Vesta 2018
By Joseph R. Schmidt
Science Fiction Short Story
5600 words
joe@josephrschmidt.com
Vesta was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807. The asteroid was named after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta.
In 2010, the International Astronomical Union reclassified the asteroid Vesta as a dwarf planet. But it had been a publicity push for the Dawn Probe mission. The probe had been scheduled to visit several asteroids, or dwarf planets, including Ceres, Pallas, Hygiea, and even the binary dwarf planets Pluto and Charon. The probe never left the orbit of Vesta. The findings were far too unexpected and astounding.
March 1, 2018
Sparrow rumbled. Kaci had maneuvered the small lander in the simulator, she had landed it on the Moon, but as Kaci approached the surface of Vesta, Sparrow rocked and shimmied.
Too much. Get out! She pushed on the vertical throttle. The little ship responded. Up it went; she felt it in her gut.
“Albatross calling Sparrow. Kaci, are you alright?”
“Acknowledged." That was her way of ignoring Charles, her mission commander.
“Sparrow.... Kaci, you have to settle down. Vertical thrust: two-niner. Copy.”
It was as if he had read her mind. “Acknowledged,” she replied. She read the instruments again, checked the video screen, and then leaned forward to get a better look out the forward portal. Something rocked her little ship, and she had but a guess as to what.
“Sparrow. Report.”
“I read you, Charles,” she said. “Just a few seconds. Can you give me that?”
“What’s the problem?” He sounded irritated, again.
“Check the instrument log. Unexpected attitude variations. Vibration. Check for interference. Copy.”
She held Sparrow above the surface of the massive asteroid.
“Analysis indicates magnetic interference. Good call,” Charles said.
“I know.”
She had suspected the local magnetic field all along. The geologists argued that the iron demagnetized at temperatures above seven-hundred centigrade. She thought that polarization could have happened after the magma had been expelled from the mantle. But that argument gained little traction in the politically charged program.
After a slight pause, Charles continued. “Hold position. Bypassing the forward attitude feedback. I wish Russell were here. You’ll have to land this one by touch.... Copy.”
By touch? Was he joking?
“Copy?” Charles asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Acknowledged." Of course, she had landed Sparrow by touch, even on the Moon. She wasn’t a pilot, not primarily; that was Charles’s job. She was a robotics engineer. Piloting had come with the territory, a means to an end. That end, an astronaut. A dreamer, she had dreamed of where she was: on a space exploration mission. Through the years of pain and toil, she was there, and her minor skill as a pilot suddenly meant everything to the mission.
“Override complete,” Charles said. “Kaci, you’ll have to transfer to manual control. Copy.”
The nose of the ship dipped and so did her stomach, but then she had the feel of it again. “Transfer complete. Acknowledged.”
“Take her in easy, Kaci. There’s no hurry.”
“That’s the first time you’ve said that since before we left.”
“Advising radio silence.”
Radio silence, ha! He just didn’t want her comments recorded.
She eased Sparrow down while watching the screen, the camera feedback, and out the porthole. The only roll of the ship was when she overcompensated on the two joysticks. Green billowing clouds suddenly erupted to block her view outside the window. Kaci shifted her head to watch the screen. She had expected the clouds, olivine dust from the mantle, remnant from a massive meteor impact more than three million years before, an impact that reshaped Vesta from spherical to oblate. That did not account for the magnetic field near the surface. Data collected from the Dawn probe had not indicated that local field either, not that she knew of.
Kaci wanted to push the vertical thruster to the floor. Just one more try at this landing. But she couldn’t. There was a time constraint, despite what Charles had said. Russell was missing. She eased the vertical thruster back with her left foot.
Nothing visible out the front. The video blinked and flickered. Strong EMF, even through the ship’s shielding.
She felt the ship jar, the shock absorbers bottomed out, and the nose suddenly jerked up. That was what it felt like, but then the rear set firmly and things stopped jerking around until just as suddenly, Sparrow sat motionless.
Kaci breathed.
