And in the meantime, Star Fall would send a thousand scout ships ahead of its location, all escorted by military, and all shielded, to see what was ahead.
That protocol would also be changed for all Starburst ships. Until now they hadn’t been scouting that far ahead. That was to change for all of them now.
Ray and Tacita left first, then after hugs all around, Matt took Carey’s hand and with only a short pause at Angel Station, they were back on Star Fall.
“Any changes?” Carey asked as they appeared in the command center.
Matt hadn’t expected there to be and there wasn’t.
So over the next few minutes they worked with the command crew to get five hundred scout ships headed forward, another three hundred headed to the left of the shielded galaxy at a ninety-degree angle of Star Fall’s path and another three hundred headed to the right at a ninety-degree angle.
They were all to spread out and cover as many galaxies and space as they could. And they all had orders to stay shielded.
Matt didn’t much like the idea that whatever was in the galaxy was hiding from something. But they needed to find out for sure if that was a possibility. If it was, and some form of alien race had gone to the extreme measure of hiding from something, Matt didn’t like the idea of drawing that something’s attention to humanity.
But at this point, the Starburst program was designed to discover things like this. He just didn’t want to lose two thousand good people on The Bee in the process.
In three hundred years of war with the aliens, they hadn’t lost a ship or a person. Now was not the time to start. But the alien war had been different because the aliens were different. They didn’t even know they were in a war.
The aliens, as they called them, were a runaway genetics experiment done by a distant branch of humans from the original Earth. They thought they could make a lower-level rat-like race intelligent, so they had basically genetically enhanced them enough to be able to construct space ships and get to other planets and galaxies. But at their very core they were still rats with the focus to expand and breed.
Within seven hundred years they could completely expand over an entire galaxy. They would just keep breeding and building starships until they depleted a planet. Then because the planet couldn’t support them, they would turn on each other and eventually die out. But not until they had sent millions of ships per planet to new planets and new galaxies.
The Seeders had decided to just stop the ships from expanding to other planets and leave them alone on the planets. Matt knew that they had been lucky to stop the aliens because all it took was one alien ship before the infestation started all over.
After two hours, Matt suggested to Carey that they go to their apartment and he cook them dinner. She had agreed and they had jumped there.
Their apartment suited the two of them. They had decorated it in brown and wood tones, with lots of images of Earth on the walls to give them a sense of windows.
Their master bedroom was huge, with two walk-in closets, a high ceiling with wood beams, and a massive bed with quilts on it because they both liked to sleep cold.
Their living room had what appeared to be a real stone fireplace and comfortable brown-cloth couches. One entire wall was full of books. Around the room books and reading tablets scattered over the coffee table and end tables. Matt loved that it was contained cluttered with reading material. It felt like home.
A large screen on one wall allowed them to watch movies and Matt made the best popcorn ever, he was convinced, with just enough butter and salt to make it impossible to stop eating while watching a movie.
The large dining area and kitchen was where they spent the most time however. The kitchen was perfect, with lots of counter space to prepare anything either one of them wanted to cook. And it had every imaginable kitchen help appliance.
And the dining table right near the kitchen could sit eight people easily.
Carey dropped into a chair at the dining table while Matt poured her a glass of fruit juice and another glass of water. Then he went back to start working on a fresh salad to go with the cold chicken they still had left over from last night.
“Are you scared by all this?” Carey asked after a moment.
“Totally,” Matt said. “And I’m really scared for all those people on The Bee.”
“What do you think happened to them?” she asked.
“Honestly,” he said, glancing up for a moment before going back to work on chopping some onions for the salad, “I am hoping that Reed realized they had passed through something, or into something they hadn’t expected, and immediately cloaked.”
“He can think that quick,” Carey said, nodding, “no doubt there.”
“Even though we move around galaxies like they are dots on a map,” Matt said, chopping up some lettuce, “galaxies are actually huge places, so if he got inside some barrier he couldn’t get out of, he might also be able to hide from whatever built the barrier.”
“So lots of positive outcomes,” Carey said.
Matt could only nod to that because there was no reason at all to talk about the negative outcomes. He knew they both thought about them enough.
“So what do we do now?” Carey asked as Matt finished tossing the salad and put it in a bowl.
“Besides eat dinner,” he said, “we wait and study and research and explore until we have answers.”
She nodded, glancing at the salad as he put a plate of cold chicken in front of her and then plates and silverware in front of both of them.
“We have all of the Starburst ships and their scientists on the task,” Matt said, “plus all the top Seeder scientists in human space. Someone will find an answer.”
“And what happens if we don’t?” Carey asked.
“Humanity and Seeders never go without an answer for long,” Matt said, dishing up his salad. “That’s in our nature.”
Carey said nothing to that and they ate in silence, both worrying and thinking.
