Going Bold

Jorge was thrilled by the news of a mysterious aperture and the possibility of contact with an intelligent alien. He was even relatively sanguine about Andrea’s declaration that her and Lin intended to use their discretionary authority to immediately take charge of surveying the other side. Jorge’s strong chin and formidable mustache framed an expressive mouth that complemented his deep buttery smooth voice. “huuuuu… you two are going to kill me with stress someday. I know you’re both well aware of the dangers of traveling through an unknown aperture, particularly one that is not obviously being stabilized, but the real risk, it seems to me, is that the aperture might shift or collapse after you’ve reached the other end and prevent or delay your return. I insist you run a full set of assessment tests on the aperture before passing through yourselves.”

“We’re already a step ahead of you this time Jorge.” Andrea chuckled then attached a camera feed of the scaffolding around the aperture. “Lin and I already started setting up for an aperture assessment, in fact, you and your team can help us run it when you come down to the surface.”

“Excuse me.” Came a quiet but firm interjection from one of the Study team members who had until then been content as silent observers. This particular team member was short, thin, and spoke with the authority of someone with both great learning and great experience. “I have a couple of suggestions. First we should send a planetary assessment package through the aperture and deploy it on the surface. It will tell us useful data on the atmosphere, gravity, magnetosphere, radiation exposure levels, toxins, etc. This will help you prepare for conditions and also verify that the aperture actually leads to a different world and not somewhere else on Ristula 4. My second suggestion is that we immediately begin synthesizing a full Surveyor kit such as the one you two are using on this world, it will take significant time to reconfigure the standard packing arrangements so that it can all fit through a 1 meter aperture. If we start now it should be about ready by the time testing is finished, and even if you don’t go it’ll all still be useful here on Ristula 4 so the opportunity cost is minimal.”

Jorge nodded along as the slim figure spoke and was quick to agree when they finished. “Thank you for your suggestions Doctor Arbordous. I’ll get the ship working on designing and fabricating the custom packaged Surveyor kit now, and I think we can move on to our usual introductory briefing for the Ristula 4 Survey-to-Study transition. Unless anyone else has something to add at this time?” Andrea spoke up after a moments pause. “I think Doctor Arbordous’ suggestions are excellent. I’ll start the fabricators at the base camp working on a planetary assessment package right now, and let Lin start our report on Ristula 4.”

As Andrea quickly queued the fabrication at the base camp, Lin began speaking to the group. “Thanks Jorge. Doctor Arbordous we appreciate your help planning our next expedition despite just starting your own. On that note, let’s begin by covering the weather and atmospheric conditions in the region near the base camp, you’ll need that for your landing in the near future and it hints at some of the more fascinating quirks in the local biosphere here that we’ll cover later.”

Lin and Andrea spent the next several hours giving a short introductory briefing on what they’d discovered about Ristula 4 to Jorge and the Study team. After the briefing ended and the meeting broke up, Jorge and Lin used the local weather data to decide on landing at the base camp early the next morning while weather conditions were calculated to be ideal. While the small ship’s crew would stay on board, the entire Study team would accompany Jorge down to the surface. Once landed the Study team would be settling in for years of living and working on the planet, unraveling its secrets and gathering useful information for possible settlement of the planet in the future.

Andrea and Lin, mutually agreed to wait on further expeditions out of the pyramid with the mini-drones so they could focus on preparing the tests for the aperture. They spent the evening working on setting up the testing equipment. They were fascinated by its placement directly on a planet and the lack of obvious generation and maintenance structures for it, on either end. In their experience, aperture structures were neither easily missed nor placed directly on planets.

While the technology to create, expand, and stabilize apertures was fairly mature, it still required megastructures to house the equipment and vast quantities of power to run. This meant that while it was theoretically possible to build and sustain an aperture connection from the surface of one world to another, few had even made the attempt since building megastructures in space was a far simpler prospect. On top of that, given the reliability and affordability of modern orbital lift technologies, putting apertures on planets directly had more downsides for security and disease control than the dubious economic benefits could justify ignoring.

Andrea eventually stopped working on equipment setup in order to get a good nights rest so she could hike back to the base camp and meet the others as they landed. Taking advantage again of the freshly assembled hab dome Andrea was quickly cleaned up and deeply asleep after another exhausting day of physical and mental labor. Lin decided to continue working, piloting several drones in transferring components from the base camp fabricators and assembling them on the scaffolding. As the early morning hours crept up the planetary assessment package was finished and Lin moved it to the staging platform for deployment the next day.

