Matt shook his head. “First time you have been down to only eight on a team?”
She nodded. “Got any tricks?”
He shook his head. “Not a one. Wish I did.”
His team had just lost another runner yesterday, bringing their total down to seven. They were still going as well, but she could tell it was wearing on him.
A nine thousand kilometer endurance race was nothing easy, that was for sure. Every year going into it she was excited and every year at this point she felt like she had lost her mind for even trying this.
Basically she had been running and walking over twelve miles a day, two legs of the race, for twenty-seven days now. And with another runner down, that meant every leg of the race came around that much sooner.
There were only just over two hundred teams left in the race at this point of the over eight hundred that had started. So they both had done well so far.
“I’m running in twenty minutes,” Matt said, taking one more drink of his orange juice and then heading for the bedroom.
“Go slow,” she said as he walked away.
He laughed and then said, without turning around. “At this point there is no choice.”
She finished her breakfast, put their dishes in the sink and then jumped to the command center. She didn’t run again for three hours. An hour before, if she could, she would come back and lie down and give her legs a rest.
On the big screen in the command center was the image of the sphere and the location of the three Starburst ships.
It also showed the scouted galaxies on the path ahead of each ship. So far they had quickly scouted over ten thousand galaxies ahead of the three ships and found nothing at all different.
Nothing. Every galaxy was shielded, every planet that was human habitable had been terra-formed at one point in the distant past and showed signs of three ancient civilizations, now all long gone.
Carey just couldn’t believe that some group out of those three civilizations would have stayed behind somewhere. But so far, not one sign of anything.
And the huge Center structure sort of dominated all of their thoughts. With three ships now triangulating scans of the big structure ahead, they were getting a better and better image of it.
And it became more and more amazing and impossible.
From the looks of it from this great distance, it was a giant sphere itself, basically consisting of massive rings.
No one was sure yet, but they felt the rings that made up the center sphere were rotating slightly. Every day there were more guesses from scientists as to what it might be and how it might work, but nothing at all definitive yet. And they might not actually know what the thing was until they got there.
And even at their current speed, that would be about a year.
It was going to be a very long year of waiting. She had no doubt about that.
She didn’t notice the passing of time until Matt appeared at her side, freshly showered.
Together they sat down in their command chair and worked over the reports quickly with Star Fall, paying close attention to the most forward scouting ships.
Nothing at all had changed since they had started into the sphere. But as the big image showed, all three ships were barely inside after days of travel.
They finished right as Carey needed to go change for her run.
“I’ll let you know when I am out of the shower and have some lunch ready,” she said.
“As you said to me, go slow.”
“Did you?” she asked.
He laughed. “My slowest ten-K leg yet.”
She kissed him and jumped to their apartment and then twenty minutes later took the armband once again for a run-walk, this time across a large hangar used for science ships. As far as she could see in the distance, the science ships lined up. Each bird-like ship could hold four thousand crew and families and all sorts of scientific equipment.
Running and walking along the massive ships felt intimidating. Sometimes she wondered how she and Matt managed to stay sane being in charge of such a massive ship and millions of people.
In her ten-kilometer leg, she actually managed to run past sixty science ships. And she still couldn’t see the end of the rows of them in sight. And these were just the ones in base at the moment. Thousands of others were on mission ahead of Star Fall and would rotate back in and some of these ships would go out.
Seeders never did anything at a small scale. But compared to the ancients, this was a small scale and that just scared her deep down more than she wanted to admit to anyone, including Matt.
TWENTY-FIVE
MATT WAS PLEASED that for the first time in years, both his team and Carey’s team were going to finish the Tip-to-Tip.
And both he and Carey were going to run the last legs of the race into the lounge where the rest of their teams would be waiting.
Carey’s team had maintained eight runners, but Matt’s team had once again gone down to just six, but thankfully the last two had gotten injured on the next-to-last day, so the six remaining could finish it.
Matt’s legs felt like rubber bands, but he knew he could make it. And Carey was just a few minutes behind as he entered the large lounge to the cheers of maybe a thousand people.
He stopped running and looked up at the big board showing the racers remaining. Only one hundred and thirty-eight teams still remained. Some had finished already, another hundred were still on the course.
Matt slowed and stopped about fifty paces from the finish.
He had warned his team what he was going to do, so they just kept applauding.
And then, after almost a minute, Carey appeared through the door of the lounge.
She beamed at all the cheering and then gave him a huge smile when she saw him standing there, still on the course.
She actually ran up to him and kissed him to the cheers of everyone around them.
Then he took her hand and the two of them jogged together over the finish line.
He knew his team had still beaten her team since she had started ten minutes ahead of him and this coming year he would remind her of that at appropriate times.
