“I know. The storm might have carried it there.”
“Is it a wreck?”
“I don’t know. But the most interesting part of this picture isn’t in the sea area, except maybe for this one spot.” Her finger moved left, to indicate a small white circle. “According to the inertial guidance system on this ship — which I’m going to assume still works correctly, even if the laws of physics are all a bit different here — according to the guidance system, that’s where we first emerged into the Limbo ocean. So my thought is that the little disk is all that’s left of the Link transition point. It comes and goes, and it’s not there now. And don’t ask me how it can be part underwater, instead of in a vacuum or a thin atmosphere, because I have no idea.”
“And this thing?” Tully reached carefully over Elke’s arm to indicate another part of the scene. “Like part of a great big ring.”
“It is. The boundary is an exact circle when you make allowance for the look angle.” Elke ran a finger along the smooth arc. “This marks the edge of a zone of destruction. It only shows on the land and not at sea. Inside this region there’s nothing but blackened soil and dark gray rocks. Outside the burned part it’s a mixture of green and orange. I’m betting that this was originally all growing plants. Somebody sterilized the whole inner region, about seven hundred square kilometers. And guess what’s at the exact center of the black circle?”
“Tell me.”
“Better than that, I’ll show you.” Elke tapped at the board in front of her, and the picture on the display expanded, zooming in on one small area. “This is the highest magnification the image can take without losing detail. But it’s enough.”
Tully counted six drab buildings of muddy yellow, running along each side of a long and narrow stretch of white. At each end of the strip, facing each other, sat two tiny tri-lobed shapes.
“A settlement,” he said softly, “and funny-looking aircraft. I told you that the Bun was reliable. He said he saw one in the sky, and now we know he didn’t lie.”
“We do indeed.” Tully and Elke had been so absorbed in the image that the voice from behind made them jump.
“Aircraft, yes,” Dag Korin went on. He had entered the chamber silently and alone. “But I wouldn’t call that a settlement. See the boundary fence, with guard posts all along it? Throw in the scorched-earth perimeter for kilometers in each direction, and you have yourself a classic military camp. Our head-up-their-wazoo Stellar Groupies can preach peace all they like, but whoever made that encampment had war on their minds. This isn’t their home territory, either, or they wouldn’t blast everything for miles around them. And don’t be fooled by thinking this is all defenses. They may have only a few aircraft, but I’ll bet they have other weapons.”
“More than a few planes.” Tully had been leaning close to the screen as the General spoke, studying the enlarged picture. “Look over here, well outside the camp. It’s not easy to see them because they match the color of the ground. But isn’t that more aircraft?”
“Six, seven, eight.” The way that Dag Korin counted made each word sound like a curse. “Aye, and there’s another batch of the damned things, farther over. They’re camouflaged to match the background, but not very well. I’d have expected these alien buggers to do a better job, they’re careful enough about other things. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.”
Elke was working the keypad in front of her. “Well, if there is hope,” she said, “I’d credit our technology more than alien weaknesses. The orbiters had the best sensors that humans know how to build, and they could record signals at wavelengths all the way from ultraviolet to radar. Here’s what the ground would look like if the orbiters only sensed the range of wavelengths that human eyes can see.”
The picture as a whole remained the same — except that Tully, staring, could now see no details within the burned area. Buildings, boundary fence, airstrips, aircraft were gone. All had been swallowed up within the dark background.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Korin squinted at the image. “Bring it back the way it was, Elke. Ah, that’s better. We’re going to need a couple of printed copies of this, with compass settings marked.”
“No problem.” Elke did not move, leaving it to the ship’s computer to take the necessary action.
“Plus any other information we can deduce about what’s down there. For instance, what do you make of that?” Korin was pointing to a pair of oval shapes, close to one cluster of the triple-lobed aircraft but much larger than any. “Can you make those bigger?”
Elke shrugged her thin shoulders. “I can enlarge the picture, but you won’t get any more detail. We’re at the resolution limit of the orbiter’s sensors.”
“Pity.” Korin rubbed at his jaw. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough if I’m right.”
Tully didn’t think that Dag Korin had a high opinion of him. In fact, he had overheard himself referred to by the General, soon after his arrival on board the Hero’s Return , as `that long brain-dead streak of shivering misery.’ Well, Tully had improved a lot since then, and Korin’s favorite had also once been a Slither slave. He risked what might be a stupid question. “Sir, how do you know what those blobs might be? I can’t make out any detail on them at all.”
“No more can I, son, no more can I.” Korin took a couple of steps away, as though he had said all he was going to, then swung around and added sharply, “I imagine , you see. What my eyes won’t provide, I imagine with eighty years of war experience to guide me. And the more I look at that picture, the more a little voice inside me says, military expedition. Not a full-scale army, mind you, because the scale of operations is wrong for that. This is more like a scouting party, sent out to learn the lie of the land. Maybe sent to find out if Limbo is worth a bigger investment, or decide that the place is a dead loss and not worth another visit.
“Now, there’s a logic to a scouting expedition, one that I’d suspect is common to all times and all species. First, you need a base of operations. We see that on the image. You also need the aircraft or ground vehicles to make sorties away from base, and you need to have enough of them to stand some losses from accidents or hostile action. That’s what the aircraft are for. And there’s one other must-have. You may be able to live off the land to some extent, but you’ll need bigger transports — call them mother ships if you like — to bring you to your sphere of operations in the first place. Little scoutships won’t be enough for that, and they won’t be able to carry everything you need for weeks or months of operations. That’s what I think the two ovals are. They brought them here to Limbo, through a Link point of their making and under their control. And in our present situation, those mother ships represent our own best shot at a way to go home.”
Korin paused and frowned at the other two. “Now, that’s my thinking. It may be wrong, so feel free to poke holes in it. Ask questions.”
Elke said softly, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather ask about the other part of what you said earlier.”
“Other part.”
“You told us, `we’ll find out soon enough if I’m right.’ What made you say that?”
“No secret there. We can’t sit here until this ship rots around us. I’m organizing a shore party to explore the land—”
“That’s terrific! I’ve been analyzing data from the orbiters, and I’ve been wondering about a thousand other things—”
“ — but you won’t be part of the shore group, Elke.”
“What! I’m not an engineer. I don’t know how to keep things running on the ship. But ashore, I can—”
“No. You have other things to do, and they may be a lot more important than going ashore. You were the one who came up with the idea that we’re lost, not just somewhere in our own universe but somewhere in an infinity of universes. You’re our best shot — I’d say our only shot — at cracking the secrets of the multiverse. I want you focused on that, and the properties of the alien Link. I want to know about other universes that we might be able to reach — are they more or less similar to our own, could humans survive in them. I don’t want you distracted by thoughts of Limbo’s other life-forms, or war games, or shore parties. Understood?”