“It’s not very big,” Kane said.
“How big is that?”
“A little more than a half meter long, maybe two-thirds as wide.”
Kim could almost feel the room deflate.
“It looks like a toy,” said Yoshi. “Something somebody just tossed overboard.”
It was tumbling, turning slowly end over end.
Tripley stood near a desk lamp. He turned it off so they could see better. “Just for argument’s sake,” he said, “is there any possibility of a local lifeform?”
Emily shook her head. “Alnitak puts out too much UV.”
“But we don’t really know that it couldn’t happen,” Tripley said.
“Almost any thing’s possible,” said Emily. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”
Antennas and sensor pods were becoming visible. Kane tapped the window. “It has a Klayson ring.”
It might have taken a minute for the implication to set in. A Klayson ring indicated jump capability.
“Aside from the size,” said Emily, “anybody ever seen this kind of design before?”
Kane shook his head. “I’ve run a search. It doesn’t match up with anything.”
“It’s a probe,” said Emily. “Probably left by the survey unit when it was here.”
“Can’t be,” said Kane.
“Why not?”
“The Klayson ring.”
“Some probes have Klayson rings,” insisted Emily.
“Not this size. It’s too small. We wouldn’t know how to pack a jump system into a package like this. Unless there’s been a major advance in the last few months.”
“Are you suggesting,” said Yoshi, “it’s a celestial artifact?” She barely breathed the conclusion.
Kane got up, went over to the window, and studied the object. “I don’t want to get everybody excited, but I don’t think we, or anybody we know, left this here.”
They looked at one another. Tentative smiles appeared. Emily pressed her hand to her lips. Tripley glanced around the room as if he feared someone would have a more straightforward explanation. Yoshi stood unmoving in front of the windows, beside Kane.
“Don’t be discouraged by its size,” said Kane. “It might still be possible to talk to it. There might be an AI of one sort or another on board.”
“Let me ask a question,” said Tripley. “Does intelligent life have to be big?”
Emily nodded. “Theoretically, yes. Got to have big brains.”
“Theoretically. But is that really true?”
No one knew.
Kane looked up from his console. He seemed to be alone in the pilot’s room. “Kile,” he said to the commlink.
Tripley and the others showed up literally within seconds.
“We’re getting power leakage,” he told them. “It’s not dead.”
“Magnificent!” Tripley jabbed his right fist in the air and turned toward the women. “Ladies,” he said, “I do believe we’ve done it! “
They embraced all around. Emily kissed Kane’s cheek while he pretended to be annoyed, and Yoshi threw her arms around him.
“From this point,” said Tripley, “we will proceed on the assumption that they’re alive over there.”
When they overtook the turtle-shell they were looking down on the rings from a point somewhere over the north pole. Kane closed to within forty meters of the object. He’d arranged the approach so that Alnitak was behind the Hunter, to prevent its blinding the imagers.
Everybody was in the mission control center, save Kane, who stayed in the pilot’s room. Tripley sat down at a comm console, looked at his colleagues, and signaled to Kane, whose virtual image occupied a chair. Kane nodded and Tripley put his index finger on the transmission key. Kane had pointed out that the AI could handle all the transmissions, but the moment was a bit too historic for that.
“Okay,” said Kane. “When you’re ready—”
Tripley pressed the key once. Then twice. He looked up at his colleagues and beamed. “Maybe,” he said, “the first communication–”
He tapped it again, three times.
“—between humans and their starborn siblings–”
Four.
“—has just been sent.”
They looked at one another expectantly. In the windows, the turtle-shell tumbled slowly across a moonscape.
“It’s dark over there,” said Kane.
Emily shook her head. “It’s too small. It’s a pity. But I’ll settle for the artifact.”
“You give up too easily,” said Yoshi. “Try again, Kile.”
Tripley resent. One, two, three, four.
The room glowed with the colors of the rings.
“I think Emily’s right,” said Tripley. “If anybody were there, they’d certainly want to respond.”
They tapped out the signal a third time. Then Yoshi sat down at the key and continued patiently to send.
“Something to consider,” said Kane, studying the image. He pointed at an object mounted in the nose of the turtle-shell. It looked like a bracket or fork. “It might have an attack capability.”
“Why would they attack?” asked Emily.
“You’re poking a strange animal. What I’m saying is that it could happen. It might be a good idea to think about it.”
“They’re not going to shoot at us,” said Tripley. “Why would they bother? They don’t even know us.”
Kane’s voice was unemotional. “Think about our relative sizes. We’re what, several hundred times as big as they are. If there’s really something alive over there, I’d expect them to be nervous. If our situations were reversed, I sure as hell would be.”
“So what are you suggesting?” asked Emily.
“That we be prepared to back off on short notice. Which means if I say we’re leaving, I’ll want everyone to belt down quickly, and to do it without argument. I doubt that the occasion will arise, but I won’t want to get into a discussion if it does.”
“Okay,” Emily said, without bothering to conceal her amusement. “If they shoot, we run. I don’t think anybody’s going to argue with that.”
“So what’s next?” asked Yoshi. “They don’t seem to have their radio turned on. What else can we do?”
“Blink the running lights,” said Emily.
Tripley nodded. “Okay.”
Kane turned them off and then on again. Waited a few seconds. Turned them off. Turned them on.
They kept it up for a while. After a few minutes Tripley asked whether anyone else had an idea.
“Yes,” said Yoshi. “Why don’t we back away so they don’t think we’re pushy? Let them make a move, if they’re inclined. They have to be as curious as we are.”
They agreed it was worth trying, and Kane withdrew to a range of five kilometers and assumed a parallel orbit.
They spent the next few hours in a long, generally pointless and often circular discussion. The turtle-shell seemed unlikely to be a warship under any circumstances because the Alnitak region was a no-man’s-land, a place that could not conceivably be of strategic value. It was also probably not a trader or commercial vessel for the same reason. And that left only survey and research, the vessel was not completely automated, and if it was in fact a vessel, then it should be staffed by scientists. But if that were so, why hadn’t they responded?