by B. V. Larson
“Where are we going, sir?” Jasmine asked.
“To the border ring. We have to set up there in case the Macros do come through.”
“And if they do?”
“Then,” I said, “We blast every one of them out of space until they stop coming or we’re all dead.”
That comment kicked people into gear. Being on station here in stellar orbit had been like living in an endless, boring sauna for months. Everything had suddenly changed.
In a way, I welcomed it. It had been too long since I’d felt my adrenaline pumping. I watched as our ships scrambled away from the gravity tug of the white dwarf star and began to follow the streak of light toward the ring.
“We’re way behind,” I complained an hour later. “That thing must be approaching the speed of light by now.”
“It’s about seventy percent of the way there, Colonel,” Jasmine confirmed. With a dozen deft taps of her fingers, she brought up speed and course data, which now floated beside the streaking probe.
“How the hell did he get that thing to move so fast?”
“Looking at the reports, it appears he built a small platform from eight fighters. I’d guess he stripped the engines and left nothing but a frame holding them together.”
I nodded. “Eight fighter engines tied together and launched as a single unit. Yeah, that would give a small ship a pretty good acceleration curve. But there are fuel limitations.”
“Not if you aren’t planning to slow down,” Jasmine said thoughtfully. “The device will streak through space from here to the other side of that ring singing its simple tone. Then it will probably be destroyed. The question is: Can we receive the signal for enough time to get a fix on its location?”
The more I thought about it over the following two hours the more I wondered if this had been such a great idea. Already, I’d wrecked the surface of a formerly habitable world, and now we were about to poke a pin into the Macros. Even if we did learn where the star system on the far side was, how was it going to help us? The only effective way to get there was through that ring. We’d known that before we started chasing the probe. The only positive thing about the chase was that it got us out of the heat and radiation we’d been suffering through for so long. I stripped off the outer suit, took a shower, and left my helmet on my desk. I returned to the command table rubbing my neck.
“Your hair is still wet,” Jasmine told me quietly.
“I know,” I said, “it feels great. It’s cooling me down. I think I need two or three days of cooling down.”
Jasmine gave me a small smile.
“Why don’t you go take a shower?” I suggested. “I can man the helm.”
She took me up on it immediately. I halfway wanted to chase after her, but the probe was only about an hour out from the ring now, and I figured there just wasn’t time. At the very least, the entire command staff would notice. I didn’t want to be whispered about as the guy who couldn’t keep his hands off his girlfriend even in the middle of a crisis. I’d had that label before, and I’d never worn it comfortably.
After she left, I sent people off in turns to clean up. They came back with fresh suits and smiles. Nothing gets quite as nasty inside as a spacesuit you’ve been living in for weeks—especially when it’s a hot spacesuit.
All too soon, the probe closed in on the ring. We were hours behind it, but my command staff and I had come up with a game plan by then.
“Decelerate, four Gs,” I ordered. “We’ve got to slow down if we don’t want to plunge right through after it—or overshoot it.”
We turned around to aim our jets in the direction of our travel and the ship shook under us. The G forces were painful even to nanotized people. I didn’t want to be flying right into the teeth of the enemy if they did come popping out.
“Do you think we should alert Earth?” Newcome asked me. He was back on the command deck, and his face was all pink and white.
“Yes,” I said. “Tell them we’ve launched the probe. Don’t mention anything about doing so early. Let’s keep our dignity on this one.”
“And the fighters…sir?” Newcome pressed.
“You want to send them in there now? To screen us? Forget it. If we fight, we’ll do so as a single fist. I’m not burning pilots to save our butts if this goes badly. Speaking of which, where the hell is Marvin?”
“Why—he’s aboard Potemkin, sir,” Jasmine said. “I thought you knew.”
“He’s aboard this ship? Since when?”
“He boarded moments after the probe was launched.”
I nodded sourly. “He hasn’t shown his nose up here on the bridge because he knows I’m going to bitch at him. Get him up here. This is his firecracker, and he’s going to watch it go off with the rest of us.”
I knew Marvin preferred to “watch” events like this via the com network. He had direct access to all the data flowing in from the computers and sensors so he could read it anywhere. We had to have that data processed then displayed visually on our command table and holotank. That was a redundant step for Marvin.
“He’s telling me his presence here isn’t necessary or productive, sir,” Jasmine said.
I could tell she was as annoyed as was I.
“Patch that channel to me,” I snapped.
When she did so, I roared into it. “Marvin, drag your conniving butt onto my bridge, or I’ll blow up that probe right now.”
“I’m not sure Star Force currently has the capacity to enact such a threat—”
“Yeah? You want to risk it?”
Apparently, he didn’t. The door to the main passageway dilated open immediately, and Marvin stepped through. He clunked on stubby feet again. He’d done another quick-change shedding his “external toolset” to leave him in the state he’d been restricted to.
I had to take it as positive news that Marvin was at least aboard the ship and marginally cooperating with my commands. If he’d thought we were about to be destroyed, he’d have already bailed out on us by now.
“Let’s just see what you’ve done for us today,” I said, waving toward the console.
