LINKS
____________
The Christa Affair
Chapter Five
While waiting for the four females to make their appearance in the control room, Jashi stood at the starboard viewport, looking toward the campsite of the missing mining team they'd been sent to rescue. The old-fashioned percolator bubbled cheerfully behind him, and Jashi wished it would hurry; he was ready for a mug of honest-to-gods real coffee. Although chemically identical to the real thing, the synthetic stuff dispensed by the machines in the ship's galley just didn't taste the same.
Karli had presented him with the obsolete gadget during their first year aboard the \Klondike\, mysteriously refusing to reveal where she'd found it; the ancient fugitive from a Terran scrap-heap was stamped on the bottom "Made in Korea." The percolator wouldn't function properly in the reduced cabin pressure maintained by the \Klondike's\ lifesupport system when they were off-planet; Jashi had been forced to construct a tiny pressure-dome to house it, and to manufacture a new heating element for it that would work properly on ship's power. The memory elicited a smile as he picked up the glasses and scanned the now-deserted mining camp five miles to the south.
Thru the powerful lenses, Jashi could plainly see the domes that had been living quarters for the missing scientists. Just four ordinary quick-domes -- that's all there had been to find when they made planetfall. Four empty domes so clean they might have just been erected, from their appearance -- no ship, no people, no equipment... Not even any garbage. There was no sign that twenty-eight people had lived and worked there for three months.
After searching the campsite thoroughly, they had taken one of the ship's landingcraft aloft for a complete scan of the area; high-power scan revealed nothing within a twenty mile radius. No sentient life-forms, no machinery or equipment, no man-made articles of any kind except the four deserted domes.
Sector HQ had requested a ground-search of the scanned area, in an effort to locate the shaft the scientists had been preparing to sink at the time of their last report. For two days, the crew of the \Klondike\ had repeatedly crisscrossed the area by airsled and on foot without finding a clue; the search had ended abruptly when their scanners announced the approach of the unidentified ship. Jashi had reported to HQ, then terminated all transmission to avoid detection.
*********
For a moment, Jashi thought he saw something move among the domes, then it was gone. He lowered the glasses and turned from the viewport just as Lito and Suu entered the control room with Mowii and Karli close behind. The percolator sighed into silence, and Jashi poured coffee for everyone as they assembled about the small table that was used for both meals and control room paperwork.
The \Klondike\ had a dining and recreation compartment, but the crew preferred to eat in the control room where they could all be together. Jashi turned to Lito, who was still in contact with her bondmate. "Anything going on at the site?" he asked.
"Roi says nothing changed since you left," Lito replied.
"At this stage of the game, I don't know if that's good news or bad," Jashi responded with a hollow laugh. "The only thing we know for sure is that the ship disappeared from sight... Or at least that's what it \looked\ like. Rang and I were both looking at it when it vanished, and we saw the same thing -- a slight pulsation of some sort, then it wasn't there any more. No noise, no visible disturbances around the ship. Nothing. Anybody got any questions?"
Tense silence.
"Suggestions or theories?"
Again only
silence.
"Well \that's\ something!"
Jashi attempted humor, trying to lighten the somber mood that had once again settled over the crew. "This is the first time I've ever seen four Human females speechless at the same time."
Suu tried to laugh; Lito scowled at him. (.... "Watch it, Jashaua Abram! ....") Karli said sharply inside his head. (.... "We still gotta have that talk ....")
"Sorry," Jashi said aloud. "Okay, here's the plan... Unless one of you can come up with something better. We'll maintain full scan until the end of this watch, and we'll continue visual surveillance of the canyon. If nothing changes by then, we'll rig in a video link from the observation post to the ship. We'll do a print of the scene and rig it to the computer to sound an alarm if anything in the frame changes; we can set it to ignore small animals and wind-induced plant movement. If it turns out that the ghost-ship is really still there, and just masked by some kind of invisibility device, they might scan the ridge and pick up the video sensor. But I strongly suspect they've been aware of our presence all along anyway."
"Do you really think it's still there?" asked Lito.
