The Horicon Experience (13 page)

“You’re more nervous than you were at basic graduation,” Stan remarked, glancing up at his friend. With practiced skill, Stan saved his work and shut down his machine. He turned his desk chair toward his friend and just shook his head at Delmar’s impatience. A knock at the door cut short Delmar’s reply.

Delmar rushed over to the door and flung it open, startling Jake and Sherry Sender with the suddenness of his movement. “Mr. and Mrs. Sender!” Delmar shouted.

“Cut the formality, Delmar,” Jake said with a wave of his hand as they walked into the room. “You’re a big boy now, so just call us Jake and Sherry.”

Stan stood up as the couple entered. Delmar stammered his way through the introductions.

“So you’re the Stan that Agnes thought so highly of,” Sherry said as she looked into the young man’s face.

“Don’t worry, Stan,” Jake said, watching the young man’s face redden. “She had nothing but good to say.”

“I’d ask you to sit down but we’re a little short of chairs,” Stan said, trying to change the subject. Sherry took in the sparsely furnished room with a glance.

“No, thank you,” she said politely. “We were hoping you’d want to go out.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jake, “grab your jackets and let’s go.” In moments, the young men were ready. They rode the lift together downstairs to the ground car.

“How about we go to that nice little café we ate at last time we were here?” Sherry recommended to her husband as he drove them off campus.

“Sounds good to me,” Jake replied. “You boys hungry?” Delmar and Stan looked at each other and grinned.

“We’d love to if it’s cheap enough,” Delmar admitted. “They haven’t gotten our pay vouchers to us yet.” Stan nodded in agreement.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake told them. “Our treat.”

Both young men broke into big smiles. Jake carefully watched Delmar’s friend in the rear view mirror. With a practiced eye, he noted signs of suppressed emotion but kept his peace.
There will be enough time for that later,
he thought.

A short time later found them seated around a table at an average priced home-style café.

“Not much to look at,” Delmar remarked, surveying the décor. Although there were different artifacts displayed around the dining room emphasizing the eatery’s theme, it was low key and simply decorated.

“Just remember that you pay for everything in these places, one way or another,” Jake said with a chuckle, “and you can’t eat decor.” The arrival of the server with menus and water changed the subject to more pressing matters.

Go ahead and order whatever you want,” Sherry admonished the two young men while they all scanned their menus. Although there was a wide variety of offerings to choose from, it didn’t take the boys long to decide. After the waitress had taken their orders and poured coffee all around, Jake noticed the look in his wife’s eyes.
Here she goes!
He thought with a chuckle. As soon as the waitress left, Sherry began to pump the boys for news.

“Slow down, woman,” Jake interjected with a snort. “Let them at least get a sip of their coffee first.”

“No, it’s all right Mr. Sen . . .I mean Jake,” Delmar countered. That was all Sherry needed to continue. In her own coy way, she began questioning Delmar. Several minutes later the waitress appeared with their food and interrupted the interrogation. Though only observing, both Jake and Stan felt the same relief Delmar must have been experiencing.

As soon as they saw their food, both Delmar and Stan let out a gasp. “Getting a little tired of synthesized food?” Jake asked with a smile.

“How’d you know?” Stan asked.

“It’s not that bad, really,” Delmar added hastily.

“If you don’t look at it,” Stan continued. Jake and Sherry both chuckled. They well remembered being at the mercy of synthesized food when in uniform themselves.

“Now you know why I pray over what’s on my plate,” Jake replied with a disarming smile. They bowed their heads while Jake offered thanks.

“So, what do you two want to do today?” Jake asked when the meal wound down. The boys had cleared their food right down to the flowers on the plate.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Delmar. “Maybe see the sights or something.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his full stomach. Stan just shrugged.

“It was the ‘something’ that I had in mind,” Sherry interjected. “Come on, you three,” she added, taking command.

Jake and the two young men realized they had lost the fight before they even knew there was a battle. Gathering their things, they made their way toward the cash register. Stan and Delmar hung back, and between them managed to scrape together a decent tip. Back in the ground car, Sherry gave Jake the address where she wanted to go.

