Rice sat upright at his desk in the open lab, blinking rapidly at the light, and looked at Oidar standing before him in a Sarpan E-suit. The last two weeks had been busy ones. He had been going over some last-minute details before the Port of Kowloon prepared to return to Luna and had fallen asleep over his handheld. The alien stood motionless, his arms gently cradling a bulge in the front of the suit, and waited for him to come fully awake.
“Oh… Oidar. No, no; I’m fine.” He hadn’t been expecting a visit from the alien and as he became more awake he suddenly remembered that the temperature settings in the open lab would be uncomfortable for Oidar once he’d removed his suit. “System! Increase lab temperature and humidity to—”
“System! Cancel!” Oidar said, cutting him off. The room system beeped once as it reset itself to accept the alien scientist’s voice pattern. “I am sorry, Temple, but I cannot stay.” His voice was tinny as it came from the suit’s small speaker, but Rice could easily tell that he was uneasy.
“Oidar, what’s wrong?”
He took off the E-suit’s bubble helmet and set it on the corner of the desk. Water dripped from the helmet’s collar ring and ran in a thin trickle over the edge. Rice ignored it.
“There is something here for you to see.” Oidar pulled a data stick from a sleeve pocket and handed it to him, then again caressed the suit bulge. “It is a recording of the accident at the breeder star. I am sure you have such recordings, but our scans”—he paused briefly, a hint of apology in his tone—“are better at penetrating our own shielding than yours. It is not visible, but please to note if something strange appears in the readout.”
Rice took the stick and inserted it into his handheld. “What should I be looking for?” Oidar shook his head, and Rice understood that the alien didn’t want to influence him. Perhaps Oidar wasn’t sure what it was either.
He started the playback and the figures ran through in the same sequence and values as on the Imperial recordings of what had happened. “I’m not sure I understand what it is you want me to—” There was a sudden anomaly in the readouts that stood out sharply from the familiar sequence. “What was that?” Oidar smiled and nodded. Rice reversed the playback a few increments and started it again. Again, the anomaly appeared. Rice removed the stick and replaced it with another, then watched as it played back and compared the two. When it finished, he set the handheld back on his desk.
“What did you see?” Oidar tilted his head curiously.
“I’m not sure,” Rice replied. “Everything matched the figures we got. The energy levels in your recording, made at the time the shielding ruptured, are the same as ours. The energy released by the destroyed ships shows up at the same intensity as in ours. But where our recording showed six explosions—the four generator ships and the two Imperial craft—this one shows a seventh.”
“So.”
“Yeah, ‘so’ is right.” Rice leaned against the desk and crossed his arms as he considered what he’d just seen. “Can I assume your scans of the feeder star are as good as this one, and that you’ve detected no trace of the generator ship that disappeared there?”
Oidar nodded.
“Could it be the missing ship?” Rice asked, more to himself than to Oidar. He looked up, then, “Do your people think it could somehow have been drawn through the wormhole when the energy balance went critical, only to be incinerated with the other ships at the breeder star a few seconds later?”
“They do, Temple. But—” He hesitated, his voice again taking on the apologetic tone. “But they do not wish to share this information with you at this time.”
Rice understood. The feeder star had been separated from the breeder by a distance of 900,000 kilometers. If the anomaly on the data stick proved to be the missing ship…
“Temple?”
Rice looked up and saw that Oidar was shaking. The air in the open lab was dry, and his skin no longer glistened as it had when he’d first removed his helmet.
“My God,” Rice said, grabbing the helmet, “you’ll hurt yourself. Put this on. Now.” He snatched the helmet from the desk and tried to slip it over his friend’s head, but was stopped by Oidar’s hand firmly grasping his shoulder.
“A moment more, then I promise to put it on.” Rice stopped, but continued to hold the helmet. Oidar’s hands moved to the bulge in the E-suit, and he rubbed at it in a circular motion. Rice noticed that the bulge moved slightly at his touch.
“They move now without benefit of tails,” Oidar said, and Rice knew that meant they were walking on newly developed legs. There was both pride and sadness in Oidar’s voice. “They will be mature soon and will choose their way. I am hoping they will all choose science and will investigate what we have found here. When you are again back at Luna I will be gone, but they will work at your side as I have done. As did my father before me.”
“And they will be…” Rice groped for the phrase he’d once heard Oidar use. “They will be gladly received.”
There was an awkward silence that seemed to last forever before Oidar reached for the helmet and lowered it over his head. The helmet sealed at the collar ring, he inhaled deeply for several seconds, then held out his hand, palm forward. Rice placed his own palm flat against the other’s in a Sarpan gesture of final touching. Their hands parted, and Rice grasped the alien’s hand in a firm handshake. Oidar said nothing when he released his grip and walked for the door. Rice remained standing at the desk.
When he reached the door, Oidar stopped and turned back. “Temple,” he began tentatively, his voice again thin and tinny in the suit speaker. “I have studied your medical records most thoroughly…”
“Yes?” Rice crossed the lab and stood facing his friend. “And—?”
“Your rejuvenation methods. They would not be as effective on this one as on your species, but they would work, no?”
Rice exhaled heavily, his cheeks puffing out, and shrugged uncertainly. “I… I’m not sure. It’s never been tried, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be adapted for Sarpan chemistry.”
“And cryosleep could be used to make the rejuvenation more effective, no?”
Rice nodded nervously. What Oidar was suggesting represented a level of interspecies cooperation that was unprecedented.
Oidar twisted off the helmet and held it under one arm as he stroked the front of his suit with the other. He lifted his chin in a way that suggested both pride and courage and said, “Temple, this one wishes to work with his children, and to remain a part of the project until its conclusion.”
PART SIX
Homecoming
Chapter Thirty-Two
“This is wrong,” Adela said as the small transport shuttle was brought in a mere sixty meters away from where they now stood. She turned to go but was stopped by Javas’ firm but gentle hand on her arm. “Please! Let me go; I shouldn’t be surprising him like this. It’s not right.”
Javas smiled at her in that way he had that said he understood what she was feeling, but at the same time told her that he felt she was overreacting to a given situation. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
She stopped and looked up into his face, then turned her eyes back to the ship being pulled into the receiving tube of the auxiliary landing bay. The other shuttles, those with the support personnel and crew of lower rank, had landed and departed hours ago. This transport, the last to come down from the starship now in a parking orbit above them, would be carrying the officers and bridge crew. The landing procedure was being handled remotely from the main bay, and except for a few technicians and support personnel, the bay was deserted.