The Gods We Seek Read online

  “What if there’s a stellar flare when the planet isn’t transiting the star as seen from Earth?” Sara asked.

  “We’d see the disk from its edge, so the light would be dim, and it’s not something we’re watching for so we might miss it.” Chad smiled. “There’s a solid chance we recorded the data but didn’t know what to look for.”

  “So,” Sara said, “we can ask scientists on Earth to reexamine the data and look for more of these things. Then we’ll know if it’s just this star, or if they’re abundant. And exactly where they are.”

  “We can’t send a message,” Chad said.

  “No,” Sara said, “we must return to Earth. At least, close enough to get a message home.”

  Dr. Skye said, “That’ll take two months round trip. If it turns out the intelligence is here on Everdusk, that’s two months of no progress while the Demons attack Earth.”

  Sara nodded. “We maximize the odds by splitting up.”

  “What?” Chad asked.

  “We’ll set up a base on Everdusk to continue searching for life. Those who stay will monitor the reverse SETI gear we have in orbit and explore the planet. Chad, I assume the Quadriga can assemble a suitable shelter, so we don’t risk bio-contamination in either direction?”

  Chad nodded.

  “Dr. Skye, congratulations. You’re in charge of the first-ever off-world, manned science station. I need two volunteers to help her.”

  Dylan and Musa raised their hands in unison.

  Everdusk

  The Quadriga descended at high noon through the maroon skies of Everdusk toward a substantial island near the equator, leveling to a hover atop a hillock a hundred meters from the shore. Ice-plant-like vines emitting a gentle azure light covered the rocky land. They seemed to vibrate when the wind gusted, collectively pulsing a mesmerizing pattern. The star’s visible light was feeble, but the planet was awash in infrared. Flora on the island adapted to absorb that energy, re-emitting some of it in stunning, vibrant patterns.

  The ship used the material from multiple metal-rich asteroids to print a dome-shaped shelter the size of a two-story house onto the planet’s surface. The first level was a titanium-steel hybrid, strong and light, made possible by the Quadriga’s ability to assemble material at the atomic level. Crowning the structure was a transparent aluminum dome, offering protection from the environment while affording a magnificent view of the alien world. An enclosed drone hanger attached to the upper level, sealed off from the humans. Within the hanger was a biolab using technology from Dr. Skye’s exploration of Europa capable of performing complex analysis of lifeforms with minimal human supervision. From afar, the beetle-like Quadriga seemed to lay a massive egg.

  The crew lowered equipment crates and provisions on ropes, struggling against the tug of the planet’s gravity, which was around thirty percent stronger than Earth’s. Dr. Skye, Musa, and Dylan climbed down a ladder at the top of the dome, clinging tight, afraid of a slip that could shatter a bone. The Quadriga sealed them in airtight then lifted back toward the stars.

  Their habitat was gloomy, the interior lit only by dim, blue light to avoid attracting the attention of native life. “It’s muggy in here,” Dylan said.

  “It’s the best we can do for now,” Dr. Skye said. “We can’t vent hot air from the A/C outside because we have to keep our habitat sealed against the planetary environment. Chad and I did our best to whip up a design similar to what you find on space stations, but in our case, we’re dumping the heat into a warm atmosphere instead of cold space.” She hurried to unpack a carbon fiber crate containing the most important of her scientific equipment, found a tablet computer, and powered it on. “Let’s see what’s out here.”

  “You’re in quite a rush,” Dylan said. “Shouldn’t we make a plan first?”

  “I’ve been planning this since I was a teenager,” Dr. Skye said. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Well then, have at it,” Dylan said. “Anything we can do to help?”

  “Make us some food?” Dr. Skye tapped the tablet, activating an eight-rotor aerial drone.

  “I guess that’s it, Musa.” Dylan shrugged his shoulders. “We’re officially the serving staff. Who’s cooking first?”

  The men locked eyes and said, “Rock, scissors, paper!” in unison.

  Dylan’s paper wrapped Musa’s rock.

  “How do you win so often?” Musa asked.

  Dylan gave his usual response. “Skill, Musa. Skill.”

