Walking on egg shells
"Hi there. Welcome to Sentry."
The man looked up from his glass of water, and then back down again. "Is that what you're calling it these days? I thought it was G.E.M.S."
Jared Owens sat down across from the younger man, stretching out his bad leg as he did so. "Nah, we got rid of the Gemini Mining Station name almost as soon as we got here. Just didn't see fit to let anybody else know." He paused, examining the newcomer. This might be delicate. Best to get the small stuff out of the way first. "So, where are you and your crew from?"
"Caspera Colony. What I want to know is, why the hell are we here? And who are you, anyway?" He was feeling kind of cranky, evidently.
Jared tried to keep a smile on his face, but he could tell this was going to be difficult. He just hoped this guy wasn’t going to get violent. Some of them did. “You were promised a briefing when you came aboard. I'm here to give you that briefing." He put out his hand. "Jared Owens. They tell me I'm in charge around here."
"Yin Morrow." He shook Jared's hand, and then paused, still holding it. "Why is that name familiar?"
Jared winked and squeezed his hand. "I'm older than I look, and I am familiar with the use of mirrors - I look pretty old. I was one of the first people out here. Specifically, out here at Sentry."
Yin's eyes widened and a smile started playing at the corners of his mouth. "Oh wow! First generation traveler, huh? I had no idea. I guess you guys have dropped all the military trappings here, huh?"
"Oh, long ago. We decided we'd do things democratically. I started off in charge because I was in charge when we left, but there's been plenty of turn-over since then. This will probably be my last cycle in politics, though."
"Yeah, the founders of Caspera did something pretty similar." That little smile started to fade pretty fast, Jared noted. "But, nice as it is to meet you, I'm not really supposed to be here. I've got biological samples, colony status updates, all kinds of things we were taking back to Earth. We’re supposed to check in every five years, but we actually missed the last one, and...”
"And then your worm took a wrong turn, and we insisted you unhitch and come on over here. That sound about right?"
"Yeah, basically." He stared out the bulkhead window, obviously worried.
"You want to be back out there, waiting for your worm to get on with its typical feeding pattern. Is that also right?"
"I didn't really want to take the chance that Fafnir would decide to take off without us."
Jared smiled at that. So, these were some of the ones who named their transport. Maybe this would be easier than he'd thought. “If your Fafnir shows any sign of doing that, I’ll be more than happy to let you go, Mister Morrow. But I’ve seen a lot of this, and I have to warn you that you might be here for the long haul.”
Yin pinched the bridge of his nose. “But our hitchship was more than able to keep us while we wait. I don’t understand your insistence that we leave Fafnir.”
“You were born on Caspera, weren’t you?”
The apparent change in subject took Yin by surprise. He sat up a little straighter when he answered. “Yes, I was. And you… you were actually born on Earth, weren’t you?”
“The one and only. We got crew rotations fairly regularly here for a while, but I always stayed on. The other old-timers like myself who stayed here on Sentry have since passed on. There are a few younger folks who’ve come from Earth or been to Earth a few times, but none of you were around when the worms were first spotted.”
“You must have been just a kid, though, right? There’s no way you’re that old.”
Jared laughed. “Yeah, I’m not that old. But I still remember it anyway. Fourth of July, and my mom and I were stuck in traffic on the way back from seeing the fireworks. Everything smelled like bug spray, and I was hyped up on popsicles and explosions. The radio was nattering on, and my mom almost changed it. She didn’t though, and we spent the whole ride back just imagining what this ‘amazing object’ could be. We got home and saw the pictures, those first blurry smears. Even though that first worm was nearly twelve kilometers long, it still looked just like one of the worms I’d see sometimes on the sidewalk after a rain. Its feeding plates weren’t up yet, of course.” He paused in his story. He’d done a pretty good job distracting the younger fellow but it wouldn’t be too much longer before he remembered what he was so cross about. “You don’t think they’re machines, do you?”
