“Not necessarily,” said Jon. “You could be stuck in orbit somewhere but still send out, say, projectiles.”
“Wait a minute.” Matt tried to laugh, but couldn’t manage it. “You’re suggesting the omegas might be a cry for help?”
“I’m open to a better explanation.”
“That’s one hell of a way to get people’s attention. Get them to come rescue you by blowing them up.”
“I doubt it thinks in terms of people,” said Jon. “It might be that it would be shocked to discover there were living creatures, people, on planetary surfaces.” For a long time no one spoke. “It feels right,” he said, finally. “I bet that’s exactly what’s been happening.”
“For millions of years?” Matt was laughing now. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why don’t we ask it?” said Hutch.
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“I have an idea, but you’ll have to come in closer and join us first. Do we want to do that?”
As she watched the McAdams approach, Hutch wished she had a term for indigestible.
“We ready to go?” asked Matt.
“Let’s do it.” She opened the cargo hatch, and Phyl took the lander out again. Hutch turned on its lights to draw Frank’s attention, and ran it back and forth several times. Then she directed Phyl to begin the demonstration.
Phyl brought it back toward the Preston. Toward the open cargo door. Very slowly. And bumped it against the hull. Too far to the right. Backed it off and tried again. Too low this time. A third effort went wide left.
The lander hesitated in front of the door, seemingly baffled.
Frank sent a message: You question mark.
Antonio laughed.
Hutch replied no.
Matt asked what it had said.
“It wants to know,” Antonio said, “if Hutch is the lander. If the lander is the intelligence inside the ship.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It has no way to know what’s going on,” said Hutch. “Before it saw the lander earlier today, it probably thought it was talking directly to the ship.” She grinned. “I’m beginning to like him.”
“Frank?”
“Sure. Who else?” She traded amused glances with Antonio, then flashed the strobe. Three short. Three long. Three short. The old SOS signal. “Matt, time to send out yours.”
“Will do.”
The launch door in the McAdams opened, and its lander soared into the night. It crossed to the apparently hapless vehicle still trying to get back into the Preston cargo bay, moved alongside it, nudged it left, pushed it lower, and guided it through the hatch.
Hutch flashed the SOS again, followed by Frank question mark.
Pause. Then the patch brightened.
Yes.
“All right,” Matt said. “We go home and report what we found. We have intelligent plasma out here. Or whatever. They’re going to love that. It got too close to the core, and now we think it’s stuck. You know what’ll happen: They’ll be coming out here to talk to the dragon. And somebody will be crazy enough to try to figure out a way to break it loose.” He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things. At the moment, Hutch was the suspect. “Well,” he said, “at least we’ll get clear of it. It’ll be somebody else’s call.”
“That’s not what’ll happen,” said Hutch. “Most people will react the way you just did. This place will be declared off-limits. The idiots who thought Jon’s drive was dangerous will be confirmed. And nobody will come near the place.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” The creature’s eyes stared at her out of the navigation screen. “Talk about eternity in hell.”
“Well, look. It’s not up to us anyhow.”
She nodded. “Right. And the omegas will keep coming. For a long time. We’ve seen the kind of damage they do.”
“You’ve been talking to it. Tell it to stop.”
“I plan to try.”
“Good.”
This entire exercise has had an air of unreality about it from the beginning.
What no one has said, but what I am sure they’ve all been thinking is: Why does it not disentangle itself from the cloud and show us what it truly is? Is it so terrifying? Surely it would not seem so to itself. It may be that it is wholly dependent on the cloud, perhaps for sustenance. And then there is the possibility that, despite Jon’s theorizing, it is the cloud.
When I mentioned it to Hutch, she told me that she doesn’t believe any living creature could be that large.
Chapter 37
Hutch sat on the bridge, wearily trying to figure out how to expand the vocabulary. How do you say omega cloud with blinking lights? How to establish a unit of time? How to ask what kind of creature it is?
“If it’s not native to this area,” asked Antonio, “how did it get around?”
“There’s only one way I can think of,” said Jon. “It absorbs dust or gas and expels it.”
“A jet.”
“Has to be.”
The eyes remained open. Stayed focused on them. “It never sleeps,” said Matt.
“Looks like.”
Antonio got up. “Well, am I correct in assuming we won’t be leaving in the next few minutes?”
“I think that’s a safe guess.”
“Okay. In that case I’m going to head back for a while. I’m wiped out.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No,” said Hutch. “I’m fine. You go ahead.”
He nodded. “Call me if you need me.”
She turned back to the screen image. The eyes. You and me, Frank. She blinked the lights. Frank blinked back.
How long have you been here? My God, a million years in a place like this. Has anybody else been by to say hello?
Maybe a billion years. Are you immortal? I suspect you could teach those idiots at Makai something about survival.
She thought back across her life. It seemed a long time ago, eons, since as a kid barely out of flight school, she’d taken Richard Wald to Quraqua. Since she’d stood outside that spooky city that no one had ever lived in on Quraqua’s airless moon. It had been constructed by an unknown benefactor, thought to be the Monument-Makers. But who really knew? It was supposed to draw the lightning of an approaching omega away from the cities of that unhappy world. It hadn’t worked.
Frank, if that was you sending the clouds, you’ve been stuck out here a long time. How could a sentient being stay sane?
The eyes looked back at her.
Matt said something about why were they waiting around? Nothing more to be done here. Why not start back tonight?