Proxies, page 16
A line cut by dashes appeared in the hologram. Jair leaned forward to read the scale. The flare was nearly as far from them as Mother’s relay had been from the human network. “Harpo, give me a comparative analysis of this and Mother’s signal,” he said. He looked at Merab. “He’ll have to convert them back and forth since we don’t have a sniffer trace for Mother and we don’t have an actual signal from this new one.”
An interrogative honk came from the speakers. Jair remembered Merab had restricted the Marx Brothers’ access to the bridge display systems. “Merab, can he use the display.”
“Sure, open the systems.”
Harpo’s juggling clubs appeared in one of the holograms. Jair flushed and shrugged. Merab ignored him and watched the clubs spin. They lasted a few moments, then with a flourishing finish, they disappeared and were replaced by a comparison graph. Actually, two. One compared the signals based on the assumed signal strength of the new sighting. The other on the assumed sniffer signal of Mother’s transmitter. There was a hazy tapering off the bars, but they were roughly the same. Harpo agreed they were of similar strength and possessed similar probable range.
Merab turned back to her navigational instruments and muttered commands to the ship. The scale disappeared from her hologram replaced by a series of looping lines. Most passed through the new signal, but a few shot off at an angle from it and then looped back toward it. She continued changing the image, growing visibly more frustrated. At last, she shoved back from the console and glared at the image.
Jair carefully cleared his throat.
Her head snapped around and she glared at him. Then she relaxed and turned her chair so she faced him. “Too fast, too close. We’ll shoot past it unless we take a hell of a long time to get there.” She gestured at one of the lines looping off and around. “There aren’t enough systems out here to do multiple slingshots around suns. Besides, we’re going fast enough they just won’t have enough effect.” Now she pointed at one of the lines going through the signal’s location. She traced the slight curve it had after it passed.
Jair stared at the image. They were close enough to detect it, and now they were going to miss it. Unbelievable.
Wait.
“Harpo, what— No, Groucho, what do the numbers say about the anchor for this? What’s the most likely?”
“The midget or the pit. Hard to choose.”
Midget—dwarf star, the Neutron star. The pit—black hole.
“Merab, what mass and radius did you use for your braking calculation?” Merab looked confused. “The sun you wanted to slingshot around. How massive? How big? How far out would we have to stay and not melt?”
“Oh, standard stuff. I had the computer use the most favorable assumption for the final calculation. That’s the best we can do.”
Jair shook his head. “Does the most favorable assumption use Neutron stars or Black Holes? You should be able to get a lot closer with those with a much higher gradient. Can you run the numbers that way?”
Merab glared at him. “There’s no standard model for those.” She turned back to the console and slapped controls. She reached into a compartment and put on a small wireless headset. She snapped instructions into it as Jair gripped the arms of his chair. He could ask Harpo to do the analysis, he excelled at this sort of thing, but he could tell Merab was on edge.
After ten minutes of increasingly angry work, she ripped the headset off and threw it on the console. She turned to him and crossed her arms. “Navigation, clear the prior courses, plot the new one.” The cluster of lines disappeared and a single one reached out and hooked sharply around the signal’s source. “Unless we tear ourselves apart or fall into the gravity well, we can do it. It’s not perfect, we’ll have a bit of backtracking, but it’s months shorter than any of the others.”
Jair swallowed. “Nice work.”
Merab snarled as she stood and strode for the door. “Unless it gets you killed.”
SUBROUTINE:
OUT ON MANEUVERS
“Bring the ship around. Fire a full spread on Contact One. Plot a course for the gas giant,” Captain Fanri tapped commands into his controls, making the holograms around him shift and change. “We’ll hide in the shadow.” If they altered course radically once they approached the planet, they could keep it between them and the squadron labeled Contact One. But Contacts Two and Three would still be able to track them and pass their sensor feed to the squadron. He needed to do something about that.
“Weapons, what’s the missile charge?”
“Seventy percent, Sir.”
Their cruiser carried a broadside of ten missiles port and starboard. Contacts Two and Three were a light cruiser and a destroyer, respectively. “Give me targeting on the port broadside. Five on Contact Two, five on Contact Three. Same on the starboard broadside, but I want a delay on that and detonation convincingly far out. Port will disrupt their tracking. Starboard will cover our turn. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Lieutenant Renatta. The holograms around her fountained with targeting information.
