Shackleton's Folly

By Todd Yunker

Alec Shackleton shoulders the quest to redeem his father’s honor and save the human race from extinction. With a dwindling population, his last chance is to solve the riddle surrounding the legend of a lost tribe.

With help from an alien android partner named Dancer, and the mysterious slave girl Electra, Alec must gather the clues to an eleven-thousand-year-old mystery.

A warring race claims manifest destiny and dons the mantle of empire as the galaxy burns in the void’s stillness. Alec is prepared to sacrifice those he loves to save the human species.

From the mind of the award-winning author Todd Yunker comes a thrilling, page-turning epic science fiction adventure where myth and legend collide. Shackleton's Folly is the first book in the Lost Wonders saga. If you like gripping action, thrilling space adventure, intriguing characters and a touch of romance, you’ll order Todd Yunker’s series starter for your collection.

Buy Shackleton's Folly to blast off on an epic space adventure today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Todd Yunker
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310987403

Todd Yunker

Todd Yunker is Oregonian and is Salem, Oregon. Todd is an award-winning author of the epic science fiction The Lost Wonder Series, book one Shackleton’s Folly. Growing up, Sci-Fi permeated Todd’s youth and adolescence. He was an avid reader. He devoured all the books he could find in the library. Todd relished classic Sci-Fi feature films and Japanese monster movies. He indulged his fancy and watched swashbuckler movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s influenced his vision of adventure. The raw cynical attitudes and sexual motivations of Film noir influenced his grasp of story over fluff. Todd’s study of storytelling brought him to Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Christopher Vogler’s The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. This profound understanding of storytelling has advanced the quality of his work. He would like to know the why don’t we have our flying cars?

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

Sir Raymond Priestley (1886 - 1974)

The thick, luscious, life-affirming green jungle canopy below was coming up fast when the faster-than-light ship changed course and pulled out of the hurtling dive. The space yacht Quest hugged the terrain at an altitude of no more than a hundred meters. The ship’s mirrored skin added an extra hint of orange to the green blur of treetops decelerating across it upon its approach to the ancient, desolate capital city of Daltron-6. Its hull was a design favored by those who valued elegance and speed, knowledge and cunning, over sheer brute force.

An emergent layer of trees dotted the jungle canopy, adding a topographical richness to the biosphere. The planetary rings of glittering silver arched their starlight-enhanced beauty above a titanic, black-onyx pyramid. The abandoned city surrounded the massive pyramid, with scavenger-ravaged skyscrapers of colored crystal poking high through the jungle vegetation. The black pyramid dwarfed even the tallest of the skyscrapers, its form casting a shadow over the ravaged capital.

The Quest spiraled into the city’s core, its sensors scanning for danger. The ship eased to a stop, hovering over a clearing. The landing gear appeared, and the exhaust toppled plants and scattered the small, honey-brown ferret-like creatures that populated the single piece of granite that made up the city square. The yacht slowly sank toward it. The roar of the engines cut out as the magnetic landing struts compressed, taking on the added weight as it settled dirt-side.

The portside hatch slid aside, replaced by the airlock’s shimmering force field, as Captain Ernest Alec Shackleton strode through the hatch. Alec stopped a meter from the yacht. He closed his tired, dry eyes as he sucked in the baked, humid air of the planet. It permeated his nostrils and tasted like hothouse mulch.

The getup he wore was straight out of the adventure movies he loved while he was growing up. From the stone-colored, short-sleeved Safari shirt down to the dark, earthy-brown desert boots, he wanted to be larger than life. It was as much a statement to the galaxy as was his ship, the Quest. He would not go quietly into the night, and neither would the human race, if he could help it.

Life being as it was, Alec was wearing the weight of humanity’s future on his shoulders — a broad, muscular pair that matched his 36-year-old, lean, 180-centimeter rower’s build. Alec flexed his hardened hands and then raked back his trimmed auburn hair. He pulled his Oregon State University belt buckle into place. It was a classic from Earth, handed down by his father, who had received it from his father, and so on. He wore it as a reminder of where he came from and to remember the planet now 38 years gone.

