FIFTEEN.
“That’s all the Sinese have done so far?”
IT IS.
“They’re waiting for instructions. Have you detected any communications?”
RECON THREE IS NOT IN A POSITION TO IDENTIFY OR ATTEMPT TO INTERCEPT TIGHT BEAM BURST TRANSMISSIONS. NO OTHER KIND OF COMMUNICATION HAS BEEN DETECTED.
“Has anything else changed?”
THE INBOUND SPEED HAS INCREASED MORE QUICKLY THAN PROFILED. RECON THREE AND THE ARTIFACT NOW HAVE A VELOCITY OF ALMOST FORTY KAYS PER SECOND.
“Has additional power been required to maintain position?”
NO.
“Good.” Tavoian nodded. He’d been briefed on the fact that the closer they got to the sun the greater the speed that both Recon three and the artifact would attain. Apparently, the calculations had been a little off. That happened, no matter what anyone thought. He went on with preparing his makeshift breakfast, something called an egg croissant that tasted like it had a nodding acquaintance with yeast and fowl. It did stop his stomach from growling. Then he cleaned up, as much as he could, and went aft to his work spaces where he used the special splicing tool to rejoin the fiber-optic line severed by the previous day’s exploration. He wished the fabricator had been designed so that he could make more of the line, but that was beyond its capabilities. He had five hundred meters of fiber-optic line, but that wasn’t sufficient to go very far into the artifact, even if he used it all. Who would have thought that five hundred meters would be woefully insufficient?
Then, everything’s turning out to be insufficient in one way or another. He went back to work, modifying his space anchor system.
Two hours later, he was watching as the ship’s AI guided the ISV through the set of passages that bordered another of the partly opened hexagons. The ISV encountered nothing new, and the test results were identical to the ones of the day before. By 1900 UTC, the ISV had tested the open doors on another five hexagons, and Tavoian’s eyes were bleary, especially when he thought about the eleven with open doors remaining … and the thousands of sealed hexagons. The ISV had discovered nothing new, and the laser photosensitivity tests remained maddeningly identical.
He had just ordered the ship’s AI to recall the ISV and recover the signal repeater when a chime announced an incoming message. Tavoian called it up. The body text was direct and to the point.
Your report from yesterday received. Suggestions noted and appreciated.
Please report soonest on Sinese expedition and any additional findings.
Oversized and heavily shielded Sinese spacecraft departed high Earth orbit 2100 UTC yesterday, presumed to be crewed expedition to the artifact. ETA not yet determined.
Trying not to grit his teeth, Tavoian began to fix more tea before replying to the colonel. He either doesn’t understand what’s out here or doesn’t care. Except that there was more to it than that, even if Tavoian couldn’t verbalize it. And now he’d have to deal with a crewed Sinese expedition before long.
A chime announced another message, this one from Kit, but Tavoian decided not to read it until he replied to the colonel. He couldn’t do anything about whatever Kit might say, and if it held bad news, he didn’t want to deal with it before dealing with the colonel’s “request,” and if it held better news, he’d enjoy it more later.
His reply to the colonel, when he completed it a half hour later, was not that much longer than the colonel’s initial message.
Sinese expedition has sent fifteen [15] miniature rovers to artifact. All failed to maintain physical contact. Some propelled away by contact with the artifact’s surface as it rotates, others in orbit for now. Sinese remote vehicle scanning all surfaces of artifact. AI calculates scanning will take eight more days [206 hours total].
Additional investigations of other doorways to hexagonal chambers reveal no contents within and photosensitivity identical to that determined by previous tests of other doorways. Detailed results attached.
Only after dispatching the reply and finishing his tea did he open and begin to read the message from his sister.
Dear Chris—
Father and I were glad to hear that you are fine, wherever you are. Mother sends her best, but she thinks you’re still piloting FusEx ships between Noram station and the Moon. Father and I tried to tell her you had a different duty, but she was insistent. She’s increasingly frail, and we decided not to argue or persist. I do wish you were here, but I know that’s not something you can change.
Tavoian nodded. Even if he had turned down the alien mission, he’d still have been stuck on Donovan Base … or worse.
One of the more sensational media outlets—that’s HotNews!—has announced that the asteroid your friend discovered is an alien spacecraft. They’ve even taken to calling it the Solar Express, and all the other media outlets are using the term. The whole idea of an alien spacecraft, or the remnant of one, is too ridiculous to consider. We live on a nondescript planet circling an unremarkable star in a galaxy that has over 200 billion other stars. Even if aliens did develop a means of propulsion that would attain a speed that made travel between solar systems vaguely practical—years instead of decades or generations—why would anyone want to come here? If I had to guess, I’d say that both the politicians and the media types are looking for a deus ex machina to rescue us from our own incompetence and paranoid selfishness. At least you’re not involved in that foolishness.
Tavoian smiled wryly. Just like Kit … so practical that there was sometimes no room for dreams.
