Cascade Point and Other Stories Part 5

I don't know how long I walked. The whole area was hilly and littered with rocks, and I was feeling pretty groggy as well, but I didn't fall over too often, and I always had the energy to get back up again. Still, my reflexes weren't as bad off as I feared, because when I topped that last rise and saw the s.p.a.cesuited figures not more than half a kilometer away, I managed to crouch down into a shadow without standing in plain sight for more than a couple of seconds.

There were four of them that I could see from my position. They didn't seem to have any mining equipment, but rather were poking at the ground with spades and long probes. I frowned to myself. Stark's men looking for new veins of ore? Or had I stumbled onto the wrong party completely?

There was no point in taking chances. I edged off to the left, intending to circle the group. With most of my attention on the others, it was not particularly surprising that I never saw the metal plate sticking out of the ground until I had tripped over it.

It says a lot for my mental state that I had rolled over and levered myself into a sitting position before it occurred to me to wonder what a metal plate was doing half-buried on the moon. Looking closer, I saw that the corner I had stumbled over was smooth-faced and was coppery silver in color. Only about thirty centimeters of the plate was visible, the rest being under the loose soil, and the edges I could see were ragged, as if the plate had been torn away from something else. Just at the corner was a mark of some kind etched into the surface. An identifying mark, perhaps, except it was like no letter or symbol I had ever seen.

Curiosity overcame my caution. Getting a good grip on the plate, I pried it upwards. It was a good four or five square meters in area, but the gravelly soil was loose and offered little resistance. I never got a real look at the underside of the plate, though, because something underneath it caught my eye. Something light yellow in color, about a meter long; with four arms, two legs, and an incredibly alien face...

"Okay, buddy, lift 'em."

I was halfway through my backward jump before I realized the voice had come through my headphones and not from the alien figure in front of me. Raising my arms, I slowly turned to face the figure striding toward me. His s.p.a.cesuit held the insignia of a Marine sergeant major, and his gun was holding very steadily on my middle. He gave me an appraising look, glanced at the alien I had uncovered, and nodded inside his helmet. "This is Conlin," his voice said in my ears. "I've got a snooper up on Hill Ten; I'm bringing him in. And we've got another body up here, too."

The major at field HQ decided to wait for higher authority to arrive before questioning me, and so I had to sit for an hour in a tiny office with two taciturn guards. They very obviously considered me a spy-my single attempt to ask a question made that quite clear-and I was almost relieved when my interrogators finally came. There were two of them: General Blaine and a grim-looking Colonel Stark. The latter nodded to the guards and waited until they were gone before speaking.

"Well, Morgan, just what in h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"What was that thing I saw on the hill?" I asked, ignoring his question.

"Look, mister, you're in enough trouble already," Stark gritted. "Answer my question."

I was too tired to fight him. "I thought you were trying to pull a fast one with the new iridium mine. I was trying to stop you."

"Iridium mine?" Blaine spoke up.

"There was a vein of ore opened up just before we found the wreckage, sir, but we haven't had time to work it at all. It's in my report."

"Oh, yes. Go on, Mr. Morgan."

I told them the whole story, from Louise Holst's first visit, through my contacts with Larry and Stark, to my panicky trip to the Mairan area. When I finished, Blaine turned to Stark.

"I think we'd better get Mrs. Holst up here as soon as possible," he said. "No telling who else she might go to with her fears."

Stark nodded. "I agree, sir." He glared at me. "No telling what kind of nut might listen to her, either."

"That's unfair, Colonel," I complained. "I told you the facts I had. What sort of conclusion did you expect me to come to?"

"No one asked you to draw any conclusions, as I recall," he snapped back.

"But you just had to play private eye and stick your nose where it didn't belong.

Now we've got to figure out what to do with you."

I didn't like the implications behind that, but curiosity was overriding all considerations of good sense. "You could start maybe by telling me what's going on out there."

"Forget it," Stark said darkly. "You know too much already."

"Look, Colonel, you can't leave me with half an answer like this. Lock me up, threaten me, shoot me if you have to, but tell me what the h.e.l.l that thing was."

"It was part of the wreckage of an alien s.p.a.ceship," Blaine said quietly. Stark looked at him in astonishment, but the general shrugged. "He's right, Avram. He has to know the whole story now. It's not like we can lock him away from everyone." To me he continued, "Colonel Stark's men ran across part of the ship and one of the alien bodies near the iridium vein you mentioned. Everyone who was near the site, whether he had actually seen it or not, was immediately sequestered and a security seal was slapped over everything and everyone involved. So far all we've found are bits and pieces that seem to be from the ship's hull and very small chunks of machinery and maybe electronics. Plus some bodies, as you already know."

