Starhawk

Chapter 49

JAKE, SAMANTHA, AND Tony rode the lander down through clear skies, tracking the transmission from the radio Jake had left with the wreckage. They were at about a thousand meters when Samantha caught her breath. “Look!” she said.

Jake looked, but saw only the opaque, snow-covered landscape.

“No question,” said Tony. “They have to be artificial. No way that could happen naturally.”

They were talking about the symmetries. They were hard to make out in the darkness, but they were there, surface features that were almost but not quite polygons, ovoids, cones, and cubes. A thousand assorted shapes. Lost in the blowing snow, they were easy to miss. Literally buried in snow. But they were there, arranged in grids and circles and abstract dispositions that might have been chaotic yet nevertheless suggested a kind of order.

Mountains might have been oddly shaped bubbles. A canyon cut through snowfields like a lightning bolt. Then it all went away, and they were over an area in which nothing unusual could be distinguished. “They’re incredible,” said Samantha. “Seeing them like this is a little different from just looking at the record—” She took a deep breath. “That settles it for me. Somebody’s been here. Or still is.”

There was more. Directly ahead, they could make out a cluster of parabolic hills.

* * *

“WHERE DO YOU plan to put the base?” asked Jake.

“Originally,” Samantha said, “I thought locating it near the downed lander would be as good a spot as any.”

“But—?”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to set it up near one of those grids.” She took a deep breath. “Jake, you know what we’re dealing with here, right?”

That took him by surprise. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Whenever you referred to the presence, you always used plural pronouns. As if it were a species of some sort.”

“What else could it be, Samantha?”

“I think we’re about to give new meaning to the term living world.”

Jake grunted. “That’s crazy. You’re saying the planet’s alive?”

“Not exactly. I doubt that’s possible. But I think there’s something alive in the atmosphere. More or less the atmosphere itself, maybe. It takes a lot of air to support a falling lander. If we were looking at an ordinary world, with sunlight and oceans, I doubt I’d even consider the possibility. But out here—” She shook her head.

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Jake, we’re just beginning to look around outside the solar system. Before we’re finished, I’d be surprised if we don’t discover that a lot of what used to be basic dogma is really pretty narrow. So yes, let’s recover Otto first. Then we try to send a message to the occupant any way we can. Meantime, we can talk about where to locate the base.”

“What do you think the grids are?”

“An art form. It’s hard to see what else they could be.” Jake couldn’t hide his skepticism. “Look,” she continued, “if there is something here, it’s been here a long time. What else would it have to do other than carve designs?”

“Using what?”

“The wind. Snow, dust—”

* * *

THE NIGHT WAS absolutely still.

Jake followed the signals, a steady beep-beep-beep, through the darkness. They were at about three hundred meters when Samantha tapped on her display. “There it is.”

“Okay,” said Jake. “So what’s the plan?”

“Let’s see if we can find that missing wing. The scanners can penetrate a couple of hundred feet of snow and ice. So even if it’s buried, we should be able to see it.”

“Why do we care?”

“I don’t want any loose ends.”

“All right,” said Jake. Waste of time, though. He activated the scanners, turned on the searchlights, dropped lower, and began to circle the area. They saw nothing they hadn’t seen before.

“All right,” Samantha said finally, “let’s go pick up Otto.”

* * *

JAKE STILL DIDN’T like the landing area, but it was all they had. He bounced down and rolled toward the rocks. His passengers were clinging to their seats, and he heard a few gasps. But they stopped where they needed to, and he tried to act as if it were routine. “Thank God,” said Denise.

“Actually,” said Jake, “I’m getting better with practice. That’s the best one I’ve done.”

“Glad I wasn’t here for any of the others,” said Tony.

He turned the spacecraft around and assured them that the departure would be less exciting.

They pulled on air tanks and activated their Flickinger units. Jake liked the slight tingle that always accompanied the process. It reminded him that this was what he lived for. The sensation was a built-in characteristic of the field to alert the user that it had turned on. Jake recalled the story of Alan Jarvais, who would probably be featured in every pilot-training program for years to come. Jarvais had not been aware of a defect in his unit. When he pressed the activator, the field had not formed. He hadn’t noticed and went into an air lock and started to depressurize. When he discovered that breathing was becoming a problem, he could have reversed the process, but he apparently hadn’t known how, or he had simply panicked. In any case, it was exit Jarvais.

He trained the spotlights at the top of what he had come to think of as Vincenti Hill, and the lander came into view. “We’ll leave them on for now,” he said, “and shut them down when we’re coming back, so they don’t blind everybody. It’ll be slippery out there, so be careful.”

The air lock opened, and Jake stepped down onto the ice. The others followed, and they pulled the pallet out of storage. Tony insisted on carrying it.

Samantha wore a blue jumpsuit. She was rotating her shoulders. “I see what you mean about the gravity,” she said.

