Oscar closed his eyes and let out a long dispirited breath. ‘Okay. It is your choice, and I will support it. But can we at least be cautious about it?’
Wilson smiled at him. ‘Believe me, we are going to be so cautious you’ll think I’ve turned dangerously paranoid.’
*
They set out the rules of contact at the next daily meeting of the department heads, drawing on the Commonwealth protocols for alien contact, and adapting them to their own unique situation.
‘It is my intention to discover what we can about the Dyson aliens without ourselves being observed,’ Wilson said. ‘Now we’ve seen how volatile they are, I am not prepared to take the Second Chance into orbit around any planet or moon. God alone knows what weapon systems they have in orbit around their large population centres.’
‘The initial investigation will be a contact team deployment to a deserted artefact, something big, an abandoned habitat or wrecked spaceship,’ Oscar said. ‘Anything that will show us how they live, give us an indication of their physical shape, their culture. If we get lucky there might be some electronic memory units we can access. Whatever we choose, it will be a minimum of five million kilometres from any settlement or ship. We can manage a five-gee acceleration in an emergency combat situation, which is significantly lower than most of the ships we’ve seen flying round out there; so our primary tactical advantage is our ftl drive. I’d like to avoid any sort of chase altogether, therefore the whole procedure will be conducted on a minimum emission basis.’
‘Before we begin this investigation, I’d like some idea of their response if we’re exposed to them,’ Wilson said. He glanced round the table until he found Emmanuelle Verbeke, their alien culture officer. ‘Can you give us any insight on their society, yet?’
‘Very little other than the obvious,’ she said. ‘What we’ve seen matches our standard simulations for a non-ftl technological species. They’ve followed a logical progressive route of development across their star system. Given the extent and obvious success of their colonization I am slightly puzzled by the fight we saw. I would have expected more social stability. But as we really know nothing about their culture it would be inappropriate to speculate too much on the conflict at this point.’
‘We’ve made no progress on decrypting any of their signals,’ Anna said. ‘That’s worrying. I don’t expect the RI algorithms to begin immediate translations, but there were some areas I expected progress with.’
‘Such as?’ Oscar asked.
‘Video or holographic signals for a start. There are basic formatting rules which data of that nature has to follow, even if they see in ultraviolet or air-sonar, there will be display template patterns that can be determined. So far we simply haven’t found any. Their transmissions seem to be almost completely random, and they’re all analogue signals, which is even stranger. Of course it doesn’t help that we’re receiving so many of them. Overlap and interference is considerable. I would at least have hoped to play you an example of their language by now, but I can’t even do that.’
‘It is unusual that we don’t even know what they look like,’ Emmanuelle said. ‘If the situation were reversed, and the Dyson aliens were lurking close to a Commonwealth world, they would soon be able to gain an understanding of us from what we broadcast.’
‘We are recording it all,’ Anna said. ‘If we eventually make contact, and the Dyson aliens want to talk to us, then we’ll have a full understanding of whatever communicative path-ways they employ. After that we can start translating the signals we’re recording now. It’ll be helpful in case they do become inhibited when they find out we’re here, and start restricting their output; what we’re receiving at the moment could be quite valuable later on.’
‘You mean we’re catching them off guard?’ Wilson asked.
‘Essentially, yes.’
‘Okay, I don’t have any problem with that.’
‘If they find us creeping round out here, are they likely to attack?’ Oscar asked.
‘If it was me, I’d be curious,’ Emmanuelle said. ‘But that’s a personal thing. It’s also a human thing. Given our current knowledge base, there really is no way of knowing.’
‘Then we will conduct the investigation on a worst-case basis,’ Wilson said. ‘The contact team will be armed and have fire authority if threatened. The Second Chance will operate on combat alert as soon as we cross the old barrier threshold.’
For the first time since the barrier fell, Oscar actually looked happy.
‘Anna, did you find anything suitable for us to start with?’ Wilson asked.
