Endurance: The Complete Series Page 4

  “Yeah. I don’t like it.”

  He pulled the chart over. “There’s no image here. It’s just a list of numbers.”

  “I know. But I think it’s ugly.”

  “You can’t see it.”

  “I’ve just got a feeling.”

  “Arch’s feelings have an 86.151 percent accuracy rate,” Chris said. “I’ve tracked it.”

  “It is better than random guessing,” Ivanokoff agreed.

  Thomas held up a hand. “All right. We’ll search the planet he suggested. I’ll have the helm set our course for it once we enter the system.”

  * * *

  The next 22 hours passed uneventfully, with one exception. When it drew near the time when the Endurance would enter the system, Thomas made his way to the bridge. Ivanokoff was waiting for him outside. “Sir, I would like to speak to you.”

  Thomas almost denied him out of spite, but he knew that if he disregarded his first officer without a good reason, it would probably get reported to Dispatch. “In my office.”

  The two made their way through the bridge to the little room. There was enough space for a desk, one chair on either side of it, and not much else, but Thomas had spent a large amount of time in the office anyway. His stack of novels sat beside the desk and his computer lay closed on top of it, but he hadn’t decorated.

  Thomas shut the metal hatch, more or less soundproofing the room, and turned to Ivanokoff. “Go ahead.”

  “May I speak my mind?”

  Oh, great. “You may.”

  “You are a bad captain.”

  Thomas’s insides lurched at the bluntness. “Excuse me?”

  “You divided the crew by blaming the engineers in front of the staff.”

  “Our current situation is their fault, and it’s time people on this ship learned to accept responsibility.”

  “Matthias is perfectly able to accept responsibility. He does not do any work unless he is proud of it. But the words you chose were meant to shame him and his team before the others. That will not do. A captain’s job is to unite his crew. Under Captain Davis, the crew performed well and felt comfortable in their duties. Now they are quiet and rigid, the way you want, but only because they are afraid.”

  “You seem unafraid of speaking your mind.”

  Ivanokoff stared down his nose at Thomas. “I am bigger than you.”

  That was true enough, but the phrasing made Thomas’s blood boil. “Was that a threat?”

  “No. It is an explanation. I am bigger than most things. The rest of the crew, they are not so big. You easily intimidate them. That is no way to maintain order.”

  “That’s enough.” Thomas drew himself to his full height. He still had to look up to make eye contact with his first officer. “I gave you permission to speak, but you are way out of line to question my entire system of command.” Ivanokoff opened his mouth to retort, but Thomas didn’t let him. “I’ve heard you, and now you’re through. I will run this ship the way I see fit, not the way that makes everybody feel happy. You’re dismissed.”

  “Captain, clearly you do not ...”

  “I said you’re dismissed!” Thomas moved to the other side of his desk, putting the barrier of officiality between them. “And the next time I have to give you an order twice, Lieutenant, I’ll take you off active duty until you can learn to follow the chain of command.”

  Ivanokoff frowned and looked for the briefest of moments like he might argue, or possibly assault Thomas, but instead he turned, opened the hatch and ducked through. He slammed it shut on his way out.

  Thomas stood in silence, staring down at his bare desk. This wasn’t what he signed up for. All he’d wanted, for his entire life, was to protect people and train other officers to do the same. He couldn’t do that while patrolling the emptiest space in the solar system, and he certainly couldn’t do it if he died out here in the middle of nowhere.

  He groaned and sank into his chair, feeling the old cushion sag a little. Up until two weeks ago, everything in his life had gone according to plan. Now it was all chaos. His thoughts went back to that letter from Loretta Bailey, sitting unread in his computer. You saved her, he thought.

  Yes, and look where it got you. You thought with your heart. Now think with your head, or you’ll be stuck with these people forever. Or worse, you’ll all die out here and no one will know what happened to you.

  Hey, intruded his sense of optimism. The voice sounded annoyingly like Matthias. If you get this ship back home, you’ll have saved its entire crew!

  He groaned again and dropped his head against the desk. Dispatch might not consider that to be a good thing.

  One way or another, he needed to keep going. With a supreme force of will, Thomas pushed himself back to his feet. The Endurance would reach the solar system in under an hour, and he wanted to be on the bridge to make sure they navigated safely to the planet. He could deal with the consequences of all of this later.

  How he wished he’d just stayed a lieutenant.

  * * *

  Thomas couldn’t shake his feeling of tension as he sat in the command seat, watching the little sphere grow larger on the scanners display. He couldn’t yet see the planet out the windows, as the pilot was using the gas giant’s gravity well to slingshot Endurance toward their destination. More people than were on duty filled the bridge, and their quiet conversations created a low murmur, but Thomas didn’t care to listen.

  He was about to send one of his crew out on a spacewalk on an alien planet hundreds of years’ travel from Earth. Though the situation gave him a knot the size of Canada in his stomach, he knew on some level that if they made it back home, this would go down in the history books. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, and he wondered how many other “pioneers” of history had no idea what they were doing at the time.

  “We’re a third of the way through the arc now,” the pilot announced. “The planet should come into view in a few seconds.”