“By the way,” asked Delmar, “why did you rent a ground vehicle? You could have used the transit to get to campus and all over the city.”

“You’ll see,” Sherry answered. Jake smiled but kept his mouth shut.

Several minutes later, Jake pulled the vehicle into the parking area of a giant second-hand goods establishment.

“That room of yours is too bare,” Sherry said as she opened her door. “It might as well feel like a home while you’re there.”

The boys helplessly followed her inside. Jake brought up the rear, chuckling to himself. Knowing he was out of the loop, Jake looked for a place to rest and wait for the inevitable.

Once inside, Sherry continued to maintain command. She soon had a sales clerk and the two boys moving furniture around, much to the great amusement of Jake. Although she was careful to consult the boys as to their tastes and preferences, Sherry clearly intended to furnish their room and would brook no argument. Within half an hour, a procession of furnishings surrounded the ground vehicle.

“Did I mention that Sherry is a former Lady of the Fleet?” a winded Delmar asked his friend as they carried yet another bookcase out to the parking lot.

“You did. But it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out if you hadn’t,” Stan replied between breaths.

They set the bookcase down beside the ground car. Sherry soon appeared to supervise the loading, and the boys saved their breath. Several minutes of careful arrangement were required to fit it all in or onto the vehicle. Just as they finished, Jake wandered out from the store.

“Where have you been?” Sherry asked. The boys looked up and saw Jake’s slow approach.  Delmar remembered seeing him safely hidden among the easy chairs.

“I was busy testing upholstery,” Jake answered with a straight face. Delmar hid his grin as Sherry shook her head at her husband.

They all squeezed in among the smaller purchases and Jake drove them back to the dormitory. Realizing there was no getting around it, the boys began to move the load of furnishings upstairs to their room. Jake kept himself clear of the activity by helping unload the smaller items and holding the lobby door. Several trips later, the task was finished and Sherry wisely let the boys decide on the arrangement of the furniture. When it was all roughly in place, they locked up and returned to the car.

“Now we can go sightseeing,” Sherry announced. Delmar and Stan found themselves too tired to argue.

∞∞∞

Nearly undetectable levels of current coursed through the sub-atomic circuitry. Patiently, methodically, the unit analyzed the signals it picked up inductively from the cables below. However, in spite of all its effort, it was unable to decipher the codes. If it had been possible, the unit would have felt frustration. Instead, it examined all of its recorded options for alternate solutions. Either because of damage to some of the memory cells, or because it had never been provided with the answer to this unforeseen situation, the unit was unable to find any instructions dealing with such an unusual series of dilemmas.

Discarding that fruitless effort without a flicker of emotion, the unit expanded its search to include all of its available memories. Most dealt with the mundane chores regularly consigned to machines by their organic masters. Still, it searched these for any possible directive that was applicable to the circumstances the unit faced, but found no answer.

The final set of files the unit searched were the most incomplete or damaged. The unit had to create new pathways occasionally to replace ones made inoperative by the ravages of time. Through one of these shunts, the unit’s processors finally accessed the historical files. It checked for instructions or directives from its long-dead masters. The few that looked promising were too badly damaged to be workable, stumping the unit again. It pondered this dilemma for many hours in real time, interrupted only by occasional appearances of the odd bipedal creatures.

∞∞∞

The monitor in the Observation Section displayed the signal trace of the frequency emissions from the closed planet. The trooper on duty smiled to himself and looked to be sure the recorder was getting it all. This was the third time the closed planet had sent out transmissions during his shift, and he was glad that he had been here to see it. His personal interest aside, it was still good to get such excellent recordings from the relay system.

Turning back to the main monitor, he watched the amplitude of the signal, and jotted down several notes. Footsteps interrupted his musings as his section supervisor walked up behind him.

“How’s it going tonight, Chad?” the trooper-second asked. “Anything interesting?”

“That,” Chad said, pointing to the trace on the monitor, “is the third transmission this shift.”

