Translation was like all the others. So much of mass differentials. Everything flashed white and black simultaneously, and we went null grav. Then black turned white, and white black, and all the colors inverted into their frequency complements. White and black strobed, seemed like forever, except it wasn’t, and we were back in norm-space with full grav.
The screens had all blown—first impression I had. A moment later, I could see the faintest patches of white, really faint. Kept trying to find stars, real stars.
Caught Major Tepper looking at me, amused smile on her face. “Commander Morgan told you we were heading into an intergalactic void, Lieutenant. Didn’t you believe him?”
“Some things… have to see for yourself.”
“That can get dangerous, crack pilot or not.”
“Two more translations?”
Tepper nodded.
“How long in normspace before the next Grate?”
“That depends on how accurate the translation was for us and for the Alwyn. I’m not linked to Control at the moment. So I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“No. The possible errors are too large.” Tepper unfastened her harness and stood. Didn’t look back as she left the ready room.
“Were you trying to piss her off, Jiendra?” asked Lerrys.
“Me?”
“You.” He unfastened his restraints, stretched as he stood. “This is the biggest expedition in human history. Tepper’s only Morgan’s number two. Morgan’s probably got orders to keep everything quiet until we’re close to our destination.”
“No one could follow us through a Gate.”
“Unless they’re on board. I’m sure there are some agents in the crew or the scientists.”
“You sound like a spy type yourself, looking everywhere.”
“I’m not. You’re not. Braun’s not, and I doubt if any of the senior officers are. Beyond that, anyone can be compromised, and the stakes are higher than you seem to understand.”
“So there are aliens, or there were. So what?”
“So… after more than five millennia of thinking we’re the pinnacle of intelligent life in the Galaxy, if not in the universe, we’re about to bring back proof we’re not. If Morgan is right, these departed aliens may have known far more than we’ve discovered. What’s a technology like that worth? What would the Sunnis or the Covenanters give to have that? Or to keep the Comity from getting it? What about Old Earth and the League? Or the Middle Kingdom or the Chrysanthemum Worlds? Go ahead, tell me I’m full of crap, Jiendra.”
Didn’t say a word. If I did, I’d regret it Who the hell was Lerrys to lecture me? Sure, we might find tech stuff like that out where we were headed. But who said we’d understand it or could even use it?
After he left, I looked at the screen again. Mostly saw blackness. Not much in the way of individual stars. Figured what looked like nebulae and stars were distant galaxies. Few enough of those. Meant that there was dust of some sort out there. Wasn’t anything anywhere near, and we weren’t any more than a third of the way to Danann.
Lerrys might be right. Damned if I wanted to tell him.
27
Goodman/Bond
“Duty stations for Gate translation!” The announcement blared everywhere.
Chief Stuval looked at me. “To your station, Bond. You can finish the inventory after translation.” He frowned. “Even on a new ship, there’s always something missing. You’d think that they do it on purpose.”
I laughed. It was expected. “Maybe they do.”
“No. They just don’t know any better. Ground-huggers never do. They don’t understand ships or space or translations. They never have. You got to wonder how many ships have been lost over the years because some numbers numbnuts wanted to save a few credits.”
“There are always people like that.”
“You’re right, but when you’ve made as made translations as I have… you have to wonder.” Stuval shook his head, then gestured toward the aft bay. “Better get strapped in.”
Another minute and I settled into the restraint couch in the aft bay of the armory.
“Five minutes to translation. All personnel in secure stations. All personnel…”
I checked the restraints again. I didn’t need to. Nothing ever happened during translation except null grav and disorientation. I sat there and thought how people had different reactions to Gate translations. Yet… why should a translation be different for every person? Everyone on a ship went through the same process and ended up in the same place. Did the translation affect different people’s brains in different ways?
I almost laughed. Everything impacted people in different ways. Even looking at the stars affected them differently. How could anyone look at the vast order of the universe and not accept that there was a Creator? Yet some people denied it, as if chaos could ever create order, as if, in a galaxy where there was no intelligent life except mankind, that was an accident. But were we still in our Galaxy? Or did God limit intelligence to one species in each galaxy? If He did, where had the aliens come from?
With that thought, I had to consider my mission, again. I would have liked to send a message with the locator I had yet to construct. I needed to let the colonel and CIS know that the Sunnis were also trying to obtain whatever alien technology D.S.S. might find. There were two problems with that. First, I didn’t know how to modify the locator enough to send a text or verbal message. Second, the colonel had emphasized that I wasn’t to start on the locator until we were actually at our destination. Over the time since I’d been aboard the Magellan, I’d scoped out where most of the parts I’d need would be, but I’d have to cannibalize part of a working torp for the rest of it—in a way that couldn’t be detected or traced to me.
“Stand by for Gate translation. Stand by for Gate translation.”
I’d made enough Gate translations in my time, but not nearly so many as a midlevel D.S.S. tech would have. I still got nervous. Going through artificial hawkings seemed to violate something about the Lord’s universe. I couldn’t have said what, but to me it did.
When we went through the Gate, white turned black, and black was white. It took forever, yet it was over before I could think about it. After full grav returned, my stomach was still protesting the null grav during translation. I swallowed hard and forced things back where they belonged.
I waited several moments to let my guts settle.
“Translation is complete. Dismissed from stations to normal duties…”
I unfastened the restraints. I had an inventory to complete, and I was looking forward to it, because it gave me a far better sense of where everything was, and what would be easily missed, and what would not.
28
Chang
After the first Gate translation, things quieted down. Farscreens didn’t show that much, except the faint and distant galaxies. We spent three days moving at high sublight to get to the second Gate. Before I’d become a pilot, I’d always wondered why Gates couldn’t be reprogrammed to send ships to different places. That was before I understood the stress relationships between atrousans and gravitons. You try to use a Gate for more than one destination, and pretty soon you don’t have a Gate. You put two Gates too close together, and pretty soon you don’t have either one. That was what happened to some of the military Gates in the Dirty War and why Gates are spaced far apart outside inhabited systems.
After the second translation, the captain had announced we had another day and a half of sublight travel to the third Gate. Ship seemed quieter, subdued.