2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Read online

  She would soon change her mind.

  An hour later, Cassie was walking along the busy outer corridor of the ring segment assigned to the science team. Suddenly, the ship shuddered, throwing Cassie and others against one curving wall.

  The ship lurched again, and the light from the glowing walls blinked out. People screamed. Cassie stumbled and fell. And kept falling, waiting for the impact against the floor that never came, until she realized what had happened.

  The ring had stopped rotating. They’d lost artificial gravity.”

  She floated in darkness for maybe thirty minutes, bumping into others, surrounded by whispers, shouts, and sobbing. Suddenly, the lights flicked back on. Cassie felt gravity returning like an invisible hand tugging at her guts, followed by a sudden heaviness in her limbs. Hitting the floor, she rolled then rose on shaky legs. People stood dazed, looking like scattered pieces in a jigsaw that before had been a coherent picture of normality.

  What had happened?

  The intercom broke through the rising babble of conversations. “The following personnel report immediately to port six, segment beta four for surface team detail.” Twenty names followed. One was Davey’s.

  One was hers. What was going on?

  An hour later, her questions still unanswered, she and nineteen others sat in a hopper as it left the Kepler. Hoppers were smaller Wormer craft used for ship-to-surface trips and exploration. With a tubular hull, a spherical cockpit at the head, and six jointed legs allowing them to rest level on any terrain, they resembled grasshoppers.

  The team faced each other in two rows of seats in the main cabin. Cassie only knew two others besides Davey. Manfred Mubuto, balding, dark and round, was their xeno-anthropologist. Liz Branson, with features as sharp as her sarcasm, was their linguist. Four were marines. But the rest, over half the team, were mining techs. Why?

  Davey addressed them. She’d never seen him so serious.

  “The Kepler’s power loss resulted from the primary fuel cell being purged. Engineering is working to swap cells, but that requires translating untested Wormer procedures. We may need to replenish the cell, which means extracting berkelium from Griphus for processing.”

  That was why she was on the team, Cassie realized. Berkelium, a rare trans-uranium element, was the favored Wormer energy source. It had never been found on Earth, only manufactured. Her analysis of Griphus had shown possible deposits.

  “Like every planet found via the wormholes,” Davey said, “Griphus is incredibly Earthlike: atmosphere, gravity, humanoid populations-”

  “We purged a fuel cell?” Liz interrupted. “Who screwed up?”

  Davey reddened. “That’s not relevant-”

  “Operator error, I hear,” Manfred said. “A tech misread Wormer symbols on a panel, punched an incorrect sequence-”

  Liz swore. “I knew it! We’re like kids trying to fly Daddy’s flitter.”

  Cassie started to agree, but Davey cut them off.

  “We’ve no time for rumors,” he snapped, looking at Cassie, Liz, and Manfred. “Our orbit decays in three days. I remind you that this team’s under my command – including science personnel.”

  Manfred nodded. Liz glared but said nothing.

  Davey tapped the computer pad on his seat. A holo of Griphus appeared. “Dr. Morant, please locate the berkelium.”

  Cassie almost laughed at being called “Dr. Morant” by Davey, but then she caught his look. She tapped some keys, and two red dots blinked onto the holo, one in the ocean midway between Pugnus and Manus, and another offshore of Manus. The second site was circled.

  “Wormer sensors show two sites. I’ve circled my recommendation,” Cassie said.

  “Why not the other site?” a mining tech asked.

  A network of lines appeared, making the planet’s surface look like a huge jigsaw puzzle.

  “As on Earth,” Cassie said, “the lithosphere or planetary crust of Griphus is broken into tectonic plates, irregular sections ranging from maybe fifteen kilometers thick under oceans to a hundred under continents. This shows the plate pattern on Griphus.

  “Plates float on the denser, semimolten asthenosphere, the upper part of the mantle. At ‘transform’ boundaries, they slide along each other, as in the San Andreas Fault on Earth. At ‘convergent’ boundaries, they collide, forming mountains such as the Himalayas.”

  A line splitting the ocean between Pugnus and Manus glowed yellow. The line also ran through the other berkelium site.

