The hound’s rear leaned slightly toward the ship and began moving at an angle that would minimize its exposure to solar radiation. When the blast from the hound’s nuclear-powered engine hit the Ring, the Ring melted like butter hit by a blowtorch.
“Looking good! Let’s double the speed and see what happens. Per and Aki, keep an eye on the part that was cut,” said Commander Kindersley.
“Yes, Commander,” Aki said.
Aki lined up the images taken so far. Quick analysis showed that the edges of the burn had been bent inward but were slowly shifting back to their original shape and reintegrating with the curve of the Ring. Aki had never imagined such a resilient system. She was unsure whether any human had ever conceived that such technology might exist.
If massive stress were put on a substantial portion of the Ring, the strain might cause the structure to collapse, but it seemed to Aki like compromising the structure of one part of the Ring would be insufficient to affect the rest of its surface. Every square micrometer of the Ring was maintaining a perfect balance between the light pressure it was giving off and the weight created by the pull of the sun. Even carpet-bombing, while it would cover the Ring with holes, would only produce localized damage. Aki presumed that even a slew of holes would get repaired quickly.
“It looks like it has started to regenerate already. I wonder by which mechanism the Ring restores itself to its original shape,” Aki said into her intercom.
The light pressure and gravity were both inversely proportionate to the square of the Ring’s distance, giving the curved and flush shape of the Ring a peculiar plasticity. Normally, even in such a complicated system, any parts that became concave would remain that way.
“It is probably changing the albedo of the sunlit side of the Ring. It feeds back the intensity of the sunlight. If only the spectrometer on the hound were online,” Per said. “Look at the telemetry readings. Maybe trying to detect proton-antiproton mutual annihilation while blasting it was too simplistic.”
“Everything’s going surprisingly well over here,” Mark stated. “The hound’s slicing along at five hundred meters per second. At this rate, it should reach the southern edge in about a week.”
“The ship is about to approach the edge of the opening. What did you want to see here?” Kindersley asked.
“I would like a close-up look at its repair work, especially now that it is trying to repair a section that was sliced clean through instead of just a… divot,” Per said, sounding a bit unsure of how to describe topography or geomorphometry to the military man.
“There’s no chance that the Ring won’t repair, right?”
“A meteoroid crashing into the Ring and slicing it in two from top to bottom? I am sure the Builders are prepared for that; it is an inevitability. A catastrophic bump by some nickel-iron and ice is what we are replicating,” said Per. “If the Ring cannot survive that, entity or a machine, it would have failed already. Imagine a human being with no immune system—there is no need to try to give it the plague on its thirtieth birthday; it would have died in the cradle.”
“I hate to admit it, but you’re right,” Kindersley said.
“The question is the repair rate. If we attack the Island before it finishes, we might be able to do our job,” said Per.
“Commander, I think we could use the ship’s engines to help the hound cut,” said Mark.
“Good idea. Let’s head to that edge, start working our way from there. That should save us over two days of going around.”
“We’ll cut through from both sides, like building a tunnel. We got enough fuel for the go round?”
“Already checked.”
“We’ll rendezvous with the hound in the middle, then head for the Island.”
“Can we finish our analysis of the severed portion first?” Aki said.
“Get to it!”
ACT X: JANUARY 28, 2022
3,000 METERS ABOVE THE SURFACE OF THE RING
TWO HOURS AFTER the convergence of probehound and ship, a kilometer-wide gap between the severed edges of the Ring glistened in the sunlight like two giant fluorescent light bulbs standing on end. Since the Ring was no thicker than a sheet of aluminum foil, the bright edgewise shine was proof that some process was under way.
“The edges look lined with fur,” Aki said as she looked at an image capture from the Phalanx’s telescope. What she saw was pure white, reminiscent of a rabbit pelt. A closer look showed a massive number of small fibers growing densely near the severed edges.
“It is some sort of fibrous growth with dense threading.” Per paused, then added, “If we cut the Ring, the material starts to grow. If it comes into contact with something, the fibers expand and grow onto the foreign body. It is like a fungus that thinks, and its capabilities are unaffected by the heat of the engine blast. I would like to move closer if we can.”
“Leave that to me,” Mark responded, carefully lowering the ship toward one of the edges. “We’re at five hundred meters.”
A colony of white fibers began to shimmer just beneath them.
“We’re burning them.”
“No, the engine blast cannot reach from here. The Ring is deflecting the blast by bifurcating it.”
“Then why is the fur wavering so much?” Aki said.
Per thought for a moment and then yelled, “Commander, we need to get out of here. Now. It’s going to spread to the ship.”
“Mark, pull us up,” Kindersley ordered. Without a word, Mark revved the engines to direct the ship away from the Ring. Aki fell backwards from the sudden acceleration as the ship retreated to a distance of ten kilometers.
“Are you sure, Per?” asked the commander.
“That fungus was watching us!”
“Watching us?”
“It is a tropism; the fiber reacts to any heat source other than the sun by pointing toward it and growing fast.”
“How do we check for signs of contamination?”
“The sensors aren’t showing warnings. I’ll run a detailed inspection to be sure,” Mark said.
