| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Clare M. Clerkin-Russell / Artwork by Holly Eddy |
| Journey's End |
There was an ancient legend on Old Earth that some wizards had once gotten together and created a small
boat that had eyes built into the front of its hull. They sent the boat forth into the Great Sea and it explored
some islands that could only be glimpsed from the shores of the kingdom. The wizards could see with the
boat’s eyes and were amazed at the wonders the boat found as it casually passed through the archipelago.
Then the boat disappeared over the horizon and eventually the wizards could see no more. One by one, over
many years, the wizards sought other wonders. Yet even to their last days they always remembered that
little boat and were nonetheless happy it was safely on a journey whose end they would not see…
~ * ~
Ten thousand parsecs from Terra, the Collector nodded toward a control obelisk and shut-down the inane
chatter she had been sampling for the last few ship-days. The ultra-modulating anti-chaotic noise filters had
cleaned up most of the background stuff that had overwhelmed the ancient radio signals: everything from
modern communications traffic to the natural solar belches and staccato hissings that flooded the Cosmos. It
took days of tedious work to scrub and tease coherent information out of that depth of white noise. But when
completed the Collector retained the ghostly echoes of ancient phantoms captured. It was enough to pay for
the costs of this little fishing expedition. Her clients, carefully screened amateur enthusiasts as well as
professional scholars, held such Captures dear.
The Collector listened carefully to the lost human voices, twenty thousand years old, and thought it was all so
much gibberish. Yet she felt a certain pride in attaining these elusive signals. It was her patented techniques
that had made such Captures possible. It was a well known fact most ordinary radio signals would be lost to
Cosmic noise after only a few light-years of propagation. The Collector’s filtering and scrubbing techniques
and specialized equipment had revolutionized certain historical and archeological fields.
And it had made Y’tara Goht hite Omnixia rich beyond the dreams of most mortals.
Yet Tara, as her many friends and clients called her, felt a nagging disenchantment with what was essentially
a rather boring job. She often wondered about the voices she Captured across so much time and space.
Those ghosts had been living, working people, just like herself, with dreams, successes, families, visions,
failures, and tragedies. And they had left behind a farrago of artifacts and monuments and no few documents.
Such things had a tangibility beyond the clickings and oscillating voices she spooled into the ship’s specialized
storage nodes.
Indeed, on a whim, during her last visit home, she had opted to tour Terra and its dozen or so Wonders. Thus
she had spent a considerable portion of one summer visiting places such as the Last Pyramid, Titanic-Under-
Sea, High Tower, and Mons Roshmur in the Dakot Desert. Later, outward from Old Earth stood the Apollo Site
and Ring City Ruin and even Old Starstad. And no few other artifacts around stars that humans had settled
over multiple millennia. She began to contemplate, therefore, old legends.
She shifted in the snugness of the Iyakakere’s womb room and called: “Bring up all pre-Flight anomalies in last
six months of radio scans.”
Tara leaned back and closed her wide, cat-like eyes. She had chosen a feline form for this expedition. Working
alone, she often found solace in body work that reminded her of childhood. There was a comfort in facing the
Cosmos as a rather serene, lithe humanoid cat with an intense gaze. The orange and black tiger stripes made
her feel strong as well. Much better than the aquatic form she had donned last voyage. Gawds, it had taken
forever and a small fortune to scrub the smells!
Feline, aquatic, avian, insectile, arboreal, amphibian…the list of Forms was endless. Such physical excursions
were common among the Galaxy’s vast population of humans. In all their searching and exploration they had
covered and settled most of the Galaxy that ringed the Core. Yet they had never encountered a non-human
intelligence. Vast areas of scholarship had explored the People’s need to recreate themselves as fabled
aliens, long sought but never found.
Somewhere beneath Tara’s sculpted skull and ornately peaked ears an image took shape within her mind’s
eye. The Galaxy appeared as a whorl of countless stars, coded by spectral colors and relative distances from
a known point source. In this case the point source was Terra.
