On fiction: Rendezvous with NECA pt. 6
"This is of course merely a hypothesis, but ... let's observe two things. One, all of the corpses inside NECA are intact, whereas our colleague Hendrix was found in pieces. Two, despite our persistent tresspassing, the NECAns have yet to make an appearance."
Ballard pauses for dramatic effect. Bit of an inappropriate time for didactic showmanship, but the pause contains a hint of the direction his idea goes in.
"Unless, of course, we have met the NECAns already," he says. "The crystals."
She scoffs. "Now whose ideas are fanciful."
"Granted, it's a strange thought, but let's consider it. You have noticed how the crystals are rather odd in what they choose to grow on. They are at once very adaptable, but also rather discerning."
"That doesn't make them intelligent."
"No, just strange. NECA itself is strange. Look around, does any of this seem to have been designed with something we'd recognize as alive in mind? We've seen nothing that looks like a habitat, or a stasis chamber, or anything to pass for life support apart from the air, there's nothing that looks like machinery of any kind, no modules, no storage, moving around is an awkward wading through a maze of ledges, and that airlock we passed through would be useless for just about any ship. Hey, right here around us we have all kinds of things that look like they were alive and thinking once. Can you imagine any of these life forms calling this place home?"
Silence.
"So I think," he continues, "that we can agree the NECAns, whatever they happen to be, are even stranger than the beings we see in this room."
"Let's assume then," the captain says, "that the crystals are the NECAns. What would that mean?"
"I believe, in a way, Ms. Evans is right. The ship is indeed bait. But what does a species really want, if it has gone through the trouble to build for itself an interstellar starship?"
"A home," she says.
"Yes. A new home. For whatever reason, the crystals need something alive- or somehow similar to alive- to grow on. They need a way to study the biosphere of a potential home planet. They could descend on the planet and do their study there, but it may be too dangerous to just rush inside the lion's mouth, as it were. Better to have a sample of that biosphere come to them first. It will be the part of the biosphere that can build spaceships. It will be the part that will put up the most purposeful resistance."
"Oh my God. They're studying us."
"Are you suggesting," the captain asks, "that the destruction of our radiotransmitter was a sabotage by these NECAns?"
"I would not conjecture that yet. They, assuming the crystals are the NECAns, might not recognize the purpose of our transmitter. But they might recognize it as technology, and thus worthy of study. As to why Hendrix was in pieces and these beings here are not, well, I assume the crystals eventually become more adapted to the peculiarities of the biologies they invade."
"What if the biology is incompatible? They must have passed by dozens of star systems by now," she says.
"I wouldn't believe the homeworlds of the beings we see here were safe. Not all of NECA needs to stop by a planet. All it needs is to dump some small module containing the germs of an invasion. If well prepared, that germ will take over the planet while NECA moves on."
Silence descends on the party of astronauts once more.
"It's only a hypothesis," Ballard says, "indeed I can see several holes in it ..."
Torchlights flicker over the crystallized giant mantises. Nobody seems particularly confident to pick his hypothesis apart.
"All right. We have three hours of air left before we need to return to the ship," the captain says. "I want that device removed from the crystals. I want those things-" he points to the starfish and its broken millipede robot- "broken free too. Anything that looks like a device we can carry, we'll break out of the walls. I want pieces of walls too if we can get them. And we'll take as much as we can break and carry to NECA's airlock."
He looks around, wide eyed, and there is a slight tremor in his voice. "I am not sure I believe you, Doctor Ballard. I certainly do not want to. But if what you suggest is true, then we will need all the data we can gather on our enemy. Ship crew, start preparing a containment area for the NECA samples. Assume they are intelligent and hostile. We want to keep them under control, and reveal as little of ourselves as possible."
She frowns. "If the crystals are intelligent, they must communicate with each other, somehow."
"That would be a test for a part of my hypothesis, yes."
"And once we're back at our ship, it will be the first question we'll look into," the captain says.
A punishing couple of hours follows as the crew works hard to pry a few items from the crystals' grasp, the effort made worse by the skipped heartbeats after every blow and every drill. What if something changes? What if ... they ... realize what the humans are up to? Apart from racking of nerves however, nothing seems to happen as the astronauts fill the transporters with a crystallized starfish, fragments from the mantis' last box and a part from one's chest armor, a couple wall fragments and a few other odds and ends.
She notices Ballard sneak away into a corner every once in a while and by the third time, she takes a longer look. A yellow flicker of light reflects from his watch reflects on his visor; it seems to be a sequence of short and long blips- Morse code? She can't quite make out what it says; it seems as if the letters -RRING show up, before she decides to look away and act like nothing happened. The shade of the yellow impulses reminds her of the will-o-wisps they saw on the first incursion inside NECA; there never were any wisps in this room, she notices. Indeed, they haven't seen one at all today, once Ballard told them to take the other passage.
She almost laughs at herself. It looks like she's turning into Gubarev. It's the place they are in, filled as it is with death immortalized, it has a tendency to play tricks on one's mind.
