Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera (20 page)

“Where are you?”

No response.

“Are you getting a
signal” he asked the scooter.

“I was” the machine
replied “but it disappeared just before you arrived.”

“Take us to the last location you have for her.”

They flew to a field of
giant boulders two hundred meters north of the hill. To Carson’s relief he saw
the creature pacing to and fro at the edge of the rock field. For the moment at
least Aiyana had not replaced chicken stew on the menu, but the animal was not
ready to go home hungry.

“She has to be in the
rocks” Carson said to the scooter “get some altitude and see if we can spot
her.”

“There you are!” said
Aiyana’s voice over their channel.

“Oh thank God! Where are
you honey? I can’t see you.”

“I’m in the middle of the
all the boulders – too narrow for Mr. Lizard to follow.”

“Where? We’re still not
getting a positional fix.”

“All this stone is
messing up my signal. I’ll walk out into the open.”

“The hell you will, that
thing is still sniffing around. I’ll come in and find you and we’ll come out
together.”

“My hero! You’re so
sweet.”

Carson landed the scooter
at the edge of the boulder field on the opposite side from where he last saw
the creature.

“Hover at one hundred
meters” he said as he dismounted. “One set of teeth marks is enough.”

As soon as he had reached
ground level Aiyana’s signal had vanished again. They were using their survey
satellites to create a communications network and provide global positioning, but
there were simply not enough of them to get perfect cover.

Carson looked around;
satisfied that the creature was not in his immediate vicinity he slipped into
an opening between two huge rocks. Ten meters in it dead-ended. As he turned to
leave he saw a pointed snout outlined against the narrow strip of sky where he
had entered.

He stopped moving. Had
the creature spotted him? The snout withdrew. He waited silently for five
minutes then padded forward, pausing before walking into open ground. Everything
was quiet; it must have left by now. He glanced round the edge of the rock. Everything
was clear. As he stepped out into the open he heard a growl – the lizard was
emerging from another opening no more than ten meters away.

The animal roared and
charged straight at him. Carson screamed and ran full tilt, then dodged into
the next opening between the boulders. Damn! This one was larger and his
pursuer lumbered in after him. Up ahead the stone walls converged. Surely it
could not follow him there?

Carson sprinted forward
but he sound of pursuit kept getting closer. As he reached the narrowest part
of the gap a massive blow threw him face forward onto the wet sandy soil. He
desperately scrambled along the ground until he was certain the creature could
not follow. He glanced behind, his pursuer was trying to force its huge body
further into the ravine but it was not going to make it. Carson actually took
one step closer to examine the thrusting head.

The jaws were lined with
row upon row of dagger teeth and its tongue must have been a meter long. The
large amber eyes had diagonal pupils giving them a diabolical appearance, but
now that it was no longer an immediate danger Carson simply felt wonder that
such a magnificent animal had managed to survive in this desolate world.

He turned his attention
to the ravine ahead. Mercifully, it seemed to continue into the rock field. Carson
hurried on, leaving his new friend to find another meal. After fifty meters the
ravine widened again and he found himself in an open space surrounded by giant
boulders. Best of all, he was picking up Aiyana’s signal. He hurried into
another narrow space between the rocks in what he hoped was the right
direction. His back hurt like hell from where the creature had struck him but
that could wait.

Carson entered into
another clearing and shouted with relief at the sight of Aiyana standing with
her back towards him. She turned her head and smiled but uncharacteristically
she did not rush forward to greet him. He trotted forward to join her. Damn, he
must have fell in a puddle, his left side was soaking wet. Pulling open his
jacket he saw that the lining was gleaming red.

The next moment he
realized what was distracting Aiyana. Directly in front of her was an array of
weathered containers covered with ancient symbols. Carson cried out, took one
further step, and crashed unconscious into the ground.

“He should be coming
round anytime now.”

“He will be alright,
won’t he?”

“He’ll be fine.”

Carson lay, eyes shut,
listening to the voices, peacefully floating in zero gravity.

“He should definitely be
awake now. Try stimulating him.”

“Now there’s a challenge”

Warm lips touched his
mouth. He smiled and gently returned the kiss.

“Oh, he’s conscious all
right”

“I’m administering five
milligrams of epinephrine”

The world came into focus
– he was on board the ship. He could hear the whisper of the environmentals and
the subliminal song of the Higgs Engine. He opened his eyes to see Aiyana’s
face.

“Welcome back spaceman”

He was lying in the ship’s medical tank with the top half of the sarcophagus suspended a meter above him. Carson
raised his head and stared down his body – it was enveloped in a nebulous haze
of cables as fine as plant roots.

