Dilation Chapter 5: The Ship
For fake meat, the plate of food in front of Raynor was pretty good, though it dawned on her she’d never had a meat substitute before. There had been multiple types eaten by people on Earth, but Mars had no space for livestock. Without a strong palate for meat, there was no market for substitutes. If you didn’t want to eat fish or fowl, you simply didn’t.
The slab of unidentified brown tissue on the table before her wasn’t really a substitute, though. It was meat, it just hadn’t come from an animal. A machine constructed the food, molecularly identical, pulling nutrients from giant vats in the wall behind the interface. The chef operated just like a regular constructor, only instead of creating everyday objects like hats or cutlery, it built food. She imagined there was a similar market of schematics — recipes — sold by programmers with an affinity for cuisine.
Having only tried a few meals so far, she was impressed. It wasn’t quite as good as a home-cooked meal, but the difference in flavor might have less to do with the means of creation and more to do with the nutritional content. Still, it beat every meal she’d had in the militia. Field rations were bricks of nutrients flavored to taste like bricks, and space rations were nutrient pastes flavored to taste like paste. Food on base had been better, but still mass-produced on a budget.
This was just…food.
The canteen spanned the second floors of all the three dormitory buildings. Wide, lounge-like walkways interconnected the three buildings at the same level. Scattered throughout each of the rooms were tables of various sizes and shapes, many of which were empty now that most people’s second meals were over. A haze of indistinguishable chatter filled the large cafeteria. Her translator managed to handle all of the nearby conversation, but after a certain number of voices, it just gave up. Raynor was tuning all of it out anyway. A clearer voice came from her left.
“May I sit?”
Raynor looked up to see a man with wide shoulders, his head shaved down. He wasn’t quite as light-skinned as the old Europeans, but considerably more than most people on base.
“Sure.” She gestured to the empty seats. He sat diagonally from her.
“Is the rest of your ship on a different schedule?” he asked.
Raynor blinked. “Some…a few already left. I think they’re wandering around here.” She didn’t get along with most of her ship. Only one other person had been from Mars, the rest were her former subjugators. The man must have sensed her hesitation.
“I didn’t mean to pry. I tend to see people sticking with those they traveled with.”
Raynor looked around. She saw groups varying from two to twelve, which was as many as you could reasonably fit around the larger tables. She didn’t notice any signs suggesting they were from the same ships.
“Where’s the rest of your ship?” she asked.
“I don’t have one,” he said. “The last one left before I was born.”
“So you’re from here?” Raynor became suddenly intrigued. This man was training at Starling Base but had never gone into time dilation.
“Not here. I’m from Tannon, a nation on the other side of the planet.” All of the time Raynor had been forced to spend learning geography in grade school, and it meant nothing.
“What did you do there?”
“How do you mean?” He stared blankly. “I did many things each day.”
“In the military,” she laughed. “What was your job?”
He rotated his shoulder, showing a badge with his rank symbol on it. “Specialist.”
“And what was your specialty?”
“Sorry, cadet. I can’t tell you that,” he jested — almost sarcastically, like it was incredibly boring. Then again, if he was here, he must have done something noteworthy.
“Can you tell me your name, or is that classified?”
“Very much classified — but I’ll tell you anyway. Eldon Rhyso.”
“Nadia Raynor.”
“I know. ‘Procaine.’”
“Wow,” she said. “You did your research.”
Rhyso shrugged. “Just school. Most people know who you are.”
After the first whispers of independence on Mars, Earth responded by heavily restricting trade. Supplies were only shipped to the red planet if deemed substandard, making Procaine the primary Martian anesthetic. Raynor operated a fighter like a precision instrument. Some people started calling her “The Surgeon of the Stars,” and “Procaine” followed in suit.
Her callsign had also been restricted information, only spoken by a handful of pilots who all died several millennia ago. To her, it was recent, but children today grew up learning about it in school. It made Raynor feel strangely naked. A rush of surreal embarrassment washed over her. She recalled facts she’d learned about historical figures — details of their lives, what happened behind the scenes. There wasn’t anything in particular she had to be embarrassed about, but the sudden transparency of her entire life was off-putting.
For the rest of her meal, she talked with Rhyso about the base. A handful of people from the modern era were included at Starling. They were all technical and scientific personnel, though. The broad man in front of her was the only soldier at Starling Base born in the last fifty years. And with his training still current, he was enjoying a bit of down time while the rest got caught up on the basics. He had gotten roped into doing some work during his leave. Apparently, Rhyso served under General Teckann back when Teckann was just a major. It wasn’t the worst connection to have.
He asked her about details from “major battles” in history, hanging on her every word. It was a new experience. Missions she’d flown a few years ago were now significant events from ancient Martian history. Rhyso looked at them the same way she looked at battles from World War III.
“I didn’t mean to keep you longer than you intended,” he said after she finished her meal. “I guess I’m just a bit star-struck.”
“Well, I’m flattered.” She didn’t think that was the right word, but there likely wasn’t one for being a celebrity in the eyes of someone older than you who grew up learning about something you just did.