Alec stretched his neck before he pushed a lustrous silver wrist bracer over his forearm, slung an olive-green canvas equipment satchel over his shoulder, and began to walk the perimeter of the ship. He inspected its surface and stopped to flick a bug from the mirror-like skin of the ship.

Dancer stepped through the force-field shimmer, his cobalt-blue, alien-android-centaur body absorbing the sunlight. He stretched, from the pads of his four feet to his twenty-four tentacles. His extremities looked like a Leonardo Da Vinci anatomical sketch of muscles, but he moved with, stretched with — and was filled with — a different kind of life. The tentacles bundled themselves into four arm-like structures, two on each side of Dancer’s torso, with shoulders, elbows, and the six ends making up the digits of each hand.

Alec nodded to the sky as he turned to Dancer and said dryly, The battle up there won’t last long. He pulled out the well-used black datapad from his equipment satchel and tapped the app to life, scanning the area. The Koty will be here soon. There was a touch of concern in his voice as he put his finger on the datapad’s surface and flicked through the applications until he found his notes.

Dancer pulled his datapad from a utility belt slung across his chest; its burnt sienna color complemented the vibrant blue of his tentacles. Where was I? he asked playfully. Oh yeah, the game ended up being called the ‘The Toilet Bowl’ because it was so bad — the last NCAA game allowed to end in a tie.

Alec covered the distance between them in two steps and went nose-to-nose with Dancer. "It was a crappy civil-war football game played a long time ago. Why do you try to provoke me?" he said, with the irritation plain on his face.

Dancer stood his ground, as twigs crackled underfoot, and challenged, Why do you continue to do this?

Alec’s eyes drifted skyward. He took a deep breath and held it. He slowly released it, turned, and walked away. We aren’t going to get another shot — this is the last good lead we have. He paused and then added, The inscription piece has to be in there, or we’re dead. Alec smiled faintly and said reassuringly, Come on, partner.

You need to get out more and work on your social skills, replied Dancer. It can’t be healthy for you to abstain from being with your own kind.

Alec said with a pained smile, It’s not like I’m going to find a date way out here.

Dancer followed as Alec walked out of the city square onto a paved boulevard. Alec flicked to another app and held his datapad up in front of him. It magnified the terrain, surveyed the distance, highlighted trees and creatures, and passed directions across the bottom of the screen. The jungle had taken back most of the city. The great drill trees rose hundreds of meters; their aerial prop root systems broke through what was once only a crack in the gray pavement. The calls of the planet’s avian population rang around them from the large, open branches above. Thousands of years of planetary pillage and random destruction in the city had given the edge to the jungle in its reclaiming of the city, the plant life growing up the buildings’ aged and compromised exterior walls of the buildings to heights concealed by the jungle canopy.

Alec and Dancer headed northward, toward the blackness of the pyramid that filled what sky they could see through the tree canopy. They arrived at the boulevard’s end and stood in awe of the Central Pyramid rising to the heavens at a height of 700 meters; its base covered 1.2 square kilometers and had lifted the first casing stone eight meters off the ground. That pyramid is a storehouse of the best this world could offer in the visual arts, literature, and knowledge, Alec said enthusiastically as he nodded to Dancer. "Let’s keep an eye out for anything we can use to upgrade the Quest."

They crossed the street to the pyramid. Alec touched the wall’s cool, polished surface gently. He could see the surface of the material changing. The wall panel sensed their presence and retrieved data for display. It shimmered momentarily, and then alien glyphs appeared. Alec raised his datapad and called up a file with old video scenes of an archaeological dig.

The resemblance to the glyphs discovered on Earth is too uncanny. They must have the same origins, but, if so, then how did it get 10,000 light years away to Earth 11,000 years ago? He paused. Humans were incapable of leaving Earth, so an alien race must have visited. Alec looked at Dancer, his excitement building, and continued. My theory, based on the research done by a number of leading scholars on the First Ones’ language, is that this wall is communicating with us. The papers I have read on linguistic archaeology are truly fascinating.

