Escaping the Cradle

by Karen Page

Part 32

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Part 32
DATE:FC+126

"Jenny. How do you fancy a few days in Kent?" Becky asked her daughter as they finished breakfast.

Jenny stopped and turned to look at the two women in her life. Her ma, and mum. Ashleigh had gone there to say good morning. Becky would be off to the new office. Ashleigh would be back with the forensic officers. They'd promised it would be their last day.

"Am I in a lot of danger?"

"We don't know," Becky said, honestly. "I spoke with Miss Taylor yesterday after the break-in. She said to hold tight. There are still police in the area with forensics still in The Anchor so I'm not too worried at the moment. I'm thinking about when they're gone."

"Is there a school near Auntie's house? I've been getting the extra help at school. I will lose that there."

Ashleigh looked at Jenny with concern and moved across to be closer. "Talk to us, Jenny. You aren't normally that amenable when there's talk about staying with Auntie Donna."

"They aren't nice people. They could have hurt Dr Mann. When I was kidnapped, they could have hurt Kelly. They probably want to use me as leverage."

"This is true in life. There are always bad people around. You've just had a taste of the more extreme. What does Mrs Covington say about it?"

"I've not talked to her since last week. We are down to every other week."

"And why haven't you told Ma or me about your worries?"

"It was really just this morning. There was a huge shootout at Poole ferry port between two gangs. And something happened in Basingstoke too. Things like this never used to happen."

"They did. You're just older and listening to the news more. I'm sure they are nothing to do with us."

"Okay," she said. "It's just such a coincidence. I was reading how these things used to happen years ago, but with modern laws there is hardly crime like that. Anyway, I better get my school bag."

When they got to Jenny's school, Becky watched her daughter disappear through the gates. She no longer needed Becky to take her in. 'She is brave', thought Becky. 'Braver than she should have to be.'

When Becky got to the new office at Waterwells Business Park, she saw a familiar face waiting in reception.

"Hey," she said, approaching David. "What are you doing out here?"

"They won't let me in, even though my badge worked. They know the staff, and they knew I was from a sister office."

"Good," said Becky. "Security is working. I hope you didn't kick up too much of a fuss."

"Nah, I was a good boy!"

Reception had given David a red lanyard that said, ‘ESCORTED AT ALL TIMES'.

"Come on through. I'll give you the tour."

It didn't take long. Most of downstairs was the offices. Upstairs was the secured area containing research. Becky would mostly work upstairs, though she was unlucky enough to have a small office downstairs. Ashleigh had one too.

"An office?" laughed David.

"Don't. I need to be a bit corporate now. Not my thing, but I'm told it comes with the territory. Anyway, what can I do for you?"

"Just to let you know all the serious threats against the team are over. The last two groups got in an armed altercation with each other last night in Poole. None of them survived. It isn't what anybody wanted."

David hated the outcome. He loved life. He hadn't pulled the trigger, but he set the play in motion. The Prime Minister had been a peace envoy but even she knew that what had been going on couldn't continue.

"You killed them all?" queried Becky, aghast.

"They killed each other," repeated David. He didn't want Becky thinking this was her fault. It wasn't. "One group thought the other one had your secrets. They fought over a few pictures that would have told them nothing."

"Jenny is safe?" Becky asked hopefully.

"As safe as any curious eight-year-old is."

Becky gave a small laugh, which was David's aim.

"Did you come to just tell me that? That's a long way for something you could have done on the phone."

"There is no way I would tell anybody what I just did on an open phone line. We have secure phones for items like that, and you don't have one."

"I have something better at some stage. Communication via tunnel."

"Oh joy. That is going to go down like a lead balloon. You've sold all the space agencies on your plan to link Earth, Mars and wherever they want in the Solar System. If you did that on Earth, the reaction might be less kind. Spies like to spy. Especially the ones that claim not to."

Becky pulled out a USB stick from her pocket. "I know it's old school, but can you take this to London when you go back? I need you to pass it up your chain of contacts to the PM. It contains a raw version of the Primer and new Intermediate level Hytuna."

"Intermediate level?" David asked, taking a small container out of his pocket and placing the drive in it. "Where did you get that from?"

"We've got a basic communication link with the alien council. Just for them to give us information. We're still working out other things. We want to get messaging going, but we've not got their protocol information yet. The only things we've received is the Hytuna and a space map."

"A space map?"

