Forbidden the Stars (8 page)

On the central DMR screen, the casement showed the Space Mining Division symbol for a moment, and then the image flicked to fifteen minutes before the event.

Raymond explained, “It took them a few hours to get to Site 14 after they left the TAHU. They checked the sites in rotation.”

A chronology sequencer on the lower part of the casement showed the time as 12:58 GMT. The image itself was the record from the ATV interface camera, which, as Margaret and Gabriel disembarked from the ATV in their bulky bioshield suits, followed them from about five meters away, hovering over the surface by an antimagneto engine and navigating by microfuel pulsors.

The septaphonics in the conference room carried the conversation between the two surveyors.

*

“Here it is, finally,” said Gabriel in his unmistakable accent, standing beside the ATV.

Margaret did not hesitate; she approached the site marker.

“Hucs reported the Nelson II had detected traces of a semi-large deposit of something
beyond
the core sampler range, didn’t it?”

“Yep. I brought the override code, just in case. We can get an extra twenty meters out of the sampler drill.”

He opened the ATV carry compartment and withdrew a telescopic extension for the drill, and joined his wife at the Nelson II.

*

Michael interrupted the playback with a hand gesture. The image froze at Raymond’s thought-link command.

“Do we have the readings of the Nelson II?”

“Yes.” The assistant brought them up on a secondary screen. “Non-conclusive. The mineral readings were typical as far as a kilometer down, nothing to write home about. No significant lodes. But when the drill reached its maximum depth, it registered a .002 per cent content reading by mass of some unknown substance.

“Obviously, Margaret and Gabriel believed it was a deposit of iron ore, as the record of their dialogue shows. This is why the potential value estimate he filed is so high.”

“Right.” Alliras cleared his throat. “Let’s finish the recording.”

*

The playback continued, with the two surveyors speculating on their find, and what they would do with their bonuses once they returned to Canada Station. Michael could not help but smile, even though his throat was tight, and his temples throbbed. It was a grim business.

*

“The Nelson II indicates the deposit begins fourteen meters below maximum depth,” Margaret reported.

Gabriel adjusted the depth cue on the drill, and tapped in the command to engage the Nelson II’s engine. The core drill twirled and dug into the asteroid.

“Any indication on size of deposit?” Margaret inquired as she monitored the Nelson II’s temp and friction indicators.

Watching the sample analysis display, Gabriel shook his head.

*

At 13:11:02 GMT, he reported, “Almost there, another minute or two.”

*

At 13:11:47 GMT, the image blanked.

*

The silence in the conference room drew out for a few minutes.

“Damn,” was Alliras comment.

Michael tried to be analytical. “Obviously, the deposit reacted with the something in the drill or sampler, or even with the friction and heat of the operation.”

“We’ve already begun analyses,” Raymond told him. “The makeup of the drill is designed to avoid causing a reaction to any known mineral compound, including plutonium and uranium. Whatever happened, it wasn’t nuclear.”

“So we’re left with heat?”

“We can’t rule out the possibility of a new element, one that does react to something in the drill?”

“So we are left where? At the beginning?”

“Yes.”

“Caught with our pants around our ankles, I would say,” Alliras put in. “Damn.”

They were interrupted by a message sent from Calbert. The casement appeared over the DMR of the survey playback. “Michael, one of our probe sentries has picked up small mass readings in the event area.”

“Be right there,” he replied, and the three men hurried back to the Operations Center.

*

Calbert greeted them with a nod. He pointed his hand to a medium-sized DMR on the east wall.

“Initial readings indicate a number of objects, ranging from 50 kg to 5000 kg mass.”

“Meteors?”

“No, ion pulse radar shows the objects as irregular, not cylindrical or spherical. We should be getting an image in about three minutes.”

The technicians and operators in the room all ceased their work and looked up at the DMR as the screen flicked to visual camera.

There was nothing on the screen at the moment, but the radar magnification indicated a range of 932 meters.

At a range of 500 meters, several objects could be discerned. One looked like the remnants of a Nelson II drill. Closer still, and the ATV could be seen, horribly mangled and burned.

