Lord Pluto neither moved nor spoke, and may have turned off his own nervous system, since he stood without fidgeting.
Luna said, “By ‘this equipment’ you mean the warpcore it took a highly advanced technological civilization inhabiting every world and moon of the Solar System over a year of intense effort to prepare, right? So all we have to is, what? Find a civilization roughly three to five times more advanced than the Empire of Man? What is the good news?”
Aeneas said, “We are smack in the middle of a binary system whose suns are roughly the same size. A subgiant yellow sun twice as big as and six times brighter than Sol; its companion is an orange-red main sequence star a hair smaller than Sol and half as bright. Because of this, the gravitation barycenter is not underneath the surface of a sun, but nicely placed about seven AU’s from either star.” Seven astronomical units was smaller than Saturn’s distance from Sol, but larger than Jupiter’s. “It might be a trinary system, because that subgiant star is occluding our view of another star-sized gravity source beyond it.”
“Why is that good news?”
Aeneas answered, “Because I just found out that this kind of longrange jump lands you in the center of gravity of the target solar system. If this had been a single star system like Sol, we’d have unwarped out of folded space directly into in the middle of a sun. Since about half the star systems in the galaxy are single-star, we just took a fifty-fifty life-or-death gamble without knowing the stakes or the odds. Lucky us. We won the coin toss. Lord Pluto, who the hell were those people, those things, we just ran from?”
Lord Pluto tilted the lens of his blank helmet toward Aeneas. “I have no idea. How would I know?”
“You knew they were enemies!”
Lord Pluto said, “Naturally, we arrived in the Alpha Centauri system with you and knew no more about life outside our solar system than you. The only difference is that my instruments detected the levels of death-energy filling the entire volume of the star system, so I knew no organic life was present, whereas Lady Luna was aware that all the minds of the system were interlinked and formed one uninterrupted mass subconscious mind… the content and character of that mind you saw yourself.”
Aeneas said, “And you didn’t warn me?”
“As soon as it became clear your activities might attract their attention, I made myself visible to you. Since we parted on doubtful terms, I thought it best to prove my good intentions by waiting until you found yourself in need.”
“Your hesitation almost destroyed us.”
“Because I did not understand the implications of your technology. I did not know your gravity differential turbine could be detected outside my negative information range. Our family system of not sharing the stratonic sciences has proven insufficient.”
Aeneas said, “And somehow you knew they would attack without warning. How?”
It was Lady Luna who answered. “Other predator species suffer a die-back if they over-consume their prey, or outgrow their food source. Not vampires. As long as there is any organic life-energy to consume, they have no need not to multiply. The Alpha Centauri system civilization must have consumed all local life millennia ago. And been suffering agonies of starvation since then.”
“Why did they look like people? Human biology is so exactly adapted to the environment of Earth, we could not possibly have evolved anywhere else.”
Lord Pluto said, “Lady Luna peopled the Moon with humans and other primates, as well as hounds and harts and various game animals. The relation of species in that case was a product of engineering, not evolution.”
“Are you saying Earth was created artificially?”
“Perhaps only the Cenozoic ecology is artificial, once the Cretaceous Extinction cleared dinosaurs out of the way.”
Luna said, “If earthlife is designed, the Forerunners do not look like us: we look like them.”
Aeneas said, “Were those the Forerunners?”
Lady Luna said, “Unlikely. Subconscious minds like those we saw are incapable of speculation or imagination.”
“They have warptech.”
Lady Luna said, “And their dreamtech network was bigger than anything I could dream up. But wherever they got it, they did not invent it.”
Lord Pluto said in his calm, undisturbed voice, “It disturbs me that the Space Vampires have warptech. How far did they spread?”
Aeneas said, “We had better hope they are not here, because we need native materials and help.”