“We were five hundred meters away. We should be fine, don’t you think?” asked the commander.
“The gap it is trying to bridge between the edges is a full kilometer. I cannot be certain,” Per said.
“Good point. We’ll proceed with caution.”
“Commander, I’m getting abnormal readings from some of the gimbal actuator stress sensors,” Mark announced, his voice going soft.
Aki coughed. “Just a few is normal, right?” There were tens of thousands of sensors. It was not unusual for a few to show abnormal readings at any given time.
“No, this is different. We have a problem,” replied Mark, surprisingly calm now.
“Let’s hold out for a minute, see what happens.”
“If we lose only one actuator, we can still continue. We’ll just balance out a bit more slowly. But if something is hanging on out there,” Mark explained, “if the contamination has reached our backup, it’s game over. Let’s run an inspection to see where we stand. If there’s no infection, we go back. If there’s any contamination at all, then I’ll remove the parts by hand and dispose of them. That would mean working next to the reactors for several hours while the reactors are running. And, of course, it would mean that I wouldn’t come back inside since I would risk bringing the contaminant with me.”
“Wait. Could we eject the engine to solve the problem? We can continue with just one,” Aki protested, her fear hanging in the air.
“Yeah, but if the other engine fails, we’re stranded.”
“But if the only other choice is to leave you to die, I vote that it is worth the risk.”
“Think about that one, Aki,” said Per. “We have two engines, but four people. The math is clear.”
Mark said nothing. An engineer does what his duties require of him whether he likes it or not. Aki remembered Mark’s words, and now it was crystal clear what they meant.
“Out of the cocoons
. Everybody to the crew area,” Kindersley said, his voice limned with authority.
MARK WAS SUITING up in front of the airlock. The other two took turns offering farewells. Aki went last.
“Can I finally kiss you?” he asked.
Without speaking, Aki closed her eyes and leaned toward him. She was taken by surprise when she felt his tongue touch hers. Her instinct was to pull back, but she let herself go, giving in to the desire she had felt since the day they met. Mark was the one to finally pull away.
He looked small inside the oversized suit as he finished getting ready for the EVA. He ran a diagnostic, then entered the airlock. Closing the inner door, he gave a thumbs-up through the tiny round window.
Three hours later, Mark completed the mission. He had removed and discarded all of the contaminated parts. All that was left to discard was himself. Aki was unable to speak.
“Looks like you still have some time, Mark. You’re free to do whatever you like,” said Commander Kindersley. Mark mumbled a short prayer to himself, something about how dying was acceptable if his sacrifice led to saving what was left of the world’s population.
Then he said, “I think I’ll go check out that Ring over there.”
From inside her cocoon, Aki watched the ship diminish in size through Mark’s helmet camera as he propelled himself toward the Ring.
Mark fired his thruster to close the ten-kilometer gap between him and the Ring. In the footage he was sending, it was almost impossible to distinguish the inky surface of the Ring from the blackness of space.
After some time, his searchlight finally began to reflect off the surface of the Ring, producing a circle of light that gradually grew brighter. Aki wanted to look away, but she needed to see the Ring.
“The surface is silvery velvet. Firing my thruster, on the Ring… creating waves rippling away from the contact. I’m at three meters and closing in… Okay, I’ve just touched down.”
For a moment, Mark’s stuttered breathing was all they could hear.
“It’s incredible, a mirror that goes endlessly in all directions. I’m a dimple on the surface. I weigh one kilo, but it’s enough to cause the surface to sink where I’m standing. I’m standing on an enormous pillow, a cloud.” There was a choked sob.
A warning light appeared on the monitor mounted on the arm of his suit. The red glow was visible on the monitor before he looked down and
“Uh-oh. Feeding has begun, boots are changing color. A spiderweb is wrapping itself around me, moving on its own,” he said with a calm unlike anything Aki had ever heard from him before.
“Into my suit. A mouse crawling around in here. Depressurization has stopped. There’s no pain…”
His voice began to murmur as if he were drifting into sleep. “Aki, can you hear me?”
“Yes. Yes, Mark, I can hear you.”
“I’m sorry. There’s so much more I wanted to say to you.”
“I know. Don’t worry about that now.”
Two minutes later all readings transmitting from Mark’s suit ceased.
The image coming from the telescopic camera on the Phalanx showed a human-sized caterpillar’s cocoon resting in the center of a large indentation on the Ring. It was shrinking in size. Eventually, Aki looked away.
She could not find a use for her feelings. Aki regretted being on the ship and on the mission. After forty hours, she finally emerged from her cocoon. Per and Kindersley found her, grabbed her by the wrists and wrapped their arms around her. She pressed her face onto their shoulders and hugged them back, crying like she had not cried since she was a child.
ACT XI: FEBRUARY 2, 2022
THE UNSS PHALANX shifted to a battle footing and launched its first attack. It sent a nuclear missile whizzing toward the Island, beyond the horizon of the Ring, some four million kilometers away.