“Touchdown confirmed. Copy,” she reported.”
“Acknowledged,” Charles said. “Good job Kaci. A fine landing.”
“Bullshit Charles. You would have done better.”
“Acknowledged,” he said smugly but added, “I can’t fix the explorers.”
She said, “Disembark in five minutes. Copy.”
“Acknowledged."
That was true: Commander Charles couldn’t fix the robot explorer probes, although she didn’t know if she could either. She would try. But she knew what truly worried Charles. She would try to locate Russell.
She felt her shoulders tighten. They had worked together so closely in preparation for this mission. His main task was to operate the explorer probes. She had led the team in design, but Russell had the skills to get the most out of them. They had spent so many hours in the simulator, on the Moon, and other training missions. She found herself much more attached to Russell than the agency would have allowed, if only they had known—fraternization forbidden. Besides they were each too career-minded. She was single and so was he; his ex-wife had had enough and filed the papers the day after Russell’s acceptance to this mission. Command logic stood so plainly: attachments cloud judgment. So true, she thought just then. She would find Russell—her friend.
Russell had attempted to locate the first robotic explorer, which for some reason had stalled. And then the second robotic explorer stalled, which had been sent to find the first. She didn’t like the burgeoning pattern. Would she be the second to find the first only to meet her demise while doing so? With just three for this mission, how lonely would Charles be on his return home?
In 2010, the world first received the Dawn probe’s data. She remembered that day and the months that followed. Given the undeniable information, advanced space exploration suddenly met the will of the people. Exploration of Vesta quickly grew into a walk-on-the-moon scoped venture. A number of satellites orbited Vesta, two of which had sent their own probes to investigate the signal—each lost before landing on the surface. Some called it system failures, but Kaci had studied the missions and the data. Those probes had not failed: they had been lost or destroyed. It was why a manned mission had been necessary, to troubleshoot the mission in real time and solve the mystery.
Kaci had been just twenty-four, a prodigy, when she completed her Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering. They were hiring, and she knew she was good. Six years later, there she sat, letting the dust settle, and thinking about her fifteen-year-old niece back home.
Fifteen...a hard year for Kaci—2002. But it had been a turning point, an embarkation to the limits of her abilities. She rose from that life to sit in little Sparrow, to sit in the settling green dust on the surface of an asteroid, a dwarf planet, farther from home than anyone had ever been.
But it was time to go. Russell waited for her, she hoped.
Kaci checked one of the instruments on the panel. It read the strange signal so strongly on the surface of Vesta. The Dawn probe had picked it up on its fourth pass. Why hadn’t it read the signal on the first three? A simple FM transmission but embedded with intelligent patterns. Experts and non-experts alike attempted to decipher them. The media speculated. Comparisons were made to the movie, Contact; she liked that old one and had played it from the entertainment console aboard Albatross.
She grabbed a small instrument and clipped it to her belt. This one also read strongly, for it was the beacon embedded in Russell’s walk-suit. A good sign. Shortly after the primary communications link failed, Albatross lost all signals from the explorer robots, including their location beacons.
Kaci rubbed the top of her head, and the army-recruit-length hair bristled her hand; it was just easier that way. She closed the face shield on her helmet.
“Albatross. Ready for exit. Have Russell's lander on scanner. Roughly one click, bearing one-three-five. Tracking walk-suit beacon...that can’t be right...three clicks, bearing...Charles, this can’t be right.”
“What does it say?”
“It says he’s over three kilometers away, almost a kilometer under the surface. How could that be? Do you have the images from my flyover?”
“Yes. I checked them out. His lander looks fine." Charles sounded cool, possibly trying to calm her, but he must have been sweating. After a year of training, fourteen days at Space Station Beta, and fifty-two days onboard Albatross, she knew Charles well enough to know when he was stressed. “Analysis from Dawn images reported that the impact crater near the transmission is empty.”
“Yes I know Charles. I’d rather you not say anything than fill the air with your comfort." She knew it didn’t make sense. “Our robots were just about down to the bottom. The Dawn images never showed a deep hole. Neither did our robots.”
