Claws That Catch

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I would have sworn this algorithm was good,” Bill said, looking at the results. “Hang on.”

He brought up an underlying subprogram and ran a validation on some of the matches.

“See, this ridge shows as a valid match,” Bill said, shrugging. The ridge was now outlined with a purple shape that shaded to light blue. “Seventy percent positive. I can bump the stat up but then who knows what we’ll miss? At ninety percent the system misses the Great Wall of China.”

“Which mostly ain’t straight, sir,” the chief pointed out.

“Which is why it doesn’t just look for straight lines, Chief,” Bill replied tightly. “We’re going to have to do an eyeball sort. That’s all there is for it.”

“Sir, I’ve only got two eyeballs,” the imagery specialist pointed out. “I’m just glancing at most of this stuff, but…”

“We’ll have to get more eyballs on it.”

“Captain Weaver to Biology Lab,” the 1-MC bellowed. “XO to Biology Lab.”

“Get the Marines on it,” Bill said. “They’re just sitting there.”

“So what you’re going to be looking at,” Eric said to the assembled platoon, “is stuff from the scopes. Most of it’s going to be ridgelines, rivers, stuff like that. But if you see anything that looks strange, kick it to me. If I agree, I’ll kick it up to the specialists. Try to use your brains, but let me make the final determination. Queries?”

“Sir?” Lance Corporal Wagner said, raising his hand. “Are we going to land on this planet?”

“Not unless we find something worth checking out,” Eric replied. “So hit the bunks; we’re going to be at this for a while.”

“That was quick,” Bill said, walking into the lab.

Miriam had the space spider laid out on a dissection table and was peering at a screen filled with chemical and biological notations.

“I thought you’d like to know what we were dealing with as soon as possible,” Miriam said. “But you might have to figure it out.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know if I’m figuring any of this out right,” Miriam admitted. “Some of it’s certain. This is a Class Four biology.”

“That’s Dreen,” Bill said, blanching.

“I said it was Class Four,” Miriam replied. “I didn’t say Dreen. It’s not Dreen. I don’t know where it’s from. It’s more like Nitch. The only thing that I can find that’s close to the design is Nitch but they’re Class Three. Alien unknown organism.”

“Great, we’re in quarantine for sure,” Bill said, sighing.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Miriam said, pointing to one of the biological readings. “There are no, and I repeat no, microorganisms in this thing that have any important effect on Class One biologies. So there’s no chance of us catching an alien space plague from it. The real biologists on Earth will have to double-check me on that, but this thing is the cleanest organism I’ve ever seen.”

“Not following,” Bill admitted.

“Okay,” Miriam said, sighing. “You have any clue how many viruses you’re carrying around right now?”

“None as far as I know,” Bill said. “I’m not sick.”

“Thousands,” Miriam replied. “And I’m not talking about individual bodies. I’m talking about species of viruses. Most of them have, apparently, no effect. Some of them might even be doing good things; scientists still aren’t sure about a lot of them. Then there’s your gut, which is packed with E. coli. Most… poop is actually E. coli bodies. Human beings are so chock full of little germs and bacteria and viruses and stuff that it’s surprising we have room for the muscle and stuff.”

“Didn’t know that,” Bill admitted. “But this thing?”

“It has four viroids,” Miriam said. “Best I can do on naming them. They’re not anything like our viruses. Class Four doesn’t even use DNA for one thing; it uses third juncture structures, closer to proteins, for genetic replication. The best description is that these are little packets that reproduce, but they can only reproduce on Class Four biologies and if I’m reading this right they’re some sort of enzyme producer that only attacks certain chemical structures. I don’t know what the chemical structures are, but they’re not human or other terrestrial proteins.”

“It was eating my cereal,” Bill said.

“Getting to that,” Miriam replied. “It has some more stuff in its gut. Not just its equivalent of E. coli but some bacterialike organisms. Closer in organization to Archaea but, again, using Class Four structures. Six of them. One of them can break down terrestrial sugars. You know how you can eat Adar food and not get fat?”

“Been on the Adar diet for a long time,” Bill said.

“Well, these can break down our sugars and convert them into its version of ATP,” Miriam said. “Badly. They can barely sustain themselves and it seems to release secondary materials that appear toxic.”

“So if they eat too much they die?” Bill asked.

“I’m not sure they die,” Miriam said. “I think they just don’t enjoy the experience much. I tested the toxins on some of the neurons that were still functional. The response, if I’m reading this right, looked like a pain response.”

“That’s…”

“Weird, I know,” Miriam said. “But it looks as if this thing would have little or no interest in, for example, entering terrestrial biologies and ripping them apart. If I’m reading all this right, it would find it actively unpleasant to try.”