“How long?”

“Three days. We had to
regrow half your back muscles.”

It finally dawned on him

“Oh my God, you found the
Yongding’s cargo! Hey ship, get me out of here.”

The top of the device
descended and a breathing mask slid over his face. Carson felt his body
drenched in a warm, yeasty liquid. He pulled his head up again and through the
dim light saw the tangle of vascular tubes dissolve. After a sterile rinse the ship re-opened the tank and declared him free to move. Aiyana offered her hand as he eased out.

“Wow” he said cautiously
flexing his naked body “that’s the worst injury I’ve had in decades”

“I’m glad to hear it. I
sprayed on a layer of skin from the emergency kit and hauled you here as fast
as I could.”

But Carson was not
interested in discussing his health.

“We found it!” he yelled
hugging Aiyana.

“Did you try to open any
of the modules?”

“Oh God, no. I just
stumbled across them while you were busy rescuing me.”

He let the jibe go.

“Did you get any images?”

“No, but Tallis’s fleet
has taken lots, she sent them yesterday.”

“She’s still down there? Is
she safe?”

“Oh yes, she said our
friend snuffled around the base for a while but he just kept banging his snout
on the walls and finally went home – to the ocean I guess.”

Aiyana insisted that
Carson eat before they checked Tallis’s transmissions.

“We have to get solid
food inside you to restart your digestive system.”

He ate as slowly as he
could in the ship’s tiny galley before hurrying to the main cabin.

“Tallis built two
ultra-high definition cameras, which is pretty damn smart considering she’s
blind, so we need a large space to see the result.”

As they entered they were
greeted with a full scale view of the clearing in the rocks. Carson floated in
wonder through the seemingly solid landscape.

There were thirty-two
identical cube-like modules in a rectangular array. They were all partially
buried in the sandy soil and as far as Carson could tell each was about two
meters tall.

“It’s a miracle they’re
not completely covered-up after eight thousand years” Aiyana said. “I guess
it’s the mild weather – lots of drizzle but nothing catastrophic that would
bury them in silt.”

“Why here?” asked Carson.

“The rock formation would
be relatively easy to spot, especially as it’s on a coastal promontory. I’ll
bet they didn’t have any kind of positioning system.”

Carson was impressed. Aiyana
had being doing a lot of thinking while he was in the tank. He peered closer. Originally,
the polycarbonate casings must have been black but centuries of exposure had
weathered them to a dull grey. Even so, many of them still sported visible
symbols.

“Earth moving tractor”
he read out in Mandarin. Next to the Baihua characters the label was
reproduced in Ancient English.

“Oh God!” he shouted “Can
you imagine? An entire functioning machine built on Old Earth!”

“Valuable?” Aiyana asked,
but her teasing was lost on him.

Carson rushed to another
container.

“Here’s another tractor.
Of course,” he laughed “they brought spares! There’s nothing like this in the
Archives. Most of the colonists’ machinery was cannibalized and
re-cannibalized. It was decades before they developed any manufacturing
capabilities.”

He pointed at a square of
discolored plastic; just visible was a raised array of Arabic numerals.

“This must be the lock. They
would press the numerals in a special sequence to open the container.”

“Any chance it still
works?”

Carson shook his head.

“So what do we do now?”

“We should break camp,
head to New Earth and hand the location over the Archives Council. Once they
get off the floor they’ll dispatch an entire department to perform an exquisitely
precise excavation, which will take five years to complete.”

“You’re really going to
do that?” asked Aiyana.

“Are you serious?” he
grinned “Come on, let’s gear up and get down there.”

Carson and Aiyana watched the tiny workers crawl
over the module. They had sweated for two hours digging away the soil to reveal
the entire unit. As far as they could tell the vertical cover was completely
sealed, but if there was an opening Tallis would find it.

“There is no entry, nest mates”

“That’s good news and bad
news” said Carson. “The good news is that the contents should be in excellent
condition.”

“And the bad news?”

“We’ll have to bust in.”

He pulled out a small
cutter and punched a neat hole in the ancient lock. Four teams of workers
appeared each bearing a tiny red module that they carried through the newly-cut
opening.

“It smells very old [untranslatable] in
here”

“Not surprising, you’re
the first living creature to enter for eight thousand years.”

After depositing their
loads inside the lock the workers reappeared and clambered into their miniature
transporter. Carson, Aiyana, and the tiny vessel all retreated into one of the
surrounding canyons.

