Chapter 2
“PRISCILLA,” SAID JAKE, “let’s talk about our next assignment. We’ll be heading for Groombridge.”
Good, she thought. The last stop before they started home. She wondered what the problem, or problems, would be this time. Fuel leak, maybe? Avoiding collision with an asteroid? She was, of course, not informed in advance.
“We can get rolling when you’re ready,” he said. “Something you might want to think about—”
“Yes?”
“How you would handle a runaway engine? I’m giving you fair warning because—”
It was as far as he got before Benny broke in: “Captain Hutchins, we have an emergency message from Union.” He put it on-screen.
Copperhead, we have been warned that there may be an explosive device aboard the Gremlin, which is currently en route to Barton’s World at Lalande 21185. We do not have confirmation about the bomb. Nevertheless, until we can be certain, we will assume the threat is real. Proceed immediately to Lalande 21185 and render assistance. Acknowledge.
Priscilla glanced at Jake, who nodded. “Okay, Benny,” she said, “set course. Let’s move. Acknowledge and let them know we’re on our way.”
“Acknowledging message, Priscilla.”
She checked the numbers. Just getting to the system would require thirty hours. The transmission was already four days old. “Not good,” she said. “How do we help? You know anything about bombs?”
“I think we’ll settle for an evacuation. Get everybody away from the ship and let the experts deal with it. If it hasn’t gone off already.”
Priscilla was shaking her head. “What kind of lunatic would put a bomb on an interstellar?”
Jake sighed. “They’ve been getting threats for a while now.”
“You mean because of the terraforming?”
“A lot of people are outraged about Selika.”
She took a deep breath. “Incredible. Well, whatever the bosses are thinking, this isn’t the best way to respond. They had to know we wouldn’t receive the transmission within a reasonable time frame. Why didn’t they send somebody from the station?”
“They probably would have,” said Jake, “if they’d had anyone available.”
* * *
JAKE LISTENED AS they increased power flow to the engines. “Adjusting course,” said Benny. The Copperhead swung slowly toward Lalande and began to accelerate. He put a graphic of the system on the auxiliary display. He hadn’t been there for several years. Lalande was a red dwarf, about half as massive as Sol, with six known planets. Barton’s was the second, a living world orbiting at a range of one hundred million kilometers.
Barton’s had an ordinary moon, sterile, airless, cold. There was, however, a second satellite that was not a natural object at all. It was a monument, a four-kilometer-wide ring with a pair of crossbars. The centerpiece, the object that made the monument truly spectacular, was held in place by the crossbars. It was a massive diamond, about a third the size of the ring.
It was the second of the Grand Monuments to be discovered, an event which, twenty years earlier, had stunned the world. The first of the monuments, of course, had been found on Iapetus. Everyone had assumed that the Iapetus sculpture was unique, a solitary piece of art left thousands of years ago on a remote Saturnian moon for reasons no one could imagine. Whatever its purpose might have been, it had changed the human perspective for all time. And it had required almost a century and a half before we’d learned how wrong we’d been. Since then, twelve more of the monuments, each a unique figure, had been found.
“You think that’s why the Gremlin was going there?” asked Priscilla. “To see the monument?”
“I can’t imagine any other reason,” he said.
“Have you ever seen it? The Lalande Monument?”
“A long time ago. It’s spectacular.” He put it on the display. The central diamond glittered in the sunlight. “They think it was made out of an asteroid.”
“When I was about twelve,” Priscilla said, “my class was given a virtual ride around it.”
“That must have gotten everybody pretty excited.”
She laughed. “I decided I wanted to go out there one day and touch it.”
* * *
THEY SLIPPED INTO transdimensional space, bound for Lalande. All sense of movement stopped, and the cold gray fog enveloped them. They moved through the mist like a ship at sea. Occasionally, when he’d been alone under these conditions, Jake had turned off all the lights. The result was absolute darkness. There was no source of illumination whatever outside. Put the navigation lights on, and you were passing slowly through a constant fog whose density never varied. It was, he thought, as close as you could get to hell in the real world, a place where nothing ever changed, where nothing ever happened.
* * *
LIBRARY ENTRY
One cannot look at the images of these ancient monuments without wondering, why? They are scattered around star systems with a kind of haphazard glee, left in places where, their creators surely knew, no one was ever likely to see them. They are magnificent pieces of art, the silver pyramid orbiting a terrestrial—though lifeless—world in the Sirius system, the black cluster of crystal spheres and cones rising out of the snows at the south pole of Armis V, the great transparent Cube at Arcturus. The sculpted figure, believed to be a self-portrait, on Iapetus.
Akim Shenoba, in his prizewinning analysis, “Symbiotica,” argues that mental development necessarily implies an appreciation for art, a passion for mathematics, a need to know how one came to exist. The Great Monuments, he thinks, demonstrate an angry reaction, an act of defiance, by a single species against an empty universe. He tells us that their existence implies that minds, wherever they are found, will be similar. That, in the end, there will be no true aliens.
I respectfully disagree.
I cannot imagine humans writing symphonies they suspect would never be played. Novels that would never be read. Or wandering around the Orion Arm, leaving titanic sculptures that no one would ever see.
—Soli Chung, Lost in Time, 2194
Chapter 3
THE RIDE TO Lalande 21185 took a long thirty hours. Priscilla got no sleep to speak of and developed a seething anger that the authorities at Union hadn’t told them more. How did they know there was a bomb? How many people were on board the Gremlin? Had they succeeded in warning the pilot?
“Relax,” Jake told her. “We can’t do anything until we get there. There’s a decent chance it’s all a false alarm anyhow. Consider it part of the certification process. If you get your license, there’ll be other emergencies. Nothing matters more than how you respond when things go wrong.”
She got the message.
* * *
PRISCILLA HAD SPENT the morning reading while Jake watched a romantic comedy with himself in the starring role. Then they decided to do a virtual tour of the pyramids, which evolved into a round of the game That’s My Mummy. They were near the end when Benny froze it and sounded a few notes from “Love in the Dark” to gain their attention. “Captain Hutchins,” he said, “we are five minutes from transiting back into normal space.”
Priscilla had cornered Jake’s Egyptologist and was about to finish him off. “Give up?” she asked.
“His prospects aren’t good, are they?” He shrugged, threw up his hands, and switched the system off. They started for the bridge. Tawny, a cat they’d rescued earlier in the flight, appeared from somewhere and began following her. She paused to gather her into her arms. “You guys have really bonded, haven’t you?” said Jake.