Quiet Invasion(117)

The tank connection was one of the biggest jury-riggings she’d ever built. The lasers’ beams had been directed out of the Discovery through two ceramic-metallic tunnels. One for writing, one for display. The display screen consisted of some of her best films on a refrigerated platform between slabs of doped quartz.

It looked like somebody had set up a view screen in the middle of a desert.

The pressure wasn’t the real problem. Years of oceano-graphic mining had resulted in the creation of pressure-resistant materials and provided collateral research on the effect of pressure on a whole world of substances. The real problem was the heat. The entire communications station had to be constructed so it wouldn’t vaporize out there.

“How are we doing?” came Josh’s voice through the intercom. He and his assistants, Ray and Heather, were down in the Discovery with the laser, making sure the Cusmanoses’ machine worked and stayed working.

“No change.” Vee craned her neck so she could see the circling black dot the scarab’s cameras showed as a sparkling, golden, winged alien. Vee had wanted to fly the scarab straight to their base and get them to follow along, but Helen had nulled out that idea. She worried the aliens might take it as a threat or a challenge of some kind. So Scarab Ten had gone out on the ground and flashed lights.

It had worked, though. One of the aliens followed Scarab Ten back from wherever they had found it. Then it had dropped a little jellyfish down. The jellyfish had hovered over the holotank and shot back up to its owner. Since then, the alien had stayed where it was, tracing circles in the shifting, leaden sky.

Waiting.

“How are things down there?” Vee asked Josh, to keep the conversation going. Waiting and watching were starting to get to her. She oscillated between wonder and an involuntary fear that she couldn’t make go away. This kind of thing is tough on the sensitive artist’s stomach.

“No change here either,” answered Josh. “But I’ll tell you what. If we’re going to keep this up, we need to terraform this room. I’ve got sand in my eyes.”

“Ouch.” Vee grimaced in sympathy. Not being able to touch your own skin was definitely a design limitation in the hardsuits, and when Josh had locked himself into his, there had been bags under his eyes.

Neither one of them had gotten a full night’s sleep for a week. They’d spent the entire time in his lab trying to find ways to make this work. They had cannibalized half-a-dozen survey drones and simulated eight different kinds of protective covers and cooling systems before they found one that looked like it would work.

Their setup was that it not only had to function under conditions that were literally hellish, but it also had to be flexible. They had to be able to write and rewrite the images and do it quickly with minimal help from a computer. They had put so much work into the hardware that there had been little left for the controlling software. Vee would be typing in most of the commands by hand and most of those commands were recorded nowhere but in her own head.

There were going to be so many bugs to work out of this system that it wasn’t funny. The biggest was that the whole lash-up was computer controlled from inside the scarab. How would the aliens be able to answer?

“Let me know when you’re going to start making demands on this thing,” said Josh. “I am not happy about some of these connections.”

“Will do,” Vee told him. Josh had a camera of his own down there. He could see what was going on. He just wanted some contact. Vee couldn’t blame him. In fact, she was kind of glad.

“Coffee?” Dr. Failia asked Vee, reaching for the thermos stowed in the holder on the pilot’s chair.

“No thanks,” said Vee. “I’m wound up so tight right now I think caffeine would tear me in two.” And you didn’t think to stock any tea for the trip, did you? Where are your priorities, Vee?

“Ah, youth.” Helen unscrewed the thermos and poured herself a cup. “You need to learn to relax.”

Josh chuckled on the other side of the intercom. “Forgive me for saying so, Dr. Failia, but the only reason you’re offering around the coffee is because you can’t stand to sit in silence anymore.”

“Tact,” said Helen, sipping a cup of the thick, black liquid, “is another thing that comes with age.”

Vee smiled. Josh had a good sense of humor, and he could dish it out and take it with equanimity. She liked that. She liked him. It felt good. He’d gotten out of her way like an old pro when her ideas had run ahead of her explanations and she’d just typed furiously, bringing the simulation up to speed, or had raged, unfairly, she knew, against his lab preparation because they didn’t have the specialty parts she needed.