Endeavour: A Sleeping Gods Novel, page 25
He sat at his station on the bridge, the only displays up on the walls were the ones that showed the local space and any incoming active sensors. Neither Harry nor Lydia wanted any information cluttering things that wasn’t strictly necessary. It was nice to know the ambient particle density that the ram scoop was sensing and a full read out of the A-drive conditions, but right now they just wanted sensor information.
‘We’re not getting anything else at the moment, other than weather reports from Dare, which I might add say that it’s a fine day. Unless we want to spend the next three months listening to that, I say let’s go for it,’ Tom called out from his seat, the excitement in his voice creeping in.
‘Lydia, you got the solution laid in?’ Harry said.
‘Yes, plus I have a return solution back to the gate if we need to haul ass back. For the time period we will be under A-drive, we’ll need at least thirty minutes to dump heat at Fourteen before running though,’ Lydia replied.
‘Noted. As soon as the bubble drops, get dumping that heat so we’re ready to move as quickly as possible. Don’t mess around, go to the emergency venting mode. I want to get options online as quickly as possible.’
‘Roger that,’ Lydia said.
Not for the first time Harry caught the slight sound of exhilaration in her voice as she was readying herself for travelling into an unknown situation. She was most definitely a T- type. She didn’t just cope well with crisis, she thrived on it. Harry looked at Tom who nodded.
‘Let’s do it,’ Harry said.
***
The antimatter power plant fed the vast quantities of energy into the A-drive ring and once again the bubble formed round Endeavour. Space stretched behind the bubble that contained the starship and Endeavour shot towards Mizar A. It travelled at speeds to an observer would be unbelievably fast, yet the sensors within Endeavour registered that she was perfectly still, enclosed within her own little pocket of space.
Dropping out of A-drive half an hour later the heat sinks opened, glowing white-hot from the burning conditions inside the bubble, struggling to bring the temperature of the ship down to its normal operational conditions. Without prompting Lydia activated the emergency heat dumps and the coolant, now turned into plasma, shot out of the sides of the ship, bringing the temperature down even faster.
Once they established that no one seemed to be particularly interested in their arrival, they powered up the more conventional ram drive and Endeavour slid into high orbit around the blue and green world.
CHAPTER 44: 2274 AD MIZAR AND ALCOR SYSTEM
The whole crew was crowded into the mess whilst each of the departments filled in the others on their findings.
‘Atmospheric conditions pretty much exactly match Earth’s. Only the trace gases seem to be different, and certainly not enough to bother anyone. Gravity is about five percent less, it even has a moon, admittedly a small one. Bottom line, in itself, this world is the closest match to Earth we’ve found,’ Troy briefed them.
Tom scribbled down some hand-written notes onto his pad. Despite all the modern technology and the bells and whistles of their new implants, he still found it the most efficient way of noting down ideas he had.
‘What have we got from bio, Karen?’ Tom asked,.
‘Same, I’ve been working with Troy on the spectrometry of the gas make-up of the atmosphere. It’s Earth’s twin. Same biological processes seem to be taking place, oxygen-CO2 exchange through the plant life, things like that,’ Karen said, knowing that the crew didn’t want, or need, the fine detail right now. ‘There is some evidence of post-industrial contaminants in the air too.’
‘Okay, that tally’s with the radio chatter we’re getting. From what we can tell, whoever’s down there, if they are Human, which is no guarantee yet, they seem to be at about the early twentieth century tech level. However, Lydia is going to fill us in on something she’s found, and the reason why we haven’t dropped landers yet.’
Lydia stood and gestured to the panel on the wall. It lit up showing a representation of the planet.
‘Whoever is down there,’ she began without preamble, ‘is, as Tom has just mentioned, of seemingly pretty low tech levels. However there are these.’
On the display a large number of blinking lights appeared, surrounding the planet. The majority were in low orbit but a few up high, in geostationary positions.
