Trial by Fire: Chapter Twelve

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

    Caine’s voice startled Trevor out of his daze. “You feeling any better?”

    “Sure. Fine.” Trevor clenched his torso against the shiver that coursed through him.

    Caine frowned. “Even though your temp and pulse are back to normal, you’re still cold from shock and exhibiting impaired movement, particularly in the left arm.”

    “You done, doc?”

    Caine leaned back. “I’m just trying to help.”

    And that is of course true, and I’m just pissed that I had to depend on a rookie to get back here to our module. That impairment had made for an interesting return from the alien wreck: semiconscious EVA veteran Trevor Corcoran riding piggyback on EVA neophyte Caine Riordan for more than a minute. If my old SEAL instructor Stosh had seen it, I’d never hear the end of it.

    Fortunately, what Riordan lacked in training and experience, he had made up for in common sense. Or so it seemed to Trevor, who closed his eyes and tried to recall what had happened after he had started to mumble and stumble on the Arat Kur ship. He vaguely remembered Riordan linking several tethers and reeling the exosapient across the gap between the wrecks after he and Trevor were secure on the module: a suitably undignified transit for the murderous overgrown cockroach.

    After cycling through the airlock, he recalled Caine removing his spacesuit and examining him, talking as he went. “Trevor, I want you to hear what I’m seeing, so you can tell me how best to help you. Minor burn marks on the right palm, apparently where the current entered. Seems like the suit’s anticonductivity layer helped considerably. Your fine motor control still seems poor. Are your ears still ringing?” Trevor seemed to recall nodding, or maybe he had just intended to do so.

    In the three minutes it took Caine to conduct his layman’s examination, Trevor had felt himself relapsing into shock. Caine hustled him back into his emergency suit, set the internal temperature to twenty-five degrees centigrade, and threatened mutiny if his superior officer attempted anything more strenuous than closing his eyelids.

    Which Trevor may have done for a while; he wasn’t sure. However, his next memory was of Caine dragging the alien–still by the tow line and none-too-gently–down to the lower level of the module, the ponderous creature floating lightly through zero-gee like an improbable, lopsided balloon on an industrial-strength string. After sealing the presumed Arat Kur in one of the deactivated rooms, he had returned to the control room and instructed the computer to restore minimal environmental functions in the makeshift prison cell: heat, air, and light.

    Meanwhile, Trevor had slipped back into the doze-daze from which Caine had now just solicitously roused him. And for which Trevor’s expression of gratitude had been a facetious jibe about his amateur doctoring. Trevor sought a conversational olive branch: “You’re getting better at your zero-gee turns. A little awkward yet, but that will come with time. How’s our pal?”

    “Some pal. He’s all right I guess, but who can really tell? He just lays–well, floats–there.”

    “Which is a bit of a problem, since getting him was only step one. Now we’ve got to correct the ship’s two-axis tumble. Also, we took too many rads today. We’ve got to reach some shielding soon or we’re cooked. So we’re going to need to learn how to communicate with our pal pronto. Fortunately, I think we’re off to a good start. Your one message to him so far got through loud and clear.”

    “You mean ‘stop being troublesome or I shoot’? That got through because it was simple and universal.”

    “I disagree. It got through because the alien was motivated–highly motivated–to understand it.” Trevor removed his helmet, ran a gloved hand through his hair. “I think we have to maintain that level of motivation if we’re going to get anywhere.”

    “If you’re wrong, however, then all we’re going to do is widen the current rift between us.”

    Trevor shrugged. “If the creature has genuine cause to believe that it will die unless it cooperates, then it will be sure to find a way to bridge that rift.”

    Caine frowned. “That assumption is predicated upon human behavior patterns.”

    “So? What else do we have to work with? We have to proceed from a known commonality–self preservational instincts–and aggressively exploit that.”

    Caine shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. Even if we use intimidation, and I’m not ready to, fear won’t work unless it’s placed within a meaningful context.”