One hundred meters in, the probe picked up two objects: the bodies of the two surveyors.

“Alive?” Michael shouted.

A tech punched a command sequence into his keyboard, and reported, “No, sir.”

“Damn!” Alliras swore; it was becoming a mantra.

Another technician reported, “All other objects identified as equipment from the survey team. Tools, rations, other accouterments.” Specific details at this point was lost on Michael and the others.

“What about the TAHU?”

“No sign, sir.”

“Recover everything out there,” Michael directed. “I want a detailed report and autopsy on my desk by nine tomorrow.”

The probe would magnetize the objects and drag them back to the
Canuck Flyer
, the mining orbiter, a large complex the surveyors used as a way station between Luna and the asteroids. With hundreds of engineers and processing technicians on board at any given time, there was a more than adequate mechanical and chemical laboratory, as well as an experienced medical staff on hand, more than qualified to perform the necessary procedures.

“What happened to Alex Manez?” Alliras said, but no one ventured an answer.

Michael, his body stiff, turned from the operations room and headed for the conveyor.

*

Alliras accompanied him down the hall. When Michael punched the up button for the conveyor, intending to ride to the seventeenth floor where his office was located, Alliras said, “I think I’ll go home to my wife, if that’s all right.”

“I wish I could do the same,” Michael said in a soft voice. “Right now, I have to write a press release for the media, and I have a few unpleasant calls to make to Margaret and Gabriel’s families.”

“I don’t envy you that task. By tomorrow, SMD stock might well be worthless.”

When the Alliras’s conveyor arrived first, he shook Michael’s hand. “I’m truly sorry about all this. I hate to sound clinical, but unless we can find out what that element your surveyors found on Macklin’s Rock, there’s no upside to this. The media will eat us for breakfast. We’ll lose our funding and our charter.”

“I know. Take care, Alliras. See you tomorrow.” “I’ll stop by mid-morning, if that’s all right.”

“Just fine. Convey my apologies to Angela.”

“I will. Try to get some sleep tonight yourself.”

“Right.”

Alliras stepped inside the conveyor tube. He nodded and tried to give Michael a smile as the doors shut.

The second tube arrived, and Michael rode it up to the top floor of the building.

*

In his office, he place two commlink calls. One to the Manez Family, and one to the Sheridans, and expressed his condolences as best as he could for the loss of their children and for their missing grandchild.

He then typed a short press release or the media, posted it on the Associated Press Mesh Board, Highest Priority, then turned off his computer, opened the liquor cabinet and withdrew a bottle of scotch. He poured himself a stiff measure in a plastic coffee cup.

After a quarter of an hour, he placed a commlink call to his home.

“Hey, babes,” he said when his wife, Melanie, answered.

“You’re still at work?” she asked.

“Yeah. I think I might be a while. All-nighter. Gotta be here in case they find anything.”

“What’s wrong?”

Michael had to take a deep breath, and then he filled her in. They talked over the link for three hours.

He made sure to tell her he loved her before hanging up.

Michael finally stretched out on the couch in his office to try to catch a few winks.

__________

Unknown :

Disconnected.

Free falling.

Force of pressure.

The depths of space.

Lost in the farthest reaches.

Found by the light of Sol.

All things seen as if one.

Nothing is possible when everything is gone.

Feeling his way through the morass of darkness.

Screaming against the vast vacuum of madness and pain.

Sailing with the solar wind as guide to his destination.

For one instant he feels the power of all.

The next moment the call comes to him.

It is power; it is for him.

The beacon of a million stars.

The shores of all consciousness.

The signal is Home.

It calls him.

Come, Alex.

Come.

__________

USA, Inc. Exploration Site :

Mission
Orcus 1
:

Pluto :

Helen’s voice
of authority cut off the argument that threatened to boil over from the collected scientists.

“We’ve got something on the spectrograph sensor at the artifact site. It’s the
Dis Pater
.” Immediately, Henrietta Maria and Sakami Chin rushed over to the communications desk.

Sakami’s eyes flashed all over the communications boards. “What is it?” the planetologist asked.

