The Sails of Tau Ceti (5 page)

“Don’t be paranoid!” Hunsacker snapped. “Surely you don’t think they crossed twelve light years of space to attack us!”

“Who knows what they intend?”

“How many soldiers do you think one ship can carry, for God’s sake?”

“How many men did Cortez have?” Contreras replied dryly. “Some of my ancestors thought they could handle him. History proved them wrong.”

“Not the same situation at all.”

“Isn’t it? These are refugees from an exploded star. What are they going to do when they discover their chosen refuge already inhabited?”

“But they must have known this system was occupied before Tau Ceti exploded,” Tory said. “By the late twentieth century, Earth was the center of a bubble of radio noise that stretched more than 70 light years in all directions.”

“Would an alien have found comfort in twentieth century news broadcasts?” Contreras mused.

“I tend to agree with Boris,” Pierce said. “This ship has been in space 250 years. They are fleeing the destruction of their star, looking to start over. If we were to abandon Mars, would we fill our vessel with weapons or seed corn?”

Contreras’ jaw set stubbornly. “Depends on how many potential slaves there were where we were going.”

“Do we know they
are
refugees?” Ben asked.

“That,” Pierce replied, pointing toward the light ring that surrounded the image of Tau Ceti, “is a very persuasive argument. Rather than preparing for conflict with these aliens, I think we should make plans how we can help them. After so much time in space, no telling what shape their ship is in.”

“Perhaps their life support system has already failed,” Hunsacker responded. “They may all be dead and we are arguing about nothing.”

“Then who unfurled the sail?”

“An automatic sequence triggered when the ship closed to within a predetermined distance.”

“We are speculating in a vacuum,” Praesert Sadibayan replied. “What we need is information, as quickly as we can get it. Obviously, we can no longer send the
Starhopper
probe out to rendezvous with them. They might mistake it for a weapon.”

“What other option have we?”

“I propose that we send a diplomatic mission instead.”

“You said yourself that
Starhopper
is the only spacecraft in the Solar System with the ability to rendezvous with the alien,” Tory pointed out. “How are you going to deliver your diplomats?”

“The probe masses one hundred tons, I believe. We will replace it on the booster with a manned spacecraft of equal mass.”

Tory nodded pensively. “That might work. Since the alien won’t be here for six years, we’d have time to make the switch.”

“How long?” Sadibayan asked.

“Two years.”

“You’re joking!”

Tory shook her head. “Look,
Starhopper
isn’t just any spacecraft. It’s a highly integrated system designed to survive half a century in space and then perform a series of complex, autonomous investigations. You can’t just dismount the instrument package and put a manned ship in its place. There are literally thousands of interfaces to be redone. The main computers are in the instrument package, for God’s sake. Dismounting the upper stage from the booster is equivalent to performing a lobotomy on a human being.”

“The computers can be transferred to the manned craft.”

“Sure they can. What about the thousands of distributed processing units that go with them? You also have to remount those and then cobble together the proper interconnections. Then all you have to worry about is the software, which must be completely rewritten.”

“Surely what you have can be modified.”

“Not on your life! We have to strip the various modules down to their fundamentals, modify them to account for the differences between ship and probe, then reassemble, debug, and recertify. It has taken three years to get
Starhopper
’s control codes to the point where we think they ought to be. Changing them will take eighteen months, minimum!”

“There has to be a faster way.”

“There isn’t … “ Tory froze while she consulted her implant. It took fifteen seconds for the idea to gel.

“What is it?” Sadibayan asked.

“I suppose the software could be rewritten en route. You’d need a large team on the ground for the actual reprogramming, then someone aboard ship who was intimately familiar with every aspect of
Starhopper
.”

“Could you do it?”

Tory blinked. So far, she had been solving a purely intellectual problem in software management. It had not occurred to her that the solution might affect her personally. “I suppose so. That is, if it can be done at all.”

“Who else?”

“Vance Newburgh and possibly a few others on the project staff.”