“Don’t be,” Rhyso laughed. “It happens every hour. I think I saw King Tutankhamun earlier, which arises many concerning questions.”
Despite this new, strange sense of esteem, their brief conversation cured much of Raynor’s culture shock. For as different as their two worlds were, they were more or less the same.
Technically, garter snakes were venomous, but Walker didn’t think this was the appropriate time to split those hairs. They didn’t have fangs, but they had a venom sac. The small snakes hunted like constrictors, allowing their venom to be delivered through their saliva, seeping into cuts made by their tiny little teeth. It was dangerous to a mouse, but rarely even caused localized swelling in humans. They were also one of the most docile serpents. Black bears were also fairly timid, but if they had cubs it could be a problem.
Trailing behind Dobbs and Ditka, Walker couldn’t see anything but their faded orange suits glowing brightly in her headlamps. She nearly ran into Dobbs when they stopped moving.
“Well that’s rather different from the first imaging, isn’t it?” Plum said. Walker moved around the orange masses to get a glimpse of the ship, which was perfectly outlined in the distance by a beam of moonlight.
He was right. The ship didn’t seem to have any specific orientation other than up. It wasn’t exactly a flying saucer…more like a flying ice cream sandwich. The center of the ship was a ring with a concave edge, like a thin car wheel without a tire. Above and below the center wheel, the ship flared out slightly towards the edge, and on the very top there was a circular dome. Had it not been lodged into the ground at an angle, there would be nothing to indicate a front of any kind.
“Dr. Plum,” Lauer said slowly, as if trying not to startle the ship while they stared in awe. “Do you see anything coming from it?”
Plum gulped, holding the spectrum analyzer. “A strong microwave radio frequency is being broadcast from it.”
“8.348 gigahertz?” Xi’s voice cut in.
“That’s it.”
“We’ve been recording that, but so far it’s nothing.”
“8348 — in billions,” Ditka mused. “I wonder if that’s significant…”
“It’s in the range of frequencies that transmit exceptionally clear from our planet,” Plum said. “Anything below one gigahertz is muddled in the background noise of our galaxy and anything above ten gets absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere. It’s called the microwave window.”
“Funny,” Lauer said. “Does that mean the signal is intentional?”
“Could be,” Plum said in a way that, to Walker, sounded like, how the hell should I know?
“Eyes peeled,” Fowler said as he started hiking toward the ship.
Running water sloshed faintly in the distance — probably a stream, but the fauna was silent. They trekked through the forest in no particular formation, short breaths puffing into their radios as the eight slowly closed their distance to the derelict craft. Carefully as to not tear the orange lining of their safety wear, they climbed over the ring of fallen tree trunks marking the perimeter of the clearing. Fresh dirt covered the arena-sized opening, the light from their headlamps bright even against the moonlight.
“Any movement?” Fowler asked.
“Negative,” Pierson said.
“Contact — what’s our time?”
Walker looked at the viewfinder of the camera, “Ten — I mean 2240 hours.”
“2240,” Chandler repeated over the radio. “Congratulations.”
Fowler issued commands to sweep the area, but Walker didn’t wait for the DIA agents to finish before approaching the downed ship. It was huge — a couple stories tall and a hundred meters in diameter. Ditka methodically swept her light across the hull as Walker crouched down to collect samples of dirt disturbed by the craft. As she stood up and got a good look at the ship, she finally realized what it resembled.
“It looks like a yo-yo,” she said. “Those pro kinds they tried to sell us in school.”
“It does!” Dobbs laughed, his voice almost painful in her ear. “Hey, Theo, are you looking at the middle? The part you would wrap the string around?”
“The propulsion system,” replied Plum.
Walker looked at the midsection of the ship. It was smooth; concave. It matched the rest of the ship in color, but looked almost like it was made of a different material. There were shallow, vertical seams every thirty or forty centimeters.
“You got that, too, eh? What do you make of it?”
“Our imaging showed the ship tilted on its side, which means some kind of energy emits from the band here. If each of these panels can thrust independently, it would explain the fragmented flight paths.”
“Strange way to apply thrust to a ship…”
“Genius, probably. What’s really strange is the rest of the ship.”
Lauer turned to Plum, shining him in bright light. “Why?”
“It has no seams. Aside from the panels around the middle, the hull is either a single piece of material or perfectly fused.” Everyone turned to look at the ship, bathing it in beams of light.
Xi keyed in his mic.
“Wait. Kelly, take a couple of steps to your right.” The linguist stood about forty meters from Walker, counter-clockwise along the ship. She stepped to the side carefully, like she was avoiding a landmine. “There’s a seam. It’s hairline, but it shows on infrared. It might be a hatch.”
“Should we knock?” Dobbs asked.
“If there are creatures still alive on the ship, it would be better to let them investigate us first,” Ditka said. “If it’s alright, Mr. Secretary, I’d like to start playing audio recordings.”