Mary’s voice broke in from the Venture: “Be careful, guys.”

“We will,” said Samantha.

Jake switched on a wrist light and took the lead. The darkness was oppressive. Midnight World. Priscilla had it right. “This way,” he said, starting the uphill trek. A mild breeze sprang up behind them and pushed him gently, as if urging him forward.

* * *

THE LANDER GLOWED in the spotlights. Samantha circled it, looking for damage. She didn’t find much they didn’t already know about. Then she opened the hatch and, followed by Tony, went inside. Jake heard Tony react when he saw Otto. Jake preferred the wind to the grisly interior, so he waited where he was.

Lights moved around inside. After a few minutes, Samantha came back out. She stood looking at the lander, then lifted her eyes to the sky.

Jake went in. He and Tony picked up the body and carried it out. Tony lost his footing coming through the air lock, staggered against the hull, and almost went down. Samantha, fortunately, grabbed his shoulder and steadied him. “Careful,” she said.

They laid the body on the pallet.

“Pity,” said Samantha. “He was a likable kid. With a bright future. Now all he gets is his name on a wall.”

Jake’s footprints from the earlier mission were still visible. “Doesn’t snow much here, does it?” said Samantha.

“I guess not. At least not in this area.”

“What’s really odd,” said Denise, “is that, if nothing else, the wind would have filled them in. We’ve got some wind now, and it’s moving the snow around. Does it only blow when somebody’s here?”

“The snow has a crust,” said Samantha. “That might have been enough to keep it in place. When you got here before, Jake, did you see any prints of any kind? Anything to indicate anybody else, anything else, might have been here?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t see anything unusual.”

“Okay.” She looked down at Otto. “I guess that’s all we can do here. You guys ready to roll?”

The spotlights atop the lander were in their eyes now. Jake turned them off. He and Tony picked up the pallet, and they started back down the slope. The cabin lights looked warm and comfortable.

* * *

JAKE HAD A hard time keeping his balance while he helped carry Otto. Moreover, a sudden wind that blew up behind them didn’t make things easier. “Maybe,” he said, “your buddy is trying to help.”

Samantha let the remark pass without comment.

The steepest part of the descent came during the first ten minutes. Samantha led the way, testing the ground as she went, warning Tony and Jake where the going was especially slippery. About halfway down, Tony’s feet went out from under him. Denise grabbed hold of him and the pallet but only became part of the general spill. All three plus the body went tumbling.

“What happened?” asked Mary, speaking from the Venture. “You guys okay?”

“Just a minor accident,” said Samantha. “We’re fine.”

They put Otto’s body back on the pallet and started again. And they got a break: The wind eased off.

* * *

FOR THE LOCATION of the shelter, Samantha picked a strip of flat land along the edge of a grid on the opposite side of the planet, not far from the south pole. “Denise,” she said, “you stay with the ship.”

The grids themselves did not seem to be laid out in any discernible pattern. There were hundreds of them, scattered randomly around the globe. The one Samantha chose was not special in any way. It was about average size, a square block of ground approximately ten kilometers on a side. She’d based her decision on two factors: It was an easy place to bring the lander down. And they had visibility in all directions.

Moving the shelter down required three flights. The first two carried the exterior shells and interior necessities for four cubicles. Brandon Eliot took over, with Samantha to assist, and the four structures were assembled and connected when Jake got back with the final load. “How’d you get it done so quickly?” he asked.

Brandon shrugged. “All you have to do is attach a generator to the packages. Turn it on and the modules assemble themselves.” Two would provide sleeping quarters, and the third one gave them a pair of washrooms. All three connected to the fourth—the largest—which functioned as an operations center/common room/dining area.

The third shipment brought chairs, tables, cots, and general supplies, much of it packed in plastic containers. Brandon, assisted by Jake, connected air and water tanks, an AI, and installed the mechanicals. Tony filled the water tanks. They placed a radio antenna on a nearby hilltop and an imager on the roof of the operations center. And they added some outside lights, so the base would be visible. “We want to be sure nobody gets lost,” Samantha told Jake.

When they finished, they staggered inside, closed the hatches, pumped air into the structure, turned off their Flickinger fields, stacked a few empty containers, and collapsed into the chairs and cots. The ops center had two large windows. The grid outside glittered in the starlight. It was just after 8:00 P.M. ship time, and Brandon’s automated kitchen provided a round of meals.

They congratulated Brandon on the quality of the food. But Jake suspected that what really fueled a generally happy mood was being sheltered from the cold, dismal climate. “All we need,” said Tony, “is a fireplace.”

“What’s next?” asked Mary, as they finished eating.

Samantha could barely contain her excitement. “We have the same pattern of signals that Jake thinks got a reply from whatever’s out there. We’re going to try to take that a step further.”