"It took me several attempts to get the primer converted correctly into the new Unicode format. The intermediate then went smoothly but took time. It's about twice the size of the primer. We're still working on the map of which systems are safe."

"So why get it to the PM? Why not just upload it to everyone?" David enquired, puzzled.

"Anybody could do that. If it enters the world via the PM, it has provenance."

"No problem. It might be a few days to get it there. So, what's difficult about the map?"

Becky laughed. "I love you and your friends. You might not be scientists, but you have such a thirst for knowledge. We've got a lot of it cracked. Actually, someone in Jessica's company came in while we were in a meeting. He didn't see any of us, but on the screen was the vector of a star. He recognised it as Vega. We have the direction right, but we are trying to translate speed. And we got tied up with other things."

"What is so special about this map? We have star charts already."

"We have what we can see, or what satellites like Gaia could see. This is more comprehensive. And most importantly, if the star is claimed or occupied, it tells us by which race. That way we don't stumble into an Yvestigan system by accident."

"We asked nicely and they provided. Oh, and Jenny wants to become a pen friend with the Reginaddes daughter."

David laughed. It sounded so absurd, but it sounded so like Jenny. "That girl is fearless."

"She wasn't this morning," Becky retorted, and the conversation suddenly got serious. "We started talking about her going to stay at her auntie Donna's. She is worried because of the kidnapping, and about what happened to Liam. It isn't the way for a child to grow up."

That was a very sobering admission. "What can I do to help?" David asked without hesitation.

"I don't know what can be done. I asked for security not to be as obvious, as it was making all of us, including Jenny, jittery. But then without it, things seemed okay but was actually a lot worse."

"But what about—"

"Before you say what about humanity. I never asked to be humanities saviour. And I don't really think I am. But anyway, my priority should be Jenny."

David didn't know what to say about that. He sat there feeling guilty that his actions in protecting Jenny might have made her feel worse.

"I do have a favour to ask," said David, trying to rid himself of the morose feeling.

"Oh?"

"When you've got past your star map. It would be good if you could think about tunnel safety. Currently you could step through it to anywhere. Is there any defence?"

"Ah, you're interested if we can stop a tunnel from exiting at a location?"

"Basically."

Becky stopped and considered. "We need specific conditions to open a tunnel. At the moment we've not found anything that stopped it on the other end. However, that isn't to say there isn't. We've not looked into it. But perhaps we should anyway. We'd want to know if there were restrictions."

"Then my job is done here," David said, standing up.

"I do have one thing to ask."

David quickly sat down again. "Sure. What is it?"

"We had a note that the NSA were sniffing around. Was that over Earth-1?"

"A sweep and verification was done at Jessica's company. Nothing found. I know you requested a more detailed check on Randal. It takes time. It isn't like a few clicks of a button and their whole history pops up. Perhaps if we were governments, but not us."

"Thank you. How are the other three doing?"

"All on mission at the moment. I don't know who has the worse one. Probably Andy. Well certainly the most visible."

"Liam hasn't worked out about Brenda. He says there is something familiar, but he can't work it out."

"It's probably best not to say. If Liam works it out, so be it. It isn't something we advertise. We only showed you because it might be needed. It was for you and Ashleigh with Lisa."

"I feel privileged to know a little bit of both sides of you," said Becky.

David just smiled. There was something comforting about Star Bright. He could see why Tina and Luke spent time here when not on missions. A place full of intelligent people who got on with things, no matter what got thrown at them.

When David had gone, Becky made her way upstairs to talk with Liam and Evan. Henry was still unpacking some of his hardware in the storeroom.

"How's David?" asked Liam.

"Okay. He was here to say that the situation which caused unwanted attention has gone away. At the moment, there shouldn't be a reoccurrence of either last Friday or yesterday."

"Really? How?"

"I didn't really want to know the specifics, if you get my drift."

Evan and Liam nodded. They were scientists. Their heart wasn't in all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. They wanted to know how the universe worked and discover new things.

"Anyway," continued Becky. "I have the data run finished on the vectors. The small run I managed between running the Hytuna conversion didn't reveal any matches. With the vastness of space, and the number of stars out there, I'm surprised we had a good one at the beginning."

Evan frowned. "I don't get it. Why is this different to what we've done for the interdimensional tunnel? What gives us a point in time to jump and a formula for that. This looks like vectors and speed. Why?"

