by B. V. Larson
Marvin said, “Snowflakes…? Ah, the structures. Perhaps there was a dense concentration guarding this side of the ring. As soon as one small nuke detonated, the shrapnel from the blast spread out and struck the remaining drones; and they were destroyed in a chain reaction.”
I nodded. “That seems reasonable.”
“Sir,” Hansen broke in, “the snowflakes…they’re heading toward us, converging on our position.”
I looked at the holotank and saw that he was right. “They’re not very fast. We have time. Take evasive action to stay away from them. Marvin, what do you think these things really are?”
“Automated Litho defense systems.”
“What will they do if they catch us? Blow up?”
“I do not believe so. From my analysis of their structure, they will probably latch on to any foreign object they encounter.”
“Latch on?” I looked up at the screen where one of the snowflakes spun slowly, looking harmless. “What’s that supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
I paced around the holotank, watching Hansen pilot us away from the largest concentrations of the slowly converging structures. What could they do to us? Just attaching themselves like barnacles seemed a very ineffective tactic. Then I looked back at the holotank and told it to display the overall number of snowflakes detected.
“There’s more of them now,” I said.
“Correct,” Marvin replied. “The number has risen from under two thousand to over ten thousand in less than five minutes.”
Alarmed, I raised my voice. “Where the hell are they coming from?” I demanded.
“They’re rising from the inner surface of the sphere that we’re encapsulated within.”
I realized he was correct. We were inside of a ball that was as big as a planet. It covered millions of square miles of area. How many of these snowflakes might there be?
“I know what they’ll do,” Adrienne said suddenly. She’d been pretty quiet during the running battle with the Pandas and our escape through the ring. But now she stepped up to my side and studied the holotank with me.
“It’s simple,” she said. “They’re like antibodies. They float around until they detect alien objects like our ships, and then they’ll just get thicker and thicker until we can’t avoid them. They’ll attach onto us, slow us down, and eventually overwhelm us. Maybe they’ll crush us or rip us apart.”
“It’s getting harder to dodge them,” Hansen said. “We may need to shoot our way out.”
“Out? To where?” I asked. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“We can use nukes to clear them away for a while,” Hansen suggested with a shrug.
I stared at the screens and the growing number of contacts depicted in the holotank. They were tiny points of dull orange light, meaning the brainbox wasn’t completely sure if it should classify them as enemy systems or not.
I was certain, however. They were very dangerous and should be colored a bright red.
For a while. Hansen was right. Each of our small supply of precious nukes would probably buy us a few minutes, but that was a very temporary solution.
“All right, people, I can’t be the only one thinking here. Start scanning and using your imaginations. What can we do?”
Adrienne spoke up again. “Maybe we can talk to them.”
“Good idea. Marvin, you’re our translator. Get working on any signals they’re giving off—or any kind of language. They have to be coordinating among themselves somehow. You said they’re just a kind of nano-machine, after all.”
I turned to Hansen. “Is there any way out of here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “None that I can see.”
“Can we shoot some of these out of the way?” I asked.
“The two main lasers should have no problem, and the midsized ones will be effective, but our point-defense beams don’t have enough punch. It’s easier to damage a machine—like a missile—than it is to destroy a smart rock.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s experiment. Start firing at the ones in front of us. Clear our path. See what it takes to kill them.” I knew this was only a short-term answer, as we’d run out of energy before we destroyed tens of thousands of snowflakes. Glancing at the holotank, I saw the number of visible snowflakes had risen to more than thirty thousand and climbing.
My suspicions were right. Our big lasers each blew a snowflake to dust with one shot, but it took several hits with our smaller ones before a target was cut to pieces and no longer moving on its repeller. Whatever these things were, they seemed cheap, tough, and in endless supply.
“Where are they all coming from?” I demanded. “Were they waiting dormant, or are they being generated or manufactured as we watch?”
Marvin replied, “They seem to be calving from the rocky inner surface of the sphere.”
“Calving? What does this have to do with cattle?”
“It’s a specialized term for pieces breaking off glaciers or monoliths,” Marvin said in a superior tone.
“Thank you, Captain Dictionary,” I replied.
Adrienne touched my hand briefly. I glanced at her, and my anger and frustration faded a little. The situation was maddening, and she was trying to let me know I was exhibiting too much emotion in front of the crew.
I sucked in a breath, nodded to her, and forced a tight smile. When I continued speaking, it was in a level tone of voice.
“So…” I said, “If these snowflakes are like antibodies, do they function as cells or individual Litho creatures? Could the Lithos be completely communal entities able to break apart and reform at will for various tasks?”
“I was about to suggest that,” Marvin said. He sounded a little annoyed that I’d come up with it first.
“Admit it, Marvin,” I said. “I figured something out before you did.”
“Your theory has yet to be proven.”
“But it fits the facts,” I said.
Marvin didn’t reply. I imagined he was sulking, and that made me happy until I happened to look back at the holotank and see the number of snowflakes had grown to more than one hundred thousand. Given the inner surface area of the sphere we were trapped in, I didn’t see any reason why it couldn’t eventually reach a million—or even a billion.