With a thought she cast multiple spider webs across the Galaxy. These showed circles that represented radio
beacons that, like a pebble dropped into a pool, radiated ever outward. All such signals moved at the speed
of light. Overlaying the spider webs were lines of data that indicated signals that had been aimed at a point
location. The outer edge of the oldest spider webs and data lines showed a distance from Terra of twenty
thousand light years. Humans had been teasing, playing, and manipulating electromagnetic energies for a
long, long time.
Remove omni-directional patterns, Tara thought. Across her mind-map the spider-webs winked out. What was
left was a starburst of multi-colored rays reaching out from the home planet in various directions and
distances. She beheld a flower with ragged edges, a three-dimensional dandelion puff ready to cast off its
seeds. She scanned these via a statistical chant-function. Somewhere in her subconscious a distribution of
data formed a curiously coherent pattern.
“A double bump,” Tara said aloud.
The ship, in a baritone that was a mix of her father’s voice and that of a zhing idol she had fallen for while at
academy, said: “A bipolar distribution, Tara. Showing two distinct trends in the data.”
Indeed, the plots drifting before her showed a very large trans-gaussian spread with distance as a function of
time. Although wider in terms of the number of radio signals collected, the bulk of signals had travelled only
some twelve thousand light years, maximum. The other distribution had a narrow but decidedly steeper peak.
These signals were much older. A breakdown showed many that were at least twenty thousand years in age.
All had been directed to some specific point in space.
“This could be interpreted as pre-Flight and post-Flight?” she asked.
The ship waited a few moments before answering. The pause was an affectation, quite unnecessary given its
actual mental abilities, but one cultivated to make humans comfortable whenever they used the old mode of
verbal communication. “Yes. The breakdown is quite distinct,” the ship said.
Tara nodded and her inner concentration focused on the higher, older peak of radio signatures. Human
history was effectively broken down into two distinct time periods. Pre-Flight was the era ranging from the
years when early humans began leaving Earth up until the time of the first trans-light SuRF ships. Everything
after the development of the Flight Wave Effect was termed post-Flight or after-Flight. The current year was
15642 AF, standardized to Terra’s revolution about its sun. The solar system and a few of the nearer stars
had been thoroughly colonized and settled in the four millennia after the first Moon landing. Of course the
date for those steps in antiquity was quite thoroughly debated.
“The older signatures are early pre-Flight,” Tara said. “In fact the oldest might track back to the Apollo Era.”
The ship sighed audibly. “Be careful, Tara. No one is exactly sure when or what that era exactly was.”
Tara’s cat-like face frowned. “True, the Last Great Chyn Dynasty did eventually colonize and settle the
entirety of the Moon. But the culture that preceded it could have mounted an early lunar expedition.”
“Pre-Dynasty Culture A seems to have relics throughout the Solar System, at least. Culture B a few less so.”
“Hmm,” Tara purred. “Let’s take a look at the oldest of those radio signatures.”
The map shifted. Like threads being plucked from a skein the majority of the rays winked out of existence.
Now only a few thousand remained radiating outward from Old Earth. Some were stacked in layers or tightly
clustered in one direction. Others angled off alone on their own forgotten paths. All the signals had been sent
in the years long before the first hyperwave Flight.
Reduce signals to one hundred or so of the earliest, Tara thought.
The map blinked. One hundred lines radiated outward from Mother Earth. They sketched a thin, roughly
spherical pattern across the brilliance of the Galaxy. She had the ship scan each of them. A handful
represented widely angled signals that had been sent to some of the earliest manned sub-light vessels.
These routes and the relative timeframe in which they occurred were fairly well documented. Indeed, she had
used such data in locating targets for her filtering process. The rest represented messages sent to what were
hypothesized to be robotic sondes. The spacecraft that had perhaps received the remainder of the signals
were completely unknown.
