Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter Forty-Five

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

Up close the thing just gets more mysterious. And it knows that they’re there.

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Chapter Forty-Five – The Line

“All stop, Specialist Blunt,” said Steel when they came to rest a hundred kilometers from the thing. They could see it quite well, even at that distance, because of its size. Its length was the same as their distance from it. A hundred kilometers. It was as if they were to stand back five meters from their own vessel, the Emissary, and look at it.

They couldn’t make out any surface details, partly because of the distance and partly because of the lumps of rubble attached to it. They could see now that it wasn’t completely covered by the debris, which was artfully placed to break up its outline. With the telescope they could see a little better. Well enough to see that there were some things that seemed to be attached to its top. Or, what they were calling its top. They had instinctively begun thinking of the long side with the line rising out of it as the top. The things attached there were just ahead of where the line met the body. They had also decided that the thing had a front and back, with the line leaning back.

“Specialist Wayfarer,” said Steel, “please give us a radar sweep of the thing. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, turning on the radar.

“But sir,” said Blunt, “do you think that’s wise? What if the radar wakes it up, or something?”

Steel just looked at him and said, “Don’t you think it might have noticed us by now if it was going to?” To Wayfarer he said, “Go ahead.”

No sooner had she aimed the radar and transmitted a pulse, than they received a pulse in reply, the same duration and the same frequency.

“I told you so!” said Blunt, his hands taking the flight controls.

“Stand easy, Blunt,” said Steel. “Wayfarer, send another pulse.”

She did, with the same result.

“We should get out of here!” said Blunt.

“Relax,” said Steel. And to Wayfarer, “Send a longer pulse.”

She did and the reply was just as long.

Blunt just threw up his hands, but Steel said, “Change the frequency by ten gigahertz and send again.”

The reply exactly mimicked them.

Steel said, “Turn the radar off.” That done, he said, “Okay everyone, opinions.”

Blunt blurted, “They know we’re here. We should go now before they decide to do something about it.”

“Thank you, Blunt,” said Steel. “Anyone else? Wayfarer?”

“It strikes me as an automated system,” she said. “It’s just copying us.”

“I agree,” said Steel. “But why? Tallgrass?”

“I don’t know,” said Tallgrass. “It’s almost as if it’s acknowledging us. Just letting us know that it knows we’re here.”

“Again,” said Steel, “agreed. But why?”

Tallgrass said, “Maybe it’s a kind of welcome. It might be telling us that we’re welcome and that we’re safe.”

“Could be,” said Steel. “After all, it could probably have replied much more forcefully, couldn’t it?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Blunt, let’s circumnavigate this thing. Go to the left and take us around the back of it first.”

Blunt very reluctantly said, “Yes, sir,” and put them in motion.

“What’s that?” They were just rounding what they thought of as the stern of it, and Steel was pointing at something that looked different from the rest of the hull.

Wayfarer focused the telescope on the area and they could see a small spherical object apparently affixed to the hull. “It looks odd,” she said. “It’s completely different from everything else.” She observed quietly for a minute, then said, “I think it’s transparent. Like glass.”

“A little glass ball?” said Steel.

“It’s not that little,” she said. “It’s diameter is about two hundred meters.”

“Right,” he said. “I keep forgetting the scale of this thing.”

He looked up at the looming bulk of the main object, and tried to pick out the line that extended away from it. He couldn’t see the line any more, and realized that he hadn’t seen it for a while. Not since they began their circumnavigation. He scanned the whole area just ahead of the midpoint, but couldn’t see anything but stars. He shrugged and looked back at the glass ball, wondering why this thing would have such an anomalous thing attached to it. This thing. They couldn’t keep calling it that. “You know,” he said, “we should come up with a name for it.”

“I’ve got one,” said Blunt. “Nemesis.” He spoke the name with an ominous voice.

“Thank you, Blunt,” said Steel. “Anyone else?”

Wayfarer was studying her instruments intently, and that left Tallgrass. “I’ve been trying to think of what to call it,” he said, “but I haven’t come up with anything.”

“Neither have I,” said Steel. “Nothing suitable, anyway.”

“So, Nemesis it is, then,” said Blunt.

“No, Blunt,” said Steel. “We need more than one to choose from.”

Blunt didn’t look happy and Steel was waiting for him to say something when Wayfarer spoke.

“It’s not glass,” she said. “It’s ice.”

“Ice?” said Steel.

“Yes,” said Wayfarer. “The ball. It’s ice, not glass.”

“Someone made a two hundred meter ball out of ice?”

“Apparently. I was trying to get a good look inside – it’s hollow, by the way …”

“I thought it might be,” said Steel.

“Yes,” said Wayfarer. “Anyway, looking through the shell I noticed the refractive index was wrong for glass, and I checked, and it’s ice.”

“I see,” said Steel. “So, looking inside, did you find anything interesting in this big hollow ball of ice?”

“It’s got some structure inside, mostly at one end, but most of it is just open space with what looks like some fabric forming kind of walls.” She put her best image on their screens. “Here, have a look.”

They looked, and Tallgrass said, “That looks purpose-built, to me. I mean, it doesn’t look strictly utilitarian.”

They all agreed, Blunt grudgingly, and Steel said, “Does it look to anyone else as if someone might have lived there?”

“Yes,” said Wayfarer. “I think … people of some kind lived or worked there. But there’s no sign of habitation now.”

