“It’s not going to happen,” Oscar said. “Oh, I agree, it should. But from a political point of view, all you’ve got here is the mother of all esoteric physics problems. That doesn’t gain you the kind of funding you’re talking about.”
“Nigel Sheldon will understand,” Tunde said.
“Yes, he will,” Wilson said. “More than anybody, he made this flight possible. But even he can’t carry the entire Commonwealth Senate, not for that kind of financial commitment. If we’d found anything out here, anything that indicated why the barrier was established, any hint of a current threat to the Commonwealth, then we might earn ourselves a couple of return missions at the very least. But it’s an enigma. And we’ve lived with enigmas for a long time now. We’re shocked and excited by them at first, then we just learn to live with them. Eventually, we don’t even question them anymore. Look at the Silfen. Why don’t electronics work on their worlds? How the hell do they really travel between star systems? Our popular myth has it there are forest paths between worlds. That’s what the more whimsical members of our race believe. More practical people believe they spread themselves across the galaxy with arkships millennia ago. It doesn’t matter, because we live with it, it doesn’t affect us. Now as far as we can determine, the barrier, for all its grandeur, isn’t going to affect us either. There are no alien battle fleets waiting out here to blow Earth to pieces and steal our gold and our women. This is just one more incomprehensible relic that will take us five hundred years to understand. One day, after that, you and I will be standing here and laughing at how puzzled we once were.”
“You’re taking us home, aren’t you?” Tunde realized.
“Not immediately. But we’ve certainly devoted enough time to the Dark Fortress. Unless either of you have a viable alternative, I’m going to continue with our flight around the barrier. After that, if there’s nothing else to be found, we’ll examine the poles as originally planned. We might follow up with a fast examination of Dyson Beta. I’d like to confirm that it is the same before we head for home.”
“I’ll concur with that,” Oscar said. “Team leaders are getting asked how much longer the investigation is going to last. Nobody has actually complained yet, but I’d say it’s time to move on.”
They both looked at Tunde.
“All right,” he said. “We do have enough data to keep the universities busy for a decade. But I hope to God you’re wrong about the next stage of the project. Understanding the technology in the Dark Fortress would elevate our species to unbelievable heights. We could become transgalactic, for heaven’s sake; there really would be no limits to what we could achieve.”
Anna and her little team of controllers recalled the satellites, carefully threading them back through the moving maze that was the four lattice spheres. Out of the thirty-seven they’d deployed inside the Dark Fortress, nine had been lost, either in the center or due to communications failure. When the remainder were back in their hangar cradles, Tu Lee sent the Second Chance back into hyperspace at a speed that would complete the circuit of the barrier in another five days.
The alarm brought Wilson struggling out of a deep comfortable sleep. He floundered around on the cot for a second, trying to shield his eyes from the cabin lights that had switched on automatically. Anna groaned, squinting and blinking.
“What the fuck—” she grunted.
“The bridge has declared an emergency,” Wilson’s e-butler told him.
“Son of a bitch!” He rolled off the cot and headed straight for the door. His virtual vision was flashing up dozens of icons. It was difficult to focus on them and the corridor he was half running down. Fortunately, the starship’s designers had stuck with maritime tradition and kept the captain’s quarters close to the bridge.
The status icons didn’t indicate any physical damage to the superstructure, and the hyperdrive was functioning normally. Defense was equally reassuring. No immediate danger, then. Wilson forced himself to relax as the bridge door slid open for him. That was when he started to review the sensor icons. The hysradar was breaking through the barrier.
“Shit!”
The bridge’s small night shift crew glanced around at his exclamation.
“It started a couple of minutes ago,” Oscar said as he rose from the command console chair. “I ordered a halt to our flight.”
Wilson glanced at the forward portals as he sat down in the command chair. “Are we still in the wormhole?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Tu Lee, plot a course directly out of here. Implement it the second I tell you.”
“Aye, sir.”