“Focus in on the unknowns,” Tara said.
The number of rays dropped significantly. She was down to two dozen now. She scanned the map carefully.
Her mind traced the rays back along their individual paths. Although most covered upwards of twenty-
thousand light-years, no object travelling under the speed of light would have covered an equivalent
distance. These were simply the remnants of radio waves that had continued on long after they were
received by their recipients.
She began to examine patterns in the data. Many rays followed the same vector: direction if not distance.
Others were stronger than some of their counterparts: transmissions with significantly more bandwidth and
therefore more information. Those had been transmitted later and most likely, given their directions, to
advanced robots or even manned craft that were making the earliest voyages out to the stars.
That left the remainder. And those were intriguing. Specifically because they were weak signals and were
headed in directions where there was no direct line to a human colony or place of scientific interest.
Throwaway missions. The earliest sojourners?
“Focus in on the lowest energy transmissions,” Tara said. “Especially those with limited signal and minimal
information patterns.”
“Crude drum beats,” the ship said skeptically. “And impossibly old.”
“Just what I’m after,” she said.
The overlay changed and at first it appeared that all she was seeing was the Galaxy. Noting her brief
discomfiture the ship adjusted the view. Four rays, each about twenty thousand light-years in length,
gradually grew brighter. She sampled and analyzed each of the four lines, carefully noting their staccato
patterns. Long ago, someone on Earth had been communicating with separate spacecraft directly along those
paths.
“Whatever was being signaled will not have travelled twenty-thousand light-years,” came a sleepy male voice.
“Idler?” Tara asked aloud. “Have you been monitoring all this?”
A yawn. “Yes, I hope you don’t mind. A bit bored down here.”
As you should be, Tara thought. But this was a private-thought, not a public-thought, so her passenger would
not have heard it. “We believe in the Rules of Transparency, Idler. So the ship and I don’t mind. Is there
something you’d like to add to the conversation?”
A sleepy mumble and then: “I just think, given the age of those signals, that whatever they were sent to
probably hasn’t moved very far on its own. If you plan to go trophy hunting you’re likely to be headed back
toward Terra’s neighborhood.”
Tara nodded. “Early pre-Flight. It’s surprising these craft even managed to get beyond the edge of the solar
system.”
“But that assumes those signals weren’t sent to some spacecraft within the solar system,” Idler said. “You’re
merely following the radio signals of messages that went well beyond their intended receiver. Like shining a
flashlight at an object in a room but having some of the light spill onto the walls beyond.”
“Just a moment,” the ship called. But before that vast human-made sentience could continue Tara scanned
the four signals and called: “Each of those signals is well off the plane of the ecliptic that holds the orbits of
the solar system’s principle planets. Why would a craft of that era be above or below the planetary plane?”
Idler looked over the map and the closer view of the solar system. Tara had dialed the home world’s position
back some twenty millennia. The blue and white globe represented a statistical realm of possible locales in
space. Yet the blurry proportion of radio signals aimed above the ecliptic plane was in the high ninetieth
percentile. Any further analysis made Idler’s head swim and he swiftly conceded: “You’re absolutely right,
Tara. If these things ever cruised the solar system they did so only briefly.”
“Let’s pick one and find out,” Tara said. “We’ll start from twenty kay-lites out and follow the signal line home.”
Tara chose a radio line at random and calculated Flight coordinates. The ship called back its various
automated attendants from the spaces around where they were parked and readied the primary hyperwave
generators. When all was ready the ship’s ten kilometer bulk began a steady acceleration toward the
faraway end of Tara’s radio line. As light-speed was neared a tremendous bow shock was generated by the
ship’s powerful BRD arrays. The hyperwave generators were triggered a picosecond later and like a surfer of
old the ship began to cruise along the crest of a dimensional eddy. At top pseudovelocity they would need
only a handful of hours to reach the far end of the ancient radio signal.
