“Meteorite-avoidance system.” Rebka hauled himself back into position. “I put it on automatic, because there’s so much stuff around here I wasn’t sure we’d see it all. Good thing I did. Hold on, here comes another. And another. God, they’re piling in from everywhere.”
The new jerking thrusts came before he had finished speaking, throwing him forward onto the controls. He grabbed desperately for handholds.
“Where are they coming from?” Every time Darya tried to sit up, the ship made a leap in some other unpredictable direction. There was a solid thump on the outside hull, loud enough to be frightening, and the few objects that were not secured in the galley came sailing through into the cabin and rattled around there. “Can you see them?”
Even as she asked that question, her mind was posing a more abstract one. How could orbiting lumps of rock be vectoring in at them, all at once and from all directions? Random processes did not work that way.
Kallik, with hands to spare, was doing better than Hans Rebka. Without saying a word she was at work on the control panel. The ship spun on its axis, and Darya felt a powerful, steady thrust added to the jerks and surges of the collision-avoidance system.
From her position in the bunk she could still see the main display screen. It showed a circle of light surrounded by bright glittering motes. As she watched it came swooping closer at alarming speed. When they seemed ready to plunge right into its center, the ship pivoted on its axis and decelerated at maximum power. Darya was again pressed flat to the bunk’s mattress. She heard a startled grunt from Hans Rebka and a thump as he fell to the floor.
Darya felt a few seconds of maximum force on her body; then all acceleration ceased. The drive turned off. Darya found herself lying in something close to normal gravity. She lifted her head.
Hans Rebka was picking himself up painfully from the floor. Kallik was still seated, clutching with both hands at the control panel. The Hymenopt stared at them with the semicircle of rear-facing eyes and bobbed her head.
“My apologies. It was wrong to take such action without seeking permission. However, I judged it necessary if this ship and its occupants were to ss-ss-survive.”
Rebka was rubbing his right shoulder and hip. “Damn it, Kallik, there was no need to panic. The collision avoidance system is designed to handle multiple approaches — though I must say, I’ve never known a bombardment like that.”
“Nor will you again, in normal ss-ss-circumstances.”
“But what made you think we’d be any safer here, on the surface of the planetoid?” Darya had looked out of the port and confirmed her first impression. The Summer Dreamboat was sitting on a solid surface, in a substantial gravity field.
Kallik gestured out of the same port. The upper part of another ship was visible around the tight curve of the planetoid. “For two reasons. First, it was clear from the fact that the Have-It-All could sit on the surface with a working beacon, and therefore with working antennas, that there could be no continuous rain of materials here at the surface of the planetoid. I already thought that meant safety, even before I saw what was triggering the collision-avoidance system.”
“Rocks and ice?”
“No.” The black cranium turned slowly back and forth. “When I caught sight of the objects raining in on us, I had a second reason for descending rapidly. The attackers were free-space forms. I knew they would avoid any substantial gravity field, and we would be safe here.” The Hymenopt turned to face Darya. “Those were not rocks or ice, Professor Lang. We were attacked by Phages.”
Hans Rebka looked startled. But Darya jerked upright in the bunk and clapped her hands together with excitement. “Phages! That’s terrific.”
“Terrific?” Rebka stared at her in disbelief. “I don’t know how much exposure you’ve had to Phages, Darya, but I can tell you this: they may be slow, but they’re nasty.”
“And these Phages are not so slow,” Kallik said calmly. “They are faster than any of which I have seen reports.”
“Which makes them worse.” Rebka stared at the excited Darya. “Do you want to be killed?”
“Of course I don’t. We made it through Summertide together, and yet you still ask me a question like that?” Darya had trouble keeping a smile off her face. “I want to live as much as you do. But put yourself in my position. I drag us all the way out here to the middle of nowhere, telling you we’ll discover clues to the Builders. And then all we find are dreary bits of rock and old mine-workings. Until a few minutes ago I thought that might be all that we would find. But you know as well as I do, Phages are found around Builder artifacts, and only there. They may even be Builder artifacts — a number of specialists have suggested that theory.” She stood up and went to stare out of the ship’s port, at the gleaming and suspiciously regular surface of the planetoid. “I was right, Hans. I felt it back on Quake, and I feel it more than ever now. We’re getting there! The Builders have been gone for a long time — but we’re close to finding out where they went.”