The foolishness here is close to reaching insanity. I won’t recap what you must get in the news summaries, but … there aren’t any words to express my anger and frustration. Our collective grandparents didn’t do enough to stave off environmental disasters, that’s true, but they didn’t actively act to destroy most of the human race if they didn’t get their way. There is a difference between stupidity and total insanity …
Is there? Doesn’t willful stupidity border on insanity?
I just wish you had enough rank and position to influence matters …
Tavoian chuckled sardonically. Reason didn’t matter when you dealt with people who wanted things their way, no matter what happened, and he doubted he’d do much better than many of those in office. You can’t even figure out a way into a big dumb object. Except it was a big dumb object built and operated by long-dead and scientifically brilliant aliens.
He finished his sister’s letter and immediately began a reply.
Dear Kit,
I wish I could be there, but where I am now is where I’ll be stationed for at least another month, possibly two, no matter what happens. I’m so glad you can be with Dad and Mother. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that …
When Tavoian finished the message and sent it, he decided to try another tack in dealing with the artifact—just listing what he had discovered about it, as well as a few speculations he thought were accurate, but could not prove. The listing took more than an hour, and his eyes burned even more by the time he put down the last words. It was also painfully short for such a discovery and momentous event in human history.
Every chamber but two is a flat hexagon, regardless of size, and most come in one of two sizes, rather unusual for a craft of such immense dimensions.
One of the two different chambers appears to have been an airlock, large enough to hold a spacecraft as large as Recon three, but there is no sign of double lock doors.
The other different chamber is filled with thirty-two hexagonal gray columns that might be a part of some drive system.
The only excessively large open spaces are those two chambers and the central shaft.
There is no indication of any provision for parks, natural environmental systems. Either the aliens did not need them or such spaces were contained in the larger missing part of the sphere.
All functional technology has to be within the impermeable bulkhead/deck structures or the few giant projections in the large chamber
under the hull.
There do not appear to be pressure doors sealing various sections of the artifact, unless those two are concealed within the bulkheads/decks. Would they be necessary, given that the materials of the artifact are impermeable and impregnable?
In an odd fashion, all of the hexagons reminded Tavoian of a honeycomb, but no honeybee could have built and operated the artifact that rotated slowly, as it had for thousands of years, a few hundred meters from Recon three. What were the aliens? Incredibly high-tech analogues to honeybees, or “just” aliens who liked hexagons? Both … or neither?
He saved the list, then looked for something to eat. He was too tired to think or to do any more, even though he knew the colonel would have more questions by Tuesday. Tomorrow is Tuesday, isn’t it?
48
DAEDALUS BASE
12 NOVEMBER 2114
Tuesday afternoon Alayna was still struggling with Chris’s message and the information he had sent. She was also marveling at the images of the alien artifact. It was one thing to speculate on something’s origin based on light patterns and spectrographic analysis; it was another to see detailed images showing the brightness of that silvered hull, and the incredible regularity of the former interior with the spaced rectangles that actually represented the sides of thousands of hexagons.
For all of that, it was clear to her that there was great risk—like legal prosecution and possibly even time in prison—for her to share that information with anyone, especially the Foundation, yet the Foundation was her employer, and she had, in effect, broken the agreement by sending the images from COFAR to Chris. Isn’t there a higher duty than just an employment contract? Her lips twisted. She knew what her father the attorney would likely have said, words to the effect that the law seldom recognized higher duty because anyone could claim they were acting in accord with higher principles. He’d also said more than once that the legal profession was about law, not justice, and that fewer people worried about principles than their pocketbook, notwithstanding the fact that almost no one had a pocketbook anymore, just a personal asset balance.
The other problem was the implied obligation she had incurred by accepting the data and images from Chris, an obligation to attempt to offer Chris—and the Noram Space Service—some sort of advice or insight. And that was something she certainly wasn’t about to tell the Foundation. It also bothered her that, because of the Moon’s current position, she wouldn’t be able to use the optical array to see 2114 FQ5—calling it an alien artifact still felt strange to her—for another ten days.
In the meantime, the only messages she had gotten from the Foundation involved time-sharing on both the solar observatory and the radio telescope. She was beginning to suspect that those were going to be the only kinds of messages she would get, unless there was a truly unavoidable reason that Director Wrae had to contact her.
At that moment, she saw that another message had arrived, and rather than wonder who had sent it while she tried to work on her own solar project, she called it up and began to read.
Alayna—
You win! Not in the way anyone wants to. I thought what happened to me at DAO was near the top for minimizing and undercutting, and I’ve seen enough how the more-ethical-than-you nonprofits really operate. Like what the Farside Foundation did to you this morning in this morning’s Times story. Claiming that the Farside Foundation’s lunar array was the first to discover 2114 FQ5 and bring the “Solar Express” to light … and not a word about you.
