“Let’s come back to Lila’s suggestion,” Garrison said. “We know that continuing the journey to Ursus is dependent on getting the ship functional. Leaves us with options. One, assuming it’s not going to continue, we need to prepare for exploiting the planet’s resources for the duration of the remainder of our lives.”

  Silence for a moment.

  Denella was nodding. Cassidy’s mouth hung open, incredulous. Malé put her hands together on top of her head and stared off into the walls. Jacques licked his lips and raised his just above the table, calling for silence, before anyone started in on Garrison.

  “Go on,” Jacques said.

  “Then,” Garrison said, with a nod at Jacques, “we go to possibly two, assuming that she can continue, do we all go, or do some of us remain?”

  “Why would anyone—” Cassidy stopped, seeing Jacques’s hand raised a fraction higher.

  “They’ve asked for our help,” Garrison said.

  “According to Lila.”

  “You would doubt her?” Denella said.

  “We didn’t hear anything on the tapes. Just her stumbling around. Talking to herself as far as we could tell.”

  “You saw robot,” Denella said. “Maybe no words to hear, but robot guided her.”

  “Let’s assume I’ve lost my mind,” Lila said. “Let’s assume that the ship can continue. I would stay. Help if I could, study what I can. While it’s an interstellar planet, there’s clearly a way that they’ve been able to continue to exist here. Even if you just believe seeing the robot, and the things behind the walls.”

  “Yes,” Cassidy said. “Granted.”

  “And,” Garrison said, “it’s not as if it’s uncharted. With Elegia Fortune’s telemetry and observations, we have a location, a trajectory, a velocity. Any warp ship can come back here at any time.”

  Cassidy drummed her fingertips on the table. She stared down.

  “We could send relief the moment we arrive at Ursus,” Jacques said.

  “All very sweet and apple pie,” Cassidy said. “Except that this is bigger than any of us. This is first contact with an alien species. An intelligent species. Clearly in some ways smarter than us. What about the danger that presents to humanity? Think of that.”

  “It’s been considered,” Jacques said.

  “Oh?”

  “Elegia Fortune has the resources,” Lila said, “to leave some of us here. Two landers and a habitat that would be more than adequate for a year.”

  “More,” Garrison said. “We specced up some of those landers. Designed to sustain a crew for three months if necessary. That’s twenty. Two landers with, say, five, and you could last two years, more or less.”

  “Elegia Fortune,” Denella said, “could reach Ursus 319, go back to Earth and come back here many times in that duration. Many times.”

  “It’s fully feasible,” Lila said.

  “It’s fully insane,” Cassidy said. “Does no one here see this?”

  “I see it,” Jacques said. “She’s right. We know that they caused us to fall out of warp here.”

  “We don’t know that,” Garrison said.

  “It’s self-evident.”

  Garrison gave a short nod.

  “I see Cassidy’s point,” Lila said. “There are protocols, and we should follow them.”

  “They’re inadequate,” Cassidy said. “The people who wrote them, they were watering them all down. Too many different scenarios. I doubt that this particular one was ever considered.”

  “I can’t think of anyone more qualified to take this on than Lila,” Garrison said.

  Cassidy gaped. “You’re not even listening to me.”

  “We have a lot of factors to weigh up,” Jacques said.

  “Huh!” Cassidy stood and went to the cockpit access. She slammed the hatch behind her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Out on the icy surface, Lila and Garrison approached the stem structure again. Lila’s suit was pressing at her shoulders as if she’d adjusted it badly. Not too much, but enough to notice.

  The stars were different, the Milky Way’s thickness angled differently. The planet rotated, but there was no night and day, just an endlessly moving starscape.

  Jacques and Malé walked with them, staying a little behind. Denella and Cassidy had stayed back in the lander. Cassidy was still mad.

  The idea was for both Jacques and Lila to go back into the alien complex.

  Cassidy wasn’t the only one to suggest that was a bad idea. There was dissent from the ship, and Malé had had a few points, presented very objectively.

  “It doesn’t make for good science,” she’d said, to sum up.

  Lila had to agree. But they weren’t a scientific mission. It was transport, no more. Getting people out to Ursus 319.

  They could send a scientific mission later. Researchers and envoys and linguists.

  Part of Cassidy’s argument, which was quite valid, was, “Why the urgency?”

  After all, the aliens had been floating out in interstellar space for millennia. How would a few extra months make any difference?

  “It will make a difference to me,” Lila had said.

  “They specifically asked for her help,” Garrison had said.

  Cassidy had rolled her eyes and called them reckless idiots.

  Now, Lila was almost getting used to the blank dark surface of the planet.

  “You reach out together?” Garrison said. “Touch at the same time.”

  “I guess that’s the theory,” Lila said. “Then Jacques and I get transported inside.”

  “In theory.”

  “What more do we have?” Malé said.

  “I’ll do a count,” Jacques said. “Both of us touch on zero, counting back from three.”

  “That’ll work,” Lila said.

  “But let me do the count,” Malé said. “That way you’ll be better coordinated.”

