The Sails of Tau Ceti (15 page)

CHAPTER 11

Neither Tory nor Garth moved for a long minute after
Austria
came to rest. The reality of being inside the alien starship was too overpowering. Months of mental preparation had not prepared them for the storm of feelings that accompanied their canted view of the surrounding white walls and blue deck.

Garth was the first to recover. He used his armrest controls to cycle through the views from the various hull cameras. They showed
Austria
surrounded by a compartment shaped like a wedge of cheese. At the apex ran a complex structure of tubes and beams akin to the climbing gyms popular with Martian children. Opposite the maze lay the spongy blue covering where
Austria
had come to rest. In several views, it was possible to see where their ship had sunk a meter deep into the covering.

“What do you suppose
that
is?” Tory asked, pointing to the complex framework running along the starship’s spin axis.

“Probably the keel. Trace it far enough back and you’ll find the light sail anchored to it.”

With
Austria
lying on her side, their acceleration couches seemed to be attached to the aft wall of the control room. Van Zandt unstrapped and floated to a formerly vertical bulkhead that was now a deck listing at a 20-degree angle from horizontal. Tory followed Garth’s example. Soon the two of them were balanced on the balls of their feet, flexing their leg muscles to get the kinks of long inactivity out.

“Five percent standard,” Garth estimated the pull of local spin gravity.

Tory consulted the ship’s computer and shook her head. “You’re high. Two point three percent.”

A shiver suddenly ran through the ship. A moment later, the faint sound of rushing air could be heard beyond the hull. Within seconds, expansion fog began to swirl across the view from the outside dorsal camera.
Austria
, accustomed to the vacuum of space, creaked and groaned as pressure built up around her.

“Atmosphere check,” Garth said as the hurricane noises died away.

“Pressure: 1.02 standard. Temperature: minus 100 degrees and warming. Composition: Nitrogen 74%, oxygen 24%, helium 1%, carbon dioxide 0.05%. The rest are trace gasses. It’s too cold for water vapor to register, of course.”

“Not precisely what we’re used to, but close enough for government work,” he replied. “All right. Safe all propulsion systems.”

“Safed.”

“All radars off.”

“Off.”

“Computer power to internal…” The safing procedure took a few more minutes. When it was over, Garth said, “Shall we go find Eli and the doctor?”

“After you,” Tory responded.

The two of them clambered aft through the axis passageway. Spin gravity, even though minuscule, was strong enough to disorient them as they moved through passageways made strange by the starboard list.

They found Kit and Eli in the wardroom. Garth reported Tory’s analysis of the surrounding air. Kit concurred, having just run her own evaluation.”

“So breathing won’t be a problem?”

“Not due to chemical composition, anyway. I cannot say the same about microbes, unfortunately. I’m afraid we don’t have many tools to evaluate that threat.”

“
Is
there a threat? I thought current theory didn’t allow for the possibility of extra-solar microbes living off human beings.”

“It doesn’t. Care to bet your life on the theory being right?”

“I see your point. What can you do?”

“I suppose I can culture skin grafts from each of us, expose them to the local air and water, then check for allergic reactions and other problems. It’s crude, but might be effective in identifying hazards.”

“How long to run tests?”

“A week, maybe two.”

“You can’t do it any faster?”

“Not if I’m going to prove Tau Cetian biochemistry is safe. The skin tests would only be preliminary anyway. To do it right, one of us should live outside for a few weeks while the rest of us stay bottled up in here. If our human guinea pig doesn’t die in 30 days, maybe it’s safe out there … maybe not.”

“And that’s your medical recommendation?”

“Actually, no,” Kit said. “I recommend that we don’t worry about microbes.”

“Why not?” Eli said. From the pinched expression he wore, it was evident that he did not relish the tack the conversation had taken.

“Because cross-species infection works both ways. We are as big a threat to the Phelan as they are to us. Bigger, in fact. We are merely risking our individual lives. They are risking what is left of their whole species. Obviously, if they thought there were any danger, they wouldn’t have let us aboard at all.”

