Hex

by Allen Steele

  “I’m not entirely sure...” D’Anguilo began, then stopped. “That is, I have certain... um, suspicions... about what may be there. But I’d rather not share them until I know for certain.”

  “Fair enough.” Andromeda looked at Mark. “So that’s your job... to explore this new world and find out what’s there. If it’s what the ambassador says it is, then it’s worth the risk.”

  “Yeah... or so we hope,” Sandy murmured, and Cayce shot her an angry look.

  Andromeda glanced at her watch. “All right, then... If there are no other questions, my crew and I have work to do. Montero’s scheduled departure is forty-five minutes from now, and we’ll be making the jump at the top of the hour. You’ll need to be in your cabins by the time we leave the station and safely strapped down before we go through the starbridge. Dr. D’Anguilo...”

  “Tom,” he said.

  “Tom, I’d like to have you on the bridge when we make the jump. Please report to Deck One in forty-five minutes. The rest of you are at liberty until then.” Without another word, Andromeda turned to the door, slid it open, and pushed herself out into the corridor. Sean noticed that she barely glanced his way. It was as if he’d become just another passenger. Which was just as well with him.

  “You heard the captain,” Cayce said, sharply clapping his hands together to get their attention. “Everyone needs to be back in their cabins in forty-five minutes. Until then, do whatever you need to do, but do it soon. That’s all. Dismissed.”

  He pushed himself toward the open door, with Mark and Sandy not far behind. Sean turned to Kyra as they started to leave. “So... you once had him as a teacher?”

  “Uh-huh. Pretty good one, too. I learned a lot from his class.” She hung back, giving the others a few more seconds to exit the wardroom, then took his hand. “I’m a little nervous about the jump,” she murmured. “This is the first time I’ve ever done this.”

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, really.” Sean had been through hyperspace before, but he had to remember that it was Kyra’s first time. Like the rest of their team, they had taken a rehearsal on the Corps simulator at Fort Lopez. It was only a facsimile of the real thing, though, and he couldn’t blame her for being anxious.

  “Yes, well... all the same, I’d rather not be alone.” Kyra made sure no one else was listening, then moved closer to him. “I asked Sandy if she’d mind swapping cabins with Mark,” she whispered. “She said she wouldn’t. Do you think you can ask Mark...?”

  “I don’t think he’ll mind, either.” Sean stared at her. “But I thought we’d agreed to stay away from each other until this was all over.”

  “I know, but...” Her expression was pensive as she bit her lower lip. “I’m getting the feeling this isn’t going to be the usual survey mission. I mean, we don’t know anything about where...”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” Another glance at the door, then he gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Of course, if you’re really serious about being comforted, we’ll have to see if two people can fit in those bunks.”

  “Maybe.” A fleeting smile that quickly disappeared. “I just hope you’re right,” she said, becoming solemn again. “I’m beginning to think we should have stayed in bed back home.”

  PART TWO

  ANATOMY OF AN IMPOSSIBILITY

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN ALL THE MANY TIMES ANDROMEDA HAD GONE THROUGH hyperspace, never once had she completely closed her eyes. Oh, she’d blinked, all right, at the moment when a starbridge’s zeropoint energy generators opened its torus and a silent explosion of defocused light rushed through the wormhole. That no one could look at without squinting. But she always kept her eyes open during the fifteen seconds it took her ship to make the jaunt from one star system to another. Although she told herself that, as captain, she needed to be aware of what was happening, the truth of the matter was that she was fascinated by the near-instantaneous transition from one place to another even though she’d experienced it dozens of times.

  So the retinal afterimage of the spacetime kaleidoscope hadn’t yet faded when the Montero completed its plunge through Starbridge Coyote. Peeling a sweaty hand from her armrest, Andromeda pushed back her hair as she let out her breath.

