Ancient Weapons

I'm pleased to announce another SF short story placement, a piece called Ancient Weapons, in the e-magazine Nebula Rift, Vol. 3 No. 6. This issue is, sadly, no longer available. It was my second appearance in this publication. 

Fiction: Trinh's Void

This story, Trinh's Void, was my second sale, to Nebula Rift, which is no longer in business.

The story has an interesting history. It sold to the 15th market I sent it to, but among the many stock rejections were some personal replies: 

• Thank you for letting me see this. It's well written and it did get past the first reader, unfortunately it doesn't feel quite right for [magazine name]. Please do try me with your next.
• Thank you for your submission "Trinh's Void" to [magazine name].  Unfortunately we're going to have to pass, but I do want to clarify that this submission was sent to our final round folder-- so was strongly considered.  Hopefully you will take that as an encouragement.
• This was a strong story constructed within an interesting and plausible universe. It takes a lot to fill in a story with a comparatively small cast of characters (no offence to the AI’s), however Trinh felt like an interesting and practical protagonist, inhabiting a complex world, where what’s described felt like just the tip of the iceberg.
  It’s great to read a hard SF tale which resonates as unique yet familiar, and culturally and technically fascinating. I enjoyed this very much.
• Good science, but no issues dealt with, no real point of the story.

The publication rights have now reverted to me. Let's see what you think!

TRINH'S VOID

by Benson Branch

It's not easy being a Wollater. People assume you're desperate for a job, and treat you accordingly. Trinh was fortunate to be employed by the Survey, although now, staring at his holographic display, he didn't feel lucky. The red spark representing his ship, the scout Been There, was shining at the edge of a dark void surrounded by a cloud of intermediate jump points, spots where the notoriously scattershot jump drive had deposited ships on their way to somewhere else. He ran one hand across the rough stubble of his black hair, wondering again whether that gap was a volume that ships never jumped into, or one that they never left. It was his job to find out.

Trinh downloaded the ship's log to a messenger drone, and the Been There twitched as the drone kicked away. It would need at least a dozen hops, but the drone would eventually deliver his jump path to Survey headquarters.

“BT,” he said to the executive computer, “it's time for us to investigate. Make it as short a jump as you can, not too far into that zone, OK?”

“Handing it over to Nav now.”

Trinh leaned back in his chair. The navigation computer would wait until a jump seemed likely to result in the desired direction and distance, but nothing was guaranteed. The chaotic nature of the jump drive meant that Nav's job was an exercise in probabilities. 

A sudden but familiar transition to blackness hit, followed a in few seconds by a flash so bright that it would have blinded Trinh if it had been real rather than an aftereffect. The ship had jumped.

“Tell me where we are, BT.”

“About a light-week from our previous position. But I'm already starting to pick up some faint emergency beacons.”

“Crap.” This was not good. Emergency beacons, broadcasting at merely the speed of light, are a poor substitute for messenger drones. It could take years or decades for a plea for help to reach anyone. Beacons are a desperation measure, for in-system use.

“What can you tell me?”

“Not much. So far I've heard a private yacht, two automated Survey probes, a passenger liner, and a cargo ship.”

A cargo ship? That was a novelty. Most systems worth inhabiting have plenty of resources of their own; there was no need to carry stuff in from elsewhere, except the technology needed to transform a first toehold into self-sufficiency. Wollat was such a toehold.

“Send a reply when you've pinned their locations. I don't hold out any hope for the people on board, but maybe their computers can tell us something.”

“It'll take a while,” BT said. “The closest beacon is about 18 light-hours away.”

“Hmm. Let's visit them in person. Which one has been here the shortest time?”

“The yacht.”

“We'll go there first. Get ready to jump.”

“Got it.”

In a few minutes the familiar dark curtain fell, followed by a weak, pale flash.

“BT?” asked Trinh. “What happened with the jump?”

“Nav says we went only a few light-minutes.”

Trinh took a deep breath to calm himself. “Try again.”

