Chapter 2

“Ugh, yes, sir. That is agreeable.”’

“Fine. In that case, expect my team to arrive tomorrow. You will stay clear of the excavation for now. My men will consult you on arrival, to make certain they have all the facts straight.”

“Very well, sir. I hope this does not affect our other arrangements.”

“Of course not. There is no overlap between the two. Farewell, Mr Robertson.”

True to his word, the Governor’s team arrived the next day, mid-morning, loaded with technology. Their leader, calling himself Tom Jones, quizzed Reginald for an hour about the whole story, from noticing the depression – he asked how deep it was at the start – to the time Reginald stopped doing any excavation. Some of his questions were puzzling.

“Does it smell of anything you can think of?”

Mud was all Reginald could think of.

“Does it make any sound? A humming or ticking, or anything at all?” No sounds at all.

“Has the top of it moved up or down, as far as you can estimate? Any other movement, such as rocking?” No movement at all.

“Is the object in the centre of the depression, or a little to one side?”

“Roughly centred,” said Reg.

“Does it stand vertically, or is it canted to one side?” Reg said he had not really noticed its exact orientation, just generally upright.

“Is the colour of the object the same as the soil, or is it lighter or darker?” Reginald admitted he hadn’t thought of it being different in shade, just that it was harder, like stone.

“Do you know what a concretion is, Reginald?”

Reginald did, through his occasional geological studies, but had a query.

“Doesn’t a concretion tend to have a rough finish to its surface? This one is fairly smooth.”

“Concretions are usually spherical or disk-shaped or egg-shaped, and they vary in size from microscopic to many meters in diameter, but the colour is normally the same as the surface it weathered out from.

The trouble here is that there is no evidence of weathering out of sedimentary rock or a mud layer. There is no nearby cliff or other structure that may have birthed a concretion. This object appears to have formed where it stands among deep soil. There is still a possibility that it has weathered out from the layer below, with softer rock around it being lost through erosion, leaving this lump behind.”

“So it will be harder than the bedrock it has come from?” Reginald presumed.

“That is normally the case. It has to be harder to survive the surrounding erosion processes, such as you get in a cliff face,” Tom Jones told him.

Reginald pushed farther.

“Can it sometimes be made of semi-precious stone inside? If it is a rock like that, it belongs to me and my family.”

“It sometimes can be like that internally, but valuable fillers are very rare. It is more often materials such as iron pyrites or calcium carbonate that suffuse the concretion, and that depends on the native rock they arise in. Concretions are not usually found as singletons like this one, but often in quantity.”

“So you believe this is a concretion?” Reginald asked.

“It is one possibility, for any ferrous component in rock would be indistinguishable at a distance from the remains of a wrecked spaceship that had a high iron-based content in its structure. Such a wreck would develop a covering like a concretion over an extremely long period of time. We need to test this object properly, to get a better handle on what it is.

For a start, we will fly a drone over it, with instrumentation to analyse things like magnetic fields and general dimensions.”

Reginald blinked at this strenuously detailed and complicated approach to investigating a rock, but said nothing. It was not his job to question the way they did their research; he was only expected to provide local assistance as they went about it.

The showed him the drone they would be using, and its associated cameras and sensors, then he led them to the field and pointed out the location of the offending lump. The flying machine was started and directed to the spot while one of the men watched a small screen showing what it was seeing on the ground below.

He halted the drone when he saw it was directly overhead, and the group studied what it was showing, then he moved it around to get readings from all angles. One man had his gaze directed at the images, while another was looking at a paper printout of the magnetism readings. This guy pointed out to his boss where the magnetic signal peaked as the drone passed over the object.

“It is definitely the object that is producing these intense readings, chief, though whether it is simply magnetism from a ferrous meteorite, or a technological construct, is impossible to say at this point. We can’t get an electric signal at this distance, and even close up I would be hesitant about declaring it a made object. If we could get it to produce a response to a stimulant, that would maybe point us to a fitting solution.”

Reginald, who had been listening at the side, unable to see the screen, commented, “I hope that doesn’t mean banging it with a hammer!”

The leader turned to face Reg, and told him, “Nothing so crude, Mr Robertson. We will transmit a variety of signals at it, ranging over many frequencies, trying to discover if it has any reaction to any frequency at all. We may get some reactions from metallic inclusions at certain frequencies, but these we can discount as simple physical reactions. What we are looking for is internal currents, induced by the devices we are using, that suggest the presence of circuitry of some kind. We still might get a signal that comes from a naturally formed circuit, for nature does funny things. For example, there was one site found on Earth that acted like a simplified nuclear reactor, but it was thousands of millions of years old with a purely fortuitous concentration of radioactive elements in that location.”
“I see,” Reg remarked. “Why would you just be looking for circuitry?”