    Trevor stopped in the middle of removing a glove. “What do you mean, ‘context’?”

    “Let’s say we employ threat and it works. The alien is scared. Scared for its life. Then what? How do we tell it what we want? We still have a critical gap in communication. It doesn’t know what it must do to alleviate the negative stimuli. More specifically, it doesn’t know how to communicate its intention to cooperate, because it doesn’t even know our words or gestures of propitiation.”

    “So what do you suggest?”

    “I suggest we try to learn more about our prisoner.”

    “And how are we going to learn more about a creature that won’t, or can’t, talk with us?”

    “Let’s start with the basics: physiology. What you said about their ship architecture also holds true for living things, too: form follows function. Maybe a detailed look at what we suspect to be an Arat Kur body will give us some insights into the species’ psychology.”

    “Maybe. Maybe it will simply give the bastard another opportunity to attack us.”

    “I doubt it,” Caine disagreed. “We still have the gun, and it’s displayed a thorough understanding of what that means.”

    “Yes, but perhaps it’s had time to formulate a new strategy. Suicide, for instance.”

    “Trevor, if the Arat Kur wants to commit suicide, then we’re done for. Neither positive nor negative stimuli will compel it to cooperate.”

    “That’s not necessarily true.” Trevor chose his next words carefully; he was sure that the idea behind them would not be popular. “Negative stimuli can produce results even when a subject wishes to die.”

    Caine looked up. “Trevor, are you talking about torture?”

    Trevor tried to find the carefully oblique phrases that were the stock-in-trade of official milspeak, gave up. “Yes, torture. If necessary.”

    Caine shook his head. “Trevor, leaving ethics aside for a moment, let’s recall our intel and survival objective: that the alien communicates with us. Sure, if you use pain, you might make him talk. Or, on the other hand, because the alien’s psychology and physiology cause it to have radically different reactions, it might clam up for good. Then instead of having the possibility of getting answers, we find ourselves facing the certainty of death.” Caine stared straight into Trevor’s eyes. “Besides, we might owe him.”

    “We owe him? What and why in hell do we owe him anything?”

    Caine maintained his unblinking stare. “How did his ship get nailed?”

    “Hazawa’s PDF laser. Damn good shooting.”

    “No argument. But why did this particular exosapient even come into range of that weapon? Why did Hazawa even have a chance to shoot at him?”

    “He–” Oh Christ. “All right, we were running a diplomatic beacon: a white flag. It was wrong, but it was also a mistake. On the other hand, these bastards have invaded our territory and, judging from yesterday’s results, killed a shitload of our brothers and sisters in arms. That wasn’t a mistake. It was coldblooded murder. This little shit is a soldier. He’s earned whatever he gets.”

    “How do you know he’s a soldier?”

    “What?”

    “What if this Arat Kur is not a soldier? Remember what you said about his craft: not much like a military design. Maybe that’s because it isn’t part of their military. In which case, maybe he isn’t, either. In that case, we’d be torturing an Arat Kur civilian, possibly to death, whom we ambushed while showing a white flag.”

    Trevor closed his eyes. The ethical issues had become even more murky than his vision and more uncertain than his balance. “Okay, then what do you suggest we do?”

    “We suit up to go below and meet our prisoner.”

 

---

 

    Trevor saw Caine’s feet disappear into the access way leading to their module’s lower deck. Ironically, Riordan was now better moving in zero-gee than Trevor, who bumped awkwardly along after him, left arm dragging and his legs twitching at inopportune moments. Trevor swam through a gauntlet of orange emergency lights to catch up with Caine at the Arat Kur’s prison cell and produced the handgun. Caine nodded, overrode the lock on the door, and pushed himself forward–into darkness.

    “Damn it. I meant to turn the lights on in here.” Caine’s helmet lights winked on, played quickly about the room.

 

---

 

    Trevor shrugged. “So what? A little sensory deprivation might make our guest more cooperative.”

