Legacy (2 page)

May 14, 2352

It was thirty years to the date since the USSC Pioneer made that fateful trip to the Beta Hydri system. For the first 24 years, the world waited with bated breath knowing there was nothing anyone could do to verify if the Jump Drive was a success. Since Beta Hydri was a star system over 24 light years away, the soonest anyone on Earth would get word on the crew’s fate would be at least 24 years in coming. The Pioneer hadn’t been equipped with a Tachyon Relay, so it couldn’t transmit superluminal texts.

No message ever came during the whole 24
^th
year after the Pioneer’s launch, but the world refused to give up hope. Over 120 radio telescopes were trained on that system daily, but the only sounds they picked up was
The Hydrus Signal
– the very signal that drew them to the Beta Hydri system in the first place.

By the end of the 25
^th
year, the USSC issued its first statement that hinted at a complete loss of the ship and crew. Most everyone still refused to give up hope, however. People continued to listen to the skies for that message everyone wanted to hear: “we made it and the Jump Drive was a success.”

The 26
^th
, 27
^th
, and 28
^th
years passed with nary a sound from the USSC Pioneer. The United Scientist Space Command finally admitted that they would officially count the crew as deceased on the 30-year anniversary if no word ever came.

On May 14, 2352, a memorial plaque was hung in the Hall of Heroes to honor the passengers and crew of the USSC Pioneer. They gave up their lives in the hopes of advancing the future of interstellar travel.

2

Diana

Green Continent

7PS 986. I had a calendar hanging over my workspace with luna one through six bearing the red ink slashes of my favorite pen. Number seven, the first day of the next six-lune was blank, marking the start of a beautiful evening. I always worked at night, so my “workday” was just beginning. Beta was resting like a beach ball on the ocean, preparing to usher in another night while Luna was rising in the east.

Though I’m not one to throw this out randomly, I feel it’s an important anecdote to my story of that evening and the many harvests to come - I come from a very rich family. My mother inherited my grandfather’s coffee farm back when I was still in diapers. This farm would have been a blessing if we hadn’t already owned a complete tea isle in the Eastern Sea. The Diana name, ten generations so far, was imprinted on 90% of all Legacy’s tea and now about 40% of Legacy’s coffee. Yes, we were very rich.

I only bring this up to explain why I had so much time on my hands. My father had a hobby before he died that he called Star Searching. Most people would argue that it’s no different than modern astronomy, but I beg to differ. Most astronomers don’t use military spy dishes and aim them at the heavens. Most astronomers only look for lights – the light of the planets or the light from the stars. My father listened and best of all, my father was the one who discovered alien life.

It happened nearly sixty harvests ago when my father was only twelve harvests old. He had stolen a complete spy dish setup from the Armory where Grandpop worked. As an avid reader of science-fiction books, he took the spy dish and started aiming it at the planets – namely at the planet Ronna.

He found nothing extraordinary, but didn’t give up on his searching. Also, to add to his cause, he stole a Spy-Messager the next time he accompanied his dad to the Armory. With a little altering of the Messager and a lot of ingenuity, he aimed that at the sky overhead, transmitting the same message over and over again: “Here we are – is anyone out there?”

After nearly two harvests of searching, he picked up some sounds coming from the star we call Caliper. The first track that he recorded to show his dad was this: “I love the way… [static]… let’s get… I love… and I love you… [static]…” This made the news sheet for three whole six-lunes. My dad continued to record other things that were coming from Caliper, but most things turned out too choppy to make any sense. But one thing was made clear to all of Legacy – there’s life out there and it never stops talking or singing.

Many harvests have passed since then and the noise never stops coming. My father may have passed away twelve harvests ago, but the listening and messaging are still being carried on through me and my sister Jean VII. My name is Diana X and this is my story of the night that our world changed forever.

. . .

“
I have a shipload of coffee leaving for Blaze tomorrow morning,” my mother said as I shuffled through the kitchen in my cotton robe and slippers, “Do you have any correspondence to send with it. I won’t have another ship headed that way for about five more 6-lunes.”

She’s
all business
all the time. She doesn’t offer me a “good morning” though in truth it’s really only a short span before nightfall, but she knows it’s morning for me all the same. I take my favorite crock from the cupboard and pour myself some of the remaining tea from the kettle.

“
No, I’ve stopped writing letters to those savages over there. They don’t take any of the sciences seriously,” I grumbled, taking a seat at the table next to her, “The only thing their Academy wants to talk about is my ‘conversations’ with the Caliperians. As if I could talk to people in another star system.”

“
But I thought you planned on going to college over there next harvest,” she said.

“
You sound so anxious to get rid of me, Mother,” I replied, shooting her a confused glance.

“
If you recall, Diana, I’m the one who insisted that you go to one of the many universities here in Green. And actually, I’m glad to hear you’ve accepted Blaze for what it is.”

“
Yet you’ll gladly accept their coal, gold, and silver,” I replied.

I could see her looking at me out of the corner of my vision, but I refused to acknowledge this. I knew I was pushing all her buttons but I couldn’t tell you why. I think I was just feeling a bit grouchy from a lack of sleep.

