Shadows in Flight Read online

  Ender was in the lower lab when she got there. It took her a couple of steps to move fully into the zone of Earth-normal gravity that the ship maintained in the forward compartments, where Father couldn't go anyway. Ender didn't look up -- he was busy inserting his samples into various bits of equipment, some of them for freezing, some to be worked with right away. He had no time for her.

  Wordlessly she passed Ender and climbed up into the upper lab. She sat down at the terminal for the tracking computer, brought up the holocharts, and began going through all the star systems that fell anywhere near their future path, starting with the stars they were just about to pass and working forward. The computer was looking for the arrangement of mass in each system in order to estimate how the gravitator would have to adjust its lensing.

  It was on the fortieth star she looked at -- one that was still several months in their future, but would come fairly near to them -- that the computer pointed out an anomaly. There was an object that was being tracked as belonging to that star system, but according to the computer report, the object's mass kept changing.

  That was impossible, of course, a mere artifact of the data. The mass didn't change, that's simply how it was reported. What was actually happening was that the object was not moving on a path that was predictable in relation with the known masses of the star and its larger planets. So the software kept adjusting the estimate of the object's mass to make it conform to its most recent movements.

  It wasn't an "object" at all. It was using its own power to move on a path it chose itself, independent of the gravity of the star and its planets.

  Carlotta told the software to regard the object as a starship.

  Immediately she got a very different report of its past movements. The ship now had a constant mass -- more than a thousand times more massive than the Herodotus. But the trajectory now made perfect sense. The ship was slowing down as it entered the star system. It was heading, not toward the star, but toward a rocky planet in the goldilocks zone.

  But Carlotta didn't care much about the planet. Planets were of no use to them because Father couldn't stand even half a gee, let alone 1.2. The fact that the alien ship was approaching it suggested that the atmosphere was attractive to whatever species the ship belonged to. But what mattered to Herodotus was the existence of the alien ship.

  The human race had encountered only one alien species, ever, and had fought a war of extinction with them. According to a story told by the writer of The Hive Queen under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead," the Formics had not meant to wipe out the human race at all. But Carlotta wasn't buying it -- it was easy to impute benign motives to an alien species that no longer existed.

  The trouble was, it was too late to avoid meeting the species. No matter what the Herodotus did, it would be detected -- and its plasma path could be followed back till it disappeared. And since their flight had been straight as an arrow since they reached near-lightspeed, all the aliens would have to do to find the human home world was keep on going straight along the path marked by the Herodotus's plasma emission trail even after the trail itself petered out.

  It would be far more useful to slow down and stop, not turn, so that they could discover as much as possible about this alien ship and its inhabitants. Using the ansible, they could report every speck of information they found -- right up to the moment when the aliens destroyed them. The human race would then have time to make whatever preparations might be possible to meet these aliens when they followed the Herodotus's trail back to Earth.

  And it would give Sergeant something useful to occupy his time instead of plotting ways to kill Father -- or whoever his enemy might be today.

  Carlotta sent a signal to Ender and Sergeant. Come with me to talk to the Giant. Something important has come up. Then she copied the pertinent charts and reports to Father's holotop.

  CHAPTER 5

  "Of course we're going to stop and try to communicate with them," said Cincinnatus. "We have no other choice. We can't leave a potential threat behind us without investigating it."

  The others nodded. A group this bright didn't need discussion when the options were obvious.

  "There's no reason for Ender to stop working on the genetics problem," said the Giant. "We're pursuing an interesting path that involves bacterial latency. Carlotta can manage deceleration, approach, and communications."

  Cincinnatus felt his normal despair. As usual, no one could think of anything for him to do.

  Carlotta, bless her little heart, took pity on him. He hated that. He didn't need to have his shame put into words. "What about Sergeant?"

  The Giant looked at her as if she were an idiot. "He's going to arm the Herodotus so we're ready to turn this alien ship into dust if the need arises."

