Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

I went as close to the net as I dared. I had already folded the altmatter wings to decrease the effect of the current, although the eddies were so turbulent that this did not help as much as it should have, and my ship shuddered as a consequence. I switched to fusion power and edged toward the net. I wanted to see if the busy little objects—the fishermen—were spacecraft or creatures, but at the same time I didn’t want to be swept into the net. One can’t make an offer of kinship unless the two parties begin on a more-or-less equal footing. From what I hoped was a safe distance, I saw a drama unfold.

A behemoth was caught in the net. As it struggled, it tore holes in the material. One of the busy little fishercraft immediately went for it. Arms (or grappling hooks?) emerged from the craft and tried to engage the behemoth, but the creature was too large and too strong. A few lashes of the powerful tail, and it had pulled free, swimming off in the current—but the little craft-like object or creature broke up. From within it came all kinds of debris, some of it clearly made out of ordinary matter because it was impervious to the chaotic churning of the Antarsa and only influenced by gravity. These bits had clean, smooth trajectories. Flailing and struggling in the current, however, were three long, slender creatures with fins and a bifurcated tail. Were these the pilots of the craft, or parasites within the belly of a beast? The inexorable currents drew them to the net. I wanted to linger, to see whether they would be rescued or immobilized—two of the busy craft went immediately toward them—but I was already too close and I did not want to subject my ship to more shuddering. So I powered away in a wide arc.

I made for the night side of the planet. I was hoping for lights, indicating a settlement, perhaps, but the night side was dark, except for the fires of volcanoes and lava beds. Whatever beings had engineered the enormous net had left no trace of their presence on the planet—perhaps, if they had once lived there, they had abandoned it.

My kin were clearly not on this planet. The generation ship must have come here and found that the constant bombardment of the planet by altmatter creatures made it a poor candidate for a home. I hoped that they would have escaped the net, if the net had been there at the time. It was possible, too, that they had come here and settled, and when, as I thought, the Antarsa current shifted and slammed through Ashta, they perished. I felt great sadness, because I had hoped, dreamed, that I would find them here, settled comfortably in the niches and spaces of this world. I had imagined talking to them in the Old Irthic that I had been practicing, until I learned their languages. Instead I had to send a message home that they were not here after all.

Where had they gone? Manda had told me that the old generation ships were programmed for at least three destinations. Wherever they had gone, they had not thought it worthwhile to send us a message. Perhaps something had gone wrong en route. I shivered. None of the options implied anything good for our lost kin.

I decided I would attempt a moon landing. The moons did not seem to be made of altmatter as far as I could tell. The moon over the dark side was in the planet’s wake, where there should be fewer eddies and undertows. So I brought my craft (still on fusion power) into orbit around the moon.

That was when it happened—a totally unexpected undertow caught the folded altmatter wings in the navigation chamber at just the right angle. I had at that moment cut speed from the fusion engines, preparatory to making an approach, so the undertow caught me by surprise. Before I knew it we were flung head-on toward the moon.

As I saw the moon’s battered surface loom larger and larger, I thought of you, dear kin. I thought my moment had come. You would wonder at Mayha’s silence, and hypothesize various endings to her story. I couldn’t let that happen to you. Quicker than thought, I powered the fusion engines to brake my craft. I made a crash-landing, bumping along the uneven ground, over and over, until at last we were still. I felt the slight tug of the moon’s gravity. The inertial web retracted slowly—I winced as it pulled strands of my hair with it. I was shaking, weak from shock. How slowly the silence impressed upon me as I lay in my craft!

Then the ship’s AI began to speak. The fusion engine was intact, but one of the altmatter wings was broken. There was some damage to the outside of the ship, and the AI was already launching a repair swarm that clambered insect-like over the cracked and fissured shell. Anchoring cables had dug in and secured us to the surface of the moon. There was a spare wing stored within the navigation chamber, but it would take a long time to shape and match it to the old one. Then I would have to remove the broken wing and put in the new one, and adjust the rigging to the right tension. Working with altmatter meant that as I turned a wing this way or that, it would pick up a current or two and tumble out of my hand, and blow about the chamber. After a while I decided I needed to restore my mental equilibrium to the extent possible under such circumstances. So I did what I would do at home: after suiting up, I went for a walk.

Walking on the moon was both exhilarating and terrifying. To be outside my little home after years! I could spread my arms, move my legs, go somewhere I hadn’t been before. There was the great bulk of the planet ahead of me, dominating my field of vision, dark and mysterious, streaked with fires, limned with light. The moon seemed to be a fragile thing in comparison, and I had to fight the feeling that I would fall away from it and on to the smoking, burning planet. I had to step lightly, gingerly, so that the ground would not push me away too hard. I walked halfway around it and found myself at the edge of a deep crater.

Lowering myself down to it was easy in the low gravity. At the bottom it was very dark. My suit lights picked out an opening—a hollow—a cave! I stepped into it, curious, and found a marvel.

The cave was filled with luminous fish-like creatures, each about as long as my finger. They circled around on tiny, invisible currents, so I guessed they were made of altmatter. As I stared at them in wonder, a few darted up to me, hovering over my visor. I stood very still. To make kinship with a fellow living being, however remote, was a great thing after my long incarceration. I was inspected and found harmless, and thereafter left alone. I stood in the dark of the cave, my ears filled with the sound of my own breathing, and fervently thanked the universe for this small encounter.

As I turned to leave, I had a terrible shock. My suit lights had fallen on somebody—a human, sitting silently on a piece of rock against the wall of the cave, watching me.

No, it was not a person—it was a sculpture. Fashioned in stone of a different kind, a paler shade than the material of the moon, it had clearly been brought here. I went up to it, my heart still thumping. It was the statue of a woman, sitting on a rock cut to resemble the prow of a boat or ship. There was a long pole in her hands, and she looked at me with obsidian eyes, her face showing a kind of ethereal joy. I thought she might be one of the old gods of our ancestors, perhaps a goddess for travelers. I touched the rock with my gloved hand, moved beyond tears. Why had my kin left this symbol here? Perhaps they had tried to make a home on Ashta, and failing, had left the statue as a mark of their presence.

I spent three days on the moon. I repaired the wing, a task more difficult than I can relate here (Raim will find a better description in my technical journal) and went back to the cave many times to renew kinship with the fish-like creatures and to see again the statue of the woman. The last time, I conducted an experiment.