  “But at ‘divergent’ boundaries,” Cassie continued, “such as this mid-oceanic trench, magma pushes up from the mantle, creating new crust, forcing the plates apart. The other site is deep in the trench, below our sub’s crush depth.”

  Davey nodded. “So we hit the site offshore of Manus. Any indigenous population along that coast?”

  “Yes,” Manfred said. “From orbital pictures, they appear tribal, agrarian, definitely preindustrial. Some large stone structures and primitive metallurgy.”

  “Then defending ourselves shouldn’t be a problem.” Davey patted the stinger on his belt. The Wormer weapon was nonlethal, temporarily disrupting voluntary muscular control.

  “Could we try talking before we shoot them?” Liz said.

  Davey just smiled. “Which brings us to communication, Dr. Branson.”

  Liz sighed. “Wormer translator units need a critical mass of vocabulary, syntax, and context samples to learn a language. Given the time we have, I doubt they’ll help much.”

  “With any luck, we won’t need them,” Davey said. “We’ll locate the deposit, send in the mining submersible, and be out before they know we’re there.”

  Looking around her, Cassie guessed that no one felt lucky.

  The hopper landed on the coast near the offshore deposit. The team wore light body suits and breathing masks to prevent ingesting anything alien to human immune systems.

  Cassie stepped onto a broad beach of gray sand lapped by an ocean too green for Earth, under a sky a touch too blue. The beach ran up to a forest of trees whose black trunks rose twenty meters into the air. Long silver leaves studded each trunk, glinting like sword blades in the sun. She heard a high keening that might have been birds or wind in the strange trees.

  Southwards, the beach ran into the distance. But to the north, it ended at a cliff rising up to a low mesa. Cassie walked over to Davey, who was overseeing the marines unloading the submersible and drilling equipment.

  “Cool, eh?” he said, looking around them.

  She pointed at the mesa. “That’s cooler to a rock nut.”

  He looked up the beach. “Okay. But keep your per-comm on.”

  Cassie nodded and set out. The cliff was an hour’s walk. Cassie didn’t mind, enjoying the exercise and strange surroundings. She took pictures of the rock strata and climbed to get samples at different levels. Then she walked back.

  They captured Cassie just as she was wondering why the hopper seemed deserted. The natives appeared so quickly and silently, they seemed to rise from the sand. Cassie counted about forty of them, all remarkably humanlike, but taller, with larger eyes, longer noses, and greenish skin. All were male, bare chested, wearing skirts woven from sword-blade tree leaves, and leather sandals.

  They led Cassie to stand before two women. One was dressed as the men were, but with a headdress of a coppery metal. The other was older and wore a cape of cloth and feathers. Her head was bare, her hair long and white. Beside them, pale but unharmed, stood Liz Branson, flanked by two warriors.

  The older woman spoke to Liz in a sing-song melodic language. Cassie saw that the linguist wore a translator earplug. Liz sat down, motioning Cassie to do the same. The male warriors sat circling them. The two native women remained standing.

  Cassie realized she was trembling. “What happened?”

  Liz grimaced. “We’ve stepped in it big time. The Chadorans, our captors, believe a sacred object called ‘the third one’ lies underwater here. Only a priestess may enter these waters
. When our techs launched the sub, the natives ambushed us from the trees with blowguns. They grabbed the techs when they surfaced.”

  “Where’s Davey?” Cassie asked, then added, “...and everyone?”

  “Taken somewhere. They seemed okay.”

  “Why not you, too?”

  “The tribe’s matriarchal,” Liz said. “The old woman is Cha-kay, their chief. The younger one, Pre-nah, is their priestess. Because I’m female and knew their language, Cha-kay assumed I was our leader. But I said you were.”

  “You what?” Cassie cried.

  “Cassie, we need someone they’ll respect,” Liz said, her face grim. “That means a female who didn’t defile the site. That means you.”

  “Liz, I’m not – wait, how can you talk to them?”

  Liz frowned. “It’s weird. The translator produced understandable versions within minutes, pulling from Wormer archives of other worlds. That implies all those languages share the same roots. The Wormers may have seeded all these worlds.”

