Starship Alchemon Page 14

  June bobbed gently up and down a few meters away, looking absurdly happy. The crewdoc curled into a ball and rotated her body until she was upside down in relation to LeaMarsa.

  “Doesn’t this feel good?”

  No. The globules were already crawling over her moistened flesh like hungry leeches. She remembered why she so disliked these cleansings.

  “Don’t fight it,” June said. “Let the bath soothe you.”

  The motion-activated globules released vapors that osmotically penetrated skin pores or entered the bloodstream via breathing. June clapped her hands, smashed a cluster of them to release antioxidants and other beneficial chemicals.

  “Crush as many as you can,” the crewdoc urged. “The more chemicals liberated, the better the bath will remove toxins from your body and restore peak microbiome efficiency.”

  LeaMarsa clapped gingerly, trying to ignore how the globules kept trying to attach themselves to every part of her body. The ones swarming at her mouth, nose and crotch made her especially jumpy; she kept batting them away. In contrast, June allowed the globules to crawl freely over her. She soon resembled a piñata encrusted with liquid jewels.

  “It feels like being back in the womb,” June said with a smile.

  “I don’t remember being in the womb.”

  “Our intellects and emotions might not remember but our bodies do. It’s the nature of our tripartite minds. The earliest memories are encoded in purely physical form.”

  LeaMarsa was reminded of what Faye had said about Baby Blue having a fourth system, a later evolutionary development that overlapped its physical, emotional and intellectual selves, and whose purpose remained unknown.

  “How are they dealing with the creature? Do we know what it’s doing down there?”

  “No way to tell,” June said. “With the link robot out of commission, we have no sensor presence. And in light of what happened, the Sentinel won’t permit access to the containment, at least not from inside the ship. The main effort at the moment is to make sure the contamination stays confined.”

  “We should dump the creature into space.”

  “Pretty much everyone agrees with that except Hardy. However, the devil’s in the details. There’s real concern that if a robot or pup enters the containment shaft to open the inner hatch, it’ll get within the creature’s range of control and be taken over like the other robots.”

  A globule floated into LeaMarsa’s mouth. She inadvertently bit down, crushed it into a wet powder. The sour taste, reminiscent of lemons, triggered a childhood memory.

  She was maybe five years old, sucking a lemon icicle while holding her mother’s hand. They were wandering through some sort of terrarium full of exotic foliage.

  “Try looking at that one as hard as you can,” her mother instructed, pointing to a plant with orange flowers. “Try seeing it through your exceptional abilities.”

  LeaMarsa made the attempt, as she always did during her younger years when her parents prodded her to exercise her psionic talents – what they referred to as her “exceptional abilities.” But the plant had suddenly seemed menacing to her, and she’d yanked free of her mother’s hand and ran from the terrarium.

  As the memory coursed through LeaMarsa, the nutriment bath vanished. In its place appeared that other universe, neurospace. She was again in the midst of a blackout.

  More of those shadow clusters had come into being. Even as she contemplated what that meant, the voice of the phantom woman returned, again struggling to speak as if from a great distance.

  “Implement Synchronicity.”

  LeaMarsa sighed in frustration. Did these cryptic phrases even have meaning? Maybe this latest one, along with Sentinel Obey and Coalesce and Target, were just random nonsense, synaptic flotsam inherent to neurospace.

  She tried willing the blackout to end, forcing consciousness back to the nutriment bath. When that had no effect she flailed her arms and legs, hoping motion might jar consciousness back into the real world. But her appendages moved sluggishly, as if encased in thick mud.

  She sensed that some unnatural force was causing the clusters, and that it was growing stronger. Or perhaps the force had grown stronger in the past or would go stronger in the future, for she sensed that neurospace wasn’t in alignment with the relativistic passage of time throughout the real universe. Here, past, present and future were jumbled together, with each star simultaneously existing at multiple points along its analogue’s timeline.

