by Bob Shaw
* * *
Maintaining its height above the surface of the sphere, the Bissendorf — which had been closing with the immense fleet at a combined speed of almost two hundred thousand kilometres an hour — swung out of the equatorial plane. It described a wide semicircle around the ships and approached them from the opposite direction, carefully matching velocities until it shared approximately the same parking orbit. In the latter stages of the manoeuvre, telescopic observations by Chief Astronomer Yamoto revealed that several of the vessels at the centre of the swarm were shining by reflected light. He deduced that there was a beam of sunlight being emitted from an aperture in the surface of the sphere, and reported to Garamond accordingly. Shortly afterwards the aperture revealed itself in the telescopes as a thin line of faint light which gradually opened to a narrow ellipse as the Bissendorf crept closer.
The big ship’s central command gallery took on a crowded appearance as officers who were not on duty found reasons to stay near the curving array of consoles. They were waiting for the first transmissions from the surveillance torpedo which had been dispatched towards the spaceships illuminated by the column of light escaping from Pengelly’s Star. There was an atmosphere of tension which made everyone on board the Bissendorf aware of how uneventful all their previous wanderings in the galaxy had been.
“I’m not used to this excitement,” Napier whispered. “Round about this stage on a trip I’m usually tucked away quietly with a bottle of ninety-proof consolation, and I almost think I liked it better that way.”
“I didn’t,” Garamond said firmly. “This is changing things for all of us.”
“I know — I was kidding. Have you tried to work out what the prize money ought to be if it turns out that all these ships can still be flown?”
“No.” Garamond had finished his third bulb of coffee and was bending over to put it in the disposal chute.
“Forget it,” Napier said, with a new note in his voice. “Look at that, Vance!”
There was a murmur of shock from the central gallery as Garamond was raising his head to look at the first images coming back from the distant torpedo. They were of a large grey ship which had been ripped open along its length like a gutted fish. Twisted sections of infrastructure were visible inside the wound, like entrails. Lesser scars which had not penetrated the hull criss-crossed the remainder of the great ovoid’s sunlit side.
“Something really chopped her up.” “Not as much as the next one.”
The images were changing rapidly as the surveillance torpedo, unhampered by any considerations of the effects of G-force on human tissue, darted towards a second ship, which proved to be only half a ship. It had been sliced in two, laterally, by some unimaginable weapon, sculpted ripples of metal flowing back from the sheared edges. A small vessel, corresponding in size to a lifeboat, hung in space near the open cross-section, joined to the mother ship by cables.
After the first startled comments a silence fell over the control gallery as the images of destruction were multiplied. An hour passed as the torpedo examined all the ships in the single shaft of sunlight and spiralled outwards into the darkness to scan others by the light of its own flares. It became evident that every vessel in the huge swarm had died violently, cataclysmically. Garamond found that the ships illuminated dimly by the flares were the most hideous — their ruptured hulls, silent, brooding over gashes filled with the black blood of shadow, could have been organic remains, preserved by the chill of space, contorted by ancient agonies.
“A signal has just come up from telemetry,” Napier said. “There’s a malfunctioning developing in the torpedo’s flare circuits. Do you want another one sent out?”
“No. I think we’ve seen enough for the present. Have the torpedo come round and take a look through the aperture. I’m sure Mister Yamoto would like some readings on the sun in there.” Garamond leaned back in his seat and looked at Napier. “Has it ever struck you as odd that we, as representatives of a warlike race, don’t carry any armament?”
“It has never come up — the Lindstroms wouldn’t want their own ships destroyed by each other. Besides, the main ionizing beam would make a pretty effective weapon.”
“Not in that class.” Garamond nodded at the viewscreens. “We couldn’t even aim it without turning the whole ship.”
“You think those hulls prove Serra’s theory about the sphere being a defence?”
“Perhaps.” Garamond’s voice was thoughtful. “We won’t know for sure until we have a look inside the sphere and see if there was anything worth defending.”
“What makes you think you would see anything?”
“That.” Garamond pointed at the screen which had just begun to show the new images being transmitted back from the torpedo. The aperture in the dark surface of the sphere was circular and almost a kilometre in diameter. A yellow Sol-type sun hung within it, perfectly centred by the torpedo’s aiming mechanisms, and the remarkable thing was that the space inside the sphere did not appear black, as the watchers on board the Bissendorf knew it ought to do. It was as blue as the summer skies of Earth.
* * *
Two hours later, and against all the regulations concerning the safety of Starflight commanders, Garamond was at the head of a small expedition which entered the sphere. The buggy was positioned almost on the edge of the aperture, held in place against the surface by the thrust of its tubes. Garamond was able to grip the strut of a landing leg with one hand and slide the other over the edge of the aperture. Its hard rim was only a few centimetres thick. There was a spongy resistance to the passage of his hand, which told of a force field spanning the aperture like a diaphragm, then his gloved fingers gripped something which felt like grass. He pulled himself through to the inside of the sphere and stood up.