“In what way?” asked Brandon.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow when we’re awake. But I think right now it would be a good idea to crash—”

* * *

JAKE HAD TROUBLE sleeping. He kept waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he got up and wandered into the ops center. Light snow was falling. Someone was seated in the dark. He wasn’t sure who it was. “Awake?” he whispered.

“Hi, Jake.” It was Samantha.

He sat down beside her. “I wonder how much snow we’ll get?”

She smiled. “We don’t care now. The shelter’s up and running.”

He watched the flakes drifting against the Plexiglas. “I’ve been thinking about your theory.”

“That the atmosphere is alive?”

“That it’s a global creature of some sort. Is that really what you meant?”

“I think that’s a possible outcome.”

“Just one of its kind?”

“Yes. Probably.”

“How does it reproduce? Like an amoeba?”

“My guess would be that it doesn’t.”

“It would have to, wouldn’t it?”

“Not really. The thing might not age.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“That would mean it’s been out here alone for millions of years.”

“Maybe hundreds of millions.”

“My God, Samantha. If that were true, it would be deranged. This thing actually seems pretty friendly.”

“Jake, if we’re right, it’s probably always been alone. Even when it had a sun. It’s not hard to understand why it might appreciate some company.”

* * *

HE WOKE IN absolute darkness. There was a window, but he couldn’t see it. Where the hell were the stars? He got up and turned on a light. The window was covered with snow.

Samantha was gone. He checked the time. Four hours had passed.

He sat back down and stared at the window.

What the hell was going on?

He pulled on the Flickinger gear, let himself into the lock, and closed it. The lights came on. He activated the field, and, when decompression was complete, pushed on the outer hatch. It moved slightly. But there was resistance on the other side.

He let go and stood staring at it.

He couldn’t resist laughing. The life-form that Samantha had talked about was standing out there holding the hatch shut. Hello, World Sentience. How are you?

All right. What had happened, of course, was that they’d had more snow than anticipated. It was up over the windows and now it was blocking the exit. He pushed on the hatch again, this time with a more determined effort. It moved, and some flakes fell into the air lock. Another shove produced still more flakes.

He tried to pull the hatch shut, but the snow blocked it. It was a bad moment: Until he could close up, he couldn’t retreat back into the shelter.

He heard a woman’s voice. It was muffled. Then his link activated. “Who’s in the air lock?” It was Mary.

“I am,” he said.

“Jake, what are you doing in there?”

“I’m stuck.”

“Stuck? What happened?”

“Take a look at the windows.”

He scuffed more snow out of the way, kicked it into the chamber, and pulled on the hatch again. After a moment and some more tugging and kicking, it closed. “Holy cats,” said Mary. “Are we buried?”

Jake began decompression. “I’d say so, yes?”

“Can you get out of there?”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

* * *

“TRAPPED IN AN air lock,” said Tony as Jake came through the hatch. “Never heard of that happening to anyone before.” The comment created a painful echo.

“Okay,” said Samantha, “we have to get a sense of where we are. The snow is above every window in the place. Let’s hope it was just a storm and not some sort of avalanche.”

“Couldn’t very well be an avalanche,” said Brandon. “We’re on flat ground.”

“We need a shovel,” Jake said.

Brandon shook his head. “We don’t have one.”

“Sure we do.” Jake picked up a couple of the lids that had come with the plastic containers. “We’ll go into the air lock, open the hatch as much as we can, and start dragging the snow inside until we clear some space. But there’s only room for one person.” He glanced over at Brandon. “Can we decompress the entire cubicle so we can open both hatches together? That would make it a lot easier.”

“We can do that,” he said.

“Okay.” Samantha sounded exasperated. “Let’s get to it.”

* * *

THEY TOOK TURNS digging with the lids, dumped the snow into the containers, and hauled it to one of the showers. Eventually they got outside the cubicle, but they were still buried. When finally they broke through and saw stars again, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” Mary said.

But it was Samantha, climbing out of the hole and in the effort pulling more snow in on top of them, who stopped dead when she got clear. “I don’t believe this,” she said. Her voice shook.

They were standing on a mound of snow that covered the four cubicles but nothing else. The ground beyond it was as bare as it had been when they’d arrived. The grid was still clear. The lander, parked only meters away, showed only a light dusting of snow.

“What the hell’s going on?” said Brandon.

Somebody was breathing hard.

“Not possible,” said Mary.

Jake slid down and went over to look at the lander. “Is it okay?” asked Brandon. “Any damage?”

“No,” Jake said. “At least nothing I can see.”

Tony was looking up at the sky. It was clear. No clouds. No sign of a storm. “Somebody doesn’t like us,” he said.

Mary climbed down off the mound. “You were right, Samantha. There really is some sort of global force here.”

“You wanted to find a way to communicate,” Jake said. “I think we did.”

“What do we do now?” asked Mary.

Samantha delivered a sad smile. “Anybody here who didn’t get the message?”