Until the Dawn, page 23
"We have a preliminary report on that device you found in his quarters," Greg reported. "It's some kind of transceiver like the ones we use on the fighters and other support ships, but much more complex." He took another sip of juice. "That's undoubtedly how he got the viruses into the systems of our support ships in the hangar bay. My guess is that it is also part of a larger wireless network when used in conjunction with other similar devices in the vicinity of our home star system. We've identified the encryption process and frequencies it uses, but unless we can record some of the actual wireless signals that it processes, I don't think we'll be learning much more regarding how their communications systems work."
"We're not going back home… at least not yet," Norris said, watching Wrangler carefully. "According to Dr. Simon, he's basically a human biological being just like you and me… with upgrades. What was the Brotherhood thinking when they created him?"
"Perhaps they wanted soldiers, first and foremost… reliable soldiers."
"Advancements like that could have helped Earth's population, cured diseases…" observed the Captain thoughtfully.
"And the first thing they do is infiltrate other nations and try to wipe us out," Greg said angrily. "It literally boggles the mind as to what type of thinking process could conceive of that, let alone assemble all of the resources needed to try and make it happen."
"That's what I've been wondering about him," the Captain replied with a crisp nod in Wrangler's direction. "Is there still some semblance of a conscience at the center of their so-called 'new society' thinking, or is their government now led only by sociopathic murderers? We do know from our encounter at Khyber Base that they were willing to let us surrender." He laughed darkly. "God only knows what being a prisoner of theirs would be like."
Greg finished his sandwich and pushed his plate aside. "Only a mind running on greed, ambition, a quest for power… only someone like that could order the death of so many people and that kind of destructive nuclear attack without feeling so much as a hint of remorse."
"Yeah, I know," said Norris, jerking a thumb in Wrangler's direction. "So what does that make him? According to Dr. Simon, he's an emotional basket case. He regularly endures severe fits of guilt, both at what his people did to us and at what he tried to do here on the Waywardsman. She's actually had to begin giving him medication in order to keep him stable enough to work here in the restaurant."
"We're never going to have all the answers if we can't return home and find out," Greg predicted. "That's the only thing that bothers me about being out here, Captain. What is happening back home?" He looked at his watch with a frown. "I'd better be getting back to work or they'll be calling for me. Thanks for the chat."
"My pleasure," Norris replied sincerely. "And thank you, by the way, for the update on Wrangler's communications device… it saves me from having to stop by later and disturb your work."
* * *
His next stop was the Observatory wing, or Jillian's 'office'. He entered through the hatchway and noticed that the area was bustling with activity. On one table in the center of the wing were a series of laptop computers. Trey, Nell and three other members of Jillian's staff were busy installing updated software onto them. He immediately noticed the obvious attraction in the smiles between Trey and his new girlfriend. He chuckled quietly… a new, fresh bond of love was definitely forming rapidly between the two of them. Considering all that Trey had endured to preserve the safety of both ship and crew, the Captain figured that the young scientist had a few happier days owed to him. He was pleased to see things working out.
Jillian herself was busy studying several images captured by telescope. She had them displayed side by side on the monitor at her work station, and Norris took a quick glance at them as he eased into an empty chair next to her.
"Good afternoon, Captain." She said pleasantly enough.
"Good afternoon," he replied. "Have you decided where you'd like to take the ship next?"
"Are you getting anxious to explore some more?" she asked.
"Absolutely, Doctor. We've moved around so far and so fast that I get absolutely itchy if we just sit around in one area for too long."
She smirked at his attitude and pointed to a spot on the right picture. "How about here?" she asked carefully, and his gaze moved from her face to the tip of her finger. A small, for-the-most-part spiral-shaped galaxy sat in its center. Her finger was pointing to a bright white spot in the center of one of its spiral arms.
"What's causing the bright spot? The latest mystery for the day?" guessed the Captain.
"Exactly," she replied. "But it's not a bright spot. This picture is a modified copy of the image on the left with darker areas enhanced. So the regions without a lot of light look whiter and vice versa." It was her turn to look at him. "For some reason I cannot fathom, there are a lot of variable low-intensity stars in that vicinity and I'm very curious as to what the cause is. Normally, you would find most of them scattered randomly about amongst the other stars, not clumped together in one big bunch like that. The central computer identifies all kinds of 'out of the ordinary' patterns for us each day, but it kicked this one out at the top of the list."
"Why?" queried Norris. "So you've got a series of cooler stars grouped together. What's so special about that?" He shrugged. "It's probably just one of the random things that you will occasionally find out here when there are trillions of different objects all scattered about."
"It came out at the top of the list because Greg's group in the Lab is also picking up man-made electromagnetic transmissions from that same area. He confirmed the discovery for me immediately."
