took a second look, and strolled slowly around to inspect the three sides. Well, this was different. We didn’t just have one set of scrolling symbols, we had three, one on each side.
‘A final test,’ said Leveque. ‘Clearly rather more complex.’
There was a pause. A very long pause. After ten or fifteen minutes, I started getting restless. Fian was staring at the symbols and working on his lookup. I knew I couldn’t figure it out, so I didn’t even go through the motions of trying.
‘We’re looking at all three sequences, as well as the sequence achieved by combining them,’ said Leveque. ‘None of them match any of our predictions.’
There was another wait of at least twenty minutes before he spoke again. ‘This doesn’t seem to be mathematical. It’s probably based on some sort of science, but we can’t work out what. There is, unfortunately, the possibility it’s a branch of science we haven’t yet discovered.’
Even more time passed. I was bone tired by now, and aching from impact suit bruising after the cave-in. I gave up worrying about looking good for the vid bees, sat on the floor, and leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. Whether we managed to solve the final test or not, my main worries were over. The alien sphere was obviously here to communicate with us. There wouldn’t be a war. Earth was safe. I wasn’t going to be a laughing stock. I could join the Tell clan and be part of a family.
I was actually dozing when my lookup chimed. I jerked awake and looked down at it in surprise. Why was someone calling me on my Military lookup, rather than using a comms channel? I tapped it, frowned, carefully turned off all my comms channels and answered.
‘Uh, Candace, I’m a little busy,’ I said.
My ProMum smiled at me from the lookup. ‘I realize that, Jarra. I’ve got a call from Keon that I need to transfer to you. He couldn’t get a call through to you himself, but he worked out I could use my ProMum authority to do it.’
I was bewildered. Earth gave ProParents huge authority where the wellbeing of their ProChildren was concerned, but … why?
‘I’m transferring Keon to you now,’ said Candace.
Her image was replaced by Keon, with Issette peering over his shoulder. ‘Hi Jarra,’ he said, in his usual lazy tones. ‘I know the answers to your problem.’
‘What? How?’
‘They’re three sequences you use in laser light sculptures. You use the patterns to combine light beams and create special effects. I’ve no idea why aliens should set us a test about it, but I’m transmitting the answers to you now.’
I checked what he’d sent, and saw he’d translated the answers into the alien symbols for me. I stared at them for a moment. Did I take this seriously? Did I believe Keon? Yes, I did. If someone as lazy as Keon had gone to this much effort to send me these symbols, he had to be very, very sure he was right.
‘Do we enter one full sequence at a time, or one answer from each?’ I asked.
‘I think you work around, entering one answer from each,’ said Keon, ‘but I’m just making a guess based on the way they’re used.’
‘Thanks, Keon. Stay with me while I work on this.’
I thought frantically for a moment. Commander Leveque was co-ordinating things, and making the decisions on the test solutions. I should send Keon’s answer to him for checking. On the other hand, Leveque wouldn’t understand it either, so his only option would be to pass it on to the Physics team, the team that had included Gaius Devon. They’d know nothing about laser light sculptures, and they’d probably laugh at this solution just because it came from some unqualified ape kid who was studying art.
I stood up and headed for the pillar. Forget consulting anyone else, I was Field Commander, this was my decision to make and I’d made it. If I was wrong to trust Keon, I’d look a bit of a nardle, but I didn’t care. I waited for the scrolling sequence nearest me to reach the right point, and started touching symbols.
‘Major Tell Morrath?’ Leveque’s voice sounded startled. ‘What are you doing? We can’t afford to guess answers, because …’
He stopped talking, because the symbols were flashing as the first answer was accepted. I moved around to the next sequence, entered the first answer for that, and it was accepted as well. I laughed as I moved on to the third sequence. Two correct answers couldn’t be coincidence.
‘An expert has given me a solution,’ I said. ‘I’ll transfer his call to you.’
There was a yelp of protest from my lookup. ‘Jarra, don’t you dare!’
‘Sorry, Keon.’ I laughed again, transferred the call, and beckoned Fian over. ‘Double-check me on this. It would be easy to get muddled about which answer belongs in which sequence, and have to start all over again.’
We entered the symbols together. Tension must have been doing odd things to my head, because this process seemed to take both hours and only a few seconds. As I reached the last one, I paused. ‘Completing sequence now.’
I entered the last set of symbols, they flashed, and then the pillar went black apart from one glowing circle.
‘I think we can assume you touch the circle, Major, and that sends the transmission to the sphere,’ said Leveque.
I took a deep breath. ‘Are we ready for this?’
‘This is Colonel Torrek. Go ahead, Major.’
In the old pictures of the first successful portal experiment, Wallam-Crane says some words he stole from the first moon landing. ‘One small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity.’ Maybe I should have said that at this point too, but it never occurred to me at the time. I was just thinking about all the people who’d helped me to get here and do this. The Military, the dig teams, my classmates, my lecturer, Keon and Candace, but particularly Fian. I turned to him, and held out a hand.
‘We’re in this together.’
He hesitated for a second, and then stepped forward. We linked hands and I counted it down in a breathless voice. ‘Three. Two. One.’
We reached out together and touched the circle. I was tense, expecting an instant response, but seconds slowly passed and nothing seemed to happen. More seconds, a minute now, and still nothing. I wondered if we’d done something wrong, or if the device was broken. I was about to ask Leveque for advice, when swirling ribbons of red, green and blue coloured light suddenly appeared above the pillar, plaiting themselves together in a column that reached up into the rock ceiling.
I gasped with delight, and forgot all about the viewing billions, and the need to act Military, professional and adult. ‘Hoo eee!’
‘Look!’ Fian tugged at my arm, turning me to face the wall. He’d set his lookup to project images from the Military vid feed against it. It showed the plaited column of light appearing out of the ground above us and continuing up into the night sky. I stared at it in utter disbelief.
‘The light went straight through solid rock and into space?’
‘It appears so,’ said Leveque. ‘The aliens have obviously developed laser light technology to …’ He dropped that sentence to start another, his voice finally shaking off its habitual calm to sound human and eager. ‘The sphere is responding.’
The image on the wall changed to show a close-up of the alien sphere. I couldn’t see what Leveque meant for a second, but then I realized the strange curved markings on the sphere were growing deeper. Whole sections began to unfurl, like the petals of a strange alien flower opening to the sun. When they reached their fullest extent, light suddenly blazed around the sphere. Not just a simple twisted column like the signal we’d sent, this was an incredibly intricate, multicoloured light sculpture, formed of literally thousands of light strands that were constantly revolving and changing.
‘The sphere is talking to us,’ said Leveque. ‘We’ve no idea how to disentangle the multiple light signals, let alone translate them, but it’s definitely talking.’
It was nearly an hour later that Fian and I were winched out of the hole in the tunnel roof. As soon as we were above ground, several figures in Military impact suits started spraying jets of decontaminant liquid at us.
‘You’ve been in contact with alien technology,’ said one of them, ‘so we have to follow Planet First