“What would you need?” Sadibayan’s matter-of-fact tone sent a chill up Tory’s spine.

“My implant, of course. The probe’s computers. An interface linking the two, and a lot of people backing me up.”

“You’d have them. Are you interested in the job?”

Tory swallowed hard. She had signed with Project Starhopper to do something important with her life, but this was more than she had bargained for.

“May I have time to consider my answer?”

“Of course. We will want to consider all potential candidates in any event. Still, I’d like to know whether you are interested in the position.”

“Interested, yes. Brave enough to go through with it, I’m not so sure.”

“Good enough for the time being. Now, then, where are we going to find a ship that masses less than 100 tons?”

CHAPTER 4

Minister for Science Jesus de Pasqual gazed at the blue-white spark just beyond the Tau Ceti nova and wondered whether he should feel blessed or cursed. It had been two weeks since Farside Observatory had first detected the dim, Doppler-shifted reflection of Sol that betrayed the presence of the alien light sail.

The news had initially thrilled him. Often during his days as a university professor, he had told his students that the universe was too large a place to be inhabited by a single sentience. It was pleasant to obtain confirmation of what had always been an article of faith. The Doppler shift readings were a disappointment, of course. With the derelict inbound at 15,000 kilometers per second, no ship in the Solar System could possibly catch it … no ship, that is, but one!

De Pasqual had been startled when he realized that the Starhopper Probe had more than sufficient legs to rendezvous with the alien light sail. Unfortunately, it was damnably awkward for him to ask for it to be diverted to that use. Though he was personally in favor of exploring the Centauri worlds, practical politics had caused him to oppose the project on the two occasions when it had sought science grants from the current administration.

The problem was that there was no constituency currently in favor of interstellar exploration. After two hundred years of hugely expensive space initiatives, Earth’s multitudes were asking what they had gotten for their money. So, to save the rest of his department’s budget from a meat cleaver, de Pasqual had gone before the science committee and testified: “Mr. Chairman, there is no scientifically valid reason for exploring the Centauri suns at this time! It is widely held that the Centauri worlds cannot support life, and should we desire to examine lifeless worlds, we have seven of our own to keep us busy.”

It had seemed a wise move at the time. After all, he had traded nothing for something. With an alien light sail in the sky, however, that bargain might begin to appear more than a little shortsighted to his patrons on the System Council. Nor would the man in the street remember how much he had complained about the cost of science when faced with the prospect of a shipload of bug-eyed-monsters on his doorstep. He would first demand that the military do something about it, and then go looking for scapegoats to blame for humanity’s lack of preparation. The one thing working with the public had taught de Pasqual over the years was that they never held themselves to blame for anything.

Luckily, de Pasqual had done something even before he had known there were aliens aboard the light sail. It had been his original intent that the Ministry for Science be seen leading the effort to examine the derelict light sail. With the derelict suddenly blossoming into a full-blown starship, the ministry (and by extension, de Pasqual) looked better than ever.

He thanked the patron saint of thieves and bureaucrats that he had wasted no time in dispatching a message to Luna observatory asking that they delay any announcement of the discovery. Then, after a quick survey of the computer records, he had placed several calls to terrestrial sponsors of the Starhopper Project. Since most of these were high on the ministry’s grant list, obtaining their proxies had been a relatively easy matter. Once he’d obtained their proxies, he had dispatched Praesert Sadibayan to Mars to negotiate for the probe.

As he congratulated himself on the foresight he had shown, de Pasqual considered how best to proceed now that the light sail turned out to be manned. It seemed obvious that if the Ministry for Science were to maintain control of the discovery, he would have to ensure that the alien starship remained a secret. Otherwise, powerful men on the System Council would contrive to take the glory of discovery for themselves. After passing the new data on to Sadibayan, along with orders to maintain strict security, de Pasqual sat back to consider whom else to let in on the secret.