Tara decided it was time to take Idler to lunch. Long lost were the days when starfaring passengers were
required to pay their way. However, there were customs and traditions to which all were bound, and so
demanded the basic social tenets of Galactic civilization. One of these customs was the captain’s call to
mealtime. Thus it was that after a quick refresh, with hair puffed and glossed and whiskers trim, Tara met
Idler in the ship’s Garden Basket.
“First time in weeks you’ve come out of the womb-room Tara,” Idler said by way of a greeting. “There are
rumors some captains never leave, unless they get bored with their old Form.”
“Legends, Idler,” Tara replied seating herself on a specially made chair before a wide stone table. “And
gossip.”
“But what are legends if not things to chase?” Idler asked.
The human before her had chosen a Form that, in her experience across the centuries that represented her
life, was unique. Once, creatures called pinnipeds roamed Mother Earth’s seas. The largest of these were
known as walruses. The human who called himself Idler had chosen that basic Form and overlaid it with his
own touches. These accommodated the wanderer’s desire for a semi-aquatic lifestyle. The head was roughly
simian and covered in ebony down. Although wide, the eyes were similar to those of any seal. The ears were
fan-shaped but could collapse inward and backward toward the skull when Idler entered the water. The rest
of the form’s bulk was covered in iridescent blues and indigoes of a pattern that changed whenever those
feathery segments needed replacement. Two large webbed hands sprouted from under plumage but
dexterity could be supplemented with the half dozen tendrils that sprouted from either shoulder.
Idler harrumphed his eagerness and settled down upon the ramp that led up to the end of the table opposite
Tara. Servitors drifted in on anti-gravitic orbs and began to lay out dishes. It was a sumptuous spread and
tailored to the individual and highly specialized likes of each of the humans.
It was a quiet meal, initially, as both were quite hungry and Tara could not recall the last time a meal was not
a supplement. Reminding herself not to overdo things she slowed and asked: “I hope our little detour is not
going to offset your researches, Idler.”
Idler swigged from a two-liter carafe of wine and placed it down with a thunk upon the stone table. “No, not
at all,” came the basso reply. “Indeed, a hop toward the homeworld may be of some advantage.”
“Oh, have you visited Terra before?” she asked.
“Not in centuries. And that was long before my researches began.”
“If I remember correctly…and surely this is an oversimplification…you are seeking to identify Idim and Ov.”
“Hmm,” the contemplation passed like a distant thunder. “In the old vernaculars I believe Adam and Eve
might be the closer representation. Although Idim and Ov might be a better, at least closer, approximation to
just one of several names used in the Old Tongues.”
Tara nodded. “But basically you are attempting to identify what an early human Form may have looked like.”
The big head nodded eagerly. “That’s correct. A human Form that was definitely pre-Flight, at least in that
era. A natural human Form. The Original Form. All we have is an idea based on some genetic and historical
approximations.”
“I’ve seen at least one,” Tara said.
“Oh. Really?”
“Yes. At a place called Mons Roshmur in Terra’s Dakot Desert.”
Idler sniffed. “I’ve seen simulacra but have never visited that site.”
Tara nodded. “Hai-mai! Old and striking! Four faces carved out of granite. Weather worn, certainly. But clearly
two men and two women looking westward across the Burn to the faraway Paxic Ocean.”
“That’s debatable, Tara. Many researchers have come to the conclusion that those carven images, like some
of the older and fragile remnants discovered in Aogypt, might be representations of some pre-Flight gods.”
“Gods? Not people?”
Idler’s shrug shook the table. “It’s not uncommon to worship a deity. Even today. Also, even if the faces on
Mons Roshmur were human Forms, there is very little to see of them below the neckline! Barely a help for
what I am attempting to discover.”
Tara nodded around a mouthful of lightly sautéed plump. “True,” she eventually said. “And when I visited the
place it felt as if you were in the presence of the gods. Surely, whoever built those faces, using the most
primitive tools, did so in the most worshipful cause.”
