing happened. Would you care to amend that claim?”

“Nothing did happen,” he said gruffly.

She nodded. Whatever minor doubt she might have had, she pushed deep into her subconscious. In truth, she believed both of them. For one thing, Mark wasn’t that good a liar. For another, believing them was important to her, possibly even more important than the truth.

“Say, sailor,” she asked. “Do you know where we can find a strong tree on this godforsaken rock?”

“If we can’t, I’ll
build
one!”

#

Chapter Twenty-Six

The star was a small, red coal glowing wanly against the blackness of space. It was too big to be classified a red dwarf, but not really up to Sol’s heft, nor that of most other life-supporting stellar furnaces. For stars, size is not necessarily a good thing. The big blue bruisers that illuminate the surrounding parsecs are wastrels. They burn so brightly that they use up their available fuel within a few million years. When the hydrogen in their core is exhausted, massive stars explode as supernovas.

As catastrophic as supernova explosions are, they are good for the galaxy, for they enrich the interstellar gas and dust with pre-cooked star stuff. Without this enrichment, there would be none of the atoms (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, or anything heavier than iron) with which to build living molecules and rocky planets.

The smallish red star was one of the oldest of the second generation stars in the galaxy. Its birth coincided with the end-of-life spasms of many of the galaxy’s original nuclear pressure cookers. Coming into existence so early in the evolution of the galaxy had left it metal poor, at least in comparison with the third generation stars like Sol. It was not so starved, however, that life never had a chance. All of the necessary ingredients for complex carbon chemistry existed in the quiet seas of the second of its six daughter orbs. And where life has a chance, life finds a way.

In fact, in the ten billion years since the purple second planet cooled, life had formed in its oceans on three separate occasions… formed, flourished, and then died, twice, in cosmic-scale accidents. The first such extinction involved a collision with a wayward asteroid; the second, a gamma ray burst from a distant, dying Wolf-Rayet sun.

However, life is persistent. Less than a billion years after the planet was irradiated clean of all living things, like the proverbial monkeys at the computer terminal, the primordial ooze once again belched forth living molecules.

And not merely just living. The third incarnation, in due time, produced a species of intelligent beings. They resembled frogs as much as any terrestrial form, but they didn’t resemble them very closely.

 Xxantonil was one such being. He was a space miner, one who prospected the floating mountains of the innermost of two asteroid belts, searching for the iron, silver, nickel, copper and gold with which his home world was so poorly blessed. The lack of metals had retarded his species’ technological progress for hundreds of thousands of years. However, with no other species other than the furry monsters with which to compare, he was unaware that this was unusual.

Xxantonil, the Krstanter, sat in his tiny bubble ship and contemplated how long it would take to reach the two-zor-diameter rock that was his next target. He was using his instruments to judge the range… it being too distant for a beam to yet reach… when his proximity alarm began to sound.

Startled out of the contemplative mood in which he usually whiled away the time on these long jaunts between rocks, he looked at his instruments. Something was outboard of his ship and coming in fast. Whatever it was, it wasn’t an asteroid. It seemed to be radiating across the communications band. It was radiating the furry monster distress signal!

Xxantonil had no use for furry monsters, or indeed, anything other than his desire to perform his function and obtain metals for his hive. Still, there had been enough object lessons over the centuries, lessons that taught his kind to place furry monster business in front of their own.

So, observing the velocity vector of the incoming distress signal, and plotting his own vector, he found that he had sufficient velocity change in his tanks to make rendezvous. After that, he would have to call for a tow.

Xxantonil calculated a minimum energy rendezvous, uncaged his drive coils, oriented them at right angles to his course, and then energized them until they emitted a violet glow.

He then sat back to contemplate what it was he was en route to close with and grapple.

#

“He’s taken the bait,” Susan Ahrendt said, watching the screen that showed the vicinity of Trojan Horse One as it slipped through the inner system of the small red star, warbling for help at maximum gain. Someone, they knew, would come looking, if for no other reason than the fact that it was a Broan distress signal.

She was gratified that someone had done so relatively quickly and was in good position for rendezvous. Of course, that is why they sent it through the larger of the two asteroid belts. Sensors told them that there were ships there, miners eking out an existence searching for metals that were vastly more valuable here than on Earth.

“How long?” Dr. Smithers asked, tension evident in his voice.

“Six to eight hours if he holds his current acceleration.”

“Why so damned long?”

“He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry,” Susan replied. “The database says those tubs of theirs can make twice his acceleration. I say the fact that he isn’t using his full capability bodes well for us. What say you, Sammy?”

“Agreed,” Samson Oge replied. “He is duty bound to investigate, but at his own pace. Perhaps he is low on fuel and can’t afford to go any faster. Or maybe he doesn’t want to bankrupt himself while on a mission for the Masters.”

The species in this system had been dubbed the
Korastandter
by the Broa, which was possibly a corruption of what they called themselves. Or, it might just be a made-up sequence of syllables.

The Korastandter were vaguely amphibian looking, with large six-centimeter eyes perched atop a triangular head. Coming from a system with a red star, they saw in longer wavelengths than humans or Broa. Supposedly, they had color vision, but many of their colors were in the infrared.

Human beings, Susan knew, saw in color because it equipped them to better hunt their native prey… the elusive, ripe banana. She wondered what the equivalent reason for the Korastandter color sense was. What exactly did a ripe banana look like at 10,000 angstroms?

