Published in the
November 1995 issue of Analog
Science Fiction and Science Fact, and recommended for the Nebula
Award, this First-contact novelette is about an astronomer who first
communicated with some arriving aliens and is the only invited visitor to their
vessel -- and who uncovers a shocking reason for the aliens' lack of curiosity
about us.
---------------------------------------------------------
With Other Eyes
by
F. Alexander Brejcha
I.
Even if I couldn't see
it anymore, I could almost feel the alien space ship hanging expectantly only a
few kilometers away from the Hawking space station. The Travelers, as they called themselves, had
arrived four days earlier and they were waiting for me -- but I wasn't ready!
I slammed my fist
against the bulkhead in frustration.
"Damn it, Lazz! Why can't I
get the hang of using these damned eyes?
It's been week and I can barely tell a doorway from a wall. It only took you a couple of days."
A shadow moved across
my virtually non-existent vision and I smelled the tantalizing scent of a fresh
orange as it was peeled.
"Relax,
Mitch. You'll get it in time. It was easier for me because I've been blind
for almost twenty years. I didn't have a
lot of un-learning to do --"
"I
know." I sighed and repeated his
constant litany of reassurance over the past week: "'You only had your eyes removed a few
weeks ago, and you're still trying to focus and see the way you used to'. But it isn't working!" I complained.
Lazz slapped me on the
shoulder, his voice suddenly muffled.
"Wait here. I can see I was
right. I had a feeling this might
be necessary."
With those ominous
words, I heard a hiss from the automatic door as he left the room without
explaining what 'this' was.
He could at least have
left me some of the orange.
I turned back to the
training room for another vain attempt to see the objects Lazz had set up for
me. My implanted eye-set was an
incredible device; a four-part system actually.
It consisted of a controlling computer worn on my belt, a tiny transmitter
array I wore on my forehead, and twin receivers implanted in my eye sockets and
cosmetically made to approximate the appearance of my own eyes, even turning as
reconnected eye muscles simulated natural eye movements. The system used some alien forms of sonar and
light receptors to give an approximation of the way the aliens' vision
worked. It was a different version of
something Lazz had already been developing as an alternative sight-system for
himself and other blind individuals unable to tolerate eye transplants. The aliens had provided input to modify
Lazz's design to meet their criteria.
But it had proved a
lot harder to use than I had expected and I was still almost totally blind --
and I was supposed to be able to see with this system when I went onboard the
alien ship to make personal contact. The
Travelers had insisted on it for some reason.
Lazz couldn't go because I was the one who had decoded the Traveler signals
and made first contact, and the aliens only wanted to deal with me. So I could be a "witness" to
something. They had continually refused
to answer any questions other than technical ones associated with setting up
the meeting. They had said that
everything would be explained to me and on my return, I could pass on all my
knowledge.
But if I was going to
witness anything, I would have to learn to use my new eyes!
The sound of the door
interrupted my useless efforts and I heard Lazz come in. And he wasn't alone, I realized as I smelled
a delicate floral perfume.
"All right, buddy,
I'm tuned in to your frequency again and seeing with your eyes. Now, one more time, focus, this way!"
I sighed and
concentrated. Still, there was nothing
there... no, I could just sense a teasingly vague outline that shifted in and
out of focus. I tilted my head, fighting
to keep the image clear. The perfume was
familiar and I wanted to know if I was right.
"Good! You're starting to get it," Lazz
encouraged. "Now relax and...
imagine you're a little drunk and looking at something... There, keep that up
and you'll get more detail."
Suddenly the outlines
sharpened and I saw an incredibly detailed topographical image of...
"Whoa, Lazz! Who is that!"
"Janice
Wills. Shame on you for not recognizing
one of your co-workers."
"But she's
naked!"
"No," Lazz
chuckled. "She's wearing a bikini,
or so she said." He suddenly
sounded doubtful. "Wait a minute,
let me break our link and look for myself.
After a moment, he spoke up again.
"Yup. It must have been
designed by Drexler's of
"I know what it
looks like she's offering." I felt
my face burn and I was afraid to look closer.
"But this from a woman who turned me down when I asked for a
date?" And that had taken one hell
of an effort. At forty, and widowed only
three years earlier after twelve years of marriage, I had been sorely out of
practice and feeling guilty over the way I had been attracted to Janice.
"Gee, I just love
to be discussed in the third person," Janice muttered darkly. "And I'm still 'involved' with
someone. But our beloved leader has
quite a talent for blackmail --"
"I prefer to
think of it as creative persuasion," Lazz cut in.
"Blackmail,"
Janice repeated firmly. Then she turned
back to me.
"Besides, he can
make himself look even more pitiful than you.
He's been pestering me non-stop ever since he thought of this idea and I
finally gave in since we've removed the last of the hidden media Mini-Casters." She moved closer, and I felt a light touch on
my arm. "But, we really work well
together and I just hated seeing you so down in the dumps." She kissed me lightly on the cheek. "You're on your own now, Mitch. Good luck." Then she spun away to pick up a robe she had
draped over a chair.
I struggled to keep
her in focus as she slipped it on, and then waved and slipped out the
door. Then Lazz grabbed my arm and
pulled me back to the exercise table.
"Okay,
buddy. Now that I finally have your
attention, let's try this again!"
I struggled to focus
on the various cones, cubes and pyramids he had put out for me and began
describing them. I had not realized how
much detail my new 'eyes' could yield until now, but as I worked, I started to
get the feel for using them and I marvelled at the dizzying depth they gave the
room. I had a feeling that with practice
I would be able to judge distances with millimetric precision. But Lazz had been right: the eyes did require using a whole different
set of muscles.
I was just getting
into it when the overhead speaker buzzed and Commander Elizabeth Josarro's
voice called down.
"Mitch, we've got
a problem --"
"The Travelers
are insisting I come over now," I guessed, interrupting her.
"How the hell did
you know?"
"It makes
sense." I fought a sudden queasiness.
"They were insistent on no official presence at our meeting, and
since they're probably monitoring me the same way Lazz is they know I'm getting
the hang of my eyes. And they know no
one from the U.N. is on the station at the moment."
"True... no one
expected you to have a break-through so soon."
I grinned. "Blame it on your husband. He's a good teacher."
"How did
he... Never mind." She sighed.
"I can only imagine. But it
puts us in a bind because the Travelers want you over there NOW!"
I could only imagine
the frantic scrambling going on in
I looked up to
ask: "What about my atmosphere suit
and supplies?"
"Everything is
already on the Transport. The extra air
tanks and supplies for a week are loaded into external-access
compartments. We'll control the
Transport from here until they take over to guide you into a pressurized
bay. They've prepared an environmental
chamber for you with our specs, so you should be fine."
Conflicting emotions
came over me as I thought about the coming days, but before I could say
anything, I saw Lazz reach for a wall-com.
"He can't go yet,
Liza. I'm not finished training
him."
"They seem to
think he's ready, so he's going to have to deal with it."
"I'm telling
you," Lazz protested. "He's
not ready. He's starting to get the hang
of the eyes, but he needs more time. What's
the harm if I come along? There's a
spare suit, and they're adjustable. And
there are more than enough supplies, ."
"No." Liza was firm. "The Travelers said he has to come by
himself."
"Actually,"
I corrected her. "They only said
that no government representatives were to be along. If they want parity, Lazz really ought to
come since he's right: I'm still not
fully trained and I need his help. I can
explain his presence without too much trouble."
I wasn't being quite
truthful about needing Lazz because it was getting easier and easier to use the
electronic eyes now that I had found the right mental buttons. But I owed Lazz for all his help and I knew
he was dying to go. The whole time he
had been training me, he had been pumping me for information on the Travelers,
wistfully admitting he wished he had been the one to make contact. But through a series of coincidences, I had
been the lucky one.
I had been working as
an advanced A.I. programming instructor at M.I.T., and I had always been an amateur
astronomer and a SETI buff, and in studying newly released deep-space probe
data from the Farside monitoring station on the Moon, I had come across some
intriguing signals that had seemed to correlate with similar ones from the
If it had been
mid-semester, everything might have ended there since it was a very weak
correlation, but it was summer and I had time on my hands. Too much time in fact, with Ellen gone. Figuring out the meaning of the teasing
signals had become a mental challenge to help me keep my mind off the usual summer
trips we had always taken. But
ironically, in my efforts to hide from memories of Ellen, I had been forced to
turn to those same memories to solve the puzzle.
Ellen had been a
linguistics professor at Harvard, and in order to keep up with her, I had made
a hobby of language puzzles. From that
perspective, the anomalies I had noted had started looking more and more like
an encrypted message. Deciphering them had gradually grown from a hobby to a
near obsession, and I had finally put in for a leave of absence and applied for
a SETI research grant to study the data further.
With a little help
from friends in the right places, I had obtained both the leave and a modest
grant to spend time on Hawking to study the raw data coming in from Farside and
deep space probes. It was in analyzing
those data and combining them in real-time with the
My luck in piecing it
together must have been frustrating for Lazz.
As a SETI buff himself, it would have been equally possible for him to
find and decode the signal, had he only been looking in the right frequency
ranges. But now I was the one heading
for a historic meeting, even if I did want to share it with him.
The speaker linking us
with the control-room had been silent.
Liza knew very well how Lazz felt, and she probably agreed with me,
personally. But I knew her well enough
to know that ultimately she would have to make her decision as station
commander, not as Lazz's wife.
"I'm sorry, Lazz,
but I can't spare you," she finally answered. "Mitch, you'll just have to make the
best of it. Aside from the fact that I
would probably be hauled up in front of the U.N. General Assembly and publicly
lynched for breaking the guidelines they set, I need Lazz here. What if the main processor goes down
again? We won't get the new unit up from
the surface until Friday, and I can't lose two of my best computer jocks."
Lazz tried again. "Come on, Liza! Janice knows the system well enough... hell,
she's already been running things solo while I've been training Mitch. The new program they developed doubled the
throughput."
"No." The line went dead.
"Shit!" Lazz turned to me, eerily outlined in a
sensory halo as our beams intersected.
I had avoided looking
at him too much before because the crossed signals gave me a bit of a headache,
but I faced him now and held out my hand.
"Well, Lazz. I guess it's goodbye, for now."
"That's what you
think!" An extra burst of reflected
signal from his teeth lit up as he smiled.