  Everyone on the bridge leaned forward. Though the crew knew the size and approximate makeup of the planet through their scanners, they didn’t know what sort of terrain they would face, if it would be possible to land, what sort of atmosphere—if any—it had, or any other details that could make the difference between success and failure. Their first glimpse of the world would reveal a lot of important information, including whether or not they had a chance of getting home.

  Gasps arose as the planet came into view, and Thomas bolted up from his chair. “Are … are those cities?”

  They were facing the night side of the planet, and all across its surface they could see clusters of lights, dense enough to be visible even from space.

  “It certainly appears that way,” said Ivanokoff.

  “No way …” whispered Matthias. “What are the odds of that?”

  “Of finding an inhabited planet by accident?” asked Chris Fish, also in a whisper. “About three point two eight …”

  Thomas held up a hand to silence them. He cleared his throat. “We don’t know it’s inhabited.”

  “Oh, come on!” said Chris, breaking the reverent mood. “What else could it be?”

  “Sergeant, for the last time, you will address me with respect,” said Thomas. “And it could be some kind of natural phenomenon. Or a mirage. Or …”

  “Or people,” finished Ivanokoff. “Though we do not yet know whether or not they are hostile.” His hands wandered to where he normally kept his pistols, and when he didn’t find them, he tucked his thumbs in his belt instead.

  “Or whether we can even breathe the atmosphere down there,” Thomas countered. “There are a lot of things that could go wrong. Helm, take us into the upper atmosphere slowly. Sergeant Fish, tell whoever’s running that chemistry set on the middle deck that I want to know the contents of the planet’s air. Lieutenant Praphasat …”

  Areva appeared at his elbow, waiting for instructions. He was too distracted to be startled, still looking at the inviting lights below. “I think it�
��s safe to say you should suit up.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, the scientists had confirmed that the atmosphere was, indeed, breathable, and that the ship could safely fly in it. The bridge crew had used the time to take some high-resolution images of the clusters of lights on the night side of the planet, and had determined that they were, in fact, artificially-constructed buildings. Cities.

  Thomas didn’t know what to make of it.

  On the one hand, discovering alien life was an enormous step forward in humanity’s understanding of the universe.

  On the other hand, this wasn’t his job. He wasn’t trained in diplomacy, he didn’t know the first thing about studying new cultures, and he had no desire whatsoever to make mankind’s first impression on another intelligent, city-building species.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t send a message to Earth and ask for help, as it would take twenty-five years for them to receive it and twenty-five more to send a reply, if it even made it at all. He had to make this decision himself, and he was the only one who could do so.

  “To land or not to land?” Ivanokoff muttered behind his command chair. “That is the question.”

  Thomas didn’t answer. He stared out the window at the clusters of lights, wondering who or what they would find down there. He swallowed and hoped no one noticed. “We don’t have a choice. If we’re going to get home, we have to find that chrioladium. We’re landing. Helm, put us down in the largest city on the daylight side. Try to find a building that looks important so we can talk to whoever’s in charge.”

  Matthias whooped, and Chris pumped his fist in the air in an expression of victory. The pilot began guiding the ship down toward the planet’s surface.

  Areva stood near the hatch to the hallway, outfitted in her spacesuit except for the helmet. “Am I still going alone, sir?”

  Thomas shook his head and stood up. “No. This was supposed to just be a resource-gathering mission, but now it’s something bigger. I’m coming with you.”

  Chris, who had been listening intently, hurried over. “Can I come?”

  “No.”

  “But I’m the leading expert on xenobiology …”

  “No, you’re not,” his wife called from the scanners station across the room. “That’s not even a real field yet.”

  “It’s about to be. I can’t do any research if I don’t get to see them.”

  “I only need one other person on the team,” Thomas said. “Whoever we meet down there, they aren’t going to speak English, or any other language of Earth, for that matter. So we’ll need someone to help us figure out what they’re saying.”

  “How do you know that they speak at all?” Ivanokoff asked.

  “I don’t. But I’m hoping they do, because otherwise we’ll have a hard time explaining what we want.” He looked around the room. “Does anybody on the ship have training in linguistics?”

  “I have a little,” Ivanokoff said.

  “We can’t have all three command officers off the ship at once.”

  “You do not have to come.”

  Thomas bristled. “Yes, I do. It’s my ship, so Dispatch will consider it my responsibility.” He felt a stone settle in his stomach as he realized he’d just referred possessively to the Endurance. “Besides, I want someone with more than a little training.”

  Chris raised his hand. “I’ve studied linguistics. And xenolinguistics.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Joyce said. She glanced at Thomas. “The xenolinguistics, I mean. He’s telling the truth about the regular kind.”

  “Fine, then,” Thomas said, “you can come.” Chris started to pump his fist again, but Thomas continued, “If you can help us communicate. I don’t want you trying to study them or anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.”

  “But can I …”

  “No.”

  Chris frowned at him. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

  “The answer is still no.”

  “Sir,” said Ivanokoff, “I recommend bringing a weapon with you.”

  Thomas shook his head. “No. I don’t want to accidentally provoke them.”

