Starfire & Snowball Page 4

  The display showed a metal object lying on the lunar dust, smooth-surfaced and showing little detail, roughly rectangular with a narrow wedge cut out of one end, splitting the object for nearly half its length. A smaller, rounded rectangle protruded from one side just beyond the slot, and the end had a small rounded projection centered on it; the sides of the object, and the projection on the end, were straighter, forming a right angle to the top surface. Near this object stood a larger, thin flat metal plate with row of markings on it. The patterns of markings were similar to markings they’d seen on other equipment, probably a written language of some kind.

  “Do you suppose this could be a model of one of them, like a doll or effigy? If it were stood up on the two ends of this bifurcation . . .”

  “That would put the smaller knob on top—a convenient spot for a visual sensory cluster. But it has no manipulative appendages, no arms or tentacles.”

  “It’s stylized, or perhaps they extrude from the body.”

  “In a space suit?” he inclined his head no.

  * * *

  LifeSeeker’s longboat, on the planet

  Radar analysis of the planet from orbit had revealed an important clue. The outlines of landmasses under the ice bore a resemblance to the odd shapes which had been inscribed in circles on the plaques found on the legs of several of the octagons. Those circles must have been representations of the beings’ home planet. The shapes were only an approximate match, which caused some confusion until Climatologist reminded them to account for a drop in the ocean levels as ice accumulated on land. Adjusting for that, the match was nearly exact. More evidence that the moon explorers had come from this planet, and it had frozen over since.

  The longboat settled on its landing gear on a smooth plain of ice, near the original shoreline in the equatorial zone.

  “Are you sure we’re on the landward side of the original ocean level?” Planetologist asked Pilot. ”We want what would have been dry land when the glaciation started, not ocean sediments.”

  “If your estimates are correct, then so is our position. But I can move further inland if you wish.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” He turned to help Drill Technician with his suit. Once sealed up, they airlocked out onto the icy surface and prepared to set up the equipment a few hands of arms away from the ship.

  A strong wind whistled down the icefield from the interior of the continent, picking up flakes of snow and ice, making the air sparkle sometimes under the nearly cloudless sky.

  “This is frustrating,” said Drill Technician, fumbling with the coupling to the laser head in his suit-gloved hands.

  “You could take your gloves off, the air is technically breathable,” replied Planetologist.

  “No thank you, I prefer my skin unfrozen, and I haven’t had feathers since childhood.” As with most of his species, the downy feathers which helped maintain body heat in infants had molted as he grew. “All right,” he said, snapping the last component in place, “we are ready to begin.”

  They stepped back to a safe distance and fired the drill. As the laser beam bit down into the ice, a plume of steam jetted out of the hole, freezing out as an icy cloud a a few bodylengths above them. After a short while, the plume started blowing smoke and dust fragments, and it hit bottom. The laser cut off.

  “How does the data look?” As the beam had been burning its way through the ice, sensitive instruments had been staring down its length and observing the plume. Variations in composition were analyzed. A complete stratigraphy of the borehole had already been recorded before the laser shut off.

  “Very good,” Planetologist answered, pulling data from the drill’s computer to his helmet’s screen display. “Look, we have banding, probably seasonal variations.” He touched some controls, running another analysis. “A count of 729 cycles, 729 of this planet’s years,” he said.

  “How many of ours?”

  “About 787, but that’s not allowing for whatever has worn off the top or melted out from the bottom, of course.”

  “On to the next location,” said Drill Technician resignedly. He began packing up the gear.

  * * *

  February 6, 1971 - Apollo 14 landing site, Fra Mauro Base

  Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell were near the end of their second and last walk on the Moon. As they discussed which pieces of equipment would be returned, and which would remain behind to save launch weight, Al picked up the handle of the rake-like contingency sample scoop, pulled a small metal object from a large pocket on the outside of his suit, and began assembling them.

  Mitchell was gathering film magazines together, there was one he didn’t think had been used. He called down to the CapCom in Houston. “Fred, magazine KK has never been used, is that right?”

  “Stand by.”

  Alan took the opportunity, and stepped in front of the TV camera, holding up the modified tool. “Houston, while you’re looking that up, you might recognize the handle of what I have in my hand. It just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it.” He held something up in his other hand. “In my left hand, I have a little white pellet, familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down.” The small ball dropped slowly to the dusty surface. He raised the makeshift club in his right hand, as best as the pressurized suit would allow. “The suit is so stiff, I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here.”

  The first swing struck the lunar soil short of the ball. Mitchell, looking on, said in an amused tone “You got more dirt than ball that time.”

  Shepard grinned to himself and acknowledged it. First golf swing on the Moon, and just dirt. “Here we go again,” he said, and swung. This time he connected, barely, and ball went off at an angle a few feet.

  Fred Haise’s voice came over the radio. “Looks like you sliced it, Al.”

