He Who Dares: Book Two (The Gray Chronicals 2) (73 page)

“Time and space have got to the other one.”

“It's a wonder we moved it at all.”  The moment the door close, a magenta light began flashing on a panel over the operating handle, and continued for almost a minute.

“I think the airlock is filling, sir.”

“But with what? - Janice?”

“Checking, sir.”  She answered, pulling an air sampling unit out of a pocket on her battle suit.  She worked the unit for a moment.

“It says air, sir, but I wouldn’t chance breathing it, the proportions are wrong.”

“I agree, keep your face shield closed for now.”

The magenta, light turn to orange, and Mike assumed that it meant the air pressure on each side of the other door was the same.  Grasping the handle he edged it across the slot.  The second door opened with a slight sigh as the air equalized, but there was no extreme difference.  Mike slid it all the way across and the door rumbled open.

“These are blast doors' sir, and three times as thick as ours.” Conner observed.

“Whoever they were fighting must be a tough lot.”

“I hope we don’t run into them.”

The passageway on the other side was spotlessly clean, with carpeted desks,  and here and there they could see pictures or murals on the walls.  What they represent was any one guess.  Mike had Janice video them anyway.  They search for another two hours before Mike called a halt, knowing this wasn’t getting him very far.  There was just too much ship to search and too few people.  He'd have to bring over a good portion of the Nemesis crew to search her properly.  All of the objects they brought back went into the decontamination units, as  did they when they came back aboard.  After everyone had taken a shower and cleared up, they met again in the Wardroom for a conference.  Mike opened the ‘All stations’ comm link so all the crew knew what was going on, and what they’d seen.

“This ship is a treasure house of artifacts, and we could spend a year exploring her, but we don’t have the time.”

“Come on, Skipper, we have to explore her more than this.” Pete Standish put in, obviously eager to get over there himself for a look.

“I agree, so I’ve decided to take the shuttle and the ships launch the next time and as many people as we can fit.”

“Great!”

“Hold on,”  He said, holding his hand up to stop the babble of excitement, “this will be a sweep to pick up any portable object and video record as much as we can.  We will also try to find, and get onto the command deck and computer system, if there is one, and download what we can, if possible.”

“And after that?”

“We head for home and have them bring back a few experts.”

“I hate to say it, Skipper, but unless we can find a way to use this WP from both sides, we are no better off than before.”

“If this ship is causing the problem, we may have to find a way of moving her.”

“Jesus!  How on Earth do we do that.”

“If we try to move her, Skipper, she may end up going down the black hole.”  Janice put in, “we’d lose any alien technology into the bargain.”

“She may have jump engine herself, and we might be able to take her home with us!”  Someone else put in.

“Right, and you have just won the lottery.”  Someone joked.

“There’s no telling if we can move her, let alone transfer her to Sol system, so let’s put that aside for the moment until we know more about her.”

“I can just see the Sirriens letting us keep her for long.  One look and they’d start a war just to get their dirty hands on her.”

“You could be right.”

“What about taking her to Avalon, sir.”  Cooper put in.

“That will mean that this prize and any salvage right will be in the hands of the Avalon Government.  That’s if they have deep space tugs big enough to handle something this size.”

“What about salvage right if we do that?”

“Good point.  Does anyone have a problem with that?” He looked up at the people around the table, then at the video pick up. “Speak up if you do, as I don’t want anyone complaining later that they weren’t asked.”  No one complained, but he could sense the excitement at his announcement that he would be taking a substantial number of the crew to search the alien ship.

“Pete, you’d better figure out how many we can take, plus extra air, and start a lottery to see who goes.”

“I take it I can get in on this as well?”  He asked, and Mike laughed.

“Yes, Pete, you can put your name in as well for the next trip.”

It turned out that they could get thirty people in the shuttle, and ten in the ship's launch, forty four in all, including the pilots and co-pilots.  They filled every available liquid air tank they could find and loaded them aboard, as well as every available bag, satchel and back pack.  This time, Mike looked for and found a small hole near the bow, high up on the hull, near what he hoped might be the Bridge or CIC.  The damage inside was confined to the one compartment, but they had to cover the opening with a temporary seal and pressurize the room before they could jimmy the door open.  The seal bulged as the pressure between the two equalized, and Mike got them out of the room and the door closed before it blew.  Once in the main corridor they searched for an outer hatch, finally finding and  enormous airlock.  This could hold twenty people at the time, and within thirty minutes everyone was aboard and assembled.  As before, the lights, or illumination came on, and splitting them up into groups of three he sent them off to search the ship.  He didn’t have to add the warning to watch their step, Pete had given everyone a lecture about that before they boarded.