  “Everyone okay?” she asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  Around the command center, her crew groaned and muttered. Jason’s face was pale, but at least he hadn’t vomited; it had taken Montero’s first officer a long time to learn how not to get sick during jumps, and he still kept a plastic bag discreetly hidden beneath his seat. A weak smile and a shaky thumbs-up, then he prodded his mike wand and called below to check on the passengers. Only Zeus seemed unperturbed; perhaps it was only machismo, but the chief petty officer insisted that hyperspace didn’t bother him. Andromeda had watched him in the past, though, and had quietly noted that he closed his eyes like everyone else. He just recovered more quickly than the others.

  “Nice work, Captain.” From behind her, Andromeda heard Thomas D’Anguilo’s voice. “In fact, that was just about the smoothest jump I’ve ever had.”

  She half turned in her chair to look back at him. D’Anguilo was seated at the remote survey station, hands calmly resting at his sides. His complexion was normal; there wasn’t so much as a drop of sweat on his face. She was impressed. Most passengers were upchucking by then, but D’Anguilo was as placid as if they’d only taken a gyro ride.

  “Thank you,” she said, then returned her attention to her crew. “Stations, report. Engineering?”

  “All systems nominal, ma’am.” Rolf didn’t look away from his screens. “No structural damage. Main engines on standby, life support functional, ditto for all comps and primary AI.”

  “Very good. Mel?”

  For a moment or two, Melpomene didn’t respond. She was focused entirely upon her board, her hands moving across the console. “Melpomene?” Andromeda repeated. “Status, please.”

  “Aye, skipper.” The helmsman finally heard her. “We’re at our expected arrival point... HD 76700, 1.5 AUs from the primary. But...” Apparently puzzled by something on her screens, she hesitated. “Skipper, I don’t get it. I’m not finding any planets.”

  “No planets?” Andromeda was confused. “Are you using the optical imaging system or the infrared rangefinder?”

  “Both, but...” Melpomene pointed helplessly at her station’s largest screen. “Well, see for yourself. No planets, only the starbridge in sight... but there’s something else out there.”

  Andromeda didn’t rise from her seat but instead tapped commands in her lapboard that linked the wallscreen to Melpomene’s console. The forward bulkhead disappeared, replaced by a floorto-ceiling starfield so realistic that it seemed as if a section of Montero’s outer hull had simply vanished. Distant stars against black space, all marked by translucent red numerals identifying them by their catalog numbers. None were unfamiliar, yet as Melpomene pointed out, neither were any of them planets.

  Then the starfield slowly began to turn as the forward telescope twisted about, and something appeared that she’d seen before, but only as the grainy telescope photo that Ted Harker had shown her.

  Directly in front of the ship, one and a half astronomical units away, lay HD 76700, a star just a little larger than 47 Uma. It wasn’t clearly visible, though, for surrounding it was a translucent haze the color of old rust tinted with silver. It might have been a planetary nebula were it not for the fact that it was perfectly spherical. Indeed, the sphere was so immense that it almost completely filled the wallscreen.

  Jason gasped in astonishment, and Zeus murmured something under his breath. “What the hell?” Andromeda stared at the object. “Mel, what’s the scope’s magnification?”

  “Zero.” Her voice was strangely hollow. “That’s what we’re seeing from our current position.”

  Andromeda wasn’t in the habit of distrusting her crew. When Melpomene said this, though, she had to see for herself whether or not the pilot was
mistaken. Unfastening her seat belt, she pushed herself out of her chair. The nearest porthole was directly above her; the ship’s windows had automatically shuttered just before the Montero went through hyperspace, but she found the button that opened this one.

  The shutter slid open and Andromeda peered outside. Her view was obscured slightly by the deflector array; nonetheless, it was the same she’d seen on the wallscreen. Whatever the object was, it was vast enough to completely surround the star at its center.

  “Hell’s bells,” she whispered, “what is that thing?” Tearing her gaze away from the porthole, she looked down at D’Anguilo. “Are you getting any readings?”

