Lurkers
by Benson Branch
As his awareness returned Sandin realized something had gone wrong. He was waking from cold sleep too early; the hunger pangs and stiffness from a year at the lowest possible metabolism were missing.
A blurred face appeared over him. “Take it easy,” Doc Warren said. “It's not an emergency.”
Uh, yeah, Sandin thought. Coming up to speed from cold sleep took time. He wouldn't be of any use in an sudden emergency. On the other hand, waking a co-captain before his shift wasn't normal. Something had happened.
“Just come out of it and gather your wits, Sandin. Your AI pal will give you a full briefing.”
#
Sandin sat in his cabin, sipping hot coffee. It helped. He could tell his system wasn't ready for solid food yet, but the hot, bitter liquid was wonderful, and the mug warmed his caramel-colored hands. After a minute he set down the coffee and picked up the earbud connecting him to his personal advisor, the artificial intelligence he'd nicknamed Jerry.
“What's up? I can tell we're still at full deceleration.”
“We're almost there,” Jerry answered. “At the edge of the Kuiper Belt for our destination. The big news is that yesterday somebody shot off our main antenna before we could transmit the next update to Sol.”
Sandin almost choked on his coffee. “There wasn't supposed to be anybody here,” he gasped. The Big Ears and Big Eyes back home had detected no signs of a technological civilization. “What do they want?”
“They've told us to come to a stop ASAP, and that's it. It's clear they've learned several of our languages from the transmissions Sol has beamed to us, but they don't talk much.”
Sandin followed the thought. Entertainments, news, politics, technical updates, anything could have been picked up by a Big Ear pointed in the right direction. Once the onrushing signals were discovered the Wayfarer, dawdling along at thirty-eight percent of the speed of light, would have been years if not decades behind.
“So they've had time to prepare. Do our directives say much about this situation?”
“Too much. Scenarios and responses have been sent out by multiple governments many times over, sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory.”
“And some of those governments don't even exist any more.” Sandin added. “The one that sent me, for instance.”
“Sixty years is a long time. Change is inevitable.”
“The upside,” Sandin continued, “is that with a forty-year chat lag, we can do as we choose.” And it's a huge opportunity for us, Sandin thought, if involves the first space-faring intelligence humanity has encountered.
“Finish your coffee,” Jerry advised. “Martyna's called the first captains' meeting in an hour.”
#
The Wayfarer finished decelerating and nudged itself into a lazy orbit seven light-hours out from their destination. In the observation bay the protective panels slid back, revealing a stellar landscape of brilliant sparks, glowing clusters, and the braided Milky Way. Sandin and many of the co-captains walked into the bay after their meeting. The view slowly rotated as the ship spun on its axis, and in a few minutes the yellow-orange pinhead of Delta Pavonis, much brighter than the rest, popped into view. Sandin watched the star in silence as it drifted past once, twice, three times. Then he spotted Kassia, the fifth-shift co-captain, and walked over. “This is the first time we've all been awake since the midpoint ceremony.”
Kassia smiled at him, her oval face framed by short black hair. “Yes. Even with rotating shifts, I haven't seen some of the other captains for more than a year of awake time. Or you for six months.”
“We'll be awake for a long while now.” He hesitated, then continued. “I've got a big job ahead of me, Kass. With the fall of the Party I've got to prove myself to everybody.”
Kassia nudged him with her elbow. “So the Party disintegrated and you're no longer a young princeling. So what? You may have gotten on board Wayfarer because of your parents' status, but you're a competent co-captain.”
“I need to be better than competent.” Sandin wondered what his fall would mean to the other Party members when they awoke. The foundations of his authority had disintegrated, and he needed to figure out how to reinforce it. “The meeting wasn't much, was it?”
“No, but there wasn't much to do but speculate. We haven't even spotted any ships. So, I'm not surprised Martyna cut it off early.” She looked at Sandin more closely. “This is going to be an odd place. What kind of culture stays silent after we've met their demand?”
#
With all the captains awake, shipboard life had a mechanical, clockwork rhythm, a changing of the watch punctuating a long three hours of emptiness, waiting for someone to call. Instruments passively scanned their neighborhood, and then the inner system, but nothing revealed itself. Days passed.
