“No, it’s not. ”
“What are you talking about? They just said—”
“Amy, what was this message labeled as?” I ask.
She frowns. “Intercepted. ”
My finger slides across the touch screen, and the message starts over again.
Congratulations, Godspeed! You have safely arrived at your final destination, the planet circling the binary Centauri system.
“But . . . ” Amy says.
“It’s a recorded message. ” I feel sick. I heard this message when Colonel Martin typed in his authorization code on the control panel on the bridge. We both thought it was a live communication from Earth that had just gotten cut off. But it was nothing but a recording—a copy of a message being sent to us from here.
I scan forward in the message. In the recording Colonel Martin and I heard, the words were cut off before any details about whatever is threatening our existence were told. This message cuts off too, at exactly the same spot it crackled and died before.
I wonder if this even came from Sol-Earth originally or if it is all a part of some elaborate ruse.
“Who would do this?” Amy asks, disgusted. Her eyes widen. “Not . . . not Dad?”
I shake my head. I saw Colonel Martin’s face when we heard the message on the bridge. “That message came moments after he woke up,” I add. “He couldn’t possibly have coordinated this. ”
I flick the touch screen back to the list of messages. Intercepted has only the message from Sol-Earth. Others are marked Trade Negotiations, Labor Details, Manufacturing Specifications, Surveillance—and each of these has several messages listed under each label, all marked by a series of numbers that I can’t find any sort of pattern to.
I flick the touch screen back again and see a label marked Live Feed. I nudge Amy and point to the label. “Live feed of what?” she asks.
“Maybe the people who made this compound?”
I press down on the label. A submenu pops up showing a list of random topics: agricultural, medical, community, maintenance, engine, control.
Amy looks at me quizzically. These labels don’t make sense. I touch the last one: control. The screen turns black, flashes ERROR, and then returns to the submenu. I shrug and touch the first label, agricultural.
This time the screen doesn’t fade to black. Instead, it shows a rolling landscape. Perfectly even, structured grassy hills. Measured fields of grain, corn, beans. A manufactured agricultural landscape dotted with genetically engineered cows and sheep, all under a metal sky painted blue.
I touch the screen, and the image disappears, replaced by the submenu.
“Elder, that was—” Amy can’t say the word.
Godspeed.
That was Godspeed. The labels on the submenu make sense now. I tap them quickly. Medical shows the Hospital from the outside, a camera angled near the statue of the Plague Eldest. Community is the City. Maintenance is the Shipper Level; engine shows the lead-cooled fast reactor that fueled Godspeed. Control is nothing but a blank screen because it must have been a live video feed of the Bridge, and there is no more Bridge. Doc blew it up.
“They were watching us,” I say, horror creeping into my voice. “They were watching us all along. ”
“Who was watching us?” Amy asks.
I don’t know. Whoever built this compound. The first colony—or whatever it is that wiped out the first colony, the thing that is not human, that the biometric lock on this building intended to keep out.
I click back on community. The City is not how I remembered it. The streets are crowded, dirty. The people—my people, the ones I left behind, the ones who stayed with Bartie—have a sort of desperation clinging to them. Some of them move too fast, rushing from one place to another as if their lives depended on it. Others don’t move at all. They slump against the buildings. They have given up.
“Something’s wrong,” I say. I want to reach through the screen and help them, but as soon as my fingers touch the glass, the screen fades back to the submenu.
Amy puts a hand on my arm. I think she wants to pull me away from the monitor. After all, what can I do? I’m here, and they’re far above me, orbiting around the planet. I can’t reach them. I can’t save them.
I have failed them.
I touch the maintenance label to see the Shipper Level. The doors to all the different offices and labs are open, but no one’s there. Is it night? No, it can’t be . . . the City was lit by the solar lamp. Why are there no Shippers on this level? I go back and touch engine. The engine room is empty as well. The camera angle is positioned so that I can see both the engine and, behind it, the massive seal-lock doors that hide the remains of the Bridge. The doors are locked. I try to look at the small screens on the control panel behind the engine—from what I can see, everything seems to be operational.