3: Below Deck
Miriam watched Mickey hurriedly switch between views from various SADEs, as they descended below the console. She noted his elevated biorhythms, and sent, <You’ll get your opportunity, Mickey. Be patient.>
Mickey sighed heavily. For a moment, the excitement of Kasie’s discovery had him regretting his stricture to limit humans in the dome’s investigation. However, Miriam was right. There would be time and opportunity to be involved in the development of the gates. Right now, the next steps could be extremely dangerous.
Alliance races had donated operating credits to the outpost, which paid for many of the alien members working aboard the station. So, while Pyreans and Earthers along with select individuals were linked to the outpost’s controller to view the proceedings, individuals without implants were glued to monitors.
Mickey had anticipated the discovery of a compact single support level below the deck. He was amazed at the extent of his estimate’s error.
At the bottom of the ramp, Luther stopped, and his eyes recorded a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the cavernous space for his audience. His visual’s final position showed steps descending another level.
Engineers par excellence, Mickey thought with admiration and a touch of envy. With time, energy, and SADEs, we’ll emulate your work, was his next thought.
Edmas and Kasie couldn’t help their tendencies to edge closer to the stairwell. They approached the steep end to show the SADEs that they didn’t intend to descend. Compared to Luther’s location, their views were disappointing.
<Commander, I need to join Luther,> Kasie sent. <This is only the first step in a successful investigation, and my standing on the deck with Edmas is only unnecessarily delaying the successive steps that we must take.>
<Well phrased,> Lucia commented privately to Jess and Mickey.
<And professional,> Jess added, noting his sister’s use of his title.
<You don’t need to say it, Commander,> Mickey replied. <She’s right. I’m just trying to be cautious.>
<Mickey, if there was a problem, wouldn’t the Messinants have crafted some way of warning the engineers on-site?> Lucia sent, returning to the conference link.
<Perceptive of you, Admiral,> Miriam sent. <Luther, the SADEs on the deck must watch the panels for any anomaly. There is the possibility of a warning. In that case, evacuation of nearby space must be immediate ... humans’ objections notwithstanding.>
<Kasie and Edmas, we’ve decided to support your request to descend,> Jess sent. <However, the same admonishment applies. Look, but don’t touch unless you clear it with Luther.>
Kasie heard the last segment of Jess’s sending, while she raced below.
The audience had a view from Edmas of Kasie’s hair bouncing, as she disappeared down the steps. Then they heard Edmas chuckle, before he muttered an elongated, “Ahhh.”
<Kasie!> Edmas grumbled, sending a warning. His mind had been assaulted by her joy.
<Sorry,> Kasie returned, as she clamped her gates closed.
<Kasie, you need to exhibit greater control,> Jess admonished privately.
<I said I was sorry,> Kasie shot back. When her brother remained silent, Kasie realized she’d crossed the line. <Understood,> she sent. Then she made an effort to keep her gates shuttered.
The artificial cavern was a study in an interrupted engineering project, awaiting its next iteration.
<Observe,> Luther sent. <I’m showing the existing platform and gate system.>
The SADE shifted his gaze from overhead, where a circular base funneled into the broad opening of a cone. The material appeared to be made of a milky-white translucent ceramic. The cone narrowed to twenty centimeters. Then it entered the lower deck.
<Now observe,> Luther instructed, and he slowly panned around, eyeing the deck.
<The platforms are here. They’re ready to be installed,> Kasie said excitedly, while intent on not releasing her emotions.
Knowing Mickey’s question, Edmas examined the overhead. There were no indications of potential openings above for the five gates that sat on the deck on which they stood.
Miriam directed a SADE to focus on the overhead, and the image magnification revealed subtle circular etchings in the metal.
<The Messinant engineers intended to cut openings as they needed them,> Mickey surmised.
<With what?> Edmas asked, gazing around the deck.
<When necessary, the engineers might have brought the equipment to the dome,> Miriam offered.
<Then again, we might find it below,> Edmas sent, eyeing the stairs leading below. He caught Kasie staring down those same stairs, and he waved a finger in admonishment.
<No other devices or equipment are in evidence, Mickey, other than the five waiting platforms,> Luther sent, after the SADEs made a rigorous scan of the deck.
<Then it’s time to investigate the next level down,> Kasie volunteered hopefully.
<Before that happens,> Mickey sent, <I want to run some tests. First, I’m requesting a surface test of the ceramic funnel, if it appears safe.>
A SADE hurried to the gate deck, snatched a device, and returned below. She pressed the piece of equipment to the ceramic funnel, and the molecular composition was recorded.
<What next, Mickey?> Luther asked.
<Place a recording device on the stairs, facing the existing funnel, Luther,> Mickey directed. <Then evacuate the lower deck and send something through the gate. I want a recording of the energy moving through that funnel.>
<Negative, Mickey,> Jess sent suddenly. <Nothing wrong with the idea of your recording, but a SADE must journey. Otherwise the object sitting on the far platform will block their exit from the dome.>
Mickey was briefly chagrined that he’d forgotten that point. He’d been too focused on the investigation and had made the mistake of micromanaging. Request the tests, and let others decide how to execute them, he thought.