  The drone lifted a meter-long, torpedo-shaped object and carried it to the water’s edge, flew past gently breaking waves, then the submersible detached from its carrier, plunging into the alien ocean. An infrared camera revealed a swarm of living creatures darting away as it broke through the surface. The sea was full of life.

  The drone flew a search pattern over the island, attentive for any sign of land animals while cataloging a rich variety of plant life. The data feeds transfixed Dr. Skye. For the first time in her life, she was completely in her element.

  #

  “Well, that’s something,” Dr. Skye said.

  Dylan was at work setting up hammocks and privacy screens to create makeshift quarters for each of them. “What’s that?”

  “I’ll set up a bigger screen so you guys can see what’s going on.” She took a pile of carbon fiber tubes from a cloth pouch, grasped one painted with black and green stripes, and shook the bundle left and right. Tubes snapped into place, self-assembling into an ultra-lightweight frame as tall as her and twice as wide. She clipped it onto the wall then unfolded a stiff plastic sheet, pressed it onto the frame and, with the flick of a finger, send the submersible’s video feed to the screen. “There we go. Look at this. Something is following the sub but not showing aggressive behavior. I think it might be curious.”

  Dylan squeezed some rubberizing glue onto the wall next to his cot and pulled the tube up, forming a hook with the thick paste. He hit it with a UV light, hardening it into a serviceable gear hook. Satisfied with his handiwork, he set down the tube and ambled over. “This gravity’s a bitch,” he said. “I’m near about past going.”

  Dr. Skye chuckled at Dylan’s drawl.

  “Tired already?” Musa asked, carrying a pot of food to Dr. Skye. He grinned broadly at Dylan, revealing perfect white teeth. “A few weeks in this gravity and you’ll have muscles like me. Of course, I’ll have muscles like the Hulk by then.” He flexed his biceps and laughed. “Drag yourself on over here. I made something you might appreciate for our first camp-out on an alien world.”

  “Is that right?” Dylan said.

  “Yep. Baked beans and wieners.”

  “I’ll get the campfire started,” Dylan said with a weary wink. “What you got there, Doc?” He unfolded a chair and plopped down in front of the viewscreen. The image was a composite of infrared, converted to black-and-white, and enhanced visible light. At the moment, it was black with specs of heat darting out of the sub’s path.

  “Look, there,” Dr. Skye said, pointing at a dark gray patch at the right edge of the screen. With a spurt of motion, the heat blob was next to the submersible. A sleek, meter-long creature with bulging eyes set under an armored hood swam with leisurely strokes of an eel-like tail, effortlessly pacing the technology foreign to its waters. A fin ran from behind the plated head down the length of its spine, flashing amber along the edge. Two feelers, reminiscent of octopus tentacles but without the suckers, or perhaps strangely mutated catfish barbels, trailed from above its large, drooping mouth. It raised one of them to the sub, bumping it and nudging it off course. The onboard computer corrected the unexpected deviation.

  “Is it trying to figure out if it can eat the sub?” Dylan asked.

  “Maybe. Its brain developed under entirely different conditions than anything on Earth.” She tapped the tablet. “Let’s try something.” The sub’s white light pulsed on, off, on, off. The creature darted into the gloomy darkness, beyond the range of the infrared camera.

  “You
chased it off,” Dylan said.

  Dr. Skye stared at the display. The creature returned, easing toward the sub, then tapped it again with a tentacle. She pulsed the lights again. This time, the creature backed off a meter then returned to the sub. “That looks like intellectual curiosity.”

  “You’re the expert,” Dylan said. “How intelligent do you think it is?”

  “It’s impossible to say without more experiments.”

  “Well then.” Dylan crossed his legs and leaned back. “Musa, how about some coffee with them beans. Looks to be we have a long day ahead of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Musa said, “but how do you expect to build up your muscles if you order your junior officer to do all the fetching?”

  “R.H.I.P.,” Dylan said under his breath.

  “Yuh?” Dr. Skye asked.

  Musa poured the coffee. “Rank has its privileges.”

