The Unearthing (50 page)

“Thank you,” Kodo said. He turned to his team of biologists, “We’ll be splitting into two teams: my team will start at Section Eight Nine Three and the second team, led by Doctor MacLean will begin at Section Thirteen. The idea will be for us to pinpoint exactly how long the Ship has been here based on the animals found at the start of the collection and those found at the end of the collection. We can also expect to discover several heretofore never-seen species.”

Goodrich, one of Kodo’s palaeobiologists, raised her hand.

“Yes, Doctor Goodrich?”

“Doctor Kodo, exactly what form will the specimens sampled take?”

Kodo shrugged. “Why not ask the expert?” Kodo asked. Goodrich looked self-conscious. Kodo nodded to encourage her.

“Umm…Ship?” Goodrich asked, hesitantly, “What form do the biology specimens take?”

“EACH SPECIMEN COMPRISES BOTH FLUID AND TISSUE SAMPLES FROM EACH SUBJECT SAMPLED. MICROBIAL LIFE IS CLASSIFIED BY A NUMBER SEQUENCE BEGINNING WITH FIVE-ZERO-ZERO. VEGETABLE LIFE IS CLASSIFIED BY A NUMBER SEQUENCE BEGINNING WITH FIVE-ZERO-FIVE. ANIMAL LIFE IS CLASSIFIED BY A NUMBER SEQUENCE BEGINNING WITH FIVE-FIVE-ZERO.”

The tramcar pulled into station. As Kodo and his team debarked heading to the lift banks, the Ship continued its summation:“THE SAMPLE CASES CAN BE PLACED INTO SCANNERS AT ANY STATION. GENETIC SEQUENCERS CREATE ANATOMICALLY PRECISE HOLOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF THE SELECTED SAMPLE, WHICH CAN THEN BE DISSECTED, DOWN TO A MICROMOLECULAR LEVEL.” They reached the lift bank.

“Level Three Eight Seven,” Kodo said as he and his team stepped into another of the vast lifts. The car began dropping, taking them to their destination.

“Let’s get to work,” Kodo said.

♦♦♦

Andrews and N’banga discovered a science facility to rival the greatest laboratories on Earth. The Ship described to them chemistry and physics labs, astronomy and astrophysics systems far in advance of anything as yet imagined by the Human mind.

“The Ship actually
recorded
the Betelgeuse Supernova event,” N’banga exclaimed, “It has mapped black holes, isolated the Higgs Boson; my God, Michael; the catalogue of what the Ship’s Builders have discovered and recorded about the physical universe is astounding. They’ve disproved so many established theories and proven so many more…it will take us centuries just to catch up on the
reading
, never mind duplicating their experiments!”

“Whoever it was that built the Ship seems to have done so primarily with research in mind,” Andrews remarked.

“Ah yes,” N'banga agreed, raising an exclamatory finger, “But to what end? So much of Humankind’s scientific research has come from military need. Was the research performed by the Ship’s civilization done for academic, economic, political or military need?”

“You’re anthropomorphizing,” Andrews countered, “Ascribing Human emotions and Human values to alien beings: we don’t know that the drives of the Builders were in any way similar to our own. Everything in Human civilization from residential communities to politics is almost uniformly dominated by alpha males and alpha females. This has its roots in the behaviour of the primitive animals Humans evolved from. We don’t know how
anything
, let alone primitive animal behaviour, occurred where the Builders came from.”

“Evolution is evolution,” N’banga said, “Survival of the fittest.”

“
I don’t think Doctor Kodo is an evolutionary biologist, but I am sure he would argue differently. Evolution and survival of the fittest aren’t necessarily synonymous. Likewise, Darwin’s theories have been proven to be incomplete at best. The most advantageous adaptation or mutation is a determining factor both of animal survivability and behaviour. Aggressive and predatory behaviour is not necessarily a universal trait.”

“
Could you explain what you mean?”