One hour of air left before the suits' CO2 scrubbers need to work overtime, the captain orders them to return to the ship. For once, she has to carry nothing on the way up- the captain volunteered to carry two transporters, despite her protests. Must be a cultural thing, but no need here to prove to him that she can handle transporters both ways. As the crewmember with the most experience in rope ascension techniques however, she insists to go last.
"We'll wait for you at the top of the rope," the captain says.
"No, I'll meet you at the airlock. It's not far away, and I noticed some crystal growth on the comm relays. Since I have nothing to carry, I'll take care of that."
But while, after her turn to ascend comes, she does spend a few seconds checking on the four relays, all of which she can see from her spot a few steps beside the belay anchors, her real reason for lagging behind is different. At the top of the rope, she looks towards the airlock. For now, there's no one around her. She goes in the opposite direction, along the path they followed on the first incursion. A couple of wisps float in the air in front of her. One flickers- short, short, long. A few moments later, the other bumps into a wall twice, then grazes against it.
She catches the first wisp, and it blips twice in her hand. The first attempt to catch the other fails, she needs to try again before she has both wisps close at hand. An idea flashes through her mind- if only she had a coin.
One of the comm relays she carries, with its small, disc shape, might work as a substitute. Eyes closed, she tosses it spinning into the air and then grabs it between her palms. The rounder surface touches her right. Call that heads. A few more tosses seem random enough. She tells herself "heads" will be a long flicker, and "tails" a short pulse.
Short pulse on one wisp. She tosses the relay. Tails. Eyebrow raised, she gives the other wisp a short tap. Short pulse again. The toss is again tails. Another tap. Long pulse. Heads. Short pulse. Tails. Long pulse. Heads. Long pulse. Heads again. Long pulse. Heads. Unerring.
-"Is everything all right Dr. Evans?"-
"Yes, captain, I will be with you shortly," she says, trying hard to conceal her excitement.
The wisps can send signals back in time.
What did Ballard call them? He seemed to have said, "will-ve-wisps" when he first saw them. "Will-have" wisps? Wisps to show one what will have happened? She'd groan, but the others might listen on the comm. Carefully, she takes a small sample jar from another pocket and places the two wisps inside.
He knows. He knows what the wisps can do, yet told no one. There's something else going on here that needs investigating; better not let him realize she's on to him. Sample jar tucked safely in her pocket, she gives the area a casual strobe with her torchlight. A cluster of iridescent reflections on the wall catches her eye, and she approaches. It's a comm relay. Not among those she left. Hendrix must have put it in.
His fifth. The other four are in the corridor towards the airlock. He had used all five he carried.
"I'm coming up, captain," she says.
Ballard pauses for dramatic effect. Bit of an inappropriate time for didactic showmanship, but the pause contains a hint of the direction his idea goes in.
"Unless, of course, we have met the NECAns already," he says. "The crystals."
She scoffs. "Now whose ideas are fanciful."
"Granted, it's a strange thought, but let's consider it. You have noticed how the crystals are rather odd in what they choose to grow on. They are at once very adaptable, but also rather discerning."
"That doesn't make them intelligent."
"No, just strange. NECA itself is strange. Look around, does any of this seem to have been designed with something we'd recognize as alive in mind? We've seen nothing that looks like a habitat, or a stasis chamber, or anything to pass for life support apart from the air, there's nothing that looks like machinery of any kind, no modules, no storage, moving around is an awkward wading through a maze of ledges, and that airlock we passed through would be useless for just about any ship. Hey, right here around us we have all kinds of things that look like they were alive and thinking once. Can you imagine any of these life forms calling this place home?"
Silence.
"So I think," he continues, "that we can agree the NECAns, whatever they happen to be, are even stranger than the beings we see in this room."
"Let's assume then," the captain says, "that the crystals are the NECAns. What would that mean?"
"I believe, in a way, Ms. Evans is right. The ship is indeed bait. But what does a species really want, if it has gone through the trouble to build for itself an interstellar starship?"
"A home," she says.
"Yes. A new home. For whatever reason, the crystals need something alive- or somehow similar to alive- to grow on. They need a way to study the biosphere of a potential home planet. They could descend on the planet and do their study there, but it may be too dangerous to just rush inside the lion's mouth, as it were. Better to have a sample of that biosphere come to them first. It will be the part of the biosphere that can build spaceships. It will be the part that will put up the most purposeful resistance."
"Oh my God. They're studying us."
"Are you suggesting," the captain asks, "that the destruction of our radiotransmitter was a sabotage by these NECAns?"
"I would not conjecture that yet. They, assuming the crystals are the NECAns, might not recognize the purpose of our transmitter. But they might recognize it as technology, and thus worthy of study. As to why Hendrix was in pieces and these beings here are not, well, I assume the crystals eventually become more adapted to the peculiarities of the biologies they invade."
"What if the biology is incompatible? They must have passed by dozens of star systems by now," she says.
