Prisoners of History, Part Two

From there it was a busy hour for the Gerwart scientists, as Rolas and Reggie observed from their position along the wall of the bunker. As had been planned, once the rocket’s fuel had been expended and it reached the apex of its ballistic arc, explosive charges separated the nose from the main body of the vehicle. From there the remains of the rocket fell into the sea, while the nose and its incredibly valuable instrument package floated down on a parachute to be retrieved via boat.

It wasn’t until that evening, after a hearty dinner celebrating the successful launch and recovery that Rolas was able to talk privately with Reggie. He’d been watching his friend carefully throughout the dinner, and was growing increasingly disturbed as he did. Despite the air of joviality his old commander tried to project, Rolas could see signs of tension in his puffy, sleep deprived eyes, and the ill kept grooming of his tail. He’d also kept count of the drinks Reggie had been downing, which had come out to about six of the smoky Gerwart beer pints.

After exchanging congratulations once again with Dr. Brownpad and his team, Rolas led Reggie over to his office, in one of the research complex’s administration buildings. Sitting his friend down in a chair across from a small couch he kept for informal meetings, Rolas asked pointedly, “All right, Reg, what by the Mother Goddess is going on with you?”

Reggie looked up at him, then said, “Lock the door and close the curtains.”

Baffled, Rolas did so, and then sat on the couch opposite Reg. “Satisfied?”

“It’ll have to do.” Reg rubbed the fur of his chin, and then nervously tapped the claws of his artificial paw on the briefcase sitting in his lap. Finally he said, “Rolas, I need your honest opinion. How soon will it be before your team can launch an artificial moon into orbit?”

“Hmm, that’s a tricky question,” Rolas said, curiosity aroused. “With the funding we’ve been receiving, and assuming the testing program proceeds without major delays, perhaps three years.”

“And how long would it take you to place a piloted craft up there, at an orbit of about five hundred miles?”

Rolas’ ears perked up. Was the Council of Countesses making some big push in the sciences to strengthen diplomatic ties with Gerwart? “Piloted? Mother Goddess, that’s a ways in the future. If all goes well, perhaps ten years, maybe.”

Reggie nodded grimly, and then said, “I need it in four.”

“Four?” Rolas gaped at him in surprise. “Reg, were you listening earlier? I told you we might just be able to get an artificial moon up there in three years. A piloted craft is a lot more difficult. He wondered at the request for a five hundred mile altitude. It didn’t sound like a number Reggie had just pulled from his pocket.

“Why? Principle is the same. Shoot them up in the air so fast they miss the ground as they fall down. Isn’t that how Brownpad explained it in those magazine articles?”

Rolas winced. The articles Reggie was referring to had been a simplified and somewhat optimistic series for the popular Commoner press, designed to drum up support for the program. More serious and cautious articles for scientific journals had also been published, which he trusted Reggie had read as well. “Reg, a piloted craft is more complicated by several orders of magnitude.” He started ticking off points on his claws. “One, it’s going to be much heavier. The artificial moon Brownpad is talking about would be the size of a sports ball and weigh maybe twenty pounds. A piloted craft with all of its equipment would be more on the order of a thousand pounds minimum. That means a much bigger rocket with at least two, more probably three or four stages. Two, it’s going to need a life support system like a high-altitude airship, only miniaturized to fit in the craft, preferably with a separate pressure suit in case a leak develops in the craft’s pressure vessel. More weight, more power, which means more batteries, which means more weight, which means a bigger rocket. It’s a vicious cycle. Finally we need to have a means to get them back down. Have you read the Journal of Aeronautics articles about dynamic heating?”

“I’ve read summaries,” Reg answered.

“You can’t just slow the craft down and drop it back into the atmosphere. It’s going to heat up as it hits the air, which means we have to develop some sort of heat shield. Even then if you drop down at too steep an angle you’ll fry the pilot, but too shallow and angle it might bounce off the atmosphere and go flying back into space, never able to get back down. And we have to be right in our calculations the first time.”

Reg worried his lip between his fangs a moment, before answering, “What if your budget was unlimited?”

Rolas snorted. “No such thing, Reg. You know that.”

“In this case it would be true. I’m talking about a special all-districts tax, plus 90% of the Military budget, and whatever we can shave off other programs and beg from individual countess’s purses.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Yes, I am.” If there was a hint that this was actually a joke, Reggie had to have keeping the champion gambler’s ears of all time. No, that wasn’t true; Reggie actually looked like he was sick to his stomach. Though given how much he’d been drinking that was no surprise. “You’d be able to hire whoever you needed, requisition whatever resources you required.”

Rolas rubbed his ears in frustration. “Reg, it’s not a matter of personnel. We’re inventing new fields of study for this project. You can’t just hire a rocket assembly engineer off the street. Five years ago the profession didn’t even exist!”

Reg took in a deep breath. “Rolas, we need a piloted craft capable of reaching an altitude of five hundred miles in less than four years. That’s non-negotiable. If that means you have to leave something out, like a heat shield, so be it.”