Helen replied in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

“It’s glowing—and the sensor reports that it’s giving off electromagnetic wave vibrations. Initial wave length at 6662.04 angstroms, a frequency of 450 terahertz increasing in frequency at an accelerating rate of 60 terahertz per hour per hour.”

“Can it do that?” George Eastmain, the astrophysicist, shook his head in disbelief.

Helen shrugged; her specialty was navigation and communication. “Maximum wave length of 3997.23 angstroms will be reached in approximately five hours.”

The captain speculated, “Some kind of broadcast? Could the
Dis Pater
be some kind of antenna array? If so, where is the broadcast originating?”

“Unknown.”

Between 7000 and 4000 angstroms is the visible spectrum of light. Something’s coming at us!” exclaimed Dale Powers, calculating the mathematics in his head: “… At just under the speed of light!”

Justine raced for her bio-eco suitshield, and donned it in record time. With her, the Science Team dressed and entered the air lock, leaving Helen behind to monitor communications and control.

Taking the ATVs, both packed with analytic and survey equipment readers, the group raced for the artifact.

Twenty minutes after the initial reading reported by Helen, the Science Team and the captain gathered around the monolith. For a few moments, they did not move from the ATV, so stunned were they by the change in
Dis Pater
.

The color of the monolith had changed from transparent to a deep cherry red. They heard the cyclic wave emissions as a hum, which resonated in a growing and lessening volume.

Justine swallowed. “All right people; let’s act like we know what we’re doing. I want every kind of reading you can imagine taken on that thing.” When they did not react immediately, she spoke in a loud commanding voice, “And I want it ten minutes ago!”

Quickly, the six scientists spread out to check the existing analytical equipment, and soon, reports were filtering in from each area of expertise.

Justine retrieved the AV interface camera, and filmed everything as it happened. She gave instructions to Helen to EPS live to Luna station. The power costs would be extraordinary, but if the CEO of the United States of America wanted some tangible information, she was going to give it to him in spades.

Ekwan was the first to call out. “I read temperature change.”

“Specify,” Justine ordered, assuming temporary command of the Science Team. If Dale Powers had any objections, he did not voice them.

“Surface temperature of artifact rising,” the Japanese scientist explained. “minus 210.8°C…minus 210.1°C…minus 209.6°C…”

“Projections?”

Ekwan consulted his computer. At Ground Zero, temperature will read 0.0°C”

“Interesting,” Justine said. “Peripheral effects? Climatology of the surrounding area?”

Ekwan shook his head. “It depends on how long
Dis Pater
holds that heat. We could have a few isolated whirlwinds, maybe some nitrogen hail or methane rain. If the artifact cools quickly, there is nothing to worry about. I’m assuming it will begin to cool once…
whatever
…reaches us.”

George Eastmain reported, “The thing is changing color slowly. It’s going through the entire visible spectrum. The color right now equates to about 6,250 angstroms. Over the next few hours, we’ll see it get light red, then yellow for a few minutes, changing into the greens, then blues, and finally into the violets at Ground Zero—about 4,000 angstroms or less.”

“Wave emissions increasing in pitch.” Johan Belcher looked up at Justine. “In about two hours it’ll reach a frequency too high for us to hear, but it might wreak some havoc with our communications.”

“Noted.” Justine played the camera over the artifact, noting that it had already lightened in color. “Is there any kind of spectral analysis possible? Can we tell what this thing is made of?”

Henrietta and Dale hunched over one of the monitors. Dale glanced over his shoulder. “It’s impossible to tell what
Dis Pater
is composed of. The element is uncharted. As well, we’re getting a reading on a second unknown element reacting with the artifact. Uncharted as well.”

“Suppositions?”

“If I were to make a guess I would say
Dis Pater
is made of an element that would have an atomic weight of about ten thousand, way off the charts. Carbon has about twelve, nitrogen fourteen, and even plutonium is about two-hundred forty-four. This stuff is way beyond our analytical abilities. As for the reactant, my best guess based on what this machine is reading, about half that: 5,000 or so.”