Hello world, p.48
Hello World, page 48
part #12 of First Contact Series
Masters just grins and engages the thrusters.
Light amplifiers built into the heads-up display allow them to see the moon as they swing around the planet and into the sunlight. As the fractured moon sits almost a hundred thousand kilometers away from the planet, they have to wait for their elongated orbit to bring them in sync with this strange seemingly artificial satellite. For the next hour, there’s nothing to do beyond stare in awe at the vast planet and review what scant data they have.
Cyclonic storms swirl around the equator of the ice giant, kicking bluish white clouds into the stratosphere where they merge with the black bands at higher latitudes. To Masters, it’s like watching someone stir a small dollop of cream into black coffee.
The silence is unnerving. Masters puts on some music—Chopin’s piano Nocturnes, but the eerie tones and gentle cadence lends to rather than removes the mystique. Andretti doesn’t say anything, but she’s sure he’d rather be listening to hard rock.
Masters raises a question for which she already knows the answer.
“Shouldn’t one of us stay with the Surveyor?”
She’s giving Andretti an out if he wants it, but she knows him well enough to realize he’d never let her go out there alone, and not just because of some irrational fear of monsters. The chance of her becoming disoriented or even disabled if she has another seizure is too great. He must know he’d never talk her out of going. Medically, it’s madness, as she’ll be in a 5 PSI pure oxygen environment within her suit, something that equates to standing on top of Everest. They both know the routine—deep vein clotting is a real threat. Even a gradual pressure change could be enough to dislodge any internal coagulation and lead to an embolism, but she doesn’t care. She’s too excited to worry. Jane hasn’t said as much to him, but for her this is the chance of a dozen lifetimes, and one she cannot pass by. He seems to realize that as his response is far more chirpy than she expects.
“Well, no one’s going to steal our spaceship, now are they?”
She laughs. It’s fake and they both know it, but neither cares.
On approaching the moon, the Horizon Surveyor undergoes a braking maneuver, departing one gravity well and falling into another. Given the tortured shape of the moon, their orbit is irregular, forming a figure eight, passing closest to the needle-like tip protruding into deep space before swinging out wide above the city and then back again. Small talk passes between them, but nothing more is said beyond their professionalism as pilots and explorers.
Once they settle into their new orbit, they begin preparing the drop ship. Masters can barely contain her excitement.
“Coming up on the insertion point for the shuttle.”
She isn’t telling Andretti anything he doesn’t already know. She’s speaking for the black box recording their cockpit conversation. It’s not just what’s said, but how it’s said and the lack of any negative connotations that will be telling to anyone reviewing the audio. There’s no dissent. Andretti might protest, but when it comes to taking action, he’s engaged. He’s not going to sit on the sidelines.
They suit up, donning lightweight flight gear. This far from the Sun, the biggest danger is cosmic radiation, which is so energetic any shielding magnifies rather than dampens the effect so the suits don’t even pretend to protect them from that kind of exposure. Cosmic rays are a bit like the white ball in a game of snooker. Once that one ball slams into the carefully constructed rack, dozens of balls go flying everywhere in utter chaos. The Horizon Surveyor generates a magnetic field to protect them during regular flight, but the shuttle will leave them exposed. Their flight suits are designed to maintain a comfortable pressure and temperature, but little more than that, only being good for short-duration spacewalks.
The two astronauts huddle inside the descent vehicle. The hatch closes automatically behind them. After strapping in, Andretti initiates separation, based on the timing provided by the central computer. As they drop away from the Surveyor, the city begins to unfold beneath them.
During their descent, the two astronauts breathe purified oxygen within the cabin. The pressure slowly reduces, preparing their bodies for the low pressure within their suits during the surface excursion. Once they acclimatize, both astronauts lower their visor faceplates. From here, they proceed on internal power and oxygen recycling as a precaution against any sudden decompression should the craft crash. Normally, Masters finds working in spacesuits cumbersome and tiring, but this time she barely notices the extra effort.
The shuttle is designed for mining, and has dozens of instruments ranging from spectrometers and electromagnetic sensors to radar imaging. Their craft glides quietly over the ruins of the alien city, scanning the rubble and relaying data back to the Surveyor where it will be batched and sent on to the research hub in orbit around Neptune. Masters activates the hull lights. As there’s no atmosphere and low gravity, they can sail close to the surface without fear of crashing.
“Let’s get a good look at this thing.”
Andretti brings the shuttle into powered flight, looping around the cathedral. Dozens of closely knit spires reach up hundreds of feet above the moon. Several have broken, having collapsed to the surface in some other epoch, but at least one still reaches its original height. There are numerous pits in the side of the spire, reminiscent of windows, but they’re ovals rather than rectangles. Instead of butting up against each other as they would in a terrestrial skyscraper, they’re separated by a regular interval of ten feet and twist in a spiral. It’s as though, on the inside of the spire, there are no floors, just a continual staircase slowly winding tighter as it goes higher.
“Nothing on EM in either infrared or ultraviolet. Radar imaging is showing a hollow subsurface. Lots of tunnels.”
Masters zooms in on the preliminary readings. “Looks like a honeycomb down there.”