“That’s fine,” Lauer said. “Fowler, post up on the north side. Pierson, southwest. Sconi, southeast. Fallback point is Agent Sconi.”
Rifle in hand, Fowler marched into sight, joining Ditka at his new post. Walker started taking pictures of plants on the ground, collecting a few as samples. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just documenting impacts on the existing ecosystem. Until she could see the bodies of an organism or their habitat, it was all she could really do.
The ship crashed towards the south, elevating the north end high above the ground. About fifteen meters underneath, there was a deeper indentation in the dirt — a fat X. Walker looked up at the underbelly of the ship, unable to find a source. It looked almost like a landing gear had been pushed out, but no gear was engaged. Whatever caused the imprint had happened after the crash.
She started to ask Plum to come and take a look, but only got out one syllable before a thunderous sound cut her off. In fear of being crushed by the massive vessel, Walker lunged out from underneath, landing face-down in the dirt. The noise hadn’t come from the radio, it was from outside her suit…from the forest behind her.
Rifle pressed into his shoulder, Fowler frequently angled his headlamps towards the edge of the clearing. He’d love nothing more than to look at the ship, but the aliens were a wild card — they could be dead, they could be hostile, they could be friendly. Bears were not friendly, and the complete lack of sound from the forest was spooky.
He saw Dr. Walker a little further along the hull, taking photos of the ground beneath the ship. He had just turned away from the perimeter when a loud sound disrupted the quiet. He jumped, rifle raised.
Four loud sounds.
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
He chided himself for jumping — he had watched Ditka plug the portable speakers into a device. It had only made sense she would ease into the volume, maybe start with something softer. From the edge of his helmet’s glass dome, he saw Dobbs spin around quickly, shining his headlamps towards this end of the clearing. Walker dove back from the ship.
“A little warning, Kelly!” The resounding voice of Jeremy Dobbs was barely audible over the symphony. “I’d like to save my heart attack for later, thank you.”
“I confirmed with Secretary Lauer on the open channel, Jeremy. Many would consider that a warning.” The volume lowered slightly, though not much.
“Isn’t this too intense?” Lauer asked nervously.
“They’ll know it’s communicative. This song is structured around the Fibonacci sequence.”
“Really?” Dobbs asked.
“No, I’m playing it as a joke at the first-ever alien crash site.”
“Well, look at you dishing it out…”
Walker’s voice cut in. She’d returned to the same spot underneath the ship she had dove away from. “Hey, Theo, come and look at this. I think these might be indentations from a landing gear.”
“I don’t see any landing gear,” Plum said.
“I know. The indentation is shallow, but it’s inside the skid.”
There was a long pause over the radio. Beethoven continued playing from Ditka’s hand.
“That would mean it was both deployed and retracted after the ship crashed…”
“Correct.”
“There could be an automatic protocol.”
“Either that or one of them survived.”
More silence. The opening four notes of the symphony repeated partway through the song. It didn’t have the calming effect classical music was supposed to have on people.
“Let me take a look,” Plum finally replied.
The ring around the center of the ship turned on. Nothing but white could be seen. The light was so bright, it blinded Fowler completely. He pulled Ditka to the ground as the radio erupted with shouting and cursing. Fowler wasn’t sure if the ground was any safer, but it was the only thing he could think of to protect them.
Amidst the overlapping screams, he heard Xi say he lost visual. Plum said something about the engines, but for a few seconds, it was impossible to hear anyone clearly.
“It’s just light,” Sconi yelled. “Everyone back to my twenty! Southeast!”
There was no roar of engines. In fact, there was no noise at all besides the nine of them screaming on the radio. The portable speakers had gotten disconnected when Fowler pulled their owner to the ground. He turned to see if she was okay, but something pulled roughly on his right arm.
“Come on!” Walker yelled, trying to get him and Kelly off the ground. Her eyes were wide, her face lit up in dim orange by the reflection of the bright engine lights on their hazmat suits.
Fowler turned to Ditka. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Just get off of me.”
“Sorry.” He got up, pulling her with him as the two followed Walker to the other side of the ship. Their shadows had nearly disappeared, the surrounding forest illuminated thirty yards from the clearing. They ran around the football field-sized craft, which felt a whole lot bigger now.
At the southeast edge of the clearing, Fowler moved towards the center of the group. All eight stared at the ship, eyes peeled.
On Fowler’s right, he saw Pierson holding his pistol, then looked down at the M4 in his hands. He threw it over his shoulder, the sling pulling taught as the rifle fell beside his air tank.
“Holster your guns,” he said quietly through the radio.
“No one draws unless ordered,” Lauer added harshly before either agent could respond. Not a moment too soon. On the north side of the ship, a faint strip of light crawled along the well-lit ground as a hatch opened, soon blurred by shadows.
No one could speak. No gasps, no curses, no breaths. They just watched as time froze. Deep down, they’d all held onto a shred of doubt — foreign spies, rogue satellite, experimental craft. Even after they’d arrived at the crash site, there could have been some farfetched explanation — an elaborate, expensive hoax. An earthly explanation.
Not anymore.