Commander Nahan at sensors held up his hand for attention. “Detonation of missiles at Contact One in five… four… three…”
The main plot showed the missile icons intersecting the estimated position of Contact One. They strobed wildly as they decelerated, pumping out energy across the spectrum. Contact One faded in a mass of static. They weren’t gone, but the overlapping waves from the Wittkowsky drives blurred their position beyond recovery.
“Ready with port broadside,” said Renatta.
“Fire.”
The portside missiles leapt from the ship and separated into two groups.
“Helm, take the feed from my station. Radical turn to put us in the shadow of the planet.”
“Acknowledged,” said Lieutenant Herros.
Nahan looked at Captain Fanri. “Incoming salvo. Ten seconds.”
“Helm, evasive. Nahan, give me ECM, decoys, something!”
The holograms showed the ship rolling and fighting to change vector. New images of other cruisers appeared as decoys launched and shot away on alternate courses. Some incoming missiles strobed as they decelerated and the pulsing energy wiped out the decoys. The remaining missiles tracked the ship and bracketed it expertly. They triggered in perfect unison, and the ship rocked with the impact. Holograms blacked out, replaced with damage control information coloring the ship in lurid shades.
“Sensors are out,” reported Nehan.
“Helm is unresponsive,” said Herros.
“No feed from targeting, and I’ve lost the missiles in flight,” Renatta said.
Fanri punched a control and read the summarized information. “Okay, relax. The computers have ruled us a hard kill. Umpires confirm. We’re done. Debrief back at the yard in two hours. We’ll talk on the way.” He pressed keys to acknowledge their destruction and reset their systems for the flight back.
Renatta cleared her throat. “Sir, how did we do? Did we get any of them?”
Fanri shook his head. “Not enough. I guess we should be glad for the additional funding. We may be out here a long time.”
33
THE DOWSING ROD
Once Merab plotted the course and set the Carrier Wave to follow it, she locked herself in her cabin and left Jair to his own devices. He worked on the personality overlay for Groucho, tweaking his reactions and jokes. He found few other distractions and took to watching movies for hours each day. After a week, he wished he could use Merab’s treadmill. An hour’s run might clear some of the brain fog.
He talked with the Marx Brothers, gauging their reactions. He adjusted each of them, as often as not changing them back again. It surprised him when Gummo called his attention to the results of an analysis he only vaguely remembered. “What’ve you been working on?” Jair asked.
“The dowsing rod,” said Gummo. “We’ve determined a likely use.”
Jair blinked in surprise. “Oh, right. What?”
“Mother’s description of the Rogue escaping from Lun-space indicated it was quite some time ago. She spoke of him gathering forces to attack them and everyone else in his way.”
“Sure, I remember. So what?”
“Based on the timing implied, he didn’t use the Wittkowsky drive,” said Gummo.
Jair shrugged. “So? I guess they have another type of drive. I don’t see your point.”
“Mother’s technical hints all increased humanity’s ability to resist the Rogue. The dowsing rod should be no exception. It is likely a means of detecting ships using the Lun’s drive.”
Jair lurched to his feet. “What?”
“The dowsing rod should detect craft using the Lun’s faster than light drive.”
Jair shot the computers a look. “Rhetorical expression of surprise, Gummo.” Jair paced across the room, four steps and turn, four steps and turn. “So that’s what it’s for. What else can you deduce about the drive?”
“It is slower than the Wittkowsky drive. The travel time from Lun-space to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud likely took significantly longer than a ship such as the Carrier Wave would take.”
Jair continued to pace. “Interesting, not sure if it that’s useful. Anything else?”
“Using the data for the dowsing rod as a starting point, it might be possible to construct a drive such as theirs in a relatively short time, perhaps a few years. At twenty years the probability curve flattens out.”
Jair’s lips twitched up for a moment. “We don’t have years.”
“Or a large Research and Development organization assumed in my estimate.”
He snorted. “Or any need. Why do we want a slower drive? Don’t answer, rhetorical question.” He paced, turned, paced, turned. “Anything else useful?”
“I’m afraid I can’t gauge the usefulness of—”
“Stop. I know, I’m here to judge if information is useful. Anything else?”