“That is the question around which the debate turns, I’m afraid.”
“Gods or humans. While I was there a visitor suggested a third alternative,” Tara added slyly.
Idler boomed a big laugh. Then he looked upon her with brief trepidation. “Oh, please, not the notion that
extraterrestrials built Mons Roshmur!”
“Yes. I actually met a person who insisted that this was a viable possibility. How else could primitive humans
have created the thing?”
Idler was adamant: “Intelligence? Planning? Skill? And lots of available labor?” The reply was a growl.
Tara smiled and swept around the verdant cavern that was the ship’s Garden Basket. “The exact same things
that have built us these starships.”
“Truly,” Idler replied almost in relief. Then, wistfully: “We’ve lost none of what we were, except perhaps our
basic physical blueprint.”
“But how can that be?”
Idler gusted a sigh. “Well, I do exaggerate. We can estimate the physical form. Down to a very close level.
The same technologies that allow us to create our many marvelous Forms can also backtrack to a near
approximation of the Original human body.”
“Has Forming caused us a problem, then? A setback?”
“No, Tara, I think not. But Forming has been around for much longer than even Flight technology. Indeed, it
was crucial to our ability to radically adapt to planets within the solar system and eventually to worlds around
other stars. But over time what we were has been lost. No templates, no images, no carvings. Nothing. We
are children spread across a million worlds who are unsure of our grand-parentage. It would be important, in
terms of cultural heritage, to truly know from whence we came.”
“How many worlds have you visited?” the cat asked the feathered walrus.
“Thousands. This current Form allows me to visit our fellow humans in some rather unique habitats. In
another decade I’ll likely take on a new Form and search elsewhere. I’ve expended most of my life on this
quest to find some record of what we were. I suspect, at times, I may never find the right answer.” There
was no sadness in the voice. Only easy acceptance of a given fact.
They chatted for some time until a chime rang through the big compartment. Both humans looked up from
their table as the ship announced: “Approaching target. Adjusting course to follow signal path. Detectors and
probability sampling at maximum.”
Tara glanced wickedly at Idler: “Now we’re on the hunt.”
“What do you expect to find?” the passenger asked.
“A spacecraft. It should be on the same track as the radio signal, provided nothing has significantly perturbed
its course. The ship can identify grains of sand light-years distant.”
Idler raised a webbed hand. “Oh, I’m certain the ship will leave no stone unturned. But what do you expect
this artifact to be like?”
Tara puzzled for a moment. “Oh, small, I might think. Certainly not anything over a kilometer long. Perhaps
smaller.”
“Why?”
“Well, assuming they launched from somewhere on Earth I cannot imagine a payload being much bigger…”
“No,” Idler was quick to interrupt. “Why? Why do you seek this artifact? I thought your methods of finding the
Old Voices, as they are so popularly called, should be enough.”
Tara’s catlike face formed a brief moue and then she said: “The Old Voices seem to flutter about like insects in
a jar. Oh, I’ve gotten extremely good at Capturing them. And I’m proud about it all. But it is so hard to
pinpoint what any of it means. Or what significance any of it may hold. How can I tell the difference between,
say, someone broadcasting a rude joke and a monarch announcing freedom for millions of people? I can’t.
And by the time the scholars sort it all out I am off on some other Capture.”
“I see. And so something physical would change all that?”
Tara nodded. “In a sense it would make it all more tangible. An artifact that old, well, it would be a real link to
all these Old Voices I’ve trapped within my machines.”
Idler’s big head bowed momentarily. “In an odd way, Tara, the artifact you seek is not too unlike my goal of
finding the original human Form. A touchstone for our People.”
