Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) (25 page)

“May I access your data records?” Ert asked.

“Might as well,” Ian agreed reluctantly. “I couldn’t stop you.”

“In that you are in error,” Ert replied. “I do have ethical standards of my own.”

“What are you looking for?” Lyyle asked. The auxiliary console began to hum as its memory storage unit started downloading.

“I am trying to ascertain whether this ship veiled by the Optiveil can withstand certain cosmic forces,” Ert said.

“Ah,” he continued after a few seconds. “My hopes were not in vain.”

“Exactly what are you planning?” Ian asked defensively.

“And why do you want us to go to a certain location in space?” Lyyle added.

“Are you willing to aid me in turning the tide on the Red-tail invasion?” Ert asked carefully.

“Of course,” Ian answered. “Who wouldn’t?”

“I was hoping you would agree,” Ert replied. Ian suddenly realized he’d been out-maneuvered.

“Ok, you’ve got me,” he admitted. “What do we do now?”

“Proceed to the coordinates I gave you previously,” Ert answered.

Ian climbed into his control chair and engaged the navigation system. When it verified the coordinates Ert had provided on the earlier transmission, Ian engaged the throttle bar. The
Cahill Express
shot forward on its new heading.

“Thank you,” Ert said from the speakers. “And now it’s time for Lyyle and me to do a little modification.”

“Who? Me?” squeaked Lyyle.

“He’s got you,” Ian said, grinning at his friend. “We’re in over our heads already. Might as well learn to swim.”

“Ian is correct,” Ert agreed. “And in fair exchange, I will see that the Optiveil gets into the right hands with the humans.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Lyyle asked.

“Take these schematics and get ready to do some work.”

Immediately, the printer started spitting out sheets of paper. After examining them for a few seconds, he let out a low whistle. “We’d have to land on Vogel to come up with some of this stuff!” Lyyle protested. “And I never heard of some of these items!”

“If I read your manifest correctly, the needed components are already onboard.” Ert answered. Ian got up and read the list attached to the schematics.

“Hey!” Ian complained. “You are taking some of my stock!”

“What you think of as curious artifacts are in fact components from equipment I am familiar with,” Ert replied. “I suspect it came from old Horicon probes that were found derelict in space and salvaged as scrap.”

“You’re saying that this junk is actually useable?” Ian asked.

“More than you know,” Ert answered. “With it we can make the Optiveil more effective and increase its efficiency at the same time.”

“Then let’s get started!” Lyyle exclaimed. “Where are the parts bins?”

“Always the engineer,” muttered Ian. “Come on and I’ll show you.”

Hours later, a disheveled Lyyle crawled out from under the auxiliary console. “There, that should do it!” he said, wiping his hands on his pants.

“I just want to know this isn’t going to leave me with a dead detector system when it blows up!” Ian said from where he’d been working on the ship sensors.

“It will work fine,” Ert reassured him. “In fact,” he continued as equipment began to activate, “I have already tested it.”

“Hey! Warn a guy next time!” exclaimed Ian. To his amazement, the sensor board started displaying phenomena finer and at a much greater range than he ever thought possible. The screen showed gravitational force waves bouncing off the repulsion field of the
Cahill Express
.

“My apologies,” Ert said. “Now Lyyle,” he continued, “activate the Optiveil.”

“Here goes nothing,” Lyyle said as he closed his eyes and threw the switch.

Immediately, the Optiveil system engaged. The console readout reported that it was operating at a finer level of sensor diffusion and was taking less power to do it. Lyyle opened his eyes and scanned the instruments. “I like it!” he exclaimed.

“Although you cannot observe the effect, I have tied the Optiveil into your ship’s repulsion field,” Ert said from the speakers. “You will also notice the detector system is able to detect magnetic lines of flux invisible to your old sensor system.”

“I see that,” Ian agreed. “And I like it too. One question though. Why do we need to detect these forces?”

“I was waiting for you to ask?” Ert chuckled. “I thought a trader like you would have been asking that well before now.”