The Korastandter had popped out of their search programs primarily because of the color of their star. Their planet was small and dim by Broan standards and they thus had relatively little to offer the pseudo-simians. Mostly the Broa had taken over their system because the inhabitants were technologically advanced. Like Earth in past centuries, they had carelessly begun broadcasting electromagnetic waves to the heavens, unaware of whom or what the signals might alert.

The Broa arrived as they always did, in a fleet of overwhelming power. They made their usual demands. The locals had no desire to bend to their will, but seeing they lacked other options, submitted with more grace than humans would have.

However, the alien psychologists pointed out that placidity did not equate to cowardice. It was the Korastandter way of looking at things. Would humanity become enraged if giant tree sloths or barnacles suddenly announced that, henceforth, they would rule the Earth? How many trillion ants had lived, worked, and died without ever realizing the human race existed?

The psychologists thought the Korastandter looked upon the Broa in much the same way. They were a nuisance, but little else.

The Korastandter lacked the autocratic culture favored by Broa and humans. They cared little for status, or position, or lording it over one’s neighbors. They were communal, more like bees in their hives than humans in their cities.

If they cooperated with the Broa because they had no choice, the alien psychologists at Brinks Base wondered what they would do if they were given one.

#

Xxantonil squatted at his control station and used his instruments to take a first look at his quarry. It seemed to be sparkly and shaped like a stone polished by running water.

The object was not under power. The orbit it rode was purely an artifact of gravity. Nor was it tumbling, which bespoke an active control system of some sort. Save for a dark spot on one quadrant of its ovoid shape, the object seemed unmarked.

Xxantonil powered up his enumerator. A longish search did not bring up any ship with the same shape or size. It seemed to be too diminutive to be a long-range craft. Perhaps it was a ship’s auxiliary, a life pod even.

As he pulled abreast, Xxantonil gave the object a careful inspection. The dark splotch turned out to be a hole where the hull had been melted away and a tangle of strands streamed forth. There was a rectangular-shaped mark on the hull that might be a hatch.

He carefully maneuvered until the derelict lay just beyond the edge of his drive field. He used his search lamp to look it over. The bright red beam showed considerable scrollwork on the outer surface. What was the purpose? It never occurred to him to think the lines were pure decoration. The concept was one his species did not possess.

When the little ship did not respond to his light, he abandoned his station and moved to where he stored his air suit. When he was encased in the trusty covering, he pumped the atmosphere back into holding tanks and opened his own hatch. His maneuvering unit quickly had him within reach of the alien craft. He did not do so. Instead, he used an analyzer beam to reflect off the hull and read the composition.

Iron!
By the Spirits Below, the entire hull seemed to be composed of iron.

Xxantonil felt both of his body’s circulation organs increase their output as he envisioned the wealth this little ship represented for his hive. How could he possibly be this far out on the good end of the probability curve?

Carefully, he maneuvered to the rectangular section and closely studied the mechanism. Two plates were set flush in the hull, with two transparencies beside them. One transparency was red and unlit. The other was black, even though his instruments said that it was emitting photons in the ultra-orange.

The furry monsters saw in that part of the spectrum, he knew. It was a biological response to their hellish star. He wondered if the black transparency might not be a light of some kind. Perhaps it was an indicator that showed the state of the mechanism.

As for the flat plates themselves, there was but one way to discover their function. He reached out and touched one with his gloved grasping member. Nothing happened. Pausing for a moment, he reached out and touched the second flat spot.

This time, he got a response.

No sooner did his glove touch the control, than the red light illuminated and his instruments told him that the black transparency ceased radiating. The large rectangle disappeared silently into the hull. In front of him was an opening very like an egress chamber, and beyond, the interior of the ship.

Noting that the ship interior was in vacuum, he took a piton from his belt and wedged it into the track into which the hatch had vanished. If it were properly designed, the mechanism would have sensors to prevent it from closing on him. One thing Xxantonil had no desire for was to be halfway through the hatch when it closed and cut him in two.

He pulled himself flippers first through the opening without incident and then braced in the short passage to inspect his prize.

The interior was cramped and the control station reminded him of something the furry monsters would use. Still, he didn’t think it was one of theirs. The size seemed too small.

A third species, then? He’d heard stories that there were many such out among the stars. He wasn’t sure he believed the stories. Or rather, he wasn’t sure he had believed them up until this moment.

Gazing around, he noted a latticework box attached to what would have been the aft bulkhead in his own ship. Inside lay a creature, obviously dead. It was so unlike the creatures of his own planet that his oculars had difficulty perceiving its true form.

Not that he paid it much attention. For his instruments told him that the interior of the ship, save for some organic surface coverings, was constructed of pure iron. His excitement increased as he attempted to calculate the value of the little ovoid.

Squeezing into the small control area, he noted various thin cylinders protruded from a flat panel of furry monster instruments.

Reaching out, he tried one of the studs.

The flat surface in front of him came alight. It displayed a diagram of some sort, but one which was difficult for him to perceive with half the symbolism displayed at wavelengths he could not see. The portions he could see consisted of many small circles, two of which were connected with a curved, interrupted line of glowing red. He wondered what it meant. Idly, he reached out and brushed a glove over one of the circles.

The solid circle expanded, as though he were in a ship falling toward it.

The diagram was in an alien symbolism and used an information metaphor that he had never seen, but the meaning was clear. It was a geometric representation of a star and its planets. And not just any star.

The symbols corresponded to the six planets that circled Xxantonil’s sun. He was looking at an image from out of an astronomy training module.