Konrad, Reel

Reel’s voice echoed out of the transmission units casing, rising and falling as she worked. She lay on her back, wobbling on her shell, with her head and arms inside the bowels of the machine. The alien words meant nothing to Konrad, but he could understand the frustrated tone.

The volume and pace of the words increased as she clattered around inside the unit, the sounds growing harsher. Occasionally she would punctuate her exclamations with bites at the empty air, so hard that her teeth would click in a sharp snap like a mousetrap springing closed. Konrad couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation, but he doubted it was much calmer.

He stood alongside von Braun and Lusser, waiting awkwardly in the cool night air for Reel to finish her work. Wiping his clammy, damp palms on his dirty lab coat, he grimaced. It was only sweat, right? Phantom tingles ran over his arms where the black liquid from the transmission unit had washed over them, even though he knew there was nothing there. He scrubbed harder, grimacing, and felt the knife still in his pocket. Turning away from Reel, he pulled it out of his pocket and offered it back to the guard, hilt first.

The guard started to reach for it and then stopped, his hand jerking back as though the blade were sizzling hot. He threw a glance at the box where Reel was working.

“This had that…that stuff all over it, didn’t it?” He whispered.

“Well yes, but it’s all gone now. It seems to have evaporated away.” Konrad tried to press the knife into the pug-nosed guard’s hand, but he drew back, shaking his head.

“You keep it.” He said. “I can get another.”

Konrad put it back into his pocket, gingerly. Von Braun noticed his discomfort and excused himself from his hushed conference with Lusser. He stepped over to Konrad and put a thick arm around his shoulders, drawing him off a little ways from where Reel was working. He searched Konrad’s face in the dark, peering at him from under his thick eyebrows.

“What did you do?” He asked, softly and without preamble.

Konrad threw a worried glance back over his shoulder towards where Reel was working. Between the distance and the angry noises she was making, she probably wouldn’t hear them. He hoped, at least.

“I couldn’t…” He groped for words to explain why he’d done what he’d done. “I couldn’t let her leave so fast.” He gestured helplessly at the spotlight lit ship beyond her.

Von Braun nodded. “Go ahead, tell me.”

So Konrad did, in halting bits and pieces. Von Braun listened intently, interrupting only to ask for clarification here and there when Konrad muddled the story. When he finished, von Braun gave his shoulder a tight squeeze as he glanced back at Reel.

“Well done,” he whispered, and Konrad blinked in surprise. “Very well done. I wish you’d warned me of what you were going to try, but still…”

“You’re not angry with me?”

“Gods no man, not in the least. It was absolutely essential that we keep her, and that marvelous vessel, here.” He blew out a long breath. “Everything just changed, you know.”

Konrad nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, thinking of the lines of gold running through the inside of the machine. They looked like circuits, impossibly complex but still circuits. It was like what he’d been trying to build in the basement, only a thousand times more detailed and far, far more powerful. A shiver ran up his spine. God, what problems couldn’t they solve with such a machine? He turned to von Braun, grabbing at his arm. “They have what I was telling you about; computers, electrical computers that can translate languages, calculate flight paths, send messages…”

A flash of surprise crossed von Braun’s face, and Konrad realized that wasn’t what he’d been thinking of. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “They do seem to have that, and much more. Engines that can take them across the solar system without propellant. The ability to cross the space between systems. And the raw power required to do it.”

He stared at Konrad, his eyes so intense that Konrad had to look away. “And she talks about it as though it were the most natural thing in the world, Konrad. She talks about it casually, as though it were every day they went jaunting across the Milky Way. If we can acquire even a fraction of that power, we might actually win this war.”

A thought occurred to Konrad. “Dr. von Braun,” He said slowly, “Why did they even come to us? More than that, how did they even find us? This base is supposed to be secure.”

Von Braun nodded grimly. “Another question we must answer. Come; let’s see what we can find out.”

Von Braun led him back into the pool of light surrounding the transmission unit; some thoughtful junior officer had drug out a work lamp to help Reel see. She hauled herself to her feet as they approached, the ridges of scale above her eyes scrunched together.

“Did you have any luck figuring out what went wrong?” Von Braun asked. Konrad felt sweat break out across his forehead again.

“Yes,” she said, gesturing back at the still open panel. “The reservoir of...” She stumbled, as though unsure how to go on. “Sorry, this is another thing you don’t have a word for in your language. It acts like a liquid, but it’s made up of matter that you can’t usually interact with?”

They stared at her. “Matter you can’t interact with?” Lusser asked slowly, his brow furrowing. “I seem to recall a Dutch astronomer publishing something…”

“Dark matter.” Von Braun interjected. “He called it dark matter, but if you can’t interact with it then how…?” He trailed off, shaking his head. “No, hold that thought for now. So you’re low on this…this ‘Dark Liquid?’”

