Anchor Station
6.FEB.2283

TANIA PUSHED IMITATION eggs around her plate, creating artful yellow swirls on the purple plastic dish. The improved aesthetics did little to help the bland flavor.

Across the table, Natalie worked on a bowl of fresh fruit. “Any news from Platz?”

Scientists bustled into the cafeteria from all over the station, in for their morning meal. Tania had chosen a two-person table in the far corner, one that said “go away” to anyone looking for a breakfast chat, or so she hoped.

She shook her head. “He’s mired in some political fallout from a ‘security incident’ on Gateway. Wouldn’t tell me more than that.”

Guilt chewed away at her. She didn’t know why, but when Neil asked about the mission to Hawaii she’d left out all the horrible details. I’ve got the data, and I’ll start looking at it right away. The rest she’d kept for herself, a fire in her gut that she kindled whenever it started to fade, despite every instinct telling her to put the molestation behind her. Telling Neil would just make him fuss over her, and he would make justice a project. He had enough projects already, and this one she felt was hers to resolve.

“I heard some Darwinians managed to sneak in,” Natalie said. “Turned into a big tangle with Warthen’s guards. Jacobites, I’d guess. They’re always going on about ‘purging the heathens from Jacob’s Ladder,’ you know?”

Tania glanced up from her plate. She doubted the world could get any crazier.

“Good thing we’re so far away,” Natalie said.

“Cheers to that,” Tania replied. They toasted with apple juice in hard plastic cups.

Natalie grinned at her friend. “Feeling any better?”

“The healing power of having work to do,” Tania said. “Just need to keep busy.”

“Speaking of,” Natalie said, checking her watch, “we should have our pictures in soon.”

“Not long now,” Tania said. She’d set her timer as well.

“Any trouble last night?”

“None,” Tania said with a half smile. “Greg and Marcus will be annoyed I bumped them, but I’ll say it was a typo. An honest mistake. Canceling their task was easy enough.”

Natalie looked around them and dropped her voice even lower. “What do you think we’ll find?”

Tania shrugged off the question. “You know I don’t like to speculate.”

“Oh c’mon, hon, humor me.”

Tania set her fork down and folded her arms on the table in front of her. She took a long look at her friend. “I suppose you must have a theory, Nat?”

“Sure. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You first, then.”

Natalie wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin. “I think they’re sending a giant passenger ship, full of their people.”

“What?”

“Like the Mayflower or something.”

Tania stifled a laugh. Natalie’s energy never failed to lift her spirits.

“I mean it,” Natalie said. “Think about it. First they sent the Elevator, gave us a way to get up here. Then they sent SUBS, forcing us to get up here. Survival of the fittest, right?”

“Go on,” Tania said.

“They give us a chance to vacate, plus one city to survive in as a token offer. Maybe they can’t breathe in an atmosphere that doesn’t have SUBS floating around.”

“Why not give us more time? Or a whole continent?”

Natalie shrugged. “Maybe they can’t make an aura that big.”

“I see one big flaw in this idea,” Tania said.

“Do tell.”

“Why give us a chance to leave? Why kill ninety-nine percent of us but stop there?”

Natalie’s grin faded. Her eyes raced back and forth. “Okay, enough of my idea, what’s yours?”

“I don’t like to speculate.”

“C’mon!”

“I’ll tell you what Neil thinks,” Tania said. “He thinks they’re coming to finish the job.”

At that Natalie grew somber. When she realized Tania would say nothing more, she went back to eating.

A few minutes later, their watches beeped in unison.

“There’s our pictures,” Tania said.

Natalie hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” Tania asked.

“It’s just … I’m not sure if I want to know any more.”

Tania took her hand. “Nonsense. We’re scientists. True discovery is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

The hallways had lost their nighttime forest feel with the arrival of dawn on the planet’s surface below. The overhead lights now simulated full sunlight. Tania preferred the way it looked at night. Now it was just a white hallway with green carpet.

Natalie swiped her badge to open the door, and Tania breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of an empty room.