Kallik wanted to scramble into a suit and head off at once across the surface of the planetoid. Louis Nenda’s ship was in plain sight, a few hundred meters away, and she was itching to hurry over to it. The need to know if her master was alive or dead made her abandon any thought of caution.
It took a direct order from Hans Rebka to stop her. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I can think of ten ways you might get killed, and there must be twenty more I don’t know about. When you go, one of us goes with you. And you don’t go yet.” At his insistence Kallik settled down on her stubby abdomen and joined the other two in making a first survey of their surroundings.
Even from a distance, the body on which the Dreamboat rested had appeared anomalously massive and anomalously spherical. An hour of observation and measurement added other peculiarities. When Kallik and Hans Rebka finally put on their suits and made a first descent onto the planetoid’s surface, Darya stayed behind, monitored their progress, and entered the physical data into the Dreamboat’s log. A copy was going to J’merlia on Dreyfus-27, together with a note of their safe landing and their location. Darya prepared another copy for tight-beam transmission to Opal, with a request that it be forwarded via the Bose Network to Sentinel Gate.
She smiled to herself as she reviewed the message before sending it out. Just dull statistics, most people would say. She was giving little but the facts. But there would be high excitement over these particular dull statistics when they reached her colleagues on Sentinel Gate and were passed on in turn to Builder specialists in the spiral arm. Every last one of them would want to be here.
She kept an eye on Kallik and Hans, who were moving cautiously away from the Summer Dreamboat, and played back the message before sending it to Opal.
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: 281 K; THE SURFACE OF THE BODY IS WARM, ABOVE THE FREEZING POINT OF WATER. GIVEN ITS ENVIRONMENT, REMOTE FROM MANDEL, IT SHOULD BE HUNDREDS OF DEGREES COLDER.
FIGURE: THE BODY IS A PERFECT SPHERE TO WITHIN THE LIMITS OF OBSERVATION; RADIUS, 1.16 KILOMETERS.
SURFACE GRAVITY: 0.65 GEE; GIVEN ITS SIZE, IT SHOULD BE LESS THAN A THOUSANDTH OF THIS VALUE.
MASS: 128 TRILLION TONS.
DENSITY: ASSUMING HOMOGENEOUS COMPOSITION, 19,600 TONS PER CUBIC METER. NOTE THAT ALTHOUGH THIS IS LESS THAN SOME CECROPIAN COMMERCIAL MATERIALS, IT IS ABOUT 1,000 TIMES AS DENSE AS ANY NATURALLY OCCURRING SUBSTANCE.
ATMOSPHERE: 16 PERCENT OXYGEN, 1 PERCENT CARBON DIOXIDE, 83 PERCENT XENON. THIS IS UNLIKE THE ATMOSPHERE OF ANY PLANET IN THE SPIRAL ARM; THE XENON CONTENT IS AN UNHEARD-OF CONCENTRATION; AND A BODY OF THIS SIZE SHOULD POSSESS NO ATMOSPHERE AT ALL. NOTE THAT THIS ATMOSPHERE WILL SUSTAIN LIFE FOR ALL OXYGEN-BREATHING FORMS OF THE SPIRAL ARM.
MATERIAL COMPOSITION: THE OUTER SURFACE HAS THE APPEARANCE OF SMOOTH, FUSED SILICA. THE INTERNAL COMPOSITION IS UNKNOWN, BUT IT IS OPAQUE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION OF ANY WAVELENGTH.
Darya halted the data readout and looked out of the port. Kallik and Rebka had been crouching down, close to
the surface. She had asked them to do additional materials testing outside, hoping to add something to this piece of the planetoid’s description.
“Any results yet, Hans?”
Rebka straightened up. “We didn’t get what you wanted, but we’ve probably got all we’re going to. We couldn’t take samples. The surface is too hard to cut, and it’s impervious to heat. But we’ve been hitting it with precise impulses and monitoring the seismic return wavefronts. The phase delays are very peculiar. We think it’s as you suggested — the whole thing is hollow, maybe with a honeycomb structure.”
