Beside her, Zhdanov tensed, remembering that his initial reaction to Erin’s speech had also been to blame Cameron. He thought of all of the brain scanning and analysis equipment Cameron had taken from the UESRC—now the means makes some kind of sense, if not how he did it.
“Hmm?” Kansier raised a questioning eyebrow, but Knightwood waved her hands as if to dismiss any speculation. “Maybe that’s what Cameron was doing all that time while Erin was a cadet—programming, experimenting on Erin’s mind, maybe even using nano-devices to alter the genetic structure in her brain. Dr. Cameron was solely in charge of Erin’s physicals on Earth,” she added. “In fact, he insisted on it. Perhaps that was because she was his test subject during that time.”
“What do you mean—you think Dr. Cameron used Mathieson and her mind as an experiment?” Kansier asked for confirmation.
“I do.” Nodded Knightwood. “I know Cameron was worried about trying to learn to communicate with the aliens, but—he never told me he had found a way to contact them using the power of the mind.” Knightwood laughed as though sure she had found the answer.
“I know it sounds far-fetched, but what other reason can we assume allowed Mathieson to speak to the aliens? Unless of course, they assaulted her mind with some kind of nano-weapon that allowed her to understand them.”
Across the table, Kansier listened attentively, but something didn’t quite add up in his opinion. Since he knew Cameron personally, Kansier was able to accept the idea that the doctor’s experiments had produced an Earthling with a “gift” for advanced communication—Erin had apparently only absorbed the language for twenty minutes before she was able to communicate in it. Kansier paused, turning to his right, where Cheung and Zhdanov wore similar expressions of uncertainty; he felt certain that the same thing disturbed them—the simple truth was, Cameron had never approved of genetic experimentation.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” Knightwood quickly pointed out, “that you’re skeptical of my hypothesis, but Cameron did support some genetic selection back on Earth,” she insisted.
“I know,” said Cheung.
“Take the case for the artificial enhancement of predispositioned traits, for example. Cameron believed in specialization, that this kind of artificial enhancement could speed evolution beneficially, if such an enhancement were for the better good of the entire race and not merely a select few.
“Yes, but how could he do this?” Dr. Koslov asked skeptically. “We simply do not have the technology to make humans telepathic, and he could not have developed such technology all on his own without telling anyone.” Knightwood shook her head. “Maybe not. Who knows? But haven’t we all benefited from lieutenant Mathieson’s ability already? And who knows how useful her ability might be in the future if she can sustain it. My thought is that we should be more concerned with helping her use and keep her gift than worrying about questions we can no longer answer.”
Zhdanov nodded, coming to his own conclusions. Erin’s aptitude for language comprehension had been present since childhood, after her initial years of isolation and quick absorption of the English language.
Yet for now the question had to remain open, until they had further evidence to support Knightwood’s supposition. He liked the idea instead that the aliens had a nano-weapon that had allowed her to communicate with them, but why hadn’t they said anything about using that, and why had they seemed so shocked when she spoke to them as well? And if they could make telepathy possible, why couldn’t they translate their own stored transmissions and why had they needed her assistance? It all made no sense.
* * * * *
Alone for the first time since the scout team returned, Erin began to reflect upon what had happened on Elphor. She finally faced the truth; she knew she had understood the Elphorans’ language because she had been able to read their thoughts. It had taken her a long time during the team march to the Elphoran city to sift through her captors’ memories and absorb their culture but only seconds to absorb individual scraps and figure them out.
And as she remembered her interrogation, the reason she had not been able to translate their messages then became clear—she had no way of interrogating the creatures that had sent the signals, and she could not understand their language without a living mind to invade.
She was about to settle herself onto the sleep panel, when an unexpected thought struck her.
How then had she been able to translate the short segments? How had she recognized the message urging some unidentified recipient to come to the place called Tulor? Erin weighed the question in her mind late into the night.
She knew she had heard that alien language before, but that had to be impossible!
Chapter Seven
So, this strange world was called Elphor. Iriken looked up from the monitor and looked out at the voluminous grey-green of the living planet. While training under the Garen, the Great Leader’s chief advisor, in the Great Leader’s command center, Iriken found he could access all sorts of information through the Enlil’s main computer without any code clearances.
Enlil slipstreamed behind the Discovery to this world, only to find that she had already departed. For the first time, Iriken knew why they had come to Kiel3. The Great Leader had searched long for a ship called Selesta—Iriken found the translation and realized that it was similar to the Orian word “silrista”—open to discovery.
Only ten meters away, Leader Sargon and Garen discussed the Enlil’s new course without paying him any attention.
“I take full responsibility that we arrived too late to stop the Selesta,” Garen was saying. “But we could overtake them—”
“Of course—it must be! The ancient route of Hinev’s explorers!” Great Leader Sargon suddenly exclaimed, cutting off his subordinate mid-sentence. Iriken’s ears perked up to listen.
“The Selesta is retracing the path of the ancient Seynorynaelian explorers,” Sargon continued. “If I can just remember all of the things she told me about it—the stories when I was a child—” the Great Leader stopped, and smiled. “Set course for the Tiernan system,” he ordered.