The man stared at Reg as if he was being stupid.

“The presence of circuitry will indicate that the interior of the object is part of a downed spaceship, of course.”

“Oh?” said Reg. “What if it is part of the fuselage or the exhaust section of a reaction engine? Would these have any circuitry?”
“Admittedly, unlikely; but we would expect to detect any unnatural juxtaposition of certain elements in a built mechanism, such that it would be obviously manufactured metal, and not a product of geology.”

“So how does an iron product differ from iron meteorites in composition?”

“You do ask a lot of questions, Mr Robertson. Differentiation is by several ways. One is density, in that the iron in meteorites is typically much denser than any iron found on the surface of the Earth, and secondly ferrous meteorites are actually nickel-iron, with a higher percentage of nickel than is found associated with iron on Earth. They are quite distinctive.”

“I was aware of the nickel-iron meteorites, but it had not penetrated my thick skull about the higher density. I should have noticed that, or at least remembered it if I read it.”

“Ah. You are a knowledgeable man, then?”
“University student, not yet a graduate, and so are my wives: brilliant girls in many ways, but I am admittedly biased.

We migrated here to avoid other problems back on Earth. In fact, we were invited to move here, for our own good, but partly so that we can contribute to the colony.”

“Excellent. We can always use educated colonists. Has anyone told you that you can complete your degree here? The Personalia have a new speed-learning program, where they put the requisite information directly into your brain, and you can have that recognised by your institution on Earth if you want the official qualification. You don’t really need it, provided The Personalia say you are of graduate stature. That recommendation is all you need to be accepted in your profession here. Adults only, of course. Children’s brains are under constant development so they can’t benefit from such a process.”

Reg grimaced.

“We have been told so many things, before and after we came here, that some of it went in one ear and out the other!”
“I can understand that, Mr Robertson. It takes time to adjust to this new society. You should check our local daily news channel. It appears on your mobile if you download the app. All the official announcements appear there, as well as contact details for more information.”

The drone man interrupted this discussion, to ask for permission to fly lower and get more detail.

“How low?” Jones demanded.

“Around two metres might do, chief.”

“Hmm ... very well, but no lower for now. I want another complete set of results, to compare the two for differences before we risk flying closer.”

“Right, sir. Flight plan the same as before; will do.”

He proceeded to run through the identical flight pattern, so the overfly route was clearly preprogrammed in advance of their arrival. It took a similar amount of time to repeat the flight, with the machine slowing every time it came over the object.

“That is the run complete, sir.”

His colleague produced the new printout strip, and fixed them both to a long board for comparison, one above the other, and the boss man ran his finger along, checking at every time a variation appeared. Once he had come to the end of the double strip, he grunted.

“Hmm ... no difference except in magnitude; nothing significant.”

Reg butted in, “Would you expect to see something, if there is no internal circuit in use?”

The man looked back at him in annoyance at another interruption.

“Depends. You can activate a circuit by induction, young man; you should be aware of that. It goes all the way back to Faraday.”

“Yes, sir, but you haven’t tried that yet, just looked for a reaction to a simple signal.”

“We will come to that later, Mr Robertson. “One step at a time. Talking of steps, I think it is time for you to step back from here and let us continue with our programme of testing.”

“Oh.” Reg was aware he was being dismissed, and also that they had justification, if there was any danger involved as they continued. It was almost like tapping an unexploded bomb to see if it was still live.

He removed himself and walked back to his house and family.

His girls wanted a blow by blow account of the proceedings, but his report was boring in the extreme. He was not surprised they found the story dull. It was indeed dull so far. He played with his babies, who at least recognised his smiling face and apparently smiled back. He had been warned that early smiles were not smiles as you would think of them, but simple reactions to positive activities in their short lives.

He enjoyed swinging each of them in his enveloping arms. There was a feedback mechanism of sorts, getting him to feel good while rocking his child to sleep. Some of them continued to sleep when he laid the child down in its cot, but others immediately woke up and wailed again until they were back in his comforting arms.

“Why the difference?” he asked his wives, and got a shrug. Babies will be babies, it seemed; you just lived with it.

He got over the problem by passing each awkward baby back to its waiting mother. He never had to look for the right mother, as she would be hovering around, keeping an eye on its father in case he did something amiss, for a mother believes only she can manage her baby correctly.