The question took Yin by surprise. “What? No, no of course not. I mean, their composition is strange. There’s no sign of DNA or anything, but it’s awfully hard to get at the guts of a worm. The information we’ve got back home says that they’re silicon and ammonia based, and I see no reason to doubt it. The plates are clearly for absorbing radiation. That’s standard accepted theory, isn’t it?”
“So far as I know, but some people insist that the worms were built, that they’re made things and not really alive. I wanted to know where you stood on the issue.” Yin nodded, frowning. Before he could speak again, Jared started spinning his old-man-back-in-the-day story, as he liked to think of it. “That was what everyone thought when the worms were first spotted. That they were giant space ships, or maybe giant robots. Something like that. Sure, they were solar powered, but that’s a sensible model out in space.
“Thing is, we never really stopped treating them like they were mechanical, despite the fact that there was really no evidence for it. I mean, you can’t really control where an animal that size goes. Once they open a wormhole, you’re pretty much just along for the ride and you’d best enjoy it. Take your situation, for instance. You were expecting to end up at Earth, and you’re here instead.”
Yin frowned and gestured at the construction outside the window. “And it looks like a whole lot of other people have been stranded here, too. But I don’t think I agree that we were treating the worms like machines. It’s true we don’t know how to entice them - other than inducing solar flares and hoping they like the taste of them, and that’s a tricky proposition most of the time - but the hitchships were engineered specifically to do no damage to the absorption plates. We’re not sawing the plates off or ‘upgrading’ them or anything.”
“That was certainly considered, back in the day. There was talk of capturing a worm, of killing one and taking it apart to see what made it tick, all sorts of things. But any attempt to break off an absorption plate - even in its extended position - proved incredibly difficult. You’ve probably never seen them, because most of the time the worms don’t have cause to extend them, but there are tendrils that line the entire body of the worms, underneath the plates. They whip out and knock clear anything which starts sawing or pounding on the plates. That’s why the hitchships are so gentle, and why they hook onto the back end, where they’ll interfere the least with absorption. That, and it’s the place the ship is least likely to get thrown clear when the worms start tunneling.”
Yin sighed. “So, there haven’t been any advances out this way in controlling or steering the worms? We found at home that we could reliably get Fafnir to move elsewhere by blocking his absorption plates - no food, and he moves somewhere else, and usually the next stop on the solar feed trough is Sol.”
“No, we haven’t found anything like that. But we weren’t really looking, either. We knew we weren’t going anywhere when we built the station here. Our purpose was mining. We’d send things elsewhere, just hitch up a ship on a worm and cross our fingers that it would end up somewhere useful, but that’s the entire model of using these things. So far as I know, nobody at home’s had any luck learning to steer them, OR opening holes without a worm, OR sustaining a hole. You’ve got to stick close to a worm to go through a hole, and the damned things are bound to collapse behind you. That’s just how it is.”
Yin sighed and then narrowed his eyes. “How much mining are you guys doing these days, anyway? I didn’t notice any activity on the asteroid belt at all when we arrived. Did you stop because the worms are coming rather than going?”
Jared waved a hand. “Oh we stopped all that about sixteen years ago. We sent word out as much as we could, but, well, it was kind of a pot-shot as to who got the message and when. Obviously, you folks over at Caspera didn’t. Earth did, though. We actually managed to get back a response from them - another worm passing through, and they hitched up some extra supplies for us and some messages. They didn’t mention any advances in worm physiology studies or anything, though.”
“With all the people ending up here, I think you’d be in need of the resources from the asteroids. They’re incredibly rich, aren’t they?”
“Oh absolutely. This belt is the motherlode.” He laughed, a little bitterly. “And we mined out more than half of it before we stopped. A lot of those resources we sent back out, when the worms were still moving, but much of it we refined and used here, making improvements to the station.” He examined the younger man, trying to come to a decision. He’d have to stop tiptoeing around and just get to the point eventually, no matter how little he liked this part.
“So you stopped mining the asteroid belt. Is that related to the worms coming here and not going elsewhere?” He was intent on getting his answers. Maybe it was time to give them to him.