“You hope.”

Kit nodded. “I hope.”

“All right. Tory, log my decision, please. Eli, what is our communications status?”

“We’re off the air, Captain. I shut down as soon as we came aboard. All I was getting back were reflections. Even if we were penetrating the hull, we lost our lock the moment we lost the guide stars.”

“Right,” Garth responded. “We’ll have to see about getting back on the air.”

“Do you think the Phelan will help us?”

“All we can do is ask. Any movement out there yet?” Garth asked, gesturing toward the wardroom viewscreen.

“Nothing.”

“Temperature?”

“Minus 40 and still warming,” Tory reported.

“Shall we call our hosts and see what they have planned?”

Guttieriz manipulated the intercom. He had to stretch to reach the controls. All it took was one depression of the attention key to receive an immediate response.

“Yes?” a Phelan said from the depths of the screen. Tory was not sure, but she thought it was Faslorn.

“Doctor Claridge has expressed some concern about the possibility of disease.”

“You may rest easy, Captain. Our biochemistries are sufficiently different to preclude any contagion.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Kit Claridge gave the rest of them an “I told you so” look, but said nothing.

“Then we’re ready to leave the ship.”

“Excellent. Please wait a few more minutes, Captain. We need more time to heat the air in the hangar.”

“When shall we venture out?”

“We will meet outside your ship in ten minutes. I will then guide you to our administration center … what you would call our ‘city hall.’”

“We are honored. I’m sure you must have many other duties aboard this ship.”

“I have waited my entire life for this moment. It is you humans who do me the honor.”

#

With
Austria
lying on her side, the only airlock not obstructed was a small one normally used for maintenance. After ten minutes that seemed like ten hours, the four of them made their way through canted corridors to the port side of the ship. Garth opened the circular hatch manually and levered himself into the maintenance tunnel beyond. The other three watched as he worked himself up the long sloping tunnel like a mountain climber negotiating a rock chimney. It took a few seconds for him to wrestle the outer door open. Tory’s ears popped as he did so and she was suddenly engulfed by a blast of frigid air. They crowded around the tunnel and watched as Garth climbed out into the pure white light from the hangar bay, then disappeared.

“Who wants to go next?”

“I will,” Tory said with more courage than she felt. She slipped into the tunnel and reached the open outer door fifteen seconds later. Once there she gingerly clambered out onto the perch formed by the open hatch. She was a full five meters above the blue covered deck. A foreshortened Garth Van Zandt squatted below her, gazing intently beneath
Austria
.

“What’s the matter?” she yelled.

He glanced up at the sound of her voice. “Nothing. Just checking for damage.”

“Find any?”

“Nope. This stuff seems to have cushioned us nicely.”

She glanced around for handholds and found none. “How do I get down from here?”

He grinned up at her. “Jump!”

She felt chagrined at being reminded that a five meter drop in a two percent gravity field was nothing to fear, and after she’d lived all those years on Phobos! Even on Mars, such a drop was the equivalent of jumping off a single story house on Earth. This close to
Far Horizons
’s axis of rotation, they were nearly in microgravity. It was a measure of Tory’s current mental state that none of these rationalizations did anything to calm her nerves.

She dangled her feet over the edge, sought purchase with her hands, and pushed off. She hung for long seconds in the air before landing feet first on the cushioned deck with flexed knees. The precaution proved unnecessary. The blue covering proved to be thick and yielding. She barely noticed the impact.

“Some sort of low density foam,” Garth responded to her unvoiced question at finding herself standing ankle deep in the stuff. He returned to peering beneath
Austria
.

“What are you doing?”

“Wondering if the four of us can right her in this gravity field.”

“Don’t think so. Even at two percent, we’re talking a couple of tons of weight and a full 100 tons of inertia.”

“Perhaps we could roll her over,” he said, “at least far enough to clear the midships airlock.”

“Maybe,” she said, her tone doubtful.

Just then, Kit Claridge appeared in the open hatchway above them. She stood precariously on the ledge before stepping off. Like Tory, she seemed to hang forever in midair. She landed on her rounded posterior and quickly bounced up again, grinning.