Alayna couldn’t keep from wincing. Not a word? And the story hadn’t even made any of the off-Earth news summaries?
The most momentous astronomical discovery of the century, and they couldn’t even mention your name. Those people aren’t small. They’re nanosized! I’ve already started a whispering campaign with all the people I know. Your friends at the Farside Foundation only thought they had fundraising problems.
Great! You’ll get relieved before you even have a shot at discovering more about the multi-fractals.
Except it wouldn’t happen that way. The Foundation couldn’t afford the extra funds to search for another qualified academic grunt and then send someone to Daedalus a year earlier than planned, and the Basic Science Foundation would likely object as well. Much as Alayna liked Emma personally, she could see why the older woman had been through a few positions, despite her winning the Heineman Prize and the Eddington Medal.
Just keep working on your other project. Remember that every negative reveals something about the positive.
That was so like Emma. Every negative reveals something about the positive. For a moment, Alayna smiled. Then she began to think … especially about Chris’s problem with the alien artifact. How could he investigate something that large … what could he do that might reveal more about something almost impregnable and impermeable? She also couldn’t help but wonder about the different values of Marcel’s two calculations of the artifact’s orbital period. Part of that might well have been because the assumptions made on the basis of the light reflected from the artifact did not match standard mass and density assumptions, and initially she had assumed it was a comet, and not a solid body … Except it’s not a solid body, not with all those empty hexagonal chambers. She began to calculate.
Ten minutes later, she was frowning. Then she recalculated. Finally, she gave her estimated figures to Marcel and asked, “Assuming that the walls of each hexagon are five meters thick and that each hexagon is surrounded by a passageway three point five meters wide, what percentage of 2114 FQ5 is composed of solid material…”
She broke off the question. She had no way of knowing if the walls were solid, and if they weren’t, which was more likely, what percentage was vacant and what was solid. Nor was there any way to determine density, not immediately, since without the ability to sample and measure the materials from which the artifact was constructed, only longer term observation of gravitational effects/impacts could provide mass data. The increase in velocity above what Marcel had initially calculated did suggest that the artifact had initially entered the inner solar system at a velocity considerably higher than that of either Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt objects. But the artifact could have been constructed of impregnable lower density material or higher density matter, for all that she, or anyone else, could tell. There were ways to use spectrographic analysis to determine density, but all the ones she could think of required, in effect, something like a spark electrode or laser gasification, and the material of the artifact wouldn’t react to either.
In the end, she didn’t feel as though what she wrote was all that helpful.
Dear Chris,
From the information you sent, it appears that a certain percentage of single frequency light is absorbed by certain surfaces of the artifact for purposes or reasons that are not obvious …
Is that an understatement!
… You might consider determining if that surface reflects full spectrum light, or sunlight in the same fashion. I cannot say what that might indicate, except that it would confirm that the properties might definitely be engineered and possibly to what end. A comparative analysis on the silvered hull section and around the “circles” on the hull that you mentioned also might offer some information. Such measurements also might reveal why the artifact has an albedo higher than can be accounted for so far.
I’m not a materials scientist, but from what you’ve written, I think someone ought to consider, if they haven’t already, that whoever built the artifact had the ability and technology to construct materials up from the most basic of forces. Nothing else I can think of would explain what you’ve discovered … unless I’m overlooking something, which is always possible. I once read that a twentieth-century politician quipped something to the effect that all problems offer opportunities, and that he faced what appeared to be insurmountable opportunities. I hope our “opportunities” are more opportune and surmountable.
I have my doubts as to whether these suggestions will prove helpful,
but I do feel that they will at least remove possibilities and narrow the focus of where further inquiries might proceed. In thinking about the difficulties you face, I was reminded of a few words from my current favorite quote source:
Oceanic coastlines are fractal. Down to the tiniest level, they’re fractal. How amazing is that? Except, when you say something like that as a scientist, no one except a fraction of the population, any population, knows what you mean, and those who do are all scientists, and half of them want to dispute it or qualify it, while the politicians deny it or ignore it out of habit and unwillingness to expand their horizons beyond the next election.
I couldn’t find a quote like that, well, not exactly, about astrophysics and space, although I recall there is one, somewhere, but I must be remembering it wrong, because even searches don’t show it. Your sister Kit might appreciate this quote as well.
My very best to you, and my hopes that you don’t encounter any more of such special opportunities.
After finishing the message to Chris and sending it, Alayna was almost relieved to get back to working on her own seemingly intractable problem of trying to discover something—anything!—new about the mechanism of multi-fractal mini-granulations.
49
RECON THREE
14 NOVEMBER 2114
Wednesday morning came with the piercing sound of an alarm. Tavoian jolted into a semi-upright position, kept from floating around the control spaces by his sleeping bag and the loosely fastened restraint straps.
“Report!” Tavoian’s words came out half hoarsely, half squeaked.
THREE REMOTE UNITS ARE APPROACHING.
Solar Express Page 27