Hex

by Allen Steele

  “Science fiction writers, who else?” D’Anguilo chuckled at his own joke. “My late father was a literature professor who specialized in twentieth-century science fiction. I read a lot of the books in his collection.” He pointed to the wallscreen. “But almost all those stories got the idea wrong. The physicist who came up with it in the first place—Freeman Dyson, one of the foremost visionaries of his time—never intended for such an object to be a solid sphere, but rather a series of individual habitats in orbit around a star.”

  He paused to study the screen. “But that doesn’t quite appear to be what’s happening here,” he added, a little less confidently. “From the looks of things, this appears to be a linked network of hexes.”

  “Hexes?” Cayce shook his head, not quite understanding what he meant.

  “Plural for hex.” D’Anguilo reflected upon this for a moment, then looked at Andromeda again. “Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad name... Hex.”

  “Whatever.” At that particular moment, she was less interested in what they called the place than in what she and her people would do once they got there. “Mel, how long will it take for us to get there?”

  “At our projected velocity”—the helmsman paused to enter numbers into her console and study the readout on one of her screens—“about seven days.”

  “Good. That gives us plenty of time to study . . . um, Hex . . . before we arrive. Maybe we can make sense out of the thing by then.” She turned to Cayce. “In the meantime, I want your team to prepare for a reconnaissance mission. Before I commit my ship to anything, I’d like to make a flyby, to see what we’re getting into, and maybe send down a survey team.”

  “Not a problem, Captain,” Cayce said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  D’Anguilo coughed into his fist. “Captain, with all due respect . . . I don’t think the danui would’ve deliberately given us permission to visit their system if they thought the environment was hostile for us.”

  “I understand that.” Andromeda gestured at the screen. “But I’m also keeping in mind the fact that the danui aren’t exactly the most forthcoming race we’ve met. They didn’t tell us that this wasn’t a normal planet. There must be a reason for that, and until we know what it is, I’m not going to make any assumptions. So we’re going to treat Hex as if it’s potentially dangerous and study it before we jump into anything.”

  D’Anguilo looked as if he wanted to argue with her, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Andromeda looked at Cayce again. “Do I remember correctly that one of your crew is a trained biologist?”

  “Corporal Wright, ma’am.” Cayce hesitated. “She’s not actually a scientist. She just had scientific training before she joined the Corps. Her degree is in xenobiology, though, and she studied under Dr. D’Anguilo while she was at the university.”

  Kyra Wright. Andromeda wondered if she was the same young woman who’d been with Sean in the wardroom. Her maternal intuition told her that there was something between the two of them; at the very least, she certainly looked like Sean’s type. “That’s fine. We could use another hand up here once we get closer to that thing . . . That is, if it’s all right with you, Tom.”

  D’Anguilo nodded. “Ms. Wright was one of my better students. I wouldn’t mind having her help at all.”

  “I’ll send her up here as soon as possible.” Cayce started to turn toward the hatch again, then stopped. “Just one more thing, Captain. What do I tell my people?”

  Andromeda blinked. “Come again?”

  “They were expecting a planet, ma’am. Instead, we got... well, that.” The lieutenant paused. “It’s spooked a couple of them, to tell the truth.”

  Andromeda doubted that Sean could be made nervous by anything besides his own mother; she wondered if Cayce wasn’t really speaking for himself. Yet she was aware of the uncomfortable silence that had fallen across the command center. Since they’d been together, Montero’s crew had visited nearly a half dozen alien worlds. Yet none were as strange as what lay before them. Hex was an appropriate name; it appeared to have spooked everyone.

  “Tell them the truth,” she said. “This isn’t what we were expecting... and they’d do well to remember that as they get ready to go down there.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS, THE MONTERO made the journey to Hex. Andromeda would later reflect that the least of her surprises was how quickly her crew and passengers accepted the name that Tom D’Anguilo had given this place. Hex, a human word, was simple, easy to remember, and oddly appropriate. So when she sent her first report to Coyote via hyperlink, that was the name she used.