  The blackout ended abruptly and she was back in the nutriment bath, still thrashing. Swarms of globules attracted to her gyrations enveloped her.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed.

  “It’s all right, LeaMarsa,” June soothed. “Try to relax.”

  She couldn’t. Panic overtook her. The globules kept attaching themselves, as if wanting something from her that she couldn’t give.

  “All right, we’re going,” June said, grabbing her arm and guiding her toward the exit hatch at the bottom. Gravity increased as they descended. The globules detached and drifted away.

  June opened the hatch. They exited into a downdeck corridor. The crewdoc looked at her with deep concern.

  “We should go to medcenter.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  There was nothing in June’s medical bag of tricks that would stop LeaMarsa’s torments. Why couldn’t the crewdoc realize that?

  Just leave me alone!

  CHAPTER 16

  The Alchemon was the first manned vessel to venture through the Earth-Sycamore Quiets according to the most recent files in the ship’s library. Those files were last updated five months ago when the ship passed through the Quiets and went dark – lost touch with the com beacons that transmitted data throughout the vast Inet-29 net linking the planets of the Corporeal.

  As of then, no expeditions had been slated to follow. And the only vessel venturing anywhere near this sector prior to the Alchemon had been the original robotic explorer that discovered Sycamore’s bacteria and set up the transpatial corridor. That spacecraft, according to records, had returned safely to the solar system.

  Then who the hell is out there? Ericho wondered. He stood behind Jonomy at the perimeter of the HOD, impatiently waiting for him to establish a clean image. Rigel sat in Donner’s chair, accessing info from a wafer.

  Some sort of last-minute adjunct to our mission? Ericho had heard of such things happening. Still, the reasons were always extraordinary. Pannis was not known for spending more creds than budgeted for a deep-space venture. Even the Alchemon’s expensive nucleonic fuel was precisely allocated so that the ship could perform only limited course changes and maneuvers over its eighteen months away from home. And a search-and-rescue mission didn’t fit the equation.

  Then again, they did have aboard the most powerful psionic ever studied. Perhaps that was enough of a reason for Pannis to send an extra ship for back-up.

  A jumble of rapidly changing textures and colors flashed across the HOD, impossible to assimilate. The streaming images represented the high-speed processing of Jonomy’s umbilical-linked mind. However fast the HOD, it couldn’t keep up with the tempo of a fully interfaced lytic.

  Jonomy slowed the stream to a level of human comprehension. Textures and colors morphed into a white smudge against the darkness of space, the HOD’s representation of the unknown vessel.

  He opened his eyes, emerged from his deep commune with the network.

  “Can you clean up the image?” Ericho asked.

  “No, captain. The vessel is too far away. About three hundred thousand kilometers, maintaining a parallel course. It is using nonstandard EM and visual-field distortion to disguise its signature.”

  They’d detected the mystery ship during a routine course correction meant to put them on a more accurate trajectory for the Sycamore Quiets. Within seconds of that event, the other vessel had instituted a correction to match their own.

  “It
is probable the vessel has been out there for a while,” Jonomy said. “If we had not gone through the course correction, we likely would not have spotted it.”

  Rigel looked up from his wafer. “Explain to me why EPS has no theories about what another ship’s doing out here.”

  “EPS can only calculate probabilities based on established statistical ratios among quantifiable information. It will not postulate theories in situations where a high percentage of unknown factors are present.”

  Rigel rolled his eyes, indicating what he thought of Jonomy’s explanation. “Maybe somebody needs to teach EPS the concept of an educated guess.”

  “A so-called educated guess is no better than–”

  “With EPS out of the picture,” Ericho interrupted, “it’s up to us to figure things out.” He faced Jonomy. “You’re postulating a Corporeal vessel, correct?”

  “Yes, unless we assume the existence of an alien civilization with nearly identical starship development. PAQ has done a rudimentary shape analysis based on our meager data collected at the moment of contact. They appear to be standard slab configuration, slightly smaller than us. Those EM distortion patterns match Corporeal standards.”