“Acknowledged. Proceed to his last known location. Copy.”
She didn’t want to. It was not that she didn’t want to find Russell; it was that she didn’t want to find Russell dead. How would she explain that to his little girl?
#
The scrapes were much deeper than Dawn’s images indicated. Albatross had duplicated the images upon their arrival. She could have easily stood in the largest, which gaped nearly a meter wide. Most others merely centimeters, the scrapes stretched in perfect parallelism as they led down the slope of the crater. The lines contained symmetry, a discernable pattern, and the width of them were more than ten meters across.
She shined a light into the deepest and found that the olivine dust was not so deep here. Hard, black stone, maybe metal, lay beneath the fine dust. Anomalous iron and nickel? She didn’t know, but it was not as the Dawn probe imaging had indicated.
In long leaps, she followed the familiar zigzagging tracks of her two robots as well as footprints from boots. She had to be careful, for gravity barely did its work. It was more like flying, and her propellant pack directed her along.
The crater stood two kilometers across. Millennia of settling dust piled up the slope. The scrapes ran down to the bottom. Because of shadows, that area had not been visible to the probes. However, they had maneuvered Albatross into a better orbit and captured clear, lit images of the slope. That opportunity had not come again, and darkness would soon be on her as Vesta rotated every five and a half hours.
The mission never called for landing in the crater, at least not without a full seismic analysis of what lay beneath. That was from where the strong FM signal emanated, somewhere within that slope. The lack of gravity concerned the geologists on staff; they suggested the dust and ice would act as a quicksand. They couldn’t be certain. Mission planning debated whether it was safe to walk down the slope or just park the lander at the bottom. The problem with parking at the bottom was that the crater severely limited the range of radio communications. With the little ship along the rim, it would act as a relay for communications. The robots were also intended as relays, but communications with them ceased hours ago. Things were not going as planned.
Kaci spotted Russell’s prints amongst the parallel scrapes and the meandering wheel tracks. It was madness to follow his trail. He was missing.
Analysis from Dawn’s images indicated severe slopes. After the first twenty steps, each a gigantic leap, she had traversed half way. It gave her a sickening feeling; every step required a downward thrust from the propellant pack. Still there were Russell’s footprints in the fine dust and the tracks of the explorer robots. She just didn’t like it, and her concern won out. She stopped and stood amongst the symmetrical striations, the parallel scrapes that led down the slope of the crater.
Kaci could see the slope all the way to the bottom. She magnified the camera on top of her helmet and watched the mini-screen within her face-shield. She knew Charles watched the video feed from her camera; she wanted to discuss it with him.
There was nothing to discuss. The footprints and tracks abruptly ended near the bottom, as did the scrapes. She worked so hard to get accepted for the mission, pledging her life for it, but that didn’t mean she would willingly forfeit it by being stupid. Three made a pattern, and the three that preceded her were unaccounted for.
“Kaci. Copy.”
She didn’t answer Charles.
“Kaci. I’m reading increased heart rate. Are you OK.... Kaci? Copy.”
She thought of her niece, her fifteen-year-old niece.
She leapt out beyond the slope and fired her forward propellant. As she floated out over the slope, she finally began to descend but not before she had propelled beyond where the footprints ended.
She heard Charles protesting somewhere in the background, but he was not helpful. She fired the down propellant, accelerated, and then fired the up propellant in short bursts until she landed on her feet to stand several meters away from where Russell’s footprints had ended.
An opening, two-meters tall. That had not shown up on any images. Possibly, the images contained too little variation in color and light. It didn’t seem plausible though: Why hadn’t they picked up a shadow? Why hadn’t the explorers picked up variations in the strata?
“Charles.”
“Yeah, I see it.... Hold your position.”
“You think?” She zoomed her camera closer and watched the mini-screen. She saw where Russell had fallen, and she saw the impact where each probe had fallen. What alarmed her most were the many round and indistinguishable—shallow holes? footprints? Whatever they were, they were most recent.