We’ve confirmed your father’s theory that this language belonged to a race of people who had been to Earth and were connected to your race in some manner, Dancer replied, in earnest. Jack Shackleton was a great research librarian and archaeologist. His theory regarding this language, he said, pointing to the wall, was that it was alien; it predated the Sumerian written language on Earth by five thousand years. This is the proof. He tapped on the wall twice with his datapad. You followed in your father’s footsteps, and we have proven the visitation to Earth by an alien race. Dancer added sympathetically, His belief in alien visitation was not folly.

Alec walked toward the corner as Dancer followed. The alien glyphs kept up with them, changing their form and pattern every three seconds. The times were different back when my father was still on Earth. I’m curious about many subjects, said Alec, as he flicked confidently through the apps on the datapad. My father believed these were not only the same language — he theorized that this writing was Old Empire. First Ones. He read the screen intently. I found nothing in the literature about the Old Empire’s territory including Earth. Alec stroked the screen of his datapad until he found what he was looking for and tapped it. If aliens were on Earth, then I think what we’ve found here could be the basis for the lost-tribe myth he was following, he postulated.

Alec and Dancer arrived at the end of the wall, and the building sensed their movement, continuing to display its messages around the corner. An 80-meter stretch of the base about 150 meters further down the wall was transparent, revealing the dark interior of the pyramid. The transparent material was ever so slightly marred by thousands of unsuccessful attempts to open it, the blemishes faded by the regenerating process of the material. Alec stopped in the middle of the section and peered in. The rays of daylight illuminated the interior for a short distance, and what it revealed was astounding. The few displays that could be distinguished were 20 sculptures cut from white and pink marble. They were dancing figures rising from the floor four meters in height — a ballet frozen in time, with a grouping of principal dancers in the center of the gathering, the male holding the female high, her arms stretched to the heavens. It was as if the inhabitants of this world had never left, with no signs of decay or even dust present.

Dancer put his datapad away as he crossed the geometric-patterned promenade of white, pink, and gray marble, reaching the overgrown greenway in front of the building. The drill trees had made significant inroads into the once-manicured gardens. It was now hard to distinguish what had once been a garden from the jungle encroaching on the city. Dancer went directly to the bronze-colored sculpture of a stylized humanoid discus thrower that towered 10 meters above its base. He clambered up from the base, clearing vines and plant life from it as he went. Dancer leapt to the ground after completing his task and went directly to the bushes with significant pink flowers.

He pulled a large camouflage bag from where it lay hidden in the deep brush, producing a 1.24-meter silver parabolic reflector from it. Dancer scanned the sky and the sun, taking readings of its inclination above the horizon. He said confidently, Our timing is fine. The sun is almost perfect, and the alignment with the bronze discus thrower is imminent. Dancer took a taupe towel and some cleaning/polishing liquid from his satchel. His four arms blurred as they deftly polished the disk to a perfect, mirror-like gleam.

Dancer scampered back up the base of the statue, spider-like, and sprang up the legs, catching hold of the vines that hung from the athlete’s shoulder. Dancer climbed up to the torso and leapt across the gap between him and the thrower’s arm. He walked out on the arm and placed the reflector in the curled hand, adjusting it just so. The sun’s position moved ever so slightly. It looked down upon the world, the city, and the pyramid. The sunlight struck the parabolic reflector, and a focused beam crossed the promenade; its energy hit the transparent wall next to Alec. The wall warmed to the touch of the beam of concentrated sunshine, and it sensed the wavelengths of the star’s light spectrum. It was a very special lock that required the correct response to the key. The 80-meter stretch of wall vanished instantly. Dancer smiled broadly. This is our third trip inside. He cautioned, I think it took five times to get past this lock. What are the odds we make it all the way this time?

Alec entered the voluminous space, the beam of sunlight passing through the ballet dancers into the depths of the building. The floors reached back farther than the eye could see, displaying intricate patterns of polished stone and the extraordinary skills of master masons. The beam provided enough illumination of their surroundings for them to see the enormous tapestries that lined the wall nearest them. The pyramid was a people’s cultural repository of the art, music, dreams, and knowledge of the long-gone race that had inhabited this world. A line of structures in the middle of the floor continued into the distance, disappearing into the darkness and highlighting the diverse collections of paintings and drawings spanning the inhabitants’ history. The foyer stretched far past the reach of illumination above and extended deep into the pyramid.