  But Shepard was getting the hang of it now. He stepped up to the ball again. “Here we go. Straight as a die; one more.” The swing connected and the ball went off at a low angle, hard to see against the bright lunar surface. Twenty yards? He had one more ball, he could do better. He dropped the second ball and stepped over to it. This was it. He reached back, twisting and raising his arm as much as the suit would allow, and swung.

  The impact felt solid. The ball soared, a tiny white speck fading into the distance. He grinned. “Miles and miles and miles.”

  * * *

  LifeSeeker, near Surveyor Crater

  The Leader summoned his department heads together in the upper deck briefing room for an analysis of what they’d found., the snowball planet shining in half-phase through the overhead window.

  “Physics? Your analysis of the radioactive fuel?” That would give the most definitive dating.

  “The composition is consistent with the sample being originally nearly pure plutonium-238 oxide approximately 10.4 half-lives ago,” said Physicist, ”decaying primarily to uranium-234 oxide.”

  “Ten-point-four half-lives, making it?”

  “About 988 years, or 915 of this planet’s years old.”

  “Nearly a thousand years,” the Leader’s voice trailed off, thoughtful. “They were landing on their moon when we were inventing steam engines.” He pondered this a moment. What were the odds of the civilizations of two different stars developing the same technology almost simultaneously? No, that was premature, he knew little about their overall technology, nor how long it took them to get to this point. “What else?”

  Physicist showed images of a flat, square slab, it’s surface an array of hundreds of circles. He zoomed the image to reveal those to be a clear solid—sapphire, quartz, diamond, it wasn’t obvious which—with the back surface of each cut to a perfect cube corner. “These are retro-reflectors, they will return a light beam back in the same direction from which it came.”

  “Oriented to face the planet?”

  “Exactly. We believe their function was either to provide some way to precisely fix the position of the landi
ng site, or perhaps to allow extremely accurate measurements of the planet-moon distance. Either way you would need a beam of coherent light to reduce dispersion.”

  “A laser?”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, they had lasers, nuclear reactors, chemical rockets—surely nuclear rockets couldn’t be far behind. What else?”

  “We disassembled some of the instrumentation,” he gestured to a side table where various pieces of retrieved equipment, objects and samples were arrayed. “It’s electronic, at a relatively primitive state, but they had semiconductor technology and what we examined was structured in a way that shows they understood the underlying concepts, even if their fabrication techniques were crude.”

  “Implications?”

  “They had lasers, semiconductors and controlled nuclear reactions. But we found no evidence of gravitics—oh there’s what was a crude gravimeter, essentially weights on springs, but nothing comparable to their electronics.”

  “Still, whatever took them out must have happened quickly, almost as soon as they developed space travel.” Leader didn’t like the implications, it was too coincidental. Was there some outside force involved?

  The Planetologist spoke up. “No, Leader, it did not. Our surveys of the ice don’t agree with that.”

  “Oh?”

  “We cored down to rock surface, and counted seasonal layers. On average there were only 730, plus or minus a few. 730 revolutions of this planet, around 788 of our years. The glaciation happened nearly 200 years after the moon exploration.”

  “Perhaps it stopped snowing a while back.”

  Climatologist joined in. “No, the planet isn’t completely frozen over. There are areas near the equator where there’s open water, enough to allow precipitation, although much less than when this started. We also ran climate models—tricky, since we don’t know the exact starting conditions. The pictures on the plaques helped, giving us an idea of the sea level then, which lowered with the growth of the glaciers.”

  Another member of the planetary survey team spoke up. “We also found some satellites in high orbit which don’t seem to be as old as what was left here on the moon. We don’t know the exact cosmic ray flux here over the years, but the orbits were high enough that the planet’s magnetic field wouldn’t shield them much. The exposure rate would be similar to the rate here. We found satellites of different ages, some as old as the lunar gear, validating our method, and some as young as the probable onset of glaciation. Nothing more recent.”

  “And the glaciation? What caused it?”

  “Impact winter,” said Planetologist. “Things must have been near the tipping point, but a large meteor struck and threw up a huge cloud of debris, probably also starting global fires and raising intense smoke. That would block the sun, cooling the planet. Huge amounts of vaporized water would form clouds doing the same, and where that water fell as snow, the ice would build up. If the initial impact is sufficiently catastrophic, even a technological civilization, at least at the level we’ve seen, couldn’t cope.”

  “But that was two hundred years later. They had nuclear power. Space travel. They must have known how to build nuclear rockets. They had lasers. They were bold enough to send six vehicles and however many robots to this moon, and sent robots beyond their system. Look at where we are,” he gestured to indicate the landing site, “they could do pinpoint landings!” Leader stood up and started pacing. This was disturbing. “And they had two hundred years to improve their technology before the asteroid hit. We were starting to build starships by then! How does a spacefaring society let itself get wiped out by an asteroid?”

  “Perhaps . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Perhaps they weren’t really spacefaring. If this was a stunt, a single expedition?”

  “So much effort? And then throw it away? But they had the technology. Six landings, they had the desire. They had the knowledge—they must have known of the dangers of asteroids, all they had to do is look up at the craters on this moon to see that. No, we must be missing something. What sane species develops a capability and then ignores it?” The captain’s brow crest rippled with agitation.