"I don't care what my dear wife says, I'm not letting you go over
there alone and fuck up our reputation --"
"You mean 'hog
all the glory'."
"Touché." The teeth flashed again and he chuckled. For a moment he was quiet, and then he
started nodding. "Well, when all
else fails... persuasion, usually works.
I haven't used this one since I proposed to her, but I think it's time
to pull out the heavy guns again."
The tone of his voice
was enough to start me thinking about running for cover.
I saw him pull out his
Braille-pad and his fingers flashed over the tiny seven-button keyboard, the
speech feedback set too fast for me to follow.
Then he stabbed the 'send' chord firmly with a threatening little
chuckle. I knew his pocket computer was
linked with the station mainframe and I looked around nervously.
Then I discovered the
awful thing he had unleashed.
It began innocently
enough. From all around us, the gentle
music of Chinese temple chimes stroked our ears, but then a deep roar began to
unfold itself, spreading with visceral power.
It was the beginning of his belch-collection. I had never heard it, though I had heard of
it, of course. It was legendary on the
space station and I knew Liza despised it, but I was discovering that its
amplified and omnipotent presence was beyond my wildest imaginings. What beer had spawned such awesome
scope? What combination of spiced foods
and beverages? And this was only the first
in the collection!
Beginning with an
almost sub-audible vibration, it climbed into the audible threshold quickly and
then added harmonic frequencies that chilled me. Amazingly enough, the gentle bells remained
clear and distinct throughout. But that
first blast lasted for hours, it seemed.
As it finally faded away, leaving only the innocent chimes, I stared up
at the ceiling speaker and shook my head in admiration. Digital recording at its best.
A weary sigh filtered
down from above. "All right, Lazarus. No more.
Stay there."
Lazz clenched a fist
and popped it up in the air, spreading two fingers in victory sign as the
speaker clicked off.
"Yes!" He turned back
to me. "I knew that that would do
it. She survived the first three when I
wouldn't take no for an answer to my marriage proposal ten years ago, but that
was a tough problem for her. After her
first shit-for-husband, she was gun-shy."
I could literally hear
him growling as his whole posture changed, but I was curious: "So after that you terrorized her to get
her to marry you?"
"It was done with
love," Lazz defended. "She
needed someone a little bit crazy, and we were meant for each other." He grinned.
"Elizabeth and Lazarus, Liza and Lazz. See?"
Then he turned serious. "I
had to get her to get her to look at life, and herself, differently. When that freak she had been married to
wasn't drunk and beating her up, or taunting her about her weight, he was a
sullen bore who didn't believe a woman could do anything worthwhile. First she needed to know that she was a
wonderful and talented lady, but then she needed to know life isn't always
serious --"
"Hence the belch
recording." I shook my head.
"Hey, it worked,
didn't it? And she went from a wimpy
glorified clerk to running a space station, with some impressive stops in
between. I'd like to think I had a
little something to do with that."
I laughed. "Okay, maybe. But I'm not sure that was a wise move this
time."
"Maybe not, but I
am going with you," he pointed out, clapping my shoulder.
"Not to interrupt
this mutual admiration society," a new voice broke in. Liza had just entered the room and stood by
the door, shaking her head. "You
two are quite the pair." She moved in on him and grabbed his shirt. "Okay, hon, you can go. I'll look the other way -- not because of the
recording," she warned. "But
because I trust Mitch when he says he can explain it." She turned to me. "But I'll warn both of you right
now: when the U.N. team gets up here
Friday and starts asking questions and screaming in outrage, I'll know nothing
about this. As far as I'll be concerned,
Lazz was a stowaway on the Transport.
Got it?"
"I got it,"
I promised. "And, thank
you." I knew it wouldn't be that
easy and that she was sure to take some heat for Lazz being along.
"Thanks,
hon," Lazz echoed. "And don't
worry. I'll face the music when we get
back. I just don't want to miss --"
"I know,"
Liza admitted softly. But then her tone
turned dangerously sweet. "But,
Lazz, honey? There a catch."
"A catch?" He sounded worried for the first time.
"Yes, dear. You're not going unless you give me the
access codes to the hidden computer files where you have that recording
stashed. I thought I found and deleted
every copy, but apparently I was wrong.
I will be rid of it!"
She was joking, but
she was also dead serious, and I could see that Lazz got the message because
his hands had been flashing over his Braille pad as she spoke, and with a
final, firm press of the send chord, he looked up.
"There were two
encrypted files, stashed in different sub-systems, and they're both gone. I sent verification to your mailbox."
"Thank
you." Liza's voice turned genuinely
intimate as she moved close to him.
"And, Lazz?"
"Yeah,
hon?" His hand cupped her face
lightly.
"Be careful?"
"I will. And I'll behave."
I turned away, feeling
like a shit for intruding as they kissed briefly. But "Commander Josarro" was back in
charge before I knew it.
"Now, both of
you," she ordered briskly, "get your asses to the Transport bay, into
your atmosphere suits and onto the Transport.
"Yes!" Lazz let out an ecstatic drawl. "We're off to see the Wizard."
&
II.
The rotating ship we
were approaching was obviously a deep space vessel. It consisted of a slender triangular shaft
that was nearly a kilometer long and thirty meters in diameter, and it was
capped by a three-sided and trunctuated pyramid, base forward and facing
us. The instrument-dotted, thirty
meter-wide base of the front pyramid was pitted and scarred in contrast to the
shiny sides which narrowed until they merged with a circular plate in the front
end of the central shaft. The plate and
bow-unit were counter-rotating to be stationary relative to us.
Just aft of the
bow-unit were three enormous equilateral and pyramidal pods extending base out
from the central shaft, and rotating to provide maximum gravity at their
triangular two-hundred-meter bases now that the ship was at rest. Each of the huge rotating pyramids was
perfectly smooth and unmarked, fusing seamlessly with the central shaft about
thirty meters from where their tips would have been. At the far end of the smooth central shaft
loomed a large dish, nearly half a kilometer in diameter, that faced away from
us. The circular shape of the dish was
in jarring contrast to the angular shapes and straight lines of the rest of the
ship.
We were both plugged
into the control board since sonic signals wee obviously useless in space. Instead, a sophisticated radar set-up was
being translated and fed into computers controlling our eyes, and we 'saw' the
alien ship thanks to them. It was a slightly
different type of vision, but the Traveler ship clearly visible -- and an
awesome sight. It was the first time I
had seen the ship with my new eyes, and it was almost more impressive than the
relayed probe pictures I had seen before the operation. Looking at it this way, the ship seemed
somehow more sharply etched and intensely real.
"It's
incredible," Liza's voice commented from the overhead speaker in a hushed
tone as we approached. She was plugged
into a set of standard monitors and following our progress from the station. "I'd love to know what the hell type of
propulsion they use. They used reaction
thrusters for the final approach, but their main drive system is something out
of this world."
I nodded silently,
remembering the relayed probe photos that showed the ship decelerating stern
first at a constant .8 gravity, the huge pyramids lying parallel to the sides
of the central shaft so that the deceleration supplied the gravity the rotation
now provided. The tips of the pyramids
had been pushed out by some sort of extension rod arrangement.
Lazz was at the
controls of our van-sized Transport, and at the Travelers' direction we were
approaching the motionless bow-pyramid where a large opening gaped. As we entered the cargo bay and slowed to
hang several feet over the deck, unseen grapples reached up to snag the bottom
of the Transport to pull it down to rest on the deck with a solid, echoing
thunk. The wide bay doors behind us had
already closed, and a slight hazing of our vision revealed that air of some
sort was being pumped back into the cavernous chamber of the Traveler ship.
After a seeming
eternity, external sensors indicated that the air pressure outside was almost
up to normal and I recorded the external pressure and took an air sample as a
signal came for me to exit. I closed my
helmet and switched to suit-air, seeing Lazz echo my actions.
I toggled my
radio. "Well Liza, here goes! Keep your fingers crossed."
I wasn't sure if she
could still hear my signal or not -- I doubted it -- but the pretense of
outside contact was comforting. Lazz's
soft chuckle let me know he understood.
Cycling through the airlock, we stepped out of the Transport nervously
and blessed our good fortune that our magnetic boots were holding onto the
plain and unmarked deck of the hold. I
had wondered about the lack of decontamination procedures, but when I had
passed on questions about it from nervous U.N. Science Team staffers, a curt,
"not necessary, you are no source of contamination," had been the
only response before the Travelers had pressed on to other preparations for our
meeting.
I had a feeling our
return wouldn't be so informal.
But we had no sooner
left the Transport, Lazz letting me go first, than it was as if someone had
flipped off a light switch. I almost
tripped and fell flat on my face in surprise and I heard a soft curse behind me
as Lazz grabbed my shoulder briefly.
Darkness. Once again, a blackness so complete that I
couldn't describe it. It was a double
shock now because the first time I had expected it. But here on the Traveler ship, I had been
counting on my electronic eyes and signal-permeable visor. The darkness seemed even more threatening
because of the insulating layer of our atmosphere suits. The sound of my breathing seemed unnaturally
loud and after my initial moment of panic, I reached behind me for Lazz,
getting angry. I'd need his guidance
again -- just as I had become comfortably independent. For Lazz, this wouldn't be as much of a shock
because he had been blinded in a plane crash twenty years earlier and had only
used his invention for the past six months, as the first test case of
them. I was the second.
"Relax,
Mitch. It's okay." Lazz grabbed my arm as I touched him,
mistakenly thinking that I was nervous.
"I'm fine,
buddy. Just pissed off because I'm
suddenly back to lesson one!"
"Just think back
to the first few days," Lazz advised.
"Remember the visualizing lessons?"
I did. We had an advantage, he had lectured: we had lived some or most of our lives
sighted and had a vast storehouse of visual memories to draw on. If we knew what we were looking at, then the
use of other senses, combined with imagination and memory, could fill in the
blanks, even removing any imperfections that might exist. If we didn't know what we faced, we could
select an appropriate memory image and work from that, modifying it as we
learned more. Feel the texture, hear the
sound, breathe in the scent, and use all available clues to build a comfortable
image.
I relaxed and started
'feeling'. I whistled, and from the
feedback from the external speaker and microphones, confirmed the size and
emptiness of the large cargo bay. And
turning up the microphone gain, I could hear our escorts. I concentrated. Slight rustling up ahead and to the left, and
also to the right. Two Travelers. No scent clues obviously, other than my own
lingering nervous perspiration that was quickly removed by the environmental
control of my suit. It helped that the
suit was loose around me because of the slightly lower external pressure.