Dancer, would you recall our grad students? Alec said delightedly.

Dancer caught up to Alec. You mean the minions? Recall signal sent. The sound of a small eight-wheeled vehicle came toward them from the painting collection. The autonomous robot braked as it reached them; its sensory mast raised to look at them from a collapsed position to a medium height.

Alec inspected the robot intently. "When the others get here, I want all of you to report to the Quest for upload. Understand?"

Yes, said the robot respectfully. Digital versions of the art collections estimated at 97%. Recommend additional archival units deployed to improve efficiency in the cataloging of the collection.

I will think about it, said Alec courteously, as an autonomous dirigible came slowly down from the darkness above. Dancer and I are going in. The two robots waited for more of their kind to arrive at the entrance.

Alec followed the path of the beam of sunlight for 100 meters. They had ing mubject materhe inhabitant’reached a point far inside the building when another robot raced across the floor toward the recall point. It chirped as it passed by Dancer. The beam reached a silver disk-shaped reflector mounted on a black tubular stand that redirected the beam 90 degrees. The new corridor widened, and its galleries displayed all types of photography whose subject matter included nature studies. Alec slowed to view the magnificent works of art this world had left to the ages. Then came the canvases of watercolors, oil landscapes, urban life, and domesticated wildlife. A bronze plaque mounted on the wall beneath the photo listed the artist, biography, date, medium, and subject.

The two continued down the corridor and followed the beam of sunlight until they arrived at another disk-shaped reflector turning the beam in a new direction. Alec stopped and adjusted the beam slightly to the left.

You know that it is unnecessary to adjust them every time we come here, right? admonished Dancer.

Yes, I do. If I don’t, it will go horribly wrong, Alec retorted. He sighted the beam back to the right again, feeling this to be better than before. It’s in the fine tuning where we’ll succeed.

They started out again and followed the beam. It was turned again with a reflector down a new corridor that ended at a flight of stairs. Alec kept fine-tuning each as they passed, with Dancer reminding him he need not do it. The sounds of their footsteps echoed off the polished stone. The reflector bent the beam up the stairway. Alec and Dancer maintained their trek in silence. They went up the stairway; down the hall, through a gallery, the beam still lit their path. Multimedia artwork using natural fibers filled the walls, the museum’s best works on display. Alec had a favorite tapestry that he stopped to view. Its geometric pattern dazzled the viewer with the weaver’s amazing skill. Dancer was concerned and tapped Alec’s shoulder. We don’t have much more time. You can see it again after we have the inscription. Dancer was able to tear Alec away.

The corridor opened up to a grand staircase 20 meters wide, the walls filled with stone inlay that depicted agricultural scenes rising far above them. Alec and Dancer took in the grandeur as they climbed the staircase and finally stopped on a 400-square-meter landing near the heart of the pyramid. A reflector captured the beam of sunlight coming up the grand staircase and directed it to the only room off the landing, a darkened archway cut from a solid piece of obsidian. They traversed the beautifully inlaid floor of moss-green-colored stone to the archway.

Alec stood in the framed archway, the beam of sunshine revealing the room’s interior. The walls were a translucent milky white. A large, faceted crystal floated free of any visible support in the exact center of the room. The beam of sunshine shining upon it caused an unseen mechanism to start the rotation of the crystal. An ornate set of sculpted double doors to the inner sanctum filled the far wall. Dancer stepped past Alec, entered what they had come to call The Planetarium, and went to a darkened corner. He returned with a stand and set it in the path of the beam. Dancer twisted his torso to open a compartment in his back; he pulled three long crystal pieces from it before asking, Ready?

Alec was elated. Been a long time waiting.

