Saturn Run

50.

Francisco, the executive officer, had the watch when the bridge klaxon sounded the three-note tone that signaled a radiation emergency. Startled, he lost his grip on the slate he’d been reading; the slate slowly fell to the end of its tether.

He ignored it. “Comm, kill that noise. Engineering, Science, talk to me. Frank, you first.”

Lieutenant LaFarge scanned his console. “It’s a real alert, sir, not a computer fault or test run. Outside sensors reported a radiation spike. Safety systems kicked in like they’re supposed to and set off the alarms.”

Comm spoke up. “Confirming that, sir. It’s a radiation storm alert.” All over the Nixon, except in the shielded engineering module, warning lights and bells were going off, while the computer system’s voice instructed personnel in the unshielded sections to immediately go to their nearest hidey-hole.

“We’re ten AU from the sun. It has to be one hell of a big solar event for us to notice it way out here. Why hasn’t space weather sent us an alert?” The Earth-orbit monitoring stations had near-instantaneous response times. They couldn’t beat the initial X-ray burst to the Nixon, but their warning should have arrived by now.

“Sir?” Albers Janssen was at the science station.

“Go ahead, Albers.”

“I don’t think it was the sun. The directional data says the burst came from the general direction of the alien depot. That’s well off the sun line. Also, the burst was too short for a solar flare or coronal mass ejection.” Janssen peered closely at the time plots. “Make that two short bursts, close together. A small one and then a much bigger one.” He switched his attention to the spectral plot. “Aw fuck. The main spikes are gamma, not X-ray—511 keV. That was an antimatter detonation.”

Fang-Castro hurried onto the bridge: “What happened?”

“We think the Chinese may have triggered off an antimatter explosion,” Francisco said.

“Oh, no. Can we see them?”

Navigation: “No. We’d have line of sight, but the edge of the ring is in the way. We should have visual in… eight minutes.”

Cui turned as the air-lock door behind her closed: she didn’t know why it had done that.

Suddenly feeling alone in the universe, she called the Celestial Odyssey: “Sir: What happened? Something is happening here.”

Zhang came back: “Cui, evacuate your crew immediately. Duan’s crew apparently set off an antimatter explosion and the ants are beginning to cluster between us and the planetoid. We need you back here, until we can reassess our status.”

“Yes, sir. The crew is out of touch at the moment—immediately after the flash, the air-lock doors closed, separating me from the crew. There is no… Wait one…”

In front of her, the air-lock doors were opening again: inside the lock, she saw her entire crew.

“What happened?” she asked Wong. She kept the relay open to Zhang.

“We’ve been ordered out of the planetoid. Narcissus told us we have to leave. I have vid, sending now.”

The vid popped up on a display screen.

Narcissus said, “There has been damage to the depot. Containment Module 7251 was disrupted. Members of your species intercepted one of the antimatter transport units while it was docking with the containment module. It appears that they tried to disable the unit, leading to a failure of its isolation vessel. The vessel contained 2.5 grams of antimatter. That explosion, in such close proximity to the containment module, caused it to fail as well, resulting in a larger explosion. Sanctions apply. Access to this depot and my database are denied, effective immediately.”

Wong tried to shift blame, to keep the planetoid open: “We didn’t do this. It was an action by another ship, not authorized by us.”

Narcissus said, “Sanctions automatically apply to all vessels of a species. You have five Earth minutes to collect your equipment, secure your suits, and vacate this room. In five minutes the security system will discontinue life support, evacuating the atmosphere and ceasing illumination and thermal regulation. In six minutes, further countermeasures will be taken.”

Wong asked, “What countermeasures?”

“I do not have that information. That information is available only to the security AI.”

Wong had heard enough. To the crew, he called, “You heard it, everybody. Get it together and let’s get out. Narcissus, for how long are the sanctions in effect?”

“Physical damage to a depot is a very serious security breach. Fortunately, Containment Facility 7251 was almost empty. The damage was limited to its destruction, so suspension of all depot privileges will only be in effect for one hundred and forty-four Earth years. Life-support services will end in four minutes. Further countermeasures begin in five.”

Wong said, “People, into the air lock. Don’t start cycling yet.” And, “Narcissus, why didn’t your security system prevent this kind of tampering?” The AI had indicated the depot’s defensive capabilities were superior to human technology. There should have been a specific warning, he thought.