  “But no caste code.”

  “Correct.”

  All Corporeal computers, whether space or planet-based, broadcast unique telemetry beacons. The caste codes enabled disparate equipment to communicate. But the mystery vessel had thus far ignored all attempts by the Alchemon to establish contact.

  “The absence of a caste code puts them in violation of numerous regulations,” Jonomy pointed out.

  “I’m guessing that’s not keeping them up at nights,” Rigel grumbled.

  “Any suggestions?” Ericho asked.

  “Make a flat-out run at them,” the tech officer proposed. “See how they respond.”

  “Unwise,” Jonomy said. “At best, a waste of fuel. Assuming a similar power plant, they would likely just change course to maintain the same distance between us. Even if we could get close enough for our sensors to overcome their EM field, without a caste code we would probably learn little.”

  Ericho sighed and rubbed a hand across his face to wipe away drowsiness. He’d been awake for twenty-plus hours. There was a limit to how long stimulants could keep body and mind alert. Very soon, he was going to have to close his eyes.

  But despite Jonomy and Rigel being available to cover his absence, he worried about missing the next critical incident. And there would be more incidents. Of that he was certain.

  “What about chronojackers?” he wondered. “That would explain why the ship would be wary of us, why they’re broadcasting no caste code.”

  A hijacked starship from some past era would want to avoid contact, at least until its crew made certain enough time had passed so that the Corporeal statute of limitations would spare them from arrest and prosecution.

  Jonomy shot down the idea. “A chronojacked vessel would project a unique energy signature that even the best EM field could not disguise.”

  “You sure about that?” Rigel challenged.

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “Seems to me you randomly pick and choose what you’re certain of.”

  “My actions are not random. Your statement is nonsensical.”

  Rigel rose angrily from his chair. “Nonsensical, huh? What I want to know is, why don’t you know what’s happening to us? And don’t give me more crap about EPS not having enough data to work with. Look at the whole picture, goddammit.

  “We find an impossible lifeform on a bizarre planet. Our lieutenant goes crazy and almost burns us to a cinder. We’ve got lunatic robots, an unstable psionic and enough problems for a dozen voyages. And now there’s another ship out in the middle of nowhere following us?”

  “We do not know if they are following us.”

  “They sure as hell ain’t on a pleasure cruise.”

  “I cannot fathom a logical connection among these events. However, some type of connection likely exists. What we have been experiencing suggests a pattern, suggests purpose.”

  “Baby Blue,” Ericho said. “It has to be at the root of all this.”

  “Maybe not,” Rigel said. “What if we’ve got this whole thing backwards? Maybe Pannis is responsible. Maybe they created Baby Blue. Maybe it’s an artificial lifeform developed by one of their armaments subsidiaries, something so dangerous that the only way to safely test it was to conduct an experiment far from Earth. Maybe the Alchemon and all of us are guinea pigs.”

  “That is paranoid speculation,” Jonomy said.

  “Is it? Remember how LeaMarsa was added to the crew at the last minute? Maybe Pannis put her aboard to influence this artificial lifeform somehow, or for it to influence her. Maybe this other starship followed us through the Quiets and is secretly monitoring us, checking on how their grand experiment is going.” Rigel paused. “They could be armed with intercept missiles, ready to incinerate us if things get out of hand.”

  Pannis and the megas certainly could be ruthless. Ericho could accept that a psycho like Renfro Zoobondi might have sabotaged their mission for his own devilish reasons. But Rigel was talking about a conspiracy that would have had to involve hundreds or even thousands of people.

  “Your theory runs counter to what we know,” Jonomy said. “First, the discovery of the organism. Hardy’s data proves that it was encased in rock on the surface of Sycamore for more than a billion e-years. The erosion process that exposed the rock and spread the bacteria across the planet was a phenomenon that could not have been faked.