  Cassie didn’t care. “What can I do?”

  “Convince Cha-kay to let us go.”

  “How?” Cassie asked.

  “She wants to show you something. It’s some sort of test.”

  “And if I fail?”

  Liz handed Cassie the translator. “Then they’ll kill us.”

  Cassie swallowed. “I won’t let that happen.”

  They led Cassie to a long boat with a curving prow powered by a dozen rowers. Cha-kay rode in a chair near the stern, Cassie at her feet. Pre-nah and six warriors stood beside them.

  They traveled up a winding river through dense jungle. Conversation was sparse, but sufficient to convince Cassie that the translator unit worked. After three hours, they landed at a clearing. Cassie climbed out, happy to move and stretch. She blinked.

  Blue cubes, ranging from one to ten meters high, filled the clearing. They were hewn from stone and painted. The party walked past the cubes to a path that switch-backed up a low mountain. They began to climb.

  Cassie groaned but said nothing, since the aged Cha-kay didn’t seem bothered by the climb. As they went, Cassie noticed smaller cubes beside the path.

  Night had fallen when they reached the top and stepped onto a tabletop of rock about eighty meters across. Cassie gasped.

  A huge cube, at least fifty meters on each side, nearly filled the plateau. It was blue. It was glowing.

  And it was hovering a meter off the ground.

  Cha-kay led Cassie to it, and Cassie received another shock. On its smooth sides, Cassie saw familiar symbols.

  The artifact, whatever its purpose, was Wormer.

  Cha-kay prostrated herself, telling Cassie to do the same. As Cassie did so, she peeked underneath the cube. A column of pulsating blue light shone from a crevice to touch the base of the artifact at its center. Reaching down to her belt, Cassie activated her scanner. She’d check the readings later.

  Rising, Cha-kay indicated a large diagram on the artifact. In it, a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron formed points of an equilateral triangle.

  “It is a map. We are here,” Cha-kay said, pointing to the cube. “The gods left three artifacts, but hid one. The third will appear when the gods return and lay their hands on the other two.” Then, pointing to the outline of a hand on the artifact, Cha-kay looked at Cassie.

  “Touch,” she said.

  With a sudden chill, Cassie understood. The Chadorans believed that the humans were the Wormers, finally returning.

  This was the test on which the lives of her shipmates, of the entire ship, depended.

  Reaching out a trembling hand, Cassie felt resistance from some invisible barrier and a warm tingling, then her hand slipped through onto the outline on the artifact.

  Nothing happened.

  Murmurs grew behind her. Feeling sick, Cassie looked at Cha-kay. To her surprise, the old woman smiled.

  “Perhaps,” Cha-kay said, “it rises even now.”

  Cassie understood. Cha-kay hoped to find that the third artifact had emerged from the sea when they returned to the beach. Cassie didn’t share her hope.

  They spent the night there. Pretending to sleep, Cassie checked her scanner readings. They confirmed her suspicions. The column of light showed berkelium emissions. The artifact was connected to a deposit as an energy source.

  The next day, a similar journey brought them to the second artifact, located on another flat mountain peak. The only difference was the artifact itself, a glowing red tetrahedron at least fifty meters high. Cassie again saw a column of light underneath and detected berkelium. She touched the artifact, again with no apparent effect, and the party began the trip back.

  Cha-kay seemed to have grown genuinely fond of Cassie. She told Cassie how her people found the artifacts generations ago, eventually realizing that the drawing was a map. They learned to measure distances and angles, and determined that the third artifact lay in the coastal waters. Priestesses had dived there for centuries but found nothing. Still they believed.

  Cassie did some calculations and found the Chadoran estimate remarkably accurate. Still, she wondered why the Wormers would locate two artifacts in identical settings on mountain plateaus, yet place the third underwater. Perhaps the third location had subsided over the years. But her scans showed no sunken mountains off the coast.

  Cassie enjoyed Cha-kay’s company, but as they neared the coast, her fear grew. Cha-kay fell silent as well. As the boat reached the beach, they stood at the railing, clasping each other’s hand, scanning the waters for the third artifact.

  Nothing.

