Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals Read online

  Professor Bryant had then taken a small hammer off of his tool belt and tapped the tip of a long crystal a few times. A portion broke off, and bits of what remained turned to powder like crushed glass. He looked up and grinned. “See. Someone owes me a steam bath and some shoulders time,” he’d said.

  Altin had grown very nervous at that point. He went to the broken shard of crystal and pressed a finger to the powdered part. It stuck like sand to his glove. He studied it for a moment and then harrumphed. What did it mean? Clearly that something was different. So now what? Was it going to work?

  And that was the conversation now that the hole was cut, ready for Yellow Fire’s heart. Or nearly ready. Now they had to figure out what to do about the difference. They had to fill that space where the explosives had cleared the crystals away. But should they cut out more crystal from Yellow Fire and transplant that too, or should Professor Bryant actually regrow the crystals that were already here to fill the space? He’d said he could do it. Now they were going to have to decide.

  “Well, a perfect cut,” the professor concluded. “So now you people just need to tell me which it’s going to be, transplanted crystal or regrowth. I can set up a containment field on the open areas, and we can make a bed for it right here. Now that we can actually study the damn things, we’ve found the valence shell, and it’s not really any different than any other crystal from there.”

  Altin knew better than to ask what that meant, and he relied entirely on Orli to decide. “So we have no way to know if these crystals are any different than those back on Yellow Fire?” Orli asked, standing beside Altin and staring into the opening. “What if there is some subtle difference between male and female? What if there’s a huge difference?”

  The professor climbed down out of the water saw’s cab, splashing into the runoff as he jumped from the last rung of the short ladder bolted to its side. He came over and looked into the hole with them. “What an incredible cut, if I do say so myself. I’ve done an outstanding job here, I have to tell you all.”

  “I thought this cut was based on a template created by the cut Doctor Singh made back on Yellow Fire,” Altin said. “Wasn’t one of the main purposes for this particular machine being employed that it could trace a pattern with absolute accuracy essentially on its own?”

  “Listen, Meade, I don’t piss in your oatmeal, so you don’t piss in mine, okay?”

  Altin wrinkled up his face and looked to Orli, who was barely holding in a laugh, as he said, “I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

  The professor moved on to Orli’s question anyway. “Like I said, I can’t study that other stuff, the heart stone, anyway, at least not much. So your guess is as good as mine. I suspect when we pull that out all the way, the gray crystals on that moon are going to get just like these, delicate and breakable. But that doesn’t change anything. At some point, somewhere, material from there is going to have to come together with what is here. Which means you need to decide which part and where. Are we crating all this equipment back up and taking it back to Yellow Fire for a skin graft, or are we growing these to fill in the gap? Either way, the semester is going to start in a few weeks. I’m going to have to go back or burn my sabbatical.”

  Orli looked irritated by that. “Well, I think you need to worry more about Blue Fire and Yellow Fire than whether or not you might have to use up your vacation time.”

  “Hey, it’s not vacation. Sabbatical is serious business. We save that for serious research.”

  “How is this not serious research?”

  “Well, that’s true,” he said. “I just needed something to bitch about because this is all going so well.”

  Altin shook his head, having difficulty understanding the man, but Orli was not put off in the least. “Well, let me ask you a question, then,” she said.

  “By all means,” he replied, sending Altin a look that suggested he’d just won some kind of victory.

  “Do you love your parents?”

  “My parents?” It was the professor’s turn to frown. “What do my parents have to do with anything?”

  “Do you love them?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Are they still with us? And healthy?”

  “They are. My dad can still shoot his age on the golf course, and Mom is doing cutting-edge research at a lab in Shanghai.”

  “Good,” said Orli. “Then tell me this: if Blue Fire was your mother, and Yellow Fire was your father, and this thing that we are doing was meant for them, which would you do? Transplant crystals from Yellow Fire or grow new ones here?”

  “Well, if it was my dad back on earth, we’d just grow him some new skin. Like I said, it’s easy once you have the whole genetic code, which we do.”

  “But what about the fact that the light is going through them, and the shattering part? That’s not caused by the same ‘code’ as what’s on Yellow Fire.”

  The professor’s countenance became strictly serious again, like it did when he was focused fully on the work at hand and not trying in his awkward way to flirt. “Well, you have to leave something for life to do. Like I said, I think all this is something like an electrical circuit.” He waved his arm around above his head. “When you blew up Red Fire’s heart stone, you opened the circuit and killed the power source, including the auxiliary. I realize it’s only a guess, but it fits the evidence pretty well. Your magical boyfriend there says the yellow stones on Blue Fire are all fired up all the time, even when they are pulled out and removed from the planet entirely. Yellow Fire’s work there on that moon, but in his dormant state, they only barely function. They may be dead in terms of all that magical amplification business, but I think they are still looping his dormant energy; that’s what I’m calling auxiliary. Here, they are dead entirely. To me it seems pretty obvious, even if we can’t really measure the current, or whatever it is, anywhere. Yellow Fire is going to need the power source and closed loop. That’s how I see it, but the only way I can prove it is to try the transplant and see if it all turns on. I have no idea what really binds it all. That whole bit about the stones’ working independently throws a big question mark in the middle of everything, but I’ll stand by my hypothesis until we come up with a better one.”

