The Preacher's Daughter

"Okay! It's a deal!"

It was very late. They gave each other brief but playful kisses and retired to their separate bedrooms.

Chapter 14. View to a Kill

Ten days later.

Time: February 4, 9570 2:10 PM

"Basel! What in the world are you doing?!"

Basel looked up from his optics bench in the photonics lab. A large array of lasers and cross-linked holo-scanners were laid out on a precision optics board before him, and Eliana thought the tangle of connecting fiber-wires looked so complicated they reminded her of a bowl of spaghetti.

Basel gave her a beaming smile. "Hi dearest! When you get a chance, you might want to bow down and worship me!"

Eliana shook her head in disbelief, and then forced herself to try to match Basel's playfulness. "Now don't you blaspheme Basel! This is a trained Priestess you're talking to!" She stared again at the disassembled scanner. "What are you doing? We were supposed to have this ready for the test flight tomorrow."

"Oh, I know." The grin was still huge.

"Uh, didn't someone promise me about ten days ago that this would be done in five?"

For the first time, Basel looked a little sheepish. "Uh, well, yeah, I guess I might have said something like that. But there's one thing you have to understand about research Eli."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"All good researchers are optimists! Besides, you know we were letting our schedule slip. We've been spending our evenings getting to know each other."

She shook her head dismissively. "I know. Still! Basel, you told me yesterday the scanner would be installed today. Look at this thing!" she cried, waving her hand at the myriad of tiny parts before her.

Basel went back to smiling, barely able to contain his excitement. "But that was yesterday! Today I have discovered the PATH of righteousness!"

Eliana found herself smiling back. "Now don't you blaspheme Basel!" She stared for a long moment at his optical bench, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. "What is this thing?"

Basel waved his hands over the complex optics before him and looked at her sweetly. "We've been discussing my research ideas. You know my methods. Can you figure it out yourself?"

Never one to refuse a challenge, Eliana stared long and hard at his work. She finally muttered, "It looks like some kind of..."

"No, wait," she thought to herself. "Look how the holo-scanners are cross-connected. Don't the optics manuals tell you never to do this? Why isn't this thing blowing up in his face?" She started tracing the wiring in her mind, trying to develop a mathematical schematic for the optics before her. She dimly realized that Basel had cleverly cross-wired the holo-scanners in such a way that none of their collectors ever made the critical mistake of allowing a loop oscillation. Was that possible? And what was the purpose for all this madness? She finally shook her head in bewilderment and utter confusion.

"No, I give up. I'm staring at this thing, and I don't know what I'm looking at."

"This is huge Eli! I'm going to be famous, Baalbek's photonic researcher of the year! Heck, the century! You are looking at the world's very first example of Phased Aperture Topical Holography!"

Eliana couldn't help but grin at Basel's enthusiasm and new acronym. "The PATH of righteousness, huh?"

"Yep!"

"So what will it do, and when will it do it?"

"I think I can have this installed in the CAT ready to go in two or three days."

"Really? Give me a completely realistic estimate Basel."

He paused for a moment and considered. "Realistically, plan for a test flight on the morning of the 9th, unless something really unexpected comes up."

"A four day delay?"

Basel nodded. "I looked up the difference on the solar charts. The delay will get us another forty minutes of daylight, from 3:13 AM to 9:08 AM, plus another full degree of altitude on the sun, up to 5.2 degrees at local solar noon."

"Okay. I hate missing four days of scanning though."

"Eli, I haven't told you about the capabilities yet! We'll be able to fly over ten times as high, over 200 meters, and do the scanning a hundred times faster. Instead of covering a hectare in five to ten minutes, we should be able to cover a full square kilometer."

Eliana's eyes lit up as she realized what he was saying. "Wow, great work Basel!"

Time: February 9, 9570 3:52 AM UCT

Eliana idly checked the sun's position on her instruments as Basel worked on his experimental scanner, marking it at 1.9 degrees altitude and its azimuth at 147. They were hovering 200 meters above the local landscape, five kilometers north of their station.

Basel looked up from his display. "It could use a little tuning. For now, you'll have to stay within 210 meters of the ground."

Eliana nodded. "I'll make a run at 200 meters. This is so much nicer than 20 meters. I'd constantly be ducking around the trees."

"Two hundred meters will be fine. We'll be scanning in a sixty-degree cone. Try flying straight ahead at ten meters per second."

