Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) (8 page)

As daunting as that task appeared, it did not perturb the inhuman intelligence. It was just one more thing to deal with. One accepted it along with the other immutable processes of the cosmos. Quietly, Ert sent out a coded signal.

A long unused circuit was among equipment forgotten in space. Now after centuries, it received the correctly coded command. Electrical life flowed again through the ancient machinery and a lone signal cried out in reply.

Utilizing alien equipment in ways never imagined by their builders, Ert received the brief signal. Just as abruptly as the signal arrived, it was gone. Silence reigned as the circuit died, having lasted countless eons for this one purpose. Now it was so much flotsam among the stars. But its final gasp had once more answered a master’s call. Its purpose fulfilled, it could now return to the elements from which it was fashioned.

The information in the signal actually surprised the Horicon computer. To discover that any of the ancient sentinel equipment placed there so long ago was operational was unexpected. Logic suggested it would all be inert after millennia of neglect. In effect, as far as he could tell, it had been abandoned suddenly and without explanation. Only here it was again, once more justifying its simple existence. He digested the information in the data stream burst.

Caution dictated that he wait to act on the new data he had received. By inference, Ert deduced that there was more than chance in operation here. To act openly now would possibly draw attention that could prove disastrous. Fortunately, patience was his strongest virtue. Eventually, information that is more critical would arrive. Chance was in his favor on this. So carefully through unwitting surrogates, he continued his quest.

∞∞∞

Ian was puzzled. He would be the first to admit that the universe still held more than enough surprises unknown to him, but this was still rare. Things were just not adding up.

When he first stumbled onto the weapons platform a couple of days ago, it got the drop on him. Although he had superior detection equipment, and had been traveling faster than the speed of light, this automated anachronism still launched a missile at him. Only the Unseen One had kept him from being destroyed.

But it had detected him and launched well before he saw it coming. With the technology involved, that was impossible. There had to be something here he wasn’t seeing—some unknown factor that would make this add up. As it was, this situation made as much sense as saying two plus two equal five.

First, here was an orbital weapons platform free-floating alone in space. But there was no planet. It was not orbiting anything that he could see. With a long stretch of his imagination, Ian could allow for the possibility that the platform could have drifted off into space on its own, but that went against the nature of orbital objects. Basic physics dictated that eventually an orbiting object would fall inward toward whatever it was orbiting, not break orbit and drift into space.

The only exception would be if the object had the means to move itself to maintain its orbital position. But the platform showed no evidence of having a means of propulsion. Ian could see where some sort of booster stage had been attached to it in the distant past, but nothing current. All the attachment points showed definite signs of long disuse. The only recent evidence was where those three missiles had been slung before they were launched at him. The scrape marks were very clear.

The trader sat and pondered his situation. Something was tickling him in the back of his mind. Something about the missiles just didn’t add up. Using the optical viewer again, he studied the missile racks on the platform.

Magnifying the image, Ian looked at the scrape marks on the missile racks. All of the missiles had launched from the same side. Along with the scrapes, he could see burn marks from where the rocket propellant of the missiles had blasted them out of their individual holding bays.

Ian sat the magnifier aside, trying to determine a reason for this object to be in this particular sector of space. After a couple of minutes, he flicked on his computer and started researching any information he could find about rockets. There had to be something about such primitive propulsion that was the key to this whole mess.

He’d studied rockets as part of his trading business, and ran across them occasionally. A little knowledge always helped him make a profit. Since the advent of the bedsprings and Albert drive systems, rockets were almost extinct. There was a night and day difference between the two forms of propulsion. That made them interesting. The fact that they were rare made them profitable, at least for traders like himself.

The brief he was seeking appeared on his screen. Ian noted that there were both liquid and solid fuel rocket motors. Of the two, solid was preferred with weapons rockets since it was simple and reliable. That was most likely the way these missiles propelled themselves out of the launch rack and toward their target. Still, that wasn’t quite what he was after.

Scrolling further down, Ian scanned the information, still looking for a clue. He even found a section that detailed how rocket packs were used to boost other rockets and even primitive aircraft. He had a sudden flash of inspiration.

Climbing into the control seat, Ian carefully moved the
Cahill Express
around behind the launch bay of the missile platform. He used the optical viewer again and studied the launch bays from a new angle. He noted that the ends of the bays were solid, so the blast of the rocket motor would push against it to propel the missile out of the rack and on its way. He could even see the scorch marks around the small vents at the back of the bay. He also noted that the bay containing the last missile had almost no blast marks. Obviously, its solid fuel propellant had somehow failed.

From this safe distance, Ian looked over the platform.
Something’s missing
. Then it hit him. There were no steering jets on the platform. It was without any visible means to keep itself positioned when launching. The blast from two missile launches on the same side should have sent the platform spinning in the opposite direction.

“Good ole thrust and inertia,” Ian said, chuckling.

Ian laughed aloud and moved the
Express
to a different location.

“Action and reaction,” he muttered as he flew. “For every action, there is a reaction. It’s a universal staple of physics.”

Even the Axia drive depended on this. It just did it by reaching somewhere else for reactive mass. A rocket did it by discharging thrust. That should have moved the platform but it didn’t. And since the platform lacked positioning jets, it followed that it was somehow connected to something Ian could not see. Now he had to test his theory.

Ian carefully brought the
Express
right up behind the platform. Using the grappling arm, he hooked a towline to a convenient ring along the side of the platform. Satisfied that the line was secure, he played out a length of extra slack.

