Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [13]
“Let me guess,” Picard said. “The Dyson tangle unravels near 100,000 B.C., which is about the time the Sphere was built.”
“Correct.”
“So, the Dysons, and someone on Sarpeidon, may have re-engineered the fabric of spacetime. Rebuilt it to their own design.”
“Not just here and at Sarpeidon,” the Horta replied. “All of the normal subspace dimensions between here and Sarpeidon have something in common with Sarpeidon and Dyson.”
“You’re joking,” Picard said.
“Not this time. It’s only a theory, of course, but Sarpeidon and Dyson-although the subspace that surrounds them appears to have been more intensely reworked than elsewhere-may not be merely the exceptions that prove the rule. They appear to be the actual rule. Probe back just a little way beyond them and all of subspace-all of subspace-breaks down into only the four most basic dimensions of spacetime. I believe that someone, somewhere, rewove the entire fabric of the universe, and what’s happened here is that you, and all the other young civilizations-maybe even the Dysons and the Sarpeidans-simply stumbled upon the bales of fabric someone else left behind, and learned how to wrap warp engines, transporters, and subspace communicators around them.”
Picard looked at the Horta with astonishment and admiration, and more with admiration than astonishment. He let out a long sigh and said, “So, what you’re suggesting is that subspace may itself be an archaeological artifact.”
“May be,” the Horta sang, and laughed.
“So then the question is, why would they build subspace so much deeper here?”
“There are many possible reasons,” Data suggested. “One obvious advantage is that it greatly multiplies the odds against someone just cruising up to the front door and being able to find the right lock sequence.”
“An added layer of immune defense,” Picard added, “probably against unwanted visitors, and unwanted infection.”
“Meaning us,” said Captain Dalen.
Picard grinned, in the manner that Sejanus, the Roman conspirator, might have grinned when he realized that the Emperor Tiberius had clothes after all, and brains, and teeth. “Data,” he said, “try the lock twice. I’d like to know we have a good chance of making it work on our way out.”
“I was thinking of trying it three times, Captain.”
“Three, then.”
“Signal sent.”
The door to Dyson began to open, and Picard recalled that it was not the usual kind of airlock, since there was no atmosphere that could escape during the entrance or exit of vehicles. Dyson’s atmosphere clung to the vast inner landscape, held in place by a field of pseudo gravity whose grip weakened so rapidly with increasing height that at an altitude of only fifty kilometers, it exerted no measurable influence at all. The doorway had a field of its own: a force wall standing thirty kilometers high and completely rimming its eight corners. Against that wall, the atmosphere piled up, as if it were merely water pressing against the sides of a fish tank.
The artificial gravity was not generated by centrifugal spin. It was created by gravitic generators, according to scans obtained during the first encounter. Much like the synthetic gravitational fields inside the Darwin and the Enterprise, they acted with little regard for the inertial effects of acceleration and deceleration-another fact made possible only by the miracle of subspace. This held true, of course, only for objects, or gases, or people standing within the field, which explained, without a doubt, the world’s increasingly off-center sun.
“Lock closing, now,” Data called from the Enterprise’s comlink.
Picard was looking straight ahead into brilliant sunlight, looking across tens of millions of kilometers of empty, airless space between Dyson