At a certain point in its Flight path, Iyakakere’s vast collection of sensors momentarily touched upon the rude
clickings, much consumed within the surrounding Galactic noise, of the ancient signal from Old Earth. Beyond,
space was empty of any artificial pluckings within that portion of the radio spectrum. Touching those ghosts
lightly, the ship drove on down the carefully mapped linear track. Searching, seeking, sampling. They were
closer to Terra than either captain or passenger would have thought possible before the first detector signals
were confirmed.
“Over fifty thousand astronomical units out from Terra,” Idler whispered under the dome of the ship’s
observation bubble. “That’s fifty thousand times as far as Terra is from the Sun.”
“And a five second hop at a middlin’ of pseudovelocity,” Tara confirmed.
“At that rate, and assuming the object has been in space for twenty thousand years, it has been travelling
roughly two point six astronomical units each year,” the ship stated. Then, almost disdainfully: “A belly crawl.”
Tara stared outward through the semi-fullerene shape of the observation blister. Only a few stars shone
through the haze and glare of the red supergiant they were swiftly passing. The old star watched their
crossing balefully. No life had ever grown in its environs and nothing living had ever paid it so close a visit. Yet
it remained a lantern in Terra’s skies. And it had a name that was old even when men sent the radio signal
whose empty track the starship now followed.
“Have you confirmed age and size yet?” Tara finally asked.
“Age unknown,” the ship reported. “Size several meters overall, mass approximately two hundred kilograms.”
“Small,” Idler said. “Even the humblest of Iyakakere’s drones are larger.”
Tara shook her head. “Not all. But the mass to size ratio is quite lightweight for anything around today. It may
be old, but that doesn’t rule out it being contemporary, or at the very least post-Flight.”
“Or somebody’s cast off garbage,” the ship said.
“Could it be mere coincidence that it follows the path of some ancient radio beam?” Idler asked. He was
about to say more but stopped.
Tara had fallen silent. The ruddy glare from the passing star reflected in her cat-like eyes. “It’s old,” she
whispered after a time. “And it was sent out here for some purpose.”
“Complete conjecture,” the ship said. “What do you base this on?”
Without saying anything else Tara stalked out from under the old star’s gaze and headed back toward the
confines of the womb room. Idler noted as she walked away the Collector’s serpentine tail flicked impatiently
back and forth behind her ankles. It had a predator-like rhythm that left him oddly startled.
Iyakakere dropped to its lowest pseudovelocity and spent nearly a full ship-day on approach to the target.
The massive red star fell far astern. Although there was plenty of traffic in and around Sol, the corridor they
used as an approach was deserted. Over sixty light years passed beyond the ship’s hull before the optics
picked up the target. The ship vectored its energies to maintain a cautious distance. Speed was then matched
in relation to the new found object.
Data collection quickly became a cataract. If the new images had appeared on a single screen the two
humans would have likely crowded one another for a better view. Fortunately the simulacra was shunted via
their optic nerves to be absorbed and displayed via their individual mindware.
What they saw was a slowly spinning umbrella form with three equally spaced outrigger arms. The shallow
umbrella was bigger than a human and had a decidedly parabolic shape. From its center rose a long thick
spike. This was clearly the receiver boom for some type of primitive antenna. One outrigger arm was long and
frail looking. The other two ended in blocky, heavy-looking segments. These showed moderate traces of
radioactivity.
One of the Iyakakere’s attendants was sent forth to take a closer look. Beneath the artifact’s umbrella form
was a boxy ring of compartments. Spectral dating commenced. An age of nearly twenty thousand years was
revealed. It took over a minute for Tara to remember to breathe.
“Nicely done, Tara,” Idler called.
“Agreed,” the ship added.
Tara was too busy to reply with anything but a wisp of acknowledgement across the ship’s linkages. She
dispersed several more specialized attendants and began plotting scenarios for grabbing more information on
the ancient spacecraft. And yes, eventually she wanted to physically capture the thing. But she was in no
hurry. After all, her trophy had waited this long.
When Idler realized how much time these surveys might take he registered a tremulous shudder of impending
boredom. Iyakakere just laughed in its own odd ship-mind fashion. Tara was both thorough and patient. Days
passed.
