Tenacious

8

Two days later, the Wasp led out the Intrepid, Constellation, Congress, Royal, Bulwark, and Hornet, now with some of the old Hornet’s crew recovered and aboard. The Endeavor brought up the rear, loaded with plenty of low-tech jump-point buoys.

The Wasp itself carried some low tech of her own. The moon factories had knocked together several drones from aluminum, ancient carbon fiber, and simple computer-chip technology. It had taken an extra day, but now they had them for surveys when they didn’t want to risk Smart Metal^TM.

The low-tech gear would be left on the dead alien planet. Some might be left on what everyone called the alien home world though solid proof was still needed. Just ask any of the 250 scientists aboard each of the eight ships.

“Prove it. Prove it. No guessing allowed,” was their mantra.

None of the low-tech gear would be abandoned in place on the battered world. They planned to collect it all in one location and laser it from orbit. Someone following them might know there was a new burn spot on the planet, but what was incinerated there would tell them nothing.

On the putative alien home world, they’d crash them into the deepest abyss of its oceans and dare anyone to find them.

They were coming to see, not be seen.

The trip was fast. They accelerated at two gees and took the jumps fast and with high RPMs on the ships. They covered thousands of light-years on their long jumps. They followed the Endeavor course as it raced back with the news of its discovery. On the way out, they kept their eyes peeled but saw not so much as the hair on the back of one alien head.

Kris liked it that way.

Once they arrived at the system with the battered planet, the surprises came fast and plentiful.

Professor Labao, who would likely never return from his sabbatical from the University of Brazilia, and most certainly not on time, presented Kris with some requests from the expedition’s scientists before they’d been in system two hours.

“Our observations of the subject planet shows that its surface has been heavily bombarded. As yet, we are not prepared to say by what. However, we would like to have some samples taken from the asteroid belt so that we can identify the exact makeup of rocks from there and compare it to what we find on the bombardment sites. Could you detach a ship to do that survey?”

“That’s why there are eight of us,” was Kris’s quick answer.

She walked the short distance from her day quarters onto the Wasp’s bridge. “Captain Drago, would you please order the Intrepid and Congress to slow down and split up. We want them to take random samples of several asteroids’ composition. Please advise the Endeavor that we would also like her to take samples on her way to and from setting up a warning jump buoy at the other jump into this system.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. I’ll get that off immediately.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” the professor said.

“Any more requests?” Kris asked.

“Not at this time. We are studying the planet and the entire system as we approach it, but we have nothing yet to report that is different from the hasty study done by the small science team on the Endeavor.”

Kris smiled at the way he gave her backhanded notice that he didn’t think much of what Penny had brought back. It didn’t matter to Kris. Penny had taken only what Kris could spare at a tough time. What she’d found out was all that Kris had expected.

As the professor left, Kris stayed with Captain Drago on his bridge. “Any activity in this system?”

“If there had been, you’d have been the first to know, and we’d be turning around and hightailing it out of here, I assume, by your orders.”

“We most certainly would,” Kris said.

Her thoughts were a tad different. Maybe. Depending on what we found. I’d still like to take a try at capturing one ship alone. Maybe someone would decide to live, not die. But to her flag captain, she said what was more to his liking.

“Yeah, right,” Captain Drago muttered, apparently no less deft at reading Kris’s mind now that her flag sported three stars.

As they approached orbit, Kris called a staff meeting. It was a small one. At her conference table was Jack, of course. He had two rump battalions of Marines, though what they’d do this trip was still to be determined. But then Marines were good at figuring out what was needed of them while others were still wondering why they were there.

Penny and Masao were there as representatives of the early survey, even if Professor Labao didn’t think much of it. His two thousand boffins, however, still had nothing new they wanted to report to Kris. Until they did, Kris considered her friend the expert.

Amanda Kutter and Jacques la Duke had also hitched a ride on the Wasp. Yes, they admitted, there was plenty of economic and anthropological work to be done on Alwa, but there were so many question marks about these two planets that they’d begged to be included. Never sure what kind of lion’s mouth she’d be sticking her head in this time, Kris had signed off on their inclusion and added them to her immediate staff.

They’d been the ones who spotted the food problem on Alwa. Who knew what they’d spot here?

Captain Drago dropped in from his bridge as the meeting got underway; Kris never held a meeting that didn’t have a spare chair for him.

Professor Labao led off by projecting pictures of both sides of the ravaged planet on one of Kris’s screens.

“This planet had been bombarded so heavily that very little of the original surface remains for us to study. In some places, the bombardment sparked volcanic eruptions that added to the remaking of the surface. About the only places not hit are in the low-lying areas that have been suggested as ocean areas although they present no evidence of water, liquid or otherwise, at the present time.”

“Is there any evidence of wandering clusters of asteroids in the system now that would put the planet at risk?” Kris asked.

“No,” the professor said. “We will be better able to date the bombardment once we are on the ground and have samples; however, at the moment, it appears to have all occurred in the same approximate time frame. The two planets nearest its orbit show no such bombardment in recent times. There are also no more than the usual number of orbit-crossing asteroid bodies than you would expect to find in any system. This bombardment appears to be unique to this planet.”

“An attack,” Captain Drago growled.

“That assumes intent not yet in evidence,” the professor said, refusing to rise to the Navy officer’s bait.

“Not an attack, Captain,” Jack said, “but an annihilation. An eradication. Way more than a mere attack.”

Captain Drago nodded agreement.

“We are developing our plan of study,” the professor said, attempting to regain control of his meeting.