  Just like that. For the first time in his life, Cincinnatus mattered. The Giant had a use for him.

  Ender was skeptical, of course. "We don't want to go in guns blazing."

  The Giant sighed, and now Ender got the are-you-really-this-dim look. "Andrew, sometimes I think you forget that each of you is exactly as intelligent as the others. Cincinnatus isn't going to use any weapons against an enemy whose capabilities we don't yet know. And even when we know them, he won't initiate hostilities. We don't need a war. We need an assessment. But if they want a fight, we have to be so ready that only a vastly superior technology could possibly kill or capture us."

  Cincinnatus didn't have to say a thing. He had a job. An important one. And more to the point, he had the Giant's trust.

  Enough trust that over the next few weeks, the Giant studied all of Cincinnatus's proposals and, with a few pointers and suggestions, approved them. Carlotta helped him put a small-scale M.D. field on the front of the Puppy, to act as a shield and, potentially, a weapon. Cincinnatus put in the hours of delicate work to weaponize the small atmospheric probes, designing them to cause several different levels of damage. It was vital to have an arsenal that could respond at the appropriate level. Total destruction was the least desirable option. How many alien races were they likely to meet on this voyage? It would be very nice to have something left to study, even if they had to kill everybody. Turning the aliens and their ship into a cloud of undifferentiated atoms was only the very last resort.

  To Cincinnatus, it was as clear an assignment as he could imagine. You are the soldier, the Giant was saying to him. You will follow my path to war. I have set down my military life; I give it to you.

  All his life Cincinnatus had relentlessly studied war, everything about war, from weaponry to tactics, from strategy to logistics. Every period, every battle, every general good or bad. He saw everything through the lens of war. He made himself ready.

  And what did he get for it? The nickname "Sergeant," as if he were a mere noncom, never to be a commander.

  The bitterness quickly faded, however, and now he had to face the realization that all he felt, day after day, was a growing dread. No, not dread anymore. Raw fear, that's what he felt. All his military study and planning had been theoretical or historical. This was real.

  He began to have nightmares. Vids of the Formics replayed in his mind, always tearing apart Ender or Carlotta or the Giant, as they screamed, "Sergeant! Help me! Save me, Sergeant!" And in the nightmare, he stood there with powerful weapons in his hands and he could not aim them, could not fire, could only stand and watch his family die.

  The three of them bunked together in the upper lab, but when the nightmares began, Cincinnatus began sleeping in the Puppy, or in some other place in the ship, wherever he could curl up and catch a few hours of sleep before the dreams began.

  So it was that when they began to get visuals from the tiny drones they sent on ahead of the Herodotus, Cincinnatus was already so terrified he could hardly breathe. He could not believe the others didn't notice. But they didn't. They kept deferring to him as they discussed possible strategies. And when the visuals began coming back and the sheer size of the monster starship became clear to them, they ope
nly showed their fear -- nervous laughter, lame jokes, outright declarations of awe and dread. But Cincinnatus showed them nothing, and they continued to rely on him.

  The odd thing was that even though he was absolutely consumed with his own fear, the analytical part of Cincinnatus's brain didn't freeze up at all.

  "I see no sign that the bogey has spotted our drones," Cincinnatus said. "In fact, I see no sign that they're doing any kind of recon on the planet, even though they're in geosynchronous orbit around it."

  "Maybe they have instruments that don't have to penetrate the atmosphere," said Carlotta. "We do, after all."

  "We can determine the oxygen content and so we know that it's a plant-dominated world," said Cincinnatus. "But if we were going to settle there, we'd be sending drones to pick up samples of the biota to determine the chemistry of life to see if it's compatible with us."

  The Giant hummed a long low "Ummmmmm" and said, "The Formics didn't have to do that because when they colonized, they had this gas that broke down all life-forms into a protoplasmic goo. Their strategy was to get rid of the local flora and fauna and replace it with fast-growing flora of their own."

  "So when the Formics came to Earth, they didn't probe or test at all?" asked Carlotta.