“What’s that in the center?”
“Some kind of hub?”
“Bringing us in closer.”
For someone with misgivings about their flight, Andretti maintains his professionalism.
“There’s a slight concentration of alpha particles coming off the structure. A little gamma. Nothing serious.”
“Look at that.” Masters points at what appears to be a courtyard adjacent to the cathedral. “No debris.”
“That is interesting!”
“Twenty panels lined up, all pointing in the same direction.”
“Solar array?”
“Maybe.”
For Andretti, curiosity has replaced fear, at least for now.
“Bringing us down.”
The shuttle circles the compound.
Thick snake-like wires run in bundles from the panels, converging before disappearing into the rubble.
The shuttle rights itself, and their view out the cockpit window is of the upper portion of the cathedral as they come in to land. Numerous cameras provide footage of their descent. Andretti talks through the approach, no doubt wanting to confirm details for the scientists who will watch this back in the lab.
“Landing gear down… Gravitational field is zero point eight meters per second. Take a good run up, and you could jump clear of this thing... Twenty meters... Kicking up dust.”
Rather than swirling around them in a fog, the fine dust particles are sprayed outward, sweeping away from them and clearing the landing area.
“No atmosphere. Checking for obstructions, ground composition and structural integrity.”
He runs a scan, probing the dark shadows.
“Holding at ten meters.”
Andretti is clinical. To anyone listening, not seeing them descending into the alien structure, he sounds as calm as someone on a training run.
Due to the light gravity, the thrust required to hover is minimal, and the shuttle drifts with its dangly legs protruding like those of a metallic spider. The glow from the engine is barely visible on the edge of one of their camera shots.
Masters provides an update on the scan. “I show a solid surface, slightly uneven. Radar imaging suggests bedrock beneath the LZ.”
“Proceeding with caution.”
Masters bites her lip, not wanting to distract him. She watches dozens of metrics highlighting their altitude, attitude, rate of descent, lateral motion, distance to nearby objects, rock composition in the landing zone and the computer’s recommendation for the best landing spot.
Andretti eases the shuttle lower.
Seconds pass like hours.
“Contact light… Tether away.”
A harpoon fires from beneath the craft, digging into the rocky surface. The anchor is mechanical, designed to screw itself into the loose regolith on an asteroid. It burrows beneath the rock and the slack on the wire goes taut.
“Bringing us in.... and… touchdown. We are down. Repeat. We have landed. Main engine shutdown. Contingency abort armed. No subsidence. Craft is stable at zero meters. We’re on the surface.”
With a bit more time, Andretti would probably have had something profound to say, but in the rush of the moment, with adrenaline surging through both of their veins, the vigor in his voice is enough to capture the tension of the moment. He looks at Masters from behind his visor and smiles. She offers a thumbs up.
With the shuttle firmly settled on the moon, there are a number of procedures to go through before they can conduct their EVA.
Masters talks through the checklist.
“Fuel cells are green. Life support green. Navigation green. Engines are online and primed for rapid departure. Communications array is in the green. Confirm receipt of data relay with the Horizon Surveyor—we are sending and receiving in the clear. I concur with Commander Andretti. Craft is stable. Radiation negligible. Thermal exchange is in the green. We’ve achieved vacuum within the cabin. We are good to go. EVA is go.”
The shuttle is small, barely the size of a cargo van and lacks a dedicated airlock. With the internal environment equalized to match the near-vacuum state on the desiccated moon, Andretti opens the hatch.
“It’s 11:47 on day 183 of the Horizon Surveyor’s deep cloud mission and the hatch is open. Local time is plus 18 minutes from touchdown. We are proceeding onto the surface.”
Spotlights on the hull of the craft flood the scattered debris, casting deep shadows on the walls of the vast courtyard. The pull of gravity is akin to gently sinking within a swimming pool, causing Andretti to drift to the surface. His boots skim over the rocks, barely touching them as he steps away from the craft.
Masters follows, stepping out and allowing the moon to pull her close. She seems to rest rather than stand on the surface. Within her helmet, the hiss of oxygen and her own manic breathing betray the natural sense of fear she feels—the unknown both terrifies and excites her. Focus is needed. She slows her breathing. Looking around, she sees beyond her own concerns and is thrilled to walk on alien soil. Another intelligence inhabits this tiny moon, and curiosity overwhelms her nerves.
She crouches, examining an intricate pattern on the tiles covering the courtyard. Fine lines interweave themselves in symmetrical shapes, almost like a hair braid. She wonders about the creatures that once inhabited this fragment of a lost world.
“Well, they had an eye for aesthetics.”
“That’s good, right?” Andretti keeps his back to the craft, looking up at the thin spires reaching above the ruins. Now that the astronauts are on the surface the walls seem much larger and more imposing.
The tiles around Masters are uneven, but it wasn’t always this way. Various slabs have lifted as the ground inched in different directions over time scales that defies belief. Once, this enclosure teemed with life. The multiple doorways suggest it was a thoroughfare, and she wonders about the purpose of the cathedral. Could it be a relic of religious practices? Or perhaps its purpose was political? Something like a palace? Being central to the city, it could have been practical, acting as a marketplace.