“Now we know why the Pandas use antiproton beams despite their shorter range and high power consumption,” I said. “They weren’t trying to stop an invasion of Macros. They feared these things. And I’m willing to bet these formations are cousins with the living dirt we found on that dead world in the Panda system.”
“An elementary deduction,” Marvin said quickly. “That’s been part of my operating theory for the last several minutes.”
I knew then that he had been sulking, but I decided not to rub it in.
“And do you have any other tidbits of wisdom in your brainbox you’d like to share?” I asked.
“I believe the Pandas built their battle station and fleet to counter the Lithos, and that the Lithos built this facility to contain the Pandas.”
“Excellent. But how about something more practical? Such as how to get out of this trap?”
“I’m working on that.”
Since Marvin was in the same predicament we were, I believed him and let him alone for now.
“Cody,” Adrienne said, “how thick is this shell we’re in?”
I looked at Hansen, who shook his head. “Our sensors only penetrate rock about a hundred feet deep. After that, it could be a thousand miles for all we know.”
“That’s a good question, though,” I said, shooting a smile at her. “What about other sensors? Infrared? Ultraviolet? Gamma? Neutron radiation? Neutrinos? Gravity?”
“We don’t have gravitic sensors,” Hansen replied. “The others show some variation—but nothing conclusive.”
I programmed the holotank to consolidate all the readings to see if there were any patterns. Sometimes combining sensors revealed information that a single sensor would
miss. “There’s a hot spot here,” I said, throwing the location up on the main screen. “All sorts of radiation and lots of neutrinos. What could that be?”
“Neutrinos usually come from stars,” Hansen said after a moment. “And they pass right through almost everything, even planets.”
I nodded. “So now we know the direction of this system’s sun. From the number of neutrinos, we’re less than one AU away from it. I have no idea how that helps us, but the more we find out about this place, the more likely we are to figure a way out of it,” I said in a firm, confident voice. “Keep scanning. We need all the information we can get. Make sure you feed it to Marvin.”
Hansen said, “Ensign Riggs, at a guess, I’d say we have about another half hour before I won’t be able to avoid or shoot these things anymore. Then we’ll have to slow down to avoid damaging ourselves, and that will be the beginning of the end.”
I could see what he meant. Once they started sticking to us, the process would accelerate until they swallowed the ship. Maybe they would just entomb us and forget about us as a piece of grit encapsulated by an oyster. Well, I didn’t want to become some kind of permanent cosmic pearl. “Use a nuke if you need to buy us time,” I told him.
Desperately, I ran the holotank through many variations of sensor data, trying to find something to give us a chance. I wished I had gravitic sensors. Then I slapped my head, cursing myself for my stupidity. “Adrienne, go grab the nerds and the engineers and get them to the factory. I need a gravitic sensor, fast.”
“But—”
“I don’t care how you do it,” I cut her off, “figure it out. Challenge the techies. Call the lobster an idiot and tell him the only way he can prove he’s superior is by showing the stupid humans how to quickly design and make a gravitic sensor—preferably a sensitive device that can focus on one area at a range out to ten thousand miles. Make sure it can be controlled from the bridge. Now go!”
Adrienne shot me a reproachful look, but at this point I didn’t care. Life and death hung in the balance, and I didn’t have time for courtesy.
“Sure would be nice to have some of those antiproton beams,” Hansen mumbled.
“Sure would have been nice to express that idea several days ago, when we had time to make modifications,” I retorted. “Keep it on the list, though, because you’re right. We should have taken a cue from the Pandas. I should have. Are we sure there aren’t any openings in this sphere? Any tunnels?”
“Nope,” Hansen said.
“Installations or structures, above or below ground? Anything that might be a command center?” I had a vague idea of nuking whatever mechanism controlled this killer trap, if we could only identify it.
Hansen shook his head after checking around with the other bridge crew. “Nothing big enough to be obvious, but there’s a lot of surface area to search. If it was small, it could take weeks to find it.”
He was right. Unless the nerve center I was hoping to find was as big as a city, we weren’t going to find it in the next half hour. The rising snowflake count now exceeded one million and showed no signs of slowing down. In fact, the increase was accelerating. I felt like we were red-coated British soldiers facing a million Zulus: high-tech weapons with limited ammo against massive numbers. I paced back and forth, trying to figure a way out.
“Marvin, have you found anything?” I transmitted.
“I’ve located a low-power carrier wave in the gamma band, but it will take some time to decode.”
“How long?”
“Days.”
I slammed my fist on the holotank’s pedestal. “Not good enough! We need to buy time.” As that was a statement not a question, Marvin didn’t reply. He must have been at full neural capacity trying to crack the Litho language and search for an exit at the same time. I believed he was doing his best. After all, his metal hide was in this with the rest of us.
I racked my brain for a solution. What would Dad do? I rifled through my memories of all the stories I’d heard him tell; all the news accounts, documentaries and war vids I’d seen.
Snapping my fingers, I said, “Marvin, keep trying to crack their language, but start sending pieces of it back at them. Try to break it down by words or strings or scripts. They’re machines, so they should have a very rigid syntax. They don’t seem very clever. Maybe they can be fooled into accepting our recorded commands.”