  #

  Dylan tossed three plastic coins onto the middle of a small but sturdy, gray composite table that served for dining and recreation. In the two weeks on the planet, his brain adapted to the stronger gravity. The chips flew in a perfect arc and smashed down on a pile of similar coins with a too-loud clack. “Raise,” he said.

  “Fold,” Musa said, shoulders slumping. He slid his two cards under the chip pile.

  Dr. Skye studied her cards. “That’s a small raise. You missed your flush draw,” she told Dylan. The community cards showed the king, jack, and two of hearts, the seven of clubs, and the two of spades.

  “Is that so?” Dylan asked.

  “You bet big on the flop, when three hearts dropped and again on the turn, but backed off when the last card wasn’t a heart. I put you on the ace of hearts and a king or jack. Reraise.” Dr. Skye tossed ten coins into the pile.

  “That’s a reasonable analysis,” Dylan said, “but if you want to know if it’s right, it’ll cost you. I’m all in.” He pushed his thirty-odd chips into the middle.

  Dr. Skye smiled, and her eyes narrowed. “Call.” She turned over her hole cards, a pair of jacks. With the community cards, she held three jacks.

  “Good try, Sydney.” Dylan turned over a pair of twos. “Four of a kind.”

  “What? I had you beat until the last card. The odds were stacked against you. Then you came out with that weak raise.”

  “Big blind special,” Dylan said, raking in his chips. “Texas Hold’em is a game of people, played with cards. I figured you for a flush or flush draw at first but then read your body language. I could see your wheels turning, trying to figure me out. I knew the flush had you worried.”

  Dr. Skye grabbed her chair’s armrests and pushed up. “You boys have fun. Back to the science for me.”

  Dylan tipped an imaginary hat. “Pleasure playing with you, ma’am.”

  “Do you read me that well, too?” Musa asked.

  “Naw, the Doctor has an analytical mind. She hasn’t internalized that the other players are watching those wheels spin. You have a decent poker face.”

  Musa studied Dylan. “All right then, deal another hand.”

  #

  Dr. Skye made a small, circling gesture with her pointer finger. A corresponding line traced around a twenty-four-legged, crab-like creature that scurried along the sea bed. “That makes two hundred. Two hundred alien species cataloged in under a month. When I told my parents I wanted to specialize in xenobiology, they told me to switch my major to liberal arts. They said the job prospects were better.”

  “Sounds like your parents were smart asses,” Dylan said.

  “Yep.”

  “I like them already.” He poured her a coffee and brought it to her workstation. “It must be strange for you. I bet a dozen scientists wanted to lead the exploration of Europa’s ocean. A dozen people who dedicated their career to the prospect of life elsewhere in the solar system. You were tapped for it and made history. Now, you’re far from home, impossibly far by last year’s standards, and you’re awash in ETs.”

  “I could easily have been one of the scientists who wasn’t selected, still back home, without a discovery to my name.”

  “Somehow, I doubt that,” Dylan said. He raised his coffee mug in salute. “You know, we flew right over your Europa mission on the way to Jupiter.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was right there, plain as day. It struck me how, when you launched your mission, a manned expedition to Jupiter was a laughable prospect.”

  “Desperate times,” Dr. Skye said.

  Dylan drew his lips into a half-smile. “Desperate times.” He stared into his coffee mug, swirling the steaming liquid into a miniature whirlpool. “Do you think the Demons are alive?”

  “Demons? You’ve taken to Dr. Tanner’s nomenclature?”

  “I suppose I have,” Dylan said. “It’s as good a name as any.”

  “They seem dead-set on rampaging Earth, from the bits I picked up. It’s not a scientific assessment by any means. They do nothing but wreak havoc. No communication, no response to our own attempts. Just wanton violence. If they are alive, not some machine programmed to complete a horrific mission, they have no compassion. No sense they’re doing harm, or if they do, they don’t care.”

  “The Quadriga’s a machine, as far as I can tell,” Dylan said, “but it seems compassionate.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Little things. The most striking is, it didn’t let us remove it from Jupiter orbit until right before we would have been nuked. It’s almost like it wanted us and the Chinese to work out our differences before it was forced to pick a side.”

