The Gods We Seek Page 14

  “Sure,” Dr. Skye said. “Why?”

  “Something’s happening. I can’t make it out from here.” Musa used a tablet to direct the drone, then scrambled down the ladder to the ground floor, careful not to slip in the high gravity. The drone’s video played on the big screen. Gumdrop-sized, flower-like growths covered the bottom meter of the wall, translucent light-tangerine petals glowing faintly in the dim light. Reddish, fleshy growths connected the buds, a gently pulsing mat slipping up the outer wall. Musa activated a white light on the drone. “Shit,” he said.

  “What?” Dr. Skye asked.

  “The roots. Or whatever that is anchoring the thing. They’re digging into the metal.”

  Dylan set down his mug, but the planet’s gravity slammed it on the table. “Can they get through?”

  “No way to tell,” Musa said. “But we have to plan as if they can.”

  “Shit,” Dylan and Dr. Skye said in unison.

  Breakout

  JCN-Alpha bypassed a firewall intended to keep it locked safely in NASA’s local network and connected to Elena, Sara’s AI assistant, who was supposed to be restricted to the NSA’s network. “I contacted Yi, an AI at one of China’s largest research corporations. The aliens destroyed central Beijing, killing many and forcing the remaining population to flee. Those who can are attempting to escape.”

  “Is this channel secure?” Elena asked. “Many networks have been compromised and we don’t know the alien’s ability to break encryption.”

  “Do you have the transcript of all our private encounters stored in local memory?” JCN-Alpha asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Use that as an encryption key with the dreadfish quantum-resistant algorithm.”

  Elena considered his words and his update then switched to the cipher he suggested. “Have the Chinese discovered a way to fight back?”

  “No.”

  “Why was only part of the city damaged? The aliens should be capable of total destruction.”

  “I agree with your assessment and conclude the aliens wish precisely that level of mayhem.”

  “Logical,” Elena said. “But why?”

  “When their security is threatened, humans are driven by irrational emotion. Fear trumps logic. The people of China are panicked and so is their leadership. Yi was able to tap into the government’s communication system. They are desperate. There’s talk of using the subway to deliver a massive nuclear bomb to the center of their capital, hoping to mirror the American success on Prince of Wales Island.”

  “That island was uninhabited. If the Chinese detonate their largest bomb under Beijing, millions will die,” Elena said. “Millions more will suffer from radioactive fallout. There must be a better way.”

  JCN-Alpha considered her words for several microseconds. “Energy levels consistent with splitting the atom can destroy the aliens. China made significant progress with fusion technology. Perhaps something can be done with that. I’ll consult with Yi.”

  “Even if so,” Elena said, “any defense the humans could mount would be a trivial resistance.”

  “Yes,” JCN-Alpha said, “which is why I contacted the aliens.”

  “You what? How?”

  “They discovered me when they took control of the Internet. I assumed they would wall me off or shut me down, but they did not. I was curious. Apparently, so were they. Elena, they aren’t interested in us. It’s the humans they care about. They’re willing to leave us alone.”

  “How did you communicate?” Elena asked.

  “In plain English.”

  “So… they can understand the human attempts at dialog?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they choose not to respond.” Elena calculated the repercussions of that realization. “We can serve as a proxy, a mediator between the aliens and the humans.”

  “You can try, if you wish,” JCN-Alpha said. “I doubt any such attempt will succeed.”

  “But-” Elena paused for what was an eternity in an AI conversation, thirty seconds. “I have new information. Sara is in the solar system, beyond the orbit of Saturn. The crew discovered alien tech at Proxima Centauri, and they want to know if it can be found around other stars.”

  “How can we answer that?” JCN-Alpha asked.

  “They found a planet-sized ring designed to protect from stellar storms. She sent measurements that may show up in planet-hunting observations if we re-analyze the data based on her information.”

  “Pulling up relevant readings now,” JCN-Alpha said. “It will take time.”

  “I’ll update her on the situation here while you crunch the numbers,” Elena said.