And there — on the edge of a circular black lake of stars, suited and armoured to withstand the lethal vacuum of interplanetary space — Garamond had his first look at the green and infinite meadows of Orbitsville.
seven
Garamond’s sense of dislocation was almost complete.
He received an impression of grasslands and low hills running on for ever — and, although his mind was numbed, his thoughts contained an element of immediate acceptance, as if an event for which he had been preparing all his life had finally occurred. Garamond felt as though he had been born again. In that first moment, when his vision was swamped by the brilliance of the impossible landscape, he was able to look at the circular lake of blackness from which he had emerged and see it through alien eyes. The grass — the tall, lush grass grew right to the rim! — shimmered green and it was difficult to accept that there were stars down in that pool. It was impossible to comprehend that were he to lie at its edge and look downwards he would see sunken ships drifting in the black crystal waters…
Something was emerging from the lake. Something white, groping blindly upwards.
Garamond’s identity returned to him abruptly as he recognized the spacesuited figure of Lieutenant Kraemer struggling to an upright position. He moved to help the other man and became aware of yet another ‘impossibility’ — there was gravity sufficient to give him almost his normal Earth weight. Kraemer and he leaned against each other like drunk men, bemused, stunned, helpless because there were blue skies where there should have been only the hostile blackness of space, because they had stepped through the looking glass into a secret garden. The grass moved gently, reminding Garamond of perhaps the greatest miracle of all, of the presence of an atmosphere. He felt an insane but powerful urge to open his helmet, and was fighting it when his tear-blurred eyes focused on the buildings.
They were visible at several points around the rim of the aperture, ancient buildings, low and ruinous. The reason they had not registered immediately with Garamond was that time had robbed them of the appearance of artifacts, clothing the shattered walls with moss and climbing grasses. As he began to orient himself within the new reality, and the images being transmitted from eyes to br
ain became capable of interpretation, he saw amid the ruins the skeletons of what had once been great machines.
“Look over there,” he said. “What do you think?”
There was no reply from Kraemer. Garamond glanced at his companion, saw his lips moving silently behind his faceplate and remembered they were still on radio communication. Both men switched to the audio circuits which used small microphones and speakers on the chest panels.
“The suit radios seem to have packed up,” Kraemer said casually, then his professional composure cracked. “Is it a dream? Is it? Is it a dream?” His voice was hoarse.
“If it is, we’re all in it together. What do you think of the ruins over there?”
Kraemer shielded his eyes and studied the buildings, apparently seeing them for the first time. “They remind me of fortifications.”
“Me too.” Garamond’s mind made an intuitive leap. “It wasn’t always possible to stroll in here the way we just did.”
“All those dead ships?”
“I’d say a lot of people once tried to come through that opening, and other people tried to keep them out.”
“But why should they? I mean, if the whole inside of the sphere is like this…” Kraemer gestured at the sea of grass. “Oh, Christ! If it’s all like this there’s as much living room as you’d get on a million Earths.”
“More,” Garamond told him. “I’ve already done the sums. This sphere has a surface area equivalent to 625,000,000 times the total surface of Earth. If we allow for the fact that only a quarter of the Earth’s surface is land and perhaps only half of that is usable, it means the sphere is equivalent to five billion Earths.
“That’s one each for every man, woman and child in existence.”
“Provided one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That we can breathe the air.”
“We’ll find that out right now.” Garamond felt a momentary dizziness. When he had been playing around with comparisons of the size of Earth and the sphere he had treated it as a purely mathematical exercise, his mind solely on the figures, but Kraemer had gone ahead of him to think in terms of people actually living on the sphere, arriving at the aperture in fleets sent from crowded and worn-out Earth, spreading outward across those prairies which promised to go on for ever. Trying to accommodate the vision along with his other speculations about the origins and purpose of the sphere brought Garamond an almost-physical pain behind his eyes. And superimposed on all his swirling thoughts, overriding every other consideration, a new concept of his personal status was struggling to be born. If he, Vance Garamond, gave humanity five billion Earths… then he, and not Elizabeth Lindstrom, would be the most important human being alive… then his wife and child would be safe.
“There’s an analyser kit in the buggy,” Kraemer said. “Shall I go for it?”
“Of course.” Garamond was surprised by the lieutenant’s question, then with a flash of insight he understood that it had taken only a few minutes of exposure to the unbounded lebensraum of the sphere to alter a relationship which was part of the tight, closed society of the Two Worlds. Kraemer was actually reluctant to leave the secret garden by climbing down into the circular black lake, and — as the potential owner of a super-continent — he saw no reason why Garamond should not go instead. So quickly, Garamond thought. We’ll all be changed so quickly.
Aloud he said, “While you’re getting the kit you can break the news to the others — they’ll want to see for themselves.”