‘That’s a pretty extensive satellite network.’ Troy called.
‘Yes, one hundred percent coverage and a fair amount of redundancy built into that coverage whilst they’ve been at it.’
Tom walked over to stand by the display and took over.
‘There’s no other signs of space infrastructure, other than the obvious fact they’ve been moving planets and stars around,’ Tom played with his console bringing up a closer image of one of the satellites. ‘As you can see, these fellows look somewhat familiar.’
The satellite was a copy of the ship that had intercepted them at 55 Cancri, a silver sphere shaped object.
‘Our old friend here provides our first solid link between this system and where Marcus was taken. As of now though they don’t seem to be doing much other than sitting in orbit, ignoring us.’ Tom continued.
Tom turned to the screen and brought up the display of a city, taken from above by one of their high powered telescopes. Smoke stacks churned out vast obscuring clouds. The city overall looked, like an industrial mess, congested, polluted and fairly grim.
‘This is what we believe is being referred to as Dare. From the radio transmissions we haven’t been able to figure out the world name yet, it just hasn’t been referred to yet in any of the reports. Dare is a city built round a natural harbour leading out to a sea, which in turn opens up into an ocean. There are a number of other cities and townships around, but this is by far the largest. There is a fairly good road network and, from the wakes of ships, we can see they have established sea lanes between them.’
‘Have we confirmed if they are human yet?’ Troy asked.
‘No. We only have the images I’ve put out over the ship mail that have been taken from above. We haven’t got great facial shots though,’ Tom again worked the controls, opening up his ship mail and pulling the pictures out. They were high resolution images taken from their own position, far beyond geostationary orbit. They weren’t the best quality they could manage, but they wanted to stay away from the spheres. ‘We need to work up a contact plan, whether that be dropping a crewed lander, or see if we can break into their radio net.’
‘If we break into their radio net, that seems the safest. But are they even going to believe we’re who we say we are? I certainly know with all the crazies on Earth if an alien tried that they would be lost in a sea of madness,’ Troy said.
‘True. I’m reluctant to drop a lander in case our little abducting friends out there take exception to it, but it may come to that. First, though, I want to send a probe through the satellite coverage and make sure we don’t trigger anything,’ There were a few nods of ascent from the others round the table. ‘I think we’re all curious to find out who these guys are, and why they’re speaking the Kings English as Harry probably wouldn’t say, but should.’
‘What kind of probe you want to use, Tom?’ Harry asked.
‘I reckon we’ll drop a UAV down, one of the micros. I know, I know, before you say it, the science package payload is shit, but I’d rather keep it low-key for the moment. We’ve had one fabricated up and it’s ready to go. I think you’ll all like the toy that Will’s come up with.’
CHAPTER 45 2274 AD MIZAR AND ALCOR SYSTEM UNKNOWN WORLD
The aeroshell for the probe was the size and shape of a cannonball and it shot towards the planet like one. Passing the first layer of sphere satellites in geostationary orbit without incident, it hurtled down towards the second layer that circled a mere few hundred miles in altitude.
As it streaked past them and tore into the atmosphere it popped out a parachute to help it slow down enough to ensure it wasn’t destroyed on impact. The aeroshell finally splashed into the sea a dozen miles away from the Dare harbour.
Bobbing around in the sea, it automatically adjusted its ballast so that the small hatch on the ball was above the surface and it opened itself up. The UAV that was within erupted out of the top, arching over until it was flying straight and level. To a casual observer on the ground it would appear to be a small bird, which fortunately the planet seems to have many and varied analogues of.
Flying towards Dare, it climbed high and the crew back on Endeavour got their first view of the city in profile. It most definitely was an urban waste ground. An unruly mess of industrial-looking buildings gathered together without rhyme or reason. Whether it had originally been built on a hill, or the buildings were taller in the centre it was difficult to tell but there were some truly monolithic structures in the city. They were nowhere near as big as the superscrapers on Earth, but somehow even more imposing, solid-seeming, all wrought iron and stone, lacking in any kind of elegance. This was most definitely not a place built for aesthetics, but brute force construction.