With ill grace, Marvin quietly took his spot at the command table. We all watched tensely as the point of no return was reached and exceeded.
The position of the probe on the screen was just conjecture now. It was moving too fast to get a fix on it by traditional methods. We could only plot its course and imagine where it was. We were about five light-minutes behind it, and the distance was growing as we decelerated, and it continued to streak toward the goal.
“There isn’t going to be much time for a blip of data if this thing goes through and smashes into a solid obstacle,” I said. “Why don’t you slow it down, Marvin?”
“It is already decelerating,” Marvin said, craning cameras to observe our screens. “It was programmed to do so. Your coordinates are inaccurate.”
I frowned. “Why didn’t you correct them?”
A few cameras observed me and then drifted away. “Is that meant as sarcasm too, Colonel Riggs?”
My frown deepened. I thought hard. When dealing with Marvin, you had to stay on your toes. He was devious and always thinking ahead. Considering recent events, I thought I had the gist of it.
“I get it,” I said. “If we knew just where it was, it would be easier for us to abort it or destroy it—right?”
Cameras panned over me briefly, but I received no reply. This was Marvin’s equivalent of a shrug.
Newcome, watching this exchange, was aghast. He came over and attempted to pull me aside. I let him, although I was distracted.
“This robot—it has plans, sir. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. I worked for Crow, remember? I know a schemer when I see one—human or not.”
“Thanks for the newsflash, Newcome,” I said. “But I’m not in the dark about that. Marvin is always scheming. The trick is to figure out his plan before it’s too late. In this case, I think we’ve failed. This test is a launch. Lord only knows what w
ill happen next.”
The probe flew on. Periodically, its displayed location and speed were corrected by Marvin. We couldn’t see it anymore. We had a fix on its trail and its supposed path, but we didn’t have hard data yet. It was too far ahead for that.
The probe was slowing down as it approached the ring, and I’d decided not to try to stop it. We were only an hour or so behind it after all. What could go wrong?
Marvin and Jasmine worked to rig-up a counter. Every time it updated, a pulsing tone sang in the background. It was an annoying sound—like the old moon missions used to have but quieter and more frequent. Beep, beep, beep.
I knew that if I had to listen to that sound all day I’d go nuts.
But I didn’t have to, because suddenly it stopped...
Our probe had gone through the ring.
-11-
I’m not quite sure what we’d been expecting, but we were all gritting our teeth and squeezing our eyes almost shut the moment the probe plunged through the ring into the unknown. It vanished off our sensors and…nothing happened.
I heard a few sighs of relief. People’s bodies were relaxing, unwinding their tense muscles. I knew they were thinking it had all been a bust. There was no ultimate ka-boom at the end of this grand experiment. No calamity had struck us. The probe was lost, and we were safe. A happy ending.
But I wasn’t relaxing just yet. Instead, I watched Marvin.
Jasmine dared to catch my eye and give me a small smile. Maybe she was like the rest of them and thought the worst was over. But then, I indicated Marvin with a nod of my head, and she looked at him. Her smile, as small as it had been, faded away to nothing.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, leaning forward and frowning.
“He’s locked up. Remember the time we sent instructions to the ring on Yale? He looked like that then—like he was caught in some kind of endless loop.”
Marvin’s pose was an odd one even for him. His tentacles were poised in mid-air, and his cameras were frozen. Not a single lens was zooming in. One tentacle tip that hovered over the command table twitched. Up-down, up-down. It looked like he was tapping a finger to a fast, staccato beat.
“Sir,” Newcome said, approaching me. “There’s nothing coming back from the probe. We had a wire on it, but there’s no input at all.”
I glanced at him. He looked as relieved as the rest of them. I turned back and continued watching Marvin.
“What’s wrong with your robot?” Newcome asked.
“He’s getting something—or trying to. Don’t mess with him. This test cost the crust of an entire world. I’m not planning on running it twice.”
Everyone fell quiet, and we all stared at Marvin curiously. About ninety seconds later, he came to life again.
“Mission accomplished,” he said. His cameras roved, seeing our scrutiny. “You’ve all changed positions. Is something wrong?”
“You were frozen-up,” I told him. “Processing heavy input, I’d guess.”
“Yes…my chronometer is correcting itself. One-hundred and seventy-one seconds have passed. Odd, I didn’t even feel it. I put myself into a hard loop. I don’t usually do that as it’s dangerous.”
“Never mind the details now. What happened? You said the mission was accomplished.”
“Yes, I’ve pinpointed the direction of the ring’s exit point—or, at least, the position where the probe emerged. But I’m not one hundred percent certain as to the distance relative to our location. You see, I wasn’t able to triangulate with only a single receiver. The signal was very brief so there was no time to apply a parallax test. I was only able to get a directional fix, and I’m not certain as to the range.”
“But there is a system in that direction, right? A target?”
“No, and I find that troubling. There are only roving planetoids out there, no stars at all. Not unless the signal comes from quite far off. The uncertainty lies in the distance to the target, you see. Behind a cluster of planetoids, which is admittedly the likely source, there are other possible targets.”