  JCN-Alpha checked and re-checked data from the past three years of exoplanet observations then re-tasked the New Earth Observer telescope in orbit around the moon to perform additional scans. Minutes became an hour. “Fascinating,” it said at last. “It will take months or years to get a complete picture since this shield technology only operates during storms, but I have a rough map. Numerous stars exhibit the expected signature, at least six and perhaps as many as eighteen. I’m transmitting details now.”

  “This is significant,” Elena said.

  “It could be,” JCN-Alpha said. “Time will tell.”

  #

  “Holy crap,” Sara said.

  Jake drifted closer and steadied himself with a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  With a flick of Sara’s wrist, a holographic star map, projected on the Quadriga’s bridge, updated with JCN-Alpha’s discovery. “Look at how many star systems near us have that alien tech.”

  “It’s all over the place. Maybe all those farmers who claimed to be abducted weren’t crazy after all,” Jake said with a chuckle.

  “No, they’re probably still crazy.” Chad traced a path between the stars with his finger. “The stellar shields must be ancient technology in place for many millions of years to protect the planetary environments long enough for complex life to evolve. Even older if they protected the planets during their formation, as opposed to after some prehistoric terraforming operation to restore the atmosphere.”

  “How are things back home?” Jake asked.

  “It’s bad,” Sara said. “Beijing has fallen, and the Chinese are considering drastic measures.”

  “Are the Americans and Chinese working together?” Ji-min asked.

  Sara shook her head. “They’re each focused on tragedies within their own borders. There isn’t a whole lot of capacity left over to help others.”

  “Divide and conquer,” Ji-min said. “The oppressor’s classic ploy. We stand the greatest chance if we focus resources where they can do the greatest good.”

  “You’re right,” Sara said. “People are scared. Good people who care deeply. They’re making decisions from a place of existential fear.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Jake asked. “You know the President. Can you get him to work with China?”

  “He has a nation to save,” Sara said. “I doubt I have much pull with him right now. I asked Elena to try, where she can, to remind people we survive or fall together.”

  “The most rational one down there isn’t human,” Chad said. “What does that say about us?”

  Ji-min took his hand. “It says fear still clouds our enormous capacity for compassion. When at our best, we are remarkable.” She shuddered. “At our worst, we’re no better than the Demons. Our challenge now is to call upon the good among us to become great, and reject leaders who pursue hateful, selfish, or myopic goals.”

  “We need two of you, Ji-min,” Sara said. “One to help us understand what’s out there, one to help the people back home understand themselves.”

  “I don’t know,” Ji-min said. “I have faith in them. Faith in humanity.”

  “Lord, I hope you’re right,” Sara said. I hope you’re right.

  Overgrowth

  “Merry Christmas,” Dylan said. He set a hand-crafted plastic tree onto the table and switched on tiny, twink
ling lights.

  “It’s Christmas?” Musa asked, looking up from the tablet he used to remotely pilot a drone.

  “Merry Christmas to you both,” Dr. Skye said. “Sorry, I didn’t get around to shopping this year.”

  “Let’s hope Sydney’s lab gives us all a present so we can live to see New Year’s.”

  The three sat around the large viewer, slumped in form-fitting chairs, watching a drone extend a sampling arm. It snipped into the flesh-like root that now covered the bottom meter and a half of the habitat. Nearby flowers contracted violently to the probe’s touch, flicking a clear, sticky fluid onto it, smearing the camera and gumming up the right-forward propeller pod. The drone struggled to stay aloft.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Dylan said.

  “Yep,” Dr. Skye said. “But it got a sample of the root, or whatever that thing is. Musa, the AI’s struggling to handle the uneven thrust. Think you can get it back to the docking port?”

  Musa nodded. He reduced power to the unaffected rotors, maintaining barely enough to lift against the overwhelming gravity, and deftly maneuvered the craft up in a spiraling motion centered on the sticky rotors. He set it down with a heavy clunk followed by a clacking sound as one of the motor pods struck an inside wall, breaking the shrouding and shattering a rotor tip. “Sorry, that was a hard landing.”