Kallik stood up also. “Which makes the high ss-ss-surface gravity even odder, since this is a hollow body.”
“Right. I’ll add that to the physical description. You can give me more detailed data when you get back. No other problems?”
“None so far. In a little while we’re going to head for Nenda’s ship. Keep monitoring.”
“I will.” With considerable satisfaction, Darya added a section to the readout:
GENERAL DESCRIPTION: THE BODY APPEARS TO BE HOLLOW, PROBABLY WITH INTERNAL CHAMBERS. GIVEN ITS ANOMALOUS PHYSICAL PARAMETERS, IT MUST BE OF ARTIFICIAL ORIGIN. THE PLANETOID’S AGE HAS NOT YET BEEN ESTABLISHED. THERE IS A GOOD POSSIBILITY THAT IT IS A BUILDER ARTIFACT. THAT HYPOTHESIS IS GIVEN SUPPORT BY THE FACT THAT PHAGES ARE TO BE FOUND CLOSE BY IN LARGE NUMBERS, LESS THAN A HUNDRED KILOMETERS AWAY FROM THE BODY’S SURFACE.
Darya paused. Better leave it at that, and not stick her neck out too far. But personally she was sure it was an artifact. And if that was the case it should be given its own name and ID number, like every other Builder artifact.
She added a final note to the message. “The artificial planetoid has been assigned the provisional Universal Artifact Catalog number 1237, and the provisional name” — she recalled the bright motes on the sphere’s image, now vanished — “the provisional name of Glister.”
“Darya?” Hans Rebka’s voice came as she was making the final entry. “Darya, we’re over at the Have-It-All now. It seems to be in working order, but you ought to see it for yourself. Can you put your suit on and walk over?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.” Darya initiated the message transmission, put the Summer Dreamboat into self-protect mode, and moved across to the lock. In less than a minute she was outside.
She looked up. Gargantua loomed in the distance beyond the other ship. High above her head the Phages were invisible, too small to be seen from fifty or a hundred kilometers away, but she had no doubt that they were still there. Phages were always there when they were not wanted.
And what Phages! Phages smart enough to track a falling ship. Phages fast enough to head for that ship. Phages fast enough to come close to catching it.
Darya began to move slowly across the curved and polished surface. The horizon was only a couple of hundred meters away. As Louis Nenda’s ship came more and more into view she could not help glancing up every few seconds, to make sure that some marauding Phage was not diving down on her.
Phages didn’t enter powerful gravity fields; in fact, they shunned them. Sure. That was the conventional wisdom. Until today she had believed it herself. But why assume that conventional wisdom applied to these Phages, and this situation, when everything else about them was so bizarre?
It occurred to Darya that Kallik had taken a bigger risk than they realized when she had brought them down here. The alien surface of Glister might be no safer than Phage-infested space. But Kallik’s own need to know what had happened to Louis Nenda had made her blind to risk.
Darya arrived at the lock of the Have-It-All. One thing was for sure: given the behavior of these new Phages, she would have to do a major rewrite of that section of the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog. Good timing. She was supposed to begin work on the fifth edition when she got back home.
When she got back home…
She stared out across the smooth, glassy surface of Glister before she entered the lock. The little ship they had arrived on was the only familiar object. The Summer Dreamboat had started its life as a teenager’s toy; now it was far from home, looking oddly lonely and defenseless.
Would it ever see its birth world again? And would she see hers?
Darya closed the hatch. When she got home. Better make that if she got home.
ARTIFACT: PHAGE
Exploration History: The first Phages were reported by humans during the exploration of Flambeau, in E 1233. Subsequently, it was learned that Phages had been observed and avoided by Cecropian explorers for at least five thousand years. The first human entry of a Phage maw was made in E 1234 during the Maelstrom conflict (no survivors).
Phage-avoidance systems came into widespread use in E. 2103, and are now standard equipment in Builder exploration.
Physical Description: The Phages are all externally identical, and probably internally similar though functionally variable. No sensor (or explorer) has ever returned from a Phage interior.