  The scientist was already bent over his console. “Whatever it is, I can tell you for sure that it’s not a dust cloud. Mass spectrometer shows hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, iron, silicon... They’re all there, along with carbon dioxide, argon, methane...” He looked up at her. “Everything you’d expect to find in the absorption lines of a planetary system, but the estimated mass is off the scale. That should be a planet, maybe even a superjovian, but...”

  He suddenly stopped, his mouth falling open. “No,” he murmured. “It can’t be.” Then he turned to Melpomene. “Give me a close-up!” he snapped, pointing toward the wallscreen. “Highest magnification you can!”

  The helmsman gave Andromeda an uncertain glance. The captain nodded, and Melpomene turned to her console again. Still hovering near the ceiling, Andromeda twisted herself around until she was upside down; the wallscreen looked odd from that angle, but the display remained unchanged. For only another moment, though; then the optical system cast a new image upon the forward bulkhead, and she felt her heart skip a beat.

  In the new image, HD 76700 had grown large enough that the polarizing filters automatically activated to prevent the bridge crew from being blinded. Even so, the alien sun was still obscured by whatever lay between it and the Montero. Yet the object no longer had a spherical shape. In close-up, what they saw was...

  “That can’t be right.” Jason shook his head in disbelief. “That just can’t... There must be something wrong with the scope.”

  A vast and seemingly endless network of hexagons, each having the same six-sided form, each identical to its six adjacent neighbors. The hexes weren’t solid, though; they were open at their centers, with sunlight shining through. Linked together in perfect geometric pattern, at first glance they resembled a chicken-wire fence, much like that a farmer might put up around a roost to keep the hens from wandering away. But there were no chickens inside this immense pen, but a star instead.

  “Apparent magnification is .01 AU from the outer perimeter.” Melpomene’s voice was hushed. “We’re seeing it from approximately 930,000 miles.”

  The goddamn thing is made up entirely of hexagons, Andromeda thought. There must be thousands, maybe millions of them. Hell, more than that... billions, even. A cold chill went down her spine. Whatever it is, it’s not of natural origin. Someone actually built this...

  “I knew it!” D’Anguilo was no longer at his station; he had risen to his feet, his shoes barely anchored to the floor. “I knew it!” he yelled, laughing with almost adolescent delight. “Those crazy bastards, they actually did it!”

  The flight crew stared at him. Until then, Tom D’Anguilo had been quiet and reserved, the very picture of a former university professor. Suddenly, it was as if an overexcited student had taken his place. Apparently forgetting where he was, he let the soles of his stickshoes leave the carpet; he began to float upward, not noticing or even caring.

  Swearing under her breath, Andromeda pushed herself away from the ceiling. “Cut it out,” she said, grabbing D’Anguilo by the shoulders. “You’re on the bridge. You can’t monkey around like that in...”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away.” He shook his head as he calmed down a little. “It’s just that... I mean, I suspected that the danui might have done something like this, but until now I couldn’t believe that they...”

  “Pardon me, Dr. D’Anguilo...” Jason pointedly cleared his throat. “If you already know that the danui are responsible for”—he motioned to the screen—“well, that, then why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I didn’t really believe it was possible until...”

  “Never mind that.” Still holding on to D’Anguilo, Andromeda looked him straight in the eye. “What I want to know is...”

  “A Dyson sphere.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a Dyson sphere. An artificial habitat, only with more room than hundreds, even thousands of planets.” The astroethnicist glanced at Jason. “And, no, I didn’t know for sure that the danui had built one. I suspected that they were engaged in some massive engineering project, but I couldn’t be sure until we actually got here.” His gaze traveled to the screen again. “I thought it might be a network of space colonies, like Talus qua’spah. Maybe even some sort of terraforming operation. But this...”

  “Tell me later.” Andromeda cut him off with a wave of her hand. “The danui invited us, so they’re probably waiting for a message. I’m sure they must know we’re here.”