“We have been provided with a most interesting set of devices for our ground examination. The engineers back at the Alwa fabricators have presented us with exploration probes used in the Old Earth system. It is part balloon, part powered craft, and all that is needed to transport a rover equipped with a laboratory for sample taking and analysis. This planet has just enough of an atmosphere to allow the balloon to support this kind of device during the daylight hours. We plan to deploy them from longboats, say cruising at ten thousand meters. When the balloon probe finds an interesting area, we will have them settle to a landing. The rover will do its survey and return to transport for the night. At early dawn, we will reheat the hydrogen on the balloon, lift them off, then the propeller system attached to the balloon will take the assembly to the next area for examination. A brilliant bit of engineering design, don’t you think?”

“If it gets us what we need to know fast, then that’s great,” Kris said. She’d learned long ago that if she gave the boffins the slightest chance, they would bend her ear for hours.

“Have you got anything to tell us yet?” Jack asked, ever vigilant to protect Kris’s body, or in this case, ears.

“We do think we may have found one thing you will find of interest,” Professor Labao admitted. Cautiously.

“And that is?” Kris said.

“This,” he said and turned back to the screen. Now it showed a view of deep space. There were the usual stars in the background. It was what was in the foreground that puzzled Kris. It appeared to be a long bar. Maybe a string. It had something at each end and a large sphere in the middle.

“What is that?” Kris asked.

“We don’t know,” the professor said flatly.

“Give me your best guess,” Jack growled.

“Hey, that could be a sling,” Jacques la Duke said.

“A what?” Amanda Kutter asked before Kris could.

“How big is that hummer?” Jacques asked the professor.

“We are not sure, but it appears to be several tens of thousands of kilometers long.”

“And is it in an orbit that intersects this planet?”

“Yes,” the professor cautiously admitted. “In say another twenty thousand years it would likely collide with it.”

“Right. I wonder how many of those were once sharing this orbit?” Jacques said, standing and going to peer more closely at the screen.

“So, Jacques, since you seem to know what you’re looking at,” Amanda said testily, “let the rest of us mere mortals in on the secret.”

“Okay, there’s a lot of guessing going on here, but we anthropologists do it a lot, professionally, and if we guess right, there’s a good paycheck in it for one of us. Anyway, here’s my guess. That’s a space sling.”

“A space sling?” came from everyone in the room, Kris included.

“A space sling,” Nelly said more slowly. “Yes, it most definitely could be one.”

“Quiet, Nelly. Let Jacques have the fun of telling us what he thinks he’s found,” Kris said.

YOU HUMANS WANT ALL THE FUN.

YES. NOW HUSH, GIRL.

“Pulling a lot of stuff out of a deep gravity well,” Jacques began, “is not cheap. Most developed industrial planets have a space elevator. A beanstalk. You want to lug up something big like a reactor to install in a ship, you don’t lift it in a shuttle, you send it up the beanstalk. It’s faster, cheaper, and easier. Designing a shuttle to take a battleship-size reactor is, well, just nonsense.”

“They understand the point,” Professor Labao said, dryly. Clearly he was not happy to have lost control of his meeting.

And Kris thought it was her meeting.

“So, if you want to drain an ocean or suck a lot of air off a planet, you do something like this. I assume they didn’t care where the water and air went, they just wanted it gone. You put this thing in orbit. That center bulge is a counterweight to hold it stable in orbit. The ends swing around the center. When one end is down, it scoops up water. I’d guess there’s a pipe that sucks air when it’s down and holds it until it’s up, then spews it out. The same with the water. It freezes as it comes up into orbit. When it’s all up, the sling throws it out, and it zips off into space.”

Jacques paused for a moment. “Tell me, Professor, is there a ring of gases around the sun in this orbit?”

“I don’t know,” Professor Labao said, stiffly.

“You don’t know, or you do but don’t yet have enough information to make an official, scientifically accurate to the thirteen–decimal place statement?” Kris said. Her temper was starting to boil, and she was missing Professor mFumbo, God rest his soul. Why hadn’t he stayed on the Wasp instead of spreading himself and his scientists around the battleships that didn’t make it back from Kris’s first run-in with the aliens?

Mentally, Kris shook herself. She knew she was heading into a black hole of her own making. Too many had died while she had lived, and, no doubt, too many more would die. If she continued to be the lucky one, she’d survive. The emotions boiling up inside her now would not make it any better for those she’d lost.

The professor just stared at Kris.

Jack stepped in. “Jacques had a good question. Do you have any evidence at this time of an outgassing from this planet being left in its orbit? If there was water, air, and other material on that planet, it had to go somewhere.”

The professor nodded. “We do have some evidence that this particular area of space is rich in nitrogen, oxygen, water vapors, and carbon compounds, including amino acids. We wanted to check these out on our approach to orbit before we said anything, though. I mean, why would anyone scatter this planet’s, ah, lifeblood, so wastefully?”

That left the room in a dead silence.

“When the Romans conquered Carthage, they sowed the ground with salt so that it could not grow anything and never recover from the defeat,” Nelly said, and fell silent.

“If someone really hated the people of another planet,” Penny said slowly. “If they wanted to make sure life never grew up again on a planet, they’d take away the air, water, everything. They’d pound it to a pulp, and they wouldn’t care where what they ripped off went.”

“Maybe that was the intent all along,” Jacques said. “Waste it. Waste them. Throw it away. Let nothing of it enter their own living cycles.”

“Hatred that hot and that deep is . . .” Kris said. “But then, we’ve seen what they took from other planets.”

“And killed everything that lived there,” Penny said, slowly eyeing the screen that showed the planet they were approaching. “Could it have started here?”

“I doubt if we will ever know for sure,” Jacques said, “but the more we know, the better educated our guesses will be.”