“Ok, you got me again,” Ian said, chagrined. “Now explain what comes next.”

“Gladly,” Ert said. “You are going Red-tail hunting.”

“That sounds too easy,” Lyyle said suspiciously.

“Agreed,” Ian said. “What’s the catch?”

“Again you disappoint me,” Ert said. “Neither of you have asked the critical question.”

“And what would that be?” Lyyle asked, Ian nodding his agreement.

“Neither of you asked where we would go hunting,” Ert said. “We are going to hunt Red-tails in their home galaxy.”

“But that’s impossible!” both men exclaimed.

“Not if you use their transit tubes,” Ert replied calmly.

“But we’d be torched before we even got near one!” Ian exclaimed, “even if we could detect when and where one would be!”

“Your sensor equipment is now modified to detect the formation of such tubes,” Ert answered. “And the Optiveil will keep you undetected and will enhance your ship’s ability to withstand the forces present in the transit tubes.”

Both men looked at each other as the blood drained from their faces.

“We’ve been bamboozled,” was all Ian could think to say.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The chiming of the wall clock startled the professor, breaking his concentration. A glance at the now dark window made him realize just how late, or rather how early it was. He had become totally absorbed rereading the old human texts. Although written in the Horicon script, Ert had provided him a more complete and detailed translation. It went far beyond what the archeologists had deciphered and included the deeper meaning and inflections that only Ert could provide. It was when he was about to continue reading that it hit Professor Orilious Angle that something was amiss—the clock!

“Well I’ll be…” he started to say aloud but checked himself. Here in his study at home there was no one to hear him. Again, he looked at the clock suspiciously. It hadn’t chimed in years, ever since the sound mechanism had prematurely failed. Why should it do so now?

Suspecting that he had been set up, the professor spoke aloud. “All right Ert,” he said in a firm voice. “What have you done to my clock?”

The room remained silent just long enough for him to begin to feel silly when his old curved-top radio suddenly came to life.

“All I did was fix it,” Ert said through the radio speaker. “If you are upset, I will return it to its non-functioning state.”

“No, that’s alright,” the professor replied. “Now, why did you have it chime when you did? If I know you, it was not coincidence that it happened to chime now and not when you likely fixed it earlier.”

“Guilty as charged,” Ert answered. “I was saving the repair as a surprise but decided to use it to get your attention. I see that you are reading my translation of those human texts. I hope you are enjoying them.”

“You did surprise me,” the professor said as he reached for his now cold cup of decaffeinated coffee. “And yes, I am enjoying your translation considerably. I find the deeper inflections very enlightening.”

“I am pleased,” Ert said. “It is a pleasure to find a human that is not offended by the offer of first-hand knowledge. I see that you have bookmarked a few sections.”

“How do you do that?” the professor said, looking around. To his knowledge, there were no cameras or emitters anywhere in his study.

“I am using your computer monitor in reverse,” Ert answered. “It is really very simple if you know how.”

“I should have figured,” the professor muttered as his desk computer powered up by itself. On its screen, he saw Ert scrolling the translated texts.

“What is it you want to show me?” Ert asked.

“I found some passages that did not make sense to me,” the professor replied, flipping back to the first bookmark. “Here in this section is a brief paragraph recounting some sort of encounter. With whom is the writer speaking?” he added as he held the printed text up so Ert could see it.

Ert scrolled the computer version of the text the professor showed him until he came to the passage. Briefly, the screen went blank and then other text that the professor recognized as being in Horicon began to slide by.

“I was correlating the passage you found with other texts from my own memory banks,” Ert said after a minute.

“I didn’t know you had Horicon texts in your memory systems,” the professor said. “I understood you to be strictly set up for infrastructure management.”

“I was,” Ert said. “But one of my original operators loaded other material in my memory banks for his reading pleasure. I have hundreds of such texts still intact, though much of it is fiction.”

“That’s amazing!” the professor exclaimed. “Have you shared them with anyone yet? They would be of enormous value in our study of the Horicon!”