They walked straight to the giant multiscreen setup in the back room at the far end of the lab. Natalie went for the center console seat.

“I’ll drive,” Tania said, guiding her aside. “The data is keyed to my account.”

Her assistant took the direction in stride and moved behind the chair to let Tania sit.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Tania said. She entered her passphrase and waited. Natalie placed a nervous hand on her shoulder.

The aging computer took several seconds to respond, and then another minute to access and display the raw images from last night’s sky survey. On the screen before them, a panoramic map of the cosmos appeared.

“I used the Japan and Hawaii data,” Tania said, “to calculate the likely vector the first Builder ship would have taken. Adjusted of course for changes in Earth’s, and our solar system’s, position.” She highlighted a section of the star chart, and hundreds of small boxes appeared along it. Each one gradually filled in with a small image. “The yellow squares are the pictures we took last night. The rest are old.”

“There’s a lot of yellow,” Natalie said.

“It gets worse,” Tania said. “For each yellow square I took a sequence of six images, so that we could detect movement.”

“This will take ages,” Natalie said. “What if we wrote a program to automatically scour these for anomalies? Greg could knock that out in his sleep.”

Tania shook her head. “We’ve got one already, rather sophisticated. But it sucks up all the compute resources, which would really set off some alarms.”

“Damn.”

“I know. Let’s save that for a last resort.”

Tania selected the first yellow box and an ocean of stars filled the three screens. Other than subtle variation in color, they all looked the same.

She closed the image and opened another.

Natalie frowned in concentration. “Can I drive for a second?”

Rolling her chair aside, Tania watched as Natalie stepped forward and leaned over the keyboard. She worked quickly, her fingers a blur. With each tap the view shifted into a new configuration.

A minute later Natalie stepped back. “Try it now.”

Tania rolled her chair back to the machine and selected the next yellow box. When it highlighted, a cluster of five adjacent boxes lit up as well. They all expanded at once, evenly spread across the giant displays.

“Tap there,” Natalie said, pointing.

Tania did, and the next images in each sequence came in. She tapped again to see the third. “Brilliant,” she said.

“Not as much detail, but we can look for movement more easily.”

“And in six places at once,” Tania said. “Great idea.”

Natalie rested both hands on Tania’s shoulders. “Thirty minutes until breakfast is over and people start poking their heads in here.”

Tania nodded. She began to work quickly, bolstered by the clever scheme Natalie had set up.

After twenty minutes, Tania could feel her eyes begin to glaze over. The images started to blur together into a random assortment of stars. She shifted in her chair and rubbed at a knot in her shoulder. Natalie brushed her hand aside and took over the task, kneading with just the right amount of pressure. It felt good, if mildly distracting. Tania did her best to ignore it and redoubled her focus on the pictures.

A dozen more sequences went by without any signs of motion.

“Wait. Go back,” Natalie said.

Tania stopped the sequence and rolled back through the images slowly.

“Stop. Focus on the second one from the left.”

Tania stared at a perfectly average picture of stars against the blank void of space. “What is it, Nat?”

“In the corner,” Natalie said, pointing.

In the bottom left, nearly off the edge of the frame, she saw a dark gray object, nearly invisible against the black background. Definitely out of place. Tania selected the image to expand it across all three screens. She adjusted the positioning to move the gray speck into the center, and rolled through the sequence.

The blurry object moved over time, unlike the background stars.

“I’ll be damned!” Natalie said.

Tania frowned. “It could be an asteroid or something.”

“Argh! You’re such a pessimist. It’s the Builders!”

Tania did think the gray blob vaguely resembled the shape of the shell ship. “We need to be sure before contacting Neil. Let’s task the telescope for a high-res shot on the next pass.”

Natalie bounced on her toes. “This is amazing! They’re back, and on some kind of schedule!”

“We’ll see,” Tania said. It took all her self-control to stave off Natalie’s infectious enthusiasm. In truth her gut had already reached the same conclusion Natalie voiced. Possibilities, and their ramifications, swarmed her mind. All paths led to the same place, though: Their world would change, again.

“We’ll see,” she repeated, for herself.