"That's
better." Lazz must have realized I
was thinking
clearly.
"Now, think about what they look like and make that image clear in
your mind. There are two of them
--"
"Eleven and one
o'clock, I know, but did I mention that I have no idea what they look
like? They never sent any pictures or
self-description."
"Oh." A moments silence, then: "Well, you also collected classic
comics, so picture pink Shmoos or anything else ridiculous that you can think
of. It's better than building up scary
images. If all else fails,
improvise. Hell, I've been married to
Liza for ten years and I still don't know what she really looks like. But she's beautiful to me. From her voice and what I can feel, I picture
a lush Marilyn Monroe. I've always had a
thing for her old movies."
His advice made sense,
and instead of the shadowy and looming predators my imagination had been trying
to tickle me with, I saw two of Al Capp's bowling-pin-shaped beings with tiny
little feet and happy grins and big eyes.
How the hell could anyone be afraid of them?
"Got your
braille-pad handy?" Lazz broke in.
"Yes." I nodded, feeling briefly stupid. "A good thing I learned this before I
was blinded." Speech recognition,
as good as it was, had been vetoed because of fear that an accidental homonym
error might confuse things in real-time conversation.
I reached down and
pulled up the pad, feeling the locations of the buttons out before I started
typing in my question so that the tiny computer could vocalize my question in
halting Traveler speech. The six
character buttons and space bar of the Braille pad were a hell of a lot easier
to handle than a full keyboard, now that I had learned to use it.
We had painstakingly
worked out a compromise language based on the audible portion of the Traveler
language since they were unable to communicate as we did. It was limited and dependent on a
sophisticated parser and on fill-phrases to try to simulate a more normal
conversation, and it meant that there were major nuances of their language we
were totally missing. For one thing,
much of their 'speech' consisted of visual and tactile sonic imagery
incorporated into their 'words'. Our
eye-sets were simply not sophisticated enough to perceive that degree of
complexity. But as basic as our
translation program was, it was the best we could do, and I let my fingers do
the talking.
"Why are you
blocking our ability to 'see'?" I asked.
The speaker on my suit echoed what I was typing with a warbling squeal
combined with a rhythmic clicking.
The return squeal was
immediate and my helmet speaker responded after a split second with a stiff
male voice.
"You are a race
of one, and I invited one. You are
two. What other violations?"
"Okay, you said
you could explain," Liza's voice cut in with a burst of static. "Now's your chance. Do it."
Apparently she was still able to monitor us.
"Yea, go to
it," Lazz chuckled nervously.
"What a marvelous way to start first contact!" I heard him swallow. "I'm starting to regret crashing this
party. And... ah... shouldn't we be
answering them?"
I had actually been
prepared for a negative reaction, and I reached down for the keyboard again as
my idea focused.
"There are no
violations. Only balance. The second one is here because I am not fully
trained in your type of seeing yet.
There are two of you, there are two of us. If I was alone, there would be no balance and
I would be at a disadvantage instead of you.
I let myself be injured to assure balance. My teacher must remain to preserve it. I will allow the imbalance of two of your
crew who are able to see better than I am.
But as long as you block all of our vision, there is no balance. You asked to speak to us. I say restore our vision or we leave."
"Hot damn, kick
ass," Lazz muttered next to me.
"Well, they do
say that the best defense is a good offense.
I hope they're right! Whoever
'they' are. But I do know that the
Travelers want me here for some reason."
I wasn't sure exactly
what had come out of the speaker, but the darkness around us vanished and I
reeled as I was suddenly surrounded by the eerie three-dimensional vision my
new eyes gave me. It felt strange since
the signal I was now using came from external transmitters and receivers
installed on the suit, and it was is if my eyes were a couple of inches ahead
of me and unable to look anywhere but straight ahead.
"They do look
like Shmoos!" Lazz exclaimed, trying not to laugh. "Sort of."
It took me a second to
focus on our hosts, but I had to agree with him and face the fact that I had
lost my mental bet. Based on the
preponderance of triangles, I had expected some kind of three-legged critter
like in a couple of classic science fiction books, but Lazz's "Shmoo"
joke had a certain accuracy to it.
The Travelers were
only around two-thirds our height and had very stable-looking and bulbous lower
bodies with six thin, stubby legs with broad flat feet that had multiple
fringed toes. The apparently naked body
narrowed about halfway up and the long neck extended up to a top crowned with a
bush of short cilia-like hairs. I could
'see' no mouth or eyes, no matter how hard I focused my vision, but there
seemed to be a large round organ in the center of the body that gave me the
same sick headache from looking at it that I got from facing Lazz when he was
looking at me. I really couldn't make
out a great deal of detail, though. When
I described what I was seeing to Lazz, he couldn't add much. I guess he was right about us facing a pair
of multipedic alien Shmoos. Except that
they had a single folding arm that extended up from the lower front of the body,
tipped with tentacle-like 'fingers'. I
wondered if the Travelers were pink.
But as I thought about
their comics counterpart, I was suddenly a little worried.
"We better not
tell them what we think they look like!"
I had just remembered that Al Capp's Shmoos were very obliging in
turning themselves into anything edible that was desired.
"Ouch!" Lazz obviously realized what I meant. "You're right. I forgot about that. When I was collecting, I was more into the
Japanese comics."
"Violence and
sex. That figures."
"Well," he
defended. "We all need our little
distractions. Of course, I have Liza
now."
Another burst of noise
from one of the Travelers interrupted, I couldn't tell from which one, but
after a moment we heard: "Balance
is restored. You can stay." It was a new voice this time; an equally
mechanical female one. My computer gave
a different, randomly selected, 'voice' to each new Traveler speech input.
I was suddenly
reminded of the fact that there was no difference between the collective and
the singular "you", but Lazz just grumbled.
"Gee, very nice
of you."
I nudged him with my
elbow and typed: "Thank you. May we meet with your leader, now?"
Lazz gave a snorting
laugh. "Gee, I never thought we'd be the ones to say that!"
"Hey guys, your
signal is fading..." Liza's voice
disappeared with a final popping sound.
"Now what?"
Lazz asked nervously. "Pitch a
bitch again?"
I shook my head,
wishing I could see through the face-plate of his suit. "No, I can just hear the answer. Our having contact with the space station is
an advantage for us. They're just
maintaining parity. We're on our
own." I reached down to type: "What is next?"
Squeal, and then: "You must follow." They spun in unison and headed for the back
wall of the hold, where a large triangular door waited. The shape was beginning to make a little
sense now that we had seen what the Travelers looked like: they were also tiny on top and wide on the
base.
The doorway turned out
to be the first in a pair of heavy, automatic doors leading into a large room
about six by ten meters in floor area. I
began to suspect what it was and I warned Lazz to hold on, since we didn't have
the lower body stability of the Travelers.
Sure enough, without warning I found myself lurching to the side as my
feet tried to pull away from me and I grabbed for the door frame as Lazz locked
onto my arm with an iron grip.
"We're in a spin
coupler," I explained belatedly.
"We're matching up with the rotation of the rest of the ship, and I
guess the next step is to go down into one of the pyramids."
Before long, my feet
stopped trying to escape from me and I was able to let go of the doorway. The Travelers had been oblivious to our
imbalance, and as the far doorway opened they led the way out into a large room
where we found ourselves drifting up into the air, our magnetic boots no longer
gripping. The room had three triangular
corridors about four meters in diameter extending out, one in each wall -- now
that we were floating, the term "floor" didn't really apply to any of
the surfaces around us. Our hosts
continued to ignore us, and used fine guide-wires crossing the room to rotate
and float gracefully towards the right, turning to push themselves, feet first,
into one of the corridors. As they
turned in mid-air, I noticed that they were also wearing some sort of boot
arrangement made of metal.
Feeling light-headed,
I turned to Lazz. "Here we go,
buddy: down and out." I followed the Travelers' example only to
find that the corridor was apparently an elevator, because my feet quickly
touched floor, adhering as they found magnetic grounding again. And as soon as Lazz snapped in place next to
me, we began to drop outwards. It felt
strange to be so close to our bizarre hosts, but I quickly found a distraction.
After we had been
dropping a little while, I discovered that our 'elevator' was nothing more than
a guided platform provided with guide-rails that kept it on track and powered
it. Instead of continuing down a shaft as
expected, we were suddenly in mid-air, dropping down towards a wild jungle that
occupied the inside of the pyramid.
With all the open air
around me I suddenly felt almost as nauseated and disoriented as on my first
shuttle trip, and my hand clenched on Lazz's arm as I backed towards the center
of the platform nervously. Compounding
the effect of the dizzying view around us was a familiar sensation: the mild disorientation one felt in moving
from hub to rim on the station that was the combined effect of Coriolis force
and change in gravity. I couldn't help
myself but swallowed hard as I squeezed my eyes shut, relieved that the action
cut off the eye-set input. Technically,
I could easily have been able to keep seeing almost as well with my eyes shut
as open, but to my relief the programming of my eyes simulated reality.
Within minutes I grew
aware of a welcome feeling: increasing
pressure against the soles of my feet again as we moved down into the
pyramid. Steadied by the return of
gravity and prompted by curiosity, I opened my eyes.
As we plunged into the
tree tops we stared out in awe, admittedly a little nervous, but also
fascinated by the organic tapestry weaving itself through the air around
us. An invisible barrier kept the lush
growth at bay, several meters from the path of our lift. Apparently the top of this pyramid -- and
also the others? I wondered -- was reserved for vegetation that grew almost
unchecked in the low gravity this high up.
I also noticed a fine network of wires laced through the branches and
realized that they were there to support the jungle during acceleration and
deceleration since the entire pyramid would be under gravity during those
times.
Edging carefully
forward, I moved closer to the edge and tried to spot the floor of the jungle
below us, but I only saw increasingly dense and interwoven branches that grew
more disciplined the further we dropped from the central shaft of the
ship. I was starting to wonder if there
was anything in this pod but forest. I
tried to spot movement, curious to see if there would be any animal life up
here, and Lazz must have guessed what I was thinking.
"There!" He pointed at a swarm of tiny shapes that
were making flying leaps from branch to branch.