Marvin did not acknowledge even though I could see the channel was open. I hoped that meant he was running his brainbox at maximum capacity, not that he was ignoring me. I hated to depend on the erratic robot, but I had to admit he could outperform a team of engineers if he was motivated. Dad had kept him around for a reason. He was a temperamental and dangerous—but highly effective—piece of equipment.
“We have roughly ten minutes until we’ll have to use a nuke,” Hansen called.
I contacted Adrienne who’d gone down to the factory deck. “What have we got?”
“It’s coming together now,” she reported. “They came up with a sensor box cannibalized from lab equipment. You would have thought we were chopping up their own kids. Once I told them it was life or death, they became a bit more cooperative. It should be hooked up to the control network in five minutes.”
“Thanks. Good work.” I closed the channel. “Valiant, notify me when the gravitic detector is hooked up. I’m inputting its first script now.” While my computer skills were only average, this little program was simple.
“Command accepted,” the ship’s brainbox told me as it digested my instructions. Minutes later, the brainbox continued: “Gravitic detector is online.”
“Execute the script.”
Staring at the holotank, I watched as our two ships maneuvered as if in a video game, dodging clouds of snowflakes and shooting. I wondered if the Lithos had any more surprises for us if we did find a way out. Perhaps it would be something more dangerous than space-borne antibodies.
A thin fan on my display reached out from our ship and began scanning the surface starting with the hot spot. Unlike radar, a gravitic detector could map the mass density of just about anything, and gravity could not be blocked. That meant that with proper focus, we could look within the crust of this inside-out planet and see how thick and dense it was, giving us a crude picture of its structure.
“Five minutes,” Hansen called.
With agonizing slowness, the holotank built up a picture of part of the sphere. Surveying the whole thing would take hours, but I hoped this globe would have some kind of structure that would give us an advantage. It couldn’t be made of only raw dirt or it would deform and collapse. Something stronger than soil or even rock had to be holding its shape. I imagined a geodesic dome with its triangular struts supporting much thinner parts in between.
“There,” I said, transferring what I saw to the main screen for everyone to see. “Form follows function. Only a few shapes will support a smooth sphere. I was right: these are geodesic triangles.” I used a cursor to mark the shapes of huge struts beneath the soil, tens of miles long and half a mile thick. “They’re extremely dense, most likely some form of crystal, as the Lithos don’t seem to like large amounts of metal.”
“How does that help us?” Adrienne asked from behind me. She’d come back onto the bridge and now stood at my side, gazing at the holotank.
“Great job with the detector, babe,” I said, then I froze as I realized I’d accidentally spoken to her as if she were Olivia. I forced myself hurriedly onward, hoping no one had noticed. “These main struts hold everything in place. There are lesser ones filling in the sections and even smaller ones filling in those sections in a latticework.”
“That means it has weak spots. How thick is the thinnest part?”
“Right here.” I stabbed a finger downward. “Only about five miles of soil. Not even hard rock.”
“Only?” Adrienne stared at me from close range.
I noticed her face was flushed. Had I embarrassed her with my slip-up or was her fac
e pink from exertion? Still, she didn’t look mad at me. It looked like I had gotten away with it—at least for now. It occurred to me that I was becoming a little too comfortable around her. I reminded myself to be more careful in the future. Then I got back to the situation at hand.
“Query the tech team fast,” I said. “I need to know if we can blast through with the nukes we have aboard.”
-16-
Adrienne turned and ran off the bridge, calling over her shoulder, “If I don’t ride herd on them in person they’ll debate until we’re all dead.”
Her drive and decisiveness really made me happy. I had to give Lord Grantham his due. The old man had raised two highly competent daughters, and I for one applauded the effort.
Less than a minute later, she contacted me. “Hoon says it’s possible. I’m uploading the detonation parameters now.”
I turned to my XO. “Hansen, get with your best missile controller and set up a firing plan to drill through the crust at that weak spot. Remember to take nuclear fratricide into account.” That was the tendency of one nuke to blow up and destroy others nearby before they could detonate.
I knew we couldn’t rig them to detonate on contact because flying debris would set them off in a chain reaction. The timing had to be perfect for each one to enter the hole the last one made and dig out some more soil. The farther they bored in, the harder it might be. Without more accurate data on the internal structure of this sphere, we just had to hope it would work. Many things could go wrong, from the tunnel collapsing to some clever Litho defense mechanism closing it up on us, or maybe they had the ability to harden or thicken the area in response to what we were doing.
“Firing a nuke now,” Hansen said, far too soon for him to have set up the firing plan. The man was competent though, so I just watched as the first missile shot forward toward a high concentration of snowflakes. At ten miles out it detonated in front of us, clearing a pathway free of the weird rock-machines.
Normally nuclear blasts in space don’t have much range of effect because there is no air or other medium to carry the shockwave, but this time there were thousands of snowflakes, each weighing five to twenty tons. As they vaporized, the plasma, hot gas and dust pushed outward, which damaged and shoved away even more of their dying mass. Every now and again something went even better than I expected, and this was one of those times.