  "Not as far as we could tell," said Cincinnatus. "I've been going over all that during the past couple of months and the Formics didn't do any of the things we would have expected. Now we understand why, but at the time we had no idea of their mission."

  "So are you saying that these aliens are like the Formics?" asked Carlotta.

  "No," said Cincinnatus. "What I think is that this ship isn't like the Formics. It is the Formics."

  Carlotta and Ender were so surprised that Ender laughed and Carlotta even let out a single derisive hoot. "The Formics are all dead."

  "It's got the Formic look. No attempt at grace or proportion. The colony expedition they sent to Earth was a new model. Smaller and leaner than this one. Also faster. Not as close to lightspeed as the Herodotus, but near enough to get relativistic benefits. But this ship -- do you see anything that could possibly cope with relativistic speeds?"

  Carlotta blushed. "No. This is a slow ship."

  "Well, what do we do? If it's really a Formic ship," said Carlotta, "we can't exactly call it with our ID code."

  "I think there's no choice but to send an ambassador," said the Giant. "Or, if you prefer more accurate terminology, a spy."

  "Who?" asked Ender.

  "Well, I can't fit in the Puppy," said the Giant. "So I think it has to be one of you."

  "The Puppy can't leave the Herodotus," said Carlotta.

  "It can if I tell it to," said Bean.

  "I'll go," said Cincinnatus. "I'm the most prepared if things go wrong, and I'm the most expendable if things go really wrong."

  "Circle it and see what response you get," The Giant said. "Land on the surface. If you can open a door, open it and invite inspection. Show your shape to them. Get out of there if it seems dangerous. Opening a door is all. Don't go inside."

  "I won't go inside," said Cincinnatus.

  "He'll go inside," said Ender. "He practically has to. This is Sergeant we're talking about."

  CHAPTER 6

  Ender knew that Sergeant was piloting the Puppy around the alien spaceship. For a while he had even kept the image of it in a small corner of his holodisplay. But it kept distracting him from the genetic models that had just come through from a research team that they had funded through one of their foundations.

  Alien ship -- interesting. Maybe vital for the survival of the human race. Happening in real time, so that consequences of a mistake would be immediate and irreversible.

  But what Ender was looking at was also immediate. He was looking at failure and death.

  There was simply no way to reverse the portion of Anton's Key that caused the Giant and his children to keep growing at a steady pace throughout their lives without also reversing the process that allowed the continuous formation of new neural cells and structures at an accelerated pace.

  Even if they could work out a mechanism for simultaneously changing the genetic molecules in every cell in their bodies -- which was by no means likely, not without damage and loss -- there was no simple one-step change in their DNA that would stop the giantism without also making them stupid.

  Not stupid. Normal. But that was the unbearable alternative. Turning Anton's Key was the point of the experiment that had created the Giant and his murdered siblings in Volescu's illegal laboratory twenty-two years ago. But you could not turn or unturn only a portion of it. The segments of protein doing the two primary jobs could not be separated.

  Ender swapped displays and there was the Puppy, attached to the surface of the alien ship near an apparent access point. Ender zoomed in and now the hovering drone was showing Sergeant emerging from the Puppy in a pressure suit. He was adhering to the surface using magnetics rather than the mini-gravitator onboard the Puppy, because they didn't want to risk lensing the gravity on the other side of the ship's surface -- who knew what damage or chaos that might cause? Magnetics were awkward to work with and made movement slow and ponderous, but they would cause no damage.

  Don't bother being so cautious, Sergeant, he wanted to say. If you lose your life now, it won't be much of a loss. It's not as if you have much of a life ahead of you, anyway.

  Carlotta had located a door. The Puppy approached it.

  "Should I knock?" asked Sergeant. "It only opens from the inside."

  "Any kind of lock or keypad or palmpad?" asked Carlotta.

  "If it's Formics, they wouldn't need one," said Ender. "The Hive Queen would know they wanted to come in and make another worker open it from the inside."