They had small glistening bodies shaped a little like a pair of dumb-bells,
large antennae-like fronds on the top of the front body bulge, and an
indeterminate number of legs.
"Traveler
monkeys," I decided.
"Kinda'
purty," Lazz drawled with a
"True." I looked around. "But all this makes me wonder how long
this ship has been traveling."
"You think it's a
generation-ship?" Lazz looked
dubious. As big as these pods are, if
they're like this, I don't think the ship's big enough."
"Maybe not, but
we don't know what the other pyramids hold.
Maybe cryo-chambers? Maybe these
guys just woke up. It could be an
automatic sleeper-ship and this is some sort of recreational area they use when
awake. Who knows how many solar systems
they've explored?"
Lazz yielded and
looked at our hosts with new interest.
"Want to ask them?"
I shook my head. "Not yet. These two are only crew. I want to wait until we meet the ones I
originally contacted."
A sudden shift in
movement interrupted me and I realized that our ride was over. The platform had landed on top of a metal pad
in the middle of a jungle. There were no
buildings, paths or artificial structures in sight, other than our elevator
platform and the guide-rails disappearing up to merge with the shaft we had
come out of.
I looked up, trying to
guess the distance we had descended.
"How far did we come?" I asked Lazz, since he was more
experienced with the eyes and had a good sense of distance.
"One
hundred-fifty meters," he answered immediately. "Which means that there are another
twenty below us. Support infra-structure
for the jungle? Or living
quarters?"
An abrupt squeal
interrupted, and then we heard:
"Follow." Our
bowling-pin escorts walked off the metal platform, somehow managing to walk
right out of their magnetic shoes as they stepped onto the gently rolling
'grass' that covered the ground between massive one to two meter-thick tree
trunks. Seen through my eyes, I could
see that the trees were highly dense but covered with a rippling bark-like
covering that was the consistency of foam rubber.
Kneeling, I inspected
the grass, cursing my still variable control of the eyes. But after struggling to focus at this close
distance, I saw that the tubular 'grass' stalks were crowned with a fine
network of fibers that seemed to flex to reach the light as my shadow blocked
the powerful, but diffuse illumination from above. My sensitivity to visible light was marginal
with my eye set, and it dawned on me that if I was able to see such a
difference, the light above us had to be bright! I started to mention it to Lazz, but he was
already stumbling after our guides, almost tripped by the unfamiliar roughness
of the terrain and the lower than normal gravity. I hurried after them, almost falling flat on
my face myself.
As I caught up with
them, I tried to mentally trace our movements, concluding that we were heading
for the leading edge of the pyramid -- literally an edge given the orientation
of the three pods slicing through space.
It took several minutes of weaving our way through the dense... forest
-- down here the growth was much more disciplined than above -- but before too
long we broke out into a large clearing that took our breath away.
It was obvious from
the way the walls were closing in and getting closer to our heads that we were
nearing the front of the pyramid, but where we should have faced a sharp
corner, we found instead a flat, triangular wall about twenty meters high at
its peak, filling in the front corner of this pod. The location of the control room and quarters
for other ship's functions? But what had
made me stop and stare was the way the wall was decorated. Seen with my new eyes, the entire wall was a
giant work of art combining different textures and shapes. Without any off-set lighting to highlight the
subtle bas-relief sculpturing, most people with normal vision would probably
not have noticed the beauty of the wall -- I instinctively knew that Liza would
not even have done more than glance at it.
The true nature of the wall was visible only to eyes like the Travelers',
and to the eye sets Lazz and I were wearing.
I suddenly realized
Lazz's hand was clamped around my arm with a vice-like grip and that the sound
of his breathing was harsh and strained.
I had been so distracted by the wall that I had not noticed.
I took his hand. "What's wrong?"
He eased his grip and
his breathing relaxed.
"Sorry 'bout
that, buddy. Just a momentary
flashback."
"To what?"
"Did I ever tell
you how I was blinded?" he asked.
"A plane crash,
wasn't it?"
"Yeah... in
He looked up at the
massive wall facing us. "Breaking
through this jungle," he waved around us, "and then coming up on this
all at once --"
"Brought it all
back," I finished with a shudder.
"With a
vengeance!" He let go of my arm
with a weak chuckle. "Like a couple
of bad dreams I had after starting to work with you --"
"Gee, thanks a
lot."
"Well, you've
shaped up okay, finally," he teased me, and then turned serious. "But like I said, when they first asked
me to work with you, it brought back a lot of bad memories of when I lost my
sight. Both the accident and the years
of denial and self-pitying isolation afterwards where I blamed everybody but
myself."
"What changed
your attitude?"
Lazz laughed. "Believe it or not, it got boring. I had always loved to read all sorts of
trashy horror and enjoyed writing it for fun, but after the accident I couldn't
do it anymore --"
"But what about
--"
"I know: what about all the adaptive systems there
are?" I could hear a strong vein of
bitterness in his voice. "But to
learn how to use those, I had to admit my problem." He relaxed.
"But, once I did that, it was a breeze. I took to computers like the proverbial duck
to water when I realized that it was fun.
Beat the hell out of the gold-plated pity-palace I was living in. And computers led to other research fields,
and eventually to moving out and living on my own. I was never stupid. Just lazy," he admitted. "I hadn't thought of those years for a
long time, until I started training you."
"And I brought it
all back to mind?" I felt almost
guilty as I remembered my own bitching and moaning after the operation, when I
had realized that I didn't have the near approximation of normal sight I had
conned myself into believing I would have.
Lazz shook his
head. "Just at first,
Kimosabi. I was getting over it fine
--"
"Until you found
yourself face to face with this." I
nodded towards the sculptured wall, mentally seeing a small Hover-jet smashing
into it, bits of flaming wreckage sprinkling down to burn the odd grasses at
the base of the wall as crumpled metal buckled and spilled battered bodies...
I blinked to clear the
vivid image that had overwhelmed me.
"Are you
okay?" Lazz's turn to be
concerned. "I thought I was the
over-reacting one, here."
"I'm
fine." I felt my face burn as I
moved forward. "Just an over-active
imagination."
The Travelers had
moved aside to give us a good view, and I had a feeling that they were
observing us very carefully as we approached the wall. The closer we got, the more detail revealed
itself and I hoped that the recording circuits built into our suits were
working. Everything we saw was also
being recorded by the eye-set computers for later review, synchronized with the
audio signal from the external suit microphones and my translation system.
We didn't disappoint
our hosts as we stared in fascination.
It was clear now that
the wall was actually a collection of triangular picture frames, alternating
vertical orientation to fill the large wall.
I had focused immediately on the very top picture, which depicted a
large number of space ships like the one we were in departing from a planet
orbiting an angry looking star. The
implications intrigued me and I studied it intently, until Lazz tapped me on
the shoulder.
"You're looking
at them wrong. It's reversed." He pointed to the bottom right picture. "Bottom to top, right to left." He shrugged.
"Sue me. I always check out
the last screen or page of a book, too.
That'll teach me."
Now that I knew where
to start, I appreciated the symmetry of the historical mural. The picture I had been looking at was the
final in the series. I wondered if it
was the beginning of exploration, or an exodus; a flight from a dying
star? I looked back up at the
frame. Unlike the highly realistic
images in all the other frames, the star in that final picture looked almost
abstract. It was menacing to be real.
I went back to the
beginning: a roiling ocean that seemed
to cover nearly an entire planet. Moving
over to the next pictures, I saw the ocean begin to fill up, first with tiny,
unidentifiable shapes, and then with small jellyfish-like shapes that swam in
pairs. Gradually, the jellyfish grew in
size and complexity, and by the fourth frame, I could see the beginnings of the
round sense-organ in the middle of the body.
Lazz had been
following along with me. "Early
sonar, like dolphins."
I nodded. "Once they left the ocean, the organ
evolved."
Gradually, the
Travelers -- I couldn't think of them as jellyfish anymore -- grew larger and
lost their earlier etherial look. The
oceans were shrinking, too. Comparing
pictures, I realized that the sun was growing larger in the pictures. Only in small increments, but it was
noticeable. Apparently that was the
impetus for a migration to the land, because one of the next frames showed
denser Travelers making their first forays onto land, struggling to move as
they were propelled by dozens of thick tentacles.
I glanced over at
Lazz. "Increasing mineral
concentrations in the water, less living space --"
"Less food,
etc.," he continued. "Classic
evolutionary forces." He looked
back at the patiently waiting Travelers.
"I wonder if this
is why they wanted you to have the same type of vision: so you could see this? It seems like we're expected to study
this."
"I have the same
feeling," I agreed, looking back at the mural.
Subsequent panels
showed various stages in Traveler evolution, social and technical. One thing I found interesting was that it was
not until after the beginning of an industrial age that any type of buildings
appeared. Shelter from rain was apparently
not a concern, but with the advent of scientific experimentation in chemistry
and metallurgy, buildings began to appear.
Almost exclusively to house laboratories at first, it seemed. And even after population density increased,
the dwellings I saw depicted were minimal and very open to the elements.
"This is starting
to make sense." Lazz waved around
us. "They're not used to living
inside."
"Apparently
not," I agreed. The Travelers stood
motionless, patiently waiting...
No! Just waiting. I would have to be careful not to
anthropomorphize their actions. I turned
back to the wall.
Water still covered
large parts of the planet, though islands and sections of land were more and
more in evidence. But the Travelers
never ventured far from the water. The
first vehicles I saw evidence of were ships, and commerce and transportation
seemed to be exclusively by water. Then
I saw the Travelers return to the depths of the ocean, but this time in diving
suits and submarines.
Skipping a few frames,
I saw the sun continue to grow and the oceans to shrink. Now the Travelers were turning their
attentions upwards. Telescopes, at
first, then crude exploratory rockets, and finally, the first Travelers in
space. More and more telescopes
appeared, evenly divided between examining the sun, and searching deep
space. And simultaneous with their first
steps into space, huge floating dishes appeared on the seas and on the highest
land areas available. Radio-astronomical
observatories to scan the skies, I presumed, and Lazz mumbled an agreement.
"Looks like
they're figuring out that something's going wrong with their sun, and they're
also trying to see if anyone else is out there.
They're probably trying to call for help."
We both glanced up at
that final frame momentarily, eyes skipping away as the finality of what we
were seeing sank in.
The succeeding frames
showed an increasing focus on space, with larger and more complex space ships,
reaching out to plant bases on the two moons, and then on larger asteroid
bodies scattered through the system.