Layers of smog covered the gantries and structures, coming from what appeared to be coal or gas-fired power stations, ugly radio transmitters, clearly what they had managed to pick up, were unsubtly placed on tall buildings. As the probe swooped through the city it spotted its first flag, a cross made up of four arrows pointing in towards the centre.
As the UAV flew through the city, it looked down on the roads with its masses of foot and vehicle traffic, and even what seemed to be horse-drawn carts. The hustle and bustle was evident in every part of it. It was obvious that there was no way this place had been set up in a few short years. That was the maximum time that anyone could have possibly headed off Endeavour by. The city was old, and seemed to have been here for decades, centuries even.
Descending even lower, the probe settled onto a buttress, appearing from the ground like a bird perched high up, resting its wings. Zooming in, its camera finally got facial shots of the denizens of the smoggy city. They all appeared to be human beings.
***
‘The general make-up appears to be Caucasian, in fact we haven’t seen a single example of any other kind of ethnicity,’ Karen said. ‘In the nicest possible way, the Caucasians on the crew wouldn’t have a problem blending in, but the others?’ She gave a shrug.
‘Okay, cool, that helps make any expedition choice easier,’ Tom replied. ‘Troy, Yumi, Ash and Johnny will just have to skip the first landing.’
Seeing the look of distaste on Karen’s face Tom gave a weak smile. ‘Don’t hate the player, hate the game. We don’t want to stick out too much. If they have been isolated for a long time they might not even know that other ethnicities exist.’
The crew had been debating whether to go in overtly, flying over the city, making a big announcement of their presence. The alternative was to sneak into the city and try to mingle, learn what they could.
In the end they decided they would mix the two tactics, a couple of them would try to gauge the crowd, engage with them if possible, observe if not, but certainly not give up their position. Once they had got a grip on the locals, they would put a show on and try to talk to the leaders. If there were any, that is.
The one thing they were fairly sure about was with the level of existing technology. They should at least be aware of other worlds and stars, whether they knew anything of the residents of their neighbouring planets was another matter. They had radio but it was limited, likely vacuum tube technology and the sensitivity of it unlikely to be good. Endeavour could pick up the transmission bleed offs from the planets as her sensitive receivers were designed from the ground up with that capacity. After all, they needed to be able to scan a wide spectrum and hunting for signal was one of the purposes of them. The guys on the planet though? Not so much. They had no proof one way or another they were even aware of the other worlds.
‘At least they have the common courtesy to speak English,’ Karen grinned.
‘I’d like to know how. I’m just hoping they haven’t learned from some twentieth century soap opera or other bizarre source,’ Tom said.
‘Yeah that would make for some interesting debates if their lives revolve around some old drama series.’
Tom gave a grimace, he seriously disliked the many and varied reality style VR shows that choked up the entertainment channels.
‘Don’t. I couldn’t think of anything worse.’
‘Incidentally, I’ve done some digging on that flag. The closest match we have on our computers is something called a Maltese Cross,’ Karen said.
‘Maltese Cross?’
‘Yes,’ Karen said patiently. ‘Also called the Amalfi Cross, used by the knights Hospitaller originally. Nowadays it’s used for everything from the national symbol of Malta to various regalia in armies around the world. No way of determining if it’s coincidental or it bears some relevance to any of those things.’
Tom gave a nod. ‘Shall I put it on the list of things to ask?’
***
They had put down over twenty miles outside of the city and it would take them the best part of a day to hike in. For a group that was quite used to serious physical training, it wasn’t the issue of the distance. Most of them ran for fun and fitness. Tom and Karen regularly used to take part in marathons around the globe. It was the sheer time it took to get there that was galling. What they didn’t want though, was to attract the residents of Dares’ attention by flying a lander over the city.