    Caine’s helmet lights picked out the spacesuited Arat Kur, floating motionless in a corner on the opposite side of the room. The cables wrapped around the oblong shape were intact. Trevor centered the laser aimpoint on the lower half of the alien’s belly. “You’re covered.”

    Caine activated the room’s lights and the two humans closed to a meter’s range. Still no movement. Caine undid the knotted cables. The coils fell away from the Arat Kur, which simply floated, inert.

    “Is it dead?” asked Trevor.

    He had meant the question as a rhetorical gibe, but Caine leaned closer to inspect the life-support unit on the alien’s back. “I doubt it. There are no red lights showing on its life-support pack. However, a number of gauges have changed since we came over from the wreck. Probably those are simply measuring the drain on energy and air supplies.”

    Trevor nodded; a reasonable hypothesis. “What do we do with him now?”

    “We dress him out,” said Caine.

    Trevor’s stomach contracted, trying to get away from the alien and the notion of seeing it fully exposed. “Is this a suitable environment for him?” he croaked.

    “He should be okay. The atmosphere we found on his ship shows that they are oxygen breathers. If anything, he’ll find our air a little bland. His had higher traces of sulfur.”

    Trevor found that removing the Arat Kur’s spacesuit was not especially difficult. The garment was semirigid, with a more flexible strip running across the dorsal surface. This strip functioned as a hinge, which allowed the suit to split into anterior and posterior halves. The ventral surface was quartered by the intersection of longitudinal and latitudinal seals. Opening the suit involved undoing these ventral seals and then exerting a slight pressure on the dorsal hinge; the Arat Kur eased out of the garment like an irregular pea forced out of its pod. Its six legs also dragged free of their coverings limply, then they slowly curled back up toward the torso until the rear two pair laid flat against the flat belly and the front pair were bunched up just under the alien’s chin.

    Chin? Well, at least that’s how Trevor thought of it: the Arat Kur didn’t really have one. The creature’s body was essentially a front-heavy ellipse. The front was a blunt, flattened surface with a large, recessed central orifice: the alimentary opening, maybe? Two wide-set eyes were located above this “mouth” and two equally wide-set orifices were located beneath it. Slight, rhythmic alterations in those lower orifices suggested that they were respiratory ducts.

    The Arat Kur’s back was most notable in that it seemed to be the only part of the body that sprouted any hair. The growth was sparse, occurring as small, evenly distributed clusters of short, fine spines. Each spine rose from the center of a pronounced pore. These, and a few other apparently hairless pores, were the only ones on the alien’s entire body.

    Trevor pushed away from the presumed Arat Kur. “Any helpful insights?”

    Caine shook his head. “None. You?”

    “No. But I don’t trust it, the way it just floats there, waiting. Waiting for what? For us to turn our backs? To die?”

    “Maybe it’s not waiting at all. Maybe it can’t move.”

    “Can’t move?”

    “Maybe it’s in shock. Or in an altered state of consciousness. Or is too emotionally traumatized to respond.”

    “Strange behavior for a race that settles its diplomatic problems by invading another species’ territory.”

    “I agree.” Caine continued to inspect the creature. “Unusual eye structure: no pupils.”

    Trevor leaned over to look for himself. “No pupils?”

    “None that I can see. But then again, the whole eye is different.”

    Trevor studied the area surrounding the organ. “I can’t see any ducts or moisture. In fact, I don’t think there’s much capacity for ocular movement.”

    “Odd.” Caine paused. “What about those wrinkled ridges around the eyes? Maybe some kind of folded cartilaginous sleeve?”

    “Doesn’t look like it to me. Why?”

    Caine shrugged. “Could be the sign of an extrusive mechanism.”

    “Eyestalks, huh? I don’t think so. Why are you checking the eyes so closely, anyway?”

    “Sensory ability tends to be a first cousin to communication. If we get an idea of how the Arat Kur perceive their environment, we might learn a little about how they–now this is interesting.”

    “What?”