  Letting go of D’Anguilo, she pushed herself toward the com station. “Anne, would you please transmit a text message? Standard Ku band. Umm... ‘Coyote Federation starship Carlos Montero to danui homeworld. We have arrived in your system, request permission to land...’ No, scratch that.” She reconsidered her words, tried again. “ ‘Request permission to rendezvous at whatever coordinates you wish to give us. Captain Andromeda Carson, commanding officer.’” She looked at D’Anguilo. “Think that’ll work?”

  “It’s as good as any, I suppose.” Still hovering in midair, D’Anguilo continued to stare at the wallscreen. “They’ll be able to translate it, of course. Whether they respond is another matter entirely.”

  “What do you mean?” The comps of starships of races belonging to the Talus were loaded with translation programs capable of deciphering the written languages of other member races. “If they receive a message in Anglo, they should...”

  “They should, yes. The question is whether they will.” D’Anguilo shrugged. “The danui have their own way of doing things... and it’s often not what anyone else expects or even understands.” He nodded toward the screen. “I think that should be obvious, don’t you?”

  Andromeda didn’t reply. Anne’s hands were resting on her keyboard, waiting for her captain to give her the final go-ahead. Andromeda gave her a silent nod, and the communications officer began to type the message. Planting her stickshoes on the deck, the captain carefully walked back to her seat. “Mel, set a course for... whatever that thing is. Set thrust at .05 g. That should give them enough time to respond while we figure out exactly where we’re going.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Melpomene started to turn to her controls again, then she paused and looked over her shoulder at the captain. “Skipper? That’s a rather large target. I know we haven’t yet heard from the danui, but could you be a little more specific, please?”

  “I’d say the equator,” Jason said, before Andromeda could reply. “That way, we won’t be very far off the mark, no matter where our hosts tell us to go... assuming, of course, they mean for us to somehow dock with the thing.”

  The first officer was making a guess, of course, but it was the best they had for the time being. “The equator sounds about right,” Andromeda said. “Go ahead, Mel.”

  The helmsman nodded as she began entering coordinates into the nav system. Andromeda was about to take her seat again when she noticed that D’Anguilo was still floating above the holo table. Unable to reach either the ceiling or the floor, he flailed helplessly in midair. He might have been an experienced spacer, but this time his enthusiasm had gotten the better of him. Andromeda glanced over at Zeus and silently gestured in D’Anguilo’s direction: get him down from there. The chief petty officer smirked as he unfastened his seat belt and pushed himself toward the hapless scientist.

  Zeus had just
hauled D’Anguilo back down to the deck when Andromeda heard someone coming through the hatch behind her. Looking around, she saw Lieutenant Cayce glide up the manhole from the access shaft. The team leader’s eyes were wide, plainly astonished.

  “Captain, where are we?” His gaze never left the wallscreen. Melpomene had returned the image to its previous magnification, so he was seeing the same thing he’d seen on his cabin comp screen or through a porthole, only much larger. “Are we in the right system? And what’s that...?”

  “Lieutenant,” she said, “in the future, if you want to visit the bridge, I’d appreciate it if you’d call ahead and request permission.” He started to stammer an apology, but she went on. “To answer your questions... Yes, we are in the danui system, with the star positively identified as HD 76700. And no, we’re not absolutely certain what that is, but Dr. D’Anguilo has tentatively identified it as something called a Dyson sphere.”

  “A what?” Cayce’s expression was bewildered. Grabbing hold of a bulkhead rung, he turned toward the Janus exec, who’d just then resumed his seat at the remote survey station. “You mean you know what this is?

  “Sort of.” D’Anguilo grinned; he seemed to be happiest when he was explaining things to other people. “It’s an old idea, really... and not really what a lot of people were expecting. Dyson spheres were thought to be solid structures, or at least by those who wrote about them.”

  Andromeda turned to look at him again. “And who would that be?”