"I wouldn't believe the homeworlds of the beings we see here were safe. Not all of NECA needs to stop by a planet. All it needs is to dump some small module containing the germs of an invasion. If well prepared, that germ will take over the planet while NECA moves on."
Silence descends on the party of astronauts once more.
"It's only a hypothesis," Ballard says, "indeed I can see several holes in it ..."
Torchlights flicker over the crystallized giant mantises. Nobody seems particularly confident to pick his hypothesis apart.
"All right. We have three hours of air left before we need to return to the ship," the captain says. "I want that device removed from the crystals. I want those things-" he points to the starfish and its broken millipede robot- "broken free too. Anything that looks like a device we can carry, we'll break out of the walls. I want pieces of walls too if we can get them. And we'll take as much as we can break and carry to NECA's airlock."
He looks around, wide eyed, and there is a slight tremor in his voice. "I am not sure I believe you, Doctor Ballard. I certainly do not want to. But if what you suggest is true, then we will need all the data we can gather on our enemy. Ship crew, start preparing a containment area for the NECA samples. Assume they are intelligent and hostile. We want to keep them under control, and reveal as little of ourselves as possible."
She frowns. "If the crystals are intelligent, they must communicate with each other, somehow."
"That would be a test for a part of my hypothesis, yes."
"And once we're back at our ship, it will be the first question we'll look into," the captain says.
A punishing couple of hours follows as the crew works hard to pry a few items from the crystals' grasp, the effort made worse by the skipped heartbeats after every blow and every drill. What if something changes? What if ... they ... realize what the humans are up to? Apart from racking of nerves however, nothing seems to happen as the astronauts fill the transporters with a crystallized starfish, fragments from the mantis' last box and a part from one's chest armor, a couple wall fragments and a few other odds and ends.
She notices Ballard sneak away into a corner every once in a while and by the third time, she takes a longer look. A yellow flicker of light reflects from his watch reflects on his visor; it seems to be a sequence of short and long blips- Morse code? She can't quite make out what it says; it seems as if the letters -RRING show up, before she decides to look away and act like nothing happened. The shade of the yellow impulses reminds her of the will-o-wisps they saw on the first incursion inside NECA; there never were any wisps in this room, she notices. Indeed, they haven't seen one at all today, once Ballard told them to take the other passage.
She almost laughs at herself. It looks like she's turning into Gubarev. It's the place they are in, filled as it is with death immortalized, it has a tendency to play tricks on one's mind.
One hour of air left before the suits' CO2 scrubbers need to work overtime, the captain orders them to return to the ship. For once, she has to carry nothing on the way up- the captain volunteered to carry two transporters, despite her protests. Must be a cultural thing, but no need here to prove to him that she can handle transporters both ways. As the crewmember with the most experience in rope ascension techniques however, she insists to go last.
"We'll wait for you at the top of the rope," the captain says.
"No, I'll meet you at the airlock. It's not far away, and I noticed some crystal growth on the comm relays. Since I have nothing to carry, I'll take care of that."
But while, after her turn to ascend comes, she does spend a few seconds checking on the four relays, all of which she can see from her spot a few steps beside the belay anchors, her real reason for lagging behind is different. At the top of the rope, she looks towards the airlock. For now, there's no one around her. She goes in the opposite direction, along the path they followed on the first incursion. A couple of wisps float in the air in front of her. One flickers- short, short, long. A few moments later, the other bumps into a wall twice, then grazes against it.
She catches the first wisp, and it blips twice in her hand. The first attempt to catch the other fails, she needs to try again before she has both wisps close at hand. An idea flashes through her mind- if only she had a coin.
One of the comm relays she carries, with its small, disc shape, might work as a substitute. Eyes closed, she tosses it spinning into the air and then grabs it between her palms. The rounder surface touches her right. Call that heads. A few more tosses seem random enough. She tells herself "heads" will be a long flicker, and "tails" a short pulse.
Short pulse on one wisp. She tosses the relay. Tails. Eyebrow raised, she gives the other wisp a short tap. Short pulse again. The toss is again tails. Another tap. Long pulse. Heads. Short pulse. Tails. Long pulse. Heads. Long pulse. Heads again. Long pulse. Heads. Unerring.
-"Is everything all right Dr. Evans?"-
"Yes, captain, I will be with you shortly," she says, trying hard to conceal her excitement.
The wisps can send signals back in time.
What did Ballard call them? He seemed to have said, "will-ve-wisps" when he first saw them. "Will-have" wisps? Wisps to show one what will have happened? She'd groan, but the others might listen on the comm. Carefully, she takes a small sample jar from another pocket and places the two wisps inside.
He knows. He knows what the wisps can do, yet told no one. There's something else going on here that needs investigating; better not let him realize she's on to him. Sample jar tucked safely in her pocket, she gives the area a casual strobe with her torchlight. A cluster of iridescent reflections on the wall catches her eye, and she approaches. It's a comm relay. Not among those she left. Hendrix must have put it in.
His fifth. The other four are in the corridor towards the airlock. He had used all five he carried.
"I'm coming up, captain," she says.
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