“No, I have not,” Ert replied. “My encounters with your historians and archeologists have been frustrating. They are more comfortable with their preconceived notions than with first-hand observations and facts.”

“I know what you mean,” the professor agreed, remembering the uproar caused by Ert correcting the historical record compiled about the Horicon. Compared to Ert’s first-hand accounts, what the experts had written was mostly fiction, and not very good fiction at that.

The professor noticed that Ert had stopped scrolling through his text and had one passage highlighted. “What have you come up with?”

“I found a passage in some writings by one of my original operators,” Ert said. “That operator used me to write about his own observations of what you would call political events in his day. In one of his diatribes, he referenced one of the failed attempts by the Horicon to travel off planet.”

“What happened?” Professor Angle asked. “I remember you telling me that all such attempts failed.”

“Yes, they did,” Ert confirmed. “But in his writings, this operator had a mission count of how many attempts had been made to date.”

“And how is that germane with the passage I found in this human text?”

“Because the reference to a visitor in your text brought up an overlooked possibility,” Ert replied. “I am correlating it with my text points to an inescapable conclusion.”

“That these humans actually met a Horicon!” the professor exclaimed.

“That is my conclusion as well,” Ert agreed. “I had not noticed it before until the two texts were compared.”

“So your text tells of such an encounter?”

“Only by inference,” Ert answered. “What it does tell exactly is that there were a few missions where we never knew what happened. Contact was lost after the mission was launched. Neither the Horicon nor the Jibbah were able to find the missing craft or determine what had happened. These missions were written off as failures like all the previous ones.”

“You’re saying that one of the attempted off-planet missions may have actually landed on this human world,” the professor summed up. “I noticed this and two other passages reference indirectly to a visitor but no real description of whom the writer encountered.”

“I concur,” Ert agreed. “It is a hypothesis that fits the known facts.”

“Would a Horicon be able to survive for a time on that type of planet?” the professor asked. “We only have conjecture about what the climatic conditions were on Horicon. The original atmosphere was scorched off when their star went critical.”

“I have actual analysis of the atmosphere of Horicon in my memory,” Ert replied. “And yes, a Horicon visitor would be able to breathe and tolerate the climate as recorded on that human world. It would seem arid to him, but it would be tolerable.”

“What was it that prevented them from being able to leave Horicon?” the professor asked. “That has never been accurately determined.”

“Although my function was infrastructure management, I do have a few references to the ongoing missions,” Ert said. “Again by inference and my knowledge of Horicon itself, I can surmise what may have been the limiting factor.”

“But I thought your system failed before Horicon became uninhabitable,” the professor observed.

“It did,” Ert confirmed. “And to answer your next question, the reason I was not repaired was that I was no longer needed. The system I controlled was near failure due to radiation from the Horicon star. Instead, my makers focused on more immediate needs in an effort to preserve the race.”

“But what was the limiting factor for the Horicon? Why couldn’t they survive on another planet? Surely with their technology, they could have duplicated almost anything.”

“That was the key word,” Ert replied. “Almost. My hypothesis is that there was some sort of combination of natural radiation that was critical to the Horicon metabolism. This could not be duplicated in the right combination and strength to create a viable artificial environment for the Horicon.”

“So what happened when a Horicon left the planet?”

“As you already know, they eventually died,” Ert replied. “From my knowledge of their physiology, there would likely be a slow breakdown of their nervous system. It would be a slow decline of mental function over time. In the end, cognitive function would cease, leaving the individual little more than a living brute. Obviously, since they could no longer fend for themselves in a possibly hostile environment, they would die.”

“So where does that leave our suspected visitor?”

“Realize this is only conjecture,” Ert replied. “There are ways it could be confirmed, but that would take cooperation from your archeologists on that planet.”

“And your conjecture is?” the professor prompted.

“Obviously, that one of the lost missions landed on that human world. I suspect the individual who landed managed to survive for at least a time. It implies that the environment on that planet was similar enough to Horicon to facilitate his survival.”