Down in the Garden Basket Idler heard footfalls on a pebbled pathway and glanced up in surprise. Tara
stepped lithely in his direction. She looked tired and thoughtful. Where he might have expected to see
triumph he only saw weariness.
She paused a meter away on the banks of a pool he had taken to habituating and said without preamble:
“Have I mentioned lately how pleased I am you are a passenger on board this ship?”
Quite startled out of his latest reverie Idler could only reply: “Oh?”
“Come with me,” she said. “Now.”
Idler recognized a Captain’s command when he heard one. He quickly clambered out of the pool without time
for the surrounding fields to properly dry his bulk. He resisted the urge to shake himself off and followed
Tara’s quickly receding figure out of the Basket and down a wide corridor. A travelway effector grabbed him
and within minutes he was transported across kilometers to Iyakakere’s hold. The ship adjusted the effectors
so that a steady and mildly heated stream of air dried him off. Still, his plumage was fluffed in a variety of
awkward patterns and places when he finally caught up with Tara.
The ship’s hold was a cavernous series of segments with curving floors and high roofs that angled toward a
wedge-like point. It was separated into dozens of bays with recessed locks that led out to the nothingness of
space. Equipment and storage pods hung in clamps here and there. Gravity could be varied in each segment.
Each bay could also be curtained by a work-field. Idler could see only one such forcefield was engaged. He
stood next to Tara and watched through the grayish screen as shadowy objects busied themselves around
an inert but very familiar shape.
“You’ve brought it onboard!” the Idler cried. His words boomed in the ceiling high above.
Tara turned toward her passenger. A wicked smile showed pointed fangs. “No,” she rasped. “I’ve brought
them aboard.”
Puzzled, Idler could do little except follow her deeper into the cargo bay. They passed through the gray
forcefield and into the well-lit bay. Idler felt gravity drop but his body’s well-crafted endocrine system flooded
him with calm and no little amount of anti-emetics. He and Tara walked up to within one meter of the old
artifact. Although the antenna was big enough to hold each of them, the rest of the spacecraft seemed
somehow diminutive. Idler felt a chill and his plumage bristled. Whether it was the surrounding cold or
something intangible based on the presence of such an old creation was highly debatable.
“The artifact is encased within an environmental field,” Tara explained. “We’re essentially keeping it at
outside pressure, temperature, and gravity, among other things. Also, the old radioactive power generators
are safely shielded.”
“Remarkable,” Idler whispered. “But what did you mean by…”
“Just wait,” Tara’s voice came in a whisper. Then, louder to the ship: “Rotate and present.”
Manipulated by Iyakakere’s invisible hands the artifact was delicately turned on several axes. The boxy ring
beneath the antenna was revealed. Closer inspection showed various struts and braces and other arcane
items and projections.
“Magnify point of prior interest,” Tara called. The bay went suddenly still.
The air in front of Idler shimmered and coalesced. The underside of the antenna blossomed outward. Pinned
between the V of some struts was a small golden plaque. It held multiple symbols showing the solar system’s
planets, astronomical data, a two-dimensional schematic that appeared to be the ancient spacecraft itself,
and standing in the foreground before it…
“Human beings!” Idler cried. “A scaled drawing of two human beings!”
“A man and a woman,” Tara said.
“By the Cosmos, Tara!” Idler cried.
“Your Idim and Ov, I think.”
There were tears in Idler’s big eyes. He choked: “Those humans…must be…pre-Flight!”