First Minister Hoffenzoller would have to be told, of course. He was de Pasqual’s chief patron and a man who never forgot a snub. There were a few others in the administration whose cooperation he needed, but was unlikely to get unless he let them know what was going on. In addition, despite De Pasqual’s distaste for all things military, someone from the admiralty would have to be co-opted to obtain a ship with which to meet the aliens. Knowing the military, they would undoubtedly insist on one of their own to command the expedition. Mostly, however, the council and the bureaucracy would have to be kept in the dark, at least until after the survey craft was safely on its way.

Luckily, a previous minister for science had the foresight to convene a conference regarding first contact with aliens. De Pasqual turned to his workstation and spent ten minutes reviewing the results of that long ago gathering. He finished with a grin. It was almost as though someone had foreseen the precise situation in which he now found himself. The regulations were written loosely enough so that they could be bent to his own personal needs.

#

Captain First Rank Garth Van Zandt, Terrestrial Space Navy, frowned as he plodded down the ramp from the landing boat at Olympus Spaceport. Seventy-two hours earlier he had been aboard his ship in Earth orbit, preparing to go on leave. Instead of immersing himself in the Hawaiian surf, he had spent the last three days strapped to an acceleration couch aboard a navy speeder. Anti-acceleration drugs had burned his eyes, dried out his nasal passages, and kept him from more than a few hours of fitful sleep. The journey’s discomfort was the primary cause of his current irritation. His mood was not helped by the fact that he had been given no clue why he’d been summoned to Mars.

A lanky, blond haired man with a self-important air waited just beyond the security gate that separated customs from the main spaceport concourse.

“Captain Van Zandt?”

“Yes, sir.

“I’m Benjamin Tallen, Subminister Sadibayan’s assistant.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Good flight?”

Van Zandt laughed for the first time in three days. “Obviously, Mr. Tallen, you’ve never experienced the many luxuries to be found aboard a navy speeder. They consist primarily of relief tubes fore and aft, rations that taste like cardboard soaked in dog urine, and a sensation like having two people sit on your chest. I enjoyed the trip about as much as the time I spent in traction when I broke my leg.”

“Sorry to hear that. It might not have harmed anything to allow you to travel on the Earth liner, but things are beginning to boil here. The subminister thought it important for you to be in on planning from the very beginning.”

“Planning for what, sir?”

“You’ll learn that from the subminister himself. Do you need to collect any luggage?”

Van Zandt held out the small kit bag he carried. “This is all I had time to pack.”

“We’ll authorize a drawing account for you at the Bank of Mars. Take time tomorrow to properly outfit yourself.”

Van Zandt chuckled. “I’ve heard about discretionary expense accounts, but I never expected the use of one myself.”

“The stories are grossly exaggerated, and the expense is trivial when you consider the good it will do. Remember that you represent Earth. The people you will be dealing with have little cause to love us, Captain. It is important that you make a good impression.”

The younger man led the way to a car that sent them arching high above Olympus Mons before the guide tube descended into one of the kilometer-high pressure domes in the new section of the city. The car deposited them inside the lobby of a luxury hotel. Like all structures beneath the dome, the lobby lacked a roof.

“I trust this establishment meets with your approval,” Tallen said.

“It almost makes up for the journey,” Van Zandt replied, gazing across an opulent space where polished fused silica glittered everywhere. The lobby was almost as large as a spatball field.

“Good. Let’s get you registered and down to the lower levels.”

The ritual of hotel registration had not changed appreciably in half a thousand years. With one thing and another, it took fifteen minutes before Tallen ushered Van Zandt into the subminister’s suite of rooms. Praesert Sadibayan had been working at his computer workstation. He strode to greet his visitors.

“Captain Van Zandt? Subminister Sadibayan of the Ministry for Science. Good of you to come so quickly.”

“My admiral said that it was urgent.”

“It is indeed!”

Sadibayan returned to his desk and palmed a scanner plate. There was a muted click from somewhere inside the desk as a drawer popped open. Sadibayan retrieved a sealed folder marked with various security sigils. He thumbed the spot that would deactivate the self-destruct mechanism and removed several computer printouts.