"Really," the Captain said, sounding a little taken aback. "I had lunch with him a few minutes ago and I definitely don't remember him mentioning that."
"He must have wanted you to be surprised," she theorized, then pointed again at the picture. "The signals we received are very weak, sporadic, and extremely old. There's no way to translate or convert them to anything we could read or view. They've traveled a long way to get here at light speed, so it's very fortunate for us that they haven't deteriorated to the point where we would be unable to determine if they're artificial or natural in origin." Before he could ask she continued, "And we also ran into them the old-fashioned way, so no I don't think they have anything whatsoever to do with whoever transmitted your infamous 'universe diagram'."
"But it is a definite sign of intelligent life like our own," William decided.
"Affirmative," Jillian replied. "I recommend we go here next, Captain," she said, placing the tip of her finger directly on top of the bright area in the center of the picture. "Take us to the fourth spiral arm of celestial object PGC-2014206, please."
"Excuse me?" he asked, a bit confused by the reference.
"Oh, we've long since exhausted our old methods of charting objects in the universe," she pointed out, eager to expound on her staff's accomplishments. "So we developed a new system that allows the computer to keep everything nice and organized for us. PGC-2014206 stands for 'Waywardsman Galaxy Cluster number two million, fourteen thousand, two hundred and six'. That's where we'll find the source of those transmissions, probably sent over six thousand years ago by a culture which – at that time – had only limited technology. Our experts predict the people living there would have just discovered global communications like television and radio. As their technology improves and space travel becomes more normal they soon learn to put up orbiting geo-synchronous satellites and keep more and more of their wireless activity localized."
"You've charted over two million objects already?" Norris gasped.
"Puh-leez Captain," Jillian said, shaking her head at him. "You're the leader of this project… you know what our computers can do. PGC stands for Waywardsman Galaxy Cluster…" she repeated. "We've charted over two million known galaxies like our own Milky Way so far. We're also attempting to document ideal stars and planets in each of them, the best prospects for containing fresh water and indigenous life… that really keeps the computer busy. Most of the galaxies in our catalogue are only partially mapped – our system is programmed to pick out key stars, nebulae, and other objects that assist us with navigation and record those first. By the time it's done crunching all the numbers for our primary targets and ready for the secondary ones we're generally ready to move the ship along and explore farther."
"I know, I just said that so you could brag," he said, keeping his expression deadpan so she couldn't tell if he was fibbing or not. "Although we may have to make a few more trips through the universe before you can map everything, I take it."
"I'd say we'll need a few hundred thousand additional trips," she said, correcting him with a pleased smile. "We're traveling in one basic direction away from our Milky Way in an ever-expanding three dimensional sphere, remember? Plus you have to take into account that our ability to record and store information is limited to the speed of our computer systems, not to mention all the other little things like the stars that occasionally go super nova, crash into each other, and so on…"
"Fine, I admit it. Your work is very impressive, Dr. Marcus," William said, a little too defensively for her taste. "If you'll pass your target coordinates on to the Lab wing, I'll leave orders with them to make the next transit in an hour or so."
"I can tell that you're impressed," she shouted after him, watching his back as he turned and headed back toward the exit hatches. "Don't you love a good mystery now and then, Captain?" She asked. "For instance, have those people who originally sent the transmissions that Greg received established a working, peaceful society or are they long dead? I myself simply cannot wait to find out!"
* * *
The first star system they passed by in the fourth spiral arm of PGC-2014206 revealed little new information – at first. It was simply a blue giant star that they were viewing extremely late in its short life span. Such stars were well-known for squandering their limited fuel at a phenomenally quick rate over the course of a few million years or so. It had no doubt blazed quite radiantly during that time, but now was slowly on its way toward evolving into a red giant. Soon after, it would quite probably disappear in the giant blast of a supernova.
"But why is it here, in one of the inner spiral arms?" Dr. Marcus asked from the open Comm-link next to William. He was back in his seat on the Command Dome, carefully monitoring the results of each of the three CAS transits the Waywardsman had properly executed in the past twenty minutes. They had carefully approached the galaxy, and… sensing no danger from either the Canary probes or their own motion sensors, gradually moved in toward the coordinates specified earlier that afternoon by Jillian.
"Why shouldn't it be?" William replied. "It's just one scattered amongst the billions of others in this galaxy, is it not?"
"You really need to start reading the background information I include along with my regular reports," Jillian decided. "This entire area is filled with blue and super-giant stars like the one on your overhead monitor, Captain. This star even has a series of asteroid belts orbiting it... a definite indication that it once had the ability to form planets. Blue giants generally start out as very bright stars, but they burn so brightly and quickly that they have an extremely short life span. They don't usually live long enough to drift this far inward toward a Galaxy's center. So finding a couple dozen of them in this area would be totally normal, but our discovery of 11,000 is a genuine mystery that I would like to make every effort to solve."