The two stood and stared. Across time, the two figures on the little plaque matched their gaze. The pair were
smaller than the line diagram that represented the spacecraft. The man stood slightly taller than the woman
with one of his arms raised in greeting. His face held a timeless gaze that could have lingered on the face of a
prehistoric explorer, nobleman, or one of the ancient spacecraft’s very designers. Nude, the body was
somewhat idealized, but proportion and dimension and gender were readily ascertained. The woman,
although a head shorter, was clearly his equal. Her gaze was expressive: a mixture of greeting,
contemplation, and intelligence. Long hair fell back behind her shoulders. Similarly nude and as idealized as
the male, the woman’s pose seemed determined and energized. It was as if her spirit could easily step off the
tiny plaque in order to walk across a planet for some desire or goal.
In very human terms, the two etched forever upon the spacecraft’s gold plaque were both formidable but also
likable.
“The original true Forms,” Tara said. “What you’ve been looking for all these many years.”
“Yes,” Idler whispered. “And I almost wish we had never found them.”
“What?” Tara said with a gasp.
“These two weren’t meant to be stopped, Tara. You can’t just Collect them like a trophy.”
Tara was silent for a long while. Her cat gaze regarded the beautiful depths within the eyes of the two
figures. Eventually she said: “No.”
What happened next was not what Tara would have expected ever to do with an artifact. More surprisingly
was what she decided to do with herself. Idler opted for the same path and needed far less time to be
convinced. They were another month following the ancient relic’s path toward the faraway red star. But they
covered only thousands of kilometers rather than light-years. When the time came they met at a point just
beyond Iyakakere’s vast hull.
“Another few minutes,” the ship told them. The voice came, appropriately enough, over a radio beam.
Within the clear fabric of her suit Tara shifted slightly. There were itches against bare skin she hadn’t
expected in the Form her body had recently morphed into. And to her slight embarrassment the first model of
the new spacesuit had to be remade in order to accommodate her new Form’s wide hips. Idler had
unabashedly mentioned how much he liked those, while also complaining his spacesuit bit into his underarms.
But that presented only one of many varied nuisances offered by his new body.
“Consider that problem part of your research,” Tara had mumbled. Their laughter was broadcast toward the
stars.
“Ready,” the ship informed them. Against the hull a hatchway opened and the artifact emerged on delicate,
shimmering fields. Effectors carried the ancient spacecraft and the two humans several kilometers away from
Iyakakere. With little ceremony the relic was spun up along the same axes as they had found it. Then the
vacuum around the old probe flickered and the craft fell free. Respectfully, the ship and its two humans moved
slowly away. The artifact dwindled.
“We’ll never know why that plaque was onboard,” Tara said.
“Perhaps,” Idler said. “I’d like to believe it was meant for us.”
The relic became a slowly rotating speck. In the distance the red star once called Aldebaran looked down
upon the scene. Elsewhere Sol was a brilliant star among lesser fires. The old spacecraft was back on its
original path. Iyakakere estimated it would reach the distant red supergiant in another two million years. Tara
and Idler, having adopted the old human Forms of the man and woman found on the enigmatic plaque,
reached toward one another and held gloved hands.
Idler raised his arm just like the man on the ancient plate and called: “An easy voyage, old timer.”
“Goodbye,” Tara whispered.
~ * ~
Thus it was the spacecraft designated by its builders as Pioneer 10 continued down a road whose end they
would not see…
| Make a donation |
About herself, Clare says: I am a writer, researcher and lab instructor at a college
in Rochester, NY. I hold degrees in Chemistry and Astronomy. I have always
loved science fiction and fantasy and remember discovering so many wonderful
authors as a child that I had an odd sense that they and their characters were all
dear friends. Such works inspired me to explore the world around me and led to
the pursuit of a career in the sciences.
I have had prior work published in NanoBison, Fried Fiction, and Encounters
Magazine.
in Rochester, NY. I hold degrees in Chemistry and Astronomy. I have always
loved science fiction and fantasy and remember discovering so many wonderful
authors as a child that I had an odd sense that they and their characters were all
dear friends. Such works inspired me to explore the world around me and led to
the pursuit of a career in the sciences.
I have had prior work published in NanoBison, Fried Fiction, and Encounters
Magazine.