  "If I breach the seal," said Sergeant, "it might cause serious damage inside."

  "It's a poor design that doesn't have an airlock," said Carlotta.

  "The inside door might be open," said Sergeant. "We don't know what's going on in there."

  "There might be fifty heavily armed soldiers waiting to blast you when you get the door open," said Ender.

  But Sergeant was already getting a pry bar from the Puppy's exterior tool rack. After a few minutes: "There's a little give, but I think the door isn't hinged. I think it slides."

  Ender laughed. "Come on, you two. Think like a Formic! You're trying to open the door as if it were designed for a human to pass through. Formic tunnels are low and wide."

  Sergeant muttered a few unpleasant words and then began to rerig the Puppy to pull the door in the direction the Formics would have thought of as down.

  It was slow, pulling against the drag of interior machinery, but it slid open. There was an airlock, and an inner door. Sergeant closed the outer door, and opened the inner one.

  The visual from Sergeant's helmet showed almost nothing, even when Carlotta enlarged it to fill the holospace.

  "Switch on a light," said Ender.

  "Light forward," said Sergeant, sounding annoyed. Didn't he like Ender making obvious suggestions? Poor boy.

  The visual now showed a low tunnel, with tunnels branching off in a couple of directions.

  "Nobody there to greet you," said Carlotta. "They're all dead."

  "Or they laid a trap," said Ender. "Go on in and see."

  Sergeant reacted to Ender's taunt by blanking the display.

  "Hey!" protested Carlotta.

  "I warned you, Ender," said the Giant.

  "Why punish me?" demanded Carlotta.

  "Come on," said Ender. "They're dead, there's no danger."

  "Wrong," said the Giant.

  The display came back on. It was obvious that Sergeant had indeed slid into the low tunnel. It was tall enough that Sergeant was probably sitting up.

  "There was motion a moment ago," said the Giant. "While you were wasting my time with your immature behavior."

  "Ender's immature behavior," said Carlotta.

  "Which you just matched," said the Giant. "Sergeant is in
a dangerous place and you're wasting --"

  Motion in the display. Lots of motion. A dozen small creatures emerging from side tunnels and beelining toward Sergeant.

  "Get out of there," said the Giant.

  At once the display jiggled and swiveled nauseatingly as Sergeant threw himself feetfirst back into the airlock.

  The airlock door was half closed when two of the small creatures launched themselves through the door. One went for Sergeant's body, one for his helmet. It blocked at least one of the viewers, so the image lost its depth and went flat.

  "Open the airlock!" shouted Carlotta. Sergeant apparently had the presence of mind to remember where the lever was that controlled the outer door.

  "Catch one and hold on to it," said Ender.

  "You're a cold marubo," said Carlotta, not admiringly. But it was the right thing to do, and they both knew it.

  The creature partially blocking the helmet's viewers blew away.

  "I've got the one on my body," said Sergeant. "It's trying to eat through my suit."

  "Get rid of it," said the Giant urgently.

  "No, I'm holding it by the back now, away from me. It's just wriggling now. It's not sentient."

  "How do you know?" asked the Giant.

  "Because it's stupid," said Sergeant. "Quick but dumb, like a crab maybe."

  "Get back to the Puppy," said the Giant.

  "It's an air-breather," said the Sergeant. "Or maybe it just likes atmospheric pressure, because it finally stopped wriggling."

  "Flash frozen," said Ender. "Good way to gather specimens. Except for the destruction of every cell in its body."

  "We'll still be able to tell a lot about it," said Carlotta. "When he gets it back here."

  "You mean I'll be able to tell a lot about it," said Ender.

  "Are you going to keep what you find a secret from us?" asked Sergeant. "Or will we all know?"

  "He's just being a brat," said Carlotta. "I don't know what's got into him."

  "He's jealous because I got to do something important for once," said Sergeant.

  The words stung because they were more than a little bit true.