“Readings collected from the dowsing rod are at a significant variance from the expected values.”
Jair stopped and glared at the computer. “We’re not picking anything up. How can the readings be wrong?”
“Baseline readings don’t match expectations. Similar to a radiation sensor not detecting natural background radiation. It is likely there is a flaw in the device.”
Jair dropped back into his seat and groaned. “I need to take it apart like I did the sniffer and test it piece by piece. That’s just great.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it, Jair.”
He groaned again. “And I need to revert those last few changes. That was sarcasm. I don’t feel positively about this.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Jair.”
“Never mind.” Jair dropped his head down into his hands and rubbed his forehead. Being trapped in the Carrier Wave for so long with the Marx Brothers brought home just how limited expert systems were. He’d replayed the conversations with Mother several times. She was a true AI, able to adjust to changes in the conversation, detect nuance, and imply information without stating it. If she hadn’t tried to kill them, he’d be thrilled to study her.
He wondered what sort of interaction they would have with the Rogue.
34
ON THE EDGE
Troubleshooting the dowsing rod took the rest of the flight. He still wasn’t sure if it worked properly, but he had just enough time to hook it up before the final maneuver around the Rogue’s relay station. Their regular sensor equipment could now detect the steep gravity gradient and Merab adjusted their course based on this more reliable data. Jair double-checked the proxy to be sure they were insulated from any hack attempts the Rogue might try.
He realized that without a connection to the human network, the Rogue had no way of learning human languages as Mother had. He and Groucho compiled a linguistic Rosetta Stone, with Zeppo providing a cultural brief. These were loaded on the proxy. Once the Rogue connected, it would be able to use them to learn their language and communicate. He wondered how long it would take for a true AI.
He joined Merab on the bridge. They had shared lunches the last few days but spoke very little. She spent a great deal of time on the bridge. According to the Chico, she recalculated their course, over and over. As sensor information trickled in, she integrated it into her calculations. Red eyes, with dark bags beneath, and unkempt hair indicated she’d been sacrificing sleep and grooming to obsessively check their course.
Jair took his seat and watched as she reviewed data in holograms and adjusted controls. Her hands trembled as she reached for the controls on the console. He didn’t know what to say. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She jumped. He squeezed gently. He felt her relax, not much, but a bit. He let go and sat back. She returned to her tasks with more assurance.
The ship’s androgynous voice announced, “Ten seconds.”
He tensed, then relaxed. There was nothing to be done now. Time slowed and Merab’s twitches as she looked from one display to another became the slow transitions of Yoga. The holograms all dimmed at once as they dumped power from their entry into the real universe. When they brightened again, he saw their course curved wickedly, whipping them around and leaving them floating toward the edge of the system.
He looked from their course to a display of the system. He gasped. The view centered on a strange, smooth sphere, with a ring of some unidentified substance orbiting it and a larger ring of stars clustered around. Jair blinked several times, trying to comprehend what he saw. The stars were normal everywhere except around the sphere. A thin blank band with no stars at all was surrounded by a thick dusting of them. It resembled the Milky Way seen from Earth but wrapped in a circle. The ring circling the sphere was strange, as well. It didn’t appear solid, like Saturn’s rings, but nearly transparent and sharp-edged.
Merab spoke. “Sensors, overlay the sniffer data on the visual image.” The scene flashed a few times, then settled. Highlighting appeared on the ring, making it glow like a halo.
Jair’s brain ground through the data. “The relay station. That’s the ring. It’s in close. The orbit is so fast that we can’t see it. The sphere must be a neutron star.”
Merab’s voice sounded dreamy and far away. “The ring of stars is the light bending around it. They used to find dark, super-massive objects by the ring a star would make when it lined up perfectly with them. The light bent around it on every side and made a ring.”
“This must be what Mother uses. How she can reach the network.”
They fell silent, staring at the strange combination of natural wonder and technological achievement.
At last, Merab shook herself and stood up, swaying slightly. “We made it. We’re alive. For now. I think it’s time for you to make contact.”
Jair blinked and looked away from the hologram. “Right. Chico, connect the proxy to their network.”
“Not so fast, Boss. Looks like they don’t speaka our language.”
Jair frowned. “Yeah, that’s why we put the language software on it.”