Jared nodded and said “I’m afraid so.” He felt the old familiar sadness settling on him. He licked his lips, and Yin leaned forward across the little table.
“Come on, Mr. Owens. Out with it. You do know more about worm behavior than you’re letting on. You’ve been preparing for people to be stuck here - adding to your station, you said.”
He interrupted. “That was standard operating procedure, not…”
“Sure it was. But you kept on doing it above and beyond the specs for this place. This wasn’t meant to be a permanent habitation. And you seem awfully sure that Fafnir’s not going anywhere anytime soon. What are you holding back, and why don’t you want to tell me?”
It was Jared’s turn to sigh now. So much for breaking the news gently. “We were super efficient when we got out here. One of Earth’s first priorities was establishing remote stations and acquiring data and resources. This asteroid belt was one of the first places we discovered traveling via hitchships, and it seemed ideal for both data and resources. We went through those rocks out there, those beautiful super-rich rocks, like you wouldn’t believe. And then we finally figured out where they came from.”
He took a deep breath, looked down at his fingers gripping the edge of the little table, and slowly exhaled. “They’re eggs. They’re worm eggs.” He looked back at Yin and made eye contact, hoping somehow to convey his regret and sincerity. “For all we know, this nesting site is the only one, and we destroyed half the future of the species we are completely and totally reliant on for moving around out here. No worms, no wormholes. I’m pretty damn sure nobody back on Earth has figured out how to emulate tunneling, or there’d be someone here right now.”
Jared Owens wiped away his tears. He had to get the rest out, had to finish what he’d started. “We figured it out partially because of worm behavior. They showed up and started circling the… the asteroids. The eggs. They were tapping on them, turning them. And they got more and more frantic until they found the ones we hadn’t mined yet. They came across some of our equipment out there, and I saw firsthand that they protect their young - those tendrils under the feeding plates are stronger and faster than you can imagine. We lost three people, and I nearly lost my leg.” He swallowed. “Compared to the losses they’ve suffered, that’s small change, though.
“Good news is, we seem to have anecdotal evidence at least that worms communicate with each other,” he said, gesturing out the window. “I mean, there they are, gathering in this place. Guarding the nest against us egg-sucking mammals. Bad news is, we haven’t figured out how they’re communicating. Even worse news is a good third of the eggs remaining don’t seem to be viable. Or at least, that’s how the worms are treating them. They’ve sorted them out. Or maybe they just have a longer gestational period, or… I have no idea. We still haven’t seen the worms produce any eggs, which is damned worrying.”
Yin was almost speechless. His voice was a whisper. “How… how could we have missed this?”
“We knew nothing about this animal’s life cycle when we started using it as transport between the stars. And we still don’t, honestly. We’ve still never seen any of their young. For all we know, the worms are an intermediate stage, and they’ll change into something else altogether eventually. It’s a problem of scale. We look out and see huge rocks floating in space. Maybe we needed more of those blurry photographs, like in the old days, to remind us. Worms lay eggs.
"Anyway, that’s no excuse. We should have spotted it - the distribution of rich and rare minerals in the center of the asteroids, the concentration of silicon… but we didn’t. Specifically, I didn’t. Which is why I’m in charge of Sentry again, after all these years. I’m atoning for my sins, you might say.”
He stood up, carefully. “And though I was in charge of the Gemini Mining Station back in the day, this isn’t all on my shoulders. We all made the mistake of thinking the worms were there for us - to take us where we wanted to go, to show us the wonders of the galaxy. Oh, we’d figure out how to control them, how to steer them eventually. They were only dumb animals, after all. Well, it’s our turn to be there for them. We got word from Earth, like I said - this place is now officially a protected worm sanctuary, and we’re its guardians. You’ll stay here, and you’ll help guard the nest. None of us are going anywhere until there’s a hatching anyway, I suspect.”
He turned to go, feeling completely worn out. This was always harder than he expected. “Mister Owens. Wait.” He turned back. “Whatever we can do to help, just let us know.”