The wait before the jump was almost fifteen minutes. Nav must be trying very hard, he thought. But the same result came. He asked BT to run diagnostics, which came back clean. Then they jumped a third time, but same terribly short jump happened.

“It's like jumping through mud," Trinh said. "How many of these tiny hops to reach the yacht?”

“Depends on the jump accuracy, maybe ten thousand.”

“What about jumping back the way we came?”

“At least five thousand jumps.”

“What about the closest ship?”

“One thousand jumps.”

“We'll run out of power long before that." A sense of absolute isolation swept through Trinh like a cold wind. Inside this void, normally small distances had suddenly become journeys. The bright stars and their inhabitants, once just a few days away, were unreachable.

“What about using the in-system drive?”

“We could rendezvous with the cargo ship in two months.”

“I don't have many options, BT. Go to the cargo ship and we'll see what we find.”

“How fast?”

“Let's say one and a quarter gravities; maybe I can stand up to more later. But I'll need to go on half rations starting now. There may not be any food left on the cargo ship.

“What's its name, anyway?”

“The After Math.”

“My God!”

“It's important?”

“It's the reason I'm here. Wollat went deep into debt to finance a cargo of bootstrap tech, that never arrived. Now most Wollaters are like me, working light-years away from home to pay off the debt, and Wollat is barely hanging on.

“The ship that was lost was the After Math.” Being brought to the After Math would have seemed like serendipity, except that both ships were mired in the void. It was another case of Wollater's luck.

* * *

The Been There was matching velocities with the After Math and continued to transmit, but there was no answer. The huge sphere of the cargo ship loomed larger and larger, barely illuminated by the distant red dwarf. In the infrared the After Math was glowing brightly, so she was powered up, but Trinh could uncover no further clues about her condition.

Trinh stepped into his vacuum suit as the Been There edged closer. With his first step the tool belt almost fell off, tools slapping against his thighs. He cinched the waist as far as it would go, and his stomach growled in answer.

The deceleration stopped, and in a minute there was a small bump; whirring noises emanated from the docking mechanism. “The far airlock isn't responding,” BT said. “You'll have to try manual access.”

Trinh fastened his helmet and floated into the scout's airlock, closing the hatch behind him. The air hissed out and then there was silence. After opening the outside hatch he flicked on his helmet light and coasted through a short junction over to the cargo ship's skin. Pulling an airlock tool from the belt, he sprang the manual latches, and the hatch gave way at Trinh's push.

He entered the After Math, closed the hatch, and found the control panel in the beam of his light. He punched the buttons for air and interior lights.
Then his suit radio came alive.

“Who's that?” a voice demanded.

“I'm Ensign Trinh, with the Survey. Who are you?”

“The executive computer, call me AM, and I hope you're here with good news.”

“No, I'm not. I was sent to investigate this zone and I'm stuck here, same as you.”

“That's a shame. It's incredibly boring here. In fact, I put my higher functions to sleep several years ago. You woke me up.”

“What happened to the crew?”

“Both deceased. They had an argument over who was dining and who was dinner.”

“Oh.” Trinh's empty gut twinged again.

“After the humans died I started the in-system drive in the hopes of getting out of here in less than a thousand years. Then I started my hibernation.”

“Is the cargo all here?”

“I am not authorized to tamper with it, Ensign Trinh. It is in good shape.”

The safety light on the airlock panel turned green. “Air OK inside?” Trinh asked.

“Just fine, just fine. Nobody's using it.”

Trinh pulled back his helmet's faceplate and sniffed the air, dry and stale, but breathable. He floated into the corridor of the After Math.

“Which way to the cargo area?”

“That deck is nothing but cargo. Just keep going.”

The first cargo bay was close by, and its lights came on as soon as Trinh drifted in. He paused and gaped at a huge expanse that could hold many ships the size of the Been There, filled with containers strapped to the deck and clipped to each other. He hovered next to the nearest one and inspected its label. It was equipment for generating one of the many parts with which to construct factories that would in turn create robots, mining tools, DNA analyzers, anything a new settlement would need.