The searcher spread out, and Mike took Janice and Conner with him to look for the Bridge.  He tried keeping an open link at first, but the babble of excitement was too great and he set his comm unit to standby mode after a while.  For an hour they searched, going from room to room, deck to deck, up and down stairwells and automatic elevators, or lift shafts, but it wasn’t until they covered a quarter of a mile that they found something. They entered another compartment, and this did resemble a Bridge, and even as they entered the giant screens around the room lit up, and a voice began speaking.  The words were unintelligible, but it was soon clear that whatever it was, kept repeating the same thing.







“It has to be some sort of automatic system, probably giving a warning of intruders, or asking for information.”

“Seems logical, Janice, see if you can find a terminal, or something similar.”

“Aye, sir.”

She walked around the room, her hands running over the smooth shelf that seamlessly stuck out from the bulkhead. There were several objects lying around the giant room, and Mike picked them up and dropped them in his pack, seeing Conner do the same.

“Found something, Skipper.”

“What do you have?”  Mike walked over and looked over her shoulder.

“Not, sure, sir, but when I scanned it with a probe, this came up on the screen."

“


scrolled across the screen in odd looking letters.  Then it changed, sped up,



“I’d say it was trying to communicate, sir.”

“Run the probe over it again.”  Mike ordered.  She did and the screen changed again. This time it came up in Anglic but was almost unreadable

“YouwhoARE - hereyouwhatdo.”

“Cindy!”  Mike called, keying his comm unit, trying to suppress his excitement.

“Here, Skipper.” She answered, sounding a little miffed that she lost out in the lottery.  She was standing in for Sally Goldman.

“Can you download the language file to my comm unit?”

“Let me see if it will fit in the buffer, sir - no, I can only download part of it, sir.”

“Is it structured?”

“Yes, sir, in three parts, but they are still too big to fit, sir.”

“What if you downloaded them in binary code, would that help?” Janice interrupted.

“Yes, sir, they would fit then, but they wouldn’t be usable.”

“Good, download the first part.”  She did, and it only just fit.

Mike then rested his arm on the consult and waited.  Somehow, this unit had a way of reading the memory in Janice’s probe, and he suspected that’s where it had got the words from.  The probe's memory didn’t hold much language data, or structure, but he was hoping that like all computers it would be able to read binary code.  Within seconds, the screen went wild, words and symbols flashed across it, first in binary code, then words. The trouble was, they didn’t make sense.  Mike dumped the memory and ordered Cindy to download the next file.

This time, after the unit extracted the file the words started to make some sense, but they were flashing by so fast that they couldn’t read them.  The last file did the trick, as this one must have contained the structure and cadence of Standard English.

“Who are you?
”
Scrolled across the screen.  Mike and the other looked at one another.  There was no keyboard, so how could they answer.

“What do we do now, Skipper?”

“I’m open to suggestion.”

“Without a keyboard, how on Earth do we talk to it.”  All three looked around for some form of key pad, or other input devise.

“I am receiving your radio transmissions.
”
The screen announced.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,”  Mike chuckled, “I’m Captain Mike Gray, of the Royal Naval Vessel H.M.S. Nemesis, and this is Chief Petty Officer Conner Blake, and Leftenant Janice Fletcher.”  He said, looking around the room.

“Thank you, one called Gray - where are you from?”

“A planet called Earth, in the system on the other side of this warp point I think.”

“Warp point - explain?”

“This gravitational anomaly you are in.”

“This gravitational anomaly you name a warp point is called a gateway, but I will accept you calling it by a different name.”

“Thanks, but who, or what are you?”

“I am the translocation Battleship ‘Dracon’ of the Anacas Republic.”

“OK, and how long have you been here?”

“For 8000 cycles.
”
Mike looked at the others and shrugged.

“I will have to learn a way of converting that into our time measurement system for it to make sense to me.”

“Please state the orbital rotation of your star around the Galactic center.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have that information.”

“What is the location of your home planet in relationship with its sun, and what is your planetary rotation?”

“Earth is the third planet from the sun and has a three hundred and sixty-five day rotation.  We break that down into 24 separate segments called hours to make one unit called a day.”

“Then by you time measurement, I have been here for 85000 of your years.”

“Good God!” Janice breathed.

“Have you taken the time dilation effect of the black hole event horizon?”  Janice asked.