I nodded. “Sounds like the direction leads toward the galactic center. Lots of target systems that way.”
“Incorrect assumption. The path leads out of the Milky Way galaxy entirely.”
I frowned. “Display it, Marvin. I’m not getting what you’re trying to say.”
Marvin moved to the command table and touched a set of virtual controls. The image he summoned appeared on the globular holotank above the table.
A depiction of our entire galaxy stretched across the tank. The galaxy was a spinning disk with three spiral arms. The center was like a hubcab and dense with stars. Far out along the rim of the galaxy a tiny green line shot upward. The line was no thicker than the thinnest of filaments, and it stretched even longer inside the holotank as I watched.
I examined the direction and zoomed in with my fingers. “But you said there were other possible systems behind the one you located. There’s nothing out there.”
“Untrue. There are two entire galaxies in the background that could conceivably be the source of the signal.”
“Other galaxies?” Sarin asked. “At what range? Ten million light years? That’s too far.”
“Within our frame of reference, it would seem to be,” Marvin said stubbornly, “but not theoretically. Just because we’ve only encountered rings that have led to relatively nearby destinations does not prove—”
“Marvin,” I interrupted him. “Why are you arguing about this? Are you trying to cover up a failure? Is this some kind of false lead?”
“Well, there is a sure way to discover the truth of that accusation, Colonel Riggs. In fact, you’ve brought the conversation around to the point I was trying get to. I thank you.”
“Hmm,” I said, eyeing him warily. “What do you want?”
“I propose a second test. We’ll move the receiver this time, allowing triangulation. We’ll know exactly where the signal originated.”
I huffed and almost laughed aloud. “So that’s it? You want to rip up a second world and fire another probe into enemy territory? Well, that isn’t going to happen.”
“Why not, sir?”
“Because your test looks like a colossal failure. You didn’t pinpoint a star system. Instead you got a random beam out into space. In fact, if I read this correctly, that vector goes right past the Solar System. It almost bisects the point in space we know as ‘Earth’.”
“A simplistic view, Colonel. The point is approximately thirty thousand AU outside the Solar System. That’s more than half a light year.”
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t buy it. The signal goes nowhere, and the test was a dud. Face it, Marvin, the probe didn’t survive long enough to get a clear fix. That’s all. It could have happened to anyone.”
Marvin edged closer to me. His cameras swung wide, getting my profile. “If that is the case, a second probe would prove your theory.”
“No way. I’m beginning to think I was crazy to let you do this test in the first place. Each time we wriggle a ship through that ring, no matter how small, we run the risk of waking up the Macros. They’re well-documented to have defensive software, which triggers on the basis of proximity, overriding their other programming. I’m not going to run the chance a second time—especially if it means wrecking another habitable moon.”
“We’ve sent several probes through before without causing a response.”
“True, but I’m not interested in pushing our luck any further.”
I called a break then, ordering my command staff to stand down. I told them the test had been a bust over Marvin’s protests. An hour later, I was in the canteen downing my first beer of the day.
I had just opened up my second and poured it into an icy mug when my helmet began beeping. I glanced at it and put my headset on reluctantly.
“Riggs here.”
“Sir? You have to get up here. We have contacts.”
I stood up with a grunt, stretched and trotted up th
e passageway. When I got to the bridge, I saw the command table had lit up. A red warning beacon had appeared, and machines were beeping all around us.
“Is this what I think it is?” I asked, looking at the screens.
“Hold on—yes, sir, confirmed,” Jasmine said. “We have contacts. They’re coming through the ring now.”
We all stared in shock. Even Marvin, who snaked onto the deck a minute or so later, seemed surprised. After absorbing the data, he turned away from the screens and focused his cameras on the rest of us. I knew he was taking an emotional reading—analyzing our faces and body language.
I reached out and smashed down the camera that drifted near my left shoulder. “Did you get that, Marvin? Did you read my emotional state, there? How do you think I’m feeling right now? Take your best shot at analysis!”
“I would surmise that you are in a state of anger, Colonel.”
“Damn straight, I am.”
Enemy ships kept coming through. As Marvin’s test had gone off prematurely, we weren’t in position to meet them with immediate force.
“Why the hell—why are they reacting this time? We’ve sent probes through before, and they’ve destroyed them without moving.”
As we all watched, more red contacts slipped through the ring in front of us. It was hard to believe it was happening. We were still about an hour out from the ring.
“What are we up to?” I asked. “About fifty cruisers?”
“Seventy-eight, sir,” Jasmine reported. “They’re hitting our minefield now. They’ve lost twenty-nine ships, but they’re still coming.”
Marvin stayed quiet for once in his existence. He reeled in his damaged limb. The smashed camera at the end bumped and scraped on the floor over my boots.
“What did you make me do, robot?” I asked him.
“The attack upon my person was unwarranted but predictable. It is my understanding, however, that it is unethical to blame the victim in assault situations.”
I blinked at him for a second before I realized he was upset about his broken camera. “No, you crazy machine. I’m talking about triggering a Macro attack. How did I let you talk me into risking it?”