  Cries arose among the warriors. Pre-nah approached Cha-kay. “The strangers are false gods,” the priestess said. “They must die.”

  Cha-kay stared across the ocean. Finally, she nodded. Cassie’s legs grew weak as two warriors moved toward her.

  Cha-kay raised her hand. “No. This one goes free. She did not defile the sacred place.”

  Pre-nah didn’t look pleased, but she bowed her head.

  They landed, and Cha-kay walked with Cassie to the hopper.

  “When?” Cassie asked, her voice breaking.

  “At sunrise, child,” Cha-kay said. “I am sorry.”

  Cassie boarded the hopper. She engaged the auto-launch, then slumped in her seat as the planet and her hopes grew smaller.

  …………………………

  After docking, Cassie went immediately to the briefing room as Captain Theodor had ordered. She quickly took a seat in one of a dozen Wormer chairs around a holo display unit. Dr. Xu gave her a worried smile. Commander Trask glared.

  Theodor cleared his throat, a rumble that brought everyone’s gaze to his stocky form.

  “I’ll be brief. Our orbit collapses in nineteen hours. Attempts to swap fuel cells were unsuccessful. The team sent to extract the berkelium has been captured and faces execution. Only Dr. Morant escaped.”

  Everyone looked at Cassie. All she could think of was how she’d failed.

  Theodor continued. “Dr. Morant will summarize events on the planet. Then I need ideas.”

  Cassie told her story, then answered questions, mostly dealing with the artifacts. Will Epps, their expert on Wormer texts and writing, after analyzing her scans, agreed that the artifacts were Wormer.

  The team began reviewing and discarding proposals. Finally, Theodor made his decision. A platoon of marines would drop outside the Chadoran city. Three squads would act as a diversion, drawing warriors from the city, while one squad slipped in for a search and rescue. One hour later, a hopper would drop two mining subs at the berkelium site.

  “Sir, the priestess dives there daily,” Cassie said. “When they see our subs, they’ll kill the team.”

  “That’s why I’m giving the rescue squads an hour head start,” Theodor replied. “It’s not much, but our priority is to replenish our fuel before our orbit decays. I can’t delay the berkelium extraction any longer.”

  Cassie slumped in her seat. Davey, Liz, the o
thers. They were all going to die.

  Trask stood. “If Dr. Morant could provide a topographical display of the area, I’ll outline the attack plan.”

  Cassie tapped some keys, and the planetary view of Griphus appeared, including the jigsaw pattern of tectonic plates.

  A jigsaw puzzle. Why couldn’t this be that simple?

  “Zoom in to the landing site,” Trask said.

  Freezing the rotation over Pugnus and Manus, Cassie started to zoom in, then stopped, staring at the display.

  No. It was too wild. But maybe...

  She began tapping furiously, and calculations streamed across the holo.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Trask asked.

  Theodor frowned. “Dr. Morant?”

  Cassie looked at her results. Incredible. It fit. It all fit. But the time span...

  “Dr. Morant!” Theodor barked.

  Cassie’s head jerked up. Everyone was staring. Her idea was wild, but it fit. And she liked things that fit.

  “Captain,” Cassie said, “what if we proved to the Chadorans that the deposit site is not sacred?”

  Theodor frowned. “Discredit their religion? I don’t –”

  “No,” Cassie said. “I mean, prove that it isn’t sacred because...” She stopped. What if she was wrong? But it was Davey and the team’s only chance.

  “...because the third artifact isn’t there,” she finished.

  Trask snorted. “Then why will they kill to protect the site?”

  “Because they think it’s there, based entirely on the diagrams on the artifacts.”

  “And you think those diagrams are wrong?” Theodor asked, but his voice held none of Trask’s derision.

  “I think they were correct once,” she said. “But not any more.”

  “So where’s the artifact?” Theodor asked.

  Cassie’s hand trembled as she tapped more keys. Two green lights appeared inland on the western coast of Manus followed by a red light just off the same coast, forming the triangular pattern diagrammed on the artifacts.

  “The two green lights are the known artifacts. The red light is both the supposed underwater location of the third and our targeted berkelium site.”