    As Caine drifted closer to the Arat Kur, Trevor pushed farther back, retightening his grip on the gun. One fast slash of its front claws might filet Caine. But he seemed oblivious to the threat, staring closely into the alien’s eyes. “What are you doing, trying to hypnotize it?”

    Caine’s voice suggested that he hadn’t even heard the gibe. “This isn’t really an eye at all. It’s the end of a thick fiber-optic bundle. It’s a–a kind of lens. No soft tissue whatsoever.”

    “So where is the retina, or its analog?”

    “Probably back in the carapace. Which makes sense, when you think about it.”

    “Why?”

    “Well, they appear to be evolved from some kind of burrowers, right? So, lots of dirt and debris flying around, airborne. Trapped in tight, subterranean spaces where it can’t disperse. The Arat Kur eye, evolving in that environment, develops a fairly insensate outer surface: a thick lens. Multiple lenses, if I’m seeing things correctly.”

    “Why multiple? Redundancy in case of obstruction or injury?”

    “Maybe. Or maybe it gives the Arat Kur more visual options.”

    “How?”

    “The ability to change depth of focus, for instance. Our eye changes focus by using muscular force to reshape the lens. The Arat Kur eye doesn’t seem to have any muscles and the outermost lens certainly doesn’t look very flexible. So instead, they might select different lenses for different focal requirements.”

    Trevor carried the idea one step further. “That could even give them a means of compensating for their lack of eye mobility. Perhaps the right combination of lenses gives them a fish-eye lens effect, a wide-angle view. But that wouldn’t give them very good vision. Compound eyes aren’t terribly efficient.”

    Caine kept starting at the Arat Kur. “First of all, I’m not sure this is a real compound eye. Just because there are lots of lenses doesn’t mean there’s a retina for each one. And when it comes to efficiency–well, I suppose that depends upon what the eye is supposed to achieve. As burrowers, the Arat Kur probably don’t spend a lot of time above ground. So, how essential is three-hundred-sixty-degree vision? How much do they need highly mobile eyes?”

    Trevor saw the point, finished it. “Instead, they’d need eyes that weren’t particularly sensitive to debris. And they’d also tend towards developing superior sensitivity to lower wavelength light in order to increase their ability to see in the dark.”

    “Most specifically, to see in the infrared,” agreed Caine. “That way, in a completely lightless burrow, they can still locate other Arat Kur by their body heat.”

    “Okay, but how does knowing all that help us to communicate with it?”

    Caine was floating around the side of the alien. “It helps us by suggesting that vision cannot be the primary sense for the Arat Kur.”

    “Huh?”

    “Well, as you said, long-distance vision probably isn’t so good; that’s pretty much a constant with any multiple-lens ocular structure. That means that they would tend to be even less dependent upon visual warning, so it will be less important to their evolution. And if they are truly shortsighted, then they’re going to have to find another medium for long-distance communication.”

    Trevor thought. “Which means that this critter should have a really good set of ears. But I’m not seeing any.”

    “I think I’ve just found them.” Caine sounded like he was smiling. “Come take a look.”

    Trevor moved forward slowly, keeping the aimpoint on the alien’s belly. He stopped, looked where Caine was pointing: at the Arat Kur’s back. Again, Trevor saw the big, raised pores sprouting rigid, short black hairs, although some of the biggest pores showed no hair at all. He looked for an orifice hidden amongst them, or a tympanum. Nothing. “I give up; where are its ears?”

    “You’re looking at them.”

    “Ugly back hairs?”

    “I’m betting that those aren’t hairs. Those are retractable antennae. Almost fully retracted now, I’ll bet.”

    Trevor looked again. “That’s an awful lot of antennae.”

    “No more than you’d expect for a creature so completely dependent upon sound. They probably go straight down into acoustic chambers of some sort, transmitting the vibrations they detect to an audial nerve.”

    “Then why are the hairs–antenna–retracted now? Are we being purposely ignored?”

    “Maybe. Or maybe it’s a reflex that reduces stimuli.”

    “So it is ignoring us.”