SECTION TWO
Discovery
EIGHT
IT WAS THE next morning, after a long and sleepless night, that they started to learn something about the area of space they had stumbled into.
Ahead on their planned course, scout ships found six more shielded galaxies. That stunned Carey, and worried her even more. Some race, or some entity, had enough knowledge and desire to shield an entire galaxy, make it look just like any other empty galaxy in the area of space.
And that meant, without a doubt, they were dealing with a race or an entity that could travel between galaxies. And except for the Gray and humans, no race had ever been found that had managed that.
“Stay shielded and stay back and just observe,” Matt had told each scout ship near a shielded galaxy.
“You think whoever is doing that knows we are out here?” Carey asked.
Matt shrugged. “We would know if alien ships came into human space, so I’m betting we are known. Especially if whatever or whoever is behind those shields are hiding.”
Carey flat hated that thought. And for the first time in fifty years started to doubt the idea of the Starburst program. All was fine as long as the universe stayed mostly empty, but this became a different problem when they suddenly found themselves trespassing into other’s known space.
“Star Fall,” Matt said. “Show this area of space on the big screen and color all shielded galaxies in red.”
“And add in as green dots all our scout ships and their locations,” Carey said.
On the big wall-sized board the image appeared. It showed about eight thousand or so galaxies. The location of the Star Fall was a large green dot, the shielded galaxies were directly ahead of their path.
As they were staring at the image, another galaxy white dot turned red. And then within moments another.
And then another as scout ships reported in their findings.
Carey just stared, her mouth open. If this was a civilization, they were staring at a
massive one.
But why shield every galaxy and what kind of technology and energy would it take to do such a task over and over?
It was Matt who saw the pattern. “The galaxies are all in a line.”
The moment Matt said that Carey could see it as well. And behind them one of the command crew said softly, “I’ll be.”
Another said, “Bread crumbs.”
Carey knew exactly what they meant. This looked, at galaxy size, exactly like what they had been doing with their jump stations back to human space. Many galaxies beside the ones with shields were normal, no shields, no signs of civilization-level life at all.
“They are pretty much the same distance apart as well,” Matt said.
Carey didn’t like the way she was thinking, but she had to tell Matt. “These could be like our Bread Crumb stations, but these also could form a wall. Posts in a defensive or offensive wall.”
Matt just shook his head. “And I thought Seeders worked at a massive scale. We’re playing with toys compared to this level.”
Over the next two hours they had the scout ships target certain galaxies ahead they thought would be shielded and every one turned out to be. And they sent a hundred scout ships along the line of shielded galaxies going back, since none of the likely ones had been scouted as they came by. They had been too far off Star Fall’s main course.
And they found more.
Finally, when they had over sixty shielded galaxies, Carey asked Star Fall, “Is there a pattern to what we are finding in shielded galaxies? Can you extrapolate out any kind of findings from the data we have now?”
“Yes,” Star Fall said, surprising Carey and clearly Matt.
“What would that be?” Matt asked.
“If this pattern were to continue, the shielded galaxies form a circle,” Star Fall said.
Carey just stared at the images of the shielded galaxy.
“A two-dimensional circle or a sphere?” Matt asked after a moment.
“Not enough data,” Star Fall said.
“Please indicate the galaxies, following this pattern, that would show both a circle and a sphere?” Carey said. “Increase the image to show the area of either the circle or the sphere and include human space.”
The entire wall seemed to turn white again with more dots representing galaxies than Carey could ever imagine. Human space was again shown as a small almost river of green along one side. The alien circle was shown in red and the possible sphere was shown in pink.
It was so massive Carey couldn’t even begin to grasp it. It covered more billions of galaxies and all of human space was tiny compared to the size, if this thing actually existed.
“Star Fall,” Matt said, “will any of the other Starburst ships come close to this sphere or circle?”
“Yes,” Star Fall said, “Star Rain crosses into this circle or sphere in one year at their present half speed.”
A line appeared on the large screen coming from human space showing the path of Star Rain.
“Well,” Matt said, “we can find out just how big this thing really is in short order.”
“Are we sure we want to know?” Carey asked.
Matt shrugged. “This is what we are out here to find, isn’t it?”
Carey just shook her head. Not in her wildest imagination, even after being in space for over three hundred years, could she have imagined something like this.
NINE
FOR THE NEXT two days, all Matt and Carey did was look at reports from scout ships coming in. And worry and try to figure out a way to get The Bee out from behind that shield.
And it had taken at top speed a number of scout ships from Star Rain to get to where the edge of the circle or sphere might be to explore it from that side, if indeed it did actually exist. Those reports were about to come in.
But after the last two days, Matt was convinced what they were seeing was a massive sphere made up of millions and millions of shielded galaxies around the edge and containing more billions of galaxies inside the sphere. He was sure that Star Fall had the exact number of galaxies contained inside the sphere, but so far he hadn’t wanted to ask.