Jared managed a smile. “Count on it, kid.”
The man looked up from his glass of water, and then back down again. "Is that what you're calling it these days? I thought it was G.E.M.S."
Jared Owens sat down across from the younger man, stretching out his bad leg as he did so. "Nah, we got rid of the Gemini Mining Station name almost as soon as we got here. Just didn't see fit to let anybody else know." He paused, examining the newcomer. This might be delicate. Best to get the small stuff out of the way first. "So, where are you and your crew from?"
"Caspera Colony. What I want to know is, why the hell are we here? And who are you, anyway?" He was feeling kind of cranky, evidently.
Jared tried to keep a smile on his face, but he could tell this was going to be difficult. He just hoped this guy wasn’t going to get violent. Some of them did. “You were promised a briefing when you came aboard. I'm here to give you that briefing." He put out his hand. "Jared Owens. They tell me I'm in charge around here."
"Yin Morrow." He shook Jared's hand, and then paused, still holding it. "Why is that name familiar?"
Jared winked and squeezed his hand. "I'm older than I look, and I am familiar with the use of mirrors - I look pretty old. I was one of the first people out here. Specifically, out here at Sentry."
Yin's eyes widened and a smile started playing at the corners of his mouth. "Oh wow! First generation traveler, huh? I had no idea. I guess you guys have dropped all the military trappings here, huh?"
"Oh, long ago. We decided we'd do things democratically. I started off in charge because I was in charge when we left, but there's been plenty of turn-over since then. This will probably be my last cycle in politics, though."
"Yeah, the founders of Caspera did something pretty similar." That little smile started to fade pretty fast, Jared noted. "But, nice as it is to meet you, I'm not really supposed to be here. I've got biological samples, colony status updates, all kinds of things we were taking back to Earth. We’re supposed to check in every five years, but we actually missed the last one, and...”
"And then your worm took a wrong turn, and we insisted you unhitch and come on over here. That sound about right?"
"Yeah, basically." He stared out the bulkhead window, obviously worried.
"You want to be back out there, waiting for your worm to get on with its typical feeding pattern. Is that also right?"
"I didn't really want to take the chance that Fafnir would decide to take off without us."
Jared smiled at that. So, these were some of the ones who named their transport. Maybe this would be easier than he'd thought. “If your Fafnir shows any sign of doing that, I’ll be more than happy to let you go, Mister Morrow. But I’ve seen a lot of this, and I have to warn you that you might be here for the long haul.”
Yin pinched the bridge of his nose. “But our hitchship was more than able to keep us while we wait. I don’t understand your insistence that we leave Fafnir.”
“You were born on Caspera, weren’t you?”
The apparent change in subject took Yin by surprise. He sat up a little straighter when he answered. “Yes, I was. And you… you were actually born on Earth, weren’t you?”
“The one and only. We got crew rotations fairly regularly here for a while, but I always stayed on. The other old-timers like myself who stayed here on Sentry have since passed on. There are a few younger folks who’ve come from Earth or been to Earth a few times, but none of you were around when the worms were first spotted.”
“You must have been just a kid, though, right? There’s no way you’re that old.”
Jared laughed. “Yeah, I’m not that old. But I still remember it anyway. Fourth of July, and my mom and I were stuck in traffic on the way back from seeing the fireworks. Everything smelled like bug spray, and I was hyped up on popsicles and explosions. The radio was nattering on, and my mom almost changed it. She didn’t though, and we spent the whole ride back just imagining what this ‘amazing object’ could be. We got home and saw the pictures, those first blurry smears. Even though that first worm was nearly twelve kilometers long, it still looked just like one of the worms I’d see sometimes on the sidewalk after a rain. Its feeding plates weren’t up yet, of course.” He paused in his story. He’d done a pretty good job distracting the younger fellow but it wouldn’t be too much longer before he remembered what he was so cross about. “You don’t think they’re machines, do you?”