Reel nodded. “Right. So we can receive, but not transmit. I can fix it. The lander has a condenser that can collect more. It will take a few days, maybe as much as a week,” She smiled, as though that were the most wonderful thing in the world. “But I can do it, no problem. I can fix just about anything.”

“Well, we are very glad to hear it,” Von Braun said with a broad smile. Konrad’s heart sank a little at the news. Only a week? That wasn’t nearly enough time! “Any assistance or aid we can offer you, you shall certainly have.”

She inclined her head to him. “Thank you. I will have to clear the extra time here with my Captain.” The ridges of scale over her eyes knit together, in what Konrad took as a worried expression.

“Of course, of course.” Von Braun said. “But before you do that, I have to ask; how was it that you found us? You knew exactly where we were, and exactly what we were doing here. If it’s something our enemies can also do…”

Reel shook her head, but then hesitated, uncertainty dancing across her face. “No…at least, I don’t think they can. I can show you how we did it, if you’d like?”

At von Braun’s enthusiastic assent, she led them back up the ramp into the ship. Konrad followed, grateful that he hadn’t missed his chance to see it after all. Turning into the broad corridor behind her, he stared about in wonder.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Maybe something resembling a high budget science laboratory. It had some of that, but felt more like a cargo plane. Square metal panels formed the walls, some of them showing signs of rust. Webbing covered the shelves, bracing their contents in place. Here and there, some of them were missing, or perhaps deliberately left open to allow access to the things behind them. He could see wiring, pipes, and a hundred different gadgets and contraptions. Some were utterly alien and incomprehensible, while others were jarringly familiar. Dangling from one of the panels was what looked for all the world like a set of wrenches, though not ones that would fit any earthly bolts. A metal grating that would have been at home in a factory covered the floor, overlaying smaller square panels like a carpet. It rattled under their boots and Reel’s heavy claws, providing a metallic counterpoint to her voice as they went.

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“We have a cluster of satellites over the planet right now.” Reel explained as they reached the cockpit. Konrad glanced at von Braun and saw his eye twitch at that casual statement. Putting even one object into orbit would be a tremendous coup for him; they were still struggling to reach Britain, let alone outer space. Reel put her hand on a small pad on the wall, and the door to the cockpit slid open, drawing back into the walls. “The computer has a program that lets it compare the radio signals the satellites pick up, and it uses the differences in timing to identify where on the surface the signal originated from. But unless multiple satellites receive the signal, the program can’t locate it.”

Konrad traded a glance with Lusser and von Braun. She was talking about triangulation, but she didn’t seem to really understand how it worked. Von Braun cleared his throat.

“But with all the thousands of signals out there, wasn’t it hard to keep track of them all?”

“Oh,” she said, waving a hand through the air. “The computer handles that side of it.”

The computer again, Konrad thought to himself. Was there anything that it couldn’t do? It seemed like the answer to every other one of their questions was “the computer did it”, and she accepted that as being as good as mathematical proof. Then again, he mused, isn’t that exactly what it is?

The cockpit sported four broad chairs with cutouts for their occupants’ tails, and ample space to move between them. The chairs faced the sprawling cockpit window, with a minimal set of controls in front of them. A pair of control sticks, a few buttons, nothing more. Reel stepped up between the chairs and swiped her hand across the window screen.

It came alight behind her fingers, the entire expanse of the cockpit viewscreen glowing with symbols and luminous script. She brushed at it, tapping one symbol, and then another as soon as it came up. The screen cleared, and then filled again, blocking out the view of the landing strip.

Konrad gasped. Germany lay before him, like a picture taken from miles above. Clouds, mountains, rivers, and the cities all stood out as clear as day. More, as Reel put her hands out and made a pulling motion, the view tightened, drawing down on the coastline of Peenemunde. The point of the checkered rocket in the common stood out, and even the shadows of individual people lay stretched across the ground. A bright dot stood out on their radio room, and when Reel tapped it, it disgorged lines of alien text.

She pointed to it happily. “That’s your radio station, right there. The computer tracks when you usually broadcast, the language it’s in, the frequency, and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

They stared at it. Gaped at it, even. Konrad tried and failed to keep the lust off his face. Here was proof, as if they needed more, that he’d been right. Von Braun had to cough and clear his throat before he could speak, his voice carefully level.

“The detail is…Remarkable. Did you track other radio transmissions like this?”

“Yup!” She made a pushing gesture, and the view drew out until they were looking at all of Europe. Dots blinked into existence across the whole continent, thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. “All the stationary ones, anyway.”

Lusser closed his mouth with an effort, swallowing loudly. “Do you think we could get a copy of this?”

…

Reel

Reel wasn’t sure why the humans were so excited about the mapped radio signals, but she was happy to help. Of course, being in Efreet made it somewhat less useful, so she suggested that they teach the computer the German written language first. That had earned her another round of stares that she read as being somewhere between shock and delight, which only grew more intense when she explained that all they’d need was a copy of a book.