“No, Boss, they don’t talk to our proxy so good. We can’t connect. There’s no signal.”
“Oh, no.” Realization hit Jair like a hammer. “They use the same physics we do, but they don’t use it the same way. Of course. There must be dozens—hundreds—thousands—of ways to transmit information.” He lurched up from his seat. “I’ve got to adjust our transmitter. Chico, scan their transmissions, see what you can learn about their protocols.”
Merab came up quietly behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently. Then she slid her hands down to his biceps and squeezed again. A hesitation, then her arms wrapped around him from behind and she hugged him. Her voice tickled his ear. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. We’re here, and we’re alive. That’s more than I really counted on. Everything from here on out is a bonus.” She hugged him again, and then kissed his neck. She let him go and opened the door. When he still hesitated, she took his hand and led him down the corridor to the galley.
“Get to work. I’ll make some dinner.”
35
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
Several hours later, Jair finished dinner, Merab took a much-needed nap, and the Marx Brothers were ready with a comprehensive analysis of the transmission protocol used by the Rogue’s relay. Jair settled down next to the proxy. Since it remained separate from the ship’s systems, he’d have to configure it manually. Time to earn his pay.
Merab took advantage of the time the proxy would be off-line to activate the Wittkowsky drive and kill their remaining velocity before it carried them away. She established a distant orbit around the Neutron star before shutting the drive down again. Jair plugged away at the task, working his way through the software adjustments. His shoulders hunched and his fingers cramped into claws before he finished. When he reached for the toolkit to begin work on hardware, Merab grabbed his hand.
“How long will the hardware changes take?”
Jair licked his dry lips and tried to unkink his back. “A few hours. Maybe four or five.”
“Then you’ll do it tomorrow.”
Jair shook his head but stopped when he heard and felt a vertebrae pop. “But we need this done fast.”
“And done right. You’re going to make mistakes if you keep pushing. And it will take you at least twice as long in your condition. Here are your marching orders: Cabin, couch, pick a movie. I’ll bring in food and a beer for you. After that, you sleep.” She bent her knees and crouched slightly, her arms spread. “Don’t think you can take me. I’ll lay you out without breaking a sweat.”
He grinned. Then stopped when she didn’t grin back. “No contest here. Cabin, couch, movie. Yes, ma’am.” He stood with his legs protesting and wobbled across the room to the door.
36
An interrogative honk came from the speakers. Jair remembered Merab had restricted the Marx Brothers’ access to the bridge display systems. “Merab, can he use the display.”
“Sure, open the systems.”
Harpo’s juggling clubs appeared in one of the holograms. Jair flushed and shrugged. Merab ignored him and watched the clubs spin. They lasted a few moments, then with a flourishing finish, they disappeared and were replaced by a comparison graph. Actually, two. One compared the signals based on the assumed signal strength of the new sighting. The other on the assumed sniffer signal of Mother’s transmitter. There was a hazy tapering off the bars, but they were roughly the same. Harpo agreed they were of similar strength and possessed similar probable range.
Merab turned back to her navigational instruments and muttered commands to the ship. The scale disappeared from her hologram replaced by a series of looping lines. Most passed through the new signal, but a few shot off at an angle from it and then looped back toward it. She continued changing the image, growing visibly more frustrated. At last, she shoved back from the console and glared at the image.
Jair carefully cleared his throat.
Her head snapped around and she glared at him. Then she relaxed and turned her chair so she faced him. “Too fast, too close. We’ll shoot past it unless we take a hell of a long time to get there.” She gestured at one of the lines looping off and around. “There aren’t enough systems out here to do multiple slingshots around suns. Besides, we’re going fast enough they just won’t have enough effect.” Now she pointed at one of the lines going through the signal’s location. She traced the slight curve it had after it passed.
Jair stared at the image. They were close enough to detect it, and now they were going to miss it. Unbelievable.
Wait.
“Harpo, what— No, Groucho, what do the numbers say about the anchor for this? What’s the most likely?”
“The midget or the pit. Hard to choose.”
Midget—dwarf star, the Neutron star. The pit—black hole.
“Merab, what mass and radius did you use for your braking calculation?” Merab looked confused. “The sun you wanted to slingshot around. How massive? How big? How far out would we have to stay and not melt?”