CHAPTER TWO

Yes, it had. His father, Jack, had heard about Earth’s destruction while participating in an off-planet cultural-exchange program, known as the Library of Alexandria Project, or LAP. It featured an indexed, searchable digital copy of all the works in all the libraries and museums of the world. He soon acquired a serviceable long-range starship to prove his theories about the lost human tribe by finding them amongst the stars himself. There were 3,879 fertile men, a low-enough count that a council of survivors had formed, requiring him to provide viable sperm for the bank and to stick around until he had fathered a child. To provide a stable population, everyone needed to find a partner and have kids. Jack had found a partner, a research specialist. Even though she was introverted, she was willing to do her part to rebuild the race. Alec was the culmination of their short relationship, was born on July 7, 2269.

The relationship between Alec’s parents was strictly one of convenience and not true love. Women of childbearing years were highly sought, and she was no exception. In fact, she became quite a popular choice for the task at hand. That being done, Jack asked Alec’s mother to join him in his search, but, by this time, his theories had been so thoroughly discredited that his mother was embarrassed to be associated with him. So she told Jack she would not be joining him in his folly and that he should take his son, too.

Alec had grown up on that old ship, and, by the time he was in his twenties, he had the equivalent of five PhDs, with the dissertations to prove it. He could conduct a full archaeological dig by himself because he had been doing it since he was fifteen. Alec wanted more, a real life; he wanted to be with his own kind, humans.

Jack believed when they found the lost tribe, they would be able to support the survivors from their home world. They believed they would find the new home for humans near or through the legendary Falls of Ur, the largest falls in the galaxy. Alec always asked, Where are the Falls, Dad? But there were no falls, no new home world, and no life for him.

His father, Jack, insisted they continue their research together. When they discovered a new home world, Alec could find a girl his own age and maybe have a life with her. Alec had spent his entire life as a voyeur of the human experience. Everything he knew about people and human relations he had learned through the Library of Alexandria material. He had watched boys and girls on television and in film engaging in thousands of different types of relationships, but he felt as if he was just eating dirt. He was now a full-grown man who possessed a great knowledge of the theory, but didn’t have any practical experience to back up his observations. Alec yearned for the opportunity to meet a real woman to talk to and have some fun with, and see how the relationship progressed.

The months-long journey required to explore the galaxy and find the lost tribe had lost its luster for Alec. It wasn’t what he wanted, and he said so. He wanted to be in the human community at least for a while.

So Alec started a small import/export business. He didn’t expect the business to grow very large, but it was big enough to support him and his interest in space yachts. He had been on a short, lucrative trip when his client claimed he could no longer pay for the cargo. Alec saw the Quest off the flight line in a fenced-off area for repossessed ships. The ship was a bit rough from neglect. The original owner had ordered both the sport and luxury packages for the ship but failed to make even one payment. No one around the shipyard wanted it because it was not very functional on the blue-collar planet.

Alec had been receiving reports of his father’s exploits and data from the man himself for many years. He had not heard from Jack for an extended period of time, however, when Dancer showed up with Jack’s glassified remains. His body had been cremated and his ashes mixed with glass and highly compressed into a small cylinder.

Dancer had hitched a ride with his father, even though they had been warned not to enter the system. His father had never taken a warning seriously and continued to scout a dig site on a small satellite circling a gas giant. They had landed near a religious refugee camp when a group of pirates dropped in. They had disabled the group’s ship and had been conscripting the able-bodied males to work for them in extremely dangerous mining operations on a nearby moon. None of their people ever returned to the camp. Humans were not welcome on most worlds, and this one was no exception; they were all considered troublemakers. Humanity’s crusade for religious freedom and against oppression topped the list of bad traits as far as the most aggressive governments were concerned.

Jack was not a person to shirk from a fight, even if it meant certain death. He had stood up to the pirate captain, with no more than a meter separating them, and demanded that he and his crew leave the refugees and never return. Jack had done what no other being had ever done before. The pirate captain pulled out his weapon and shot Jack in the chest for making a scene. The projectile fired caused too much damage for him to survive. In the final seconds of his life, he asked Dancer to deliver a message to Alec: He wanted to be interred on humanity’s new home world.