‘Yes, actually. There are a lot of spaceship wrecks floating round out there.’ She gave Oscar an uncomfortable look. ‘It would appear the Dyson aliens do fight a lot among themselves. I think we do genuinely need to be cautious.’
‘We will be,’ Wilson said, giving her a warning stare. ‘Have you got a suitable starting point for us?’
‘I think so, yes.’
*
Nobody actually said anything, but the bridge crew was very conscious of passing inside the line where the barrier had been. Was it going to spring back into existence, trapping them?
The hysradar scanned behind them, scouring space and hyperspace. There was no change to the quantum signature of spacetime. Nothing altered in or around the Dark Fortress.
They waited just inside the barrier line for over an hour before Wilson finally said: ‘Okay, Tu Lee, take us over to the rock.’
‘Aye, sir.’
*
McCain Gilbert waited in the contact team’s operational office, not too far away from the bridge. By contrast, this compartment only had a couple of consoles, but a lot more display screens. Three long tables were seating most of his forty-strong team members, who were regarding the blank screens with a controlled patience. The absence of any current sensor data couldn’t damp the sense of excitement vibrating round the room. It was present in the short terse comments shot between friends, the way shift rotas had been forgotten so everyone could cram in, drink packets on the tables, lack of the usual horseplay. The contact team were finally coming into their own.
So far, they had been the most underused department on board, simply looking over everyone else’s shoulder as vast quantities of physics data flowed back into the starship. Now, that tolerance and waiting was being rewarded.
Oscar came in just as the Second Chance emerged from its wormhole. Mac waved him into the vacant chair next to his own, and together they watched the wormhole’s blue light fade off the screens allowing the cameras to focus on the chunk of rock they were rendezvoused with. Anna, who found it and therefore had the right, had named it the Watchtower. A long slice of rock, with a station of some kind at one end. Given its tower-like shape, and its position – one and a half AUs beyond the outer gas-giant orbit – she felt it analogous to some ancient imperial outpost, a long-forgotten garrison fort, watching across the desolate barbarian territories for anything which could threaten civilization.
‘Looks like we were right about it being inactive,’ Oscar said. ‘Thankfully.’
Long-range passive scans had shown no infrared emission. There was no neutrino activity, or electromagnetic broadcasts. As the rock had a fast rotation, once every twenty-six minutes, they had concluded it was now abandoned, most probably a victim of some ancient battle.
As he watched the images appear, backed up by the slow trickle of data, Mac was convinced they were right. The rock was fashioned like a sharp blade, over a kilometre and a half long, but never more than a couple of hundred metres wide. Every side was sheer, with razor edges. So obviously a splinter that had snapped off cleanly from whatever asteroid had been nuked into oblivion.
‘That must have been one brute of an explosion,’ Mac said idly. ‘We’ve never seen them build anything on a small asteroid.’
The station was rooted in the surface around the wider end of the fragment. Cubes and pyramids and mushrooms of polytitanium composite m
ade up the bulk of it, their once-strong hulls now as brittle as a biscuit from centuries of vacuum exposure. Crumbling fissures exposed reinforcement ribs below, while the colour had been mottled down to a grubby lead-grey by uncountable micro-meteorite punctures and constant molecular ablation. Spiky fungal structures moulded from toughened plastics and metaloceramics lurked between the larger sections. They, too, were fraying around the edges, leaving long delicate strands poking out from ragged cavities.
‘At least you won’t have any trouble gaining access,’ Oscar told him. ‘There are more holes than walls.’
‘Yeah, on the upper sections. Those lower portions look more intact. Ah, here we go, the deep scan’s coming in.’
They leaned forward in unison, peering at the small hologram portal which was now showing a three-dimensional map of the station’s internal layout.
‘That looks like a surrealist’s maze,’ Oscar said. ‘It’s got to be some kind of industrial refinery. Those are all pipes, aren’t they?’
‘Or corridors, or warren tunnels. Remember the jarrofly nests we found on Tandil? We thought they were just beautiful coral outcrops until the swarm came out.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ Oscar gave his friend a wide smile. ‘Only one way to be sure.’
