Exolegacy, page 13
By the time they were within visual sight of the Ago, the ozone fog was so thick that they couldn’t see much further than fifty meters in any direction. The facility coalesced into a solid shape as the flyer touched down near the main entrance. Even if it had kicked up any of the dust on landing, it would have been unnoticed. The air was already so thick that Gin and Rez stepped lively to keep up with Xikse as he trudged up to the entry point.
A solitary figure stood hunched at the door as they approached and raised a limb in greeting. Xikse repeated the gesture and the door irised open as the four of them stepped through. Only once it had been secured again, did their host speak. “I am Nasah, Straj to this Ago. I expect that you are the Doctors Hernandez and Donauri?” Nasah addressed the two women in masks, only giving a cursory glance to Xikse. Now that the light and air were clear, it was obvious that Nasah was an ejd, their scales worn to the point of feathering. Gin would have confused them with the other Straj that she had met at customs if she hadn’t known better. Their outward ignorance toward Xikse further illustrated the difference in class.
“I have been informed about your respective fields of expertise,” they continued. “I see that Doctor Donauri has a keen interest in ecopoiesis, what I believe you call ‘Terra-forming’, how quaint.”
“I prefer the more universal term ‘ecopoiesis’ as well,” Rez said. “I’ve been studying it my whole career, ever since your efforts here became known to Humanity, in fact.”
“I don’t see why it should be any of your interest,” Nasah shuddered. “As far as I’m concerned, humans can stay on your own planet and leave us to engineer our own.
“That doesn’t explain why Doctor Hernandez is here though. I expect some self-assumed privilege based on your father’s interference here?”
Rez picked up on their tone and guessed at their politics as well, but before she could try to argue her way into their graces, if there were any, Gin interjected.
“I am a scientist first, Straj Nasah, and I expect a professional such as yourself to treat me with the respect I have earned. I, like my colleague here, am very interested in the work that your people have begun to do here on Tiras. I do not wish to interfere at all, only to observe and learn. However, if you feel that there are too many humans here for you to handle, I am happy to wait in the flyer so that you can give your generous attention to Doctor Donauri.”
“I would prefer to have no humans here at all, but I’ve been instructed to be hospitable by my guild. I do suppose that there may be more intelligent exchanges if it were only myself and Doctor Donauri though. Perhaps you can accompany Doctor Hernandez out of the facility,” they directed at Xikse impersonally. “We cannot have stray humans wandering about unaccompanied.”
“Certainly, it would be my pleasure,” Xikse replied.
Nasah waved their arm in dismissal and Xikse turned to usher Gin back outside, giving her what she assumed was a look that translated as ‘well that was easy.’ They exited the Ago the same way they had just entered a moment before.
Once Gin and Xikse had disappeared back through the entrance, Nasah turned back to the interior of the facility and began shuffling off. Leaving Rez standing there, not knowing what to do next.
After a few paces, they stopped and called back without turning, “Did you wish to see the rest, or are you satisfied with the entryway?”
“Yes, of course!” Rez jumped to catch up. “I am not used to your manner, but I will keep up from here on. Do you mind if I ask questions?”
“They will not bother me, but be aware that I may not answer all of them. If any.” They continued through an opening into a larger space with an array of terminals at its center.
Rez was distracted from her exacerbation with Nasah’s tone when she drew close to the readouts on the terminals. They were of course all in Manis figures and words, but she wasn’t a novice at math, and had learned the basics of their mathematical figures. Thankfully, they used base ten; she wasn’t that good at mathematics. Nasah offered nothing by way of explanation, but stood aside and let Rez investigate the dials and readouts as closely as she wished.
“Is this the control for the exhaust?” Rez asked, pointing toward a panel with various levels of what she assumed were elemental makeups of the ozone being spewed upward. Nasah just looked at her, but even though they didn’t say anything, they did straighten a bit and their eyes widened. Rez took that as a look of surprise. Emboldened, she nodded to herself in assumed confirmation. Looking back at the readouts, she gleaned more now that she knew, or thought she knew, the purpose of the one panel.
Directing her attention to the opposite panel, she recognized symbols relating to radiation and force. There were dials that appeared to focus something, but when she reached out to them, Nasah broke their silence. “Do not touch anything. It is how it is supposed to be.”
That confirmed for her what she thought already. The dials were meant to focus something to do with radiation, which would exert a level of force on something. The only type of radiation that she could think of that might be able to exert any scale of force for larger applications was delta radiation. “What are you pushing with radiation?” She asked, not expecting a helpful answer if any.
To her surprise, Nasah approached her and pointed at the readout. “Good. Because you were able to understand that much, I will help you to understand more. The main mechanism of this Ago, and all of the others as well, is to exert a continuous and organized force on the core of Tiras, without puncturing the asthenosphere. Tiras’s core is not spinning fast enough to create an electromagnetic field around the planet. The Ago system was constructed to both gradually accelerate it and to release the excess of the process into the atmosphere to begin warming the surface.”
