Didn’t protest that. “So long as I’ve got the one on sevenday.”
“You’re on the schedule.”
We just looked at each other. Both understood how it stood. He was a better officer and commander. I was a better pilot. Wasn’t a lot more to say.
Still felt shaky when I headed back to my stateroom. Hoped sleep would help.
33
Chang
I might not have been flying for the next day or so, but I wanted to know what sort of inspections had been done on the shuttles. Also needed to smooth things over with Morgan. No sense in having him pissed for the whole mission. Could be more than a year.
Knew he ate early. I hated getting up so long before quarters. Did anyway on sixday. Struggled into skintights and vest and shorts. Got to the mess before he did. Lagged to one side, looking for him.
He saw me, looked away.
“Commander…”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” His voice might not have been as cold as the ice on Danann. Close, though.
“If I could speak to you for a moment?”
He stepped to the side of the corridor. “You’ve got your moment.”
“Sir… I wasn’t subverting your authority yesterday. I was trying to do what I thought best to keep you from being put in a difficult situation. I’m not D.S.S. Never will be. You know that, but I wouldn’t have… presumed to question your authority…” What else could I say?
“Lieutenant…” He actually sighed. “Is this an apol-ogy?”
“If it needs to be, sir.”
For a moment, he looked at me. Hard. “Let’s have breakfast. I’ll fill you in on what the mechs found out. You need to eat. You look like shit.”
“Yes, sir.”
He shook his head again. “Pilots.” The word was spoken low enough that he could have denied it.
“Yes, sir. They’re almost as bad as…”
“As what, Lieutenant?” There was a trace of humor in his words.
“Bureaucrats… politicians… maybe ship captains.”
“Sometimes, pilots are worse.” He gestured to one of the tables where no one was sitting. “Pilots as a species are actually indispensable. Politicians and bureaucrats only think they are.” Morgan sat down.
I decided against asking if he’d had troubles with Allerde. He’d told me.
A steward arrived with coffee. I was more than ready for it. Six hundred ten was far too early for me to be functioning—except on duty, and I’d always hated the early shifts.
When the steward left, the commander looked at me.
“You were right. We checked over both shuttles. There were cutouts on shuttle two. There was also a device of unknown capabilities attached to shuttle two’s fusactor controls. We blew an armor jetpak pushing it clear of the Magellan. We’ve put the shuttles under extra surveillance, also certain other sections of the ship, and we’re looking for… irregularities… in other areas.”
“What about the Alwyn?”
“We messaged them suggesting a similar inspection. They found nothing.”
Caught the dubious tone in his voice. “You’re worried about that?”
“I’m worried that they didn’t find anything.”
“Better hidden or not yet planted?”
“I’d guess the latter.” He took the coffee mug and sipped, held it below his chin, with some of the steam rising into his nostrils.
Waited for him to say something else. He didn’t.
Steward delivered an omelet—looked like yellow plastrene with embedded mushrooms. Took a small bite. I’d tasted better. Eaten a lot worse, especially on the Mc-Clendon contract. Had to keep that in mind.
Morgan didn’t even look. He just ate.
Decided to see if Morgan would say more. I chewed the egg stuff and finished a mug of coffee. Steward refilled it.
“We knew this would be tough,” he finally mused.
“Everyone’s afraid D.S.S. will get better technology from the expedition.”
“That’s some of it, but not as much as people would think.” He swallowed more coffee, gulped rather than sipped. “Humans have been alone in the Galaxy for millennia. There’s not been any trace of other intelligence. When you think about it, there’s not even that much life that seems to have the possibility of evolving sentience. I’d say that’s because the conditions for life evolving above the microbial level are rare. They’re even rarer for intelligence evolving. It took something like three tries before it happened on Old Earth, and it was a perfect incubator.”
“Makes sense.” He was going somewhere.
“Does it? Or is it because some prime mover, some deity, arranged it that way—the old intelligent design theory?”
“I’d opt for chance.”
“So would I. Most people won’t. Most people believe there has to be a cause. Most of them believe humans are something special in the universe.”
I snorted. Seen too many people who were anything but special.
“So what happens when we prove that we’re not special?” he asked. “When we discover that the only other intelligence we ever have encountered vanished billions of years ago, and that they were smarter and accomplished more?”
“You think so?”
Morgan’s laugh was low. “All of our high-tech equipment, and we can’t even find the entrances to that city, or whatever it is. The material they used would survive anything up to a nova, and I’m not sure it wouldn’t survive that unless it were in the center of the star. It’s likely that these Danannians created Chronos as well. It’s a mass almost exactly the same diameter as Danann, except that it’s two hundred eighty times denser. We can’t even get close to it—but it’s semicollapsed matter, or an entire sphere composed of something incredibly transuranic. Danann isn’t even the center of anything. It looks more like a colony or an outpost. Just one city, or hive, or station on a planet, and they sent it spinning off into the galactic void…”
“You think they sent it?”
“They had to, if you consider it. There’s no trauma to the planet, no apparent damage to the structures. They just sealed everything and left.”
“Where did they go?”
“The scientific types are working on it. Dr. Taube says she has a theory, but she needs more information before she’ll say more. Something about a possible Type III civilization.”
Just sat there for a time. Held the coffee mug. Supposed I was more like most people than I’d thought. Aliens… smarter than we were. Lots smarter. They’d built an outpost on a planet and whipped the planet through space. The outpost was bigger than any single human city, and it had lasted unchanged for billions of years. Then they vanished. Or they went back where they’d come from.
“You see, Chang?” Morgan said softly. “What does that do to everyone who thinks we’re special? Or to all the religions who believe in an anthropic creator? It’s the biggest threat ever to their beliefs and their existence.”
Guess I hadn’t seen it quite that way. Always had thought anyone who felt people were a divine creation was deluded beyond belief. How could anyone believe that an omnipotent being would create so many frigging idiots?
“Way back in history… they burned the first scholars who suggested that Old Earth’s sun wasn’t the center of the universe. Millions have been killed because they wouldn’t accept this or that god. We’ve been fighting the believers for millennia. What do you think they’ll do if we present them with Danann? Do you really think they’ll accept the evidence?”