“Oh, standard stuff. I had the computer use the most favorable assumption for the final calculation. That’s the best we can do.”
Jair shook his head. “Does the most favorable assumption use Neutron stars or Black Holes? You should be able to get a lot closer with those with a much higher gradient. Can you run the numbers that way?”
Merab glared at him. “There’s no standard model for those.” She turned back to the console and slapped controls. She reached into a compartment and put on a small wireless headset. She snapped instructions into it as Jair gripped the arms of his chair. He could ask Harpo to do the analysis, he excelled at this sort of thing, but he could tell Merab was on edge.
After ten minutes of increasingly angry work, she ripped the headset off and threw it on the console. She turned to him and crossed her arms. “Navigation, clear the prior courses, plot the new one.” The cluster of lines disappeared and a single one reached out and hooked sharply around the signal’s source. “Unless we tear ourselves apart or fall into the gravity well, we can do it. It’s not perfect, we’ll have a bit of backtracking, but it’s months shorter than any of the others.”
Jair swallowed. “Nice work.”
Merab snarled as she stood and strode for the door. “Unless it gets you killed.”
SUBROUTINE:
OUT ON MANEUVERS
“Bring the ship around. Fire a full spread on Contact One. Plot a course for the gas giant,” Captain Fanri tapped commands into his controls, making the holograms around him shift and change. “We’ll hide in the shadow.” If they altered course radically once they approached the planet, they could keep it between them and the squadron labeled Contact One. But Contacts Two and Three would still be able to track them and pass their sensor feed to the squadron. He needed to do something about that.
“Weapons, what’s the missile charge?”
“Seventy percent, Sir.”
Their cruiser carried a broadside of ten missiles port and starboard. Contacts Two and Three were a light cruiser and a destroyer, respectively. “Give me targeting on the port broadside. Five on Contact Two, five on Contact Three. Same on the starboard broadside, but I want a delay on that and detonation convincingly far out. Port will disrupt their tracking. Starboard will cover our turn. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Lieutenant Renatta. The holograms around her fountained with targeting information.
Commander Nahan at sensors held up his hand for attention. “Detonation of missiles at Contact One in five… four… three…”
The main plot showed the missile icons intersecting the estimated position of Contact One. They strobed wildly as they decelerated, pumping out energy across the spectrum. Contact One faded in a mass of static. They weren’t gone, but the overlapping waves from the Wittkowsky drives blurred their position beyond recovery.
“Ready with port broadside,” said Renatta.
“Fire.”
The portside missiles leapt from the ship and separated into two groups.
“Helm, take the feed from my station. Radical turn to put us in the shadow of the planet.”
“Acknowledged,” said Lieutenant Herros.
Nahan looked at Captain Fanri. “Incoming salvo. Ten seconds.”
“Helm, evasive. Nahan, give me ECM, decoys, something!”
The holograms showed the ship rolling and fighting to change vector. New images of other cruisers appeared as decoys launched and shot away on alternate courses. Some incoming missiles strobed as they decelerated and the pulsing energy wiped out the decoys. The remaining missiles tracked the ship and bracketed it expertly. They triggered in perfect unison, and the ship rocked with the impact. Holograms blacked out, replaced with damage control information coloring the ship in lurid shades.
“Sensors are out,” reported Nehan.
“Helm is unresponsive,” said Herros.
“No feed from targeting, and I’ve lost the missiles in flight,” Renatta said.
Fanri punched a control and read the summarized information. “Okay, relax. The computers have ruled us a hard kill. Umpires confirm. We’re done. Debrief back at the yard in two hours. We’ll talk on the way.” He pressed keys to acknowledge their destruction and reset their systems for the flight back.
Renatta cleared her throat. “Sir, how did we do? Did we get any of them?”
Fanri shook his head. “Not enough. I guess we should be glad for the additional funding. We may be out here a long time.”
33
THE DOWSING ROD
Once Merab plotted the course and set the Carrier Wave to follow it, she locked herself in her cabin and left Jair to his own devices. He worked on the personality overlay for Groucho, tweaking his reactions and jokes. He found few other distractions and took to watching movies for hours each day. After a week, he wished he could use Merab’s treadmill. An hour’s run might clear some of the brain fog.
