The Sails of Tau Ceti (16 page)

“Set erect on its landing jacks.”

“Of course,” Faslorn said. “I will have the orders issued. Also, you will be interested to know that we are preparing to take your power module in tow.”

“How?”

“You may find the operation enlightening. I have arranged for you to observe it when it takes place tomorrow. Is there anything else?”

“Communications. We are currently off the air. Earth will be getting worried.”

“Our technicians are working on the problem. The difficulty lies in our lack of knowledge as to how you were communicating with your base. We weren’t able to make arrangements in advance.”

“We use a beam of coherent microwaves…” Eli began.

“Yes, we became aware of that as you came aboard. We are setting up a maser with the same frequency distribution. You should be back in contact within the hour.”

“Excellent.”

“Also, we will be sending our own messages of friendship now that you are aboard.”

“Why didn’t you do that months ago?” Eli asked.

“We thought it best to wait for your arrival, Professor Guttieriz. Come; let us go where there is more heat and gravity.

Faslorn led them toward the hatch in the bulkhead. The humans trailed him in a small, compact knot. Once outside the hangar bay, he directed them to a small lift. It was a tight fit, but they all managed to crowd inside. The door closed and the lift began to move. Their weight started to increase almost immediately.

#

The first thing Tory noticed after the lift door closed was Faslorn’s smell. The odor was not unpleasant, just different. It reminded her of a combination of peppermint and paint thinner. She was surprised that she had not noticed it before. Perhaps the air in the hangar deck had been too cold; or else, coming from storage tanks, it had been purged of telltale traces of the starship’s builders.

The next thing she noticed was that her implant had lost touch with the computer in
Austria
’s hold. The loss-of-signal warning sounded silently in her skull the moment the door closed. Garth noticed her pained expression and asked what was wrong.

“My implant. It just went off line.”

Faslorn, who had taken up position in front of Tory, demonstrated the flexibility of Phelan vertebrae by turning his head completely around. She found herself looking up into two dark eyes.

“The hangar walls are impervious to radio signals, Miss Bronson. Is this a problem?”

“It causes me to lose contact with
Austria
’s computer,” she explained.

“I confess that we have nothing like your implants and do not, as yet, have a full understanding of how the device functions.”

“No secret there,” she replied. “An implant is just a particularly wide band radio transceiver with a direct mind interface.”

Faslorn emitted a sound unlike any they had previously heard. Whether it signified humor, or distress, or something else, Tory had no idea. “One of the unavoidable pitfalls of studying your race from afar is that most of our information comes from those entertainment programs that are broadcast. We are forced to infer a great deal from very little solid information. We have seen your actors simulate implant use, of course, but have been frustrated by the lack of hard data.”

Eli Guttieriz frowned. “I shudder at the impression you must have of us if holovision is your primary source of information.”

“You would be surprised how much useable information is buried in such a broadcast, Professor. Unfortunately, very little is of the hard, technical variety. Miss Bronson, would you consider it forward of me to ask questions concerning your implant?”

“Go ahead.”

“This loss of signal. Did you suffer mental anguish? Disorientation?”

“Not at all. It was more like walking from a noisy room into silent one. A minor nuisance, no more.”

“Yet, disorientation can occur.”

“Sure, but only when transmission delay causes an implant to fall out of sync with its base computer. Usually if you stay within a hundred kilometers of your source, there’s no problem.”

Faslorn’s head bobbed up and down in a good imitation of a human nod. “Then implant transmissions are never placed on the satellite feeds?”

“Of course not. The time delay involved in getting the signal out into space and then down again would cause a user’s eyes to cross.”

“Would you be willing to explain the human/computer interface to our scientists? Perhaps they can duplicate the signal so that we can place you back into contact with your ship.”

“I’ll do better than that,” she replied. “I’ll have
Austria
’s computer print out the interface specs.”

“That would be most kind of you.”