Both portals were showing the hysradar scan of the barrier surface. It seemed to be fluctuating, bowing inward as if it was being bombarded by projectiles. Then Wilson acknowledged the scale; if objects were hitting it, they’d be the size of gas giants. The hostile force! The reason the barrier was established. “Astrophysics, do we know what’s causing that?”
“No, sir,” Bruno said cheerfully. “Not a clue.”
“Is there anything else out here? A ship? Some weapons system which could be causing that?”
“Nothing,” Sandy Lanier reported from the sensor console. “The hysradar scan is clean for a thousand AUs this side of the barrier.”
Wilson frowned at the bridge portals. The fluctuations were growing larger. And they weren’t going to find out why sitting out here peering over the parapet. Decision time.
“Hyperdrive, take us in to one million kilometers of the barrier,” Wilson ordered. “Defense, force fields on. Let’s see what’s happening.”
The rest of the bridge day shift arrived, sitting at the consoles that had been left unmanned, or standing behind the night shift. The atmosphere of nerves and genuine excitement was the same as Wilson remembered from the Eagle II’s cabin as they came in to land. He rubbed his hand slightly self-consciously over his creased white T-shirt before brushing his hair off his brow; the chair’s leather was already sticking to his bare legs below his sleep shorts. For a moment he considered hurrying off to change. It was hardly the most dignified image for history (and the onboard sensors were definitely recording), but then half the bridge crew was dressed the same. Ah, what the hell …
“One million kilometers, sir,” Sandy Lanier reported.
“Take us out of hyperspace.”
One of the portals switched to an image of pure aquamarine-blue. Dark streaks blossomed from the center, and peeled open. This time they didn’t have to switch the sensors to infrared to see the barrier.
“My God,” Tunde said hoarsely. “It’s becoming transparent.”
Dyson Alpha was wavering in and out of visibility thirty AUs ahead of them, only marginally brighter than the rest of the stars behind. The fluctuations indicated by the hysradar scan were inaccurate; the barrier wasn’t moving in any physical dimension, it was losing cohesion.
“Sensors, Defense, is there anything shooting at it?” Wilson asked desperately.
“No, sir. No energy of any kind. Local quantum state is also stable as far as we can tell. The barrier is … oh, wow! It’s gone! Hysradar scans are clear. The fucker’s vanished.”
Wilson stared at the two portals. The one with the gravitonic scan was empty. A second later, when the light reached them, Dyson Alpha burned steadily at the center of a colossal blank circle.
We’re still seeing the other side of the barrier, he realized, it’s going to take the light from the stars beyond over four hours to travel thirty AUs.
“Full passive sensor sweep,” Wilson ordered. “Show me what’s in there.”
“This can’t be coincidence,” Oscar said; he sounded shocked, even a little frightened. “It’s been there for over a thousand years, and then it vanishes just as we come along? No way. No goddamn way. Something knows we’re here.”
The bridge crew were looking around anxiously, seeking reassurance from one another. Wilson had been thinking along similar lines himself; quite a loud voice in his hea
d was urging him to run. And don’t look back. The starfield was beginning to reappear around the edges of the barrier as light swept in toward the Second Chance. It gave the rather unfortunate impression of a giant mantrap opening its jaws.
Wilson turned to Tunde. “What’s the Dark Fortress doing?”
The physics section went into a fevered huddle over their consoles, running analysis routines over the hysradar scans. Wilson watched the results coming through on one of his desk screens, not that he could understand the details, but the overall impression was easy enough.
“There’s still something there,” Tunde said. “Hysradar scan shows it’s smaller than before. We’re probably picking up the outer lattice sphere. Wait—yes, it’s rotating. The shell has gone. And there’s a very strange quantum fluctuation signature inside it. That wasn’t there before.”
“A wormhole?” Wilson asked.
“No. I don’t recognize it at all.”
“Threat assessment?”
Tunde gave him a slightly irked look. “Nothing obvious. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
A picture of Dyson Alpha’s planetary system was building up on one of the bridge portals. The two gas giants were both smaller than Jupiter, orbiting at four and a half AUs and seventeen AUs from their star. The largest of the three solid planets had a diameter of fourteen thousand kilometers and orbited one point two AUs out from the sun. The remaining two were both smaller, and in mildly ecliptic orbits a lot farther out. They called the innermost planet Alpha Major and focused the starship’s main sensor suite on it.