The cockpit grew crowded and noisy with humans. Three technicians that she thought must be subordinate to von Braun and Lusser were grouped around the main viewscreen, two of them arguing with each other and pointing to various radio sites. They had laid claim to the two front chairs, leaving the third and shortest of them to squat between them. He was reading a book aloud, pausing after every page to feed the next page into the computer through a camera lens. Reel had worried that it would take at least as long to teach the computer the written German language as it had the spoken, but that turned out not to be the case. Beneath the Efreet symbols, the computer was already starting to fill in human words where it was sure of them.

Von Braun leaned over to her. “I know I’ve said it already, but we can’t thank you enough for this. We’ve been trying to get a good sense for where radio transmitters are distributed for more than a year.”

He had said it several times already, but that didn’t stop a flush of warm pleasure at the words. Stars, it felt good to be appreciated! “You’re welcome, Doctor von Braun.” He’d encouraged her to call him “Wernher”, but everyone else present called him Doctor, so she did too. “Thank you for supplying some written works to help the computer learn how you record your language!”

He waved that away, smiling broadly. “Not at all. Mein Kampf seemed an obvious choice…you must take a copy with you, when you go. For now, I think we can leave the technicians to their work, yes?”

I’ll have to read that at some point, she thought to herself. She hadn’t been listening closely while the technicians read, but what she had caught sounded…intense. A very different tone from the dry instruction manuals she’d seen on Old Bug. Shaking herself, she brushed off the vague sense of unease that the few words she’d caught left her with.

Reel led the way back out of the ship. Outside, the sky was lightening, the black of the night leaching out of it. She knew from the simulations that on planets, rather than lights being on a set timer, rest and work periods were marked by the rotations of the planet itself. As it spun on its axis, the planet’s star would appear to rise over the horizon, marking a new day.

Von Braun turned towards that light, stretching his arms as if to embrace it. “It’s going to be a wonderful day, Reel.” He waved for Konrad and Lusser to come over from where they were examining the transmission unit. “Now, can you tell us,” he asked as they joined him. “what it is that you hope to trade for or buy from us?”

Reel paused for a moment, considering. Captain Arcturus had wanted to have that conversation with them himself, she knew. But until the condenser collected enough Dark Fluid to run the transmitter, that wasn’t going to happen. She could ask the humans to wait, but that might mean a week or two of doing nothing. If she just told them, they could maybe get started right away.

Decision firmed. The captain would be annoyed with her, but he was halfway across the solar system. “We have something we’d like you to build for us. We need small computers that can integrate directly with our brains.” Saying it out loud made her implant itch, but she pressed on, pointing to the device and tilting her head to show them. “They need to be capable of communicating with a central computer, and of broadcasting through a transmission unit like the one I was going to leave here. They should be capable of storing a large amount of information, and bringing it readily to the mind of the user. And,” She said with sudden inspiration. “We need the designs for them, so that we can manufacture them ourselves later on.”

Konrad’s eyes grew wider and wider as she spoke, and his mouth opened and closed like a broken valve, though no sound came out. Lusser’s eyes had gone a little round too, but he just nodded, his gaze fixed on her head. “So that’s what that is.” He muttered.

Von Braun smiled at her. “We can do that.” Konrad squeaked and jerked his head around to stare at von Braun. “I’m putting Konrad in charge of development, effective now. He’s our best when it comes to this sort of work.” The squeak choked off into a strangled squawk, and Konrad’s face paled three shades lighter. Von Braun turned and grabbed the man by the shoulder, shaking him a little bit and grinning. “He’s not saying much, but he’s thrilled with the opportunity.”

Reel thought he must be, judging by that reaction. For her own part, she felt a rush of relief. If they hadn’t been able or willing to do it, that would have ended everything right there and she would have had to return empty handed. She smiled back at him, a big wide grin that showed off all of her teeth. “What would you like in return?”

Von Braun answered at once. “We’d like to see how your ship works. The engines, the computers, the communication equipment, all of it. Any parts you can spare, and your presence and expertise for the work on the development of the…implantable computers?” He made the last a question.

She nodded. “We just call them implants. But what do you need me for?”

He gestured to the ship. “You know all of this technology from years of use, and you can help guide us as we develop the implant to make sure it meets your needs. Besides, you strike me as intelligent and inventive; you’d be a huge help to us.”

Her chest swelled with pride at the compliment. “It’s a deal. You’ll have me for as long as you need me, and my Captain will just have to deal with my absence. How do you affirm a contract here?”

In answer, he stepped forward and offered his hand up again. She took it and shook it, like she’d done when he had greeted her. His hand was warm and smooth under her scales, with a surprising strength in the grip for something so small. He pumped her hand up and down and then let it go, and a couple of the watching scientists patted their hands together, making slapping noises that she took for approval.

She couldn’t believe how easy it had all been. She’d just secured the promise of everything they’d come here for, in only a day! The hardest part of all of this would be telling the captain about it.