Faslorn turned to face front just as the lift came to a halt. The ride had taken the better part of a minute, yet spin gravity still had not risen to the level they had calculated for the starship’s outermost deck. As the lift doors retracted, they found themselves facing a large compartment with more than a hundred aliens arrayed in two groups in front of the lift doors. The smell of peppermint and paint thinner was suddenly overpowering. There were other smells as well. In addition to the machinery odor common to spacecraft, there were less identifiable fragrances. It was the smell of a thousand aromatics that had developed on a world far from Earth, the byproduct of an entire alien biosphere.

Tory paid not the slightest attention to the impending olfactory overload. Beyond the waiting aliens was a transparent wall, and beyond, an artificial world.

As every member of the crew had commented at one time or another,
Far Horizons
bore an uncanny resemblance to a human LaGrange colony. Like the big colonies that orbited in the gravitationally stable points in the Earth-Luna system, the starship was a vast hollow cylinder that had been spun on its axis to produce an artificial gravity field. The ends of the cylinder had then been sealed off and a tiny replica of the Phelan home world built in the enclosed cylinder.

The compartment in which they found themselves was high up in the forward end cap of the great cylinder — that is, the end farthest from the light sail. Their vantage point gave them a panoramic view of a tubular green-gold world. Overhead, at the cylinder’s axis of rotation was a glowing tube of light. It glowed with a light more orange than that of Sol, but more yellow than photographs she had seen of the pre-nova Tau Ceti. The sun tube must surround the thrust keel they had seen in the hangar bay, but then, Tory realized, there was no reason why an artificial sun could not be hollow.

Half a kilometer below the sun tube in every direction lay the artificial terrain that hugged the inner walls of the kilometer wide cylinder. There were undoubtedly numerous decks below the “farmland” and inboard of the hull cluttered with machinery that they had observed during their approach, yet the cumulative volume of all such decks must be but a small percentage of the vast cavern that was the ship’s habitat. On a planet, the human eye seeks out the natural bound of the horizon, allowing the brain to put things into perspective. Here there was no horizon, only a gently rising landscape where the details grew smaller with distance until eventually they were lost in the radiance of the sun tube.

Tory raised her eyes to follow the sun tube to where it disappeared into the far end cap some four kilometers distant. Twin rivers gushed from the far end cap just outboard of the sun tube, then fell in matching spiral waterfalls until they disappeared into a cloud of white spray a quarter kilometer above the habitat floor. Twin rivers emerged from that spray and meandered across the curved surface of the cylinder walls until, having negotiated the full length of the ship, they turned around and headed back. Tory let her gaze follow the course of the nearer river, but the mouth was lost in the distance. Presumably, it entered the far cylinder wall at its base and was then pumped back to the spin axis to begin the long fall once more.

From the river, Tory turned her attention to the fields. She found herself looking down on a miniature world of neat hexagonal farms interspersed with villages laid out in six pointed stars. She remembered the six fingers on each of Faslorn’s hands and smiled. It would seem that the Phelan had learned to count on their fingers just as humans had, and, as a result, used a base 12 numbering system.

The scale of the ship made it difficult to take in everything at once. By focusing on a single spot, Tory found that she could make out details on an ever-decreasing scale. She focused for a moment on a bend in the meandering river where it reflected the yellow fire of the glow tube. She continued her scan, pulling her gaze toward the spot directly beneath her vantage point. She found herself gazing down on a footpath that connected two villages. The villages were composed of several beehive shapes painted in contrasting colors. Midway between the two villages was a stream with a footbridge spanning it. The bridge would have been at home in a Japanese formal garden.

As she watched, a foreshortened pedestrian strolled onto the bridge and moved rapidly toward the nearer village. In their native gravity, the Phelan gait was smooth and natural. It reminded her of the knuckle walk of the great apes, or possibly a human being who is especially skilled at moving about on crutches. Yet, no human being on crutches moved so quickly while carrying such a load in his extra pair of arms.

Faslorn let them drink in the breathtaking beauty of the view for nearly a minute before booming out. “Ladies and gentlemen of Earth. We welcome you to our home. We hope you will do likewise for us.”

CHAPTER 12

“Spectacular!” Kit Claridge enthused without taking her eyes from the panorama. “Is this what the Phelan home world looked like?”