There were no other planets to colonize.
Then a framework appeared in space:
a monumental manufacturing facility floating at what had to be one of
their Lagrange points. The resources of
the whole world were apparently focused on it, and construction began on a vast
fleet of ships such as the one we were in.
Frame by frame, I saw the world change as the oceans continued to
recede.
The final picture was
the one I had focused on first, where the exodus from the Travelers' home world
had begun, and my eyes returned there.
But with my new perspective, I noticed something else as my eyes brushed
its way to the apex of the triangle: I
had thought that the last dozen frames were decorated with a border along the
base, but I realized now that there was a much more somber reason for the
detailing. Focusing until my eyes hurt
-- or were those tears trying to come out but finding no place to go? -- I saw
that the border decorations consisted of long rows of tiny stylized Traveler
pairs. But panel by panel, approaching
the final picture on the top, the number of rows diminished. From twelve rows of tiny figures on the first
panel to use the population census, the final one had only a fraction of a
single line.
My chest was hurting
in a way I had not felt since Ellen died as I realized that that final frame probably
was showing an exodus. There were a huge
number of ships launched, but only a tiny percentage of the population
remaining, so perhaps everyone was leaving?
"I wonder how
many were left at the end?" Lazz asked, his voice choked.
I looked at him a bit
surprised. The whole time I had known
him, he had always been a split second from a wise-crack; never serious, except
where Liza was concerned.
"Not many,"
I answered, realizing my own voice was as broken as his. "God!
Can you imagine what it must have been like, living all your life with
that sun overhead, the radiation getting stronger and stronger, baking away the
ocean and the life around you?"
"No," Lazz
answered quietly. "But it sure
makes me ashamed when I remember the things I've bitched about!"
"At least we know
why they're here." I looked back at
our guides. They were still standing
motionless, waiting. "They're looking
for a new home!"
"Boy, did they
come to the wrong neighborhood!"
Lazz shook his head. "They
obviously can't come down to Earth, even if the politicians would let 'em, and
what else can we give them? Venus is too
hot, and Mars is too cold. Never mind
their atmospheres."
"I don't
know." I looked around. "They're ahead of us, technologically,
maybe they can do something. But,
boy, do I wish I had a line to Liza right now.
If the Travelers want me to negotiate some kind of landing rights
somewhere, I am in deep... shit."
"About time you
loosened up," Lazz teased, trying to fight the gloom that had overwhelmed
us. "But you're right: you can't okay anything like that."
We both turned to the
Travelers as I reached down shakily for my Braille pad. On the one hand I was still close to crying
for the Travelers, but on the other hand, I was feeling dizzy and excited by
everything that was happening. From a
sheltered university teaching position to having my eyes cut out and being
picked as mankind's sole... well almost sole, representative to meet aliens --
what a change of life! Part of me wanted
to crawl back in a hole and zip it shut, but the other part wanted to climb up
on a building and shout. I felt moved by
forces greater than me to find out about our visitors. All through history, the mass perception of
aliens had either been as God-like saviors or as conquering demons; both views
doing little to flatter us as a species.
But here was a chance to redeem ourselves in our own eyes and I didn't
want to screw it up.
I couldn't believe it,
but I was suddenly wishing for the presence of the very same bureaucrats I had been
endlessly cursing before.
Restraining a morbid
laugh, I typed: "Take us to your
leaders."
The Travelers quickly
passed us and headed towards the solid wall we had been studying, unflinching
as a large triangular section retreated a few centimeters and silently slid
aside just as it looked as our guides were about to run into the wall.
Lazz waved a hand, the
signal flash from his teeth clear even through two helmets as he grinned
silently, bidding me to go first.
I did, and we hunched
down to follow the Travelers up a claustrophobic hallway, their twin figures
swaying back and forth like unsteady bowling pins.
It wasn't long before
we came into a large room with six other Travelers perched in pairs on odd, low
stools around the edges of the room. In
the middle there was a raised platform with two slightly more elaborate stools
occupied by another pair of Travelers who reflected differently: they were denser. As Lazz and I entered, they stood up and the
one on the right let out a rapid run of speech as it faced the others.
Whatever was said
wasn't translated, but all the other Travelers immediately got up and filed
out, leaving the four of us alone in the room.
As the door slid shut, the Traveler on the left spoke.
"I guide this
vessel. This unit is..." An untranslated squeal I tagged as
'One'. "And --"
"-- and this unit
is..." the one of the right finished with a different squeal I tagged as
'Two'. The numerical designations would
be spoken now, whenever the Traveler names were used.
I thought quickly and
reached down to type: "This unit is
Mitch and the other unit is Lazz. We
combine to see, to learn."
"You are the
witness," One and Two said simultaneously.
"Witness to
what?" I asked.
"To my
journey," the chorus responded and I was reminded again that there was no
difference between any of the personal pronouns; the singular or plural you,
'me' and 'us', or 'our' and 'my'. But
they had individual names. I wondered if
the collectivization was due to the increasing focus on species survival rather
than individual survival towards the end.
Lazz must have been
thinking along the same lines, because he leaned over to whisper: "I just thought of something. They only have one arm and hand. Maybe that's why they're always in
pairs?"
"That's a chicken
and egg issue," I decided.
"They were always in pairs in the pictures. I just wonder if they are breeding units
also, or if they are working pairs that breed differently. They never answered any of the questions
about their biology."
I also wanted to know
more about their "journey", but my question about that was ignored.
"You are here to
see and learn about us," was the only response I got. "An environmental chamber has been
prepared from your directions. It has
been sterilized and filled with gases compositionally equivalent to your sea
level atmosphere. Follow." They turned and headed for the right wall,
part of which also slid aside obligingly for them, and remained open for us.
"I think I've got
it," Lazz whispered as we entered another tight corridor. "They found us, and they can obviously
see we don't have any place for them, so before they go on, they want us to
learn as much about them as possible.
They want to open the door to later contact when they do find a new
home. Look at how intent they were on
finding other life. And it would explain
the eye bit, too. They want us to see
them, and their ship, with their eyes so we can understand them better."
"Could
be..." But something didn't feel
quite right. "I wonder if there
isn't more to it. This pod alone could
hold a lot more than the few Travelers we've seen. Even if this is a sleeper ship, don't you
think there would be more up and around for something like this? All their lives they've been searching for
alien life, and now that they've found it, they don't seem too terribly
excited."
"You think these
might be the only ones left?" Lazz
fell silent for a moment, but I could almost hear his mental circuits firing.
"Depends on how
long they've been traveling. We don't
know if they have any kind of 'hyper' drive, or if they've been traveling
sub-light --"
"In which case
this almost has to be a sleeper ship," Lazz interrupted.
"Exactly. Maybe they've had problems?"
I was feeling totally
morbid. Death had been circulating in my
mind a lot for the past few months. My
fears about having my eyes removed had sparked a desperate and failed attempt
to reach out to Janice, and then misplaced guilt over that had brought back all
the horror of losing Ellen, and now I was confronted by a species having fled a
dying star.
But Lazz felt it
too. "You think they're close to
the end, and they want to pass this on to us before they die."
I nodded. "It would fit, and it would explain why
there aren't more of them around."
I turned to the
Travelers and reached down to type:
"What is in the other rotating pods?"
"Those who
lived," was the immediate answer from ahead of us.
"Bingo,"
Lazz offered. "You were
right."
"Yea,
whoopie," I grumbled. "I wish
I wasn't." But as we approached an
intersection of hallways to stop in front of an obviously jury-rigged airlock,
I wondered which of us really was right.
I had to be careful not to assume they would behave the way we
would. Maybe what we were seeing was
their version of jumping up and down with joy.
And "those who lived" didn't have to mean "those who
died".
"Enter," one
of the Travelers commanded as the outer airlock door opened.
"'Come into my
parlor', said the spider to the fly," Lazz mumbled. "Maybe instead of worrying about whether
or not they look like something edible, we should be worrying about how edible
we look. Maybe they're out of food and
this is the fridge... just kidding," he added in a hurry as I punched his
arm and pulled him into the airlock.
The door closed behind
us, and our suits started billowing wildly after a moment as the air pressure
dropped. We were briefly blasted with
heat and a strange intense light, and then the suits settled down and the far
door opened to reveal a large room with a wide wall panel that reflected in a
strange way. An uncomfortable-looking
bed had been added over against one wall.
"Sanitary
facilities are in the next room as specified," a disembodied voice
announced as we entered the room and the airlock door closed behind us. "Your suits and this chamber have been
sterilized since you fear contamination."
"Uh, Kimosabe,
we're not working on the seniority system here, are we?" Lazz sounded a little nervous. "I'm worried enough about the air, but I
really don't want some alien Montezuma's revenge hitting my system when I don't
even know what a bathroom looks like here."
"Relax," I
offered. "Even if Traveler germs
could survive in our systems, the waste systems in the suits can handle even
that. But you heard them --"
"Yes: we've been sterilized," Lazz grumbled.
"I'll go
first." I reached up for the
release catches on my helmet and cracked the seal. Pulling my head free, I wrinkled my nose as
the neck seal got caught on it, ripe with the sweaty smell of damp rubber. Lazz hissed expectantly and I realized I was
holding my breath. Feeling my pulse race
a bit, I breathed out and then drew in the room air tentatively to find myself
inhaling scentlessly clean and cool air.
"Come on in, the
air is fine." I slapped Lazz on the
shoulder as I turned off the now needless air regulator for my suit and took
some cleansing breaths to clean out the taste of canned air.
A panel slid open on
the wall, revealing a spare set of air canisters.
"These are from
your Transport," the anonymous voice explained. "Exchange them and place the used ones
here. They will be recharged for
use."
"Why are we
here?" I felt silly looking up as I
switched my tank as instructed, but it was as good a direction as any. And at least this room had a higher ceiling.
"To learn where your
eyes can see better," came the immediate answer. The strange wall panel I had noted before was
alive all at once with images of incredible depth and clarity. Traveler display technology obviously took
full advantage of their sense of vision.
"Will your
recording system work at higher than real time speeds?" our guiding voice
asked. "The capacity was stated in
the data you sent."
I looked over at
Lazz. That was his specialty, and he
nodded.
"As if they don't
know," he grumbled. "We sent
them the specs." But he looked up
to speak as I transcribed on the keyboard.