Sandin's shift on the bridge, his twelfth so far, was almost over. As usual, nothing had happened. Then Martyna barreled up to where he stood and said, “Your relief.” She squeezed by him, her solid, muscled bulk almost knocking him aside, and sat in the padded command chair. Sandin decided not to confront the executive captain, not this time, and turned to leave the bridge. Then the communications board lit up, and Martyna pointed a finger at him. He hastily patched all the co-captains into the comm through their AI assistants.
“My name is Yalkayarda,” a clearly synthesized voice said. “I am in charge of this section of Delta Pavonis.”
“My name is Martyna. I am the executive captain of this vessel. We are explorers, wishing no harm for any party.”
Sandin began counting silently, and when the reply came it was after a time lag of forty seconds. Six million kilometers, one way, so not far; however, he realized they could be much closer but bouncing the signal off a distant relay to obscure their location.
“So you say. We will need an extended period of observation to verify your intentions.”
“Perhaps we should exchange information. You have already learned a lot about us in the transmissions from our home system, but we know nothing of you.”
Forty seconds later, the link shut down from Yalkayarda's side.
“Jerry, what do you think of this?” Sandin asked, softly, so that Martyna would not hear.
“Considering how long they sat and watched us, this may be an intelligence whose priority is safety and concealment. Martyna's request may have been considered out of line.”
The link came back up. “We will consider your suggestion,” Yalkayarda said, “but not immediately. Know that if we receive information from you, we will check whether it contradicts that which we have already intercepted.”
“May I ask--” Martyna began, but the link had been broken again.
Sandin shook his head. “Jerry, talking to these guys could get frustrating.”
#
“Martyna's called a big meeting.” Jerry's words exploded in Sandin's ear. “I don't know what she's up to. Wayfarer can tell me there's been an external conversation, I presume with Yalkayarda, but she's been blocked from telling me what was said.”
Sandin dashed out the door. “Thanks for the warning.”
The ten captains gathered around a long, polished wooden table, the only one on board, in a conference room barely large enough to hold it.
“Yalkayarda says we're now permitted to refuel,” Martyna began. “But we are not to start Wayfarer's engines.”
“Why not?” Kassia asked.
“Who knows? Maybe they want to see what our in-system craft are capable of--”
“--without the risk of letting us fire up our interstellar engine,” Sandin interrupted. “Which could certainly be used as a weapon.”
Avese, eighth-shift, leaned forward. “Have they told us to leave?”
“They haven't said what this is about.” Martyna glanced around the table. “Now, I need a volunteer to take out the tender and execute the backup fueling plan. Yalkayarda will transmit the location of the objects they want us to use.” She stared at Sandin, pinning him with her chilly blue eyes.
The other co-captains glanced at each other while Sandin raised his hand. “I volunteer.”
“Very good.”
“I'll need to thaw some key crew members.”
“Fine. I'll tell Yalkayarda we'll get started in a couple of days.” She grinned. “There won't be a Party out there.”
Sandin could hear the capital 'P' in Party, but nodded and kept his mouth closed.
“Don't mess up.”
“I won't.”
#
Sandin was buckled securely into the seat at the tender's console, and a portable Jerry was plugged in. Because this was a backup plan, he knew it required a watchful eye. Wayfarer should be refueling her tanks by vacuuming gases from the atmospheres of gas giants, or possibly a Titanesque moon. But Yalkayarda had forbidden her to move.
Instead the tender had carried repair robots to this frozen snowball, selected by Yalkayarda, a few light-seconds from Wayfarer. Once deployed the robots started filling large bladders with different strata; methane and ethane were fine, water ice was good, and carbon dioxide was pure gold, but a thick layer of ammonia would tilt the harvest too far towards elements of an odd atomic number. The repair robots were damn good at manipulating the vacuums, but their primary purpose was for fixing ship exteriors, not handling volatiles. Periodically Sandin would herd full bladders back to Wayfarer, to refuel the main tanks.
Jerry snapped Sandin out of his reverie. “There was a brief flare behind us just now. The temperature and spectrum suggest a fusion engine.”
“Then it's not one of ours. It's Pavonian.”
“Almost certainly. And it should come as no surprise they're hovering around our operation.”
“Is it still visible?”
“No, but I've got its direction.”
Sandin took a deep breath and considered his options: ignore the flare, ask for advice, or act on his own. Damned if he was going to ask for permission; being meek wouldn't win him any points with Martyna or with any of the co-captains not already in her tent. His status would be further diminished. If he acted without inquiring first, Martyna would find fault with either the outcome, his lack of authorization, or both. If he did nothing and Wayfarer had also seen the flare, she'd tear his hide off for not reporting.