The question took Yin by surprise. “What? No, no of course not. I mean, their composition is strange. There’s no sign of DNA or anything, but it’s awfully hard to get at the guts of a worm. The information we’ve got back home says that they’re silicon and ammonia based, and I see no reason to doubt it. The plates are clearly for absorbing radiation. That’s standard accepted theory, isn’t it?”
“So far as I know, but some people insist that the worms were built, that they’re made things and not really alive. I wanted to know where you stood on the issue.” Yin nodded, frowning. Before he could speak again, Jared started spinning his old-man-back-in-the-day story, as he liked to think of it. “That was what everyone thought when the worms were first spotted. That they were giant space ships, or maybe giant robots. Something like that. Sure, they were solar powered, but that’s a sensible model out in space.
“Thing is, we never really stopped treating them like they were mechanical, despite the fact that there was really no evidence for it. I mean, you can’t really control where an animal that size goes. Once they open a wormhole, you’re pretty much just along for the ride and you’d best enjoy it. Take your situation, for instance. You were expecting to end up at Earth, and you’re here instead.”
Yin frowned and gestured at the construction outside the window. “And it looks like a whole lot of other people have been stranded here, too. But I don’t think I agree that we were treating the worms like machines. It’s true we don’t know how to entice them - other than inducing solar flares and hoping they like the taste of them, and that’s a tricky proposition most of the time - but the hitchships were engineered specifically to do no damage to the absorption plates. We’re not sawing the plates off or ‘upgrading’ them or anything.”
“That was certainly considered, back in the day. There was talk of capturing a worm, of killing one and taking it apart to see what made it tick, all sorts of things. But any attempt to break off an absorption plate - even in its extended position - proved incredibly difficult. You’ve probably never seen them, because most of the time the worms don’t have cause to extend them, but there are tendrils that line the entire body of the worms, underneath the plates. They whip out and knock clear anything which starts sawing or pounding on the plates. That’s why the hitchships are so gentle, and why they hook onto the back end, where they’ll interfere the least with absorption. That, and it’s the place the ship is least likely to get thrown clear when the worms start tunneling.”
Yin sighed. “So, there haven’t been any advances out this way in controlling or steering the worms? We found at home that we could reliably get Fafnir to move elsewhere by blocking his absorption plates - no food, and he moves somewhere else, and usually the next stop on the solar feed trough is Sol.”
“No, we haven’t found anything like that. But we weren’t really looking, either. We knew we weren’t going anywhere when we built the station here. Our purpose was mining. We’d send things elsewhere, just hitch up a ship on a worm and cross our fingers that it would end up somewhere useful, but that’s the entire model of using these things. So far as I know, nobody at home’s had any luck learning to steer them, OR opening holes without a worm, OR sustaining a hole. You’ve got to stick close to a worm to go through a hole, and the damned things are bound to collapse behind you. That’s just how it is.”
Yin sighed and then narrowed his eyes. “How much mining are you guys doing these days, anyway? I didn’t notice any activity on the asteroid belt at all when we arrived. Did you stop because the worms are coming rather than going?”
Jared waved a hand. “Oh we stopped all that about sixteen years ago. We sent word out as much as we could, but, well, it was kind of a pot-shot as to who got the message and when. Obviously, you folks over at Caspera didn’t. Earth did, though. We actually managed to get back a response from them - another worm passing through, and they hitched up some extra supplies for us and some messages. They didn’t mention any advances in worm physiology studies or anything, though.”
“With all the people ending up here, I think you’d be in need of the resources from the asteroids. They’re incredibly rich, aren’t they?”
“Oh absolutely. This belt is the motherlode.” He laughed, a little bitterly. “And we mined out more than half of it before we stopped. A lot of those resources we sent back out, when the worms were still moving, but much of it we refined and used here, making improvements to the station.” He examined the younger man, trying to come to a decision. He’d have to stop tiptoeing around and just get to the point eventually, no matter how little he liked this part.
“So you stopped mining the asteroid belt. Is that related to the worms coming here and not going elsewhere?” He was intent on getting his answers. Maybe it was time to give them to him.