    “No, more like it just can’t handle what it’s experienced and has withdrawn its consciousness from the outside world.”

    “Like catatonia?”

    “Maybe. Or perhaps it’s a natural trauma response for the species.”

 

---

 

    Marvelous. Their prisoner now had to be recategorized as a mental patient. Trevor saw where that could lead. “Caine, if the alien is psychologically withdrawn, then we have to bring it back to reality.”

    “I agree.”

    “Then I repeat: nothing motivates as effectively as fear. Let’s not waste any time.”

    “We still don’t know how he’ll react. We might force him deeper into withdrawal.”

    Trevor looked at Caine from the corner of his eye. “Exactly how much more withdrawn do you expect he can get?” Trevor saw his retort hit home. Caine frowned, looked at the alien. Time to follow up, but gently; gently! “Caine, when we came back from the wreck, I was conscious enough to watch you try every form of communication that we know of to reach the Arat Kur: voice, written language, images, sound patterns, mathematics. But there’s been no response and we’re running out of time. We’ve studied the alien and have discovered some useful facts, but now we have to try other methods.”

    After about five seconds, Caine asked quietly, “What do you propose?”

    “We start with something passive, something that will work by eroding the exosapient’s will and self-composure. White noise, biased toward the ultrasonic range. We can rig the intercom to produce it. We may have to play with the sound characteristics a bit, since we don’t know what audial stimuli will create discomfort.”

    Caine looked disgusted, but nodded. He did not look at Trevor as he launched himself toward the door. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

 

---

 

    Trevor started with a decibel level that would have been subaudible to a human subject, using sound waves in the 18,000-30,000 cycles range. It might have made the average person a bit edgy, but no more.

    They seemed equally ineffectual upon the Arat Kur. The room’s emergency snoopscope–a single fiber-optic pickup hidden between the modular ceiling plates–showed the Arat Kur still suspended in midair, unmoving and apparently unaware of its surroundings.

    Trevor boosted the sound, but thirty minutes later, there was still no visible effect. Trevor checked his settings: a decibel level of 80 and a top sonic range of 40,000 cycles. The machinery was probably not capable of producing higher frequencies. Trevor let his eyes drift back to the decibel level indicator. Eighty was apparently not enough. Trevor depressed the control switch and held it down.

    The numbers mounted steadily.

 

---

 

    “I wonder–”

    Trevor looked up; it was the first sound Caine had made in over an hour. Now, with almost no warning, he was already out of his acceleration couch, swimming around toward Trevor’s computer station. “Any activity?”

    “Not so far.”

    Riordan nodded, leaned over to study the alien’s black and white image. “Trevor, I think I know why we haven’t been having any luck with–” His words ended abruptly. Trevor looked over, knew what he’d see. Caine was staring at the decibel indicator.

    Without a word, Caine picked up his helmet, swam out the exit, headed in the direction of the Arat Kur’s prison chamber. Trevor shook his head, killed the sound, and followed, his limbs still uncooperative and awkward.

 

---

 

    It was a measure of how much Caine’s zero-gee facility had improved that he was already alongside the Arat Kur by the time Trevor arrived, handgun out.

    “You won’t need it,” Caine said.

    “Why?”

    “Because the Arat Kur is either dying or comatose. I can’t tell which. Maybe both.”

    Trevor edged closer. How could Caine tell if the creature was even more withdrawn than before? There was no change in its appearance.

    Upon closer inspection, Trevor revised his assessment. The movement of the respiratory ducts was less pronounced, suggesting shallower breathing. However, the rate of respiration was increased, and there was a persistent tremor in the soft tissues. The only other change was in the hairs–no, the antennae–on the creature’s back: they had all disappeared.

    Caine circled the alien slowly, inspecting every centimeter. When he got to the posterior, he leaned lower, inspected a previously unnoticed cloud of liquid globules. “This is probably the worst sign of all. I think it’s voided and has made no effort to move away from its own wastes. Pretty much a sure indicator that it has lost self-awareness or has impaired motor control.”