Having spent a few days patiently analysing the environment, for the first time they decided they needed to seriously consider any local diseases. After all, if the locals were indeed human, then any local viruses would presumably be adapted for the human body.
The team had taken a whole battery of anti-viral and nano-scrubbers, little machines that would attack anything untoward in their bodies. The problem with the aggressive little machines was they caused a lot of nausea for the first couple of days of using them. The body had everything that shouldn’t be there cleansed out of the system. It was an uncomfortable time for them, yet important for both the crew and the denizens of the planet. They didn’t know whether the common cold would kill everyone on the planet, and they certainly didn’t want to find out.
Tom and Karen had carefully examined the UAV footage and had fabricated disguises in the lander’s small nano-vat. They donned what seemed to be local clothing, trousers and shirts with leather jackets over the top. They had made their way through the forest where they had put down and joined a nearby road which seemed to be a major arterial route into the city. The trees were indistinguishable from any Earth forest that could be found in Europe. The air was warm and slightly humid but everything had a drab washed-out look, like the life had been sucked out of it. The ground was muddy and the sky drizzly, it was not cold as such, merely very damp.
The only way to tell they weren’t on Earth was feeling slightly lighter on their feet and when they looked up they could see the two suns close together in the sky, often blocked by the thick grey clouds. When they could see them, it was strange to see the two suns overlooking an environment that looked so similar to Earth, a ready reminder of how far they had come.
On breaking out of the treeline they reached the lichen-covered road that was paved and smooth enough for vehicles, but not the best maintained. It was covered in potholes and cracks, some damage had been crudely repaired whilst other areas were just left to fester.
They continued trudging up the road in the direction of the city, their implants projecting an overhead map onto their field of vision, showing their slow progress. Tom and Karen made small talk, chatting about the plants and trees around, other little observations they could spot.
After half an hour they heard a strange clanking sound from behind them, turning they looked at the bizarre sight approaching them.
‘That looks like one of those old nineteenth century cars,’ Tom said to Karen as they stood aside and let the car go by. Tom let off a jaunty wave as it did. The driver, an old man, dressed like a farmer, turned in his seat and just looked at them as he drove pass, not even acknowledging them.
‘He’s a jolly fellow isn’t he?’
‘Well, you might have just done the local equivalent of stick your middle finger up at him, Tom. You wouldn’t be happy either,’ Karen said.
‘He could at least have offered us a lift,’ Tom grumbled.
Together they resumed their long walk to the city. The situation, so normal-seeming that it was only a few minutes later it sunk in. That old man was their first viewing of a true intelligent life form, with their own eyes, that was not from Sol.
***
The thing that was so remarkable about the building was how unremarkable it was in every way, sat on a world eighty light years from Earth, under a sky bearing two suns. It looked to be a bar of some description, although Tom thought an ‘Inn’ sounded somehow more appropriate. It was situated a short way off the road with a track leading to it.
Outside the Inn were a couple of motor cars, similar to the one that passed them and stabling for creatures that were identical to horses in every way they could tell. They approached the snorting, snuffling animals closely, the muscles rippling underneath their smoothly glistening fur.
‘This is getting truly weird, we’ve ended up in some nineteenth century reconstruction of Earth here,’ Tom said under his breath. He turned and looked at the Inn, looking at the sign he could see it was in English, ‘The Olde Respite’. Tom grinned at Karen. ‘Want to go in, grab a drink, have a proper date for once?’
‘Well if we do, how exactly are you planning on paying for anything?’
‘Well it’s the twenty-third century, honey, you can pay if you want to,’ Tom replied, with a wink.
Together they walked to the door and Tom opened it, a bell sounding from above the doorway as it swung open.
They entered the dark room, a few people scattered around in pairs and small groups talking quietly to each other. As people began to notice them it quietened down except for the radio playing soft music from the side.