  “Didn’t the ship move when Chad figured out how to command it?” Dr. Skye asked.

  “That was part of it, but the timing was down to the millisecond. Literally. I don’t see how he could have intentionally cut it that close. I saw the telemetry from the Chinese ship thanks to Sara’s spy work. One video frame we were there, in orbit around Jupiter. The next frame, we were gone, and the nuke was exploding. No human mind is that quick.”

  “If you ask me, Chad isn’t telling us everything he knows.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Dylan said.

  “I suppose it is.” Worry lines traced across Dr. Skye’s forehead.

  Musa sat on the second floor, watching through the transparent top of their shelter as a drone ventured out to retrieve a submersible. “Tell me, Sydney, what was it like for you when the Demons first attacked? Isn’t that the day you opened the Europa exhibit at the Marine Pacific Institute?” His strong voice carried well in the small enclosure.

  “It was. How did you know?”

  “I wanted to go opening day,” Musa said, “but I had to work. I had tickets through NASA for the following week.”

  Dr. Skye smiled, her gaze wandering to a distant past. “You know, I volunteered there since I was a kid. The moment I was old enough, my dad signed us up. It was amazing. I got to teach adults about the ocean and about conservation, feed lorikeets and sea otters, even wade in the shark touch pool, lifting bamboo sharks close to the surface so the littlest visitors could touch them and realize that sharks are amazing, not terrifying. Bringing the aliens from Europa there was my way of giving back. I thought it would be the highlight of my career. The line waiting for the Institute to open its doors that day filled the entrance plaza and wound all the way down to the harbor. We did a preview night for students. The setting sun bathed them in golden-orange light. It was a beautiful sight, so many hopeful faces come to see what I had brought. I was watching from the new education wing they named after me, the only part of the building that’s not named after a sponsor.”

  “That’s quite an honor,” Musa said.

  “The institute’s Director told me it was a historic day,” Dr. Skye said. “For science, I told her. She touched my arm and said, ‘for humanity.’ That’s when it struck me how deeply meaningful it was for people to realize we’re not alone. I was so caught up in the process I hadn’t taken a breath to fully grasp the significance, to feel it in m
y heart, until just then.”

  “Understandable,” Musa said. “It was quite a project.”

  Dr. Skye nodded. “For the first time, people could witness with their own eyes that we share the universe with other life.”

  “We walked past gallery entrances that were there, in one form or another, since I was a kid. Tropical Pacific. North Pacific. Then came the one I created out of sheer will to explore beyond Earth, labeled with letters styled to resemble ice on the top, water in the middle, and warm geothermal vents at the bottom. Large, bold letters. ‘Europa,’ with smaller letters beneath reading, ’Jupiter’s icy moon.’ The viewing room was round and held dozens of visitors. A hologram, projected into the center of the space, described my mission. Beyond was a short passage then a darkened chamber with a ten-meter by five-meter aquarium wall at the far end. Dozens of stunning, translucent shapes floated in the tank, their feather-like arms flapping to propel them forward, there because I sampled DNA hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth, allowing my team to grow them from scratch in the lab.”

  “Amazing,” Musa said. “I understand the technology but can’t quite believe what it can do.”

  “I’m in awe myself,” Dr. Skye said. “And so were the visitors. They came pouring in, wonder written in every face. Of course, they were all streaming the experience to vSpace.”

  “Yeah, the kids love that,” Musa said. “Give me a good ‘ole 3D game any day.”

  “They weren’t off in vSpace themselves at least,” Dr. Skye said with a smile. “Each of them was fully in the present, absorbed in the history they were witnessing. They asked questions, some rather insightful. Fifteen minutes into it, the mood shifted like a truck hitting a wall. A teacher said, ‘Extraterrestrial life is trending online.’ Then her jaw dropped. I can still recall her expression vividly. The posts weren’t about us.”

  “The invasion of Anchorage?” Musa asked.

  Dr. Skye nodded.

  Musa leaned forward, pressing his face against the clear dome, straining to see the bottom of their habitat’s wall. “Doctor, can I take control of the returning drone for a moment?”