"So why was Captain Holst so upset when I first contacted him?" I asked. "I remember distinctly the phrase 'he can't get away with it.' "

"Holst was violently opposed to the security measures we were taking," Stark said, clearly not happy at telling me all this but apparently willing to follow Blame's lead. "He thought more damage would be caused by a cover-up than by spilling all of it right away."

"I think he's right," I told him.

"Then think again," Stark shot back. Suddenly, through all his anger, I saw how worried he was. "You don't seem to realize how big a bomb we're sitting on here. If we don't announce this properly we could rip civilization apart. The whole world system has been balanced on a knife edge for the last century, and this is more than enough to bring it down. We simply cannot afford to let even a hint of this get out. Not yet."

"Nuts," I said. "Civilization isn't all that fragile. People aren't going to curl up and die just because you've found some chunks of metal and alien bodies...." I trailed off as an uncomfortable thought struck me. "You did say that's all you found, didn't you?"

Blaine nodded. "You see our problem now. The cultural effects will be bad enough, but the political ones will be even worse. So far we've found nothing that even looks like an alien weapon, let alone one that might still work. But will everyone believe that? I don't think so. And all it would take would be a single doubter, a single preemptive attack, to spark off a major war. Coupled with an unpredictable reaction from the general public over the discovery, that war might become this civilizations last."

It was an overly dramatic speech, but I hardly noticed. What he said made uncomfortable sense.

Blaine continued, "This is why we're asking for your cooperation. We have no idea yet where this ship came from, what it was doing here, or even how it crashed, and we need those answers long before we can start preparing the public-and foreign governments-for this shock. I might point out that Captain Holst came to this same conclusion once he had thought things through."

"We'll have your cooperation, too," Stark added. "Willing or otherwise.""Avram, your threats aren't going to work this time," Blaine said, looking suddenly tired and very old. "Mr. Morgan is a Dreamsender. You can't lock him away in Leavenworth and keep him from talking to anyone. If he won't go along, we've lost the war."

"Not necessarily, sir. There are many ways of destroying a man's memory. Or we could put him into a long-term coma if necessary."

"Save your breath, Colonel," I said. "I do have a working conscience, you know. No one will ever hear about this from me." The last statement was only probably true, of course. I still wasn't really happy with the whole idea of a cover- up, but there didn't seem to be a better alternative at this point and I was willing to go along with it for now. Whether the army would be a responsible guardian of the secret, though, was something else again, especially if they turned up anything of real military value. But now that I knew how much useful information could be gleaned from another's dreams, I felt sure I could keep tabs on major developments up here, and if someone got too far out of line I could always blow the whistle. But I obviously couldn't even hint at such threats. As long as I was a prisoner my bargaining power was just a fraction above absolute zero.

Either Stark read something in my face or he was just naturally distrustful. "I don't think we can afford to believe him, General. Once he's out of here there's nothing to stop him from calling anyone on Earth and spilling the whole story." He squared his shoulders. "I'm willing to take responsibility for his treatment, sir."

"Not so fast, Avram. Mr. Morgan could be of considerable service to us."

Blaine was giving me a very speculative look. "Mr. Morgan, you said you sent a dream from here back to Earth, correct? Was there anything unusual about that contact?"

I shrugged, wondering what he was getting at. "No, not really. It wasn't harder to make or maintain contact, if that's what you mean."

"Any unusual time delay between question and answer?"

"No. Not that I noticed, anyway."

Stark frowned. "But Earth's one and a quarter light-seconds away from here.

That means a two-and-a-half-second delay, round trip."

"It wasn't there," I told him.

"Which means dreamsending is very possibly instantaneous," Blaine said.

"And distance didn't seem to affect it."

Stark and I both stared at him. Then slowly, Stark nodded. "I think I understand, sir. But we'd need a name and face, wouldn't we?"

"I don't know. We're talking about a whole race, not a specific individual. It may be possible to get someone at random just by knowing what they look like generally."

"It's worth a try, certainly," Stark agreed.

"If it's not too much trouble," I cut in irritably, "would one of you mind telling me what you're talking about?"

