Again he paused, as if contemplating the nonempirical question he had asked. Shaking himself, as if to shake off the lack of an answer to that question, he went on.
“It appears to us that similar kinds of bullets were used to hit this planet. Whether it occurred in one wave or in a series of waves, it seems to have followed the use of atomics and preceded the asteroid bombardment.”
Now he paused to study Kris for a moment. “We asked you to collect samples from the asteroids. We need them to test the different strikes to see if the products of those strikes came from this planet, or from the asteroids, or from somewhere else entirely.”
“Do you think you can make that kind of a determination?” Kris asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s been a hundred thousand years, more or less, since these events happened. Despite the eradication of most water and atmosphere from this planet, it still has weather cycles. There has been a dust storm in the southern hemisphere in just the short time we’ve been here. We may have set an impossible objective for our research, but if we didn’t posit the possibility that some of this attack was from beyond this system, then we would never find it out, even if it were.”
“In other words,” Kris said, “is it possible that some of the bullets that pounded this planet came from the next system over?”
“That is our thinking.”
“If we could make the association, it would certainly connect the two and very likely implicate the aliens of the next system in their first genocide,” Jack said.
“Planetcide,” Penny said.
“Precisely,” Kris said. “Well, Professor, you have our attention, and our hearty support for your survey. Have at it.”
Once that was published, the patience of the Sailors and Marines grew longer. Now they could see the need for a solid, if lengthy, forensic examination of the planet below them.
It was Captain Drago who suggested that their time could be put to some defensive purpose.
“We’re going to want to outpost the next system. If I can express a preference, I’d like to not only put warning buoys at the jumps into that system but also into the ones the next system out.”
“Give ourselves plenty of time to pick up our skirts and make a run for it,” Kris said.
“I wouldn’t have said it quite that way, but yes.”
“It will take more time to collect all those buoys,” Jack pointed out.
“Why collect them?”
“But then, if the aliens come back, they’ll know we’ve been there?” Kris said, beginning to see the answer to her question even as she asked it.
“And the problem with that is . . . ?” Captain Drago said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.
“Hold it,” Jack said. “We’re doing forensic research to discover the origin of the iron bullets that slammed this planet. Do we want some homicidal alien going over our warning buoys?”
“I checked with the engineers who designed these buoys and the factory bosses who turned them out. They are products of Alwa. The metals and silicon are from that system. There’s not one atom drawn from human space. If they go over them, they just lead them back to Alwa. No farther,” Kris said.
“The design is hardly better than the electronics we had when we left Old Earth, but the design has no fingerprints on it. The metals came from stars that burned long ago on this side of the galaxy. Yep. If we leave them, they know someone came calling but not someone from more than, oh, a couple of thousand light-years or so.”
Again, Captain Drago paused. “Do you see a downside to their knowing we know where they lived?”
Kris spoke slowly. “We know where they lived, and we didn’t do a damn thing to their old home. Nope, I don’t see a downside. Let them try to figure out why someone would do that.” Now Kris and Jack were both grinning ear to ear.
The Endeavor and the Intrepid were dispatched to picket the next systems out.
It was Nelly who came up with the smoking gun.
10
Kris and Jack were just sitting down to another bland breakfast in the wardroom. The main course was oatmeal, a crop the colonists on Alwa grew and stored as famine rations. The Navy was eating a lot of oatmeal.
It was sweetened by dried berries and nuts gathered in the deep woods, now less dangerous thanks to Marine hunting teams both making them safer and hunting for a bit of red meat. The Alwans didn’t donate the berries and nuts but traded them for electrical products from the moon factories. The Alwans drove a hard bargain, but for now, food was harder to come by than basic commlinks and TVs.
As Kris was about to take her first bite, Nelly said, “Kris, I think I may have made Professor Labao mad at me.”
“And why might the good professor be upset with you?” It was never good when Nelly made Kris pry bad news out of her.
“I kind of borrowed one of the survey rovers.”
“I thought he had those rovers booked pretty solid,” Jack said.
“They are,” Nelly admitted. “I borrowed it last night after they put it to bed. Then I had it drive just two kilometers to look at something we’d discovered from the mapping survey.”
“Nelly,” Kris said, “those surveying rovers don’t have much battery life.”
“Yes. We just about ran it dry. However, there was enough for it to carry out our test before it ran out.”
Kris and Jack found themselves rolling their eyes at the overhead. When Professor Labao and the scientists found out that one of their nine surveyors had been hijacked by Nelly and left in the middle of nowhere with a dead battery, there would be hell to pay.
“However, Kris, we did verify that the orbital slingers were not made on this planet.”
“What?” came from both Kris and Jack.
“Kris Longknife, I have a bone to pick with you and that so-called smart computer of yours,” was less of a shout and more of a bellow. It came from the doorway into the wardroom and preceded the expected Professor Labao into the officers’ mess by a good three seconds.
“We found what everyone was looking for,” Nelly repeated, but in a voice more appropriate for a teenage girl coming in several hours after her curfew than for the Magnificent Nelly.
“Do you know what that computer of yours has done?” the professor demanded as soon as he located Kris in the wardroom.
“Yes, she just told me,” Kris replied evenly.
“She’s burned out the batteries on one of the handful of rovers we have.”
“It is not burned out,” Nelly said. “It’s taking a charge, a bit slower, but it’s taking a charge. In two hours, it will be fully charged,” Nelly insisted.
“I will not stand here bandying words with a random collection of matrix and gunk.”
“Well,” Kris said, “this random collection of self-organizing matrix seems to have gotten around all your safeguards and taken control of your little robot without your noticing it for an entire night.”
“Are you defending that pile of junk?”
“Nelly says she’s found the smoking gun that connects this attack to the next system over. Have you?”
“She,” the professor began, then stopped. He blinked several times, then settled into a chair two down from Kris. After a long pause, he went on.
“My computer is updating me on what he and his mother and brothers and sisters did last night.”
NELLY, YOU DIDN’T HAVE HIS OWN COMPUTER KEEP HIM IN THE DARK, DID YOU?
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME, KRIS. THERE WAS NO QUESTION HE WOULD NOT ALLOW US TO DO THE ANALYSIS WE KNEW WE NEEDED TO DO. I’D ASKED NICELY. I’D GOTTEN NOWHERE. SO, YES, WE DID TAKE MATTERS INTO OUR OWN HANDS.