"Up to about
thirty times normal speed given a high resolution image... well, you've been
using this type of vision a lot longer than we have, so I guess I can assume
you'll give us a good image..." He
broke off in embarrassment. "There
will be no problem," he amended.
I debated getting out
of my suit to get comfortable, but before I could suggest it, our hosts spoke
up again.
"Focus on the
display," came our next order.
"Use the seats."
I noticed the stools
that seemed to be built into the floor in front of the screen. There were six of them arranged in pairs in a
semi-circle, and we squatted awkwardly on two.
"I have a feeling
we're going to be sitting here a while," Lazz whispered. "I could sure use a beer right about
now."
I was more worried
about something else as I thought about hours of watching a video record
passing too quickly to keep track of.
"Is there a way to make sure the eye-sets don't turn off if my eyes
close?" I had a sudden panic image
of dozing off in the middle of a prime period of Traveler history and my
eye-set recorder shutting off because my eyes closed.
Lazz chuckled. "Open up," he ordered as he reached
for his belt to pull out a small tool from a kit as I undid the front of my
suit to give him access to my computer.
He bent down for a moment and opened a small panel, and then made some
invisible adjustments before straightening.
"There. If you do happen to disgrace mankind by
nodding off there will be no witnesses... except me," he concluded
ominously. "And I locked the focus
on the distance of the screen, just in case."
"How about your
eyes?" I whispered needlessly.
"I'll be
okay. I'm used to this, from one of my
data processing instructors." His
voice suddenly took on a droning, monotone voice as he slowly said: "He.. had... this... incredible...
monotone... way... of... lecturing."
He shook his head. "But God
help you if you nodded off. In his
classes you had to pay attention! And he
loved to give pop quizzes" Lazz
laughed. "No, don't worry about
me."
As we turned to face
the display, the screen shimmered and apparently reset, because we were looking
in on a vivid image of the ocean in the frames on the wall outside, shifting as
we watched, and alternating with teasingly brief images of close-ups within the
water. I restrained a smile as I
realized we were watching the Traveler equivalent of a PBS documentary. Accompanying the fluid flow of images was a
rapid, high-pitched squeal which when slowed down would probably prove to be a
narrator's voice.
After a while, as I
had expected, my attention drifted and the swirling images on the screen
blurred, even if it stayed in focus. It
was a weird feeling. I was locked at
attention -- I mustn't shame humanity! -- but I wasn't really seeing the
hypnotically blurred screen. Instead, I
saw sheeting rain on the windshield of Ellen's car as we drove home after a
late dinner at Fleur de Lies. It had
been our twelfth wedding anniversary, May 20th, 2017... the last one we had
shared...
&
I had gone all out to
reserve one of the dining rooms just for the two of us, and hired a classical
trio from a nearby college to play. I
wanted this to be an extra special anniversary because Ellen had just sold her
first fiction novel. While I had
astronomy for a hobby, hers had been writing mysteries. She had been writing and selling short
stories for years and had finally -- after much urging on my part -- decided to
try a full-length novel. And she had
sold it to a mid-sized publisher, with a fair advance for simultaneous CD-Text,
Electronic and Print rights.
That deserved a
celebration.
The candle-lit dinner
was perfect: a falling-apart tender
trout aux amandes, broccoli with Hollandaise sauce, new potatoes simmered
with an incredible fresh herb seasoning, fresh warm rolls on the side, an
incredible Chenin Blanc -- only a single glass apiece because we wanted fully
clear heads for the rest of the night -- and a sinfully rich chocolate cake for
dessert. Gentle music of Mozart, Dvorak
and Bach eased our digestion, and we left the restaurant walking on air. A sudden rain shower did nothing to dampen
our spirits.
Since my car was in
the shop, we were using Ellen's and naturally she was driving. Her convertible was her baby. The rain was light but we took it easy as we
headed home, anxious to get more intimate.
I was trying not to look too anxious as I pictured her finding her
present on her pillow: I had found a
first edition of an early Agatha Christie novel that I knew she had been dying
to get to add to her collection. It had
cost me an arm and a leg, but after our last anniversary when she had bought me
an antique telescope I had been eyeing, I had been determined to find her
something equally appropriate.
With the fogging up of
the inside rear window, neither of us had seen the dark blue van that had been
behind us until it was right on our rear bumper. It was running without headlights in the
early evening gloom, the driver obviously impatient over Ellen's careful
driving at the speed limit. The driver
of the van didn't seem to care about the fact that the small manual-control
road we were on was a two-lane one with no-passing markings laid down, because
as soon as a gap opened in the oncoming traffic, he floored it to pass us,
ignoring the blaring alarm that was certainly coming from his dashboard as he
crossed over the electronic road-markers; an alarm already logged in his
violations-box, unless it had been disconnected.
Ellen had seen it, and
she calmly moved over as much as possible and slowed down to give him room, but
we were approaching a curve and unseen to the van, a large truck was just
coming around it, lights flashing angrily on high as the truck driver slammed
on the brakes. The van driver panicked
and swerved right into us, the shock throwing me against side window hard
enough to stun me.
The next few moments
passed in a blurred haze as our car ran up on a stone wall to our right and
flipped, spinning and sliding to slam into the oncoming truck with a numbing
crash that blacked me out.
&
I had awakened in the
hospital almost ten hours later. I had
had three broken ribs, a broken leg and a concussion, but all that had been
forgotten in the agony of learning the Ellen was dead. It had been her side of the car that had hit
the truck, and while the roll-bar had saved us when the car had flipped, the
windshield frame had been ripped loose to plunge into Ellen's chest, driven by
the impact to kill her instantly.
And the van driver had
not even been bruised! And to make it
worse, he had not shown the slightest sign of remorse on sobering up. He had laughed at the life-time sentence
imposed on him and sworn that he wouldn't even spend a week in a cell. And he had been right. Three days later, due to jail-crowding, he
had been remanded to house arrest at his home with electronic surveillance as
his only guardian.
I had been a
basket-case for months, unable to imagine a life without her. For twelve years, our lives had revolved
around each other. Sure, we each had had
our own interests and we had not spent every moment together, but there had
always been the subliminal knowledge that the other was there; within reach
with a raised voice or the push of a speed dial button. But suddenly that had been over.
I was alone.
The screen in front of
me took on a new poignancy as I realized that for all the pain I was feeling,
and had felt, the beings in this ship had lived with a far greater horror all
of their lives. What was my loneliness
to theirs?
The subliminal
squealing stopped and the screen stabilized with a vivid image similar to one
of those on the panel in the mural.
During early mechanization. Then
the panel went blank. I decided that the
wall outside was an abridged Traveler history text, and that we had been shown
it first so we would appreciate the full class room course we were being
exposed to now.
My muscles and my
bladder were all screaming for relief, and I stood up to stretch, grateful for
the sanitary functions of the suit.
Glancing at my watch, I realized in amazement that we had been sitting
motionless for almost five hours!
Next to me Lazz rose,
managing to pop some joint or other with a loud crack that echoed in the small
room. "Next time," he
groaned. "Remind me to bring some
Relax-Tabs! Nutrient bars and water just
don't do it." Then he reached over
to reset my eye-set computer. "Now
what?"
Our answer came as the
same panel that had provided fresh air canisters slid open again, but this
time, the compartment behind it was piled high with the supply containers from
the Transport.
"Eat and
sleep," came a new order.
"When you are ready for the next viewing, tell me."
"Hey," I
heard Lazz call as he sorted through the pressure cases. "This one's got my name on
it." He opened it and pulled out a
uni-suit rolled up next to a deflated air-mattress, a small case, and two other
uni-suits. "Bless her heart! She managed to sneak this on..." He looked over at me, wide-eyed. "She knew all along! There wouldn't have been time for her to slip
this along after we left her. He shook
his head and then looked up. "I
know you can't hear me, sweetheart, but thanks." He blew a kiss at the ceiling before turning
back to me.
"Okay,
Mitch: C'mon. You heard our hosts. It's break time. Considering where we stopped, we've got a lot
of history left to cover." He
grabbed his uni-suit and headed for the doorway to our 'sanitary facilities'.
The door opened
automatically as he approached it, and he peeked in suspiciously before turning
to me with a flash from his teeth.
"Standard station
bathroom. I'll be out in a few minutes.
&
After eating some
rehydrated low-residue rations and stretching out for a nap -- Lazz won the
toss for the minimally padded cot and I used the air mattress Liza had slipped
into the container for Lazz -- we were ready to go again. Since we were no longer in our suits, I
warned our hosts we might have to stop the display from time to time, but then
we settled down for another session in front of the screen.
For the next day, our
time was split between naps, meals, and bathroom breaks, each pause bringing us
closer to that final tragic frame we had seen.
Finally we found
ourselves looking at a vivid frozen frame that was a virtual duplicate of the
exodus picture. The roiling sun
dominating the picture actually did look every bit as daunting as the
sculpture. I realized that the Travelers
were probably living their lives in shielded suits and homes towards the end. It made the forest outside that much more
understandable: a defiant return to
better times; probably using carefully nurtured plants grown in a shielded
environment.
We got up to stretch,
curious over what was next, but then we froze, because the screen had come to
life again and a different squeal took over the narrating duties as new,
speeded-up images were displayed. From
to time, I caught a glimpse of a single ship along with various passing star
fields and planetary bodies.
I was afraid to move
until this shorter display ended, but after about ten minutes, the screen went
dark and I turned to Lazz, excited.
"That last bit
was the trip this ship made! We can
back-track to their home system and see where else they've been."
"The witnessing
of history is over," our hosts' voices interrupted. "Put on your suits and prepare to leave
this chamber."
"That's it?"
Lazz burst out. "Come look at my
etchings and then out the door?"
I reached out to take
his arm. "I think we'll find that
we've gotten a little more than that once we take a look at the recording in
real-time. Let's not push it." But one thing bothered me and I looked up.
"What about our
history? Information about us. You have already received some from our
exchanges, but --"
"The witnessing
of history is over," the disembodied chorus repeated, the mechanical tones
of the computer lending an air of finality to the words.
After Lazz reset my
computer, I retrieved my flushed-out suit, changed into my undersuit,
reconnected all my plumbing, and then closed up. I grabbed my helmet with a sigh and forced myself
back into it, wrinkling my nose as the stale canned air hissed in once
again. It reminded me that we would not
only be in deep shit once we got back, but also in quarantine because we had
breathed air here, even if in a "sterile" room with pure gases.