He talked with the Marx Brothers, gauging their reactions. He adjusted each of them, as often as not changing them back again. It surprised him when Gummo called his attention to the results of an analysis he only vaguely remembered. “What’ve you been working on?” Jair asked.
“The dowsing rod,” said Gummo. “We’ve determined a likely use.”
Jair blinked in surprise. “Oh, right. What?”
“Mother’s description of the Rogue escaping from Lun-space indicated it was quite some time ago. She spoke of him gathering forces to attack them and everyone else in his way.”
“Sure, I remember. So what?”
“Based on the timing implied, he didn’t use the Wittkowsky drive,” said Gummo.
Jair shrugged. “So? I guess they have another type of drive. I don’t see your point.”
“Mother’s technical hints all increased humanity’s ability to resist the Rogue. The dowsing rod should be no exception. It is likely a means of detecting ships using the Lun’s drive.”
Jair lurched to his feet. “What?”
“The dowsing rod should detect craft using the Lun’s faster than light drive.”
Jair shot the computers a look. “Rhetorical expression of surprise, Gummo.” Jair paced across the room, four steps and turn, four steps and turn. “So that’s what it’s for. What else can you deduce about the drive?”
“It is slower than the Wittkowsky drive. The travel time from Lun-space to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud likely took significantly longer than a ship such as the Carrier Wave would take.”
Jair continued to pace. “Interesting, not sure if it that’s useful. Anything else?”
“Using the data for the dowsing rod as a starting point, it might be possible to construct a drive such as theirs in a relatively short time, perhaps a few years. At twenty years the probability curve flattens out.”
Jair’s lips twitched up for a moment. “We don’t have years.”
“Or a large Research and Development organization assumed in my estimate.”
He snorted. “Or any need. Why do we want a slower drive? Don’t answer, rhetorical question.” He paced, turned, paced, turned. “Anything else useful?”
“I’m afraid I can’t gauge the usefulness of—”
“Stop. I know, I’m here to judge if information is useful. Anything else?”
“Readings collected from the dowsing rod are at a significant variance from the expected values.”
Jair stopped and glared at the computer. “We’re not picking anything up. How can the readings be wrong?”
“Baseline readings don’t match expectations. Similar to a radiation sensor not detecting natural background radiation. It is likely there is a flaw in the device.”
Jair dropped back into his seat and groaned. “I need to take it apart like I did the sniffer and test it piece by piece. That’s just great.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it, Jair.”
He groaned again. “And I need to revert those last few changes. That was sarcasm. I don’t feel positively about this.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Jair.”
“Never mind.” Jair dropped his head down into his hands and rubbed his forehead. Being trapped in the Carrier Wave for so long with the Marx Brothers brought home just how limited expert systems were. He’d replayed the conversations with Mother several times. She was a true AI, able to adjust to changes in the conversation, detect nuance, and imply information without stating it. If she hadn’t tried to kill them, he’d be thrilled to study her.
He wondered what sort of interaction they would have with the Rogue.
34
ON THE EDGE
Troubleshooting the dowsing rod took the rest of the flight. He still wasn’t sure if it worked properly, but he had just enough time to hook it up before the final maneuver around the Rogue’s relay station. Their regular sensor equipment could now detect the steep gravity gradient and Merab adjusted their course based on this more reliable data. Jair double-checked the proxy to be sure they were insulated from any hack attempts the Rogue might try.
He realized that without a connection to the human network, the Rogue had no way of learning human languages as Mother had. He and Groucho compiled a linguistic Rosetta Stone, with Zeppo providing a cultural brief. These were loaded on the proxy. Once the Rogue connected, it would be able to use them to learn their language and communicate. He wondered how long it would take for a true AI.
He joined Merab on the bridge. They had shared lunches the last few days but spoke very little. She spent a great deal of time on the bridge. According to the Chico, she recalculated their course, over and over. As sensor information trickled in, she integrated it into her calculations. Red eyes, with dark bags beneath, and unkempt hair indicated she’d been sacrificing sleep and grooming to obsessively check their course.
Jair took his seat and watched as she reviewed data in holograms and adjusted controls. Her hands trembled as she reached for the controls on the console. He didn’t know what to say. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She jumped. He squeezed gently. He felt her relax, not much, but a bit. He let go and sat back. She returned to her tasks with more assurance.