    “All right, so the sound was a bad idea.”

    “No. Just before I saw how high you pushed the sound, I was starting to think that the sound was simply pointless. I’m pretty sure that the audial stimuli didn’t do this.”

    “Why not?” Trevor’s attention momentarily strayed from the laser-point he was painting on the Arat Kur’s belly.

    “This creature is a burrower, so much of the sound made in its environment must persist as echoes. Consequently, its natural habitat is probably noisier than ours. So to hear an individual over any distance, an Arat Kur must be able to filter out background noise. Whether it achieves that filtering by mental discrimination or special anatomical structures is immaterial. What matters is that, evolutionarily, Arat Kur physiology and psychology must be able to tolerate audial distress and confusion.”

    Trevor frowned. “Let’s say you’re right. Then how do you explain the catatonia and the–?”

    But Caine hardly seemed to hear him. Riordan launched himself back into the corridor, where he scooped up two of the tethers he had used to tow the Arat Kur from the wreck. He somersaulted, kicked back into the room and set about trussing the alien with the longer tether. He tossed the other to Trevor. “Tie it on as a towline. Then keep your weapon on him.”

    Trevor lashed, then tugged, the towline. “Taut. Where are we–?”

    “Let’s go.” Caine wrapped the end of the towline around his wrist.

    “Go where?”

    “Life support.”

    “Life support?” The words exploded out of Trevor before he could govern the dismay or the volume behind them. “Why?”

    “Just a hunch. Play along, okay?”

    “All right–for now. But at least tell me what you’re doing so that if something happens to you, I can try to finish the work.”

    “Sure. Since the sound didn’t have any effect, I started reviewing all our assumptions about its behavior, its environment. And I returned to the possibility that, if the Arat Kur was not willfully withdrawn, it might be because it was already reacting to something negative in the environment, something we don’t notice but which they find so aversive that it paralyzes them.”

    Trevor scowled. “Like what?”

    “Space, open space. That’s the one greatest difference between a burrower’s environment and our own.”

    “Damn–yes, of course. Agoraphobia. And the answer was in front of us the moment we boarded their ship: the narrow passageways, the low-ceilinged rooms.”

    “And when I shot out the cockpit blister, even before it climbed onto you, the Arat Kur starting weakening, and then went rigid, like it was in shock. Or in this case, was immobilized by fear of the greatest open area of all: free space.”

    “Without a tether.”

    “Right. And when we brought him back here, what did we do? Put him in a high-ceilinged room. He was okay at first because the lights were out and he couldn’t see the spaces that cause his agoraphobia.”

    Trevor nodded. “But then we came in and turned on the lights and left him behind. And here he is: wholly catatonic and withdrawn. So now we take him to life support to give him as crowded an environment as we can.”

    “And we see what happens.”

    “Sabotage, probably.”

    “Can’t rule it out, but there are enough snoopscopes in life support to monitor his activity no matter where he goes. And the control room is only a few steps away.”

    “I hope you don’t mind if I remain a little closer to our prisoner than that. Like on the other side of this door.” Trevor helped navigate the inert ovoid of the Arat Kur through the hatchway and toward the clutter at the heart of the life-support section.

    “Suit yourself.”

    The maze of machinery reached to within a meter of the ceiling, and had less than half a meter’s clearance above the floor. Other than a narrow walkway around the outer perimeter, there was no other space wide enough to permit easy passage. A human would have to thread sideways if he wanted to move between the tubes, tanks, and centrifuges.

    Caine undid the tow line, and then the restraints. The Arat Kur floated motionless. Riordan pushed himself backward gently, floating out of the room at a leisurely pace. Laser aimpoint still painted on the alien’s belly, Trevor shoved off the deck with his foot and drifted backward. As he cleared the room, the heavy vacuum-rated door slid shut.

    “Let’s hope it works,” Caine said.

    Trevor nodded and thought, It had better. Because we’re running out of time. All of us.