  The response she received from the merchant marine was terse:

  COEX PRIORITY ONE 7/46/23 12:09:03 CMT

  TO: Carson, A., Capt. (CO, Montero)

  FM: Harker, T., Com. (MM)

  GRADE: TS

  RE: Hex

  Intrigued by your discovery. Standing by for further info. Please update when you learn more.

  Ted

  Reading this in the privacy of her cabin, Andromeda rolled her eyes. Intrigued, indeed; that had to be the understatement of all time. If Harker had been aboard the Montero, she would have loved to see the look on his face when the ship came through the danui starbridge.

  Sure, Ted, I’ll send you more info, she thought. Soon as I figure out what the hell I’m dealing with.

  The closer the Montero came to Hex, the more mysterious the sphere appeared to be. Anne’s original transmission went unanswered; nothing came through the com network even though she frequently retransmitted the text message on multiple wavelengths. With D’Anguilo’s assistance, she rephrased the message in more diplomatic terms, using the translation program to reiterate it in the hjadd, nord, kua’tah, and soranta languages (the danui native tongue being still unknown). Still, there was no response. It was as if the danui—or, for that matter, anyone else who might be present—simply didn’t want to speak with their newly arrived visitors.

  And yet, near the end of the second day, the Montero discovered that they were far from alone in the danui system. Andromeda was having a late dinner in the wardroom when Jason’s voice came through her earpiece, asking her to come to the command center. When the captain returned to the bridge, she found her first officer peering at the nav table.

  Hex was so immense, it was impossible for the table’s holographic imaging system to construct a model that wouldn’t crowd out everything else, including Montero’s present position. In the end, a significantly downscaled version of the Dyson sphere had been projected instead. Ever since the Montero had fired its main engines to begin the long trip, the only images above the table had been Hex, the danui starbridge, and the tiny white dot of the Montero itself, with red and blue dotted lines showing the distance the ship had already traveled and the course it was projected to take.

  But that had changed. About one-sixth of the way around Hex, at a distance of 1.5 AUs, was a second ring, identical to the starbridge the Montero had come through. And next to it was another white dot, leaving behind a broken red trail of its own as it inched toward Hex.

  “A second starbridge,” Jason murmured, pointing to the new ring. “We didn’t spot it before now because it wasn’t active. It opened just a few minutes ago, when that ship came through.”

  Andromeda stared at the ring and the adjacent dot. “What kind of ship? Do we know?”

  The first officer said nothing but instead glanced over his shoulder at Rolf Kurtz. In D’Anguilo’s absence, the chief engineer had assumed his position at the remote survey station. “Still trying to get a visual fix, skipper,” he replied, not looking up from his console. “Judging from its energy signature, though, I’d say it’s using a negmass drive.” He hesitated. “My guess is that it’s hjadd.”

  Andromeda turned toward the com station, only to see that it was vacant as well. Hell of a time for this to happen, with most of the bridge crew off duty and only a couple of officers standing
watch. Perhaps it was just as well that Anne was in her bunk; her failure to make contact with the danui had been giving her fits, and another unanswered communiqué would only vex her even more. Andromeda decided to let her sleep.

  “Where’s the second starbridge?” she asked.

  “That, I can tell you.” Jason typed a command into the navtable keyboard. An instant later, numbers appeared beneath the new ring, with a green line appearing as a parabolic curve between it and the first starbridge. “How interesting,” the first officer murmured, staring at the computations. “The two starbridges are in the same equatorial orbit, half an AU from Hex and exactly 14,602,140.88 miles apart.” He hesitated, then pointed to an empty point in space one-third of the way around Hex. “I’ll bet anyone here their dessert for the next week that there’s another starbridge right there... same orbit, same distance.”

  “What makes you think that?” Rolf asked.

  “With something this big, why settle for having only two starbridges to get here?” He shrugged. “Or even three, for that matter.”