“Kaci, just get out of there!”
“No Charles. It’s what I came for. It’s why we’re here." She found the onscreen setting, clicking on the light mounted to the top of her helmet, as if she were working a seam of coal. The opening had depth.
“Kaci. Sending probe three. Copy.”
“Negative,” she said. “Save it.”
Kaci stepped with a short shuffle and ducked into the opening.
#
After only a few steps, the tunnel opened wider, roughly more than ten meters across. She looked back to find that the opening had been covered with molten rock, except for the small hole through which she had entered.
Light from her flashlight reflected from the crinkled yet shiny surface of the walls. And it was truly a tunnel, as if it had been cut or bored by heat. She wanted to take off her glove and touch it, to feel the glassy luster with her fingertips. There was something about those ridges, something different.
“Charles,” she said.
No answer. She did not expect Albatross to be behind Vesta for a while; even then, her radio would be relayed by Dawn probe.
Her instruments indicated a strong magnetic field. She guessed that the transmission from her suit was not strong enough, but Russell’s beacon was, which wouldn’t last much longer—the cost of a stronger beacon.
That mysterious FM signal was also strong, but the magnetic field from the overhead nickel and iron prevented the transmission of her weaker radio.
Isolated, she continued.
Two-hundred twenty-seven degrees below zero, she read it on her mini-screen. Her walk-suit’s internal temperature and humidity also displayed there. Her nose had started to dry and itch; she never got used to that. She called for a slug of water that filled her mouth and then swallowed it. The humidity in her suit would come up, of that she was certain.
That familiar set of striations identical to those on the surface continued, only hardened into the floor. She walked between the largest. Periodically, she attempted to raise Charles or Russell on her radio.
Two kilometers in, she rested.
The FM transmission had lessened. Her orders, her primary goal was to locate the source of the transmission, but at some point, she had changed her priority to locating Russell.
The temperature had risen to one-hundred fourteen degrees below zero. The thermal scans from the probes had not indicated magma until well below fifteen kilometers. Furthermore, basaltic olivine was a poor conductor. On those scans, this shaft would appear as a single hair and could be easily missed. Imaging was only as good as its resolution, but the overlying mass would mask and naturally filter the data.
She ran a gas analysis. Trace compositions of oxygen and nitrogen. What did that mean? Into the analyzer, she scraped hairy frost from the tunnel wall. Solid-phase sulfur-dioxide. Unexpected and strange.
Had the tunnel been made by natural phenomenon, such as thermal venting? It seemed only plausible. Stranger possibilities were merely romantic. But that glassy olivine had ridges which indicated a direction of the applied heat, a direction she had not before considered. The ridges rose sharpest into the tunnel, therefore the tunnel had been bored from the surface through the substrate, not from the depths in some thermal ejection.
She checked her weapon. It was absurd. Whatever lay beneath the surface here, whatever it was that bored a hole so deeply with untold power, it would not be simply thwarted by a fancy projectile. It seemed to her that the tunnel had slowly begun to curve...somewhere. Still, she checked her weapon.
Kaci realized she could not know what direction the tunnel went. When the temperature rose to sixty below zero, she stopped again; a few smaller tunnels led away to the sides. She moved in closer, and the light penetrated. They were different, not so shiny, even granular. They tended to follow unevenly along a seam of reddish minerals, a silicate possibly. She didn’t know whether to investigate those further or not. But then they were too small to enter easily. If she continued, did she leave her back exposed? The gas analyzer indicated enough ambient mass for sound to travel, but Kaci couldn’t hear anything inside her helmet. Paranoia? Probably, she decided.
Russell’s beacon still transmitted.
The smaller tunnels became sparser. If only she could talk to Charles. She tried, and then she tried Russell. No good. The tunnel leveled out.
Amber warnings blipped on her mini-screen: elevated heart rate, humidity above normal, elevated respiration. She knew that. Then a red one: external microphone activated. She froze. That one was automatic with levels greater than forty decibels, normal suit movement not withstanding. Had the microphone turned on because it recorded the echo of her footsteps through the heavier atmosphere? Or had there been real movement? Real sound?