“The Archives Council
would kill me for this” Carson said as a small boom echoed round the clearing. They
hurried to inspect the results. The surface of the lock had disappeared
revealing its charred mechanism. Aiyana inspected the seal; the perfect join
had been replaced by a two millimeter gap. Carson inserted a crowbar and
heaved. The cover moved a centimeter. Both of them threw their weight on the
lever. The cover moved another five centimeters. Abandoning the bar they
grabbed the edge a pulled the module open. Carson ran round to look inside.

“Oh God!” he shouted.

Aiyana joined him and peered
into the darkened interior. The module was empty.

“This is vandalism, we
can’t blow any more.”

Carson was staring at the
fifth module they had forced open. All were as empty as the first.

“Let’s try another way”
said Aiyana

She lifted up her head
and addressed the little vessel floating above them.

“Tallis, could you build
something that generates electromagnetic radiation in the exahertz range?”

“We can have a device ready in six hours”

“Brilliant!” Carson yelled “gamma rays – they’ll be able to penetrate straight through the casings”

“It’s getting late”
Aiyana said “let’s talk at the camp”

They reconnected with the
communications network as soon as the scooter rose above the curtain of rock
surrounding the clearing.

“How did it go?” the
buggy asked.

Carson retold the day’s
events.

“Now we have to figure
out how to image gamma rays”

“Why not use my
phase-array sensors?” said the buggy.

Carson sighed, suddenly
everyone was smarter than him.

“I’m afraid to ask” he
said as they entered the living module.

Aiyana spared him the
effort. “Hey stove, what’s for dinner?”

“Synthetic vegetable
quiche”

“Oh dear God”

She circled her arms
around him.

“You know the way Tallis
sometimes gets confused about humans? Well, when you first got injured she
suggested that I eat you and simply hatch another nest mate.”

“Hmm, maybe for dessert”

Two hours later they were
lying in bed staring up through the transparent ceiling. For once the clouds
had parted to reveal a night sky gorgeous with stars. Their spontaneous second
course had been wonderful and now they were drifting towards sleep.

“Carson” said Aiyana
“there’s no way anyone would come this far to leave a bunch of empty storage
modules, is there?”

“Nah, someone took the
contents. It must have been whoever seeded the oceans with complex life-forms.”

He lifted his head.

“Hey buggy, did the ship ever get back to you about terraforming this planet?”

“Yes, there are no direct
references to Mirama c but it thinks it found a passing mention in a history of
post-colonial expansion.”

“And?”

“About six thousand years
ago a private foundation called New Habitable Systems got the idea of founding
settlements on bacteria worlds. Apparently they seeded several hundred planets
before they ran out of money.”

“I guess that explains
Mr. Lizard” said Aiyana.

They nuzzled in the
darkness.

“Wait a minute” said Carson “on the third cassette Sakyamuni said that all the storage modules were distributed
before they settlement of New Earth.”

“So?”

“But according to the ship the terra-formers arrived two thousand years
after
the Yongding, and whoever opened
the units didn’t break in like we did – the seals were still good – which means
they had the access codes. How could they have known the codes? How could the
locks still be working after all that time? Something is wrong.”

“Perhaps we’ll puzzle it
out tomorrow”

“Maybe, but I’ll be
amazed if we do.”

But once again Aiyana was
right.

Early the next morning
they landed the buggy in the clearing.

“Don’t worry” Carson said to the machine as he unbolted the last of its sensors “we’ll reassemble you as
good as new afterwards.”

“Carson, I’ve never been
as good as new. You built me from reconditioned parts.”

He laughed and carried
the square black sensor to the makeshift frame which already held three similar
units. The four mounted sensors created a rectangle about the same size as a
storage container. He placed the frame against the first target’s weathered
surface and positioned Tallis’s gamma-ray generator – an improbably small
device no bigger than his thumb – on the opposite side.

“Can you still talk to
your sensors?” Aiyana asked the buggy.

“Yes, but you’ll have to
use at least two angles if you want me to generate a three-dimensional image.”

They retreated to a safe
distance from the radiation while the buggy captured the first data. Carson
then repositioned the generator and sensors to create a second image from a
different angle. After that he and Aiyana climbed into the buggy to inspect the
results. A ghostly hollow shape floated before their eyes.

“Nothing!” groaned Carson “One down, twenty-six to go.”

“At least we didn’t
damage anything” said Aiyana “I mean, even the empty modules are precious,
aren’t they?”