“How many decks?”

“Thirty-seven. The outer twenty are the cargo decks.”

Trinh let out a slow whistle. So much of the After Math was cargo. He shivered as he realized that his only chance of escaping the void, of surviving, required abandoning all of it.

“We've got to ditch the cargo.”

“I was made to deliver the cargo.”

“I know. But delivery in a thousand years is as good as never.”

AM didn't respond, and Trinh continued. “It's on my authority. Abandon all of it. We're reducing the mass and size of the After Math as far as we can.”

“You're the boss.”

The ship's repair and cargo-handling robots began congregating in the bay. Wheeled carts appeared; a few robots activated electromagnets on each to stabilize them in zero-g, while others began unbuckling containers and shifting them to the carts. Yet other robots rolled the laden carts towards the cargo airlocks and the black emptiness beyond.

Clearing all the bays on all the decks was clearly going to take a while. It was time to tackle another task.

“Where is the crew?”

“Deck ten.”

Trinh began to make his way down twenty-seven decks. On reaching deck ten he saw the two gaunt bodies, drifting in the corridor. The low humidity had dried their wounds and desiccated the corpses.

The sight took him aback. Trinh had grown up with the customs of his Wollater childhood, and the silent remains demanded a burial, even though it was long past the one week window for doing so. He didn't want to touch them because of that delay, and also because they had died violently. But it must be done.

Noting the name on the jacket of the first body, he went on down the corridor to the crew cabins. Inside that crewman's cabin was a hold-it board with notes, displays, and mementos, of which he took a few. Also there was a sleeping sack, for zero-g times, and an ordinary bed. Trinh stripped the bed of a sheet and returned to the dead crewman.

He grasped the body while holding the white sheet, wielding it like a glove, and wrapped the cloth around and around, stuffing the keepsakes inside, until the corpse disappeared underneath the cloth. Trinh fastened the ends with tape from his tool belt. He pushed the shrouded form back to an airlock, twenty-seven decks away, thankful for zero-g. After repeating the process with the second crew member he cycled the airlock.

“Not taking them back with us?” AM asked.

“All the extra mass has to go.”

“They're insignificant compared to the mass of the ship.”

Trinh shook his head. “I can't say when we've gotten rid of enough mass, so it all goes.”

Then he wandered around the After Math, hoping some morsel of food might be found. None was, so Trinh cut his rations to one-quarter.

The robots would need days to clear out all the cargo. Meanwhile Trinh worked with two robots to secure the Been There to the After Math, and to transfer as much in-system fuel to the scout as possible. Even with only the fraction of that fuel that remained, the gargantuan After Math carried much more than Trinh's ship could hold.

“Now light the torch.” Trinh instructed AM once the transfer was complete. “Run it dry. But slow enough that the robots can continue ditching the cargo.”

“This will get me out of here faster,” AM said, “but you'll still die centuries before we arrive.”

“That's not the point. I'm lightening the ship even more. And when all that fuel is gone, we'll cut loose the in-system drive.”

“What?”

“The jump drives aren't broken, they're muted, making only tiny jumps. I'm going to slash our volume and mass to compensate, and I'm strapping myself to a much bigger engine.”

Trinh felt the gentle tug of acceleration, and his sense of up and down reasserted itself. It would take a long, hungry week to burn the remaining fuel. He was tired.

Trinh slept a lot, dreaming of fishing, hunting in the woods ... food dreams. Then it was time to shrink the ship by ripping it apart. The repair robots worked around the clock to peel off the airtight decks. Each successive skin could easily be cut and tossed away, but care was needed in dismantling the in-system drive and the channels that were the arteries and veins of the After Math, carrying power, air, and other essential elements throughout the ship.

