McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS Read online

  Mark nodded, “Or suicide to avoid capture…”

  “Or suicide to avoid capture. Either way, the event will start alarm bells ringing all the way up the Broan chain of command. No matter how you look at it, the time is coming when we will have to curtail Q-ship operations.”

  “What else can we do?” Lisa asked.

  “Strategy and Intentions has a thought. They recommend that instead of continuing to flesh out our maps of stargate connectivity, we try to map the lines of Broan authority instead.”

  Both Mark and Lisa gave him a blank look. Landon continued, warming to the subject.

  “We’ve found a number of what we believe to be regional capitals, systems with multiple stargates and a large Broan presence. Xavier reported they encountered the new stargate protocol after being held up for hours waiting on a convoy: Seven ships all bound for the same destination. That level of activity ought to indicate a Broan stronghold somewhere along the convoy’s path.

  Strategy and Intentions thinks we can use traffic analysis to get a better idea of where the Broa are. If we plot the density of pseudo-simians rather than star positions, we might be able to identify their hierarchy of control. Once we know the reporting relationships, we may pinpoint the single system everyone else reports to.”

  “Logical,” Lisa said, nodding.

  Landon laughed. “One of my professors at the Academy once defined logic as the means by which we arrive at the wrong conclusion with confidence. Still, it makes more sense than continuing to blunder about and risk losing a ship.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Mark warned.

  “A big one,” the Admiral agreed. “We’re stretched to the limit and we’re going to have to shift resources to make this new plan work. The problem is that there isn’t a lot of flexibility regarding our most critical shortage.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Translators.”

  Lisa’s spine stiffened for a second, and then softened as she silently acknowledged what she had suspected was coming.

  If Dan Landon noticed the sudden spasm, he gave no clue. Instead, he looked directly into her eyes and said, “Lisa, I would like you to head the translation team on this new effort.”

  Lisa didn’t answer right away. Things were moving too fast… first their homecoming, then this new offer. It wasn’t the way she had imagined it.

  As Landon fixed her with a penetrating gaze, she stammered, “Uh… yes, sir. If you need me.”

  “I truly do.”

  “What about me, Admiral?” Mark asked. “Do I have a position in this new organization?”

  “I have something else for you, Mark,” he said, transferring his attention to the male half of the team. “It involves that second pressing problem I mentioned.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Security. Specifically, the security of Brinks Base.”

  #

  The silence that followed stretched uncomfortably long as Mark and Lisa regarded their commander with puzzlement. When they had left, there had been no hint of a threat to the base. What had happened in the interim? Finally, Mark asked the obvious question:

  “Brinks Base isn’t safe, Admiral?”

  “It’s safe enough… for now. The Broa don’t know we are here and there are no gravity waves emanating from this system to give them a clue. That is why we chose the location of… uh, Grand Central Terminus. Over the next few years, that bit of vacuum is going to be the origin of literally thousands of waves, but it will take a couple of centuries for any of them to reach a Broan-occupied system.

  “Like every other invention in history,” Landon continued, “stargates are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they make interstellar travel easy and cheap. On the other, they are discontinuous. They operate by transposition rather than translation. No Broan craft will stumble over one of our gravity waves en route from hither to yon because their ships are never ‘en route’ between stars.

  “Yet, it is inevitable they will eventually become aware of us, if not through misadventure by one of our spy ships, then some scenario we haven’t thought about. When that happens, they will launch a full scale search for us. Not only will they search all the systems under their thumbs, but every uninhabited system as well. They have the capability, using single-ended jumps.

  “Hideout is, so far as they know, an uninhabited star system. What happens when a Broan avenger materializes on the outskirts of this system and detects our energy signature?”

  “We’ll put a superlight missile through it,” Mark replied.

  “That we will,” Landon agreed, “which will be almost as big a red flag as having that ship report back that it found a lot of radio traffic in a supposedly uninhabited system on the edge of the Sky Flower Nebula. We will likely have a war fleet materializing in our sky a month after that ship fails to report back.”

  “Isn’t that true of any base we establish in Broan space?”

  “As it turns out, Mark, it isn’t. The scientists, being scientists, seem to think that this whole gargantuan scheme has been put in motion merely to allow them to study their specialties. The gravity astronomers have been looking at the waves we’ve detected with our gravtennas. Everything checks out except the waves coming in from galactic east. Try as they might, they couldn’t make the distortion patterns match the stellar cartography. They have been burning up computer time to discover the reason and came up with a theory that matches the data. It was sufficiently startling for me to loan them a ship. To my amazement, they found what they were looking for.”

  “What was that, sir?”

  “A rogue planet. Actually, a cluster of them.”

  #

  Mark and Lisa sat in the Brinks commissary and ate a late breakfast. Instead of one of the long tables, they chose a corner booth this morning so that they could sit undisturbed, side-by-side, and snuggle. Across from them, looking like a third diner, Mark’s vacuum suit sat propped up, facing them. Beside it was his kit bag.

  “Damn it, Mark! We came back to Brinks to avoid this!”

