The translation sounded an error, but she didn’t care. The joke was still worth it.
“Oh, you’re funny.”
Alison turned back to Dirk with a wide grin. “Where’s Sally?”
Dirk’s reply was short.
She sleep. Sally tired.
With a nod, she replied. “Okay. We’ll leave when she’s ready.”
The previous night’s visit left Neely Lawton thinking about Steve Caesare. She looked out pensively through the largest window in her lab and across the water to the Valant, rising mightily from the shimmering blue water.
Every time she talked to him, he became less stereotypical for a Navy man. After a long minute or two, Neely sighed and peered at her watch. If the rest of the group were on time, she’d probably only get to see Steve one more time. She was more than a little surprised to find herself secretly hoping for a delay.
Aboard the Valant, and inside the oil rig’s large machine room, Steve Caesare stood in a precarious position. He was holding one of the heavier pieces of the drill bit while Tay wriggled the rest of the assembly beneath it, trying to secure everything into place. When it was set, Caesare released the drill bit and took a step back to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead. The morning temperature was warming up quickly, and the lack of ventilation on the lower level of the Valant had him wondering whether the rig’s original engineers had ever been outside, let alone in the tropics.
On the other side of Tay, Lightfoot was quickly bolting the two pieces together. When finished, he called up through an opening in the middle.
“Next!”
Caesare faithfully lowered another piece down to meet Tay’s guiding hand. One of the several heavy titanium blades lined the bit’s outer edge. Unlike older designs, these blades were much less jagged, able to grind through even the strongest materials with minimal vibration.
“Hey, Steve,” Borger entered the room behind them. “You got a sec?”
“Sure, Will. Not in the middle of anything at all here.”
“Sorry.” He hurried across the marred metal floor and helped to hold the blade in place.
“Try again,” Lightfoot called up.
They pulled the piece out and lowered it again, even slower this time. The alignment had to be perfect.
“Nope. Again.”
It took several tries before the blade finally slid correctly into place. Lightfoot began tightening while Caesare and Borger stepped back. Borger’s brightly colored shirt already looked damp with perspiration.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” Together they walked to the wide exit and out of earshot.
“What’s up?”
“Clay and Alison should reach Trinidad in a few hours,” Borger said. “So your ride will be here just after nineteen hundred. As soon as it’s dark enough.”
“Thanks. I’ll be ready.”
“There’s also something else I wanted to talk to you about. A couple things actually.”
“Okay.”
Borger glanced around apprehensively. “It’s probably better if I show you.”
“Where is this?” Caesare asked, straightening back up behind Borger. On the screen in front of them was a detailed aerial picture of a lush green forest. In the center of the frame were several patches of open space, scattered with large boulders.
“Rwanda.” Borger tapped on the keyboard and zoomed the image out, bringing part of Lake Kivu — one of Africa’s Great Lakes — into view.
“Where DeeAnn told us to look again.”
Borger nodded. “Correct.”
“And?”
Borger swiveled around in his chair. “And I think she was right.” He promptly turned back around and zoomed back in. Closer this time, advancing down to one of the rock-strewn areas in the picture. “Anything look familiar?”
Studying the screen, Caesare shook his head. “No.”
“Don’t feel bad. I didn’t catch it at first either.” With his mouse, Borger pulled a menu down from the top and selected a rotate option. The screen turned at a 90-degree angle. He then dragged the corner of the frame down, rotating it a little more before finally dragging a square over one section with his mouse.
When the square was enlarged, a recognizable shape emerged.
“Now that looks familiar.”
Borger nodded. “It’s very similar to one of the outcroppings we saw in Guyana. One of the four.”
“How many are here?”
“Just the one so far. But this is right against the forest, so the rest could be obscured if they are indeed there.”
“You can’t penetrate through that?”
“Actually, I can.” He enlarged the shape of the rocks further. “These are multispectral images. The problem isn’t composition, it’s depth. And for that, we would need some ground-based Lidar scans to overlay—”
Caesare frowned and interrupted Borger. “So is this it or not?”
“I can’t say for sure. It looks like what we’re looking for, but the human brain can play tricks on things like this. Finding visual patterns in what often are random or natural shapes.”
Caesare suddenly eyed Borger with a faint look of both surprise and amusement.
“Hey, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean I’m not objective.”
Caesare grinned. “Evidently.”
“Besides. You know how I hate to be wrong.”
This time Caesare laughed. “Yes. I do.”
They both turned back to the screen. “Without being able to see more, we can’t be sure.”
“Agreed.”
“But if this is it,” Borger began, pressing his hands together, “why wouldn’t DeeAnn have told us sooner?”
Caesare folded his arms in front of him, pensively. “I think she’s battling more than we know.”
“Hmm, maybe.” After a brief pause, Borger turned around again to face Caesare. “Well, changing subjects, there’s more I need to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s about our friends in China.”
“Which ones?” Caesare grinned. “We’ve made so many.”