She realized suddenly that sound was only possible with significant gas pressure.
More red warnings: increased heart-rate. She turned slowly in place, inspecting the tunnel around her.
She held her gun. Those stupid projectiles, little rockets with explosive tips, would do nothing, she was sure.
External temperature reading: thirty degrees below zero. Nearly a kilometer below the surface; it was only a guess. How could it be so warm? How could there be gas pressure? Was this structure a thermal vent, after all? She knew it was not.
Russell’s beacon lay just ahead. It had to.
She moved along, increasing her pace.
Russell’s gun lay before her, and she stopped cold. She expected evidence that he had gone this way but not in that form. What had caused him to drop his only weapon? No spent cartridges. And there! An instrument, the FM type that matched what she had strapped to her belt. With the device detached from his belt, what could he have been testing?
A part of her told her to turn back. She didn’t want that. How could she leave without Russell? She couldn’t live the rest of her life without knowing what became of him.
With her helmet mounted light shining, she walked slowly through the tunnel. The microphone picked up the echoing sounds of her feet and even the occasional scrape of her suit. She grew accustomed to that. When she heard something else, she stopped. She felt the pores on the back of her neck prickled with perspiration, not from exertion. Her hands felt clammy. She turned around—so difficult in such little gravity. She had to make sure she didn’t hit the shallow ceiling. There was nothing behind her, nothing she could see.
Her glove contained little switches, and when she selected the correct one, her hand became a pointer that displayed on the mini-screen in her visor. She flipped through the menu, snapping her helmet light off and powering the built-in night vision in her face shield.
She stood still, blind, listening for something—something other than her pounding heart. The night vision gave her nothing. Red alarms registered near the bottom of her screen; ten below zero. She ignored them and selected infrared. The face shield transformed into a cool blue, nearly uniform as it shifted the infrared into a relative visible spectrum for display and then normalized.
Again she scanned. Blue. More blue. A patch of yellow and then orange.
She pulled her hand up to point the gun. The yellow patch separated into more than one and moved quickly along the wall. Scrambling, fumbling, she worked the pointer with her free hand, until her helmet lamp lit and her visor normalized.
They were quick, rolling dizzily all about her and across the ceiling. They had fleshy arms, like those of octopi, that seemed to suction, or at least stick, to the smooth surface. She watched them, wanting to shoot the micro-missiles: she didn’t. One finally stopped.
Not like octopi, fleshy tubes protruded thickly from a head-sized orb. So strangely symmetrical like the sticks and knobs in a high school molecular model: silicon with four oxygen attached, tetrahedral.
She stood stupidly, watching, and she knew it. One of the fleshy tubes, thirty centimeters from the center, opened at her in a round and soft mouth. God! she could see right down it. She wanted to move and finally decided to. That round mouth adeptly shot out and snagged her face shield. It ripped it right off.
She tried not to breathe but the foul and cold air seeped into her mouth and burned her lungs. Fumbling with her gun, she felt a tug on her hand, and the weapon was gone. They moved all about her. As the seconds passed, she felt the cold gas sting her cheeks.
They rolled all over each other. Damn! they moved fast. She cowered into a crouch, covering her head. One on top of the other, they formed a web to encapsulate her, each appendage suctioning to that of another in crooked triangles. Each with their free, tube-like appendage stretched towards her, seeking her. She felt her heart pound in her chest; her last breath running too long, she began her slow exhale. A soft round mouth gently suctioned onto her forehead. Clammy. Not wet. Cool. She inhaled and her lungs burned.
Darkness.
#
Russell. She sensed him somehow and sensed his comfort. Memories, unfamiliar in texture and not her own, barged into her head. Kaci snapped her eyes open to the dim light of a small cavern. Her head hurt from oxygen deprivation, reminiscent of training.