Dancer said he had never met anyone like his father before. His rage was so great over his friend’s death that he destroyed the pirate vessel and crew. He freed the refugees himself and presented them with Jack’s ship to take them on their journeys. He knew Jack would have wanted it that way. Dancer was honor bound to deliver his father’s remains and personal effects to Alec. That was nearly six years in the past now. After Dancer had carried out his duty, he stayed on to join Alec’s crew. He and Alec agreed to take on his father’s quest to find the lost tribe and prove his claim.

* * *

Dancer placed the clear, beam-splitting crystals into the stand’s holders. One holder was damaged, and, when Dancer tried to straighten it, the welding broke. Dancer fitted the holder back in place, lining it up with the other two crystals. He held one of his special appendages up to the surface and produced a web-like material. Dancer attached the holder in place and then checked to see that it was flush with the other crystals. It was close. He adjusted all three crystals until they each split the beam of sunlight, focusing its color spectrum on multiple points of the crystal rotated halfway between the floor and ceiling. The room’s walls and floor flickered and then disappeared around them.

Here comes the travelogue again, but, without it, we would not have figured out the clue to the next section, Alec said satisfyingly. Alec perceived Dancer’s feelings of obligation to him. They’d had many a discussion about it; it was a contentious point between them.

They were standing in what looked like open space, with stars and nebulae around them. In the center of the room burned a star where the crystal had been. A hyperspace conduit of light and color opened to their right as the scene shifted and blurred as hyperspace warped space-time. Then the planetarium revealed a different star and solar system. The display traced a course through the system, focusing on one planet. The view changed, and Alec and Dancer now appeared to be on an alien hilltop looking up at the night sky, and the sounds of that alien world’s nocturnal inhabitants were everywhere. Then, just as suddenly, it changed back to the hyperspace conduit. Alec monitored the changing star fields, datapad in hand. Dancer stood near the center of the room, browsing the star systems as they passed and taking in the scene. Dancer was fascinated. It’s like being there, for only a moment, but you sense that this is what that world was like.

We’re getting close! Alec said excitedly, while staring at his datapad.

Dancer made way for a passing mass of ice and stone in the Oort cloud at the farthest reaches of the upcoming system. Sorry. We’re almost here. The star system appeared ahead — a main sequence star and a planetary system with a blue planet third from the star. Their programmed trip descended to a grassy hilltop on the planet. Alec looked at the rolling hills of green grass and then up at the night sky, watching the projection closely. A light breeze rustled the trees in a nearby grove.

Here. He pointed out in wonder at the stars. There’s the Big Dipper and Orion. The night sky of old Earth before the blackness. He hesitated; a feeling of loss overtook him for a moment. I never saw it myself, but my dad told me all about it — its smells, its taste, how it felt to lie in a field of grass with a woman to love and look up at the Milky Way. Alec relaxed as the emotions subsided. He flopped down on the holographic grass, stretching out to look at the stars above. Suddenly, the field fell away from them, and Alec was left lying horizontally in empty space. They left Earth’s proximity and entered hyperspace again.

Dancer took his position near the crystal. Alec sat up and checked his datapad.

I honor him and will remain until the task given you is complete, Dancer said reassuringly as he pulled parts of a musical instrument from his back compartment and utility belt. Dancer knew his relationship with Alec was complicated. Alec treated him as if he were a biologic, when many scoffed at such ideas. Alec was much like his father. Dancer felt as if the obligation he owed the father had passed to the son at his death. He started to put the instrument together.

Alec stood and gazed at Dancer. He was uncertain where this was going. It was survivor’s guilt that started all of this. Thirty-six years, and nothing to show for it. My dad’s deed was a cultural-exchange mission to the Shoans of Pavoneer in the Vulbub system.

Dancer agreed. He told me that he felt guilty that he had survived. So he dedicated his life to finding the lost human tribe that he believed to have traveled to the stars.

Alec was inspired. We are at the threshold of discovery, Dancer. Think of it: If it is here, we will have the second piece of the inscription my father searched for and the location of the lost tribe.

It has been a task worthy of the heroes of your classical period, replied Dancer eagerly.

You think of us as heroes? Alec asked, with unease in his voice.

I have witnessed honor, courage, hope, and justice since joining this mission.

Maybe you have, but that was my father — not me, he said with certainty.

You are your father’s son, replied Dancer, secure in his knowledge.