"History?" Liam suggested. "Just as we measure things differently. I presume they looked at stars and measured their paths long before they worked out interdimensional jumping. Have you looked at the new Hytuna document to see if there are any clues?"

"I've only just finished an accurate translation," Becky pointed out. "I sent a copy to Sam and Jessica. They pick up languages the quickest, with James not far behind."

"It's a good job you didn't tell Jenny before she went to school," joked Evan. "She'd have wanted to take it with her or stay home and read it."

Liam pulled up the data and frowned. There were thousands of matches. He took the top ten and put them on their new discussion board. "Are we sure this is speed?"

"No," said Becky. "I guessed since it was after the vector. Why?"

"Look." Liam added the known speed of those ten matched star systems. "There is no correlation."

"Okay, is there anything that correlates to speed?"

Liam pulled up different bits of data and overlaid. While that happened, Evan's slightly bitchy comment 'it would have been really nice if they'd given a file structure', got them all laughing.

"It does help having more than one star system to compare against," Liam said, as he checked and looked for patterns. "Ah. This one looks more like it."

"I wonder what the other values are then?" Evan pondered.

"We do have what race that claim them," pointed out Becky. "That is useful. It gives us a list of other races. I've no idea what the other values are. We have another formula and some numeric values. How many planets are in it? How dangerous it is? The type of star? They could be anything."

"Class of star would make some type of sense. We measure in two ways. Temperature and luminosity."

"Aren't they related? Surely a star that is hotter, will shine more?" Becky asked.

"Sure, but size comes into it. Say you have two stars the same temperature as our Sun. If it was larger, then it would shine more. There is a formula to calculate luminosity based on temperature and radius."

"Of course there is. There's always a formula!"

Evan nodded. "Okay, let's find a group of stars that are class G2. That's stars the same temperature of Sol."

Becky watched Liam and Evan work. They were loving it. Hunting through data, making sense of it. Categorising what they saw.

After a little while, Becky said, "We've got the main details. We can pass the rest to the international community. I'm sure they will love going through it. There are so many stars not in the Gaia catalogue. Probably too faint for our telescopes to pick up."

"What's this other formula for?" pondered Evan. "We have the star motion. Let's have a look at that. Let's do Vega one first, since that's what star we started with."

"It looks like a position relative to the star. Like we have for communication."

"Could it be a communication beacon?"

"It might be. It could be a danger area. It could even be a safe entrance."

"Do all stars have one? Do stars not claimed have one?"

Liam hunted and did some queries. "There aren't any with two. Most stars have one. Even unclaimed ones. So probably not a communication beacon. Unless we have one that we've never found. I think we would have been pointed to it as our communication endpoint rather than the one we are using."

"Fair point. If it was a danger point, I'm sure there would be many. Don't jump here because there is a planet, or an asteroid belt."

"We need another satellite," said Becky. "We could just jump to one of them using Eos, but if we're wrong it is a lot of danger."

"It doesn't have to be a proper satellite," said Evan. "A box that can withstand extreme environmental conditions, with power for a tunnel device. We can send it, and it can come back. It doesn't even need communication, unless we want to. Perhaps a camera or some other mechanism to check what's close by."

Becky sighed. "I know what Jessica is going to say. You just don't put something like that together in a few days. It can take months."

"Could we treat Aurora as a test ship for it? Not anybody in her, but put in some automation so she jumps there, does her stuff and jumps back?" asked Liam.

"Possibly. She has an auto return capability in her already. In extreme circumstances, such as total air evacuation in a vacuum, she will auto return. We need to enhance that for longer distances. She has the ability to recognise pulsars and auto triangulate. Like a galactic GPS."

"I'd be willing to go," said a voice behind them. They whirled around to see James standing behind them.

"And me," added Sam, who was standing next to James.

"But—"

"It's no different from how explorers used to be. They sailed off into the distance, no idea what they would find. At least we have a map. We know what star system we are jumping to."

"As you've said, there is no airlock with Aurora. There is only one Eos. There is only one you."

"Pft. I'm a test pilot. I trust Eos and the technology she has inside her. From what you said, it isn't bringing me in next to the star. If it is near a rock, it would be moved to one side. If it was a planet, I presume I would be the displaced item."

"Yes," Evan agreed. "That is what should happen. We saw you getting moved when the other ship arrived over Australia. We've no proof what would happen if you arrived inside a planet and I don't think I'd want to try."