‘Right. Send us in to do the dirty work. Never fails.’
‘Damn right. I’ll just lounge around in here, maybe have me one of those gourmet meals from the canteen, then access a hot TSI drama. But you be sure to enjoy yourself in those bollock-squeezer suits of yours while you’re over there.’
‘Once I set foot on that lump of rock, make first contact with the Dysons, it’ll be my name that our race remembers, not yours.’
‘Tut tut: vanity, the most tragic sin of all. Hey, Mr Legend, what are your first words going to be when you set that photogenic foot down?’
Mac struck a sincerely thoughtful pose. ‘I thought some-thing like: Fuck me, now I remember why you shouldn’t eat curry before you put on a space suit.’
‘Cool. Historic, even. I like that.’
Mac grinned, then stood up. ‘Okay everybody, eyes and ears to the front, please. Our captain is going to hold the Second Chance a hundred kilometres off the Watchtower as a safety precaution. That means we’ll be using the shuttles to get ourselves over there. Preliminary scouting party will be myself and team C. The main objective on the first flight is to ascertain occupancy levels. If that is confirmed as zero, we’ll conduct an initial survey. Following that, I want to operate a rotating three-team shift pattern to map out the Watchtower’s contents. As you can see, there’s a lot of pipes and tunnels and shit to get through. We’re going archaeological on this one, which I know is a little different to the kind of exploration most of you are used to. What we need is clues as to what these critters look like, what they eat, what they drink, who they voted for, if their team won the Cup, all that crap. So what you have to track down are artefacts that will open any sort of window into their culture for us. Teams B and F, I want you to concentrate on their electronics, or optronics, or difference engines, or whatever the hell they used. If there are any data fragments left in any system over there, I want them downloaded and copied. Got all that?’
A rumble of happy agreement went round the room.
‘Fine, team C with me now, we’re suiting up. Shuttle departs in thirty minutes. Now while we’re scratching round over there, Oscar here is assuming his usual job of exploration supervisor, which means he’ll be watching our asses from his nice comfortable office chair. I’m sure you remember the drill, all major decisions are his – I don’t want any rogue calls on this one, no just going round the next corner because it looks interesting. If there’s any doubt about something, clear it with Oscar first. Team A, you’re our direct observation monitors on the first flight. B, D, E, if we okay the site, you’re on next. I suggest you get some rest accordingly.’
He turned to leave. Oscar caught his arm.
‘I know everyone thinks I’m obsessing over the barrier coming down,’ Oscar said. ‘But take care over there.’
‘Don’t worry. Coward is my middle name.’
*
It wasn’t until a full twenty-four hours after Mac had landed on the Watchtower that Dudley Bose finally got his chance to regain some of the limelight. He’d thought that as a member of contact team A he would be among the first humans to meet the Dysons. That hadn’t happened, of course, not with McCain Gilbert pre-empting him.
Dudley had considered his pre-departure appointment to the starship’s contact team as a smooth move. After all, Wilson and his senior officers couldn’t deny he was the Commonwealth’s expert on the Dyson Pair, from an astrophysics angle at any rate. And with his first-life engineering degree expanding his knowledge base on a practical level, he was an obvious choice for the contact team as well as the science staff.
So far on the voyage his knowledge had been left sadly unapplied. He understood very little about the quantum state of the barrier – managing the university’s astronomy department single-handed had left very little time for him to keep up-to-date on the theoretical front of physics. And although the insides of the Dark Fortress remained visually spectacular, he was unable to offer any insight into the nature of that gargantuan mechanism.
While the Second Chance was examining the Dark Fortress, most of his time had been spent in his cabin by himself, recording commentaries. His contract with Gralmond Web-News called for informed opinions and interpretation of the information which the starship gathered. A pop science pundit, basically. So he would watch the day’s results come in, and provide an explanation which was dumbed down to the lowest level possible. His time as a lecturer, reducing complex facts to a series of easily digestible chunks, followed by his meteoric exposure to the media and their demands for simplified sound-bite presentation, made him perfectly qualified for the job.