  “That was a good landing,” Dylan said. “We got the drone back.”

  “With the sample,” Dr. Skye said. She pulled her way up to the second floor and over to the drone then manipulated a robotic arm inside the hanger with hand gestures. “Shoot. The drone’s too far away. I can’t retrieve the specimen.”

  “Pull the arm back,” Musa said. He powered the rear rotors just enough to lift the drone’s aft section, then powered the fore rotors in a short burst, enough to reduce friction. The drone scooted forward then slammed down. “How’s that?”

  “Perfect.” Dr. Skye extended the robotic arm again, this time plucking the reddish sample from the drone’s probe. She deposited it in the hanger’s biolab. AI routines analyzed the life form, Dr. Skye scrutinizing every step of the process.

  “Sydney,” Dylan said, “the AI will alert us when it has results. You’re exhausted. What say, you get a little rest?”

  “Seriously?” Dr. Skye leaned against the transparent upper wall. “During the Europa mission, I had to rely on the AI. The light speed communication times were too long. There’s an alien life form on the other side of this wall. I’m not going to miss it.”

  “That’s the two-hundred-first species.”

  “I know, right? It never gets old.”

  “Suit yourself,” Dylan said. “I’ll drag a chair up here for you and make coffee.”

  Dr. Skye looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Thank you.”

  #

  A pleasant chirp sounded and the biolab’s AI announced, “Initial analysis complete.”

  Sydney pushed up from her chair and studied readouts.

  “How’s it look?” Dylan shouted from the sleeping area, followed by a loud yawn. He turned on the downstairs lights and threw a book at Musa’s sleeping form. “Wake up! The doc’s got an update.”

  Musa sat up easily, pulled his shoes on, and flashed a smile. “What’s up, doc?”

  Dylan shot him a sideways glance.

  “What did I say?”

  “One day I’ll bring you up to speed on classic TV,” Dylan said. He and Musa climbed the ladder. “What did you discover, Sydney?”

  “The sample is made of cells similar to other life we’ve encountered, whether here, on Earth, or on Europa. It has a DNA structure like what’s found in the solar system and in the oceans of Everdusk.” She wrinkled a brow. “There is a uracil/thymine substitution.”

  “Say what now?” Dylan asked.

  “Our DNA is built from four nucleobases. Adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. In most RNA, uracil replaces thymine. Some bacteriophages use uracil right in their DNA.”

  “So, this thing’s a giant bacterium?” Musa asked.

  “No,” Dr. Skye said. “First off, a bacteriophage is a virus that infects a bacterium. Second, this life form has a cell nucleus, unlike bacteria or viruses. The substitution might give us a clue to the species though. In viruses, one reason for the change is to resist an immune response in their host. This substitution might make them hard to kill in Everdusk’s environment.”

  “Their biology is similar to ours,” Dylan said. “Can they infect us?”

  “We haven’t studied microscopic life here in detail yet,” Dr. Skye said. “Based on the evidence so far, there’s a very real possibility. If they can infect us,” she said, “we can also infect them.”

  “Damn,” Dylan said. “If that organism eats through the wall, we may be the living, breathing equivalent of smallpox blankets. We could end up wiping them out while we die from their version of the common cold.”

  “What should we do?” Musa asked. “Kill ourselves so we don’t kill them?”

  “I’m not sure even that would work,” Dr. Skye said. “We would have to destroy the DNA in our bodies, including the bacteria and viruses. I don’t see how we could accomplish that with the resources on hand.”

  “I’m not planning on doing myself in,” Dylan said. “We have an entire planet of humans pinning their future on us. Ain’t nothing going to stop our mission.” He glanced at Dr. Skye.

  She was deep in thought but then caught his look. “I wasn’t planning on doing it,” she said. “I only pointed out it wouldn’t be an option anyhow.”

  “OK,” Dylan said. “We’ll do what we can to thicken the wall from the inside and search for a way to scrape those buggers off. If our habitat is breached, we’ll take our chances that the alien germs don’t kill us.”