They just looked at me... and suddenly I understood. "Oh, no. No. Forget it. I won't do it."

"Come now, Mr. Morgan," the general said soothingly, "we can at least discuss it, can't we?"

And in the end I gave in.

It's been nearly a year now, and I really have no complaints. I would have preferred being on Earth, but Blaine wanted everyone involved with the project kept isolated at the new base in Mairan Crater, himself the single exception. Still, my quarters are quite comfortable and I'm treated with the courtesy due me as the chief-and only member, so far-of the new Office of Alien Communication, so I suppose I'm doing pretty well.

My Seipaic contact, Garun'Sutt, has finally gotten over her original terror at my alien presence in her dreams and is beginning to consider our relationship something of an adventure. I suspect this is partly due to her governments interest in her communication with me and the resulting attention she gets from her people.

It's not everyone, after all, who can talk to an alien who's at least-we estimate- fifty light-years away. But whatever the reason, I'm not complaining. I'm still not sure why I always get her when I send out these dreams, though I suspect her face is just very similar to that of the first dead Seipai I saw. Since she seems to be my only contact I'm glad she's calming down. We've started exchanging factual data about our respective races, and are trying to figure out a way to locate each others planet. Blaine isn't absolutely sure that's a good idea, but I think that by the time we solve the problem I'll know Garun'Sutt and her people well enough to know if we can trust them. In fact, I'm secretly hoping the Seipai can get a ship here to visit us within my lifetime. The way Stark and his PR men are p.u.s.s.yfooting around the whole issue, I figure there's an even chance Earth won't hear about the Seipai until they actually drop anchor here.

And I'd love to be around to see the headlines that day.

Afterword.

To answer the standard question "Where do you get your ideas?" I got this one, appropriately enough, from a dream. Visiting my sister in California, I dreamed of a friend back home and tried to ask her a question. I woke up before she could answer, and dreamsending as a profession was born.

"The Dreamsender" was a bittersweet turning point in my life.

It was my second sale and therefore proof that I wasn't just a single- shot writer; but the word of its acceptance came the same July 1979 day that I learned my thesis adviser had suddenly died. The combination of these two events led, five months later, to my leaving physics entirely and striking out toward the quixotic goal of becoming a professional, living-wage-earning writer.

How much the fields of physics and science fiction have benefited from that decision I can't say. I do know, however, that I've certainly gained from the deal.

The Energy Crisis of 2215

Its birth had been in the fiery turbulence of the primordial explosion, and for the billions of years since then the tiny black hole had drifted quietly through the expanding universe. Not once in all that time had it found itself closer than half a light-year to any star, much less approaching to within a few million miles as it was doing now. But there is a first time for everything.

Never very large to begin with, the black hole had steadily been losing ma.s.s during its long lifetime, and its gravitational effects were virtually undetectable even tens of meters away. But the strange laws which governed its existence required that a decrease in ma.s.s be accompanied by an increase in effective temperature, and so the black hole was now radiating energy and particles as if it were at a quadrillion degrees. Without this power output it might have slipped unnoticed through the solar system; as things were, it hadn't a hope of doing so.

The black hole was just crossing the orbit of Saturn when it was first detected by a routine gamma-ray scan. Identification came soon afterwards; and on Earth, Luna, Ceres, Hestia, and the s.p.a.ce Colonies debates were soon raging as to what should be done about the intruder. A large body of opinion was for letting the black hole continue unmolested along its hyperbolic path, or possibly even a.s.sisting it on its way out of the system. But others saw a unique opportunity in the chance meeting, and their views eventually prevailed, though at the cost of bitter feelings and many broken friendships.

The preparations took even longer than the debates had, but finally all was ready, and on January 1, 2215, the first of four specially designed s.p.a.ce tugs matched orbits with the black hole and began pouring protons into it. As the intruders positive charge increased, the tugs used electric fields to nudge it from its original course and, eventually, into a stable orbit at one of the Earth-Luna Lagrangian points.

Project Firefly had begun.- Dr. Ray Carter, Director of the Firefly Project, ran his eyes over the bank of monitor screens that wrapped themselves around the main control board like a lucky horseshoe. The glance was pure reflex; everything had been ready for the past two hours and the only thing holding up the works now were the speeches still going on from the main auditorium. He felt no impatience, though; if turning Day One into a media event would help sell Firefly to the public, it had Carters blessing. Glancing around the room, Carter noticed a familiar figure staring out the port into the blackness outside. Walking carefully in his Velcro shoes, he joined the other. "You can't see it from here, Senator," he remarked by way of greeting.