  “My magical boyfriend is also your employer, you know. The one who’s opened up this opportunity for you to be here on this never-been-tried-before research. Show some respect.”

  He actually took a step back from her unexpected response. “Hey, no offense. I was just saying. Don’t get cranky on me just because this is all frustrating.”

  She closed her eyes and took a breath. It was all frustrating; everyone present could feel it. She returned to her earlier line of inquiry. “So, to be clear, if this was your father, and his life and your mother’s were at stake, you would grow the crystal bed around the heart rather than transplant additional crystal?”

  “Well, my mother wouldn’t ask to be killed if my dad was dead,” he said. “She’d be heartbroken, but she’s actually pretty happy with her work. She’d get through it. He’d want her to.”

  Orli’s right eye started twitching, but the geologist saw it and amended his reply. “But yes, I would grow them. I know we can produce identical crystals to those that are here. There is no such guarantee that the crystal bed back on Yellow Fire will match these. In essence, moving them here would be like transplanting two organs instead of one. Twice the opportunity for rejection. Again, that is my guess. But you asked, so that is what I would do.”

  “I agree,” chimed in the professor’s assistant, Doctor Walters, over the com. She was in orbit, up on the Glistening Lady, using the ship’s computers to assist with the work. “Geologically speaking, it’s solid. Not sure about how it plays for resurrecting life, but he’s right about the rest.”

  “How long will it take?” Orli asked. “To grow a crystal bed over all of that?” She pointed to the blown-out area all around them where the planetary rock was exposed.

 
“Probably longer than you want,” said Professor Bryant. “Three months, maybe three and a half. We can do some things to try and speed it up, but this is a lot of space to cover. And they are big.”

  Orli’s body moved with the magnitude of a mighty, decisive breath. “Fine,” she said. “If you both think that’s the way to go, then that’s the way to go.” She turned toward Altin and put her hands on her hips, staring up at him through the dome of the helmet glass. “So there you have it. Her Majesty asked that we get all our ducks in a row. Well, now we have them. We have a hole; we have the heart stone cut loose and ready to be moved; you have the transmutation spell you need; and the professor and Doctor Walters agree that they can regrow the crystal bed around it all. The only thing left is to convince Her Majesty that it is enough. She’s even less inclined to science than you are.”

  “Hey,” he protested. “I’m perfectly inclined to science, and I learn more and more every day.”

  She smiled. It was true. “I know. I’m just trying to make a point.”

  “Well, if you want something to be worried about, you should be thinking about how we’re going to get past the wedding obstacle with Her Majesty. She fully intends to hold our happiness hostage for whatever it is she really wants.”

  “You know what?” Orli said, sounding suddenly completely at ease in that regard. “It’s been so many months now, and Kettle is still not ready for it, and Pernie is clearly not coming home anytime soon. If all I have to do is wait another year for a ring and an official document, then so be it. If that’s what it takes to safeguard Blue Fire’s life at this point, I am fine with that. I’ve already corrupted you, and your honor is surely ruined as far as the purpose of all that delay anyway. I already have what I want.” She grinned up at him, and saw that he was blushing beneath his helmet and making a rigid point not to look around. She even spared a glare for the professor while Altin recovered himself.

  “Well,” Altin said, changing the topic to one more suitable for public discourse, “you are quite right about Kettle and Pernie. But I should think that”—he paused and looked around the chamber filled with what amounted to broken Liquefying Stone—“we ought not mention that you’ve become suddenly so accommodating to Her Majesty’s request.” He grinned at her. “I think I’ve just realized the one thing that will motivate her to give her permission immediately, so long as you don’t tip our hand.”

  Orli wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind, but she did like the confidence in his voice.

  “Well, then let us get to it,” he said. He turned to the professor standing there. “You heard My Lady; get to your project. We’ll go see if we can get the last thing we need: the sanction of two worlds.”

  Altin teleported himself and Orli out of the cavern directly to the lowest level of his tower, “the boot,” as it had become known by the science team. They took off their spacesuits, and while Orli ran upstairs to “put on something that won’t cause scandal on Prosperion,” as she’d said, Altin spent a moment checking the area down below the surface, making sure it was still clear for the clean room. It was, so he sent the little room down to its designated resting place near the heart chamber, where they had been working for weeks. Satisfied it was in order, he checked the jar of fast-cast stones on the shelf near where the teleportation chamber sat when it was in the boot. There were still three of the small garnets inside the jar, none of them worth much for jewelry, but all perfectly suited for storing simple magic spells. If broken, any of the three would send the stone box down into the caverns of Red Fire, precisely as Altin had just done. And inside the chamber he’d just sent was a corresponding bowl in which resided four little blue sapphires, each of which would bring the box back to the boot. He figured that would be plenty for the team should they have need to move back and forth while he and Orli were gone.

  With those precautions taken, he ran up after Orli and found her waiting for him on the battlements, staring out into the blowing sand of the red world as she brushed her hair, still short in the style of Earth, which Altin simply adored.