“Right,” said Steel. “So we have this enormous object that was obviously constructed by someone, and it has an incredibly long line leading away from it, and a little, well, relatively little hollow ball of ice attached to one end. Oh, and it mimics our radar signals.” He stared at the ball, then said, “Okay, Blunt, continue the circumnavigation. Wayfarer, report to Mission Control. Tell them everything. Tallgrass, you’re off shift. Get some sleep. I’ll be in my alcove.” He stepped to his curtain. “Wayfarer,” he said, “see if you can find that line again.”

They were around the corner and partway up the other side when Wayfarer noticed it. She wasn’t able to find the line again, but while she was looking she noticed that the stars were wrong. In the area right above the big object, where the line originated before, the stars were wrong. She checked and re-checked, and she was right. The stars she was seeing there were actually a reflection of the stars in the opposite direction. She made a series of observations and calculations, then she started to tell Blunt what she found. She changed her mind when she realized that he would probably just use it as another excuse to go home. Instead, she called out, “Supervisor Steel. Come out here. You should see this.”

He came out looking a little blurry, as if she had awakened him. When she told him, he had to think about it, then he said, “Light sail. It’s a three thousand kilometer light sail.” He was practically whispering.

“Actually, sir,” said Wayfarer, “it’s five thousand. It’s a five thousand kilometer light sail.”

Tallgrass came out of his alcove not looking at all blurry. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, floating over to them. “What’s happening? What’s this about a light sail?”

Steel nodded at Wayfarer, who said, “That long line we saw angling away? It turns out it’s the edge of a big light sail. And I mean big. It’s five thousand kilometers in diameter.”

“Five thousand? But that’s …” Tallgrass paused to think, then said, “I guess it would have to be big to push this.” He tossed his chin in the direction of the big thing. His eyes widened. “Can you imagine the size of the laser array you’d need for something this big?”

Wayfarer nodded and Steel said, “Yes. You’d want it to be the same diameter, or almost, since collimated light doesn’t spread much.”

“You know what this means,” said Tallgrass. “This proves that it came from interstellar space. You wouldn’t make something like this to get around in a small area like a solar system.”

Steel laughed. “Small,” he said. Everyone laughed with him. Here they were barely a million kilometers from home, nowhere near the next planet, much less the further reaches of their solar system, and they were able to think of it as small. He sobered and said, “So, now we know it came from another star. Now we have to find out what it’s doing here.”

Blunt took a breath to speak, then closed his mouth. He knew it was pointless. They would just ignore him anyway.

“Specialist Blunt,” said Steel. “Please alter course to bring us closer. I want to see those objects on top, in front of the sail.”

“Yes, sir,” said Blunt, suppressing a shudder.

It would be an hour on their new course before they would get close. They’d been hanging back a hundred kilometers during the circumnavigation, and their new destination was another fifty kilometers forward. There was nothing to do but wait, and speculate.

After Wayfarer advised Mission Control of their latest discovery, and their new plan, she said, “So, do you think this was made by the people who destroyed our civilization thousands of years ago?”

Steel was quiet, so Tallgrass spoke. “Assuming that the legends are true …”

“What else could it be?” blurted Blunt, looking over his shoulder from his flight panel.

“Right. So let’s assume it’s true. Okay?” said Tallgrass. “Okay. Then it would stand to reason that this thing was involved somehow, wouldn’t it?”

Steel and Wayfarer agreed, and Blunt loudly said, “Of course it would. And if we keep fooling around here, it’s going to wake up and …”

“Emissary, this is Mission Control, over,” crackled the radio, making them all jump.

Wayfarer recovered and replied, “Mission Control, this is Emissary, go ahead.”

After six seconds they heard, “Emissary, Mission Control, be advised that the Sunward vessel has been detected and is estimated to reach your position in just under one day, over.”

“Roger that, Mission Control,” said Wayfarer. She got the details, including the fact that the Sunward vessel wasn’t talking to them, and signed off. “Well,” she said, “I guess that gives us a kind of deadline, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does,” said Steel, “and the first order of business is to complete this circumnavigation. And that starts with finding out what those things are up there ahead of the sail.”

They didn’t talk much for the next half hour. Each time someone tried to start a conversation, it faltered and petered out. They were above the top of the big starship, flying close enough to get under the sail, which came down to within one kilometer. They could make out details of the hull, which looked sort of unfinished. It was as if it was put together however it would go, with no thought to an overall design.

The objects on top – there were twenty-eight of them – looked more finished. There were fourteen larger ones at a hundred meters long, and fourteen smaller ones at thirty meters. They all mimicked the dimensions of the main vessel – one third as wide as they were long, and one fifth as high. They looked complete. They looked as if they contained … something. Power, maybe. Potential, for sure. They glittered in sunlight, which illuminated them in hard contrast.

They looked like an auxiliary craft of some sort. “Lifeboats maybe?” ventured Tallgrass.

“Maybe,” said Steel.

Blunt said, “Are those weapons ports?”

No one could say for sure, but they looked as if they might be.

They flew on up to what they thought of as the bow, then around and back to where they began, just ahead of midships. They were only standing off one kilometer now, and this time the big vessel really did fill half of their sky.

“Try the radar again, Wayfarer,” said Steel. “See if you can penetrate the hull.”

As soon as she did that, her radar screen lit up. A small section of the hull was outlined, and animated arrowheads flowed toward it.

After a stunned silence, Tallgrass whispered, “I think it’s inviting us to come closer.”