Still in her walk-suit, her bare hands were bound in front of her with a flexible substance. Her feet were not bare but equally bound, so she sat and leaned against the wall.
Russell, unconscious, sat similarly against the wall beside her. His dark skin looked pale. She tried to nudge him, but he did not respond. At least he was breathing.
It was warm, relatively. She guessed about ten degrees centigrade, as much as a meat locker. Why had that image come to mind?
She was breathing. That in of itself seemed preposterous. In the center of the small chamber a round device glowed where it sat on the floor. An atmosphere generator? she speculated.
She decided the only exit from the chamber lay straight away. Across what must have been the opening, hung a large mass of that same stuff which bound her hands and feet. Did that keep the air rich enough with real air for her lungs? Across the chamber, she saw their helmets and several missing explorer probes. One of which, and to her dismay, had been obviously disassembled. Realizing what felt so strange, she felt moisture within her suit. The environmental and other automated controls had ceased functioning.
Russell began to stir and finally he opened his eyes. “You’re late,” he said, dryly.
“Me? Never,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong schedule.”
He looked tired and weak, but she had seen him worse. He tried to smile, she could tell. “Don’t fight it," he said. "I’ll be there.”
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know what they're looking for, but they rummage around in your mind."
"Telepathy?"
"It's seamless, like they've done it all before."
Kaci knew what he meant. "So we're not the first?"
Russell shrugged, raised his eyebrows, and then he shook his head. "I don't know, but they haven't killed me yet."
"I'm not sure that's good."
"How can it be bad?"
"They want us for something."
"Hey, it's nice to be wanted, as long as wanted's not dead."
"Hmm." It wasn't enough for Kaci, the indifference. As long as they were kept alive in this environment fashioned specifically for them, she had hope.
The seal over the only exit broke away, leaving little time to wonder what would come of her and Russell.
They rolled in like tumbleweeds in an old western. She saw plainly their orb centers, each translucent and filled with an ochre fluid that sloshed about. All but two stopped out of reach. Those two straddled her and Russell, as if they were tripods bobbing up and down, extending and retracting their appendage accordion-like, and probing all about them with those round mouths. Then suddenly they exchanged positions. It occurred to her then that each appendage, all four of them, were alike.
She turned her head quickly. The web of tetrahedral creatures reformed, and the inspection continued. Where were their eyes? She didn’t think they had any. Organic they were, carbon-based, she doubted. What did they eat? Did she want to know?
A clammy and cold mouth suctioned to the top of her head.
She felt more violated than she had ever before: so many present in her head. She could not precisely determine words, but the images, her own images and feelings, were presented in an organized stream. Specifically, they presented feelings of comfort and images of those things and people that comforted her.
Then suddenly she recognized another. She felt the presence of Russell somewhere in her mind. He thought of his young daughter. Kaci felt his pain, as he longed for her. This had been just a short mission. With the new fuel and longer burn rates, they had been promised a six-month turn around. He had promised he would be back for his daughter's birthday.
But it did not end there. She suddenly saw herself as Russell saw her. She wanted it to stop. She didn’t want to know.
He had heard the snide remarks about her: she had heard them as well. Too cold, too confident. It was all true. She had alienated so many with her intellect, her desire to be right. But Russell had consistently been there, he always had time for her, and she had never noticed.
There she was in his eyes. She had even cut her hair like the men, just to intimidate them. Surprisingly, she did not look so awful to him. She felt his embarrassment; his feelings had been revealed, and they were real.
What did they want from her, from Russell?
From her and Russell, they mined specifications of the Albatross and the landers.
What did they want with them? Was she revealing to them sensitive and vital information—information they would use against her and her home? Helpless to resist, she worried.
Russell was still there with her, she sensed him. Her childhood, a poor girl from a bad neighborhood, an alcoholic mother and no father, pain and humiliation, all revealed.
Kaci's older sister had been smart and gotten out. Her sister had wanted children, but years of drug abuse had hurt those chances.