But the Watchtower had finally presented him with the opportunity to enhance his profile. Physically placing him on the ultimate human frontier would make it his flight. He, Dudley Bose, was due to become the human interface with the mystery of the Dyson Pair.
Then McCain Gilbert went and announced the team schedule, and Dudley had to wait for yet another day. Until it became his turn he was once again reduced to a second-hand role, watching through the shuttle’s camera as McCain Gilbert jetted himself over to the large alien structures on the Watchtower, and spouting banalities like: ‘This is it. Any moment now. Yes! Contact. How much this differs from our usual first encounter with an alien environment. CSI contact personnel normally walk through a wormhole and place their foot firmly on the ground. Here, you can see my friend Mac actually having to cling on to the edge of a hole with his hand. Now, wait, he’s shining his lights through into the structure. You’re seeing the first glimpse of a whole new alien universe.’
In truth, Mac’s careful drift through the structure was tedium itself. It was quite obvious the station had been deserted for a long time. The polytitanium hull was still mildly radioactive, its decay rate allowing an accurate dating on the explosion of two hundred and eleven years. ‘So there can be nothing left alive in there. Or if there is, it’s a life form very different from anything we know.’
The compartments weren’t particularly strange. Engineering principles were reasonably universal. The hull material was made up from sandwiched layers; the pressure wall, thermal insulation, structural reinforcement, cable ducts. First indications were that the cube Mac entered was a habitation section. Several internal walls had rectangular hatchways. ‘They are two metres across, larger than human ones, which indicate the Dysons might be bigger than us.’ In case you couldn’t work that out for yourselves. There were times Dudley hated himself for what he had to do.
Almost every compartment had an opening into the broad tunnel-like corridors that curved and twisted through the interior – none of those had hatches. Mac’s suit lights found octagonal mounting blocks in the compartments, jutting out of the walls at the ap
ex of structural ribs. At one time they’d held large units of machinery. Now, there were just empty brackets and load pins. ‘It’s been stripped clean. Whoever won the battle must have taken their booty with them.’
Mac’s whole EVA was a record of empty chambers and long dark tunnels. The Watchtower had a sense of rejection about it rather than abandonment. Cold, dark, feebly radioactive, it was simply of no consequence any more; both purpose and meaning had ceased when the lethal radiation pierced every corner.
It was an impression that was now strengthening in Dud-ley’s mind as he watched the horn of rock expanding across the starfield. Everything out here was grey, leaving very little difference between the rock and the alien station perched on it. He could just make out the other shuttle hovering above the cube, a silver and gold speck with green and scarlet navigation strobes flashing incessantly. Their light shimmered across the scuff marks on the perspex of the little port he was pressed against.
‘Helmet.’
‘Huh?’ Dudley turned round to see Emmanuelle Verbeke on the other side of the aisle. She was putting her own helmet on.
‘Time to put your helmet on,’ she said.
‘Right. Sure.’ He gave her a thank-you smile, and retrieved his helmet from the fuseto patch on the side of the chair. He had got on quite well with Emmanuelle since leaving Anshun. Thankfully, since they were partnered up together in team A. Not that he got to socialize with her much outside duty shifts and training sessions. He was still somewhat conscious about his physical shape. Everyone else on board had been through a full rejuvenation, at most ten years ago. He was the starship’s official geriatric. Any early hope that would give him an air of distinction had quickly faded.
The shuttle’s small thrusters were firing almost continually as it manoeuvred in for rendezvous, sounding as if someone with a hammer was knocking on the fuselage. Dudley accommodated the slight swaying motion it set up as he lowered the tough transparent bubble over his head. The lip-like seals gripped tight, and he fastened the secondary mechanical seal. His e-butler immediately ran final integration checks, confirming the suit was fully functional.