“
You seem to enjoy the benefits of our business just as much as I do,” she replied, touching the sleeve of my robe, “How much did this cost again?”

I stood up and dumped the rest of my tea into the basin. I was in no mood to finish the fight that I had started in the first place, so I rushed to my room and changed clothes. I grabbed the looking glass off my vanity and judged the woman staring back at me. The lines under my eyes were looking every bit of thirty harvests which would be fine if I was thirty harvests old. I had thirteen more to go before I reached the age of the woman in the looking glass. Her blonde hair was looking twisted and rough at the edges. Surely this wasn’t a 17-harvest woman.

I took a brush to my hair, progressively working out the tangles. After a few minutes, I gave up and settled on tying my hair in a ribbon and forgoing face powder entirely. I would be seeing no one for the remainder of the evening, so I could be as ugly as I wanted. I put on my shoes and then raced out of the house as quickly as I could.

I heard the back door creak open behind me, but I refused to look back. Most likely Mother had more to say to me before I headed to the studio located a mere 40 paces behind the house. She never called out, thankfully. The only break in the silence was the sweet chirps of the nightfrog and the whistles of the bluebat.

As I neared the one-room studio, I looked up at Caliper Tower, its cagey metal structure jutting upward from the building toward the stars above. Caliper Tower was our official name for the full-size “message sender” that my father built. It mainly consisted of a metal tower, the height of ten people, with four metal arms jutting out the length of a person in all four directions. My father wove copper wire between the arms, hundreds of strands, creating something of a water-strainer dish aimed at the stars. I checked it in passing every night to make sure the uglihawks didn’t try to nest in it again. I’ve had to shoo them away three times just since the last Alpha eclipse.

I was happy to see it was free of any twigs, so I moved around to the other side of the studio. I grabbed my bristle broom from where I’d left it by the door and headed to my listening dish. This metal dish was nearly as wide as the full length of the studio, much larger than the “strainer dish” located far above my head. This one rested about waist high on a custom-made tilt-table just 10 paces from the studio.

I dropped the broom into the dish, resting the bristles on the edge of a winterfern branch that managed to find its way into the dish. Tugging on the broom, I dragged the branch out of the dish and tossed it toward the woods.

To my shock, I suddenly heard thunder rumbling in the distance. The skies had been clear for two luna and were still clear a moment ago when I checked the tower. I glanced toward the ocean in time to see something unusual flying rapidly toward me. My first thought was that it was some sort of giant blackbird, but the thing lacked wings. It couldn’t have been any more than the passage of three heartbeats before I noticed that it was an object – perhaps a flying metal ocean vessel. I screamed.

“
Mom!”

I knew she could hear me if she was still in the kitchen since the windows were open. The flying vessel actually slowed down as it neared our home, then finally stopped directly over our backyard. I was about to scream again, but from where I stood, I could already see my mother and my sister on the back porch staring upward at the impossibility above us. There was no way that a metal object could fly, let alone hover like a floating ceiling above the backyard.

I brandished my broom like a weapon as I slowly approached the floating savages of Blaze. I had already made the assumption based on the direction from which this thing had come, that this was a creation of the people from Blaze.

“
You welcomed us to Hydrus and we are honored. We respectfully request permission to land. Please transmit your reply,” a female voice blared from the heavens.

I imagine in that moment that my brain literally locked up for the passage of about ten heartbeats as my mind attempted to decipher too many things at once. My first thought was:
Hydrus – what’s that?
My second thought immediately followed:
what does that ‘restactally’ word mean?
My third thought was:
Transmit – does that mean shout?
My fourth thought argued all these questions at the same time:
Hydrus must be a person or a city we never heard of, recuptablably must just be a way to describe requesting permission, and transmit cannot mean shout because I couldn’t see any windows above me for someone to hear me.

I stared at the thing, wishing someone else would tell me what to do, but I finally realized that the solution to all this would probably have to come from me. If I wasn’t going to shout my answer to them, the only other method at my disposal was my “message sender.” That thought suddenly gave me a fearful pause. I even recalled muttering those words.

“
Message sender.”

What if these people weren’t from Blaze? I dropped the broom and rushed into my studio, quickly shoving the lever down to stop the recorded message. I then grabbed the recorder’s ear and lifted the lever that would feed some power to it.

“
Yes, you can land if you promise to do no damage here,” I spoke into the ear.

I waited a moment and spoke it again just to make sure they could hear and understand. I paused for a moment and was about to speak it again when suddenly a reply blared from the sky.

“
We are friends and as you can tell by our shared language, we are also family. We promise no damage.”

I turned the ear off then proceeded to turn off all my other equipment in the office. I glanced up at my calendar in that moment and saw the slashes through the first six days. Today… tonight was 7PS 986.

August 10, 235
2

The USSC finally published something that they had in the works for more than three years. They were planning another trip to Hydrus and this time, they were not relying on any experimental “Jump Drive” nor were they sending just a Colonial Establishment Cruiser. The Hydrus Signals have never stopped, implying that there was definitely a world around Beta Hydri with people who appeared to be as curious about their neighbors as the people of Earth.