“That’s good to hear,” Bill said.

“Yup,” Miriam said. “I even tried it on Adar food and got the same responses. I don’t have any Class Four biological material to test it on, so I don’t know what it would do to a Class Four biology. But all the biologies that we’re… friendly with don’t seem at risk.”

“All good news,” Bill said, letting out a sigh. “I was really sweating quarantine.”

“And you might, still,” Miriam said, looking at the enigma on the dissection table.

“But you said…”

“I haven’t gotten to the really good part,” Miriam said, waving the XO over to the table. She picked up a probe and spread the carapace, using the probe to point to a bit of purple stuff.

“What am I looking at?” Bill asked.

“Reproductive organs,” Miriam replied. “Here, here, here, here, here…”

“Uhmmm…”

“No,” Miriam said. “That’s not normal either. And all of them had some formed embryos in them. I’m not sure if they were dead or just… hibernating. Some of them seemed to be active for a short time. But this thing looks as if it’s supposed to breed faster than… Well, a hamster would go ‘Whoa!’ And they’re parthenogenic. Which means…”

“They don’t need other spiders to breed,” Bill said, breathing deep. “One of these things could…”

“Wipe out a world,” Miriam finished.

“I need a bottomline here, people,” Prael said, trying not to look at the linguist. He recognized, now, that he needed her. It didn’t mean he had to like it.

“I don’t think we can give one, sir,” Bill replied. “Miss Moon is not a biologist.”

“I’ve discussed the findings with Dr. Chet,” Miriam said. “He’s confirmed everything I found and does not consider them a threat. But it will be up to the science team on Earth to concur.”

“We’ve caught four more,” Bill said. “Miriam.”

“They’ve been given various Earth and Adar foods,” Miriam said. “Some of those are compatible with the Hexosehr. The only thing they’ll eat of Earth foods is cereal. They avoid the sugary ones, going for the blandest stuff we stock. And even then they don’t like it.”

“Put a big pile in the cage and they’ll go over from time to time, nibble on it, then lie down,” Bill said.

“And I was able to confirm that it’s painful for them to eat,” Miriam said. “They only do it to survive, poor things. I wish I had some Class Four biologicals to feed them.”

“I’d prefer that we keep their numbers down, Miss Moon,” the CO said. “They are still a huge potential biological hazard. Anything else?”

“They hibernate in vacuum,” Miriam said. “When exposed all their external openings close tight and they curl up. Their carapace is remarkably resistant to exfiltration. I don’t know how long they can maintain it, but I’ve put them in hard vacuum for fifteen hours and revived them. At this point, it’s how I’m storing them.”

“So we can’t even kill them by evacuating the ship,” the CO said, grumpily. “Where did they come from? Cheerick?”

“No, sir,” Bill said. “No way they came from Cheerick.”

“I think it was my fault,” Miriam admitted.

“How?” the CO asked.

“The asteroid mining,” Miriam said. “I think these things can last a long time in vacuum. Maybe for years or even centuries. There was probably one sitting on the asteroid. Who would have noticed?”

“Uh,” Bill said, shaking his head. “I think there’s a more probable explanation, if that’s the case.”

“Go,” the CO said.

“Last mission we got some material from a comet. We really didn’t use any quarantine procedures since what could you get from a comet?”

“Oh, yeah,” Miriam said happily. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they could get some nutrition even from comet ice. There’s a hint of complex organics in it! Wow! Glad it’s not my fault.”

“So am I, Miss Moon,” Prael said, gritting his teeth. “But to get back on point. This does not appear to be a threat to the ship?”

“No, sir,” Bill said. “Not to us. But they’re a threat to somebody.”

“How’s that, XO?” the CO asked.

“Gotta make a Star Trek reference, sir,” Bill said, grinning faintly.

“I’ll survive,” the CO replied.

“If they got the right food, they’re worse than tribbles. Tribbles didn’t have claws that catch.”

“Nada, CO,” Bill said. They’d been at the process for a week, checking out all of the rocky planets and the bigger moons, even if they were outside the standard life-zone. “The only one thing that seems to be in this system was that installation the Hexosehr trashed.”

“So we keep looking,” the CO said. “Suggestions? Astro?”

“HD 243170 is a G0 type star, very similar to Sol in other words, about four light-years away. That would be my next suggestion.”

“XO?” the CO asked.

“Concur,” Bill said. “Main sequence stars have longer life-zone periods than any other type of star. Theoretically, they’re the most likely to have developed life. My only query is about that point. We’re looking for a star-spanning species; they could be anywhere.”

“In which case HD 243170 is also the closest star,” Lieutenant Fey pointed out.