The graser protecting the Island shot down the missile at the line of defense, disintegrating it in a microsecond, which was exactly what the crew had expected. Shortly after, the ship was hit with the massive surge of electricity that was released when the graser fired. Half the electrical systems suffered some sort of damage. After emergency procedures were performed, the ship and her hound made their way toward the Island, but the functional capabilities of both crafts were substantially impaired.
Aki put on a pressurized safety suit and secured herself in place in her cocoon. She kept a close eye on the infrared image being transmitted by the hound as it scouted their route. The Ring appeared on the screen as a plain gray field with subtle variations in color. After some time, the small bump of the Island appeared on the horizon.
“The hound is about to enter graser range. Make sure that all data files are closed,” ordered the commander. The backup electronics had been fried in the surge. If they were hit again, they would be crippled and in serious trouble.
Aki and Per had estimated that the graser would need 147 hours to recharge. It was an estimate based on a few too many assumptions that were based on suppositions that were based on guesses. There was no guarantee that the estimate was even close to correct. They waited in tense silence. After about five minutes, Per dared to speak.
“It is not firing.”
“So it really does shut down while it recharges.”
“Proceed?” asked Per.
“I don’t see any reason not to. What the hell else can we do?” Kindersley said.
FIVE HOURS LATER the Island was within visual range. The graser still had not fired.
Their probehound was floating directly above the Island. Commander Kindersley ordered the hound to make its descent. Aki controlled the telescopic camera. The Island rose up from the surface of the Ring to form a cliff three hundred meters high. The edge had appeared rounded in observations made from Earth, but viewed up close it was a sharp vertical wall. The top of the Island resembled a mirrored plane stretching beyond the horizon. More like a continent than an island, Aki thought to herself.
The opposite end of the Island was out of visual range, over 130,000 kilometers away. According to the readings that the sensors were producing, the Island was a table large enough to hold ten planets the size of Earth and still have room left over.
The telescopic camera revealed a web-like pattern covering the surface. At maximum zoom, it looked like the walls of a honeycomb, a collection of hexagonal-shaped pillars, each about four meters across with their surface covered in a translucent, viscous substance.
“If I did not know any better, I would say we are looking at the wall of a colossal bee hive dripping with honey,” Per said after clearing his throat.
Aki panned the camera to have a better look at the outside edge. The surface had no distinguishing features except for a gray border several meters thick around each cell in its matrix. There were no railings, no catwalks, no emergency exits. Aki had the camera trace a path around the edge of the cliff. A protruding object that resembled a lighthouse slowly came into view.
“Could that be a telescope?” asked Per.
“I bet it is the graser battery,” said Aki.
The commander moved the hound in for a closer look.
It appeared to be a stubby telescope atop an altazimuth mount. Double-checking the scale gauge connected to the distance meter, Aki confirmed that the diameter of the aperture was unbelievably large—about the length of a football field. The muzzle contained a concentric circle that looked like a collimator. The structure was seamless, completely smooth.
As she looked for even a trace of details or distinguishing features, Per noticed a miniature version of the battery on top of the barrel. “That must be the optical telescope—their viewfinder,” said Per.
“You’re probably right. A viewfinder to target incoming objects,” Kindersley said.
Examining the long-range images sent back by the hound in closer detail, the exact same object appeared again nine thousand kilometers in the distance. The structures lined the Island at equal intervals.
&nb
sp; “Now’s the moment of truth, crew. Press on or turn back? You know where I stand, but I want to hear you on this one.”
“Continue,” Aki replied immediately.
Per took a bit longer. “I do not see any reason not to. Why wait?”
“The base of that graser battery is our target. Set the ship for final approach. Aki, prepare for an EVA.”
“Of course, sir.” Aki propelled herself out of her cocoon and began donning her space suit.
She and Per had talked about it. The mission would continue. Aki had volunteered to take over Mark’s duties. She would stand on the Island with her own two feet if that was what it took to obtain a sample and send the data to Earth.
The risk of contamination appeared to be low. The Builders seemed content to leave the Ring unguarded, perhaps due to its regenerative abilities. The Island, as it was protected by the graser, was perhaps not capable of self-repair. This was the best working theory the crew had to go on. Although the head of a simple planarian worm will grow back when it is cut off, the same cannot be said of a human. Similarly, it would be much more difficult to outfit the Island—a much more sophisticated construction than the exoskeleton of the Ring—with the capacity to regenerate itself when damaged.
It was likely that the nanomachines responsible for the fabrication and maintenance of the Island were still wandering its surface. Unlike the nanomaterial composing the Ring, the Island’s machines did not go about their work blindly. Aki pictured them emitting and receiving messages for propagation direction control, powered by something beyond human invention and understanding. Perhaps even Maxwell’s Demon had finally been constructed, and the nanobots were harvesting molecular-level power from the minute differences in temperature and energy across the Island’s surface.
“EVA prep completed,” she said.
Before the other two could come to the airlock door to see her off, Aki stepped in, depressurized, and opened the craft’s external door. The stern of the ship was pointed straight at the Ring. A continuous weak blast from the engines of the orbital maneuvering system counteracted the gravitational force of the Ring and the Island, allowing the ship to maintain a constant distance.
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