Humans and SADEs climbed the stairs, and a single SADE returned and set a recording device on the steps.
When everyone was on the gate deck, Edmas and the SADEs stared at Kasie.
<What?> Kasie queried.
<Kasie, to observe safety precautions,> Luther sent, <we’ll want the console opening closed.>
“Oh,” Kasie muttered. Then she carefully edged around the open stairway to stand at the console. She felt Edmas’ hand on the small of her back to prevent her from stepping backward.
<Could it be as simple as repeating the same process?> Edmas offered.
<That was my thought too,> Kasie replied.
They touched the primary and secondary control panels in the same two-step process as before and were rewarded with the large window popping up. Edmas placed his hand in the second panel’s window, and then Kasie repeated the operation in her primary panel.
A glyph appeared on the primary panel. It was abruptly replaced by a second symbol, and then a third appeared.
<Countdown,> Kasie sent, and Edmas and she edged out of the way.
When the glyph countdown finished, the console slid in place.
<Instructive,> Luther sent. <Now we have an indication of a timing sequence of a Messinant countdown.>
A SADE leapt on the platform, and Kasie sent him on his journey. In less than a minute, he returned.
As the dome’s blue light faded, Kasie nodded at Edmas, and the pair repeated their discovery, uncovering the stairsteps.
The SADE who’d set the recording device descended, grabbed it, and returned to the upper deck. She signaled the device to play and allowed the vid to stream to the wider audience.
As the audience of engineers expected, the ceramic material funneled the energy from beneath the lower deck to the platform. The instrumentation was unable to detect the nature of the
energy, but it was presumed to be similar to what had been recorded by the SADEs on the platform deck.
<Any dangerous leakage?> Mickey requested.
<None detected,> Luther replied, after examining the recording’s data.
<Of course not,> Mickey replied, his frustration leaking. <We couldn’t expect the Messinants to construct something that slipshod.>
Humans on the conference link and who were in Mickey’s presence hid their grins and smiles.
<Now can we check out the next level?> Kasie sent plaintively.
After permission was given, Kasie was disappointed to find the strictures were still in place. The humans were blocked, as the SADEs made their way below.
<Kasie and Edmas, you may descend,> Luther sent, <but you must stop at the first landing.>
Kasie hurried below, and Edmas swiftly followed, both of them stopping where instructed.
The staircase didn’t stop at the first landing. It continued to switch back, dropping nearly forty meters.
As the SADEs descended, their activity tripped illumination that sprang from the cavern’s walls, much as the glyphs lit the corridors. Of course, the color was blue.
Huge structures rose tens of meters high from the base of the giant space. An open lift was attached to the overhead, ran beside the stairs, and reached the depth below. Obviously, it was meant to haul engineers, heavy equipment, and cargo.
Edmas signaled the audience to watch his view. He looked overhead and scanned six umbilical lines that connected under the platforms on the deck above. Then he followed one of the flexible tubes to a central power plant that resided on the deck below. The power plant’s spherical shape gave the SADEs the idea that magnetics were used to contain the energy’s force.
Luther’s view scanned the periphery below. Large cylinders reached halfway to the overhead. <Pastes, water supply, air filtration, and water reclamation, to name several, I would hypothesize,> the SADE observed.
<Is there another level farther down?> Kasie asked.
<It’s not immediately evident,> Luther replied. His view was of the bottom of the stairs that ended at the deck level. <There might be another access point.>
On Luther’s signal, the other SADEs fanned out to search for an access to a deeper level. Meanwhile, Luther approached the power plant. It was an enormous sphere.
Luther ran diagnostics on the information his sensors received. That data was carefully monitored by the engineering teams.
<Magnetic field detected,> Miriam commented. <Consensus is that the energy source is antimatter.>
<Technology we don’t possess,> Mickey lamented.
<How do you investigate an active power supply?> Jess asked Mickey privately.
<Carefully ... oh, so carefully,> Mickey replied.
Mickey’s response didn’t give Jess any comfort. In the planning stages, he’d presumed that the SADEs would attempt to investigate the power supply remotely. Thereby reducing the exposure to danger. It wasn’t long before he’d been disabused of that idea.
A thought occurred to Lucia, and she chose Miriam to ask. <Miriam, this is a private conversation.>
<Understood, Admiral,> Miriam replied.
<Suppose that there’s an accident during the investigation of the power supply. Could it result in some sort of catastrophic feedback to the connecting dome?> Lucia sent.
<There are two reasons that the SADEs calculate that the possibility is near zero,> Miriam replied. <From a simple technical perspective, we believe that the gates would have to be connected at the time for the disruption to occur. Meaning, that a gate was firing and connecting to the distant dome when the magnetic field containing the supply’s core collapsed. For another reason, it’s our consideration that the sophisticated level of Messinant engineering would have precluded this possibility.>
<What if it is as Kasie says that the Messinants would use this circumstance as a way of teaching upstart races a lesson?> Lucia asked.
<That’s why our conjecture doesn’t reach zero,> Miriam replied. She halted her desire to voice her amusement. The subject was too serious for humans.