  Neither Andromeda nor Rolf took him up on his wager, which was wise on their part. A day later, the existence of the third starbridge was confirmed when another starship—most likely nord, judging from its lightsails—came through it, and it wasn’t long after that before they realized that the first officer was right. In all, six starbridges were in equatorial orbit around Hex, each one located at equal distances from its nearest neighbors.

  It soon became apparent why the danui had chosen to build six different points of entry to their system.

  By the fourth day, Hex completely filled the forward screen until nothing else could be seen. The sheer size of the thing was staggering: 93 million miles in radius, 186 million miles in diameter, with a circumference of 584,336,233.568 miles and an estimated volume of 1.08617 miles. As abstract as the figures were, they were the only way Andromeda could comprehend just how bloody huge the sphere was.

  Except for the small gas giant in close orbit around HD 76700, the only other object in the danui system besides its sun was Hex. If Tom was right, and the sphere had been built more or less on the same principles originally postulated by Freeman Dyson, then any other planets that might have once existed here had long since been destroyed, their mass used for the sphere’s construction. Indeed, the amount of matter and energy—not to mention time—required for such an effort was utterly mind-boggling. Andromeda knew that she would’ve deemed such a feat to be impossible had she not seen it with her own eyes.

  Once the ship was within ten million miles of Hex, D’Anguilo was able to study its hexagons a little more closely through Montero’s optical telescope system. Their dimensions were identical; each of their six sides were one thousand miles long and one hundred miles in diameter, giving them a total perimeter of six thousand miles. By then, it was obvious that Hex revolved around HD 76700 at a rate that would produce an internal surface gravity of 2 g’s for the hexagons at the equator and nearly none at all for those at its poles. It was difficult to tell exactly how many hexes made up the sphere, but D’Anguilo estimated that Hex was comprised of approximately six trillion hexes.

  Even more astonishing, it appeared that the sides of a given hex were individual cylinders, joined together at their corners by spherical nodes, with the adjacent hexes linked to them by the same nodes. Examining them through the ship’s telescopes, Kyra Wright arrived at the conclusion that these cylinders were hollow, and most likely were serving as habitats. She dubbed these objects biopods , since biospheres was not an accurate description of their shape. If D’Anguilo’s estimates were correct, then Hex was made up of thirty-six trillion biopods... every one of them potentially habitable.

  Now they knew why the danui had put six starbridges in orbit around Hex. The sphere was so large, multiple points of entry had to be provided in order to reduce the travel time to its far-flung habitats. And it was obvious that Hex was well visited; by the end of the sixth day, the bridge crew had counted nearly a dozen alien vessels coming and going through the starbridges they could see, and there was no telling how thick the traffic was on the other side of the sun.

  And yet, the danui still hadn’t made contact with them, nor had any other ship responded to Anne’s attempts to communicate with them. It was as if the Montero, and the humans aboard, were being deliberately snubbed.

  “I don’t get it. I really don’t understand.” Absently gnawing at a thumbnail, Andromeda slumped in her seat as she scowled at the wallscreen. From a distance of less than eight million miles, Hex had all but completely lost its spherical shape; instead, it appeared to be a curved wall of hexagons that slowly moved from left to right, the sun behind them shining through like a distant spotlight. “If they wanted us to come here, then why give us the silent treatment?”

  “The danui are naturally reclusive...” D’Anguilo began. He was standing at the remote survey station, Kyra seated beside him.

  “I know. You’ve told me that over and over again.” Andromeda glared at him from over her shoulder. “But this is downright rude. It’s like...” She paused, searching for the right words. “Getting invited to a party, then being made to wait at the front door while all the other guests are let in.”

  “Not only that, but the other guests aren’t saying anything to you either.” From the helm station, Melpomene gave her captain a sympathetic nod; she didn’t bother to hide her disgust. “I’m with you, skipper. This is really pissing me off.”

  Seated at the communications console, Anne quietly nodded in agreement. Andromeda was about to reply when Kyra shyly raised her hand. “Pardon me, Captain, but...”

  She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “Go ahead, Ms. Wright,” Andromeda said, not unkindly. “You have something to say?”