Eliana typed for a moment on her auto-pilot module, and then said, "Bearing 180, wing five by five, minimal forward thrusters to the helm." The CAT began to glide southward at 36 kph.

"It seems to be working," said Basel after a moment. "In one minute, we will have scanned a strip 600 meters long by 280 meters wide."

Eliana nodded approvingly. "So, a square kilometer every six minutes. This is very good." She paused for a moment. "Are you seeing the detail you expected?"

"Just judging from the sharpness of the echoes, I think so. At the rate we're recording, I can't process the data in real time. We'll be downloading the data into the station library for the image processing."

They settled down into a quiet routine. Eliana would methodically fly south for a thousand seconds, scanning a 280 meter-wide strip ten kilometers long, and then make a U-turn and repeat the process north. As they neared the end of their seventh pass, they had scanned a rectangle ten kilometers long and almost two kilometers wide.

Basel spoke up. "Eli, I have this thing seriously de-tuned. We would have a much easier job at this if I made some adjustments."

Eliana nodded, squinting slightly from flying almost directly into the sun on the southern horizon. "How long would that be?"

"We'd miss one day of scanning, no more. I know exactly what I have to do."

She nodded again. "And what would be the benefit?"

"Well, I've got the angle of the scan set much too wide at sixty degress. I want to narrow it down by a factor of five. We'll still have the same scan width, maybe lose a few meters. But we'll be five times higher up."

Eliana broke into a bright smile. "A full kilometer? That's a much safer altitude! Thank you Basel. We're just finishing this strip now. Why don't we head back home? I'll let you get to work."

"Yeah. Actually, I was thinking we could return to our old site #4 first, where you saw the creature. There were some unusual echoes on my prototype. I'd like to retest."

Eliana forced herself not to shiver. She nodded and without another word throttled the CAT and flew southeast at 400 kph. They were a kilometer above their old site less than ten minutes later. "Time mark, 6:10 AM," she called out, "local solar noon."

"We'll have to drop down to scan Eli, down to 200 meters."

She nodded and gracefully lowered the CAT.

"Scanning now," said Basel. A few quiet minutes went by.

"Well?" she asked.

"I've got the recordings. Just give me another minute for the analysis." A minute later, "It seems completely normal. None of the weird echoes."

A quiet pause. "Interesting. Anything else you want to do here?"

"No, I guess not."

Eliana nodded and then sighed. "I'm not the warrior I'd like to think I am. I'm looking down at our old tracks and it's giving me the creeps. Let's go home Basel." Hearing no objection, she began to raise the CAT.

As they crossed 400 meters of local altitude Basel called out, "Wait! What's that?"

"Where?"

"Northeast of site #4, maybe two hundred meters. It looks like... Is that a wooly hippo lying on the snow?"

"Out in the open? Shouldn't they be buried in deep hibernation?"

Basel frowned. "Yeah, they sure should."

"Let's take a look."

A slow flyby revealed what appeared to be a hippo carcass lying on the snow. After a brief consultation, Eliana landed the CAT nearby, retracted the wings and drove to the site. They soon had the dead animal five meters in front of their vehicle. It was indeed a wooly hippo, the pigmy cousin of its tropical relative, barely 200 kg with a thick and ropey woolen fur. It had roughly the shape of a small pig.

"Well, this is different," said Basel after a moment. "See the tusks? I think this is an adult male."

Eliana frowned. "The animal doesn't just look killed. It looks slaughtered."

"Yeah. When I first saw this from the air, I thought a bear might have scored a kill. They occasionally come out of hibernation early and extremely hungry. But this hippo doesn't look chewed at all. It looks as if something just broke its neck and left it."

"It's not just broken Basel. Look at the throat area. It looks as if half the neck was scissored open and then the head bent way back. That cut looks very clean, almost surgical. There's no tearing at all."

"That's... interesting... Heck Eli, in deep hibernation, the animal would be very sluggish. The poor hippo didn't have a chance." Basel continued to stare at the carcass, a growing frown upon his face. "There's something else bothering me about this kill."

"What?"

"I'm not sure. Let me think."

Eliana stared at the corpse. "Well, this is the first spotted hippo I've ever seen, hundreds of small, dark brown spots. I always thought they were a uniform gray color. Look Basel, the spots seem to form some sort of pattern."