“If an unauthorized ship or one of unknown origin had attempted to access the containment facilities, the security system would have instituted protective measures. This was not a ship of unknown origin. It was one of your species’ ships. Once I informed the security system that you had been given the safety protocols and basic operating instructions for using this depot, your status was changed to authorized. There was no a priori reason to believe that you would not follow the safety protocols, considering the hazards to you and the depot and the penalties that could incur. By the time the data stream indicated that a safety was being breached, there was too little time for security units to arrive before containment failed. Life-support services will end in four minutes.”

Wong tried one more time. “Narcissus, the first ship did not convey the safety information to us. We did not know about the safety protocols.”

“I would not know that, nor would the security system. It is in the interest of every species to make sure that none of its ships interfere with the depot’s functioning, to avoid sanctions. Life-support services will end in two minutes. Further countermeasure begin in three.”

There was no point arguing with the answer-bot. The team finished stowing their gear, secured their suits, and Wong entered the air lock and the interior air-lock door closed. The space-side door opened, and they found Cui hanging in space, just outside.

Cui saw herself on the vid, and killed it. “We don’t know what range Narcy was talking about when he said, ‘further countermeasures.’ We need to get back to the ship. Everybody into the shuttle.”

Another minute and they were gone.

“Admiral Fang-Castro, Mr. Crow wishes to speak to you. Shall I put him through?”

She said, “No, not at the moment. Wait—tell him to join me in the conference room in ten minutes. And Hannegan, Clover, Martinez, Barnes, and Darlington. I want them there, too. Tell Darlington we’re going to have a conference, we’ll want a direct link to Earth.”

Fang-Castro spent ten minutes assessing the situation from the bridge. The Celestial Odyssey was right where it had been and a tug was headed back toward it from the planetoid. There was no sign of the larger shuttle.

Francisco said, “They were messing with one of those storage units and it blew. That’s why we got two pulses. I bet they tried to grab one of the bees, and something happened—could have been a self-destruct mechanism to keep that from happening—and that took out a second storage unit.”

“What’s our radiation status?”

“We’re fine. They may not be, depending on how close they were to the explosion.”

“Any other damage?”

“No.”

“Comm, call Zhang.”

A moment later Comm said, “Admiral, they acknowledged the call and declined it.”

“Might be too busy to talk to us,” Francisco said.

“Or too angry,” Fang-Castro said. “Comm, reach out to them every half hour or so. If they answer, put it through to me. I’ll be in the conference room. I want everything that happened since the blast, including the blast, encrypted and forwarded to Earth. I want that done immediately, with a top-priority tag on it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When Fang-Castro got to the conference room, the others were all waiting, Barnes by vid from the isolation suite. She nodded at Darlington and said, “Link this to Comm, highest encrypt, top priority, tagged for the President.”

Sandy nodded and when the link was set, Fang-Castro told the group what had happened.

When she finished, Crow held up his stylus: “We must have told them that the trailing moonlets were antimatter storage?”

“Of course,” Fang-Castro said. “We also told them that the bees were apparently gathering something, but we didn’t know what, or why.”

“Didn’t we ask Wurly?” Clover asked.

“We asked Wurly for all information concerning the moonlets, the bees, and the primary, including technical drawings, manufacturing specs, and everything else we could think of,” said Martinez. “He agreed to give it to us as part of the tech package. But we were so busy gathering information, and checking the validity of what we could see, and making valid copies of it, we haven’t had a chance to look at much of it. We never looked at the details of what the remotes were doing, because we figured we could do that anytime.”

Crow said, “I’m sure the survivors on the Odyssey are talking to Beijing. What I need to get clear here, now, is that nothing we did caused the accident—that we are not to blame.”

“That is correct,” Fang-Castro said. “Mr. Francisco has suggested that the Chinese may have tried to capture one of the bees. That would have been tempting—they’re small and they’re genuine alien tech. If they could have gotten a bee back to Earth, it would have been worthwhile. We didn’t try it because we didn’t have to, and we didn’t actually have time, with the Chinese pushing on us as they were.”

“So we’re not to blame,” Crow said. “Whatever happened, is the Chinese’s own doing.”