  “Well...” Kyra hesitated. “I think you’re overlooking the obvious. The question isn’t why the danui haven’t communicated with us. It’s why they built Hex in the first place.”

  That was one of the few times in the past six days that Kyra had spoken directly to her. Ever since she’d starting working with D’Anguilo in the command center, she’d been a quiet presence, sharing the console with the astroethnicist as the two of them studied Hex. But Andromeda had gradually become aware that, when she wasn’t on the bridge, Kyra spent most of her free time with Sean. The captain had seen the two of them together in the wardroom, and on one occasion she’d spotted her emerging from Sean’s cabin. It was probably just as well that Kyra hadn’t seen her, or otherwise, D’Anguilo might have lost his assistant; Andromeda apparently intimidated her.

  So Kyra was Sean’s new girlfriend. On the one hand, Andromeda found herself liking her, albeit reluctantly. Before their relationship had gone sour, and Sean had moved out of the house, she’d met most of the girls Sean had hooked up with in the past, and the majority of them had had more beauty than brains. Kyra was good-looking and smart, and the fact that she had manners was a bonus. But Sean had probably told her all about his mother, and by then Kyra probably thought Andromeda flew a broomstick when she wasn’t commanding a starship.

  “The thought has occurred to me.” Andromeda favored Kyra with an encouraging smile as she turned her chair toward her. “You have a theory, I take it?”

  “Umm...” Kyra glanced at D’Anguilo. Her former teacher nodded, and she went on. “I’ve lately reread Dyson’s original paper... the one he wrote back in the mid twentieth century, on searching for infrared sources in the galaxy as a way of detecting extraterrestrial civilizations. He said that an alien race might go to the effort of building something like this in order to solve two problems: overpopulation and diminishing energy resources. Such a habitat would not only meet all the population needs of the ones who built it, but they’d also be able to capture all the energy emitted from its sun.” A rueful smile. “Dr. Dyson later insisted that he was only joking, and he was rather embarrassed that these things were eventually called Dyson spheres. I would love to see the look on his face if he coul
d only see this.”

  D’Anguilo raised a finger, politely interrupting her. “Another scientist of the same period, Nikolai Kardashev, devised a classification system for advanced alien races. According to the Kardashev scale, the danui appear to be a Type II civilization... one capable of harnessing the entire energy output of its native star.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kyra nodded in agreement. “By comparison, humankind rates as a Type I civilization... but just barely... because we’ve learned how to harness the entire energy resources of our own planet. And a Type III civilization would exploit the energy of an entire galaxy...”

  “I understand.” Andromeda tried not to sound impatient. “So what are you getting at?”

  Another nervous glance at D’Anguilo, then Kyra rose from her seat and walked across the bridge until she stood in front of the wallscreen. “Let’s assume Dyson was right,” she continued, pointing to the image of Hex behind her, “and the danui built this place in order to deal with overpopulation and the subsequent rise in energy demands. If our estimates are correct, there are six trillion hexes here, with thirty-six trillion biopods among them, and each biopod is a thousand miles long.” She shook her head. “Even if the danui bred like crazy, it’s doubtful that they’d need all this space just for themselves.”

  “It’s certainly scary to think that they would,” Andromeda murmured, and both Melpomene and Anne chuckled at her dry comment. “I’m following you. Go on.”

  “So...” Kyra shrugged. “Why not call the neighbors and invite them over? Throw open the doors and let them in?” Again, she gestured toward Hex. “Like I said, there’s more than enough room... and they’d have the entire energy output of a star, too.”

  Andromeda blinked, trying to absorb what Kyra had just said. It was utterly mind-blowing to think that a civilization would go to the effort of building something like Hex, only to practically give it away to any other race capable of getting there. It would be like humans placing an enormous sign above Coyote: INVADE US, PLEASE! As harebrained as Kyra’s theory seemed, though, it appeared to fit what they’d already observed: six starbridges in orbit around the Dyson sphere, with alien vessels freely coming and going.