Lucia shared her conversation with Jess, which only added to his concerns for his sister. He was a believer in Kasie’s interpretation of the nature of Messinants. They’d had too much proof of that already. The alliance races, except for humans, were biological experiments. Nothing more than that to the exalted Messinants.
<What’s next, Mickey?> Jess asked on the conference link.
<We have to find the equipment that installs a platform, or we have to devise a device to do it,> Mickey replied. <Then we would have to actually install a platform.>
<Here,> a SADE sent, and all eyes picked up on the SADE’s view.
Unlike the uppermost deck and the corridors, which were covered with glyphs and tests to the races, there were few glyphs in these two levels beneath the console.
The SADE had used a glyph to open a door, which recessed much as those that hid the dorm rooms. An entire space lit, revealing shelves of supplies on one side of a deep room and cabinets along the other side.
<The analysis of these articles and equipment will take some time,> Luther sent.
Edmas leaned toward Kasie and whispered, “That’s code for humans will become bored while the SADEs work.”
“I recognized it,” Kasie commented. “Do you want to wait here or get some paste?” she asked.
“I don’t know how you can continue to eat that stuff over a period of many cycles,” Edmas replied, shuddering at the thought.
“Priorities,” Kasie said. “I eat it as quickly as possible so that I can get back to work. So, staying or going?”
“If you’re staying, you might need me,” Edmas replied, indicating with a thumb toward the console above.
“Then let’s break for a midday meal and some rest,” Kasie offered. She signaled Luther, and the pair climbed the stairs to the surface.
While the SADEs conducted an inventory of the treasure trove of material they’d found, most humans aboard the outpost fell off the conference link and went about their assignments. Mickey, Jess, and Lucia stayed and watched the SADEs examine and test pieces of equipment and investigate supplies.
To humans, the failure to understand the purpose of an item was frustrating. To the SADEs, it was about collecting data. Eventually, the purposes would be revealed.
A SADE opened a heavy crate that required three SADEs to pull off a shelf. The SADE imaged the contents and created a potential assembly.
<The pieces create a circle equivalent to a platform’s dimension,> Miriam noted.
<Luther, take the crate to the level above and assemble the pieces,> Mickey requested.
While SADEs closed the crate, hoisted it, and carried it to the stairs, Luther examined the open lift. Several glyphs were evident on a small panel that stood on a pole a meter-and-a-half above the base. The glyphs weren’t found in the SADEs’ assembled Messinant lexicon.
What gave Luther a hint of the operational choices was that one glyph on the panel was brighter than the other two.
Under Luther’s direction, the SADEs loaded the crate on the platform and climbed on. When Luther joined them, he touched the bright glyph. The lift rose swiftly and silently before it came to a halt next to the stairway’s first landing. From there, the SADEs carried the crate to the next level.
<Either the Messinants were extremely strong, or they had an easy means of transport,> Lucia sent. <Could they have had grav technology?>
<We’ve seen no evidence of it,> Mickey replied.
<The Messinants might not have wanted any evidence of their advanced technology falling into the hands of their experiments,> Jess suggested. <Consider the thought that alliance space was their laboratory, and the emerging races were never meant to join them.>
While humans conversed, they kept an eye on the SADEs assembling the crate’s contents. Four arcs of metal rings easily assembled to complete a circle.
Luther examined the
finished ring. Then he walked to a platform that lay on the deck. This unit was located sixty degrees clockwise from the active gate.
<Our assembled device fits over a platform’s outer edge,> Luther reported.
The SADEs hoisted the ring, walked it to the platform where Luther stood, and fitted it over the platform.
Mickey was about to ask how the device would be powered, when abruptly the edge of the assembled ring lit with blue light. Then the platform rose in the air.
<Automated installation,> Luther commented.
When the ring reached the overhead, the blue light glowed brightly and cut through the metal alloy of the gate deck. Then the combined installation returned to the lower deck, and the ring’s light extinguished.
<Remove the device,> Luther instructed the SADEs.
As soon as the cutting device cleared the platform, it rose again. The platform sealed to the upper deck, and the hoist lowered. When the hoist collapsed to the deck, it sunk farther, and disappeared as a cover slid over it.
<Discovering a step seems to be the hard part,> Jess commented. <After it’s known, the process appears entirely self-installing.>
<Agreed,> Mickey replied. <We can initiate another gate at the linked dome. Then we’ll probably need Kasie and Edmas to discover how to link the two gates.>
<That process might require two humans at each dome,> Miriam offered.
<I’ll stage a Trident and equivalent comm devices at the other dome,> Lucia sent, as she made arrangements to make it happen.
A second Trident had waited in the system occupied by Luther. It accelerated, dropped below the ecliptic, deployed its interstellar drive, and shot forward toward a transit. It would deploy a traveler, a group of SADEs, and comm relay devices at the second or target dome.
<We need two human volunteers,> Jess noted.
<One more,> Jodlyne corrected. <I’m preparing to leave for the second dome.>
Lucia chuckled. She had a view of Jess’s face. Jodlyne’s announcement was unequivocal, and Jess was at a loss for a response, as was Mickey.