“It is an idealized rendition. They wanted to remind future generations of what we had lost.”

“A spectacular reminder.” Garth said.

“To those of us born aboard this ship, Phela is but a series of images in our data banks. This…” Faslorn moved his oddly jointed arms in an all-inclusive gesture toward the little world beyond the glass, “is all the home we’ve ever known.”

“It’s truly beautiful,” Tory said.

“Thank you.” Faslorn gestured toward the waiting throng of Phelan. “Come, let me present my shipmates…”

A Phelan stepped forward at a gesture from Faslorn. This particular being moved stiffly. There were wide streaks of gray in his fur and his eyes lacked the shiny black sheen of the others. The overall impression was one of great age.

“Captain Van Zandt, I present Rosswin, my chief advisor. He is our acknowledged expert on your race and its works.”

The Phelan extended his six-fingered hand to grasp Garth’s. The handshake had all of the formality of a treaty being signed. “I look forward to many hours of enjoyable conversation, Captain.”

“As do I, Advisor Rosswin. May I present my crew…” Garth introduced Tory, Kit, and Eli Guttieriz in turn. The rest of the introductions followed this same pattern. First Faslorn would introduce one of the Phelan, and then Garth would return the honor. Tory sensed formalism behind the ceremony that went beyond mere politeness. It was almost as though she was a performer in an ancient, stylized ballet.

The routine was interrupted several introductions later. A female stepped forward at a gesture from Faslorn. As among humans, Phelan females tended smaller than their male counterparts. The other differences were subtle, with few of the outward sexual differences so apparent among humans. Or rather, none of the differences so apparent
to
humans. The differences between Phelan male and female were undoubtedly as noticeable to them as were bulging biceps and bust lines among the denizens of Planet Earth.

“Miss Bronson. I wish to present Maratel. She will be your personal guide while you are with us.”

“Hello, Maratel,” Tory said, holding out her hand.

“Miss Bronson,” the alien replied in a voice whose timbre matched that of Tory’s own.

“Please, call me Tory.”

“I am honored, Tory. I hope we will become great friends.”

“So do I.”

The next Phelan to step from the crowd turned out to be a Phelan medical specialist and Kit Claridge’s personal guide. Then Garth and Eli Guttieriz were each introduced to their respective guides. Finally, with Phelan ranks and names buzzing in everyone’s head, Faslorn signaled an end to the greetings.

“What now?” Garth asked as the crowd of aliens began streaming toward an opening to their right.

“We have arranged a welcoming banquet for you, Captain. I believe that is the human custom when an important guest arrives in one’s home.”

“That is indeed the custom in many human cultures.”

“It is my understanding that the custom is nearly universal. As it turns out, the custom is one of ours, as well. Let us break bread together and toast our good fortune at having finally met. After that, we can discuss the details of your education.”

“Education?”

“We know a great deal about you humans, but you know nothing of us. We have arranged to teach you something of our history, our society, and our customs so that you can better perform your function.”

“Function?”

“Your orders are to discover all you can about us, are they not?”

“You are most perceptive, Faslorn.”

“Not at all. We intercepted a news account to that effect several months ago.”

“You seem to have thought of everything.”

“We have had 240 years in which to do so,” the alien commander replied. “As you will quickly learn, we Phelan are serious students of the human condition, perhaps as serious as you yourselves. In studying you, we have learned to admire you. Humans have much to be proud of. Come, let us go in.”

He led them through the same doorway taken by most of the crowd. Beyond lay a banquet hall with a head table on a raised dais fronting several other tables arrayed in a rectangular pattern. It was a scene familiar to generations of public speakers and other habitués of the rubber chicken circuit.

#

The Phelan conducted the humans to the dais and the head table. Tory found herself sitting next to Maratel three places to the left of Faslorn. Each of the humans was placed next to their personal guide. The rest of the crowd had dispersed to the lower tables. If there was a status order to the seating, it was not apparent. Still, everyone seemed to know precisely where they belonged, making Tory wonder just how many times they had practiced sorting themselves out. The thought made her wonder how many times they had rehearsed their welcoming ritual, and for how many years.