But the idea of finishing together after nine thousand kilometers was just wonderful and the room was cheering and both of their teams were gathering around and laughing and celebrating.
Later in the evening Matt and Carey had planned on taking both teams together out to a wonderful dinner at the rib place they had seen early on. It would be lots of food, some drinking, and far too much fun.
The applauding and cheering had just about died down when suddenly it started up again as yet another runner came through the door and into the huge room, headed for the finish.
And this time Matt and Carey stood beside the finish line to cheer the runner on as well.
TWENTY-SIX
TEN MONTHS LATER, Carey just shook her head when Matt asked her if she and her team were going to run again. He hadn’t really kidded her as much as she had expected him to about his team beating her team last year.
And him waiting for her at the finish had been one of the nicest things she could imagine him ever doing.
But now, as the big Center loomed ahead of them, neither of them were certain if they should cancel the Tip-to-Tip or let it happen again this year.
They were still three months away and all three ships were now close enough that weekly dinners had restarted among the six chairmen again, just as they had done for hundreds of years during the fight with the aliens.
Carey had been surprised at how much she had missed those dinners with her friends.
The ten months since all three ships had started toward the center of the vast ancient sphere had gone without incident. Every galaxy, every planet seemed to be exactly the same.
The only difference as they got closer in was that the scientists said the planets seemed to be older and more worn out. Granted, a million years of just letting the planets grow wild had helped each planet recuperate, but it
was becoming clear that the ancient civilization had expanded outward, growing the sphere larger and larger as it went.
One theory going around now among the scientists was that the ancients had simply outgrown their home and moved to a bigger one.
At one point the six chairmen over dinner had tried to speculate how many humans would have had to move in that case. Not counting the Gray and the Cirrata. Just humans.
There were billions of human planets in each galaxy and billions of galaxies inside the sphere. And each planet seemed to have had a full population on it.
The number had gotten so large, all of them had just laughed and given up. One of their ships could have given them the exact number, but Carey knew she didn’t really want it.
And she had little doubt that she wouldn’t have been able to even grasp it if she knew the number. You start multiplying billions by billions by billions and the number just gets silly.
Yet the scientists think all those people just packed up and moved at basically the same time because there was no signs at all of a war or a plague or anything else that killed anyone.
And the scientists had assured her and Matt that if there had been that kind of problem, they would have found evidence for it.
Along the way they had also found many other intact space stations and hundreds and hundreds of ancient ships.
They got no more information from the stations and the other ships than they had gotten from Arcadia Case.
It was now the Center that had them all focused. Being so close now, they could see far, far more detail and the three Starburst ships where compiling as complete an image as they could, adding more and more detail to it every day it seemed.
Now everyone was sure of the structure. The Center was also a giant sphere. But the sphere was made up of six wide rings, all moving clockwise while also turning on their axis slowly clockwise as well.
There was a smaller interior ring and then each ring got slightly larger as it came outward. About a half a light year separated the rings, but with a structure so massive, they looked close.
So the overall image was of a sphere, but it was actually six rings moving all the time both spinning and twisting, one inside the other.
It was the scale of the thing that completely had them baffled. The largest ring could contain the entire Milky Way Galaxy inside it and never touch a star.
The landmass on the inside of the largest ring was estimated to be that of two-hundred-hundred-billion planets. And it clearly had atmosphere and gravity and seemed very earthlike.
A very bright yellow sun-like object of immense size shone from the middle of the sphere, lighting up the inside surfaces of each ring. As the rings spun and the interior rings moved in front of a ring farther out, night dropped over the surface.
The scientists had surprised the chairmen a month ago by saying that the cycles of day and night were pretty standard twenty-four hour cycles on the large outer ring.
But they had no idea what that center object could be or what kept the rings stable and with gravity and atmosphere on the inside of the rings. And no one would even venture a guess as to the material the structure was made from. Forces like what was happening in the Center would tear apart any material the Seeders knew at a molecular level.
They theorized the power somehow being transferred from the billions of galaxy shields to the Center was what kept the entire thing powered, but they had no real idea beyond that speculation.
As with most things they had encountered with the ancients, the ancients had been so far advanced that much of what the three Starburst ships were seeing wasn’t really clear to them how it was done.
Not even in theory.
So now, after ten months, with three more months until they reached their positions around the Center, she and Matt had to decide if they were going to run the Tip-to-Tip.
It would end this year just two weeks ahead of the ships reaching their destination.
She looked at Matt and then said what she had been worried about.
“Wrong time for the run,” she said. “We need everyone focused on that monster we are facing out there. We can bring the run back when we find stability again.”