"Who knows," answered Jashi. "What's your opinion, Rang?"
"We both saw the same thing. Insufficient data to have an opinion," his brother responded. "I wish we dared scan it. How about if we try ultrasonics... Think they'd be able to detect a single microburst?"
"What difference does it make?" asked Mowii. "Jashi just said he thinks they know about us anyway. I can't believe you guys crawled around in the grass like a bunch of savages if a remote sensor was just as good!"
"If there's anything there to detect anything in the first place..." added Suu.
Suddenly they were all talking at once -- typical family meeting aboard the \Klondike\. (.... "Oh brother! ....") said Karli.
Had an outsider been present at that moment, he would have wondered how this bunch lived together aboard ship without killing one another, but Jashi knew this was good for them. It would release the unbearable tension that had been brought to the boiling point by the strange events of the past hour. (.... "Starting to act like themselves, aren't they, Kitten? ...."). He let it continue a few moments longer, then whistled loudly -- the room became silent.
"First of all, a remote sensor isn't as good as the Human eye... It's somewhat easier to fool. Second, I'm not \sure\ they know about us, it just seems logical, in view of their unknown origin and their other cute tricks. Third, I have no opinion whether they're there -- invisible -- or whether they're gone; either one is an impossibility within the limits of science known to the Federation. Fourth, our scanners are now on at full power -- much easier to detect than the radiation from a video sensor -- and as you put it Mowii, I'm \tired\ of crawling around in the grass like a savage. I didn't like it in the first place! I call for a formal vote -- recorded and logged -- any objections?"
No one spoke; Jashi switched on the recorder. "As Captain of the \Klondike\, I propose to discontinue visual surveillance at the end of this watch, and substitute a video surveillance computer link. Further, I propose to continue full power multiscan, and observe hyperphone silence. We will attempt databurst link with HQ if nothing has changed by end-of-watch. I'm sure they'll be scanning this area since we haven't reported in sixteen days. End of proposal... How say you?"
It was unanimous. The formal recording was made only to leave a record in the ship's log; military vessels were required to record and log everything. "If a board of inquiry ever get's their hands on \this\ log, they'll have a coronary!" thought Jashi wryly as he switched off the recorder. Aloud he said, "This meeting is adjourned. Lito, you have the conn. Now how about something to eat?"
"Nothing but proto," said Suu. "We ate the last of the real stuff yesterday. It's either proto or L-4... We were supposed to stock the pantry on Delfina-Two."
"Yuch!" said Jashi. "Chemically-the-same-as doesn't do a thing for the taste of synthesized beef-steak!" As for L-4, three quarts of the water-based liquid a day would maintain a person's health indefinitely, without need for other nourishment, but it had no class. Jashi remembered the old spacers' tale of a shipwrecked asteroid miner who survived six hundred twenty-eight Earth-days on the stuff. When they found him, he had been dead three days -- according to the story, the medical report had listed the cause of death as "acute terminal boredom."
"Chicken and rice, please... I can't stomach any more of that phony cow muscle!" The lilt of Suu's laughter rippled back from the passageway as she headed for the galley.
Karli poured them all more coffee, then snuggled close as she returned to her seat, laying her head on Jashi's shoulder. Their contact intensified, enveloping them both and shutting out the light conversation of the others at the table. Karli was inside his head with unaccustomed intensity; Jashi could feel her fear. (.... "I'm sorry, Jashi. I knew you were joking; I'm just scared!....")
(.... "I was thoughtless ....") Jashi answered. He glanced at the ship's-time readout above the main control panel -- in just a few hours he'd have to start back to the canyon to set up the video link; suddenly they wanted to be alone, together. (.... "Now? L-4? ....")
(.... "L-4 shall be as Delfinan Brandy! ....") she responded.
Without speaking, they rose from their places at the table. They stopped at the galley to draw two glasses of L-4; Suu smiled as they retreated down the passageway, and stuffed two hot protodinners into the mass-recycle chute. "Bet that's one glass of L-4 he won't find boring," she said to herself. She wished Toko were here to spend these few hours with her.
CHAPTER SIX
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