About an hour before Andrea’s scheduled wake up time Lin noticed something new on the feed from the original probe that had been sitting in what appeared to be a tent filled with a cross between an archaeologist’s work room and an amateur chemist’s lab. Since reestablishing contact with the probe no one had come into view and few clear sounds were detected. Now the camera showed a flap open and slim long fingered hands began to lift and secure it in a roll near the roof of the tent as a tall figure silhouetted against the bright sun of the day looked over its shoulder speaking with someone out of sight. It was clear that something had been deadening the sound in the tent until the entrance opened as distant animal calls, the grunts and thuds of physical labor, the sounds of speech in an unknown language now inundated the microphone.

With the tent’s entrance secured open the tall slender figure stepped out of the harsh glare of daylight and for the first time Lin was able to observe the being in the consistent light of the tent’s interior. Based on the body shape Lin was fairly confident that this was the same individual that had grabbed the probe. It still appeared uncannily human, though the better light revealed skin with a pale reddish purple tint like cream stained with ripe plum juice. Small whorls and loops of darker pigmentation appeared on the skin in a pleasingly symmetrical pattern. A small pair of feathery antennae matched the brown hair, explaining why Andrea and Lin had failed to notice them in the poor lighting of the pool chamber. The eyes that had appeared hazel in the wavering lantern light now looked to be more green. Lin, judging by their appearance being close to a traditional human decided to interpret their expressions as if they were human though remained firm in her conviction that neither her nor Andrea should rely entirely on that assumption when they attempted to make contact.

Soon three other similar beings entered the tent carrying overloaded backpacks made of canvas framed with wood. They ranged in height from 1.5 meters to a towering 3 meters with similar reddish purple shades of skin with darker patterns, and antennae matching their hair colors. With sighs of relief the three new arrivals carefully lowered their bulging packs to the floor of the tent by a relatively open work table. The first being’s human like features curved into an indulgent smile and they spoke briefly to the others before gesturing towards the tent’s entrance. The three gave broad grins and quick responses before rushing from the tent, loudly exchanging words and gently jostling to be first to wherever they were headed.

Lin had already set up a language learning system to begin recording and attempting to parse any speech coming in from the probe’s microphone. Now it was finally getting some data to begin working with. Lin was confident that they’d still have to learn most of the language during first contact, since slowly building a translation without active help from fluent speakers would take far longer then either her or Andrea were willing to wait. As Lin pondered the challenges of linguistics she watched the one remaining being rub their hands together in anticipation before beginning to unload a mix of living and dead plant and animal samples as well as some objects that looked like the weathered relics of some earlier civilization.

The sorting of samples in the tent laboratory had gotten halfway through emptying the first backpack when Andrea woke up and joined Lin in watching someone who was more and more appearing to be a colleague in exploration. “This certainly makes for decent breakfast entertainment.” Andrea mumbled half aloud and half in their shared mind space as she munched on a maple and peanut butter flavored meal bar. The two took a last few minutes to relax and watch before heading back to base camp and what they expected would be a hectic week or more of preparation and testing before they got to meet this fellow explorer in person.

Their expectations proved to be accurate, the next 6 days was an almost non-stop series of giving detailed briefings on aspects of Ristula 4 to the incoming Study team members, running the planetary assessment package just outside the pyramid structure, and running test after test developing a detailed model of the aperture. Not only was the other side of the aperture very definitely on another world it was one that was unusually compatible with traditional human atmospheric and temperature needs. The model they developed of the aperture predicted that it would remain stable for the next week but would then destabilize and retract for an uncertain length of time.

In a fit of inspiration Doctor Arbordous helped resolve that uncertainty by taking core samples at various points along the length of the stream that flowed from the aperture. The alternating layers of loam, with and without fungal remains, pointed at an 8-12 year cycle where the aperture would close for 4-6 years, allowing the fungal forest to grow back, then for the next 4-6 years the aperture would open and the as yet undetectable property of the seemingly normal water that poured through would kill off the fungus, leaving clear layers.

Now Andrea and Lin knew that they would be out of contact and out of reach of any help from the Study team for about half a decade at least and they had only 4 days to make a decision one way or the other. It took them 4 minutes to decide. They would still be able to get supplies and communicate through the aperture for a few more days after passing through but it was decided that having everything ready on the other side first was best in case something unforeseen occurred with the aperture. With the help of Jorge, the Study team members, and numerous drones the elements of the modified Surveyor kit were passed through the aperture and gathered on the rock near the exit to the surface in the pool’s chamber.

After Jorge wished them a safe journey, Lin sent her last drone through to join the others and Andrea climbed up the scaffold before jumping into the shimmering sphere feet first, launching them both into a new world unlike any they’d seen before.