“Not very dignified,” Tory commented.

“But fun. Where are our hosts?”

“They haven’t shown up yet. Maybe they’re waiting for all of us to get here.”

Less than a minute later, Eli Guttieriz joined them. As he picked himself up, a hatch opened in the far bulkhead. Tory could have sworn it had not been there a moment earlier.

The being that entered moved toward them in the scuttling motion of an Earth crab. It was, Tory realized, the natural motion any quadruped would take moving in low gravity. Except the Phelan was not a quadruped. Or rather, he was a quadruped in that he used four of his limbs to move. There were two other limbs, however, for a total of six. It made him look like one of the many armed Hindu or Shinto gods.

Like humans, the Phelan was axially bisymmetric, with a torso from which various appendages sprouted. The triangular shaped head was mounted on a long, flexible neck that gave every impression of allowing him to look directly behind. The motile ears were constantly moving, as though scanning their surroundings. The thin torso was topped by a wide set of shoulders atop a second, somewhat narrower set. Two small, nimble arms were suspended from the upper shoulders. Two more arms were suspended from the lower. This lower pair was long and heavily muscled. Faslorn used the intermediate limbs along with his short, stumpy legs to move in a knuckle walk like an ape or a chimpanzee.

Faslorn quietly spread all four of his hands with his palms up in a gesture of welcome. In so doing, he displayed his various sets of fingers. There were six fingers on each hand, with two opposable thumbs outboard of four long fingers. The gesture also displayed the fact that the upper Phelan arms had two elbow joints and a wrist joint. One of the elbows operated backwards to that of a human elbow. The arrangement allowed Faslorn to extend his arms in a motion reminiscent of the operation of a scissors jack.

The Phelan’s body was covered with what, on closer inspection, appeared to be a soft white down, not feathers, but not individual strands of hair, either. Tory filed a mental request to ask to inspect that marvelous pelt when she knew the aliens better. Faslorn had black patches arrayed across his body seemingly at random. His clothing consisted of a pair of shorts and an equipment harness. The gold comet of a spaceship captain was pinned to the harness. The insignia was identical to the one on Garth’s collar, making Tory wonder whether the costume was native to the Phelan, or merely an attempt to conform to human ideas of dress.

For a long minute, humans and Phelan regarded each other. The gulf between them was far larger than the three meters of cold air that separated them. It consisted of all the developments that had taken place during 6 billion cumulative years of separate evolution. Not for the first time, Tory wondered if there were some universal principle that allowed for two races so alike physically, a mere 12 light-years apart, at practically the same moment in history. It seemed too big a coincidence to shrug off. Perhaps, she thought, it merely seemed a coincidence, like the seeming coincidence that lunar eclipses on Earth only happen when the moon is full. Whatever underlying phenomenon had resulted in Phelan and human living so close to one another, she looked forward to learning all about it.

No one spoke. It was as though they had each silently agreed to savor the moment. In a way, both species were in the process of losing their virginity. Never again would either meet an alien intelligence for the first time. Tory felt a hot, stinging sensation as large globular tears began to form. Nor was she alone. A quiet sniff from Eli Guttieriz proclaimed that he, too, was having difficulty controlling himself.

Faslorn was the first to speak. “I do not know whether you appreciate how much your presence means to us aboard this ship. We have studied you humans for all of our lives. To actually meet you at last…” The too perfect voice subsided into inaudibility.

“We feel much the same way,” Garth said.

“Do you truly?”

“To meet other intelligent beings has been a dream with us for half a thousand years.”

“It has been one much longer with us,” Faslorn replied. “In fact, our ancestors were contemplating ways to contact you humans even before Tau Ceti went nova.”

“Were they?”

“I must admit,” the alien said with the closest his physiology would allow for a smile, “that they hadn’t contemplated making the journey in person. Before we enter the habitat proper, is there anything I can do for you?”

“Our ship…” Garth said. “Can it be righted?”

“Righted?”