His plan was simple. He was going to try to move the platform out of position by using the dead mass of the
Cahill Express
. He couldn’t just tow it because the drive effect would move along the towline and cancel any inertia the platform produced. What he proposed to do was start his ship in motion away from the platform and then kill the drive, causing the ship’s mass to succumb to inertia just like the platform. If the platform were just floating free in space, it would move when the line became taunt.

Ian double-checked his plan. Everything looked ready.

“Here goes nothin’.”

He gave the drive a nudge of reverse power. Just as the ship started to move, he killed the drive and let the
Express
float backward away from the platform. He watched the platform through the front windows as the slack slowly disappeared. Suddenly, the line went taunt and the
Express
stopped dead in space. Whatever was holding that platform was strong enough to hold his ship as well. Ian remotely opened the clamp on the line disengaging it from the platform. This was going to require more study.

Obviously, something was holding the platform in a stationary position. It couldn’t be a drive system like the one that powered his ship because he would have detected it the moment he clamped on. Whatever it was, it was also powerful enough to stop the considerable mass of the
Express
in an instant. So it followed that it had to be bigger, much bigger, in mass than the ship
.
An idea hit him.

Swinging the
Express
around, Ian headed away from the platform. He remembered seeing a field of rocky debris not far away when he had been looking around for other platforms. He’d actually found the remains of two more derelict platforms, but both were nothing more that scrap metal after all this time in space. He had plotted their positions relative to the platform that had fired the missiles at him but he didn’t find what you would expect if the platforms were a picket line delineating a border. Assuming they were as unmoved as the first platform, their positions formed more of a parabolic arc.

Could be a fence
, he thought.

By backtracking, Ian soon came upon the rocks he had seen earlier. He used the grappling arm and placed several large boulders in an outside cargo sling. When he had enough for his purpose, he headed back to the working platform and took up a starboard position far enough away to be safe. He was dealing with unknown factors here and it heightened his sense of caution. He made a point of facing the
Express
away from the platform.

Since it was a defensive device, Ian assumed its builders would aim it away from themselves. Thus, it would follow that the area behind the platform would be where the power source should be. His eyes and sensors told him there was nothing but empty space in that direction, but now he had his doubts.

Satisfied with his observations, Ian used the grappling arm and lifted the first rock out of the sling. With a flick of the control lever, he arched the arm to swing and release the rock in a rough approximation of an overhand throw. As soon as the arm released the rock, it was free of the effect of the ship’s drive and hurtled along freely in a straight line. Ian grabbed the optical viewer and watched patiently.

The rock grew smaller and smaller as it continued along its initial trajectory. Ian was about to give up when he saw the rock begin to glow. Brighter and brighter it glowed and then unexpectedly, it was gone.

He laid the viewer aside and pondered on this for a minute. Checking the readout of the detector screen, he noted the distance the rock covered before he lost it both visually and on his sensors.

Ian tried the same experiment at each of the platforms. In each case, the rocks disappeared at the same distance and in the same parabolic arc as the first one.

Returning to the first platform, Ian prepared to throw yet another rock. This time he moved considerably closer to where he had seen the first rock start to glow. Ian made a point of releasing the rock at a slower velocity. At the expected point, it began to glow like the others. Because it was going slower, it wasn’t quite as bright. His hope was that if it were encountering something that would create friction, it wouldn’t burn up so quickly.

Ian watched carefully as it continued forward, glowing all the time. And then it was gone. He was still able to see the rock right up to the instant it disappeared. That proved the rocks were not just burning up when he lost sight of them. There was something out there for sure, even though his eyes and sensors detected nothing.

Moving the ship yet closer, Ian came up with a different test he could try with the rocks. This time he threw the rock at a forty-five degree angle compared to the trajectory of the previous one. It started to glow at about the same position in space but then while he watched, it skipped back out into cold space.

Tracking it visually, he saw it circle in an arc and start glowing again further away. This time its trajectory was steeper and it continued to glow until it too disappeared. He repeated the experiment and each time received similar results. Something was definitely there. Something very much like a planet with an atmosphere.

Ian sat at his console. He took a sketch pad and drew a curve representing the positions of the platforms. Then he drew lines through each on a direct line tangent from the rear of each platform. They intersected. Along these lines, he marked approximately where the rocks had started glowing and where they had disappeared. Through these two sets of points, he drew a curve for each. Except for being of a slightly smaller radius, they matched the curve established for the platforms.

“Got’cha!” Ian exclaimed, using a phrase he had picked up from someone years ago. There was a planet down there. He just couldn’t see it. He didn’t know how someone could hide an entire planet both visually and to sensors, but they had.

Swinging the
Cahill Express
around, Ian aligned it on a course offset from the imaginary line that would bisect the first platform. Caution told him that if they could hide a planet they could have some sort of stabilizing beam to hold a platform in place. He certainly did not want to tangle with that! No telling what it could do to his ship.

After double-checking his coordinates, Ian calibrated his targeting sensors to keep him on a course relative to the platform. This way he could also know when he was approaching the atmosphere he could not see by simply watching his time and speed. Advancing the throttle, he started downward, his eyes and sensors still registering nothing—nothing but the star field far in the distance.

The
Cahill Express
drew closer and closer to the position he should first be able to detect an atmosphere. Suddenly a friction glow began to appear at the outer edge of his repulsion field. Glancing at his chronometer, Ian noted it was just about right. Impatient to resolve this mystery, he accelerated the ship. The glow of friction with the atmosphere brightened noticeably. He was now almost to the point where the rocks disappeared.