Matt thought for a second and then agreed. “After all, how often do we get to explore a massive ancient civilization’s abandoned home?”
Later that day from the command center, they told the crew that this year the Tip-to-Tip relay race was off. And the reason for it.
Later Carey got calls from three of her teammates thanking her.
And they got no complaints at all. Everyone knew what faced them.
Distractions at the moment weren’t what any of them wanted or needed.
SECTION SIX
The Center
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE THREE STARBURST ships took up positions on three sides of the giant Center sphere. Matt had spent most of the last months just staring at it, reading science reports about it, trying to get used to it.
That, he discovered, wasn’t going to be possible.
Star Fall was nothing more than a tiny microscopic speck of dust floating near the massive structure. It was impossible to put scale to what he saw.
One of the scientists, a good friend of theirs named Janet, who was from their home galaxy, had tried to give him and Carey some perspective one afternoon.
Janet had said simply, “Imagine the distance from Earth to the sun. That distance would only be one thousandth of the way across any of the bands. So you could start at the edge of the band, travel the distance from your sun to your Earth and still not really have started the trip across the width of the band.”
Matt had just shook his head. How could something physical be that large?
Something actually constructed.
Janet went on. “Now, the big ring of the Center would completely encircle the Milky Way Galaxy. And not touch a star on any side. It has a diameter of over one-hundred-and-forty thousand light years.”
“How in the world is that held together?” Carey had asked.
Janet had just shrugged and said, “We have no idea. By any standards we know in physical and molecular level forces, that ring, any of those rings, should have pulled themselves apart, let alone ever be built.”
“How is it possible that the ring is moving?” Matt had asked, “both spinning and twisting?”
Janet had just shrugged.
So now they faced the massive Center of the ancient civilizations, something so impossible, it didn’t seem real. And so large, they had no idea how to even begin.
So that night, all six chairmen got together for dinner in Matt and Carey’s apartment. It was Carey’s turn to cook and she had created a wonderful pasta dinner with fresh Italian bead, two types of sauce, and a light green salad with Italian dressing.
After they got eating, it was Benny who brought up the problem they now faced.
“How the hell are we going to explore that thing?” Benny asked.
All five of them shook their heads. Matt actually had no idea at all what they should do. Any plan he and Carey had come up with just seemed to be at the wrong scale.
“So what kind of resources do we have exactly?” Angie asked. “How many scout ships, military ships, and scientific ships?”
Matt held up a hand. “Privacy field down.” That opened the privacy field around their dinner conversations and their apartment. He then said, “Star Fall, do you have the exact number of scout ships, military ships, and scientific ships available on all three of the Starburst ships?”
“In all three ships,” Star Fall said, “there are twenty-four thousand scout ships of various sizes, twenty-one thousand military ships of various sizes, and eighteen thousand scientific ships, again of varying sizes and uses.”
“Thank you, Star Fall,” Carey said. Then she said, “Activate privacy field.”
“So we swarm the place,” Benny said.
Matt liked that idea, actually. They would first have to test th
e safety of the entire area, but all of their ships were used to scanning and covering great distances quickly. And right now, what they all needed was more information.
In twenty minutes the six of them had decided on a plan. They would send out probes first, then smaller scout ships, to test the safety of the entire thing. If the Center proved to be safe, then each ship would send out half of their ships at once, with the focus in the beginning on the large ring and anything to do with power generation.
They would have all the heads of the science departments and military departments submit plans of discovery with that idea in mind and the six of them, with the help of their ships would look over the plans.
Matt liked the idea. It felt like finally, after over a year traveling here, they might get some answers.
And at this point, any answers would be better than none.
TWENTY-EIGHT
AFTER TEN DAYS of probes and small scout ships scanning throughout the large, moving rings of the Center, they were ready to launch.
Half of their ships would launch very shortly, spreading out over the largest ring, taking readings.
Star Rain and Star Mist would do the same. It would seem like a mist of tiny, tiny, tiny microscopic bugs had suddenly swarmed over the outer ring.
Carey knew that a lot of the crew had issues with the scale of the Center. And many doubted that humans, even ancient humans, could build at such a massive scale, so something else must have built it.
Carey wanted to remind those worried that the major pyramids of Egypt on her home world wouldn’t even take up a tiny bit of room on one of Star Fall’s massive hangar decks. And those pyramids had seemed impossible at the time.
Carey was managing to get a grasp on the size of the Center. Now her interests were moving to how it was built, how it still remained in one piece, and where had the ancient races gone?
She and Matt were in their command chair, hooked into everything happening on Star Fall. Surprisingly, all ships were ready, all had their assignments.
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 8