“Yes, that’s correct, in my opinion.” She turned to Hannegan. “I’d also like some reassurance that the aliens haven’t been… fooling us. Did they actually deliver what they said they would?”

Hannegan cleared his throat. “We’ve been looking at the science data ever since the I/O went up. There’s an awful lot of it. All the theory behind the production of antimatter, all the underlying supersymmetry stuff. That’s a far cry from working technology, but it’ll still give us a twenty-year jump on the underlying hard science. A lot of theoretical-physicist food fights are gonna get settled when we get back. To me, it looks like Wurly really has given us exactly what it promised at the first meetings.”

Martinez held up a finger. “But understand, we got the science over the I/O link, but not the tech specs for actually building much. That’s on the quantum storage units.”

“Where are you on testing the actual readers?” Crow asked.

Martinez shook his head. “We’re sorting out the electrical connections now. They’re not hard, but we don’t want to screw anything up, either. With everything else we’ve had to do… What I’m trying to say is, we could probably start testing them tomorrow, or even tonight, if you’re in a rush. We haven’t done it yet.”

A call popped up on the corner of the conference room screen: Francisco calling. Fang-Castro tapped her slate, and Francisco’s face appeared: “Admiral, we’re getting a broadcast from Wurly. Or the primary. It’s very short, it’s in all the languages, it says we’re barred from contact with the primary and all the other alien tech for one hundred and forty-four years. It’s a loop, playing over and over.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s it, ma’am.”

Fang-Castro said, “Thank you,” tapped her slate, and Francisco disappeared. She asked, “Anybody?”

Clover said, “Hey, it told us the rules right at the beginning. It’s never done anything to deviate from those rules. It even told us why those rules were in place, and we pretty much played out the part it said we would. Less than two weeks into our First Contact, and we’ve managed to piss off the other party. Well, it would be pissed off, if it had any feelings to be pissed with.”

Crow said, “Stop saying ‘we.’ It wasn’t us, it was the Chinese.”

Clover shrugged. “An irrelevant distinction, I suspect. As far as the AI is concerned, all us humans look alike. I imagine that millennia, or megayears ago, when the face-to-face contactees got into their planet-killing disagreements, they didn’t much concern themselves with exactly which members of the other species had committed the unforgivable offense. I think we came out of this pretty well—a little foul, a little harm. It only banned us for a hundred and forty-four years. We got off easy! That’s almost nothing when you consider the timescales of interstellar travel.”

“All right, John,” Fang-Castro said. She turned to Crow. “Mr. Crow, do you have an opinion on our current situation’s security? Does the AI or anything else in the depot pose a threat to us, in your opinion?”

Crow tapped his fingers together thoughtfully. “I’m more concerned with the Chinese. If they attempt further tampering with the depot, its security systems might be inclined to take countermeasures. I don’t think it would distinguish between them and us. As John pointed out, its policies operate species-wide.

“And I’d point out, they banned us—they didn’t tell us to give anything back. And as far as we know, we have it all. And as far as we know, the Chinese don’t have much. They didn’t have time link to the I/O and we got all the available QSUs. That strikes me as a pretty unstable situation.”

Clover said, “About an alien threat: if there is one, we have no idea what form it would take.”

Barnes added, “We never saw any visible weapons, but there’s so many things a facility like this might be able to do. Some kind of super cybervirus trashing our computers? A swarm of bees chasing us down—we have no idea what their capabilities are. Nanobots, like the ones on the surface of the depot’s primary, gobbling up the ship from under us?”

Clover said, “You guys work too hard at your nightmares. Blowguns would be a lot easier.”

Crow: “Blowguns?”

“Yeah, these guys are making anti-iron by the ton, remember? So a little magnetic peashooter firing BBs at us, that’s what I’m thinking. Except each BB is like getting hit with…” He looked at Hannegan. “Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”

Hannegan punched a few numbers into his slate and volunteered, “Something like a kiloton of TNT?”

Clover laughed: “That’s the ticket! Beats poison blow darts all to hell. And it’s not like they’d have any shortage of BBs. Oh yeah, the AI could’ve slammed us good if it wanted to. But it hasn’t, so it probably won’t.”

Crow said, “You’ve been leaning on that theory pretty hard, the ‘they haven’t, so they won’t’ theory.”

Clover shrugged: “It’s what I got.”