“My God,” Sandy Lanier said. “Will you look at those readings.”
Alpha Major’s visual spectrum showed water on a scale that indicated oceans, and an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. It was also a strong source of neutrinos. “A very heavy level of fusion activity,” Russell commented. “I’d say total power generation exceeds our Big15 worlds combined.”
“What the hell uses that much power?” Oscar muttered.
A measurable percentage of it, they discovered, was pumped into communications; throughout the electromagnetic spectrum the planet was shining like a small nova. The starship’s RI began recording the multitude of overlapping signals, but without a key none of its decryption algorithms were of any use.
The greatest fusion usage was the most obvious to see. Space above Alpha Major was thick with activity. Slender brilliant threads of fusion drives created their own ring nebula, extending from the upper atmosphere out to a million kilometers. Fleets of ships were accelerating at three or four gees away from the planet, slashing long scars of plasma across the void before finally cutting their engines to coast to destinations across the star system. Hundreds more were on their approach, firing their engines to decelerate into the perpetual swarm circling the planet.
Over fifty moonlets were in orbit two hundred thousand kilometers out, with knots of small fusion flames wrapped around them as ships came and went. They must have been captured asteroids, their orbit and spacing was too regular to occur naturally. Each one was surrounded by massive industrial stations.
“Don’t they care about their environment?” Antonia asked. “It can’t be safe having fusion ships flying that close to a habitable planet.”
“Those are big ships,” Anna said. “At least the same size as the Second Chance, some are a lot bigger. And their exhaust is helium, they’re probably using boron fusion.”
“Expensive,” Antonia muttered.
“Depends on your technology level,” Oscar said. “This is not a primitive civilization.”
“Where are the ships going?” Wilson asked.
The Second Chance began to expand its observation. They found an astonishing level of technological activity on and around every planet. The two outer solid planets, though cold and airless, were dotted by vast force field domes, artificial habitats whose vegetation matched the spectrum to be found on the landmasses of Alpha Major. Fusion globe suns illuminated each one. Spacecraft were almost as numerous as above Alpha Major, wrapping the worlds in a perpetual flexing toroid of blazing light. They also had dozens of industrialized moonlets.
Out among the gas giants, the pattern was repeated. Every large moon was home to the habitat force field domes, and surrounded by ships and industrialized moonlets. The thin rings orbiting the gas giants played host to thousands of stations that latched on to the rocky particles, slowly digesting them. As for the dozens of outermost moons—rocks that were essentially large asteroids—force field habitats had engulfed them completely. Tightly whorled contortions in the magnetosphere revealed colossal structures in low equatorial orbit. When the Second Chance’s sensors tracked them, they found they were trailing cables or pipes down into the upper cloud bands.
As the details appeared on the bridge portal they made Wilson nostalgic for the future he’d thought he was pioneering back in 2050, the never-happened golden era of humanity’s High Frontier. This was the kind of intersystem society any technological civilization would eventually build if it was somehow cut off from the stars.
Why would it be cut off, though?
Three hours after the barrier had vanished, Sandy turned the sensor console over to Anna, though she hung around for a couple of hours to see what developed.
One of the secondary telescopes was watching the turmoil that was space around Alpha Major. “Looks like some ships are heading outsystem,” Anna said. Eleven streaks of fusion plasma were visible beyond the distance when most of the ships had powered down to coast-flight mode. “Accelerating at five gees, and have been for three hours now. That’s one hell of a velocity they’re hitting. I hope they’ve got force field protection. A small molecule can seriously ruin your day at that speed.”
“I’m tracking several similar flights from both gas giants,” Jean Douvoir said.
“Any coming our way?” Wilson asked.
“Not really, sir. Four are on an interception course for the Dark Fortress. One of the others will pass within eight AUs.”
