Lopé made a face. “What’s that? Some kind of special child-rearing crèche?”
The captain did not smile. “Religious denomination. Real old-time fire and brimstone.” He indicated the holo. “During the meetings you’d hear stuff like that. It’s called ‘speaking in tongues.’ Words sound familiar, but they’re just off enough so that they don’t quite make sense. Not to outsiders, anyway. If you were in the congregation it all sounded just fine. So I’m thinking one possibility. It might not do a thing, but…” He raised his voice slightly.
“Mother. Slow the signal. Search for discrete word patterns within the transmission. Discard anything that doesn’t fit. Excerpt and compile. And reverse it.”
“Working,” the ship responded. “Please stand by.”
“God’s language inverted.” Oram was speaking as much to himself as to anyone on the bridge. “The language of lies. The Devil’s Tongue.”
Faris acknowledged her husband’s comments with a thin smile. “That’s comforting.”
Upworth eyed him curiously. “What would make you think that, Captain?”
Oram’s attention came back to her from the distant place where it had been loitering. “Familiarity. An old game called ‘Sounds Like…’ Could be completely wrong here, but worth a try. No harm.” He smiled slightly. “When I said ‘familiarity,’ I meant on a linguistic basis, not an intimate one.”
Upworth pushed out her lower lip. “We would never think anything like that of you, Captain,” she observed dourly.
Oram raised an eyebrow, but looked vaguely pleased.
“I’ve reoriented and compiled the transmission, Captain Oram,” the ship declared. “I have included everything I was able to extract and render intelligible. I have taken only the necessary liberties to ensure general comprehensibility.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He waved a hand absently. “Put it on general audio.”
In place of the unfathomable screeching they now heard a voice. The rhythms were odd, the speech pattern obscure, but it was decidedly human. As were the words. They were not what anyone could have expected.
“…teardrops in my… the place I belong…”
It wasn’t much. Not a speech, not a plea, but understandable. Everyone was stunned.
A human. Out this far.
Of all those present, only Walter didn’t wear a look of amazement. Seated at his console, he maintained his usual stolid expression as he did his job. It was the kind of focus that allowed him to answer the as yet unspoken question that had leaped to the forefront of everyone else’s mind.
“There’s spatial data, too.”
“How much?” Oram inquired quickly.
The synthetic did not hesitate. “Enough. More than enough, actually. Mother, please track the signal to its source. Compile and display.”
“Working. Please stand by.”
A navigation holo appeared over the bridge’s central table-console. Walter manipulated its size, colors, and content, his eyes darting from console and readouts to the holo as he drew in ancillary data and connected points.
The result was—unexpected.
The holo flickered, twisted, and went out. In its place arose a flurry of blue pixels that expanded beyond the nav profile boundaries to momentarily fill the room. In the center of the first holo an image began to take shape. Its outlines were indistinct, forming and reforming, crackling with weakness as the ship’s computer fought to hold it together.
“…to the place I… All my memories gathered round…”
The rest was inaudible. Then the image seemed to settle down, collapsing into a more discernible shape. There was no longer any mistaking the visual. It was a woman, depicted life-size. As the crew looked on in amazement it began to drift around the bridge, wafting through solid objects, less perceptible than a ghost. A ghost with a lament, its lyrics barely understandable.
“…the radio reminds me of my home far away, and drivin’ down the road I get a feelin’ I should have been home yesterday, yesterday…”
His head inclined toward the floating figure, Tennessee strained to hear, to make sense of the faint chanting that almost was singing. The words from another time, another place, hung in the still air of the bridge like an aural specter. As he remembered, as the lyrics and tune came back to him, he began to hum along.
“…country roads, take me home, to the place I belong. West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home, country roads…”
The ethereal, wandering image abruptly locked up. It hung among them for an instant longer before scattering in a silent burst of evaporating pixels.
Eyes turned from the place where the figure had last hovered to the man who had been humming in concert with the ancient words.
“‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’” Noting that more detail was wanting, Tennessee added, “First recorded by the great John Denver, mid-twentieth-century singer, songwriter, and environmental activist.”
“What’s an ‘environmental activist’?” Upworth wanted to know.
“Someone who agitates to preserve the environment,” Tennessee replied, looking over at her. When she eyed him blankly, he added, “They’ve been pretty much extinct for some time now. Like their rationale.”
Lopé shook his head. “You gotta be kidding.”
Tennessee frowned at the sergeant, his voice solemn. “I never kid about John Denver.”
It was Mother who interrupted the history lesson. “Source of the transmission located.”
“Visuals, please,” Oram directed the ship.
The holo star chart that appeared was the most detailed the computer could generate for the outlying sector in which they found themselves floating. Without having to be prompted, Mother zoomed in, to center on a single blurry star. It had no name, no designation. Even in a time when high-powered telescopes floated in orbit between the Earth and the moon there were still places, still stellar objects, that could not be clearly distinguished.
“Empty” space was full of dust, gravitational distortions, and other astronomical events that often obscured direct observation of distant phenomena. Such was the case with the uncharted star whose location Mother was able to resolve only because of the ship’s current position in the cosmos.
The visuals were unremarkable. “Details,” Oram said.
“Signal originates in sector 105, right ascension forty-seven point six and declination of twenty-four point three relative to our current location. Full coordinates being relayed and recorded now.”
“Got it.” At the navigation console, Ricks utilized supplementary instrumentation to further refine the available data. When he was satisfied, he nudged a control and the holographic image instantly zoomed in a second time to reveal additional elements. The initial fuzzy image of the distant star sharpened. Five planets became visible, along with the usual assortment of moons, asteroids, and other cosmic detritus. The navigator’s attention flicked back and forth between the holo and his console.
“Looks like she’s a main sequence star, a lot like our own, but quite old for the sequence. Very old. Five planets.” He stopped, frowned slightly, and rechecked several noteworthy readings. “And look at this—planet number four is square in the habitable zone.”
Everyone was suitably shaken. Given the amount of terrestrial effort that had gone into locating every possible habitable world within range of Earth’s colony ships, to have missed one in this sector was shocking.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been, Oram reflected. Even in an age when deep space exploration and colonization were taken for granted, the one salient fact that people always seemed to have a difficult time grasping was simply how big space was. Add to that the fact that the system they had just discovered lay in an area replete with cosmic obscurantism—like the flare that had damaged the ship—and maybe it wasn’t so surprising it had been missed.