“Which was why I concurred,” Bill said, shrugging. “We’re just going to have to start from here and expand out. It’s going to be sloooow…”

“Oh God,” Berg moaned. “I can’t believe I’m longing for some nice exciting paperwork.”

The guys in the platoons had been told to send anything that might be an anomaly on to their chain-of-command. Then they’d been told to send stuff that only really looked like an anomaly. Which meant that Berg was only getting a file every minute or so. He was currently looking at a suspicious hill, if by “suspicious” you meant looking remarkably like Little Round-Top, tree-cover included.

The nice thing about this shot, admittedly, was that the Blade had finally found an apparently uninhabited planet that looked remarkably like Earth must have prior to the advent of civilization. The closest possible magnification even showed trees that looked like… well, trees. Broad-leafed, coniferous… If there was ever an Earth Two, it was the planet they were currently surveying.

“I know what you mean, man,” Lieutenant Morris said. “I wish just one of…”

“One of what?” Eric asked, pulling up the next shot. This one, he had to admit, was interesting. It looked sort of like…

“Eric,” Morris said in a strangled voice.

“I think I’ve got…”

“I don’t think,” Lieutenant Morris said. “I know.”

“Calling that thing a ruin is a bit of an understatement,” Captain Prael said, whistling faintly. “That’s a… A…”

“That would be a city, sir,” Weaver said, looking at the zoomed back shot of the area. “A big one. A big one. And it’s not the first one we’ve spotted, just the largest to date.”

It was hard to tell that the collection of odd-shaped mounds was a city unless you looked at the penetrating radar. When those shots had been pieced together, it was apparent that buried under about forty feet of silt and loess was a massive urban region approximately thirty miles across. The larger mounds were piles of rubble from immense buildings over a kilometer across at the base. Foundations for lesser buildings could be seen stretching out from those megastructures.

The ocean was now well away from the structures but the city might have once rested at a seaside. One side certainly had that terminal look. That meant that the planet had, probably, been warmer given that in twenty million years a sun tended to cool, slightly. The planet currently had extensive icecaps which might have been liquid in that earlier time.

“Do you think it’s their home planet?” the CO asked.

“Sir, I wouldn’t begin to venture a clue,” Bill replied. “We don’t know what these guys looked like, how they lived, what they ate or what happened to them. But the point is, we’re looking at a ruined planet. One that has more territory than we can effectively survey just in this one shot. And one, by the way, that’s perfect for humans as far as I can tell. Gravity’s slightly lower, oxygen’s a tad higher. It’s actually paradisical.”

“You just said a big word, XO.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Gravity’s lower?” the CO said. “The Blade’s gravity is…”

“Even lower than that, sir,” Bill replied. “If we assume that they would design a drive that gave the same gravity as their home planet, sir, it actually mitigates against this being it.”

“I wonder what their home planet looks like, then,” the CO said.

“If we ever find it, it will be interesting.”

“The majority of the ruins are under forty feet of soil,” Captain Zanella said. “Which means we are not going to be digging; that’s way too much to move. What we are going to do is look for any surface remnants we might find. Platoons will cover their designated search boxes and we’ll keep it up until we find something or Captain Prael calls off the search.”

“Remember that scene in Star Wars where they’re chasing each other on those bike things?” Dupras said, weaving his board around a massive broad-leafed tree.

The area where the city had once been was covered in trees. They looked somewhat like hemlocks but rose nearly ninety feet off the loam-covered forest-floor. Over the external sensors could be heard the sound of birdlike creatures fighting for territory, calling for mates. A deep, rumbling croak like from a frog the size of a mastadon occasionally echoed through the woods. Nobody had spotted the source, but there were various bets on what it was going to look like.

“Yeah,” Staff Sergeant Carr said as they came to a large stream and started to parallel it. “And I remember them crashing a lot. So be careful.”

“I’m being careful, Staff Sergeant,” Dupras said, sliding around another tree. “I’m being so careful I’m the model of carefulness. But I gotta say, I wish this was as far as we were going. This place is great. Gotta get rid of some of the trees, though.”

“Yeah, I don’t get all the trees,” Lance Corporal Rucker interjected. “Where are the fields? It’s just, like, trees for miles and miles and miles. I was looking at the shots and I didn’t see one open area in this whole part of the continent.”

“The whole eastern seaboard used to be covered in trees,” Sergeant Bae, the Bravo Team leader, answered. “It’s been clear cut at least five times since you Westerners arrived. Ecologically destructive bastards.”

“And the Chinese aren’t?” Carr replied, grinning.

“Oh, hell, so was China until we clear cut it,” the sergeant replied. “But that was thousands of years ago, not hundreds, so it’s all shiny.”

“Staff Sergeant?” Dupras said, suddenly. “I’m sorry to interrupt your wrangling like an old married couple, but I think you need to see this.”