“’Like a heat…’ Reg, that would be murder!” Rolas gasped.

“Not if it was a volunteer pilot,” Reggie replied flatly. “I can provide a couple if you need them.”

“What? No, Reggie. I’m sorry, but the answer isno. This is a scientific endeavor, not the plot of some crackpot adventure serial! I could never agree to such a scheme in good conscience.”

“You’re conscience has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s a matter of securing the safety of our entire world,” Reggie said, his tone growing sterner.

Rolas stood up. “Now you’re talking utter nonsense. If you intend on going on like this, please allow me to tender my resignation. I’ll have no part in such an irresponsible scheme.”

“Your resignation is denied,” Reggie stated.

He felt his ears heat up in anger. “I’m not Military Caste anymore. You can’t order me about without my permission.”

“Yes, actually I can. I have a signed order from the Council, the Minister of Science, the Minister of War, and your own count. You’re not getting out of this, Rolas.” Even as he delivered his threat, Reggie looked shamefaced and embarrassed. It was look of a male pushed into a corner, not someone who enjoyed lording over a victim, like their Gerwart torturers from so long ago.

Rolas sat back down again, disturbed. “Reggie, are you going to tell me what’s really going on, or aren’t you? Because if you’re just going to throw about insane orders for impossible results, I’m walking away, Count and Council be damned.”

Reggie gave him a short nod. “That’s fair. Actually I should have told you from the start, but the Council is running scared on this, and so am I.” He tapped his briefcase once. “What I am about to show is beyond top secret. I’m not going to ask you oath on it, because if you breathe a word about what we are about to discuss to anyone besides me or select members of the Council Ten, it will never come to trial. Your body will simply be dropped down a deep hole and buried, whether or not you happen to be still alive at the time. Now if you could kneel behind your desk for moment, I’d appreciate it.”

Rolas stood up, still trying to process both the threat and the nonsensical order at the end. “Why?” he asked flatly.

“Because there’s an explosive charge built into this case, and if I make an error unlocking it, it’ll blow up in my face. I’d rather not take you along with me, old friend.”

Eyes wide and ears turned back, Rolas did as he was asked. A moment later Reggie let him know he could stand up again. The open briefcase, which indeed had a small explosive charge attached to the locking mechanism, was sitting on the floor, while Reggie held what appeared to a thick piece of folded paper in his paw.

“What’s this?” Rolas asked, taking it from Reg as the latter held it out to him. It wasn’t paper, rather some form of black resin, though it bent like paper and unfolded to a flat surface about a two pawspans wide and one in height. He ran one fingerpad over the surface, and to his surprise it began to glow, an odd looking sigil waving in an animated pattern. Then a bright picture appeared, like a print image lit from behind. It was an image of an ocean shot from underwater, with fish in forms he didn’t’ recognize. Overlapping the image were several small squares, abstract images of some sort, set in neat rows along the left side.

“What in the Mother Goddess’s name?” Rolas breathed, staring at the strange… machine? Artifact? Illusionist’s prop? “Reggie, what is this?”

“You know that clever mechanical calculating machine Dr. Brownpad’s team uses to figure launch trajectories?” Reggie asked. “The one that takes up an entire office floor?”

“Yes?”

“That little thing is what you get when take about a million of those machines, stuff them onto a little flexible chip the size of your clawtip, and mount about a hundred of them underneath a little flat screen.” Reggie smiled at Rolas’s astonished face. “So far we’ve found it has a library of tens of thousands of books, all unreadable to us, about a thousand personal photos, hundreds and hundreds of what appear to entertainment and documentary cinemas, and also serials of various sorts. It can also play interactive games like you’d find at the War College, only massively more complex. It even has a calculator.”

“I don’t understand,” Rolas said. He touched one of the little abstract squares at random. It made a brief musical chime, and then a cinema of some small fuzzy orange and cream striped animal appeared, slinking low in the grass, until it wiggled its hindquarters in excitement and pounced on a balled up piece of paper. “What is that creature? I’ve never seen anything like it. Where did this device come from, Reg?”

Reg took the magical resin paper back, folding it up and placing back in his briefcase, and then withdrew a paper map of the Mother Country. He pointed at a spot in the highlands, home to beautiful mountain ranges, sheep herding villagers, and not much else. "Two years ago something landed on a plateau in the Skyblue Highlands, in Countess Rivermaster's domain. The flash was seen by a hunter, who called the authorities. At first we thought it was a meteorite, but when we sent a scout team in we.... found something."

“What, a rocket, like the ones we've been working on?”

Reggie chuckled humorlessly. “Oh, not like yours, old friend. That magic piece of paper came from the... vehicle.”

"But... but... who made it? It's like nothing I've ever seen. Not anyone in Gerwart, or the Unallied Nations, surely."

"No, not from them. The Visitors made it," Reg said gravely.

"The who?"

"The crew of the vehicle that landed. The spaceship. The alien spaceship."