Basel shook his head. "No, that's not it..." Another quiet minute passed. "Blood! That's it! Where's the blood?! Even in hibernation, the blood flow would have been considerable. All the neck arteries have been sliced. But the snow here looks almost spotless."

"Yes... Could the hippo have been killed elsewhere and then dragged here?"

"Possible I suppose." Basel looked around, including the visuals from the rear of the CAT. "I don't see any drag marks, no streaks of blood either."

"Perhaps the wind..." Eliana stared at the corpse and didn't complete her thought.

Basel turned to her. "Eli, are you sensing anything?"

"I feel a little nervous." She paused. "No, nothing overt."

Basel looked at the carcass again. "I'd like to do an autopsy."

"Here?!"

"No, not here. Back at the station, the bio lab. I think this corpse will just fit inside the cargo bay." A long, tense moment of silence passed. "You don't think that's a good idea?"

Eliana grimaced. "I'm trying to weigh unknown risks. What are the odds of learning something valuable? Are they worth the risk of contaminating the station? What if there are parasites within the corpse?"

"We have the means to keep the specimen isolated, carbon nano-tube containers, very strong. We can keep the carcass isolated. And we can incinerate at the first sign of trouble." He looked at her. "Eli, I think we should try to find out what killed the hippo. And if there are parasites within the corpse, don't you think we should know about it?"

She made her decision. "Agreed. We need information. An autopsy is worth the risk." She glanced at a complex set of controls between them. "How good are you with the remotes?"

"I'm very good."

"Why don't you take over then?"

Basel nodded and spent the next twenty minutes manipulating the CAT's mechanical arms, expertly placing the frozen carcass within the hold of the CAT. When he was finished, he retracted the arms and Eliana sealed the cargo area, extended the wings and lifted straight up, applying extra power for the increased weight. At 800 meters, she banked sharply and headed for home, Basel monitoring the inert carcass along the way.

Chapter 15. Dark Dreams

Five hours later...

Time: February 9, 9570 11:30 AM UCT

Eliana was alone on Level-B, the first sub-level below the CAT's Level-A garage. Like Level-C below it, Level-B was a large work and storage area, 8 meters by 16 meters with a 4-meter ceiling. Along the length of an 8-meter wall were several isolation chambers with numerous diagnostics for bio-analysis. Eliana and Basel had placed their specimen in Chamber-#1, their most secure repository.

The large corpse was frozen solid. Once its transfer was complete, they decided that Basel would work in the station's Level-2 control room and start the processing of the raw holographic data they had collected, while Eliana monitored the slow thawing of the corpse with low-level microwaves.

The work time passed without incident. A bit later than she expected, she heard Basel entering the CAT garage above her from the main station's connecting tunnel. He then climbed down to meet her.

"Hi. Sorry I'm late. I felt the urge to head up to Observation and take a quick look around."

"No problem. That was a good idea. See anything?"

"Not much in the visuals. Twilight ended an hour ago. Everything looked quiet in the infrared and UV. Amazingly long stretch of clear weather we've been having. Typically we would have had a number of storms by now." Basel stretched and noticed for the first time the temperature of the room. "Nice and warm down here," he commented.

Eliana nodded. "I have the room heated to 21C."

"Ah. To help with the thawing?" He turned to the specimen chamber.

"No. I just felt cold I guess. I found out a few things about the hippo."

Basel was staring at their hippo. "Hmm?" He looked back to Eliana. "Did you start the autopsy without me?"

"No. Well, maybe a little, just the surface analysis, once the skin area had thawed. All those spots, I know what they are now. They're not fur color. They're stains, blood stains, all over the body, almost a thousand of them. I've got everything recorded."

"Show me?"

Eliana nodded and went to a control station. "Running the hologram now. This is a typical spot. Here we are moving down into the fur. Notice how the fur is cut?"

"Yes, very clean, a sharp scissoring. The fur hasn't been pulled at all."

"No. And I agree it's a very clean cut. I don't know about the scissoring. I think a razor-sharp hook might be able to make the same cut."

"Really? That clean? A knife perhaps. Hmm... Yeah, maybe..."

Eliana continued to manipulate the holographic display controls. "Here's why I think it was a hook. We're down at the skin level now. See that slit? Here's what the wound looks like with a side-scan from the NMR."

Basel stared for a moment at the nuclear magnetic resonance image. "It's in the shape of a thorn. Looks like a wickedly sharp point too."