“It’s some sort of support member for one of the buildings,” Eric said, looking at the shots from the portable ground penetrator. The meter-square box didn’t have the power of the radar on the Blade so it only revealed structures down twenty feet or so. The member faded into the depths well below that.

The part that extended above ground, jutting out of the stream like a transluscent rock, looked like a log made of glass. It was apparently untouched by the elements, about a foot across and the portion that could be sounded for was at least forty feet long. It was a jutting enigma, a relic of a race gone for so long that their most massive works were buried under the dirt and silt of millennia, with only this glassine remnant whispering: We were here.

“My name is Ozymandias,” Gunny Judas said.

“Sorry, Gunny?” Eric replied. “What was that?”

“I barely recall, sir,” the Gunny said. “Something I learned in school. A poem about a ruin in Egypt. The only part I can remember is the part that goes something like: My name is Ozymandias. Look upon me ye mighty and despair. But the statue it’s about was ruined and faded by time.”

“Habitable planet and all those ruins right in the line of Dreen advance,” Captain Prael pointed out sourly. “But we found nada of any use so we’re done here. We’ll leave it to generations of archaeologists if the Dreen don’t trash it. Next?”

“HD 242647,” Lieutenant Fey said. “G2 class star, just short of nine light-years away.”

“XO?”

Bill looked at the star map pensively, then shrugged.

“Technically, Astro is right,” Bill said, frowning.

“But… ?” the CO asked.

“But I’m wondering if we should bet on the ponies, sir,” Bill said. “The Blade’s engine was found on the rocky planet of an F type star and so are two other facilities that are believed to be from the same race. Another, though, is on the sole rocky planet of a B, a blue star. Okay, so this city is around a G class. But all the stuff we’ve found that’s useful has been around other classes.”

“And… ?”

“HD 34547 is a blue seventeen light-years from here,” Bill said. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong and we blew a survey. But my point is that it’s not a G class star.”

“Whoa,” the sensor tech said as the ship exited the heliopause. “TACO!”

“We’re getting major readings, sir,” the TACO said, pointing at the display.

“Hmmm…” Captain Prael said. “Dreen?”

“They don’t match the Dreen readings we have, sir,” the TACO said, shaking his head. “And they’re way off the scale. If that’s a Dreen ship, sir, it’s the size of a moon.”

“Got this triangulated, yet?” the CO asked cautiously.

“Right in by the star, sir,” the sensor tech answered. “Less than one AU. Inside the warp-denial bubble.”

Sufficient gravity caused the ship’s warp drive to refuse to work. For Sol the warp-denial point was between the orbits of Mercury and Venus. For this more massive star, it was at nearly one astronomical unit, the distance from Earth to Sol. However, the surface temperature of a planet at that distance would be closer to Mercury’s. Whatever was generating the energy was relatively close to the blue-white star.

“Actually, sir,” the tactical officer continued, looking at the readings. “It appears to be in a non-Keplerian orbit. Not even that, it looks like it’s just sitting over the star, directly out of the plane of elliptic.”

“Well, we’re here to find stuff from that race,” the CO said. “Makes sense that it would be something that was big and put out a lot of particles. So we check it out. We have a visual, yet?”

“There’s a flicker there,” the TACO said, zooming in the scope. “There’s something there, but what is the question. We’ll just need to get closer.”

“Conn, CIC…”

“Whoa,” Bill said, looking at the swelling image on the screen. “That looks like…”

“The world’s biggest Christmas tree,” Prael finished.

The ten-kilometer object was tapered like a fir, either made of glass or some similarly translucent material and colored in wild shades of red, purple and green. Different “branches” were different colors and either were pulsing or picking up refractions from the blue star. The base of the “trunk,” and there did appear to be an extension, was pointed towards the star with the tapered “top” pointed into deep space. And it was, in fact, just sitting at the absolute north pole of the star.

“Distance to object?” the CO asked.

“Three AU,” the TACO said.

“Sir, recommend…” Weaver started to say.

“Conn, CIC,” the CO said. “Hold it right here. Way ahead of you, Captain Weaver. We don’t know what that thing is or what it does and I’m not getting any closer until we do.”

“It’s pretty, I’ll give it that,” Prael said.

The Blade had moved around the system getting images of the giant “tree.” There was, indeed, a section of “trunk” on the inner side. Temperatures in that region should be nearly four hundred degrees Celsius on the surface. However…

“And weird,” Bill said. “I don’t believe these readings. Nowhere on the surface, including on the side pointed to the star, does the surface temperature get above a hundred degrees celsius.”

“Conn, Astro.”

“Go,” the CO said.

“We’ve got another anomaly and you’re not going to believe this one…”