“I’ll say. None of the
original transportation containers survived on New Earth, so just by themselves
they’re a major discovery.”

“So we’re already in the
Archives Council’s good books” she said, trying to cheer him up.

“Yeah, but compared to
what should have been here…”

They positioned their
equipment at the second module but it resolved to be another blank. After that
their work settled into a rhythm. They placed the sensor array by each
container, took two images then returned to the buggy to check the results.

Towards the end of the day
they had processed twenty units. Both of them were tired and cranky from the
strain of hauling round the sensors and the continual disappointment of empty
modules. Carson was stretching and trying to summon the energy to finish the
final six when the buggy spoke up.

“Hey, that last unit –
could we take another shot? I thought I could see something on the floor.”

The news galvanized them.
The array of sensors was heaved to a new position and they were soon in the
buggy’s darkened cabin staring at the enhanced image. At the bottom of the
container was a faint translucent rectangle.

“What is it?” Aiyana whispered.

“God knows” said Carson squinting at the anonymous outline “the resolution isn’t good enough to tell.”

He opened a channel.

“Tallis, did you bring
your explosives with you?”

It took over an hour to
clear the silt from around the module. Carson and Aiyana were aching and soaked
with sweat but far too excited to complain. Nothing appeared to differentiate
this unit from the others, although the surface was too weathered to read the
list of contents.

Finally Tallis was able
to lay her charges. Minutes later they leapt into action as the echo of the
explosion died away. By now they were experts at breaking into the ancient
containers and it took just a few practiced tugs to pull the module open. Carson
played his flashlight over the interior. Above the clearing the light from the
late afternoon sky was beginning to fade.

“What the –”

“What is it?” Aiyana
asked, trying to peer over his shoulder.

On the floor of the
container was a flat clear rectangle, thirty centimeters by fifteen. Carson
moved the flashlight around, trying to gauge the object’s refractive index.

“I think it’s made of
glass.” He stopped – the light had caught something on the surface.

“It’s engraved with
Ancient English.”

He leaned forward, trying
to make out the words. For thirty seconds he was completely still, then,
twisting round he bellowed “Hey buggy, turn on your headlights. Tallis, get in
here. I need a high-def recording of the entire interior.”

“Honey, what is it?”
Aiyana asked him. She was alarmed to see that he was trembling.

Carson ignored her
question.

“Darling” he said taking
her hand “you know that carry-case we have for the analysis tools? As soon as
Tallis is finished I want you to take the buggy back to camp and get it. Dump
the contents – I don’t care where – and make some padding, lots of padding, for
the case’s interior. Cut up the bedclothes or whatever.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“No” he crouched down at
the edge of the container. “I’m not moving.”

“And” he shouted as she
scrambled into the buggy “bring some surgical gloves.”

She returned an hour
later. Carson was still squatting by the open unit.

“Perfect” he pronounced
as he inspected the open carry-case. He placed it on the floor of the container
next to the glass rectangle and pulled on the surgical gloves.

“I have to be calm” he
said. “Really, I have no right to move it but there’s no way I’m leaving it
here.”

He took three long
breaths then reached out, eased his fingers under the object and with wincing
care placed it in the padded interior of the case. He closed the lid and stood
up. No father carrying his first-born child moved with more care than Carson as he placed the case into the buggy.

He seemed to calm down once
it was stowed.

“Come on, let’s get to the
camp.”

“What is it?” Aiyana
asked again as they flew through the darkness.

“It’s a message” was all
that he would say.

Carson carried the case
into the camp’s habitation module and laid it on a memory-shape table. He
fussed around the room and returned with a small portable spotlight which he
position at an oblique angle.

“That should make the
engraving more visible.”

He opened the case and
together they read the ancient words:

The fact that you are
reading this message proves that the people of New Earth have succeeded in
building another starship. I celebrate that you have survived and prospered. Much
time has passed I am sure, decades, possibly centuries.

You may not know who I
am, so I should introduce myself. My name is Aaron Lavan Samuelson. I am, or
rather I was, the Director of Science for the International Extrasolar
Expeditionary Project. I am one of the 1,002 survivors who made their way to
the Eridani system after escaping the terrible destruction of Earth.

I have the honor of
being the elected leader of the Technical Alliance, a dedicated group of
scientists and technicians who, unlike the other survivors, refuses to be
shackled by the so-called Covenant with Humanity, which deliberately aims to
limit the growth of technology. Perhaps the Covenant no longer exists and is
nothing but an historical curiosity. I sincerely hope so; otherwise humankind
may never advance beyond its primitive origins.