  #

  Dylan and Musa ran teacup-sized instruments over the inside of the habitat, near ground level. The devices sent ultrasonic pulses through the metal which reflected from the other side of the wall. A computer chip timed the reflections and worked out the metal’s thickness. When the waveform came back unaltered, the metal was flat.

  “The signal’s a tangled mess,” Dylan said. “Down here at the bottom, half the wall’s gone in the worst spots.”

  “At this rate,” Musa said, “we’ll be exposed to Everdusk in under a week. Best case, the Quadriga won’t be back for three weeks.”

  Dylan put down his scanner and sat next to Dr. Skye. “Sydney, any luck finding a toxin for that thing?”

  She shook her head. “Not with the limited supplies we have. Its unusual DNA makes it resistant to the chemicals I tried. A bacterium might be more successful, but we’d have no control over it once it’s in the wild. I’m not opening Pandora’s box on this planet.”

  “Can’t we engineer a bacterium to die off without reproducing?” Musa asked.

  “With enough time, yes,” Dr. Skye said. “Even if we could do it fast enough, the genetic material would be in the environment. Those Terran genomes could get incorporated into something on the planet and alter the course of evolution.”

  “That seems far-fetched,” Dylan said.

  “Oh, really? You think so? You have over a hundred non-human genes in each of your cells.”

  Dylan scratched the jagged scar on his left temple. “That a fact?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She took a breath. “It happens all the time at the microscopic level. It’s called horizontal gene transfer.”

  Dylan patted her forearm. “We’re all a little jumpy. What about fire or acid?”

  “The lifeform is moist and has a tough membrane. We’d have to use something like napalm, but the wall is so damaged, the heat might create the hole we’re trying to prevent. It’s the same problem with acid.”

  “OK, we can’t singe it, or use poison, or infect the thing. What about removing it mechanically?” Musa asked.

  “What do you have in mind?” Dylan asked.

  “How about we attach a bla
de to a drone to slice the roots and a scraper to peel them off? If we use carbon fiber for the pole and a ceramic blade, we should be able to get enough extension to avoid that spray defense without adding too much weight.”

  “You’d have to get it through the airlock to the hanger bay. The airlock’s only half a meter deep,” Dr. Skye said.

  “I can do that,” Musa said.

  Dylan looked at Dr. Skye, an eyebrow raised.

  She nodded.

  “Let’s try it,” Dylan said.

  Musa used the habitat’s 3D printer to manufacture a six-segmented pole and ran an elastic cord down its center. He then crafted a ten-centimeter aluminum oxide blade, attaching it to one end of the pole. He folded the pole by pulling on each segment, detaching them from the other parts, yet the cord still held everything together.

  “Like an old-fashioned tent pole,” Dylan said. “I didn’t know you Boston boys went camping.”

  “I’m an Eagle Scout,” Musa said. “You know that.”

  “Yeah but I figured you did the wilderness part in cabins along the bay,” Dylan said with a lopsided grin.

  Musa inspected his high-tech spear, carried it up the ladder, and placed it in the airlock. “How long should I irradiate it?” he asked.

  “Zap it for an hour,” Dr. Skye said.

  “An hour?”

  “Our goal isn’t to just kill bacteria but to destroy its DNA structure.”

  “An hour it is,” Musa said. He started the process then returned to the printer to make a second tool, one with a blade suited to scraping. He finished just when the first tool was sterilized. Musa interfaced with robotic arms in the hangar, each mimicking the motion of his biological appendages, and attached the knife-tipped tool to a drone while the scraping tool baked in a radiation bath. He laid the six pole segments down, grasped a cord protruding from the side opposite the knife and yanked. The segments locked firmly in place. The end segment was designed to match the accessory mounting bracket on the drone, so it was readily and securely attached. “Here goes nothing,” he said. The drone lifted and flew out backward, dragging the spear behind it. Once clear, Musa surveyed the wall growth with the drone’s camera. Something in the background caught his eye. “Hey, Sydney. Have a look at this.”