Andretti distracts her.
“What do you make of those panels?”
Masters scoots over to examine the array they observed from orbit. The slightest flex of her legs propels her easily ten yards, and she has to dial back her strength. In micro-gravity there’s a danger of toppling onto the ruins. With the dust blown away by the shuttle’s exhaust, the remaining rocks are sharp and jagged.
She examines the panels.
“They appear to be photoelectric.”
Andretti comes up beside her. “Maybe. But what good are solar panels this far out from the sun?”
“Look at the cables. They’re an afterthought—not part of the original structure. They’re not as old as the walls.”
“I guess they use them for power. Better than nothing.”
The two astronauts follow the cables.
“Life needs energy. Perhaps this is how they’ve survived.”
Andretti isn’t convinced. He stops and allows the lights on the side of his helmet to illuminate a crumbling archway.
“Looks like a crypt to me.”
Rather than walking into the ruins, the two astronauts swim forward, pulling on rocks as they push off the surface and slowly bounce along. They’re both letting out a thin filament of fluorescent wire, marking their path, but knowing it will limit them to just over a hundred yards.
“Any ideas about their physiology?”
Masters looks around her at the hallway sloping down into the darkness.
“Dunno. I mean, what could you make of human physiology by studying St. Paul’s Cathedral or Shanghai airport?”
Andretti stays close. He sounds nervous.
“I can’t imagine this was their original home. Why live here? Why not soar off into space?”
Masters examines a raised relief on the wall, but it offers no clues about its maker.
“Resources? There’s plenty to mine.”
“Maybe.”
They proceed slowly down a hallway buried in darkness, descending into the bowels of the moon, following the cables. Their spotlights seem feeble, barely illuminating the rubble before them. As they reach the end of their tether lines, they drift into an antechamber opening out into a vast hollow dome. Starlight comes in through collapsed portions of the ceiling.
Circular terraces fall away in front of the astronauts, leading down toward what could be a stage, but it’s obscured by the darkness. Cables snake their way across the floor, reaching an altar set in the heart of the vast amphitheater.
Andretti tugs on his filament.
“End of the line.”
Masters unclips, which brings a predictable response from her commander.
“You’re not—”
He never finishes his sentence.
I’m hungry.
Starving.
We need to feed.
So little time. We need so much.
Conserve your strength, my friends. They are coming.
“Tell me you heard that.”
Andretti doesn’t answer. Masters catches his face in her spotlights. His eyes go wide. His cheeks are pale, drained of blood.
“Commander?”
Andretti begins drawing in his tether, pulling himself back to the shuttle as the winch on his waist winds in the thin filament.
“Andretti??? You can’t leave me here.”
He pauses by the tunnel, turning his back to the darkness as he faces her.
“W—We need to get the hell out of here while we still can.”
I can feel their life force.
They’re close. So close.
Soon we will feed again.
Masters yells at Andretti, watching as he rounds a corner and his lights fade.
“Dariooooo!”
There’s a sense of irony in talking over a radio in that he can reply to her as though he was still standing beside her.
“I—I can’t do this. Pull back. That’s an order.”
Patience, my friends.
Wait. Be still.
There will be time later.
So near. So close.
I can taste them.
There is power. Energy.
Masters turns, allowing her spotlights to ripple over the inside of the vast dome. Images have been carved into the walls. Shadows accentuate the forms. Creatures with long spindly arms and bulbous bodies have been arrayed in a variety of positions—an action scene frozen in time. Aliens clamber over each other with various instruments held between what appear to be multifaceted mandibles. Jane runs her gloved hand over the wall. What should be a smooth, marble-like surface is heavily pitted. Whereas once these were sharply defined carvings, now they’re eroded, with soft edges after the passage of billions of years.
We will rise again.
We will escape this prison.
We can never escape.
Over the top of the voices, Masters hears Andretti breathing hard as he flees for the shuttle. Given the low gravity, that can only mean he’s panicked. Masters, though, is calm. She’s lucid, and that allows her to think clearly.
“They can’t hear us.”
“What?”
“We can hear them, but they can’t hear us.”
“Wh—How do you know that?”
Masters has lost all trace of fear. She steps down toward the stone altar on the low stage some forty feet away. Each step is undertaken in slow motion as gravity struggles to keep up with her boots.
“Everything we’ve heard. It’s one-way traffic. They’re talking among themselves—not to us.”
“You need to get out of there, Jane.”
Masters ignores him, gliding forward, following the cables from the array as she makes her way toward a series of faint blue lights.
Three bodies lie on what appears to be a concrete slab. Each has six limbs, but they’re grouped together, lying beside a bulbous body, strung out together. Ribs are visible in the distended torsos. Dull eyes stare at the ceiling. They’re corpses. Death, it seems, is universal in its hatred of life. Skin clings to desiccated remains, withering in the cold vacuum. She reaches out a gloved hand, touching lightly at one of the limbs. Ash drifts from her fingertips. A bone slips from a socket and the leg rolls to one side, crumbling as it breaks apart.