Yesterday, Carey had sent out military escorted science ships to study any kind of connection that might be happening between shielded galaxies. There had to be a reason for such a massive undertaking, but Matt had a hunch that Seeders were so primitive compared to the race that built these galaxy shields, they might not be able to understand it.
Not once, but numbers of times both he and Carey had mentioned they felt like ants on a human’s pant leg.
“Report coming in from Star Rain,” Star Fall said.
On the big screen the image of space showing the possible sphere five red dots lined up near where Star Rain’s scout ships had gone.
“The scout ships have found five shielded galaxies,” Star Fall said. “There is now a very high percentage the shielded galaxies forms a complete sphere.”
Matt just stared at the sphere illustrated on the large screen, trying to make any kind of sense of what he was staring at. It just completely baffled him.
Why?
Carey kept staring at the large sphere, then she asked a question that he hadn’t thought to ask.
“Star Fall, what is at the center of this sphere? Can you show an image of the galaxies in the center?”
“No,” Star Fall said. “There are no galaxies anywhere near the center of this sphere that can be detected.”
“Empty space?” Matt asked.
“Undetermined,” Star Fall said. “And the scout ship The Bee has reappeared.”
Matt coughed and then stared at Carey.
A stunned silence filled the command center.
“Please contact Chairman Reed,” Carey said before Matt could.
“He is contacting you,” Star Fall said.
“On the big screen,” Matt said.
A moment later the smiling and clearly healthy face of Chairman Reed appeared.
“Great to see you again,” Matt said.
“Great to be seen, Chairmen,” Reed said, smiling and bowing slightly. “Seems I got myself and my ship into a little pickle.”
“We noticed,” Carey said, laughing. “But wait until you find out what your little adventure uncovered. Is everyone on your ship all right? No damages or injuries.”
“No damages or injuries beyond an entire crew being scared out of our minds,” Reed said. “Every detail will be in all our reports, but if you would like, I can summarize what we found on the other side of that shield.”
“Please,” Carey said, again a half second before Matt could say the same thing.
“Inside that shield the rest of the universe vanished,” Reed said. “So we instantly knew we had gone through something and we cloaked.”
Matt nodded. He had hoped that would be the case.
“From the inside,” Reed said, “the shield looks like a shimmering surface of a lake surrounding the entire galaxy. Only it was an oblong, like we were inside a strangely shaped ball. Never saw anything like it. Think of looking at a surface of shimmering mercury.”
“Could you spot the power source?” Matt asked.
“There was none that we could find,” Reed said. “And we spent a lot of our time trying to figure out if we would be destroyed going back through the shield. That is what took us so long to come back out.”
Matt nodded. Logical thinking and if he had been in charge of The Bee, he would have done exactly the same thing that Reed had done and just as carefully.
No power source at all?” Carey asked.
“None that we could locate,” Reed said. “We think it might be a natural form.”
“It’s not,” Matt said. “You’ll understand when you get the rest of what we have discovered while you were in there.”
“Any signs of civilization?” Carey asked.
“Yes,” Reed said. “At one point in the distant history of the galaxy, a fairly advanced civilization traveled among the sta
rs of the galaxy inside the sphere. But the best that we could figure with limited time to study what we could find, that civilization died out almost a million years ago. No idea why.”
“So going through the shield caused no problems to anyone or your ship?” Matt asked. If that was the case they could go back in and study.
“None,” Reed said. “We tested and retested everything we could, but we could never get a reading on what the shield even was. So we voted. I figured all of our lives were at stake, so everyone needed a vote. The entire adult crew voted one-hundred-percent to take a chance and go back through.”
“Well come on in and we’ll talk some more,” Matt said. “Get your crew settled and all reports filed so Star Fall can put it all together.”
“Glad to,” Reed said.
“And Chairman,” Carey said. “Great job.”
“Thank you,” Reed said, smiling.
With that the screen went blank.
Matt exhaled. He hadn’t realized how much tension he had been holding with every hour that ship and all the people on board were missing.
Behind them the command crew were all cheering and laughing. It seemed they had all felt the same stress.
“Star Fall,” Matt said. “Please inform the other Starburst ships and Chairmen Ray and Tacita that our lost scout ship has returned intact and they will be getting data shortly.”
“Done,” Star Fall said.
Matt nodded and turned to the smiling faces of their command crew. “Now, everyone, we need some ideas on how to explore this giant sphere we have stumbled across. After lunch, Carey and I will be willing to listen to anything, no matter how wild.”
“From the looks of the size of the sphere,” Carey said, “the wilder the better.”
With that, Matt jumped them both back to their apartment where he needed desperately to just hug Carey.
And it seemed she had needed to hug him back.
TEN
TWO DAYS LATER they had a plan. They were headed to the center of the sphere.
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 3