"11,000?"
"That's right," she replied confidently. "And one of the four fading stars in this immediate location is the projected source of the transmissions that Greg received. Until we got here and found nothing I was pretty much convinced that it was this system."
"So you're saying that as recently as six thousand years ago there was a star system inhabited by living beings out there, at or within a few light years of this particular star."
"Within ten light years, unquestionably," she replied. "So I hope you can understand my puzzlement when we currently can't find a star with normal enough emissions to support planets and biological life within a hundred and twelve light year radius."
"What the hell happened between then and now?" Norris wondered out loud.
"Maybe it wasn't biological life that was here," Aaron suggested warily from his station. "Maybe it was something completely new and never before encountered."
"But this star and its neighbors looked like totally normal yellow stars from our previous position earlier this morning," insisted Jillian. "We were situated exactly 6,217 light years distant when I viewed this spiral arm through one of our telescopes and Greg picked up the old signals. So if you take into account that those transmissions and the light from the stars in this galaxy travel at the speed of light, that means we were viewing this area earlier today as it was 6,217 years ago." She paused to let everyone think about that for a moment. "It's why I was so sure the source of those radio and television signals would be here, and also why I was only expecting to find a cluster of 9,500 dimmed stars."
Melissa turned around in shock and stared at Norris. "So those asteroid belts out there…" she couldn't bring herself to say the words and just gazed in astonishment at the picture of the star on the overhead monitors above them.
"Those asteroid belts are quite probably all that is left of the planets that used to orbit this star," Dr. Marcus said, finishing Melissa's statement for her. "And since we can now accurately project a timeline based on our previous position from this morning, at least 1,500 additional stars have been damaged somehow and lost most of their radiant energy within the past 6,217 years."
"That means whatever the hell caused all this is still spreading," Norris said, his own voice a little shaky. "About four stars per year are going dark. I would imagine the repeated shockwaves generated as each star suddenly transitions into a blue giant is also what destroys the orbiting planetary objects."
"Agreed," Jillian said in reply. "Whether it's some sort of natural phenomenon or a disaster caused by man-made technology remains to be seen, but something in the arm of this galaxy is most definitely destroying entire stars at a pretty steady rate."
"Oh you can bet it will be some type of weapon that was made by people," concluded Aaron pessimistically. "It's a weapon made by angry people who are at war with each other. We haven't found any natural phenomenon in all of our history that can move faster than light between stars. Four stars destroyed per year is a pretty damning indicator in my opinion."
"It's of even greater concern to me when you consider that the majority of stars in an average galaxy are already the uninhabitable, cooler red giants that are in the later stages of their most lengthy lifespan," Jillian commented. "Those stars are here all around us too but they haven't been touched. It's only the newer, cooler stars like our own back home that are progressively being destroyed."
Norris swiveled in his chair. "Melissa, I know we have language and linguistic communications specialists on board. Find them and have them begin reviewing those transmissions that Greg picked up. Jillian thinks they've decayed pretty well over the years but you never know. Have them try and translate something that could be useful."
She nodded and opened her own Comm-link while William kept his open. "Jillian, you said that the Waywardsman's position earlier this morning allowed us to essentially 'look backward' in time over 6,000 years. If we plot a series of transits back outward in stages of… say… ten to twenty light years per trip, can you pinpoint one or more positions in this damaged area where the stars have most recently gone dark?"
"That would be a piece of cake," she replied.
"Then let's do that," Norris ordered, a chill running up and down his spine.
What the devil was going on in this area of space?
* * *
It took them several days, but the Waywardsman continued to explore, pausing at each new location for an hour or so before the next transit in a pre-planned series was executed. Dr. Marcus had their exact destinations plotted on a three dimensional image of the galaxy's fourth spiral arm. They were moving in a gradual arc farther and farther away… with the computer updating the color coded image each they time they moved with stars that were no longer viewed from the observatory as dimmed.
Near the end of the second day they had a basic map plotted showing the exact course of the destruction. The most recent activity was all concentrated on the edge of the wasteland farthest from the inner side of the spiral arm. That placed it close to their initial entry point inside the spiral arm. However, it was not quite close enough for them to reasonably determine if anything might still be alive somewhere within the damaged area.
The Waywardsman's specialists were unable to determine anything useful from the older communications that Greg's team had recorded. They were simply too old, had traveled too far, and were basically identified as routine news and video clips. Without a way to enhance or repair the damaged parts of the transmissions – which had no doubt traveled through some very nasty nebulae and radiation clouds on their way out of the Galaxy – there was simply no way to identify more than an occasional phrase or two. They did promise that, given more time, they would be able to learn more about the ancient civilization, even if it wasn't a perfect report.