  “Second, if this other starship was somehow monitoring us, Pannis would have had to install secret com gear on the Alchemon. If such an implanted subsystem existed, I would have detected it. And even if I somehow missed it, the Sentinel would not. One of its primary duties is to safeguard the ship against illicit tampering.”

  “You wouldn’t need an entire subsystem,” Rigel argued. “There’s a simpler way to monitor us. All Pannis would need is a small shielded transmitter discrete from the network and someone onboard to use it.”

  Ericho frowned. “You’re saying we have a spy? Who?”

  “Who else? Our illustrious science rep, Hardy Waskov.”

  Jonomy hesitated, considering the idea. “In theory it is possible. However, you are making assumptions based on assumptions, a sure method for digressing farther from the truth.”

  “You want the truth?” Rigel growled. “Give me a power glove and ten minutes alone in a room with Hardy.”

  Alexei came over the intercom.

  “Captain, I’m in the natatorium. I just came here following my duty period. I realize I should have gone straight into a sleep cycle, but I was kind of tense from worrying about everything that’s been going on. So I came here for a quick swim and–”

  “Get to the point.”

  “Yes sir. You probably have this on your monitors, but the pool is messed up. I’ve never seen so much pollution in a biosystem. The water is full of algae and these pulsating globules. They seem like something from the nutriment bath, but a lot bigger. Plus, it’s really hot and humid in here.”

  Jonomy shook his head. “The ship is not reporting a problem. No abnormal indicators in any of the systems that interact with the natatorium.”

  “Give us a visual,” Ericho ordered.

  “Sir, LSN is a dopa.”

  I need sleep, he reminded himself. He was forgetting standard policy.

  “All right. Alexei, you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. Set up a manual camera feed.”

  “Is that legal in a dopa?”

  “Captain’s orders.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Ericho turned to Rigel. “Let’s pretend for a moment that this is the only problem the ship’s experiencing. What could cause this sort of pollution?”

  “Could be a fluid leak. A bit unusual that the ship’s not registering it, but I’ve seen some odd mech breakdowns in a ship’s piping. It would have to be a c
ombination of malfunctions, though, probably involving NUB and TEM.”

  “So, the nutriment bath and thermometry regulation systems go haywire and start interacting with the natatorium?”

  “I didn’t say it was likely, just theoretically possible.”

  Alexei came back on the intercom. “You should be getting video now.”

  The HOD came alive from a 3D cam the trainee had stuck on the wall. His description didn’t do justice to how strange the pool looked.

  Much of the surface had a black sheen and was opaque, as if covered by an oil slick. The remainder was splotched with clumps of what appeared to be green and violet algae. Scattered across the surface were dozens of multicolored globules similar to those from the nutriment bath. But as Alexei had indicated, they were larger, some the size of golf balls. A white mist hovered above the pool, probably due to the escalated temperature and humidity.

  “No way that’s a fluid leak,” Rigel said.

  Ericho agreed. “And we have no indications of an LSN malfunction?”

  “That system remains green,” Jonomy said. “EHO has registered the heat increase and the presence of the mist but has deemed those changes harmless. The only other anomaly I am reading comes from IBD, which is just now reacting to the pollution.”

  “Why the hell didn’t it react earlier?” Rigel asked.

  “I have no explanation for the delay. At any rate, IBD is closing off all feeder valves to and from the natatorium. It is isolating the pool from the rest of the biosystem.”

  “Can we get an analysis of the water?” Ericho asked

  “IBD is undertaking that now. It will route samples of the algae, the globules and the oil-like pollutant to EHO for more detailed parsing.”

  “How long?”

  “A full array of tests will take several hours.”

  Ericho shook his head. Whatever was happening in the pool, he sensed that it was too important to wait that long for an explanation.

  Jonomy read his thoughts. “Hardy could accomplish the task manually considerably faster.”