Each Phage has the form of a gray, regular dodecahedron, of side forty-eight meters. The surface is roughly textured, with mass sensors at the edge of each face. Maws can be opened at the center of any face and can ingest objects of up to thirty meters’ radius and of apparently indefinite length. (In E 2238, Sawyer and S’kropa fed a solid silicaceous fragment of cylindrical cross-section and twenty-five meters’ radius to a Phage of the Dendrite Artifact. With an ingestion rate of one kilometer per day, 425 kilometers of material, corresponding to the full length of the fragment, were absorbed. No mass change was detected in the Phage, nor a change in any other of its physical parameters.)
Phages are capable of slow independent locomotion, with a mean rate of one or two meters per standard day. No Phage has ever been seen to move at a velocity in excess of one meter per hour with respect to the local frame.
Intended Purpose: Unknown. Were it not for the fact that Phages have been found in association with over 300 of the 1,200 known artifacts, and only in such association, any relationship to the Builders would be questioned. They differ greatly in scale and number from all other Builder constructs.
It has been speculated that the Phages served as general scavengers for the Builders, since they are apparently able to ingest and break down any materials made by the clades and anything made by the Builders with the single exception of the structural hulls and the paraforms (e.g., the external shell of Paradox, the surface of Sentinel, and the concentric hollow tubes of Maelstrom).
—From the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog, Fourth Edition.
CHAPTER 8
Louis Nenda’s ship was undamaged. Inside and out, every piece of equipment was in working order. The main drive showed signs of overload, but it still tested at close to full power.
“I’m sure that overload happened while they were in orbit around Quake,” Darya said. “I told you, I saw them putting in every bit of thrust they had to try and get away from that silver sphere.”
“Yeah. But you also said they were accelerated away by the sphere at hundreds of gees, enough to flatten everything.” Hans Rebka waved an arm at the orderly interior. “Nothing flat here that I can see.”
“Which is not difficult to explain.” Kallik was crouched down on the floor by the Have-It-All’s hatch, sniffing and clicking to herself. “If the ship were to be accelerated by gravity or any other form of body force, neither it nor its occupants would be harmed. They would feel as though they moved in free-fall, no matter how high the acceleration appeared to an outside observer.”
“Which should mean that if the ship is undamaged, so are Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.” Rebka was inspecting the main control panel. “And the engines haven’t been powered down. They’re on standby, ready to fly this minute. Which leaves us with one question.” He stared at Darya and shrugged. “Where the devil are they?”
They had searched the Have-It-All from side to side and top to bottom. There was ample evidence that Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda had been there. But there was no sign of
them, and no suits were missing from the lockers.
“Master Nenda was certainly here,” Kallik said, “more than three days ago, and less than one week.”
“How do you know?”
“I can smell him. In his quarters, at the controls, and here near the hatch. J’merlia, if he were here, could place the time more accurately. He has a finer sense of smell.”
“I don’t see how that would help us. Not even if J’merlia could smell it to the millisecond.” Rebka was walking moodily around the big cabin, examining the decorated wall panels and running his fingers across the luxurious fittings. “Darya, I know you said that the sphere that carried this ship away was silver at first, then it turned to black—”
“Turned to nothing, I said. It was like a hole in space.”
“All right, turned to nothing. But couldn’t it have changed again? One odd thing about this place — wha’d’ya call it, Glister? — is that it’s a perfect sphere. Spherical planetoids don’t occur in nature. Hasn’t it occurred to you that it may be the same sphere, the one that you saw?”
“Of course I’ve had that thought. I had it before we even landed. But it only leaves a bigger mystery. Something sent a beam from near Gargantua, at Summertide, and the sphere that I saw ascended it. If this sphere was my sphere, what sent the signal?”
“All right, so maybe this isn’t your sphere.” Rebka seemed amused by her proprietary tone. “I’ll drop that, and ask you again: Where are they?”
“Give me a minute. I may have a logical answer; whether or not you like it is another matter.” Darya sat down on one of Nenda’s comfortable couches to organize her thoughts. As she did so she surveyed her surroundings, comparing them with the familiar, stripped-down, and spartan fixtures of the Dreamboat.
The contrast was great. The whole inside of Nenda’s starship was filled with alien devices and manufacturing techniques. The technology used here had been perfected long before by the Zardalu, before their thousand-world empire had collapsed, and been picked up piecemeal after that collapse to become the common property of the mix of species that now made up the Zardalu Communion.
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