"I suspect the inside edge of that thorn is also wickedly sharp. There's no stretching at the edges of the cut tissue at all. It's a surgically clean slice."

Basel nodded. "Did you run a bio-comparison?"

"Yes, very broad sweep. The closest we have for this type of attack pattern would be from cephalopods. Some species of octopi have hooks along their tentacles, used both for seizing prey and for defense."

"Ah. And do you see any patterns of tentacle strikes with these marks, patterns of linear strikes?"

"No, quite the opposite in fact. There's a complex 2-D pattern of marks over the entire body, almost as if a rug woven with a geometric pattern of hooks were wrapped tightly around the hippo." She typed for a moment at her console. "Here's a model of an unfolded rug that would make the punctures if wrapped around this hippo."

Basel stared at the 2-D pattern. "It reminds me of a sunflower. Look at the two Fibonacci sequences. There are repeating patterns of thirteen hooks spiraling clockwise, and patterns of eight hooks spiraling counter-clockwise."

"Yes, and with close to a thousand hooks on the poor hippo, the gripping power must have been close to absolute. My guess is that the hippo was completely immobilized, and then its head was pulled back to expose its throat to some sort of mouth or beak. See how most of the neck has been severed? The cut starts at the throat and goes in and upward, all the way back to the top of the spinal column."

Basel studied Eliana's analysis. "Very impressive," he said quietly. "The neck and shoulder muscles of an adult wooly hippo are extremely strong. The power to pull the head back like that would be extraordinary." He paused for a moment and gestured at the diagrams of the rug pattern and its mapping to the hippo's body. "All the spirals converge to the hippo's throat area. That's where the center of the attacking creature's body is."

Eliana nodded. "The beak area."

Basel stared at the corpse for a moment and then asked, "Is the interior completely thawed now?"

"Yes. Just barely, but yes."

They spent the next several hours continuing the autopsy. To both their relief, there were no signs of parasitic implants, no trace of any foreign material whatsoever. That puzzled them both. Normally after such a close and intense struggle, there would be skin or hair or saliva traces of the attacking creature, but they found absolutely nothing. They did find one thing unusual, and logged it as a second cause of death. In addition to the near decapitation, over 85% of the hippo's blood had been drained from its body.

They sealed the specimen chamber and retired to their living quarters about 2:30 PM, climbing up a level to the CAT's garage and then leaving the annex through the secure tunnel to the circular chamber of Level-3 in the main station. Eliana asked if she could take a shower first, even though it was her turn to make dinner, and Basel agreed without hesitation and offered to make the meal himself. They had a very quiet evening, neither wanting to talk. They both retired early, Basel taking his own shower just before bed. They were both in their own private rooms by 3:30 PM.

Three hours later...

Basel opened his eyes in the darkness, slowly drifting up from an uneasy sleep. He felt tired and nervous, and lay for a moment wondering what woke him up. He had a vague memory of... of something, but thought it was probably part of a bad dream.

"No, wait, what was that? Some sort of scratching sound?" thought Basel. "What did I just hear?" His eyes were now wide open in the pitch blackness of his bedroom. He lay there without moving, trying to decide whether to turn on a light. He shook his head in disbelief at his growing fear. "Oh hell, am I just imagining this?"

No, there it was again, a faint scratching sound by his door. "Eli?" he called out softly.

"Yes," a small voice replied. "May I come in?"

Basel gave a huge sigh of relief. "Of course."

The door slid open, revealing the dim lights of their living area and the silhouette of Eliana's body. She was barefoot and in her pajamas, shivering slightly. She came over and sat tentatively on the edge of his bed.

Basel cocked his head. "You didn't want to use the door chime?"

"I didn't want to disturb you if you were asleep," Eliana said in apology. After a moment she asked, "May I join you?"

"Under the covers? Sure. I'm not wearing anything though."

"That's okay, I don't mind," she said with a shy smile. She scooted under the blankets a second later. "Ah, you're nice and warm."

"You feel frozen. Want to cuddle?"

She nodded. "I'd love to." Basel put his arms around her and hugged her. They had decided many days ago not to have sex with each other until they had their understandings about commitment and marriage fully discussed, but this didn't feel sexy at all. Well, thought Basel, perhaps that wasn't quite true. They were both extremely attracted to each other both physically and emotionally, and the only thing separating their bodies now was the thin layer of Eliana's soft pajamas. But neither of them was expecting to become overtly sexual now.