Rez had to close her mouth after Nasah’s fully informative explanation and the completely different manner in which they delivered it. “Thank you,” she managed, still stunned at their transparency. “Are you using delta radiation beams to bypass the mantle? I can’t think of anything stronger than that.”
“Ah, but there is where my allowance has to end, I have been instructed to withhold any information regarding technology that humans could not reasonably invent themselves. The nature of the radiation that we use is exotic to humans. We do not even know how it would affect you if you were to be exposed. Negatively, we assume.
“However, I can confirm that the effect it has on the core is acceptable to our purposes. We have been running the Ago network for roughly twelve revolutions around Buris, and the magnetosphere has already begun to show signs of regeneration.” Nasah ended in the straightest posture that Rez had seen yet, she understood it as pride in their work.
Some quick math in her head told her that if the network had been running for twelve Tiras years, that would be over twenty-two Earth years ago. “You mean that it took you almost twenty years to build the system since you arrived! That’s an incredible feat of engineering. How many Ago do you have in operation?”
“We have forty-two currently active Ago installations. I assume that humans would be able to count them through your surveillance satellites if you so wished.” Nasah responded matter-of-factly.
“That’s amazing…” Rez still couldn’t believe the organizational feat that the Ago network had achieved in so few years after first landing on an alien world. “And the atmosphere, the ozone, that you’re creating. Have you seen much difference since that has begun? I’ve felt that the air is much warmer than it was sixty Earth years ago since we don’t need heated suits, but how about the humidity content?”
Again, Nasah recognized Rez’s intuition and responded with fact instead of run-around. They stood there at the terminals for hours, playing the whittling game of Rez trying to get more information out of Nasah than they were allowed to reveal, purely out of curiosity as a scientist. Nasah, for their part, was a willing opponent and began answering her inquiries more openly after the first few forays.
By the time Rez’s com crackled to life with the signal from Xikse that it was time to return, she had become completely enamored with the ecopoiesis process that the Manisae had begun. Her mind was on fire with wanting to know the intricacies of the process that Nasah withheld from her but had to be satisfied with their restraint. She made her heartfelt thanks known to them and told them that she would be delighted to discuss further the Ago system or even perhaps answer any questions Nasah may have about her work. Where they might have scoffed at the offer to know anything about humans before, Nasah seemed to consider the offer at their parting. “Travel safely, Doctor Donauri, I will attempt to be available if you decide to revisit Ago-13.” And then they turned and disappeared through another portal in the wall, leaving Rez to find her own way back to the flyer.
31 Proof
Gin and Xikse sat in the flyer outside Ago-13 and plotted their route to the crater edge. They replaced their rebreather filters and tucked spare ones in their packs before exiting the vehicle. Even though it would have been much faster and more efficient to hop over to the gully that Gin had pinned on the map, it would be much more conspicuous, and would not go unreported by Straj Nasah. They doubted that it would make Rez’s attempts at communication easier either.
Gin had formulated a mental image of what the landscape might look like on her hike to the gully, but hadn’t factored in the ozone fog that veiled the crater. Thankfully, Xikse had a satellite-based compass that they both used to follow the carefully planned path. There was no trail to follow here. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been Manis or Human-made and would be long worn out, covered, or reshaped by natural geological occurrences. Progress was slower because of the limited visibility, but the gradual upward slope was fairly open and free of surprise cracks or boulders.
Eventually, a shape in the fog resolved, revealing the shadow of the crater’s lip. According to their locator, Gin and Xikse were standing at the mouth of the gully. Gin sat her pack down in the regolith and began scanning back and forth for any proof of tooled disturbance; any straight edges, or unnatural corners jutting out from the wall or ground. Xikse, knowing just what to do, began scanning in the opposite direction, falling right back into his official role.
“This brings back memories,” he said over their shared com.
“Oh?” replied Gin.
“You are not the first Hernandez that I have hunted for archeological proof with. I spent years assisting your mother in her interests around the estate and accompanied her to the Reliquary after her first discovery. It really was something to see, I am sorry that my people have made such a mess of the situation.”
Gin had stopped scanning the ground and was looking at Xikse, “I hadn’t thought of that. I never really knew her as you did. I only became interested in archaeology as a hobby at University, but it was never a practical interest for me, being on Luna. There isn’t much to research there.
“This is my first time practicing the theory that I learned remotely. Reading about it doesn’t really compare with having to breathe through a mask and squint through ozone fog while hunting for tool marks, does it?”
“I suppose not,” Xikse conceded. “I am happy to be sharing the experience though.”
They both turned back to sweeping the area, but after a while Gin stooped and scratched at something on the ground. She hustled back to her pack and rummaged around for some of her rudimentary tools. She had found a basic pack of picks, brushes, and a pen-sized petrographic microscope among her mother’s belongings back at the house and was delighted to borrow them for today’s outing. Rolled satchel in hand, she shuffled back to where she had scratched in the regolith and settled into brushing and scooping at the ground.
