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“There you have it, Eric,” President Jim Marsen said as he slumped back into his chair. His right elbow rested on the table, his fingers holding a phantom cigar.
Eric gazed at the thin LCD screen on the center of the table. The probe’s diamond shape visible from low orbit. It was old footage from the Theseus before the Curtani attacked.
“And you think it is still out there?” Eric asked.
Jim nodded. “Looking for a new place to set up shop. Its pattern appears to be seeking out habitable worlds. Well, worlds with a suitable atmosphere, at least.”
“A terraforming probe,” Eric said in a whisper. “But every other time the probe jumped, this time it imploded.”
Jim stood up from his chair and stepped next to his colleague. “Yes. The military is assuming that was a defense mechanism.”
Not worthy.
“Not certain,” Eric mused.
“What are thinking, Eric?”
“It did nothing to prevent the Curtani from landing on it, nor did stop our team. It imploded only when we got inside and it had scanned us.”
“Searching for something?”
Eric nodded. “Something familiar.” He passed his hand over the screen, returning to an earlier slide depicting the probe’s zigzagging path through this quadrant of the galaxy. With a deep exhalation, he exclaimed, “Not possible.”
“That’s what our chief investigator thought too.” Eric felt a smile cross Jim’s face. “We are only somewhat versed in your father’s work. It’s hard to find these days.”
Eric craned his neck closer to the red line. “That is a fair assessment. Wild, debunked hypotheses are usually not the best investments.”
Jim chuckled and placed a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “And yet, you believed it.”
Eric craned his neck to Jim. “No, I was just interested in the similarities between three different sentient species in three different systems. It could support common evolutionary traits among distant, life-bearing worlds.”
“Even down to city planning and philosophy?”
“Possibly, a lack of communication does not mean separate civilizations wouldn’t follow similar architecture and philosophy, similar to pyramids and ancient Earth civilizations.” Eric stood up.
“So, does Management seem to think the probe is interested in these extinct cultures?”
“We don’t know. It is one hell of a coincidence.”
“And there is no evidence of a previous civilization on this rock?”
“Also, we do not know. We are assuming so.”
The LCD display switched off and the room lights bathed everything in a dull yellow.
“Since you’re onboard, I’ll bring you to meet the rest of the research team.” Jim headed for the door. “Follow me. I’ll show you why the probe, or another probe, is still out there.”
Eric followed Jim down several intersecting corridors. They stopped at a heavily guarded door. The troops saluted Jim and rushed to open the doors for them.
The research lab inside was a buzz with activity. Several scientists were crowded around LCD displays of the probe, the current planet they orbited, and recordings from recent events. Eric walked quickly passed one such recording of his own corneal implants. He saw Emb in it. A LCD projection of a spherical star map was in the center of the room. A red line shot meandered through the projection with a several large red spheres connected by the line. A young, short-haired blonde woman was locked in conversation with a taller, light-blue skinned Metamorph at this projection.
Eric swallowed hard. He fought back tears.
“Lieutenant Nascern, this is Eric Reeves, the xeno-researcher who survived the latest encounter with the probe,” President Marsen, stopping a few feet from the Metamorph.
The woman’s voice trailed off into a murmur. Nascern, the Metamorph, turned and stepped forward and presented his hand to Eric.
Eric shook Nascern’s hand with a weak grip. The woman stepped up beside Nascern.
Nascern motioned toward the woman. “This Dr. Cynthia Morse. She is my brightest post-doc on this assignment.”
Jim shook her hand, Eric followed.
Morse stammered, “I’m so sorry what you had to go through. I can’t imagine . . . ”
Eric’s response was flat. “Don’t try.”
Morse dropped the rest of her statement. She pulled her hand from Eric and stepped back.
Eric leaned toward Jim. “Why am I only being introduced to this team now?”
“There wasn’t time, Eric. You were called up quickly to rendezvous with the Theseus while we were still in route.”
“So, expendable.”
“I wanted you on this mission.”
“I doubt the Board agreed with your call.”
“They did not.”
Nascern clapped his hands together and cleared his throat. “So, now that you are part of the team, what do you wish to know?”
Eric stepped passed Nascern to the star map. The points on the map were labeled with the names of the systems the probe had visited.
“How have you been tracking it?” Eric mused.
“We aren’t,” Morse replied, moving next to him.
Eric raised an eyebrow. “Really? Are you just following a hunch that it’s tracking a series of lost civilizations that my late father discovered?”
Morse shied away from meeting his gaze. Eric felt his chest swell. He was nearly a foot taller than Morse. He chastised himself, he must have sounded like his doctoral advisor many years ago. Good one, Eric.
Jim nodded at Nascern and the Metamorph stepped to Eric’s left. “Yes, we have been tracking it. We have new tech that can track a ship through phase space.”
Eric’s eyes widened.
Nascern continued. “It is still a bit glitchy. We have techs working on it as we move. Refining it. That’s how we tracked it out here. Well, I should say we are tracking a disturbance, the techs call it the ‘shadow’.”
“The ’shadow’?”
Nascern grinned. “The probe doesn’t travel alone, it has a shadow.”
Nascern motioned Eric to follow him. He headed toward a console near the back of the room.
“The phase sensors are not fine tuned enough to follow something as small as the probe.”
“But I was told it has grown larger at every system it has entered.”
Nascern raised a single, slender finger. “Yes, after it arrives. When it phases, it is the same size. That’s why we do not believe it was destroyed with this last implosion.”
“So, it has a mother ship?”
Nascern stopped at the console and a holographic projection appeared in the air before them. It was a red mess to Eric. It depicted a visible representation of static, phase static. Phase space had long been too noisy to see behind its mysterious curtain. The only thing any vessel could do when jumping was to ride a gravity line from its entry point into phase space and its destination point in real space. Like walking a tight rope over a gorge in a windstorm blindfolded. If a vessel strayed from its navigation points in phase space, they could be lost in the static, forever.
Nascern passed his hand over the console and refined the red spherical image. He filtered out the noise of phase space and revealed a black image. There was still enough noise that the mass was an irregular, amorphous shape.
“That is our probe’s escort. It is estimated to be about three to four times larger than this survey cruiser.”
Eric whistled. Out there just beyond the time and space was an amorphous shadow looking over them. What was it contemplating?
© 2018 C.J. Staryk. All Rights Reserved.
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