He gazed at the screen. “Odd. This star system also has planets in the hundreds, not eight or nine. I wonder if that is a commonplace feature of multiple star systems. We may never know. The trove of Forerunner science Grandfather found did not include the answer to that question. And human science has since lost all curiosity.”
Nearly all the worlds had some trace of cities or roadways under oceans of liquid or glaciers of solid nitrogen. This system had been civilized when the orange sun had been hotter, geological ages ago.
Only one small planet was close enough to the subgiant sun to have water. A single ocean formed the southern pole. The rest of the globe was one supercontinent entirely crisscrossed with a web of canals and reservoirs. A single vast mountain rose from the north pole like the horn of a unicorn, reaching above the atmosphere.
It was surrounded by six large, close moons, whose shadows coated part or all of the small globe every few hours at irregular intervals.
It would have taken minutes to drop space contortion pearls to the likely locations on the surface and then teleport down. Instead, Aeneas equipped the asteroid with gravity-drivers, disinertia fields, impellers, and all else needed to transform the mountain into an interplanetary vessel able to land. He was unwilling to leave the warpcore too far behind him, and even more unwilling to be left behind while the others explored.
The asteroid, now a three sided pyramid coated with silver ablative, descended on negative-gravity beams from the cloudless purple sky above trees that looked remarkably like feather dusters. It landed next to a native city near the foot of the north polar mountain, crushing a square mile or so of this lacy forest beneath its base.
The towers of this city were thin stalks in the low gravity, wider at the peak than at the base, like trumpets standing on their mouths. At ground level were domes and spirals. All the cobblestone streets were curves. The doors and windows were tall and thin, as if meant for a race of wraith-thin giants.
Other than some architectural oddities, it might have been a city of Earth. An airport held craft of many fanciful designs, triplanes, ornithopters, and helicopters woven of silk and gossamer. There was a spaceport with a monorail launch-catapult. There was a power plant, with the characteristic cooling dome betokening atomic power.
Lady Luna cautiously sealed her breathing hood before exiting the airlock.
Lord Pluto was more cautious. He surrounded his armor with several defensive fields and energy shells, and vanished from their sight.
Aeneas was confident he could not be harmed by any combination of gasses, or biological or chemical agents. He wore a purple-hemmed white tunic and white sandals.
An energy ramp reached from the airlock to an oval fern-garden, intersected by canals, in the center of the city. Down the two walked.
Above the doorway of every building were hanging one or two or a dozen yard-wide globes of material whose surfaces were opaque to Aeneas’ instruments. These did not seem to be lights or weapons or energy supplies. Perhaps decoration?
The walls were likewise impenetrable, but clearly the native eyes could pierce their substance, because their windows were made of it also.
It was for this reason they had landed and drawn close. Lord Pluto’s power could not be broadcast over large distances. Aeneas said, “Lord Pluto, I assume you are still within earshot?”
He was. Suddenly the walls became clear as glass. All the buildings and towers were empty of any living thing. The gear and artifacts of the native peoples were all folded or
stowed neatly, with no signs of panic or haste.
“That is eerie,” said Aeneas. “I’ve just noticed how quiet it is.”
Luna said, “No insects. No songbirds. My instruments detect no bacteria.”
The yard-wide globes hanging, either singly or in clusters, before the doors, now turned transparent as well. They revealed their contents. Lady Luna screamed in shock.
They were filled corpses. Some held one. Some held many. They were long limbed and long-necked men, all crushed or compacted together. All seemed to be of the same race, but the mangled conditions of the bodies made it hard to tell. All were in postures of frenzy, as if dying in mid-struggle, in torment.
Aeneas, meanwhile, bent over and touched one of the ferns of the thick garden in which they stood. The lacy leaves seemed oddly pale and motionless. The plant stirred and chimed like glass at his touch, and his hand went numb.
“These plants are undead,” he said in a voice of quiet horror to Lady Luna.
The whole garden rippled as the lifeless leaves unfolded, spread, and turned toward them hungrily.