Xikse made his way over to where she was working and stooped even further down than his normal posture to investigate what she had found. “What do you see?”
“I don’t think it’s anything yet, the ground looks a little different here, darker maybe. It’s hard to tell in this light,” she rolled out the tools and selected a penlight from one of the slots. Turning it to the full spectrum setting, she directed it at the patch of ground from a short distance. “There, see?”
Laid out faintly on the ground in front of her was a dark patch, radiating outward from her position at a right angle as if she were standing at the corner of a rectangle. One line terminated a few meters further and then turned at a right angle again to run parallel to the first. “It looks like a rectangular patch. That might mean that it was a foundation of some sort,” offered Xikse.
“Perhaps, that would be lucky, but not necessarily what would help us in the short time we have here. I was hoping it was a dump site for mining slag. But the shape doesn’t look like a haphazard dump.” Gin took out one of the various vials she had brought in her bag, scooped up a sample of the darker regolith, and returned it to its place.
“Let’s continue further into the gully,” Gin said.
“If you wish,” Xikse answered. “But keep a watch on your filter expiration, when it says you should replace it, you have only a moment to change it before it fails. We should start walking back soon after that.”
Gin’s filter still read that it was at nineteen percent; she took note and packed up her tools. She and Xikse continued sweeping the ground as they proceeded deeper into the edge wall of the crater.
After a few dozen meters, she stopped and followed the wall up with her eyes. Then she reached out and ran her hand along the relatively flat surface of the rock. “Hey Xikse, look at this. You see these ripples on the surface, how they run vertically up the face? That doesn’t seem to match what we know about the area. I haven’t seen any other sedimentary rocks here, and these layers are vertical, not horizontal. The only two things that could do that are a significant geological event to flip the whole cliff on its side… or tool marks.”
Gin took out an empty vial and scratched a few centimeters deep at the base of the marked cliff face, then took another sample. A glance at her filter said she had only ten more percent left until she needed to swap it out.
“If these walls were mined like the marks might indicate, it’s probably not a mine for crystals, but for aggregate. They might have been milling the rock to use as a building material, like our concrete.” Gin stood there in thought as she turned and scanned the wall and opposite side of the gully. Then she stopped and focused on a dark spot a meter above her eye-line and started walking toward it. Xikse followed close behind her and focused on the same point.
“Is that a hole?” he inquired.
“I think it is, yes, but it doesn’t look like a borehole. You see the vertical marks around it as well? I think that the hole was there when the marks were made, but it appeared when the outer wall became too thin.” Gin replied. She reached the point of the wall directly under the hole and tried to find a smallish boulder that she could maneuver under it to use as a stool.
“I can give you a support to climb up to it if you want. I can position my back to support quite a lot of weight.” Xikse stepped to the point where Gin had stood just moments before and braced himself against the wall, then he slowly shook his back, and his scales slotted together to create a tightly patterned and smooth surface. “You can put your full weight upon my back if you need.”
“That’s amazing! I wish I was a biologist, or even knew one so that I could tell them about this. If you’re okay with it, I will be careful.”
“Not to worry, just let me know when you are ready to descend and I’ll be ready.”
Gin gradually stepped onto Xikse’s back and positioned herself to be in the center to not overburden either side and walked her hands up the wall toward the hole. It wasn’t far, as Xikse provided at least a meter and a half of additional height. Gin held out her penlight and gradually swept the interior of the hole. What was waiting on the inside was brilliant. Dozens of sparkling reflections danced across the walls of a cavity about twice the size of her head. The light illuminated a latticework of points of dark, cloudy crystal.
“It looks like a geode! It’s all crystals inside!” Gin exclaimed. Suddenly, her armband display began to blink brightly. She turned her attention from the glittering deposit and read the warning. “I need to come down quickly to change out my filter, Xikse.”
“Okay, I will need to as well in a few moments. You can just hop down if you wish, that may be the most comfortable dismount.”
She did so and landed solidly next to him. In a flurry of activity, she had her old filter out and the new one slotted into its place. “Do you mind if I climb back up to try to get a sample?”
“Of course, but keep in mind that the longer we stay, the faster we will have to make our way back to the Ago and the flyer. We have additional filters in the flyer, but the ozone will be thicker there as well, so the filters will fail more quickly the closer we get.”
She waited for Xikse to get back into his interlocked position as her base, then climbed up again to try to pry a sample loose. This time, she had her tools ready. The crystals were tightly packed in the cavity, but she managed to knock a few loose, and crack another in half. In all, she descended with a small handful of reflective grey points and a wide smile behind her darkened faceplate. Once the samples were secured in a third vial and replaced in her satchel, the two explorers shuffled as fast as they could back the way they had come.
Not a minute had passed after they both had arrived alongside the flyer when they witnessed Rez exit the side of the Ago. “Ready to go?” She said across their shared channel, making her way to the craft.
The three of them boarded and then cycled up the flyer, lifting off moments later and leaving the Ago and Noachis Terra behind them.