Jared nodded and said “I’m afraid so.” He felt the old familiar sadness settling on him. He licked his lips, and Yin leaned forward across the little table.
“Come on, Mr. Owens. Out with it. You do know more about worm behavior than you’re letting on. You’ve been preparing for people to be stuck here - adding to your station, you said.”
He interrupted. “That was standard operating procedure, not…”
“Sure it was. But you kept on doing it above and beyond the specs for this place. This wasn’t meant to be a permanent habitation. And you seem awfully sure that Fafnir’s not going anywhere anytime soon. What are you holding back, and why don’t you want to tell me?”
It was Jared’s turn to sigh now. So much for breaking the news gently. “We were super efficient when we got out here. One of Earth’s first priorities was establishing remote stations and acquiring data and resources. This asteroid belt was one of the first places we discovered traveling via hitchships, and it seemed ideal for both data and resources. We went through those rocks out there, those beautiful super-rich rocks, like you wouldn’t believe. And then we finally figured out where they came from.”
He took a deep breath, looked down at his fingers gripping the edge of the little table, and slowly exhaled. “They’re eggs. They’re worm eggs.” He looked back at Yin and made eye contact, hoping somehow to convey his regret and sincerity. “For all we know, this nesting site is the only one, and we destroyed half the future of the species we are completely and totally reliant on for moving around out here. No worms, no wormholes. I’m pretty damn sure nobody back on Earth has figured out how to emulate tunneling, or there’d be someone here right now.”
Jared Owens wiped away his tears. He had to get the rest out, had to finish what he’d started. “We figured it out partially because of worm behavior. They showed up and started circling the… the asteroids. The eggs. They were tapping on them, turning them. And they got more and more frantic until they found the ones we hadn’t mined yet. They came across some of our equipment out there, and I saw firsthand that they protect their young - those tendrils under the feeding plates are stronger and faster than you can imagine. We lost three people, and I nearly lost my leg.” He swallowed. “Compared to the losses they’ve suffered, that’s small change, though.
“Good news is, we seem to have anecdotal evidence at least that worms communicate with each other,” he said, gesturing out the window. “I mean, there they are, gathering in this place. Guarding the nest against us egg-sucking mammals. Bad news is, we haven’t figured out how they’re communicating. Even worse news is a good third of the eggs remaining don’t seem to be viable. Or at least, that’s how the worms are treating them. They’ve sorted them out. Or maybe they just have a longer gestational period, or… I have no idea. We still haven’t seen the worms produce any eggs, which is damned worrying.”
Yin was almost speechless. His voice was a whisper. “How… how could we have missed this?”
“We knew nothing about this animal’s life cycle when we started using it as transport between the stars. And we still don’t, honestly. We’ve still never seen any of their young. For all we know, the worms are an intermediate stage, and they’ll change into something else altogether eventually. It’s a problem of scale. We look out and see huge rocks floating in space. Maybe we needed more of those blurry photographs, like in the old days, to remind us. Worms lay eggs.
"Anyway, that’s no excuse. We should have spotted it - the distribution of rich and rare minerals in the center of the asteroids, the concentration of silicon… but we didn’t. Specifically, I didn’t. Which is why I’m in charge of Sentry again, after all these years. I’m atoning for my sins, you might say.”
He stood up, carefully. “And though I was in charge of the Gemini Mining Station back in the day, this isn’t all on my shoulders. We all made the mistake of thinking the worms were there for us - to take us where we wanted to go, to show us the wonders of the galaxy. Oh, we’d figure out how to control them, how to steer them eventually. They were only dumb animals, after all. Well, it’s our turn to be there for them. We got word from Earth, like I said - this place is now officially a protected worm sanctuary, and we’re its guardians. You’ll stay here, and you’ll help guard the nest. None of us are going anywhere until there’s a hatching anyway, I suspect.”
He turned to go, feeling completely worn out. This was always harder than he expected. “Mister Owens. Wait.” He turned back. “Whatever we can do to help, just let us know.”
Jared managed a smile. “Count on it, kid.”