For Kaci, fourteen was not as bad as fifteen. Fourteen had been fun, too fun. She had been too smart even then. Kaci knew she wanted out, but she had not been wise. Images of Kaci’s pregnancy flashed. She felt Russell’s disbelief. Her older sister took her into their home. When the little girl came, Kaci gave her up to her sister.
Kaci felt warm tears on her cold face.
That child was now fifteen, a good kid, but Kaci had little to do with that. After her pregnancy, Kaci studied with determination, finally realizing the power of her gifts. She lived with her sister near a good school, and after just a year, the recognition came in the form of scholarships. She vowed to provide for her niece, the guilt dug so deeply. But her niece didn’t need her; she had a good mother. It had been the right thing to do, so Kaci went away to college, early.
Why did they have to delve into that? What right did they have to humiliate her in front of her colleague, her friend? What use did they have of it? How could she face Russell now?
#
Russell woke her. She looked into his eyes. He had seen so much.
“Kaci. I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“It hurts you for me to know.”
She thought of how cold she had been, how she had shut everyone out of her pain. She thought of how Russell had supported her professionally and even personally. “It’s OK,” she said. Then she smiled. “I’m glad you know.”
His eyes smiled back.
That had felt right to her. “What do you think they want?” she asked.
“I don’t know; you’re the smart one, Doc.”
“How many are there?" she asked.
“I was looking for smart answers, not smart question.”
“This is not what I expected.”
“Oh yeah...and what did you expect?”
“Nothing,” she said.
Russell’s face grew somber. “Are we going to get out of this?”
She sighed. “That device in the middle of the room must generate the air we breathe.”
“I asked if we were going to get out of this,” he said.
“I heard you, damn it!” But then she tempered her tone; this wasn’t a staff meeting. “They’re smart, but I sense they’re desperate.”
“Desperate for what?" Russell asked.
Kaci couldn't answer.
"At least, I don’t think they’re hungry.”
That was true, she decided, and laughed quietly.
#
Once again, the aliens tumbled into the room until they formed a network over her and Russell. Each extended its free, tube-like appendage toward them. She closed her eyes. Was this it? What would poor Charles do all by himself?
Again, she felt the cold but soft mouth on the top of her head. It was as before, a telepathic conference call. She wanted to tell them to make an appointment and call some other time.
New images came in a flurry and not from her memory. Spatially, she felt the inside of a ship, the inside of the aliens’ ship. She felt it wobble as it traveled. Fear and confusion, their fear and their confusion, followed by a jarring crash. The ship must have crashed on Vesta.
How long ago? Kaci wondered, and then after a brief pause, she gained a sense it had happened during her lifetime.
The images continued. Unable to fly their ship, they used it to burrow into the crust until they reached a suitable temperature. Then they formed the caverns where they lived, consuming silicon in some form; probably silicates, she decided.
She opened her eyes wide. Within that enveloping net of aliens, one stood trembling before them, alone and separated. She understood now. That single creature stood so vulnerably, a part of their family given to her. Her buried feelings for her daughter, the little girl she had given up, the little girl she gave up to be loved, had fostered that deep trust.
They wanted to go home, and they gave up one of their own to meet that end, but how could she help?
#
Just hours later, she called Charles from outside the tunnel.
“I lost contact," Charles said. "My God Kaci, where have you been?"
“We found something, Charles. Copy.”
“We? You found Russell?"
"Oh yes. He's fine.... We're both fine."
"Good God! Tell me what happened.”
Kaci hesitated but then said, “We’re going to have to make a parts run. Copy.”
“Repeat.”
“I said we have to make a little parts run.”
#
Kaci felt unsure about the plan, and she knew the aliens understood why, for they knew a great many details about the technology of Earth and the nature of her people. Their plan was to send one of their own back to Earth, where, using the facilities there, they would build parts for their ship. What assurances could keep that lone creature safe from those who would exploit it? Kaci knew that what the world would learn from manufacturing the parts would outweigh the cost of returning to Vesta. What they would learn from the tetrahedral alien, Kaci decided, would be far more astonishing.