Lazz seemed to read my
mind as he sealed his own helmet.
"Time to face the music, huh?"
"Not yet. It's only been about twenty-eight hours and I
was told it would be several days. I
guess there's more to this show and tell.
But look at it this way: we're
going to be employed for some time. Just
think about how long it's going to take to sort through and analyze the
recording we just got."
"So true, so
true." Lazz seemed to take great
delight in that.
The inner airlock door
opened as we approached it, and we were quickly cycled through and back out in
the corridor to face the two leading Travelers.
I wanted to know more about why I had been brought onboard, but my every
attempt to ask anything was ignored and we were efficiently herded down a new corridor
to return to the doorway that opened out to the jungle. However, when we passed though it, we were
greeted by a surprise.
A huge crowd of
Travelers had gathered outside. They
seemed to fill the open field in front of the sculpture wall, only leaving a
narrow corridor towards the elevator platform.
As we followed our guides past the other aliens, their massed attention
was overwhelming and I felt my focus slipping.
"They must have
been revived while we had our screening," Lazz whispered. "I guess we were wrong?"
I didn't answer right
away but looked back in amazement as we eventually stepped onto the elevator
again. I had lost count of the number of
Travelers who were gathered to see us off, but as I forced myself to examine
them more closely, I started to realize that there was something wrong. The ten Travelers we had seen first had been
virtually identical in size and appearance, as were some of the newcomers, but
there was a variance in shape among many in the watching rows, and the signals reaching
me were not all as focused or strong as the first ones.
"Obviously we
were wrong about them dying out." I finally said. "But take a good look at them. You're better with your eyes."
He did, and after a
while turned back to me somberly.
"I see what you mean. This
is a tired bunch! I hope they have
better luck at the next stop."
"But they all
woke up to see us. There must be
hundreds of them!" I looked back at
them. "That makes
sense. After all the effort they went to
try to find... alien life, I just knew they couldn't just sleep it all
away!" I thought about the last
piece of recording we had been shown and grinned. "And if they're kicking us out before
they go on -- they might have made other alien contacts which --"
"Will be on the
last recording!" Lazz finished, just as excited as I was.
The elevator had
started to rise while we had been scanning the crowd, but instead of continuing
up to the top, we stopped, about ten meters up in the air. Looking down from where we were was an odd experience. Because of all the foliage, we could only see
a few dozen Travelers scattered around the base of the elevator, but somehow we
knew that we were the center of attention of the whole ship.
Our new escorts moved
to the edge of the platform, blithely perched millimeters from a fall, and
faced in opposite directions to speak in ringing squeals that echoed all
around.
"This is the
Witness. Our Journey has purpose."
Then the elevator
began to drop again and Lazz and I both looked up helplessly. Now what?
We returned to ground
in moments and reversed our parade-like trek to return to the sculpture wall,
and then it was back through the claustrophobic corridor to the airlock leading
into the screening chamber, and we were issued a peremptory command: "Enter.
The Journey continues." The
outer airlock door opened.
I was starting to get
more than a little nervous for some unknown reason, and I could tell by Lazz's
tensed posture that he felt the same way.
"No," I
countered. "We must return to our
home."
"You are here to
witness. Then you will be
returned." One and Two were taking
turns. "The Witness is honored and
must not be harmed." A pause and
then again: "Enter so we may
continue."
Lazz and I locked
eyes. I nodded towards the waiting
airlock.
"What do you
think?"
After a moment he
sighed. "Well, this is the price I
pay for black-mailing my way along. It's
your call. I'll do it if you will... besides,
I have to admit, my curiosity cat is looking to loose a few lives."
"I have to
know," I admitted. "Besides, I
really don't feel worried." Lazz
mumbled something and I asked:
"What?"
"Umm... never
mind." Lazz shook his head. "I was just thinking about some land
sales in a geographically disadvantaged area...
Go ahead. After you."
Once again we entered
the viewing room and stripped off our suits before settling in expectantly in
front of the screen.
Lazz leaned over. "Well, at least we're 'honored' and 'not
to be harmed'. I just wish I could let
Liza know I'm okay."
I heard the edge in
his voice, but I could understand it. He
knew what Liza had to be going through, and I knew it also.
I remembered well how
I had felt one night when Ellen had been late coming home. We had had plans to go out to dinner, and
when over an hour had passed without a call, I had begun to seriously
worry. Ellen had had a thing about being
punctual, or calling if detained. If she
was due someplace where she had never been, she would prefer to sit for ten
minutes outside the building and wait rather than risk being late. I had tried calling her personal phone
several times but had only reached a recording that kept repeating that the
carrier was "unable to connect due to network difficulties".
When she had finally
called, from a land-line at a service station, her first thought had been to
reassure me, because she had known how much I had been worrying. Then she had explained that her car had
broken down in the middle of a record thunderstorm and on a back road. And by a supreme act of cosmic malice, the
road had been washed out both ahead of her and behind her. On top of that, the storm had knocked out
power to the cellular towers in the area, and she had been forced to walk
several miles in the pouring rain to get to a service station.
When she had finally
come home, drenched and miserable, I had immediately scrapped our restaurant
dinner plans and sent her packing to a shower, while I had cooked a good hot
meal for us to eat by the fireplace. It
had always amazed me that she had been worried about me! But that night had turned into one of the
most wonderfully intimate evenings we had ever shared.
As I sat next to Lazz
waiting for the aliens' next move, I envied him again and wondered if I'd ever
have any evenings like that again.
The screen suddenly
flashed back to life and we found ourselves looking out into space from a
vantage point I presumed was the front of the ship, since the space station was
off to the side as expected. But as we
watched, the station moved, or rather we did.
"This is what
was," came a simple explanation from above.
The scene speeded up
and we moved away from the station. The
massive globe of the Earth brushed the upper portion of the screen momentarily,
but disappeared behind us. Our vantage
point changed and we were looking back from the same place and I saw that the
pyramids were back down in travel position as we accelerated away from the
space station.
"Son of a
bitch!" Lazz blasted and got to his feet.
"They space-napped us!"
I realized immediately
what had happened. While we had been
starting down that elevator, they had been folding down the pyramids and
launching us gradually to simulate the increasing gravity as we descended on
the elevator. We had never noticed it
because once underway, we had been under the same level of gravity as we would
have been from the rotation of the ship.
Lazz's jaw was
clenched and he was glaring up at the low ceiling, but before he could say
anything I grabbed him and tried to pull him back down into his seat.
"Sit
down!" I wasn't alarmed. Even if we were a long way from understanding
each other, I had a gut feeling we had nothing to fear from the Travelers. And in a strange way, the maneuvers we had
been going through were very reassuring, because they reminded me that the
Travelers were not some sort of super-beings able to control gravity and all
sorts of unimaginable forces. They were
more advanced than we were, but not so much that we couldn't catch up.
Lazz was resisting me
and I pulled harder. "Will you
relax? They said we would be safe and
that we would be returned, and I believe them.
Obviously they've got something else to show us." My eyes were locked on the screen. I looked up as Lazz finally calmed down and
dropped back to his seat.
"What is
now?" I asked.
The scene shifted and
I found myself staring into what had to be the sun.
"How close are
we?" I asked, feeling like an idiot as I did for not being more specific.
But our hosts knew
what I meant, and the screen changed to show a diagrammatic representation of
the solar system that looked like it could have come out of any elementary
school book on Earth. A small pyramid
was almost halfway between the orbits of Earth and Mercury and heading towards
the sun. If I strained, I could almost
imagine that I saw it move.
"Slingshot
effect?" Lazz murmured next to me, yielding to curiosity. "Even if our sun is a wimp compared to
theirs, it's got a pretty good gravity well to use."
"Yeah, but how
good is their insulation?" I
wondered. "And how come we're
along?" But something else bothered
me. "And if they have such a good
drive, whatever the hell is powering this thing, why do they need a gravity
well for acceleration?"
"Maybe they use
the sun for a different kind of boost?" Lazz wondered. "I've read several old science fiction
books about that."
"And maybe we
were right before." Something kept
nudging my mind and I reached down to type:
"Please show an image of the history wall outside. The last six panels."
"Huh?" Lazz stared at me. "What are you up to?"
As the screen changed
obligingly, I bent forward to ask:
"Please display only the bottom portions of each panel and expand
them in size." Again the screen
cooperated, and I peered closely at the declining numbers of Traveler figures
at the base of each panel. At first, I
didn't see anything new; just a tragically shrinking population as resources
declined, and the Travelers cut their population. But finally I saw what I had been missing.
Not only were the
number of the Travelers shrinking, but in each of the final panels, there were
an increasing number of figures that were misshapen, even if just
slightly. Perhaps just with a smaller or
missing 'eye', or with no arm at all, or with legs missing -- small differences
that had been impossible to spot on unmagnified images, but there were more and
more of these mutant Travelers among the population census figures. The angry sun was doing more than damaging
the planet!
"They're mutating
from the radiation," Lazz said numbly as he also spotted the changes. "Dying out."
"Looks that way,
doesn't it." I had suspected that
radiation had been a problem, but this was worse than I had thought. "If this has been going on for a long
time -- we won't know how long until we go through the first recording -- and
the whole time they have been trying to find other life forms --"
"-- and now
they've reached that goal, and we've been 'witnesses'..." Lazz continued
my thought but left the implication unvoiced.
"Exactly." I saw he understood, and asked
needlessly: "If you were very tired,
dying, had no possible future really to expect, and had finally realized your
one life's ambition, what might you do?"
"What I tried,
twice," Lazz answered bitterly.
"The first time with pills, except I took too many and threw them
all up before they could work. And the
second time with a gun, but I got caught before I could pull the trigger. And I didn't even have a 'life's
ambition'."
I swallowed. "I'm sorry." I felt like shit.
He squeezed my
arm. "Don't worry about it. Like I told you: I was a poor little rich boy who couldn't
handle reality too well at first. It
took me a while to wise up, but I did.
But what I want to know is how far this 'witness' thing is going to
go?"
"Put the map back
on, please," I asked. As it
re-appeared, I could see that we were on a direct course with the sun.
I saw Lazz's lips move
as he stared at the chart, and I could almost hear him whisper: "Liza". Like Ellen worrying about my fears when she
had been late, he was thinking of her instead of himself; knowing that all she
could see was a rapidly accelerating ship heading right for the sun, and
carrying her husband with it.