  “Yes,” Jacques said.

  Malé counted.

  On zero, Lila and Jacques touched the closest stem.

  Nothing happened.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lila touched the structure again. Still she stayed on the planet’s surface. No bright light. No opening her eyes to a room with moving woven lattice work.

  “I guess that’s bust, maybe?” Garrison said.

  “Just needs more investigation.” Lila began walking around the structure.

  “It was counterintuitive anyway,” Malé said. “Touch something and get transported within. I think that’s a leap.”

  “If we had the right equipment,” Garrison said, “we could bore our way down to it.”

  “We don’t know how deep,” Denella said, from back in the lander. “We’d end up damaging their installation.”

  “Right equipment,” Garrison said.

  “Soundings, you mean?”

  “Yes. We’re not just taking a drill and chewing straight into the surface.

  “All right,” Jacques said.

  “We’ll have to stay now,” Lila said. “And then send back the right equipment.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Malé said. “We need to do more investigation.”

  “That’s why we’d stay. To do that. We can’t just leave them here. Not now. Not now that they’ve made contact.”

  Lila touched the structure again. She stayed on the surface. Still no light.

  The indentations were extraordinary. Remarkable patterns and shapes. She kept walking around it. If they set up a little temporary base here, it would have to be self-powered. No external heat source to keep them going. No differentials to exploit.

  Of course the ship, and her little landers, had all the power they needed. That would be fine.

  “Six months,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Garrison said. “Did not copy.”

  “She’s speculating,” Denella said. “About how long she would have to spend here.”

  “Yes,” Lila said. “Elegia Fortune has to continue on to Ursus 319.”

  “Assuming the repairs go well.”

  “I have news on that,” Cassidy said. “A message from the techs aboard. They’ve located a code glitch in the system. As if it had been hacked. They’re parsing it all again now. It was a very specific instruction to exit warp at this location. In fact, there’s even a course change. Very subtle, but it’s actually not a direct line to Ursus.”

  “How?” Jacques said. “How is that possible? Introduced before we left Earth?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Someone helped them. Someone did this.”

  “That’s sure how it looks. Though how they would have talked to anyone is beyond me.”

  “I have an idea,” Garrison said.

  “Spill.”

  “Back aboard,” Lila said. She touched the stem again. “If the code can be parsed, Elegia Fortune can continue. We need to start making preparations for a temporary base here.”

  “Insanity,” Cassidy said.

  “So you’ve indicated,” Jacques said.

  “But I do remain unconvinced.”

  “It’s in our mandate,” Lila said. “But let’s talk back aboard. Clearly this part of what we wanted to do has failed. Clearly there is a whole lot more to this—hacked code—than we know.”

  “Let’s reconvene aboard Elegia Fortune,” Garrison said. “There are more experts there to add to the muddiness.”

  “Yes,” Jacques said. “We will need to get underway.”

  Lila stayed with the stems for a moment. It was almost as if her time below had been nothing more than a dream. A slipping away.

  Telepathy. A shaky old bipedal robot. Aliens in suspended animation behind transparent walls.

  All too strange.

  And now she was considering marooning herself here to get to the bottom of it all.

  Perhaps Cassidy was right. Perhaps it was insanity.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Aboard Elegia Fortune, life was beginning to return to normal, apparently.

  All these passengers with their great plans for the arrival at Ursus 319, were smiling and happy. They were almost celebrating. The problem with the warp drive had been resolved. Another twelve hours of testing and checking and they would be underway again.

  Back for the weeks of shipboard entertainment and relaxation. Work for many, of course, but at least feeling reassured that the ship was safe and would get them there.

  A little glitch. Nothing more.

  Few knew about the hacking.

  Lila sat in Garrison’s cabin, with Denella, who was off duty and clearly wanting to talk. The space was identical to Lila’s own, but with slightly different coloring and scents. He had some kind of apple background, misting the air.

  Three armchairs and a coffee table, with a teapot steaming away. Denella had an unfolded tablet spread across the middle, showing how to configure a temporary base.

  “But this is given,” she said. “Easy.” She was wearing a light shirt, and tartan culottes, ending just below her knees, and her hair was down. She seemed to be a very different person to the uniformed officer who’d accompanied them to the planet.

  “I haven’t spoken with Jacques about this yet,” Garrison said. He poured from the teapot. The liquid gurgled prettily.

  “About what?” Lila said.

  “About how they hacked the system. It’s conjecture, but we still need to figure that out. Stop it happening again.”

  “Again?”

  “Low chance, but it’s been a long investment on their part. Eighty years.”

  “Tell.”

  “Maybe I should go,” Denella said. “If you don’t want this getting to the captain. I’d be obliged to tell him.”

  “That’s fine, you can tell him.”

  “So?”

  “How long have we had interstellar flight?” Garrison said. “Couple of hundred years?”

  “At least.”

  “Plenty of time for signals to reach this planet.”

  “We talked about that,” Lila said.