“Jerry,” he said, “Let's work our way towards that plume.”
“Done.”
The tender spun on its axis and then an acceleration pushed Sandin gently into the chair. “Nothing on radar, no occultations, no hot spots?”
“I'm checking every input this little boat has. Nothing to see.” The acceleration continued.
“If we stray very far Martyna will be calling,” Sandin said. “Can we send her a message that's full of static--fake a transmission failure?”
“Certainly.”
“Then do it.”
Sandin did not expect a collision, even if the Pavonians remained undetectable; he was confident they were watching and would move out of the way if, against the odds, he came too close. But if they let him continue sailing past, what then? When should he turn around?
The acceleration suddenly cut out, and then there was a small nudge to port. “Course adjustment. Thought I might have seen something,” Jerry said.
Sandin saw nothing unusual through the view screen.
“Martyna is asking us what's going on.”
“Don't answer.”
Then two white spheres materialized in front of them, details clearly visible. Bumps and protuberances disrupted their symmetry, while a bright silver band encircled the middle of each one. Grasping mechanical arms swung out from the bodies and stretched towards the tender, giving Sandin a sense of scale. They were work pods, single person size. There was a slight bump as they reached the tender and latched on.
“They're firing thrusters to slow us down,” Jerry said. “But we have a lot more mass than they do.”
“Let's help them out.”
“Maneuvering jets on low is the most deceleration I can offer; one pod is close to a nozzle.”
“It'll help.”
After a while the gentle tug of deceleration ceased, and the lights on the console told Sandin they were almost at a complete stop. Then there were several loud thumps. “They're rotating us,” Jerry said.
Then there was a final jolt, and silence.
“The pods are gone. We're attached to something I still can't see. Wait, it's some kind of arm's-length docking mechanism, a dozen meters or so long, but I still can't tell what's on the other side.”
“That's amazing camouflage,” Sandin said. Perhaps he should suit up and check the airlock. However, the comm came alive before he could unbuckle his seat belt.
“I must, unfortunately,” Yalkayarda said, “inform your executive of what has happened. I hope that your inquisitiveness will not kill any cats.” The link was dropped before Sandin could answer.
#
Sandin's ears were still ringing. The conversation with Martyna had been loud and one-way; plus, he had to wait for each blast. The call had been routed, and probably censored, through Yalkayarda's ship, and the deceptive forty-second lag was still in force. He knew that Yalkayarda was close by, but Martyna still could not be certain, even if Wayfarer could still spot Sandin's tender.
She had been boiling hot, but Sandin knew the next step was in Yalkayarda's hands, not hers. If Yalkayarda had hands. He had made his point by pulling the plug on the call in the middle of one more Martyna tirade.
Sandin waited. After an hour, Yalkayarda finally called.
“I must make some decision about you,” he said.
Sandin took a deep breath. “There's no reason not to send me back.”
“Not from our point of view. You have learned about our propulsion system from the breakdown in our disguise, and you have seen our pods.”
“Minor points, aren't they?”
“Not to us. Our propulsion technology is a secret that is now living inside your head, inside the artificial intelligence on board your ship, and nowhere else. Your Martyna does not have it.”
“It's not a sufficient technology for interstellar flight. It wouldn't interest us.”
“But you know it now, and that is the problem. Would you want an outsider, any outsider, to know where you are the weaker party?”
“No.”
“Then you must not go back.”
“Martyna knows I'm here.”
“We've asked her to leave this system as soon as she has refueled. She will not object to your absence, I think.”
A black thought gripped Sandin. “You wouldn't execute me?”
Yalkayarda broke the call, but the popping noise of the dropped signal was immediately followed by the pop of its return. “No,” he said. “We can expect a second visit from your system in another sixty to one hundred years, I am sure. The circumstances of your death might eventually come out--a skeleton in the closet, so to speak--and the repercussions of that are more important than the temporary inconvenience of treating you well.”
Sandin marveled at this answer. He decided that lurkers, such as the Pavonians, must be disposed to take a longer view of things than humans would.
However, life as a permanent traveling exhibit or a study specimen might be a novelty at first, but a very lonely one. Jerry didn't really count as a companion. If only ...
“Do you have space habitats?”