It made me think again
of Ellen, and death, and coping. And I
thought about the Travelers. If we were
right and they were heading for some grand self-immolation to end their
journey: how long had they been in
search of their 'witness'? And if we
were right, it also meant that we were the first alien race they had encountered;
or at least the first technically advanced one.
There was the reason for that three part signal again, since the final
component would only have been detectable to a space-faring race. They were tired and wanted to move on, but
they wanted witnesses who would appreciate their journey and the scale of their
existence.
The requirement for me
to use their language and to 'see' in their way was obvious now. I shook my head as I thought about the way I
had fought the temporary sacrifice I had been asked to make. For Lazz, it had not been a choice and he had
survived and prospered. And I thought
about poor Janice: a target for my
attempt to deny what was happening, what I was going to face, and what I had
lost.
Grow up and stop
feeling sorry for yourself! I chided myself.
It was time to accept that Ellen was dead. Soon I would have my eyes back and I would be
able to on with a new, exciting life uncovering Traveler secrets, knowing that
I had been part of one of the greatest moments in human history.
I looked up as my
fingers typed automatically: "Thank
you." But even though there was no
reply and I had a strange feeling we were alone, I wasn't afraid. I believed their assurance that we would be
"returned".
My thoughts were
suddenly interrupted. "The
separation comes," the chorus proclaimed.
"Witness our existence to your world."
Somehow I had expected
excitement, fear, some kind of emotion, but that was stupid. The artificial voice of my computer had no
programming for it and no knowledge of Traveler emotions, whatever ones they
had.
"Now what?"
I wondered, but I braced myself because I suspected what was coming. "Hold on Lazz."
The map disappeared
and found ourselves looking at the Traveler ship from a vantage point several
kilometers behind it. Apparently a
remote probe with a camera. The giant
drive dish had been glowing in some peculiar way with energies displayed on the
screen, but suddenly the dish flickered and gradually went dark as we found
ourselves weightless.
"What the
hell?" Lazz grabbed for the stool.
"Turnover,"
I answered, sure I was right. "And
if the separation is what I think, we'll soon see it."
"Right... Turnover!" Lazz caught on immediately. "Constant acceleration...
hmm." He let go and pulled up his
Braille pad, fingering the keys rapidly as he gradually drifted up off the
stool. "How long since we left
Earth orbit?"
"Around thirty
hours or so."
"Bingo. Assuming we burn -- or whatever this ship
does --at the same rate on an outward vector to slow down, and continue to do a
lateral burn since we also have orbital velocity to contend with..." His fingers kept flashing some more as his
computer kept rattling off figures too rapidly for me to understand. "We should stop somewhere just inside
Mercury's orbit."
"Stop, and then
begin burning again to take us home," I guessed.
"The separation...?" He didn't finish, but I could see his guess
paralleled mine.
On the screen the
drive dish changed. A single, intense
beam burst out from it, lasting nearly ten minutes.
"The signal goes
home, to any who find what remains," came a explanation after a while.
"Nice completion
there," Lazz said. "If any of
their own people return there, they'll know where to look. Or anyone else who comes calling."
"If we're still
around," I pointed out. "I'll
bet you this is a sub-light ship and that they've been travelling a long
time."
"Still kinda'
nice. They'll know we were around,
too."
The screen swirled as
the signal beam cut off, and I grabbed for Lazz we felt pushed to the side and
new activity started on the screen.
"Here we
go!" Lazz burst out.
"Yep. Look."
I pointed to the screen where we could see that the huge Traveler ship
was slowly turning on its axis, propelled by reaction thrusters, until the dish
was towards the sun. Then came the
'separation', I had expected, but had been afraid to count on.
Two of the pyramidal
pods were separating from the central shaft as we watched, propelled by short
bursts of thrusters. Gradually they
swung around until their trunctuated tips faced each other. Then, with additional blasts of the
thrusters, they moved towards each other until they joined at the tips to form
a sort of a dumb-bell shaped whole that floated above the shaft with its single
remaining pod underneath.
"This
one!" We looked at each other,
reaching the same conclusion at the same time.
I reached up a hand to
pull Lazz down next to me. "Hold
on. We're next, I think."
And we were. No sooner had the two separated pods joined
up, than new and powerful bursts of energy extended back from the dish that now
faced away from us. Gradually the ship slowed
to leave the joined pods to continue their plunge towards the sun. We immediately felt a rapid return of gravity
and I stared at Lazz as my hopeful guess was verified.
"This has been
planned from the beginning," I guessed.
"All the Travelers went up into the other pods to leave us
here."
It was the only
answer, and Lazz hissed with surprise as it dawned on him it meant. "They're leaving us the ship! They're leaving us the whole bloody ship! Computers, drive system, transmitter...
everything!" His voice was hushed
and reverent as he stared at me.
"And it's on auto-pilot -- heading back to the station?"
It seemed that way,
because we were already at normal Earth gravity, which meant we were going to
stop even sooner than expected, and then return the way we had come if it kept
up.
My own mouth was dry
as I realized what this would mean, and I stared at the rapidly separating
shapes. Apparently the camera was keyed
to the pods, because while the ship itself soon disappeared off-screen, the screen
image kept pace with the pods.
"How long before
they...?" I whispered. I couldn't
quite say it.
"About
thirty-four hours," Lazz answered after a moment, his eyes locked on the
screen. "We'll just have started
back when they... hit the sun" He
waved a hand uncertainly. "They're
all over there?"
I shrugged. "I guess so." I reached down for my own keyboard.
"Has everyone
left this part of the ship?" I typed.
"No," a new
voice answered after a moment, coming from the display screen. It was another stiff female voice this
time. "There are two beings still
onboard."
"Who?" I
asked just to make sure.
"The
Witness."
"You are a
computer?" I added at Lazz's prompting.
"Yes."
Lazz gave a relieved
sigh. "Well at least we're not
totally on or own. I'd hate to have to
try to figure out how to fly this thing."
I nodded. "That makes two of us." But I wondered about something else and
reached down again.
"Will you
instruct us in how to access the information in your memory banks?"
"Yes. The Witness is now in command of this
system."
Lazz rubbed his hands
together and chuckled. "Job
security!" Then he hissed as his
eyes focused on the screen. "Sorry."
I got up, feeling
strangely heavy after over thirty hours at reduced gravity. Looking towards the screen I asked: "Can I speak to you from anywhere on the
ship?"
"Yes."
I headed for the
bathroom where we had hung our suits after flushing them out. "C'mon, Lazz. I've got to get away from that for a
while." I nodded to the screen
where the featureless joined pods with the Travelers hung accusingly. I felt strangely guilty: as if we should have been able to help the
Travelers somehow.
Lazz tore his eyes
away from the screen. "Yeah, I'm
with you. It keeps reminding me that
we're also still headed for the sun. What
if they run out of gas, or whatever they use?"
&
After stocking our
suits, we spent the next day exploring the Traveler ship with the guidance of
the ever-present computer. We only
returned to the viewing room to nap and eat, both activities done fitfully and
with frequent glances at the growing sun on the screen. Neither one of us could bring ourselves to
turn the screen off. We did direct the
computer to display a split screen, showing the probe picture and the map
diagram. The latter showed the joined
pods drawing further and further ahead of the ship itself as we slowed.
But during the last
hours we couldn't leave the room, and we sat staring at the screen almost
non-stop as the pyramid on the map slowed to a stop and then began an odd
course outwards again.
I stared at the map,
confused, but Lazz just slapped my arm.
"Relax,
Kimosabe. We're headed for where the
Earth will be, not where it was, or is."
He sounded puzzled as he went on.
"I do wonder why they went to all this trouble to slow us down,
when a different trajectory could just have swung us around to hook up again,
decelerating in another, more economical pattern. It would have been faster,
too."
"Yes," I
pointed out. "But we wouldn't have
been as empathetic as 'witnesses'. They
wanted us to really understand what they are doing and feeling."
Lazz nodded after a
moment. "That makes
sense." Then he let out a loud
sigh, and with it went both of our unvoiced and lingering fears of the flaming
sun and we turned our full attention to the Travelers.
Our eyes were fixed on
the pods and the sun it was approaching, and I had no idea how much time had
passed until static started breaking up the image. The pods were still fairly far from the
roiling solar surface, but apparently the radiation was just getting too strong
for the transmitter on the camera probe to overcome, because the right half of
the screen went blank before restoring the solar system map that showed us on
the way back out. And just touching the
edge of the stylized sun was a small inverted pyramid.
"Do you
think...?" Lazz asked softly, his voice broken.
"They're
gone. No one could survive that close to
the sun." I felt an overwhelming
urge come over me and I cursed my eyes.
Now I wanted to cry. But
these eyes wouldn't let me; they only released a pain that reached deep into my
throat and gut.
"No," Lazz
corrected me quietly after a long silence.
"They're not gone. That's
our job." He got up to stretch. "It's funny that I didn't think of it
before, but I just remembered something from long ago reading. It made me realize why they only wanted you
to witness this, as someone who had taken the first step to understanding
them."
"What's
that?"
"The ancient
Japanese Samurai warriors had a ritual suicide custom very similar to
this. A spectacular and brave death,
sometimes witnessed by a close friend or retainer there for support. There is more to both, of course, but in
either case, it is quite an honor."
He stared at the screen, his finger following a trace line that showed
the course each part of the ship had taken, following the pods' straight course
into the stylized sun. His head bowed a
moment in respect, and then he returned to sit beside me.
After a long pause, he
asked: "Mitch, do me a favor? I don't trust myself."
"Sure. What?"
"I put an optical
disk in your locker at work. Destroy it
for me please?"
"The belch
recording," I realized. "You
kept one!"
He nodded. "I didn't lie when I said that I
destroyed every computer file with it, but this is a straight digital audio
recording: the original. But after what Liza's been going through, I
owe her freedom from that threat."
"I promise."
"Good." He grabbed my arm. "And then we've got to get you a
date!"
I only half-heard him
as I saw the inverted pyramid disappear on the map. Closing my eyes, I thought about how the
Travelers had faced their end -- and how I had faced my own losses. The lesson was obvious, and I opened my eyes again
to face Lazz.
"Yes, I think
you're right. This time, I think I'm
ready."
-
end -