Senator Chou didn't turn. "I know," he said, his voice carefully neutral.

Nodding toward the port, he continued, "It's two kilometers to the DeVega dipole accelerator platform, a hundred meters to the energy collector sphere, and another half kilometer to the black hole itself. And the whole thing a superbly engineered waste of money."

Carter winced slightly. Chou had always been one of the strongest opponents of Firefly, and Carter knew better than to try to argue with him. Apparently even coming over to say h.e.l.lo had been a mistake. "If you'll excuse me..."

Chou turned to face him. "Sorry. No real point in screaming about it now. But it wasn't necessary, you know. Fusion plants and solar power are quite adequate for Earths needs."

"For now, sure. But what about the future? Even at the present rate of increase we would have a hard time building enough fusion plants to supply our needs by the turn of the century."

"The sun will still be there."

"Sure will," Carter nodded. "And did you know you'd need a billion and a half square kilometers of solar collectors to generate as much power as Firefly will?

That's about three times the Earths surface area, I believe. Excuse me, please."

Carter went back to the control board, his annoyance at Chou evaporating quickly. Rossetti, chief operator, looked up. "The Secretary-General is just about finished, Doc," he said.

"Good. How are the collectors doing?"

"Seem to be okay. Firefly's throwing off a lot of particles, both charged and neutral, but most of them are being collected, or at least stopped. Efficiency for charges is hovering near eighty-five percent; heat exchangers about half that."

Carter nodded. Firefly-the black hole was almost universally called by the name of the project nowadays-was behaving as expected, losing its ma.s.s in a thermal spectrum that included both photons and subatomic particles. The fast- moving charged particles were no problem; a set of electromagnetic fields at the collector sphere slowed them down to safe speeds, simultaneously converting their kinetic energy into electric current. The X rays and neutral particles were captured by a special multicomponent liquid blanket, their energy absorbed as heat to be changed into electricity by more indirect means. And for the ultra-high-energy gamma rays that pa.s.sed through the collectors as if they were tissue paper, there were ten meters of shielding.

Pity we can't use the neutrinos, too, Carter thought wryly. Firefly's temperature, he noted, was still increasing, and he hoped the Secretary-General's speech wouldn't take much longer.

A yellow light flashed twice. They were ready in the auditorium. "Okay, Rossetti. Fire when ready."

"Aye, aye, Admiral." Rossetti's hands moved over the controls as Carter watched the indicators. Kilometers away, the three ma.s.sive DeVega accelerators came to life, sending narrow beams of neutrons directly into the tiny black hole.

Firefly's radiation levels jumped as the gravitational energy of the falling neutrons began to reach the collectors. Rossetti carefully adjusted the flux levels and Firefly's temperature began to stabilize.

"That's it, Doc," Rossetti said at last. "Total neutron flux about ten to the twenty-eighth per second; total Firefly luminosity one point six times ten to the eighteenth watts. Temperature holding near ten to the fifteenth degrees Kelvin.

We've got steady state and she's running like a champ."

A loud cheer erupted in the control room, echoed, no doubt, in the auditorium.

Someplace a cork popped loudly, accompanied by the steady hum of video cameras. Carter smiled for the reporters, his first real smile in weeks. After months of argument and backbreaking work, the closest thing to a total matter converter that mankind was ever likely to have was finally operational.

There were still things to be done, of course, but most of them were routine.

He would first have to give a statement to the a.s.sembled dignitaries and cameras in the auditorium. Then came a check of the maser banks that would be beaming the energy to Earth and Luna, a quick trip to each of the DeVega accelerators to personally congratulate the operation crews there, and spot checks of other parts of the complex.

Five hours later he was finished, and he made a last stop back in the control room. "Any fluctuations in the plate potential?" he asked the dark-skinned man who had taken Rossetti's place at the main control board.

"No problems, Dr. Carter," Kapoor said, his gloomy face in marked contrast to the smiles worn by the rest of the Firefly Project staff today. "The black hole is holding position to a small fraction of a fermi, as nearly as we can tell."

Carter nodded satisfaction. The carefully shaped electric field of the main plates was all that held the positively charged black hole suspended in place at the focus of the three neutron beams. If it drifted even slightly the beams would miss the tiny object. "Anything else to report?"