Episode 03: The Great Eye of Zeta Herculis
Lord Pluto’s voice issued from a point in midair. “I have rendered us invisible to the life-absorbing plants. They are still a danger should you touch them: step on no grassblade, let no leaf brush you.”
In the distance was the north pole mountain whose base was hidden behind the too-near horizon. It rose into the purple sky like a column, made ghostly by distance. Its peak had the crisp clarity and sharp shadows of an object in hard vacuum, and the crown had the typical antennae and dishes of an astronomical observatory. Aeneas said, “Let’s go there. We can use the equipment to search for any living worlds in this system, or to discover our precise location, which I need before I can calculate a warp-path.”
A kinetic ray placed a contortion pearl on the peak, teleported a mass of molecular engineering microbes as well as larger robotic tools, and a set of servile automatic minds to run them. The servominds built and pressurized an atrium fit for their humans to step into. Then the molecular engineering microbe mass with their escort of tools flooded through the observatory, seeped and pried into alien mechanisms, and began the classification and analysis process.
Aeneas, Lady Luna, and the unseen Lord Pluto contorted to the mountain top, to direct the servominds, and make any decisions requiring ingenuity.
While they waited, Aeneas stood on the balcony and looked at the alien world underfoot. With his amplified vision, he saw flying creatures that looked like autogiro-winged butterflies, but they were pale as ice and radiating death-energy. He also saw myriad wormlike things floating on the surface of the canals, also pallid unlife. And, elsewhere, a swarm of locust-winged things hung on the wind like a silent dust storm over a vast but pale grassland. All were Necroforms. All were vampires.
Aeneas could not restore feeling and motion to his hand. All the molecules of the dead cells were present, and in their proper places, but nothing was moving. Aeneas severed his wrist with an energy beam and grew a new hand from raw totipotent cell masses.
The servominds reported: The alien thinking machines were not actually machines, but a set of undead microbes, connected by thought-energy threads in a decentralized network, and held in a blood-red liquid substance that radiated death-energy. This liquid ran through every instrument in the observatory and controlled them.
Sir, milord, and milady, sent the servominds: Spaceman’s fog contains microscopic, positive life. This can be fed into the fluid containing negative life. This will power it, and allow the instruments to activate. To proceed, please give the order.
Aeneas studied the fluid using his many senses, warping space to bring him remote information or to Doppler-shift unseen frequencies into view. A spike of neutronium reached from the peak along the axis of this super-stratospheric mountain to the long dead core of the planet. Rivers of this vampire microbe fluid flowed up and down this spike, and through the spherical core sea, and up fountains like vertical rivers. These waters circulated through vents and chimneys in the crust to the floor of the southern polar ocean.
Aeneas said, “This planet is all vampires. Their cells are dispersed throughout the hydrosphere, and are carried by the canal system to every part of the globe. I am not sure what the canals are for…”
Lady Luna said, “The canals form their computing network. The natives here have rigorously organized their subconscious minds, their dreams, to carry out both simple and complex mathematical computations. The unconscious minds of everything on the planet are connected to this worldwide liquid mind. It acts something like our signet rings, to carry out routine thought operations.”
Lord Pluto’s voice spoke out of nowhere, “Let me inspect the astronomical machinery. If I can hide us from any observer, even one inside the liquid mind used to control this facility, I will activate the instruments. Agreed?”
Aeneas said, “If you can mask us, yes.”
Lady Luna said, “I will ask my ring to help yours. Since the unconscious minds here are also organized into one system that commands the waking thoughts of the vampires, it should be quite easy for you. But I must also scan the machines from closer range.”
Inside they went. Any instruments based on the same principles of engineering as their earthly counterparts could be understood. Other objects were incomprehensible.
The ceilings and doors were tall and thin, as if built for men on stilts, but Lady Luna could squeeze through them by turning sideways. Aeneas tossed a pearl through any door he could not negotiate, and contorted through.