"I'll go with you," said Liam. "It's the first trip outside the Solar System, apart from going to the alien council."

Becky was torn. It would prove the details, but it was a major risk. "If this did happen, where would be a good destination?"

"18 Scorpii," Evan answered without hesitation. "It's a G2V like Sol. I noticed when we were looking at stars similar to ours that it didn't have any claim."

"Just there and back," Liam said to Becky.

"You lot want to go now, don't you?" she responded, staring down at the desk.

Sam smiled. "Why not? What is the point in waiting? It won't change anything. Eos is always ready to go."

Becky looked up and saw four faces looking at her. She wanted to say no, but not wanting to disappoint them nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

In just under half an hour, they were pulling into the factory carpark.

"I don't think we should go to 18 Scorpii," said Becky as they congregated in the empty reception.

"We've just driven down here," sighed Liam, feeling a bit beyond disappointed.

"It's not that, is it?" said Evan, looking at Becky.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't go. Just that it's too similar to Sol. If we go somewhere and you are going to take a photograph, I want it somewhere different. Say, 61Cygni. It's a binary star system."

"What type of star?" asked James.

"K type dwarf stars," said Liam, without having to look it up.

"Oh good. I was worried you were sending us to something scary like a black hole or a neutron star."

"I'm coming too," Liam mentioned. "I value my life!"

"Fair point," he said with a nervous laugh.

"This is your idea," Becky reminded them. "We can stop and discuss other things. You don't have to make this journey."

"I'm good," said James.

"Me too," added Sam.

"Me three," joked Liam.

"It's really like you three are egging each other on," said Becky. "Okay, go get ready. Evan and I will setup upstairs."

Becky put the fake computers away and brought out the real ones from the hidden cupboard. Evan and Becky logged in and got up the telemetry.

As they were finishing, Sam nipped in and went across to Becky. "Last time I gave this to Ashleigh to look after."

"Sorry?"

"Don't worry about it. Just put it to one side."

"Okay."

A few minutes later, James came in and looked around and was about to leave. Becky saw an envelope in his hands, like Sam had. "Since Ashleigh isn't here, I can look after it for you," said Becky.

"Ah, thanks," flushed James and after handing it across, quickly left the room.

"What's that about?" asked Evan.

"I've no idea. Let me ring Ashleigh and find out."

Becky dialled and it was a few minutes before Ashleigh answered. "Hi."

"Hi. Sorry to disturb you. I'm at the factory and something strange has happened. I'm not sure what it means though."

"And I will?"

"Sam came in and handed me a letter. He said that you'd looked after it last time. James did the same a few minutes later."

"What are you doing?" she asked sharply.

"Er, they're taking Eos out."

"Yes, but those are goodbye letters, just in case they don't come back. They haven't had me hold on to them since the first trip to the alien space station. What are you up to? Where are they going?"

"We were discussing the star map. James suggested they try one of them, and Sam and Liam went for it."

"Okay," Ashleigh said. "You better get your head in the game. They are obviously taking it seriously."

"I hadn't realised how nervous they were," Becky admitted.

"I know. Ring me when they're back. I love you."

Becky repeated the sentiment.

Following a check of communication via a tunnel, James said over normal communication. "Ready to go."

"Please don't stay more than a minute for the first time. A few pictures using the external camera and return."

"Understood, though if we need to triangulate it might take us a few minutes to process the data."

"Of course. Good luck. Go at will."

"Departing," said Sam. The ship disappeared.

"We have telemetry via a tunnel," said Evan after a few seconds. "Ship looks good. Accessing external camera."

They did, and Evan gasped. In the distance there were the two balls of fire. But there was also a planet. Becky saw it and her eyes widened.

"Control, do you read?" said James.

"Yes," Becky responded. "We're seeing your camera. You're close to a planet. Rotate a bit and take more pictures. Then please bring her home."

"Can we get closer to the planet?" asked Sam.

"No," responded Evan firmly. "Getting close to planets outside our Solar System isn't something we should just do. We don't want to risk causing any changes or risk a first contact. We have no rules or policies."

"We're going to jump into the Solar System, near Mars and then jump back to the factory. I don't want to risk a direct jump the first time."

"Understood. See you soon."

It was only a few minutes before they landed. However, a few seconds later, before they opened the door, a red light started flashing. On Becky's screen, a single word flashed in red. CONTAMINATION. The ship room sealed itself.