There was a long pause, but Yalkayarda didn't break the connection. “Why do you ask?”
“You might have the resources to solve our problem.”
#
Kassia's face filled the view screen. “How's that?” she asked.
“Step back a bit,” Sandin said. “Good.”
After two months living on the tender, coping with cramped quarters and stale air, with only occasional supplies ferried to him by drone, Sandin was feeling impatient. He was ready to be finished with this phase of the adventure. In a way he envied the rest of the crew, only recently awakened. “How did the vote go?”
“Two co-captains, including me of course, and 20% of the crew are going with you. That's a fantastic result, considering that nobody likes to be a hostage.”
“Not hostages,” Sandin said, “as I've explained before, to you, Yalkayarda, and to the crew. We will be ambassadors, exemplars of human behavior between now and when the next ship arrives. We'll be genuine settlers, and there will be a century for the Pavonians to warm up to us. And as they're studying us, we're studying them. There'll be lots to do!”
Kassia nodded. “Of the 80% who don't agree with you, a three-quarters majority voted to continue on rather than go back to Sol empty-handed. Yalkayarda still hasn't said what they'll find at the star he recommended.”
“He'll probably never tell.”
“Well, it will give them something to speculate about for the next twenty-two years.” She stepped closer and her face filled the screen again. “We're starting to load our share of equipment into another tender. We'll get to keep one tender; I think Martyna is being careful to split resources fairly with Yalkayarda watching.
“Don't we know anything about the habitat?” she continued. “I mean, farming and hydroponic equipment I can understand, but how much geological gear are we really going to need?”
Sandin laughed. “Yalkayarda keeps his secrets. Even I don't know if this habitat is manufactured from scratch, or a hollowed out asteroid, or something novel. But we need our share of everything. Yalkayarda will be curious to watch us using it, so there will be opportunities.”
“They're asking me to fly the tender to some special coordinates, and not offloading at the habitat. This is all so strange.”
“Yalkayarda doesn't want anyone to learn anything about him while they can still communicate with Wayfarer. Once everybody's at the habitat it will be different.” But, Sandin knew, they would not be allowed to send any of what they learned back to Sol. As far as home was concerned, there would be only silence from Delta Pavonis. Eventually Wayfarer would be far away from this star and from Yalkayarda, free to transmit, but those voyagers would have none of the insights that the habitat pioneers would have, only the knowledge that there were those who had chosen to stay.
#
Departure day arrived. Wayfarer lit her mass converter engines and began the long acceleration; burdened with a heavy load of fuel, it would take her over five years to reach coasting speed. There had been little time for Yalkayarda to produce a habitat, so it had begun as a rocky shell with just basic power and structural components such as decks and airlocks. Creating living quarters, farmlands, and the several interlocking ecologies necessary to support long-term habitation had been entirely up to the humans and their technology. Supporting this activity had delayed Wayfarer's departure by a month.
Sandin was sitting in a spartan habitat room reviewing progress reports. “Yalkayarda's calling,” Jerry announced.
“Very good.”
“With video.”
Sandin was speechless for a moment. “Turn it on!”
On the screen in front of him a face appeared. It was more wide than tall, as if a human face had been squeezed down. Perfectly circular eyes stared back at him. There might be an iris, Sandin thought, but it's black like the pupil and hard to see. The white of the eye, what little showed, was pink. A light brown fuzz covered the entire head except for the eyes, and no ears or nose were visible. A thin slit almost at the bottom of the face might be a mouth.
Jerry spoke into Sandin's ear. “That fuzz is closer to a primitive feather than to fur.”
The thin line opened, it was indeed a mouth. “So this is what you look like,” Yalkayarda said. “Congratulations on your election to executive captain.”
“I'm honored,” Sandin replied. “This is a milestone for us both.”
“This beginning has been good, but I must prepare for the middle, when the next ship arrives. The habitat is progressing well, after I withdrew my people?”
“Yes. It was smart for your crews to do only work that could be done in a vacuum. I expected your biological chemistry would be similar to ours, based on carbon and water, because we chose your star for its similarity to our star.”
“It will take time to identify any risks from direct contact,” Yalkayarda said. “Sandin, will you be alive when the next ship comes?”
Sandin paused, and then smiled. Perhaps it was time for him to act like a Pavonian.
“I might see that day, but I will be near the end of my useful lifespan by then. Unless I spend time in cold sleep.”
And then he turned off the link.
***
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