  “But these are aliens, sir.”

  “All the more reason not to look like we’re invading their planet. No handguns.” An image of the aliens in a recent science fiction film—ten-foot-tall semi-robotic creatures that exhaled poison and bled liquid nitrogen—flashed through Thomas’s mind, and he amended his orders. “But have someone standing by at defensives in case we need support from the ship’s guns.”

  That seemed to placate the first officer, who inclined his head.

  “Let’s head for the airlock.” Thomas glanced out the viewport, where the planet was rapidly growing larger. “This is going to be an interesting day.”

  * * *

  As the exit ramp descended from the bottom of the Endurance, Thomas’s stomach flip-flopped. He grimaced and berated himself for feeling nervous. Sure, it was a diplomatic mission. Sure, he wasn’t exactly trained for this. But he was a captain in the United Earth Law Enforcement Corps, and he’d seen his share of action. “Butterflies” were for the newbies. He was going to step into this with confidence, with all the self-assurance he should have after his many years in the service.

  Then the bottom of the ramp hit the dirt of an alien world, and Thomas thought he might throw up.

  He, Areva, and Chris stomped down the ramp. Though far more flexible and less bulky than the equipment astronauts wore back in the 21st century, their spacesuits were still designed to ward off both extreme heat and cold, not to mention the vacuum of space. It made their footfalls heavy.

  They’d landed in the middle of an enormous courtyard, surrounded on all sides by silver, reflective buildings at least five stories tall. The ground was made of flat, grey stones, arranged in a symmetrical grid, with small patches of flowering plants lining the walkways to each building and a design that looked like a seal or a crest laid into the middle of the courtyard where the four walkways met.

  Two aliens waited at the bottom of the ramp.

  As he descended to meet them, Thomas took in humanity’s first look at extraterrestrials. They were both tall, about six-and-a-half feet, and slender. Their skin looked like a coat of matte grey paint covering their bodies, except where it darkened to black around their eyes. Their ears rose from the sides of their heads a good two feet into the air—creepy, spindly tendrils that swayed with the wind like antennae. They had noses and mouths, and were wearing clothes, which Thomas found reassuring—silky-looking garments that clung flat to their bodies. One wore a red thing similar to a dress, while the other had on a blue pantsuit-like outfit that had probably been tailored to fit him. The one in the blue was bigger than the one in the red, suggesting they might be different genders.

  Oh, and they had a third arm sticking out of their chests.

  Thomas tried not to stare at the creepy protruding joints as he reached the bottom of the ramp, and instead raised his hand in greeting. “Hello,” he said. The sound came out of his suit’s speaker sounding raspy, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “We’re from a planet called Earth. Can you understand me?”

  The pair blinked at him, and then Red Dress turned to Blue Suit and made a high-pitched, oscillating noise. Blue Suit waved his antennae, then pulled a small cube of about six inches on each side out of his pocket and pushed a few buttons on it.

  Thomas looked at Chris. “Any guesses what that means?”

  Chris shrugged. “Nope.”

  “What do you mean, nope?

  “What, you actually think I can translate this? Automatically, without any prior knowledge of the species?”

  “Well, no, but I thought since you were trained in linguistics that …”

  “That’s not how it works.” Chris waved a hand dismissively. “If you gave me a couple of years to live with them nonstop, I might be able to put together a working grammar and syntax, assuming their la
nguage even uses things like that, but even then it would take a lot longer to gather enough of a vocabulary to start translating conversations on the fly.”

  Thomas frowned. “Why didn’t you say so before we left the ship?”

  “You didn’t ask. And I wanted to come on the mission.”

  The two aliens watched the conversation, antennae-ears twitching whenever Thomas’s voice rose. Thomas tried waving to them again, but they simply continued to watch. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, do you have any ideas for how to tell them what we want?”

  “You could try acting it out. Like charades.”

  “I would like to see anyone act out ‘chrioladium.’”

  “Don’t get touchy about it.”

  Thomas glared at Chris, and the scientist raised his hands. “Sorry. What if we just show them a sample of it? I can get one from Matthias.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. Improvise.”

  The alien in the red dress stepped forward onto the landing ramp. She hesitated a moment, then raised her left hand to mirror Thomas’s greeting.

  “Yes,” Thomas said, raising his hand again. “Hello.”

  Red Dress tilted her head to one side, then raised her middle hand in the same gesture. It had a thumb on either side, and seemed able to pivot in any direction. Gross.

  “Um, yes,” Thomas said again, avoiding looking at the hand. “Hello.”

  This could be good, he thought. Maybe this is progress.

  Red Dress watched him, then raised her right arm so that all three hands imitated the greeting. Then she started clapping both outer hands against the hand in the middle.

  Or maybe not.

  Thomas let his arm fall. “Okay. Let’s get the sample.”

  * * *

  The aliens let them retreat back into their ship’s containment airlock without further interaction. Once safely secluded, Thomas activated his suit’s intercom interface. “Page the reactor room.”

  “Reactor room, Matthias here.”

  “Lieutenant, I need a sample of chrioladium.”