Salvation

“Nkya? Fairly typical, if you can say that about exoplanets,” Geovanni said. “Let’s see: ten thousand three hundred kilometers in diameter, which gives us a gravity of point nine Earth. Thirty-seven-hour days; so not good for our diurnal rhythms. Atmospheric pressure is two thousand pascals, which makes it two percent Earth sea level pressure; that’s made up mainly of CO-two, with traces of argon, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide. It’s orbiting five and a half AUs out from Beta Eridani, so cold, cold, cold. Minimal tectonic activity, meaning no volcanoes. No moons, either. Nobody’s going to be terraforming this baby.”

“So no indigenous life?”

Geovanni turned around and grinned at her. “Not a chance.”

“Does Beta Eridani have any other planets, save Nkya?”

“Three. Two small solids, both in close orbits to Beta Eridani, as hot as Mercury and tidal-locked so you could melt bricks on their light side. One gas-mini, fifteen AUs out; makes Nkya look tropical.”

At the end of the corridor, a pair of solid doors swung open for us, taking us through into a nondescript anteroom. Then Geovanni practically rushed through an identical set of doors on the opposite wall. The Nkya egress chamber looked remarkably like an industrial warehouse. Smooth polished concrete floor, high blue-gray composite panel walls, black composite roof obscured by bright lighting strips hanging down over the aisles. Metal racks ran almost the length of the chamber, three times Eldlund’s height, stacked with white plastic pods and bulky metal cases. Commercial cargo trollez rolled along, either collecting supplies from a couple of portal doors that led away to distribution centers and slotting them in the correct place on the racks or picking equipment from the racks and taking it down to the portal at the far end.

One wall was inset with long windows that looked into a series of labs where samples were analyzed. Technical personnel wandered around their benches loaded with expensive analysis equipment, dressed in double-sealed white environment suits, peering through bubble helmets.

“Sure there’s no indigenous life there?” Kandara asked, staring into the labs. “Looks to me like you’re taking contamination protocols very seriously.”

“Standard procedure,” Geovanni replied. “It takes seven to twelve years to receive preliminary Sol Senate Exolife Agency clearance, confirming there’s no autochthonous microbiology. Personally I think that ought to be increased to fifty years, with a quadrupled sample range, before you can formally announce an all clear with any form of authority. But that’s just me. Over the years we’ve found some interesting microbes on some otherwise inhospitable planets.”

Kandara stared around as if she was trying to memorize the facility. “Any chance you missed something on Nkya?”

“No. Beta Eridani was a classic by-the-book arrival procedure. Kavli spent a couple of months decelerating down from point-eight-C. She arrived in-system this February. We sent a squadron of astronomy satellites through her portal. So far all standard and good; my people know what they’re doing.” He waved a hand at the semicircular room at the end of the labs, nearest the portal to Nkya. It was a control center, with two lines of big, high-resolution holographic windows all along the curving wall. Several desks had smaller screen stacks, with senior researchers and their gaggle of graduate astronomers drooling over images of strange, dark planetary crescents, orbital paths, fluctuating data tables, star maps, and rainbow graphics that to me resembled bad abstract art. “We picked up the signal straight away. Hard not to. It was multispectral, low power but constant.”

“Signal?” Alik barked in surprise. “Nobody said this was an active artifact. What the fuck are you sending us to?”

Geovanni gave Yuri a quick, resentful glance. “I don’t know. I don’t have clearance.”

“Go on, please,” I told him. “What happened after you detected the signal?”