“
Long ago, an author by the name of James P. Hogan wrote the
Giants Trilogy
; required reading for most scholars of speculative fiction; a trilogy about an alien race that evolved as completely nonaggressive vegetarians; who did not have the same violent civilization that we, Humans to this day still have. Predatory behaviour all but died out on their world because in primitive times the prey animals of their world evolved highly poisonous tissue that all but killed off their predators and allowed them to flourish instead. Suppose, then that the Builders evolved along those lines? Or for the sake of argument, that their evolution took forms we can’t even imagine? Only the Builders can say for sure why they built the Ship. And they aren’t around to tell us.”

♦♦♦

The cultural archives were unique: a gigantic museum with hundreds of floors of tools, clothing, artwork, histories, literature, music and musical instruments, technology, relics and mementos from thousands of worlds, thousands of civilizations. Peter couldn’t even begin to decide where to start. As head of Xenoanthropology, it fell to him to oversee rather than participate in the catalogue. The world’s leading anthropologists, curators from the great museums were all under his direction, now. He grieved for the Prof, who should have been here to see this place. And Peter wanted very much to do exactly what he knew the Prof would have done: simply
explore
the Archive. He walked to a panel on the wall leading to the massive structure’s central level.

“
I guess the first question I should ask would be about the people from your own civilization.”

“
WHAT SPECIFICALLY WOULD YOU KNOW, PETERPAULSON?
” The Ship asked, in reply.

“
Tell me about them. What were they called? What did they look like? What were their goals as people? How long did they live? General information.”

“
THE RACE WHO DESIGNED THIS WERE KNOWN AS THE EOULF. HERE IS A REPRESENTATION OF THEM.
”

Suddenly there appeared beside the workstation an alien being. Peter nearly fell before realizing it was as the Ship had said: a representation; a hologram. There was nothing in the being that Peter could even recognize as remotely similar to Human. The Eoulf was roughly three meters tall; at least half as wide. Peter couldn’t tell if the creature itself was naturally a translucent, luminous blue or if that was simply how the Ship’s imaging made the Eoulf appear. It looked as though bunches and bunches of fine, delicate strands had been woven together into a large, cylindrical stack. They graced the floor, spreading out in a pool. The upper end of the Eoulf looked much the same, the tentacles fanning out around the top of the…
torso
, Peter supposed. The upper tentacles ended in long, slender fibres that looked almost like hair. Peter wondered if they weren’t the Eoulf equivalent of hands. Between bunches of the fibrous strands long, fanlike membranes fluttered in the air currents. A thick disk was centered above the top of the tentacles, sitting atop a round, slowly pulsating mound.

“
I’ve never seen anything like them,” Peter said. “No. They look…
almost
…like some form of jellyfish. Has Doctor Kodo seen this image, yet?”

“
MARKKODO IS OTHERWISE PREOCCUPIED. IF YOU WISH, I WILL TELL YOU, NOW, MORE ABOUT THE EOULF.
”

“
Please,” Peter answered. “I’d like that, very much.”

♦♦♦

Bloom and her team went to the drive decks and moved on. They had only been allowed a glimpse of the Ship’s main power core; the Ship would not tell them what it was, or how it worked. But the image Bloom had recorded and would remember through all the long days of her life: They stood together on one side of a large window. The window itself was a transparent metal alloy nearly ten meters thick. On the other side was a chamber kilometres across and high. In the center was a massive, brilliant star of whiter than white light, sitting atop a dark column taller than Everest. Constant arcs of energy the size of expressways shot from the white orb to a ridged cone above. Around the starlike flare spun several large, black slabs of undetermined material. They spun so fast they created a strobe effect in the observation room. Further out, another series of larger slabs of black spun. Between the two rings, there seemed to pass an invisible wave; a barely-perceptible distortion of space and time that fed the smaller ring. They were looking at the Ship’s power distribution node. The power was channelled from a ring that ran around the lower half of the Ship, which its control entity explained to them, was a spinning torroidal black hole. The Ship said the technology involved was beyond their level of development to understand, or to use. It would provide the equations behind the physics, but their Race would have to learn for themselves how to apply them. Engineer as well as pilot, Bloom shivered at the prospect of Humankind learning to build such a thing as this. Such a feat would either elevate or destroy them.