Alec stepped through the focused sunbeam, over to the still slowly rotating crystal. He tapped a sequence of commands on his datapad and then held its display toward the crystal. A pattern of light flashed from the datapad, pulsed ever faster, and caused a reaction in the facets. The star fields changed into small, visible patterns of glyphs rotating around the room. Alec lowered the pad and walked over to the sculptured doors, running his hands over the perfect seams.

It’s taken us three standard years to get this far in breaking through the three-lock system, stated Dancer. First the clues in the travelogue to use the constellations of the stars above each of the planets visited in a projection for the crystal. He watched his friend closely. Then we figured out the starry night-sky patterns and how they changed in the 110,110-year time period.

Alec nodded in agreement. It was the amount of time covered in the changing constellations of planets included in the projection.

Then we worked it out that it needed to be compressed into a five-second projection you just showed the crystal, Dancer said with satisfaction.

Alec pointed out, You were the one who guessed the glyphs were musical notes, and my contribution was how they used the periodic table in the notation for scale and amplitude.

Which I must play back exactly, or it’s a total bust. I’m going to warm up here, Dancer said with some trepidation. He was now holding a wind instrument that he had constructed from the parts. He blew a wail and cry from the brass alto saxophone. Dancer played his version of the soulful jazz classic Take Five as a warm-up. Paul Desmond was a genius.

* * *

Dancer did believe that they were on a hero’s journey. The Library of Alexandria Project was left to Alec by his father’s estate. He had conveyed it, with Jack’s belongings, to Alec. Alec was responsible for its administration and protection. A home world — not on the horizon for humanity — was the extremely precious cargo that the Quest carried with her. Alec had explored this wonder of his race all his life and took it for an ordinary information source. He researched it; he used it for entertainment; it was his private Earth. He knew he needed to copy it for its protection, but the human community did not have the resources to do so.

* * *

Alec had thought about leaving it behind with the authorities. When they pressed him for it, he asked what difference it would make whether he had it or they did. They could only say they were better equipped to protect it. Alec had asked, What does that really mean, anyway? They were just a bigger target for any human hunt. If that happened, the cultural history of the entire race would be lost. He just reminded them that his family had been the caretakers of this treasure for the last 40 years and had done alright so far.

If we’re right, Alec said optimistically, the periodic table-based glyphs are musical notes. Time to try it out. Anytime you’re ready.

Dancer’s 24 digits moved, magically producing the chords while he watched the glyphs change faster. The crystal resonated with the sound waves coming from the sax, and the glyphs on the walls responded by becoming more complex. The changing complexity of the music provided real-time feedback for the correct playback of the notes.

I think we did it this time. It’s evolving! Alec looked over at the doors with fascination. Beautiful.

The music coming from Dancer changed moods — from one of light to one of dark. The glyphs quickly slowed to a stop. Alec’s brow furrowed with irritation as he swung round to Dancer.

I know what happened. Alec, like I told you before, when I make even the smallest mistake, the sound waves cause changes in the crystals’ responses. He shrugged both sets of shoulders. A single error will cause a cascading crash of the musical work. Sorry, Dancer said apologetically.

The wail of the sax started the glyphs moving again. Rich tones filled the room. The notes rotated around the walls faster and faster, with Dancer’s 24 digits moving ever faster to keep up with the visual feedback.

Alec noticed the appearance of a small crack between the doors. Dancer’s performance became more intense and caused the doors to open wider and wider. The music was almost a living entity in the room. The doors were now completely open, and the glyphs suddenly vanished. Dancer played to a grand finish.

Alec smiled jubilantly at Dancer, Congratulations — you did it. He put out his hand, and Dancer grabbed it as they shook hands. Dancer disassembled his sax and put it away as they went to the newly opened doors. They entered the tight, low-ceilinged corridor, the walls and floors emitting the soft, warm glow of a mid-sequence star.

A bipedal creature materialized into existence in front of them. It looked from Dancer to Alec and stated neutrally, I am the museum’s Curator. How may I assist you?

Alec smiled and nodded to the walls. "A bio-scanning lie detector with a holo-projection and