  “Sorry, sweet,” he said as he sipped hot coffee from a drinking bulb. “We knew this could happen.”

  “But not so soon. We’ve only been back a week.”

  He shrugged. “Needs of the service and all that.” A questing hand gave her a reassuring squeeze. Despite his attempt at putting a brave face on their coming separation, he, too was unhappy with the thought of not seeing his wife for months.

  Still, the job he’d been given was an important one and he looked forward to the challenge. As for the two of them serving together as they always had, her job was even more important than the one on which he was about to embark.

  A rogue planet, as it turned out, was neither a base for pirates, nor a world filled with antisocial barbarians. It was a planet that had formed in the cosmos in the absence of an accompanying sun. The existence of such orphan orbs had been the subject of considerable argument among astronomers for hundreds of years. The two sides disputed for so long because the scale of the universe made the chance of anyone actually discovering a rogue vanishingly small.

  The theories concerning rogue worlds evolved with humanity’s improving understanding of the universe. There was a time when astronomers thought the formation of the Solar System an event so unlikely that there might only be one such in the galaxy. Decades later, telescopes became good enough to detect worlds in orbit about other stars and the theoretical picture changed. Planets, it seemed, were common. Like the stars that lit them, they coalesced out of a primordial gas ball under the influence of mutual gravitational attraction.

  Most of the gas and dust in primordial clouds collapsed into the center to form the star. However, some material possessed too high an angular momentum to fall straight inward. This more energetic material swirled around and coalesced into smaller lumps, ranging in size from several times the size of mighty Jupiter down to miniscule Mercury and below.

  Yet, what if the gas cloud as a whole pos
sessed a high angular momentum? The central mass might not reach the size where a hydrogen fusion reaction would light off. In such a cloud, there would only be planets, but no sun to betray the group to the surrounding universe.

  This, then, was the definition of a rogue world — a planet without a sun, a cosmic orb that moved eternally through interstellar darkness. Rogue worlds might lack sunlight, but they possessed mass and raw materials, including frozen gases from which breathing gas and fuel could be extracted. Most importantly, they were invisible to anyone who did not know precisely where to look.

  It was this “invisible” attribute that excited Dan Landon and his staff. If Brinks Base was vulnerable to discovery, a cluster of rogue planets was not.

  Mark and Lisa sat quietly, not speaking for a long time. The end of their contemplation came quietly with a voice announcing that boats for TSNS Roman Road were ready for loading.

  “Time to go,” Mark said, twisting about to face his wife. She lifted her face to his and kissed him. The kiss went on for a long time. When it was over, they reluctantly unwound from one another. Lisa slid out of the booth, reached over, and picked up his kit bag. Mark followed, leaning over the table to retrieve the vacuum suit, which he slung over his right shoulder.

  Then, locking arms, they headed for the spaceport airlock. Not for the first time, Mark voiced a universal complaint of soldiers and sailors.

  “This damned war is interfering with my love life!”

  He’d meant it to come out lightly, a bit of gallows humor to mark his send off. He didn’t manage his desired tone. It was more of a growl then a giggle.

  “Damned war…” his wife repeated, almost prayerfully, before pulling him closer as they low-gravity skated along the corridor to where they must part for the duration of what was to come.

  #

  PART TWO:

  UNTO THE BREACH…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Faalta was barely above the horizon when Dos-Val checked his communications logs for news of the mysterious bipeds. It was nearly a full cycle since he had advanced the theory that a wild species was loose in Civilization. Though most did not believe it possible, even a hint of such a situation required that it be explored.

  To do so, the Council established a new vine within the Ministry of Science and promoted Dos-Val to lead it. With his new-found priority and resources, he ordered another search of the central database. One-quarter of his available computer specialists were assigned the task. Once again, subtle search routines scoured the repository, seeking traces of the bipeds and related organisms. Once again, results were negative.

  He put other specialists to researching everything known of the bipeds’ two visits to Civilization, with special care paid to medical data. What they learned was that the bipeds’ sun was Faalta-like and their world a twin to Ssasfal. However, the same could be said for many worlds.

  As results continued to be negative, the Prime Councilor became agitated. With each new irritant, he granted Dos-Val increased resources, with the clear implication that his patience was waning. Dos-Val, under pressure, expanded his inquiries. He ordered a team to research the disappearance of the missing accountant, Sar-Say. A second team was assigned to do nothing but consider new approaches to the problem of the wild bipeds.

  It was this latter group whose efforts first produced a few ripe lossa fruit.

  The one thing they knew about the bipeds was that they were using the stargates. One of his young assistants, Szal-Trel, suggested modifying the software that operated the stargates to require visual communication with each ship prior to jump. In this way, they could estimate the number of biped ships, the better to bound the problem.

  Modifying the generations-old gate software had proven a major undertaking. Even so, with fewer than two-twelfths of the gates upgraded, the effort yielded immediate results. In the past quarter-cycle, the Ministry had received records from three widely separated systems showing wild bipeds using stargates. In each case, the individuals whose image they captured claimed to be members of a species with a similar physiology. Moreover, the three ships were of two different types, which put to rest the idea that they were dealing with a single pirate vessel.