“Safe enough, but keep tracking it. If it alters course in our direction I want to know about it.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Tunde, do you think they’re capable of detecting our hysradar scans?”
“I’d say they have the technology to detect quantum wave fluctuations, which might give them an indirect clue we were here. But we haven’t detected any hysradar emissions from inside the star system, so they probably haven’t got a direct detector. Why would you build a hysradar if you’re confined inside a barrier thirty AUs across?”
“Do they have the technology to build the barrier?” Wilson asked sharply.
Tunde grimaced, reluctant to give an opinion. “I’d say not. Judging from what we’ve seen, I’d put them on a par with us, except that they don’t have wormholes. The Dark Fortress is orders of magnitude above anything we’re capable of.”
“That implies the barrier was put up by an outside agency.”
“It’s looking that way, yes.”
“They were confined inside, then. Someone thought they were a threat.” Wilson turned his attention back to the magnificent astroengineering accomplishments which the sensors were revealing. Given his background, it was hard not to be envious of Dyson Alpha’s civilization. “Why?”
“I’m more concerned about why it was switched off,” Oscar said. “Somebody observed us here.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Wilson said. “If you were attempting to close off this civilization, why remove the barrier the first time a ship investigates it?”
“They didn’t ‘attempt’ to cut them off,” Tu Lee said. “They succeeded.”
“Which makes switching the barrier off all the more nonsensical.”
“I don’t know what you’re worrying about it for,” Anna said. “There’s a simple way of finding out now.”
The bridge crew all looked at her. She grinned back, small spiral OCtattoos on her cheeks shimmering a soft silver.
“Ask
them,” she said, and pointed at the portal.
On the third day after the barrier fell, they used the hysradar to scan the system. Wilson had heard every argument for and against making contact. Most people, himself included, were being cautious, despite what they’d seen of the Dyson aliens. Dudley Bose was eager to start hailing them, while Oscar wanted to turn the Second Chance around and head straight back to the Commonwealth; he was still badly worried by the timing of the barrier coming down.
It was the first time Wilson really wished they had instantaneous communications back to the Commonwealth. He would have been relieved to pass the buck on this question. Anna was right, they could learn a lot from initiating contact. But now that it looked certain the Dyson aliens had been confined, shipboard speculation was heavily focused on the reason. Their civilization was impressive, but not that threatening.
There were now eighty-three ships heading out from the star system. After three days of continual flight at five gees acceleration the first wave had now traveled over ten AUs, and still more were being launched. The first ships from the outermost gas giant had almost reached the boundary where the barrier had been.
Nobody on board the Second Chance could work out what they intended to do once they were outside the thirty-AU limit, as the ships weren’t designed for interstellar travel. But the crew had spent their time gathering more data on the Dyson Alpha system. It wasn’t just the planets that had been colonized. There were two asteroid belts, one on either side of Alpha Major’s orbit, which were extensively settled. And each of the gas giant Trojan points, with their broad cluster of medium-sized planetoids, accommodated thriving spaceborne societies. More intriguing—certainly to the physicists—was the swarm of rings, five hundred kilometers in diameter and protected by force fields, which were orbiting three million kilometers above the star’s corona. They seemed to be absorbing the solar wind, siphoning in massive currents of elementary particles that jetted out of the flares and sunspots below them.
Wilson finally authorized the use of the hysradar to obtain a more detailed chart of the star system and its inhabitants. Nobody was really surprised when it showed tens of thousands of the big ships coasting between planets, moons, asteroid habitats, and the industrial stations. The total was slightly unnerving given how alone the Second Chance was. Also unforeseen were the number of stray asteroids they detected out beyond the second gas giant that showed signs of colonization and industrial activity. Three of them were only a couple of AUs away. Wilson gave Sandy Lanier, the duty sensor officer, a very hard time for not picking up their neutrino emissions earlier. He paid for it that night, when Anna gave him a lecture on how small the fusion generators were, and how big space in general was. “They must be just starting to build on those asteroids,” she claimed heatedly. “If there’s anything big and dangerous close to this ship, our department will spot it for you.”
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