Iriken suddenly realized he had wanted to see the planet below, now that the possibility had been removed. He eyed the great expanses of green regretfully. He had only ever known life aboard the Enlil, but his race had once lived on the surface of a planet under the open sky, free to wander without the protection of atmosphere compression packs, to look up at the stars only at night and observe a familiar slow-moving tapestry of lights, warmed by the nearest star by day.
He had never experienced this strange thing called climate—except briefly on Kiel3—it was merely a detail that the computer provided as some form of description to distinguish between worlds. Iriken had known only the constant temperature within Enlil, but recently he had begun to wonder what the winds of Kiel3 would have felt like against his face.
* * * * *
Erin recognized the Tiernan system from the picture and descriptions the Elphorans had given her. Only two short days after the wormhole jump, the Discovery’s on board scientists and analysts had determined the presence of planetoids in the nearby class K star system while compiling new star charts of the area.
Unlike the last time, Discovery approached the system traveling at minimum speed, giving them the chance to glimpse the world on their course grow from a small hazy pinpoint to a bright, greenish-yellow sphere, nearly one and a half times the mass of the Earth and whose gravitational pull exceeded the Earth’s by 17%. On the bridge, Colonel Kansier called for a recon shuttle to scout the surface and collect water that they had needed ever since the Discovery left the Earth.
“Knightwood, Zhdanov, and Cheung on line,” the intercommunications officer said.
“Patch us through,” Kansier nodded. Zhdanov’s face appeared on one of the Earth vidscreen holo-monitors that had been brought onto the Discovery bridge when the initial plan to outfit the vessel was carried out—the strange alien holomonitor had only acti
vated itself once, during their stay on Elphor.
Kansier thought back to the trip to Elphor.
On that day, Kansier’s bridge crew had received the first shipment of food when the observation window before them suddenly lit up. The view it projected originated on the surface of the planet but had somehow been transmitted with perfect clarity to the Discovery, magnified beyond the possibilities of Earth technology.
Three dozen aliens had surrounded the recon team.
The unprepared bridge crew had demonstrated various reactions to the surprise but all felt a kind of despair and urgency to reach their comrades below—two of the officers were still in recuperation, having gone into a catatonic state when the recon team was led away.
Kolesar had suggested a rescue party, but after the team had disappeared, Kansier knew there was nothing they could do. The Discovery may have presented an unparalleled technological advantage, but they still hadn’t figured out how to access its systems—hell, they couldn’t even control the navigation.
Kansier cursed their powerlessness, but they could only wait.
Then, a miracle had occurred. As if by magic, the recon team had hailed them after two very long, tense, nail-biting days to say that they needed a ride home.
After they returned to the ship, Kansier and the others had little time to ask questions, however, when the Discovery took matters into her own hands and jumped through another wormhole gate.
Now that they had come across another planet so soon, Kansier was reluctant to repeat their mistakes, but he had a feeling he knew what Zhdanov was about to suggest.
“Colonel, Knightwood and I request permission to join the scouting party. From the looks of it, this might be the planet Tiernan lieutenant Mathieson detailed in her report. Knightwood and I would like to try to establish contact with the human-like aliens the Elphorans spoke of.”
Kansier turned to Erin, to verify that Zhdanov’s assumption was correct, and she nodded, understanding his intent.
“Anxious to test the odds?” Kansier sighed.
Zhdanov didn’t seem amused. “We may not be noticed,” he countered. “Take a look at the local traffic—I don’t think anyone’s paying us any attention.” Kansier glanced at the radar image screen, where thousands of dots registered the presence of transports and artificial stations and satellites around the moonless planet.
“They have an intergalactic civilization here, it seems. Maybe they’ll never even notice us!”
“They’re bound to protest if we try to land, though—all that traffic would have to be regulated—but we won’t know what they’re saying to us and how to respond. Our shuttle could be destroyed before she touches down.” Kansier narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you want to take the risk? We need you two—we all depend on you. Save some energy for future discoveries. All we need right now is the water, and if this is the central headquarters of the entire colony the Elphorans are descended from, then how much more can we learn about them without taking the risk that they might decide to bring us in and take our ship if they can?”
“With this many ships in their skies, it should take them a while to figure out that we’re not some kind of returning cargo shuttle or something, especially if we stay out of orbit.” Zhdanov argued.
“Hmmm,” nodded Kansier.
“A lot of the cities,” Zhdanov continued, “are built in planetary chasmae—steep canyons, no doubt for protection. But the main city is sprawled over a large area. That’s where a lot of the shuttle traffic comes in from space and leaves the planet. We may not know how to navigate into it, but we’d like to try. Knightwood and I have one more request,” Zhdanov added. Sensing something significant was about to emerge, Kansier listened patiently.
“We’d like to take Erin Mathieson with us. Now don’t you see—if she can do what she did on Elphor, we might be able to get by the Tiernans and contact the humans.”
Kansier finally consented with a slight nod, though he did not approve of their venture. Major Dimitriev rose in his chair and now interrupted with a gesture of protest.