There were neither ladders nor ramps, merely trapdoors in the ceilings. In the low gravity, it was no more effort to leap thirty feet straight up than to step up a stair.
A trio of alien corpses were arranged on benches in a chamber filled with mirrors. This race differed markedly in shape from the corpses stuffed into glass spheres outside. Perhaps it was a caste or class difference. They were shaped like five-legged centaurs, if centaurs were proportioned like giraffes. The extra leg was designed for prodigious leaps in the low gravity. Their arms and fingers were long and elegant, with more joints than human arms. Their faces were narrow and strong, with philosopher’s brows, features expressive even in repose, sensitive lips and nostrils.
A set of carefully arranged glass wands held the dead bodies upright, limbs poised gracefully.
The floor was covered with markings of a writing system. Aeneas addressed the servominds. “Can you translate it?”
Not at the moment, sir. We have as yet encountered insufficient correlatives. We can translate their engineering manuals, and scientific textbooks, because we can correlate any patterns of possible symbols to various possible models of the universe. The writings here have an emotional or religious value for which there is no common ground.
But Lady Luna said, “I can read it. My ring can correlate these shapes with archetypes and symbols encountered in the local dream-spectrum, which is active. I’ve been recording continuously.”
Aeneas said, “Someone is sleeping on this world?”
“The whole solar system is one nightmare.”
“So what does it say?”
“This is a suicide pact: these three are servants who, at the last, refused to obey the order to turn themselves into vampires, but who did not wish to die by being fed to vampires. It is a set of poems or musical stanzas praising the goodness of their life they are leaving behind, sunlight and wind and scented ferns, and those stanzas praise the greatness of the master-race who created them, who no longer has need of them.”
Aeneas said, “For what reason? Does it say?”
She shook her head. “There is a statement that the master-race was created by an even higher master-race, overlords. The overlords ordered the masters to commit racial suicide. The servant race here was supposed to follow their masters out of love. Except suicide is the wrong word. What is it called when one surrenders life, not into death, but into ant
i-life?”
Lord Pluto’s voice came out of midair. “The word you seek is damnation. These three killed themselves to find escape.”
Lady Luna said sadly, “I do not think they escaped damnation. These sections written here are praises of the wisdom and justice of their masters, and expressions of their own grief and misery for not having the virtue to follow them into the endless pain and horror of a zombie existence. Any being who loves and praises his own tormentor is damned!”
Aeneas said, “Any being whose creator made him see evil as good and good as evil would utter such praises. Any creator making slaves to serve him, not children to inherit all the good he can bestow, will create blind creatures.”
Lady Luna muttered, “Horrible!”
That annoyed Aeneas. “Oh? Is our family so much better? The Moon Maidens you have made—is it their fate to serve you forever?”
She raised her hand and slapped him sharply on the cheek. He raised one eyebrow and smiled a crooked smile with half his mouth. “Hit the bull’s-eye, did I?”
Lady Luna said in a husky voice, “We are nothing like them! Nothing like this!”
At that moment, the alien machinery stirred into life. Aeneas could see ultraviolet and microwave-colored torches ignite, and hear sonar holograms being projected. Fluid containing undead microbes rushed through tubes and capillaries webbing the alien instruments.
Lord Pluto’s voice spoke. “We remain unseen. For safety’s sake, let us return to Talos, and have the servominds report there.”
A mental command sent to their contortion pearls returned them to the pyramid.
The suns were examined.
Aeneas said, “As it turns out, there is a cloud of material between here and Sol, absorbing certain spectrographic lines, messing up human almanacs of this star’s fingerprint. We are at Ruticulus, also called Zeta Herculis.”
Lady Luna said, “Am I supposed to recognize that name?”
Aeneas said, “No, but you are supposed to be glad I do. Sol can be reached in four warpjumps taking a day and a half each. The only question is fuel: I cannot refuel in deep space. I need to be in a gravity well.”