  Nobody had an answer. The Leader paced, pausing by the sample table, looking vainly at the artifacts for an answer, but there was none.

  A small white sphere caught his eye. He picked it up, examining it. The surface of the white sphere was covered with small dimples, like little craters. Part of the white plastic covering was discolored, almost tanned, probably from the solar wind.

  “What’s this?”

  “We’re not sure, sir. We found it some distance from octagon three, the one with the two-wheeled cart. It was a chance find, there were no footprints or tracks leading up to it.”

  “Curious.” He held the ball out at arm’s length, then looked out the topside window at the planet overhead, itself a white sphere. In his hand, the small dimpled ball looked the same size as the planet, and nearly as white.

  His brow crest flattened. He shook his head and dropped the ball back on the table. He hated coincidences.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Author’s Introduction to “The Gremlin Gambit”

  The problem with writing stories that blur genre boundaries, as this one does between hard science fiction and high fantasy, is that editors don't know what to do with them. This story got a few friendly "not quite right for us" bounces from SF magazines before one editor suggested I try sending to to the webzine “MindFlights”, with his recommendation. They bought it and it appeared in September 2009. Thanks Johne!

  “The Gremlin Gambit” copyright ©2009 by Alastair Mayer

  THE GREMLIN GAMBIT

  by Alastair Mayer

  “Ma’am?” She looked almost young enough to be my daughter, if I’d had one—attractive, slim, barely up to my shoulder. The green hair was odd, especially here, but at least she was in civvies. “Nobody told me I had a visitor, who are you?” She had to belong on the base; this place—Air Force Flight Test Center, also known as Groom Lake, Area 51, and Neverland among others—has the tightest security in the United States. She’d been waiting in my office, green hair and all, when I got back from the briefing.

  “I’m here to offer our help against the attackers.”

  The briefing had been grim. An alien fleet had materialized well within the orbit of Saturn, in the constellation Eridanus. They knocked out half our meager—and secret—space forces and landed heavy hits on Earth before we knew what was happening. “Surprise attack” would be a massive understatement; for all the popular myths about this base, we didn’t even know there were alien lifeforms out there.

  “You can call me Titania,” she said.

  The name sounded Russian, but the Russians—and almost everyone else on the planet—were already helping. What was this? Another thought came to me and I made it a joke.

  “Titania as in Queen of the Fairies?”

  Her eyes flashed. I’d always thought that was just an expression but I’m sure I saw a glint of green. Then she grinned and the room seemed to brighten. “My grandmother, if you must know.”

  “Ha ha.” I thought she was playing along, but this really wasn’t the time for jokes.

  “Seriously,” she said.

  Okay, I had a nut case on my hands. I didn’t know how she’d gotten in but I reached for the phone to call Security. “Ma’am, I don’t have time for this, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  She stepped over and pushed the phone down into its cradle, her strength surprising me. She stared down at me.

  I’d been sure she was shorter when I first came in, and the green glimmer in her eyes was back. There was a strength here that I found strangely attractive.

  A hint of anger edged her voice. “No, you listen, Darling.”

  She wasn’t being familiar. That’s my name, General Darling.

  “We don’t have time for this. The Earth is our home too. It’s in danger. You need our help.”

  We need
ed all the help we could get. I still had no idea who she was or what was going on, but she was right. Hell, we all knew Earth was done for if we didn’t find some way to resist the Eridani.

  “But, but—” I hate when I stammer. “Who are you?”

  She sighed. “I told you. My name’s Titania, and yes, my grandmother is Queen of the Fairies. I’m a fairy.”

  I choked back my reply.

  “What, you were expecting some diminutive Barbie with a minidress, Wilma Flintstone hairdo and dragonfly wings?”

  I blushed. “Well, or perhaps butterfly wings.”

  “Disney has a lot to answer for. Okay, look, we’re wasting time, the second enemy fleet is on its way. If it takes a demonstration . . . .” She did something with her hands and the air around her sparkled, like the transporter effect from Star Trek, then she faded out and the sparkles condensed to a spot of light which hovered in the air above my desk, like ball lightning. It—she?—darted off and did a quick circuit of the office, buzzed me once, then dispersed into a cloud of sparkles again. Titania stood before me. “Convinced?”

  I couldn’t say anything. My mind kept looping on the audience response in the children’s play: “I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies.”

  I sat down, digesting this. “Okay, yes, I’m convinced.” There was still the Eridani. “How can fairies help?”

  “It’s not just us fairies. The rest of Earth’s magical folk are in the same danger, worse than anything you humans have done.” I must have winced at the word “magical”, because she paused and then said “Look, if it will make you feel any better, think of it as Arthurian magic.”

  “Arthurian? Merlin?”

  “Leave Great-Granddad out of this. No, silly. As in Arthur C. Clarke. ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’, Clarke’s Third Law.”

  “Oh.” That did make me feel better. “So you just showed me some very advanced technology.”