Borger smiled. “Well, do you remember that hacker kid I told you about? The one that helped that Chinese MSS agent find Li Na Wei?”
“Yeah. You said his name was Mongol or something?”
“That’s his handle, actually. M0ngol, M-0-n-g-o-l. All serious hackers have one.”
“So what’s our friend up to?”
“I wish I knew. He’s gone,” Borger said simply.
“Gone where?”
“I have no idea. But all information on him has vanished. Wiped from every source or system I was monitoring. No driver’s license. No birth certificate. No picture or bank account. Nada.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Borger acknowledged.
Caesare brushed a hand against his jaw, pondering. “Why would they delete him from all their systems?”
“Well, the most obvious explanation isn’t good.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I can’t find anything on him, even internally — which I’m presuming means it’s the government’s doing, or perhaps the Ministry of State Security itself. Eliminating one of their own.”
Caesare still had his hand under his chin when he frowned. “Well, they would certainly have the resources to erase any trace of him.”
“They sure would.” Borger hesitated a moment before adding, “There’s one other thing.”
Caesare rolled his eyes. “You’re killing me, Will.”
“Sorry, but it’s important. Especially this last piece, about our alien ship.”
“Let me have it.”
Borger lowered his voice. “Okay, so we both know what we saw on that video.”
“A ship that repairs itself.”
“Exactly. I was shocked when I saw that video footage from Tay and his men.”
“I think we all were, Will.”
“Right, right. But here’s the thing. It makes sense. That it does that. Listen, if you’re traveling through space on a ship, the distances are huge. Almost unimaginable.”
“Agreed. Including the energy required. Which is a big part of why it was a one-way trip.”
“That’s right,” Borger said. “But it’s not just the energy. It’s also the distance. Most people don’t understand what kind of distances we’re talking about. We’re talking vast. Really vast!”
Caesare listened and took a step backward, lowering himself into the second chair with a loud creak. “Go on.”
“The distances are so great, that you’d have to be traveling at speeds most people cannot really comprehend.”
“Close to the speed of light.”
“Yeah, but these days the speed of light is just a term thrown around by everyone. I don’t think most people really appreciate what that means. Even at a fraction of the speed of light, you’re talking about moving so fast that you start affecting time itself.”
“Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,” Caesare replied.
“Precisely. But here’s something that even fewer people understand. When you’re moving that fast, again even at a fraction of light speed, the energy translates in two ways. One is kinetic energy but the second is force.”
Caesare thought for a moment. “Like an impact?”
“Exactly. Like an impact,” Borger nodded. “As in something hitting the ship. And here’s the thing. Force equals mass times acceleration, so at that kind of speed, the object wouldn’t have to be very big. In fact, it could be very small. Space is mostly empty but not completely.”
“When you say it could be small, how small are we talking?”
“Really small. Like the size of a pebble, or less. Even at a tenth of the speed of light, you would be moving so fast that even a speck of dust could create one hell of an impact and rip an enormous hole in your ship.”
“Geez.”
“Yeah. And let me tell you, there is a LOT of dust floating around in space.”
Caesare folded his arms. “Well, that could ruin your trip in a hurry.”
“Exactly. Which is why you would need to be able to repair your ship, and quickly. So, either you’d have to be ready at all times, or you would need a ship that could do it by itself.”
Caesare leaned back. “Which is exactly what we saw.”
“Exactly what we saw!” Borger repeated excitedly.
Caesare sat silently, contemplating. He watched a familiar expression form on Borger’s face.
“That’s not all of it.”
Borger smiled and slowly shook his head.
“Keep going.”
“We know the ship can repair itself. We all saw it. But I didn’t know how, until this morning. In the shower.”
Borger pulled up his sleeve and exposed a small scrape on his arm. It was red but already beginning to heal. “I got this last night when we were bringing the stuff over from the Pathfinder.”
Caesare glanced at Borger’s arm. “A scrape? Okay.”
“What I’m trying to say is that this is all tied to the green liquid. The solution we saw in those containers before they were destroyed. Do you remember when we found them inside the mountain?”
“How could I forget?”
“Then you’ll remember that when we were inside, there was no system or power source to keep all those embryos in suspension like that.”
Caesare peered curiously at Borger. “Something needed to provide that energy.”
At that, Borger’s expression grew even more excited. “Exactly what I was thinking! What we saw was amazing, but it wasn’t magic. It all still has to work within the same laws of physics, regardless of whether we understand it.”
Now Caesare grinned, seeing where Borger was headed. “It did have a power source.”
“It had to have had one! We just didn’t realize what it was.”
“Until now.”
Borger smiled. “Exactly! It’s the liquid, Steve! The solution is more than just the nutrient; it’s also the power source!”
“Wow,” Caesare replied slowly.
“And that’s how the ship can repair itself! Because it’s not just surrounded by that green solution, it’s infused with it!” Borger leaned forward in his chair. “And that ship isn’t merely making its own repairs, it’s HEALING itself!”