  “Exactly. Here’s what I think. The human race puts out an awful lot of signals. Radio communications, laser and so on. If you had lots of time on your hands, you could decrypt anything you received, break it down. At some point you figure out that some of those same signals are coming from some other location. Realize that it was ships. Ships that were passing you by. How would you get one to stop?”

  “Um,” Denella said. “Not by flagging it down.”

  “Right. No way to receive a signal while you’re on warp drive.”

  “Oh!” she said, eyes lighting up. “They sent out a signal to hack the system before Elegia Fortune even left.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Denella closed her eyes, thinking hard. She reached and clasped the bridge of her nose with her left index finger and thumb.

  “The iterations are staggering,” she said. “They understood the system, so they’d been listening for a long time.”

  Denella let go of her nose and looked around, smiling.

  “What?” Garrison said, though he clearly knew.

  “You both get it, don’t you?”

  Lila nodded.

  “That’s about all they have,” Denella said. “Time. An AI looking through all that. They could have... no. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not.”

  “Because if they understood the systems so well, why not just build themselves a starship? Right off the bat?”

  “Good question,” Garrison said.

  “Resources,” Lila said. “Power for manufacture. Systems to build the drive.”

  “Warp drive’s a finicky device to manufacture. Lots of precision.” Garrison took a sip of his tea.

  “Warp drive is big thing,” Denella said. “Very big.”

  “Yes.” Garrison nodded. “Energy hungry to build one. But once it’s built, well, you have an energy source you could harness to build more...”

  “What?” Lila said.

  “Warp drive,” Denella said. “We have one. Use energy to build more.”

  “Build starships,” Garrison said.

  “You could do that?” Lila said.

  Garrison shrugged. “I’m used to having a big factory. Orbital facilities.”

  “We could do that,” Denella said. “Send the equipment.”

  “Yes.” Garrison shrugged. “We could do that.”

  “The question,” Lila said, “is how many there are? Are we talking a few hundred. Or billions? More?”

  “Aliens?” Denella said. She smiled again. “We need to ask them.”

  “Yes,” Garrison said. “Excepting that they don’t want us to go down there.”

  “They do,” Lila said. “They asked for help. That was clear.”

  “To you.”

  “Yes.”

  “We will stay,” Denella said. “Take down lander. Two landers. And portable habitat. Set up base.”

  Garrison nodded.

  A charge ran through Lila, as if she’d touched an electric outlet. Excitement? Nerves? Terror?

  “We do not have to,” Denella said. “Will be long wait.”

  “I volunteer,” Garrison said. “Wouldn’t miss the chance.”

  “Likewise,” Lila said.

  Another charge ran through her.

  Were they really going to do this?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They situated the two landers fifteen meters apart on the planet’s surface, just under a hundred meters from the structure where Lila had been taken underground. The airless surface felt less inviting now, if that was actually possible.

  The structure seemed inert, but out of place. The icy dark frozen atmosphere felt far more natural.

  Five of them were going to stay here for the duration. Until Elegia Fortune reached her destination and arranged for the return of a support mission to restock and resupply.

  Lila, Garrison, Denella, Malé, and two others from ship’s contingent; Fiona Duncan, a systems tech and, importantly, a trained medic, and; August Dimetrios, a strategist and data analyst, who’d volunteered to remain.

  August was well into his seventies. “This,” he’d said with a cheery smile, “this will be my last big adventure.”

  “You know this is nuts,” Cassidy said, as the third lander set down nearby.

  Through the viewport, Lila could see the habitat tent self-assembling between the other two landers. It would be a strange time. Not cramped, but still restrictive.

  “We know it’s nuts,” Garrison said. “That’s what’s so invigorating about it.”

  The lander grew quieter as the landing engines wound down.

  Cassidy had brought them down, and was returning to Elegia Fortune with the pilots of the other two landers, and with Jacques, who’d made the trip down, just to hand over, perhaps to kind of formalize the mission.

  The coding issue with Elegia Fortune had been resolved. Still plenty of work to do to resolve all of that, but the techs were confident that they could continue the rest of the journey safely.

  “They sent a sledgehammer to stop us,” Cassidy said. “I don’t think that their intentions are clear, but that shows what they’re willing to do.”

  Cassidy, and many other members of the crew and passengers, had raised all these objections, and others, since the first group had returned to the ship with the loose outline for setting up on the surface. It seemed like things went in circles.

  “You have supplies for a couple of years here,” Jacques said. “And strategies to spin that out longer if necessary.”

  All of which they’d also been over. Power, food, recycling, heat. It had taken the best part of ten days, while they ran checks and double checks on Elegia Fortune’s warp drive’s coding.

  The ship was ready to depart. As was the third lander. The last thing was just for Lila and Garrison to suit up and cycle out through the lock.

  Lila shivered. It was warm in the lander, and they would be warm in their new base, but the thought that just beyond the walls it was near absolute zero was unnerving.

  Of course it was like that on the starship too.

  “We’ll work it out,” Garrison said. “You’ve given us a robust system.”

 

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