♦♦♦

At last they came to the hangars. The hangars were all located along the upper half of the outer hull. What Bloom discovered not so much a hangar bay as a hive. The hangar bays were stacked in row after row; each row lined with alcoves, five high. In each alcove was a Bug. On the left side of the bay the alcoves held the same bugs that Bloom and her team had secretly worked with at Groom Lake. On the right side were larger, wider, fatter looking craft; more Beetle than Bug. Bloom suspected they served as either cargo or personnel transport. She also expected that both “breeds” of craft could be adapted to fit several different mission profiles.

Each ascending level was accessible both by lift and by gantry. A series of recessed tracks were laid out on the floor of the bay, which led up and out through valve-like doors along the far bulkhead. Multiple craft could be launched at once it seemed. That could prove a tactical advantage, especially on a vessel the size of the Ship.

“There are hundreds of bays like this along the outer hull,” Bloom said, “How many craft do you count, ladies and gentlemen?”

“According to the Ship the alcoves themselves serve as complete work bays for each craft,” Brubaker said, “Repair, refit, refuelling and regeneration are all done from within. Apparently there are five ships in each alcove; the vessels can be launched in waves.”

They made their way onto the main deck of the hangar bay. Bloom crouched down to examine the nearest track. There were a series of rails spaced laterally down the length of the track on floor and sides.

“Guys, look at this,” she called to her team. They came over and examined the track.

“What do you make of it?” Bloom asked.

“They’re spaced out like the mag couplings on a high-speed tram,” Someone observed, “It looks like an accelerator bed. Maybe that’s how they launch the Bugs. Zip ‘em along, each magnetic rail pulling it faster than the last…shit they could possibly shoot out of the Ship fairly close to the speed of light.”

“Yeah,” Bloom said, nodding, “Yeah. Of course, there
is
only one way to find out,” She said, rising, “And that’s to fly one out of here.” Bloom walked away from the launch rail towards the nearest alcove and Bug waiting within.

“I think I could take her up,” She said to no one in particular, “I think I could even fly it out of here.”

“That’d be great,” Brubaker said, “Considering our orders; but how would we get it through World Ship Preserve airspace without being detected?” Bloom considered this. She’d been briefed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself for the mission. His orders to her were crystal clear: Locate and acquire a Bug from the Ship. Provisions would be made, the Chairman had said, to get it past the security system.

“That’s been taken care of,” She told Brubaker, “Right now, let’s get this thing into the launch trench and see if we can’t figure out how to the bee out of the hive.” She went to the cockpit. The chamber filled up with strange, warm liquid, just as she’d experienced at Groom Lake. The controls appeared around her. Only this time the symbols on the panels had been translated into English. She brought up main power and activated the Bug’s zero buoyancy fields. The null field, as Groom Lake called it, set off an interesting system within the Bug; one that the best techs had yet to understand: it neutralized the Bug’s kinetic and inertial mass, making it nearly as weightless as a large balloon. Bloom pushed forward on her sticks and the Bug slipped slowly from its alcove. From somewhere outside the Bug in the hangar itself, loud mechanical noises resonated and suddenly some invisible force was guiding the Bug into the nearest trench. The Bug sat there, Bloom at the controls staring at the far end of the trench.

“That was cool,” Bloom purred.

“Now all we have to do is fly the thing out of here unnoticed,” Brubaker said, “Just how do we do that?”

“That would be where I come in,” They all turned at the new voice. There in the open doorway of the launch bay stood Major Benedict.

“Major,” Bloom said when she’d climbed from the Bug, the fluttering shock of discovery still fresh in her stomach, “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” Her security chief said with grim authority. He stepped forward as Bloom and her engineering crew gathered together in a nervous group. Bloom watched him carefully, wondering what was going to happen next, not particularly caring to find out.

Benedict toggled his headset and spoke: “Go central security voice command link,” He said, waiting for the connection to establish itself. Within seconds, it had.