“Colonel, forgive the interruption, but is it really necessary to send officers with the scout team? Shouldn’t we wait until we’ve determined their security? We don’t even know for sure that there are people like us on this planet.”
“No, I’ll go.” Erin had appeared behind them. In the holo-field, Zhdanov smiled his approval.
“Yes, Mathieson must go, in the event that she can make contact with the aliens.” Said Kansier.
“We’ll be expecting you in a few minutes. Knightwood’s loading some equipment onto the scout shuttle. We’ll meet you there.”
* * * * *
Several hours later, on the planet Tiernan, the scout team flew over a great urban expanse beneath the window they had taken to the surface, tantamount to the perfect geometrical cities of Elphor but many times larger and teeming with a variety of transports that wove through building blocks of every color. The system of air shuttle traffic, unknown to them, proved to be their greatest trial. Knightwood was for the hundreds of different transports around them that camouflaged their identity.
Knightwood gazed out the windows, searching the passing shuttles and pedestrian lanes far below for signs of human life, but could see only a few of the inhabitants clearly as they passed by, and all so far were like the Elphorans.
Unfortunately, they would have to wait to find the human-like beings until they had augmented their water supply; the ship’s monitor had showed them an undisturbed lake to the northeast past a wide vastitas, a lowland area on the planet’s surface, and the shuttle would be able to speed up once they cleared the city.
“What a view!” whistled Zhdanov.
The great volcanoes of Tiernan dwarfed even those of Mars. Flat-topped elevated mensae rose beyond the city before the great plains appeared. Giant paterae, filled with water to form crater lakes larger than Earth’s great lakes put together appeared beneath them like small oceans. A great deal more of the planet’s surface water remained frozen at the poles than on Earth, but the climate of Tiernan was actually a few degrees warmer on average.
“You can say that again,” agreed Knightwood.
The absence of real terrestrial trees reminded Knightwood of Elphor, as did the strange olive and brown uncorticate tree-like forests, distant relatives of the Elphoran dthúl trees which had proven quite tasty and a big hit with even the children on board the Discovery—despite the face that they closely resembled Earth vegetables in their nutritional value.
The shuttle met no resistance and picked up only marginal signs of animal life—the humanoid inhabitants of the planet appeared to have clustered into great cities without venturing into the wilder terrain beyond.
It was no wonder they had forsaken the land beyond civilization’s reach; close-ups of the land below revealed large but low, powerfully muscled six-legged carnivorous creatures and herds of squat, long-necked herbivores, with two frontal legs and a third for balance, three smaller grasping appendages above the vestiges of a common six-legged ancestor.
“Look at those weird creatures!” exclaimed one of the officers on board the shuttle.
“Yes, I wouldn’t want to meet up with any of them,” agreed Zhdanov.
The shuttle touched down at the edge of a lake and began to draw the water into the thirty-million gallon tank, but they found the process slower than anticipated. Like the water, their movements outside the shuttle, affected by the slight increase in surface gravity, slowed significantly, and the team quickly grew tired.
But as Knightwood watched Erin through the window, standing outside in her alien flightsuit, her head turning as she observed the bizarre but beautiful landscape around her, she thought the young lieutenant moved rather quickly.
Knightwood’s reveries were interrupted by a call from the radar operator behind her.
“We’ve got to move,” he shouted, his voice urgent. “The ship just picked up a mass of gravitational waves—our Charo
n alien friends are back.”
Knightwood nodded and waited for the airlock to open so she could bring in the others.
* * * * *
It can’t be a coincidence, Zhdanov thought. Again the Discovery had escaped the Charon alien ship that had chased her to the Tiernan system, only moments after the scout party returned from the surface of that planet. Discovery had passed through another nearby wormhole gate, and aside from other things, Zhdanov again wondered who had constructed their tour.
Discovery is protecting us, the realization shocked him. But why? How does she know when we have left her and when we return? What course has she set for us and why? His line of thought degenerated into the same old questions—questions they had all been asking themselves these past ten months.
The ship had reappeared in a large expanse of dark matter, an open section of space without stars or light, within a blanket of particles and hydrogen clouds in which they could determine neither where they were nor how long they had to go before they would return to the familiarity of a star system.
Knightwood had suggested yesterday that they had come to the edge of some galaxy, and the hundred or so onboard scientists had spent the rest of the day studying the composition of the strange dark matter that had been predicted but not yet conclusively proven to exist by terrestrial science.
The opportunity presented them was unparalleled, and in only hours, the science of the matter that composed a large percent of the universe’s mass grew from the rudimentary into a complex branch. But even with so many scientists on board, Knightwood knew it would take years to unravel and analyze all of the data they had collected.
On the bridge, Zhdanov had found the crew silent and despondent when he arrived to present the scientists’ report in person. The uncertainty of their position and overwhelming darkness beyond the ship had begun to affect the crew’s morale, and many that had already suffered from a peculiar space travel-induced mental sickness were quarantined in the calming hydrogardens on board the Stargazer.