  After the promising start, however, the sightings ceased. Either the quarry was frightened off, or they were able to defeat the jump check after initially being surprised by it. Still, three sightings in so short a time allowed Dos-Val’s team to estimate how deeply Civilization had been penetrated.

  The answer did nothing to soothe the Prime Councilor’s irritation.

  #

  A quiet signal sounded, announcing the arrival of his morning appointment. He checked his schedule. The visitors were Kalz-Vor and Gor-Dek.

  Kalz-Vor was the assistant leading the team assigned to study the disappearance of the Sar-Dva Clan’s missing accountant. Gor-Dek was one of the senior philosophers in the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Dos-Val knuckle-walked to the portal of his office and greeted his visitors. When they were settled on resting racks, he asked Kalz-Vor why he had requested the conference.

  “As you know, Subminister, we asked the Institute of Physics to review our records of the battle at the Nala stargate. They have some startling information.”

  “Continue,” Dos-Val said.

  “Sar-Say was en route from Vith to Perselin when his ship disappeared in the Nala system. An avenger disappeared at the same time, and the Nala stargate was damaged by beam fire. Unofficially, the Kas-Dor are suspected, but of course, we are making no accusations.”

  The Subminister signaled his agreement. Their task was to track down the wild bipeds, not involve themselves in disputes between members of the council.

  “Our reconstructed scenario is that the missing avenger attacked Sar-Say’s ship just as it entered the Nala gate. The two ships’ jump fields were likely interpenetrated. We surmise the avenger fired a bolt intending to disable the transport, and missed. The bolt struck the gate. The overload was strong enough to send both ships on a single-ended jump.”

  “A jump to where?”

  “We don’t know, Subminister. Even with exact readings, we would be unable to predict the point of emergence. There is some randomness involved.”

  “So we know why the ships disappeared. How did Sar-Say end up in the paws of the bipeds?”

  Gor-Dek made the gesture of apology for a necessary interruption. He then took up the narrative, “Obviously, the bipeds come from wherever the two ships emerged in normal space.”

  Dos-Val considered the thought. It was simple, direct, and so obvious that one could hardly argue with the conclusion. Yet, the idea caused every hair on his body to tingle.

  The problem lay in the laws of probability. If the stargate threw Sar-Say’s transport and its attacker to some distant point in space, then they should be dead. If not killed by the side effects of a gate gone mad, they would have died of starvation or oxygen deprivation when they emerged light-cycles from the nearest star.

  “What chance they emerged near an inhabited star system?”

  “Should a tunnel through phantom space pass through a star,” Gor-Dek explained, “the star’s mass will act as the far terminus. The two ships could well have been thrown into normal space within the star’s planetary system.”

  “How, then, did they show up at Klys’kra’t? Are you saying these bipeds possess their own stargates?”

  “It is possible, Subminister. The technology is obvious to any culture with knowledge of multidimensional physics. However, I am suggesting that they may not need a stargate.”

  Rather than speak and make a fool of himself, Dos-Val sat and awaited clarification. Sensing his unease, the old philosopher drew himself up in his lounging frame and continued:

  “When Szor-Trel came to me, I listened politely, but did not think much of his hypotheses. An entire planet erased from the database? Impossible! Ships traversing the stargates without our knowledge? Preposterous!

  “Then he showed me the
records from the Nala Gate. That the two missing vessels were thrown a great distance seems obvious. After all, the bolt actually vaporized a section of the outer plating. And he is correct about the physics. There is no way to predict the end point, even if we had proper power readings. Like you, I assumed a ship sent into the universe at random would reenter somewhere in deep interstellar space, condemning the crew to a lingering death.

  “For the survivors to become prisoners of local autochthons requires the tunnel to intersect a star… unlikely, but not preposterous. We are very careful to avoid such intersections when we site our gate pairs. Moreover, since these bipeds are now running free through our gate network, they obviously discovered a way into Civilization. The question is, how? I believe I have the answer. However, it requires me to impart forbidden knowledge.”

  Both of his listeners blinked in surprise. Over the millennia, there had been discoveries considered too sensitive for widespread dissemination. These bits of dangerous information were the responsibility of only a few of the most senior scientists or researchers.

  “Is that wise?” Dos-Val asked the philosopher.

  “Wise, Subminister? No. However, if my suspicions are correct this problem may be far more serious than you realize. You are aware that the stargates work on the principle of coordinate rotation?”

  “Of course. The exact details…”

  “…Are not important,” Gor-Dek replied. “What you need to know is that the gates form their interstellar tunnels by rotating quasi-dimensions into other dimensions. In so doing, they establish a connection between two widely separated points with no distance between them.”

  Dos-Val signaled the affirmative. “Academy level physics.”

  “Yes, of course. What you do not know is that there is a different set of coordinate transformations that have a different effect on space-time, one that makes stargates unnecessary…”