The ship’s androgynous voice announced, “Ten seconds.”
He tensed, then relaxed. There was nothing to be done now. Time slowed and Merab’s twitches as she looked from one display to another became the slow transitions of Yoga. The holograms all dimmed at once as they dumped power from their entry into the real universe. When they brightened again, he saw their course curved wickedly, whipping them around and leaving them floating toward the edge of the system.
He looked from their course to a display of the system. He gasped. The view centered on a strange, smooth sphere, with a ring of some unidentified substance orbiting it and a larger ring of stars clustered around. Jair blinked several times, trying to comprehend what he saw. The stars were normal everywhere except around the sphere. A thin blank band with no stars at all was surrounded by a thick dusting of them. It resembled the Milky Way seen from Earth but wrapped in a circle. The ring circling the sphere was strange, as well. It didn’t appear solid, like Saturn’s rings, but nearly transparent and sharp-edged.
Merab spoke. “Sensors, overlay the sniffer data on the visual image.” The scene flashed a few times, then settled. Highlighting appeared on the ring, making it glow like a halo.
Jair’s brain ground through the data. “The relay station. That’s the ring. It’s in close. The orbit is so fast that we can’t see it. The sphere must be a neutron star.”
Merab’s voice sounded dreamy and far away. “The ring of stars is the light bending around it. They used to find dark, super-massive objects by the ring a star would make when it lined up perfectly with them. The light bent around it on every side and made a ring.”
“This must be what Mother uses. How she can reach the network.”
They fell silent, staring at the strange combination of natural wonder and technological achievement.
At last, Merab shook herself and stood up, swaying slightly. “We made it. We’re alive. For now. I think it’s time for you to make contact.”
Jair blinked and looked away from the hologram. “Right. Chico, connect the proxy to their network.”
“Not so fast, Boss. Looks like they don’t speaka our language.”
Jair frowned. “Yeah, that’s why we put the language software on it.”
“No, Boss, they don’t talk to our proxy so good. We can’t connect. There’s no signal.”
“Oh, no.” Realization hit Jair like a hammer. “They use the same physics we do, but they don’t use it the same way. Of course. There must be dozens—hundreds—thousands—of ways to transmit information.” He lurched up from his seat. “I’ve got to adjust our transmitter. Chico, scan their transmissions, see what you can learn about their protocols.”
Merab came up quietly behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently. Then she slid her hands down to his biceps and squeezed again. A hesitation, then her arms wrapped around him from behind and she hugged him. Her voice tickled his ear. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. We’re here, and we’re alive. That’s more than I really counted on. Everything from here on out is a bonus.” She hugged him again, and then kissed his neck. She let him go and opened the door. When he still hesitated, she took his hand and led him down the corridor to the galley.
“Get to work. I’ll make some dinner.”
35
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
Several hours later, Jair finished dinner, Merab took a much-needed nap, and the Marx Brothers were ready with a comprehensive analysis of the transmission protocol used by the Rogue’s relay. Jair settled down next to the proxy. Since it remained separate from the ship’s systems, he’d have to configure it manually. Time to earn his pay.
Merab took advantage of the time the proxy would be off-line to activate the Wittkowsky drive and kill their remaining velocity before it carried them away. She established a distant orbit around the Neutron star before shutting the drive down again. Jair plugged away at the task, working his way through the software adjustments. His shoulders hunched and his fingers cramped into claws before he finished. When he reached for the toolkit to begin work on hardware, Merab grabbed his hand.
“How long will the hardware changes take?”
Jair licked his dry lips and tried to unkink his back. “A few hours. Maybe four or five.”
“Then you’ll do it tomorrow.”
Jair shook his head but stopped when he heard and felt a vertebrae pop. “But we need this done fast.”
“And done right. You’re going to make mistakes if you keep pushing. And it will take you at least twice as long in your condition. Here are your marching orders: Cabin, couch, pick a movie. I’ll bring in food and a beer for you. After that, you sleep.” She bent her knees and crouched slightly, her arms spread. “Don’t think you can take me. I’ll lay you out without breaking a sweat.”
He grinned. Then stopped when she didn’t grin back. “No contest here. Cabin, couch, movie. Yes, ma’am.” He stood with his legs protesting and wobbled across the room to the door.
36