“Are all three the same?” the section supervisor asked.

“No, sir. And that’s what’s interesting,” Chad replied. “They seem to be sending out a different carrier signal each time. It’s as if they’re unsure of what they’ve got.”

“Well, considering it may be equipment they’re unfamiliar with, I’m not surprised.” The two men watched the trace in silence for another minute.

“I guess I better leave you alone,” the trooper-second said. “Call me if anything really interesting happens.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Chad said with a chuckle as his supervisor headed out the door.

The trooper-second continued down the passageway to the Analysis Section. Entering the compartment, he found two troopers pouring over the data recordings from the previous shift. Hastily scribbled notes covered the printouts, along with circles around specific parts.

“It looks like you’ve been busy,” he said as he approached the pair. One looked up and motioned for the trooper-second to come closer.

“See this signal variation early in yesterday’s first transmission?” the trooper asked, pointing at the report he was studying.

“Yes,” answered the supervisor, examining the highlighted part of the printout. Although his training had not been as thorough as that of these specialists, he was well enough versed to recognize that it indicated frequency variations. He said as much.

“Notice that it’s at amplitude inconsistent with normal Red-tail equipment,” the analyst continued. “The repetition is also at a consistently decreasing time interval.”

He pointed to duplicate patterns circled throughout the graph. “What we think is that if, and I mean if, they’ve acquired Red-tail equipment, they’ve already deduced its function and have started modifications of their own.”

“That would be quite a leap, even for these people,” the supervisor said. “Could there be another explanation?”

“Not that we have any evidence of so far,” the second analyst answered. “We’ll agree that it’s an unprecedented leap in technology, but that’s what our preliminary observations lead us to theorize.”

“An onsite investigation would be ideal,” the first analyst suggested. “But we should try some other approaches before we take that risk.”

“Sounds like you’ve already decided who I would likely choose to go down,” the supervisor said with a smile.

“Yes, sir,” the second analyst answered, “and neither one of us is especially anxious for the experience.”

“You’ll need a ship and a pilot,” said the supervisor. “Let me see what I can find.”

“Take your time, sir,” answered the first analyst. “I’m in no hurry to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.”

∞∞∞

Using one of the planet’s two moons for cover, George landed his new ship, the
Reacher
, at the edge of the outer sensor shadow. Knowing the regular intervals that the signals emanated from the surface helped avoid detection. George did not want to take any unnecessary chances and risk this new ship to suffer the same fate as his original scout ship,
Starduster
, which had been affected by the tractor ray much farther out. Now she was on her way to the scrap yard.

“Okay, let’s get set up,” he said to Akir and Trooper Ronwell Brittin, the technician the mothership operations officer had assigned to him for this detail. “Have you ever been on a field mission like this before, Brittin?” George asked the technician as they suited up.

“Yes, sir,” Britten answered. “Training flight in basic. Our flight was assigned to set up a communications array and protect it from enemy attack.”

“I think you’ll find this isn’t much different,” George assured the young man. “Just pay attention to detail. We only get one shot at this.”

“Yes sir.”

“We’ve only got about three hours of shadow before the ship is exposed,” George said. The three men double-checked their clear, flexible pressure suits and exited the craft. Taking portable sensor equipment from the storage hold on the exterior of the ship, they hiked the quarter-mile to the lunar ridge where they were going to set up the sensory equipment. Although the equipment was bulky, the very low gravity of the moon aided their task.

Arriving at the crest of the ridge, they slowly assembled the sensors and the relay equipment. George laid out the sensor grid on the rock face while Trooper Brittin uncoiled the cables. Akir used his blaster on its lowest setting to blast out a secure opening in the rock for the relay equipment. As soon as the cavity was cool, they set the relays and connected the cables to the sensor grid and the power source.

Testing their work, George looked at his chronometer. “All right, time to get back,” he said as he started back toward the ship. The others fell in behind and they made good progress in the low gravity. Their long, loping strides carried them quickly back to the scout ship.