He could live with this, as long as the girls had the patience of a saint to put up with temperamental children. He loved his children, but hated their wails, particularly when they had a wet or mucky nappy. Hunger cries he could recognise and pass the baby to the milk provider, but most other cries he reckoned were of the nappy-changing type, and so to be avoided by a wise father if at all possible.

The babies were soon fed and asleep in their cots or cradles depending on age, so the adults switched to the evening meal. As Reg expected, one of the ladies had devised the menu and the others had helped prepare it. This tasted as pleasant as he had become use to and by the time they were settled with their mugs of coffee, he was comfortable in his lounge chair. He was soon jolted out of his reverie.

Frances spoke to him, “Darling, now that the house is built more or less as we want it, we have been discussing colour schemes for the walls.”

“Decoration already? I thought the new house would need some time to air out and settle down before applying paint. I read somewhere that a new house has to air out many gallons of moisture from the walls and so on, before you get them painted.”

“How long?” she demanded, imperiously.

“I am not sure; two to three weeks, I think was the recommendation, depending on how much you air the rooms. Have you been airing the house?”

“Well, admittedly the builders told me that we should air the house for a while before decorating, but I thought they meant a few hours.”

“God, no. Evaporation takes time, especially from inside walls, including any plastering, and the foundations will still be curing for a while.”

“But most of the moisture in the foundations will not come up into the house. It will vent to the outside directly.”

“Well, I still want to give the house enough airing, or the walls will start growing black mould ... or anyway, that is what happens on Earth. Perhaps black mould is not found here.”

“You are arguing for the sake of arguing, my darling man. Possibly kit houses don’t use as much water in being built. I will check with our building firm.

Did you have a bad day up at the field? Is that what made you grumpy?”

He subsided, admitting, “Yeah. I got sent away, as I was asking questions about what they were doing. Sent away like a schoolboy, for asking questions. They were intelligent questions, Frances!”

“Probably, but they wanted to do their work, and you were not part of their team, Reg. You would act the same, in their shoes.”

“Possibly. What can I do for you instead, Frances?”

“You can take a look at our shopping list for getting things in the city. We may or may not be able to use similar materials here. We need paint and wallpaper and papering paste, but we can make our own paste if it is not sold. It is mostly flour or cornstarch, sugar, and water, as I recall.”
“What are our walls like? Do we need a sealant coat before decorating?”

“I didn’t check that, so you can ask someone; there are bound to be others who have dealt with that question before. Probably the shop staff will be able to tell you from past experience with customers.”

Reg looked at the list, and his brow wrinkled.

“These colours you list, Frances? Do they have to be a particular shade, or would anything of that general colour do?”

“Everyone has their own preferred colour shades, so you can choose what looks good to you, Reg, and we’ll go with it. Just make sure the colours don’t clash if they are listed for one room. The shop will be able to help in avoiding colour clashes. Show them the plan and get advice.”

Reg set out for the city on one of the mountain-style bicycles they had used to get here, for that style of machine was one of the few that could cope with the lack of a properly laid road. Any fairly flat surface, be it grass or packed earth, was rideable, except where the grass produced thick tussocks you had to beware. The bicycles all had a front pannier attached to the handlebars, and that acted as as shopping basket. Hanging storage bags were slung on each side of the saddle, strapped to the frame out of the way of the rider and the wheels but able to carry more goods. The women had used the panniers for their clothes and baby essentials, while the baby hung in a papoose-style sling. The builders had been recruited to bring their suitcases and rucksacks of other items. The helpful men had put together a shelter for the baggage until there was enough of a house to move them inside.

It was still a long journey back into the city. In the medium term, rail tracks were proposed to provide branch lines into the countryside, with track-beds of low quality. This meant that any rail vehicle had to be of light construction and travel at low speed, but would remain a transportation option superior in capacity to most rural motor roads back on Earth. Eventually these roads would be developed, but rail offered a more efficient and cost-effective mode of transporting goods and people in the interim.

The trip into the city was fun for Reg; in part because he was alone, a highly unusual situation for him these days. He used the partly bulldozed track into the city, but was able to admire the countryside while being careful where his wheels were going in front. Finding a level stretch allowed his gaze to move to the sides and front, seeing the sparse trees, the occasional stream, and many rocks sticking out of the ground. There were frequent random rocks scattered about the countryside, so it would be a long time before farming work removed all these natural obstacles.

At last he was within the edges of the built environment, and riding became simpler and smooth. He checked the street name (the humans had added these at an early stage to know their way around) and the consulted the city plan on his mobile. He had earlier checked the directory for decorating supplies and found two possible shops, so headed for the nearest he could get to.