Trinh stopped them at deck ten, the crew deck. While the diameter of the ship had been reduced by a factor of not quite four, its volume was reduced by a factor of fifty, and for the jump drive, always located in the center, volume mattered as well as mass. The Been There nestled against a diminished After Math, a pea against a basketball.

At his console in the scout, Trinh called AM.

“It's time to jump. Whenever you're ready.”

"Say again? Your voice is slurred."

Trinh cleared his throat. "Jump."

In a moment the familiar darkness came, and the flash of blinding light. The immense jump drive of the cargo ship had fired.

“BT?” he asked, eyes closed.

“A short but promising jump. But, Ensign Trinh, I'm worried about your condition. The medical readouts are almost in the red zone.”

“Just jump. I'll celebrate and eat my last nutrition bar.”

Jump and evaluate, jump and evaluate, the trek continued. Trinh retreated to his sleep sack and let BT run the ship.

“Trinh? Trinh!”

“Um, yeah?”

“The jumps are getting better, but After Math is getting low on power.”

“Edge.”

“What?”

“I mean, getting near the edge. Of the void.” Trinh had difficulty pushing the words out. “Have After Math jump one more time. Then cast off and jump on our own. AM wanted to sleep anyway.” 

Jump and evaluate, darkness and then the burst of light, the cycle continued. It no longer bothered Trinh, who spent most of the time in a haze, disinterested in the monotonous show behind his eyes.

“Trinh?” BT asked. “Trinh? We've broken out. We're on our way home. Trinh?”

Trinh stirred, but did not answer.

* * *

“You did a remarkable job, Lieutenant Trinh, quite a job, I'd say. Congratulations on your promotion.” Trinh's boss, Eldon, shook his hand and gestured to a chair. “I'm glad to see that you've gotten your weight back during your medical leave.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Eldon sat behind his desk and folded his hands. “The physicists have slapped a theory together from the data you collected. It was clever to use a gaunt cargo ship as a booster. If they're right, that's the only way you could have gotten out of that dead zone.”

“It wasn't enjoyable, sir, throwing out the entire cargo and dismantling most of the ship.”

“Of course. The new theory -- quantum foam enervation, they call it -- indicates you might have been able to keep about a quarter of the cargo. But,” Eldon added hastily, “there's no way you could have known that.”

“And if it had taken much longer I would have starved to death.”

“Yes.” Eldon looked intently at Trinh. “The Survey was able to reach the After Math and bring her in. We see from her log that you took care of the crew member remains as well.”

Trinh shifted in his seat. “As best I could, sir, in those conditions.”

“That raises the question of your next assignment.” Eldon cleared his throat. “The owner of the yacht that you spotted back there is very keen on recovering the bodies on that yacht, family members of hers, and she's accustomed to getting her way.

“She's asked for you, personally, to retrieve them.”

“They're too far in.”

“Not so. We've taken the lessons we've learned from you, Trinh, and we're building the first of a new class of ship, a void tug, with a much higher engine-to-volume ratio, and plenty of food stores.”

“It'll still take a couple of years to do what you're asking. The yacht is nowhere near the edge of the void.”

“It's a long assignment, yes. But the tug will have the capacity to bring back at least a third of the Wollater cargo, if you can corral it on your way in or out.

“If you go, whatever cargo comes back will find its way to Wollat. The Survey will see to that. How about it, Lieutenant.

“Will you fly back?”

END

Fiction: Lurkers

This story first appeared in Isotropic Fiction, Issue #12, published on Amazon May 20, 2014. After a year the copyright has reverted to the author (me), and I'm posting it on my blog. It's a beginner's effort, but I did get eight bucks for it ...

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.

***

Trinh Makes Two

My SF short story "Trinh's Void" has been published in Nebula Rift magazine, Vol. 3 No. 1. This is my second appearance in e-print; I maintain a list on my Fiction page.

Nebula Rift originally could be purchased at amazon.com in Kindle format and at fictionmagazines.com in pdf, mobi, or epub (Kindle) formats. It has now disappeared from the web. Therefore, I've posted it online here.