YOU LIED TO HIM.
NO, KRIS, NEITHER I NOR MY SON LIED TO HIM. WE JUST DIDN’T TELL HIM.
NELLY, YOU AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS.
YES, KRIS, I EXPECTED THAT YOU MIGHT SAY THAT. I’M SORRY, BUT IT WAS SOMETHING WE DECIDED HAD AN EIGHTY-NINE-PERCENT CHANCE OF SETTLING THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ATTACK. I DECIDED IT WOULD BE BETTER TO ASK FORGIVENESS THAN ASK PERMISSION.
Oh, where did I hear that one before? Father always said, “Your sins will find you out.” Today is going to be interesting.
The glazed look in the professor’s eyes went away; Kris took that to mean that the update from his computer was over.
“That doesn’t prove it is from the next system over,” he said, continuing a conversation that had, no doubt, begun in his head.
“Yes,” Nelly said, “but it does show that the metal in that counterweight is not a product of this planet or of the asteroid belt. If you can persuade Kris, you can send ships to survey the other planets in this system, but I bet she’d rather push on to the putative alien home world and check the isotopic makeup of iron and nickel and distribution of rare earths on that world than spend more time on this one.”
“Would someone please bring the rest of us into this briefing,” Kris said. She noticed that munching of oatmeal had ceased all around the wardroom. Clearly, if she got her briefing here, there would be no need to have the Wasp’s news feed updated.
Nelly took up the briefing in a voice clearly intended to carry through the wardroom. “The problem with all the sites that we have been sending the surveyors to is that they have had a hundred thousand years, maybe more, to be contaminated. What might once have been a unique isotopic structure with particular impurities that could give an off-world fingerprint has been worn down by wind and frost. Fragments have been blown away and blown in. Simply put, nothing special was coming from where the surveyors were being sent.”
Nelly paused to let that sink into human minds with their slow absorption rate. So she had learned a few things from Kris.
“However, there was a possibility that some uncontaminated, or at least less contaminated samples of material from the time of the attack might exist. Those were the orbital slingshots, or more particularly, the centrally located counterbalances. They were big, heavy, and likely to survive entry into this atmosphere. Why the aliens didn’t just deorbit them when they were done, but instead launched them off on their own orbits that crossed this planet’s orbit is something I am not prepared to conjecture about.
“However, we found one still orbiting the sun, and that left me and my children to speculate that there must have once been more. Based on that hypothesis, we searched the map for meteorite objects that were large enough to make their own craters when they hit. We found several that might well be younger than the strata they sat on. We asked permission from the boffins to include them in their survey and were turned down. Yesterday, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and we did, indeed, answer the question we’d all been asking.”
Kris glanced around the room. Had any of the other listening officers spotted what Nelly had so quickly glossed over? A few might have; Kris could tell by the narrowed eyes as here and there, officers, usually younger ones, reflected on what a world would be like when computers decided to ignore the orders that humans gave them.
Most, however, looked on expectantly for Nelly to finish the briefing.
“Every planet has a certain fingerprint, a signature if you will, that is embedded in its metal. There is a specific distribution of isotopes in each different type of metal. There are also rare earths that get mixed up in the ores as well. Back on Earth in the twentieth century, one of the first suspicions that an asteroid had struck near the end of the dinosaur era was the different distribution of the rare earth iridium in the makeup of the layer of earth that separated the geological stratus that held dinosaur bones and the next layer up that held none.
“Last night, we parked a surveyor next to a large mound of metal that we thought was a counterweight for an orbital slingshot. When we burned through the surface contamination, we found a nickel-steel center whose composition did not belong on this planet and did not originate in the asteroid belt.”
Again, Nelly paused.
“We propose to you that the composition of this metal will suit very nicely the metals found on the home world of the aliens.”
“It could come from one of the other planets of this system,” Professor Labao said.
“Professor, there is no evidence that any of the other planets in this system ever supported life. There is also no evidence that they were bombarded at the same time this planet was. No, if we are to find where the bullet of this smoking gun came from, we need to look farther afield. I suggest we try the next system. If it turns out not to fit there, we can come back here, but I strongly propose that we are wasting our time here and now. Let’s go see the more likely source before we spend more time here trying to prove a negative.”
Kris canted her head and waited to see if Professor Labao would say anything further. He didn’t.
Captain Drago had been looking on like the rest. He was also likely the oldest one to narrow his eyes as Nelly admitted her newfound ability and freedom to ignore her human instructions. Kris caught his eye.
“How soon can we get underway?”
“Give me four hours to make sure we’re shipshape and ready.”
“Then send to the fleet. In four hours we will detach from our shared moorings and prepare to break orbit. Have gunnery lay in a shoot to destroy all evidence that there were ever rovers on this planet. If that means an extra orbit, so be it.
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” came the reply, and it quickly became so.
11
A shiver went down Kris’s back as she watched the planet rotating below the Wasp. One of the screens in Kris’s flag bridge stayed fixed on the terrain flowing below them. It showed a warm and welcoming world.
Had it spawned horrific monsters?
If it had, why and how?
The land below was green and brown and tan. When they crossed oceans, there were waves with white capes and reef-surrounded islands. On their approach, they had quickly spotted two continents. One was larger and divided into three smaller segments. The second spanned the northern and southern hemisphere with a narrow isthmus in between.
Kris remembered a short course she’d taken about Old Earth. This planet was different, but quite similar. There were even ice-covered poles. Here, the northern one showed land beneath it.
They look like us. They come from a planet that even could pass for our home world. Why do they just want to kill us and every other living thing?
There was no answer to Kris’s questions scrawled across the planet below.
On another screen, Captain Drago was mooring the Wasp nose to nose with the Royal. Since the Royal outweighed the Wasp, the pole between them was longer for the Wasp than the heavier ship. Moored, they swung around their center of gravity, but it was a messy swing. Kris could hear pumps moving reaction mass and water around the ship. Out on the bridge, Penny was even moving the armor to help balance the ship.
No doubt, across the mooring line, the Royal was doing the same.