“Right.” Kraemer looked pleased at the idea of being first with the most sensational story of all time. He went to the edge of the aperture, lay down and lowered his head into the blackness, obviously straining to force the helmet through the membrane field which retained the sphere’s atmosphere. After wriggling sideways a little to obtain his grip on the buggy’s leg, Kraemer slid out of sight into the darkness. Garamond again felt a sense of dislocation. The fact that he had weight, that there was a natural-seeming gravity pulling him ‘downwards’ against the grassy soil created an illusion that he was standing on the surface of a planet. His instincts rebelled against the idea that he was standing on a thin shell of unknown metal, that below him was the hard vacuum of space, that the buggy was close underneath his feet, upside down, clinging to the sphere by the force of its drive.
Garamond moved away from the aperture a short distance, shocked by the incongruity of the heavy spacesuit which shut him off from what surely must be his natural element. He knelt for a closer look at the grass. It grew thickly, in mixed varieties which to his inexperienced eye had stems and laminae very similar to those of Earth. He parted the grass, pushed his gloved fingers into the matted roots and scooped up a handful of brown soil. Small crumbs of it clung to the material of his gloves, making moist smears. Garamond looked upwards and for the first time noticed the lacy white streamers of cloud. With the small sun positioned vertically overhead it was difficult to study the sky, but beyond the cloud he thought he could distinguish narrow bands of a lighter blue which created a delicate ribbed effect curving from horizon to horizon. He made a mental note to point it out to Chief Science Officer O’Hagan for early investigation, and returned his attention to the soil. Digging down into it a short distance he came to the ubiquitous grey metal of the shell, its surface unmarked by the damp earth. Garamond placed his hand against the metal and tried to imagine the building of the sphere, to visualize the creation of a seamless globe of metal with a circumference of a billion kilometres.
There could be only one source for such an inconceivable quantity of shell material, and that was in the sun itself. Matter is energy, and energy is matter. Every active star hurls the equivalent of millions of tons a day of its own substance into space in the form of light and other radiations. But in the case of Pengetty’s Star someone had set up a boundary, turned that energy back on itself, manipulating and modifying it, translating it into matter. With precise control over the most elemental forces of the universe they had created an impervious shell of exactly the sort of material they wanted — harder than diamond, immutable, eternal. When the sphere was complete, grown to the required thickness, they had again dipped their hands into the font of energy and wrought fresh miracles, coating the interior surface of the sphere with soil and water and air. Organic acids, even complete cells and seeds, had been constructed in the same way, because at the ultimate level of reality there is no difference between a blade of grass and one of steel…
“The air is good, sir.” Kraemer’s voice came from close behind. Garamond stood up, turned and saw the lieutenant had opened his faceplate.
“What was the reading like?”
“A shade low in oxygen, but everything else is about right.” Kraemer was grinning like a schoolboy. “You should try some.”
“I will.” Garamond opened his own helmet and took a deep breath. The air was soft and thick and pure. He discovered at that moment that he had never known truly fresh air before. Low shouts came from the direction of the aperture as other spacesuited figures emerged.
“I told the others they could come through,” Kraemer said. “All except Braunek — he’s holding the buggy in place. It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right, yes. I’ll be setting up a rota system to let everybody on the ship have a look before we go back.” Again Garamond sensed a difference in Kraemer’s attitude — before the lieutenant had seen the interior of the sphere he would not have cleared the buggy without obtaining permission.
“Before we go back? But as soon as we signal Earth the traffic’s all going to be coming this way. Why go back?”
“No reason, I suppose.” Garamond had been thinking about Aileen’s reluctance ever to travel more than a few kilometres from their apartment. He had been planning to return her to the old familiar surroundings as soon as possible, but perhaps there was no need. Standing on the interior surface of the sphere was as close as one could get to being on the infinite plane of the geometer,
yet there was nothing in the experience to inspire agoraphobia. The line of sight did not tangent away from the downward curve of a planet and so the uniform density of the air set a limit to the distance a man could see. Garamond studied the horizon. It appeared to curve upwards slightly, in contrast to that of Earth, but it did not seem much further away. There was no sense of peering into immensities.
Kraemer put the toe of one boot down into the small hole Garamond had made and tapped the metal at the bottom. “Did you find anything?”
“Such as?”
“Circuits. For this synthetic gravity.”
“No. I don’t think we’ll find any circuits in our sense of the word.”
“What then?”
“Atoms with their interiors rearranged or specially designed to do a job. Perfect machines.”
“It sounds incredible.”
“We’ve taken the first step in that direction ourselves with our magnetic resonance engines. Anyway, what could be more incredible than all this?” Some instinct prompted Garamond to push the soil back into the hole and tamp it down with his foot, repairing the damage he had done to the grassy surface. In the region close to the aperture the soil was thinly distributed, but there were hills in the distance which looked as though they could have been formed by drifting. “As soon as your men have got over the shock tell them to gather vegetation and soil samples,” he said.