  “You get them all set up?” she confirmed as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “I did,” he replied, though it was muffled in the kisses he placed upon her neck.

  “I’m still nervous about leaving them down there like that with us gone. Well, with you gone.” She turned in his arms and faced him, looking up into his eyes.

  “They’re fine. I promise. They have four sapphires in the box to come back with, and they’ve got three garnets to go back down. You know Her Majesty has a short attention span when it comes to the technical details, so we’ll make sure to bore her into agreement and then come right back.”

  She smiled. “Are you saying I’m boring when I talk about this stuff?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s dreadful when you start quoting readouts and things. I sometimes think I might have to cast a silence spell on you.”

  She gasped and shaped indignation on her face. “How dare you, Altin Meade. Don’t you ever, or I’ll ….”

  “You’ll what?”

  “Well, just try it and see.”

  He smiled devilishly and kissed her, and for a time he let his hands roam freely. The rise of her breathing matched his own, and he had just begun to push her toward the floor when Orli’s com button beeped and Roberto’s voice came over it.

  “Hey, we can see you guys down there, you know? That magic lid of yours is see-through.”

  Altin gasped and pushed away, looking up through the transparent barrier of his Polar Piton’s Perfect Parabolic Protection shield. All he could see were the whirling clouds of the endlessly red atmosphere.

  “You pervert,” Orli said as she tapped the com button to transmit. “Don’t you have enough hot chicks to look at up there as it is?”

  “Who says you are a hot chick?” They could both hear him laughing.

  “You know what I mean. Don’t make me kill you the next time I’m up there.”

  “Who says I’ll let you back on my ship?”

  “You do see who is standing next to me, right, Captain Voyeur? I pretty much go where I want these days, so you better just watch it.”

  “Oh, I was watching it. That was the problem. I thought I might throw up, so I said something.”

  “Oh my God, you are going to die.” She was smiling, however, despite Altin still looking rather uncomfortable about having nearly been caught.

  “Hey, you guys are the ones who told me to monitor everything from up here.”

  That was true enough. “Hey, speaking of that, make sure you do. Keep a close eye on those guys in case they need you for anything. Altin and I have what we need to go talk to the Queen.”

  “Yeah, Stacy told me. Good luck. But you know she’s going to make you guys wait to get married, right? You’re going to have to keep doing it in sin. Hopefully not where I have to watch.”

  Altin turned nearly purple at that, though Orli didn’t even bat an eye. “I know. Altin has something planned.” She looked up at him with eyebrows raised expectantly. “At least I think he does.”

  “I do,” he said, his neck blotchy as if with some strange blood disease.

  Orli laughed, then smiled up at him.

  “Hey, who else is that with you anyway?” Roberto asked. “Who came back up an hour or two ago, before you guys did?”

  “What do you mean?” Orli asked. “We don’t have anyone else up here.”

  “Hate to break it to you, lover girl, but, yes, you do. There’s someone right there with you, or at least”—he paused, and the feed cut off for a second—“someone seven point three yards southwest of where Altin is standing. I’m looking at the heat signature right now. Not as hot as you two were a minute ago, but there plain as day. I can’t get a visual through the storm.”

  They both looked in the direction Roberto had given them. If there was someone there, whoever it was had to be standing outside the dome of the Polar Piton’s shield, out in the fu
ry of the winds and blowing sand.

  Orli shook her head. “Are they moving?”

  “Nope. Hasn’t moved since it popped up. Just standing there.”

  She went right up to the battlement and leaned against the cool, black-painted steel crenel that had replaced the stone ones that had been there before the tower accident. She peered through the Polar Piton’s shield out into the wind, but she still couldn’t see a thing. “How much did you pay for that ship again?” she asked finally. “You might want to take the sensor modules back under warranty.”

  “Seven hundred and thirty-four billion, and the sensors are just fine. Dude, I’m looking right at it. You can’t see through that garbage blowing out there, but I can. There’s someone there. Or something. Temperature says human. It’s plain as day.”

  “One sec,” she said. She frowned at Altin, who glanced up at her long enough to see it before staring out into the wind again. The winds were especially bad just now. He started a seeing spell shortly after as Orli went running off down the stairs.

  She came back with a pair of binoculars and dialed up the infrared. She raised them up and gasped immediately after. “Holy shit!” she said.

  “Yeah. See, that’s what I tried to tell you,” Roberto said over the com.

  “But what is it? It’s too small to be human.”

  “It’s the right temperature,” Roberto said again. “Look at your reading. The static charge in the wind is probably just messing with it some. Thank God, too, because I really wouldn’t have wanted to watch you two going at it a minute ago in high definition. Your panting-ass heat signatures were bad enough.”

  She ignored him and checked the temperature reading. He was right. Definitely human. She turned to query Altin, but his eyes were closed, his vision now beyond the tower in a seeing spell. Though not for long. A moment after, they sprang open as if on a spring.

  “By the gods!” he exclaimed.

  “What is it?” both Orli and Roberto asked, nearly simultaneously.

  “It’s Tytamon’s decanter. The one that I sent out there to test gravity the day we arrived.”