Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [15]
“Full impulse ahead,” Captain Dalen said.
Geordi looked up from his equipment, realizing suddenly that he had been addressing Captain Picard and not the Darwin’s captain; but he saw from the expression on Picard’s face—a slight flush in infrared—that he should let the error go this time. He nodded back, then turned again to the instruments.
As the distance to the planet diminished, and the gamma ray source swelled on the Darwin’s viewscreen, Geordi noticed from the readings on his console that there was something familiar about the continents and oceans on this star’s only natural satellite, and suddenly he understood what he was looking at
“Captain Picard,” he said excitedly, and then,” Captain Dalen, the surface features of the planet ahead are the same as those on the inside of the Sphere! The builders apparently projected large the features of their own world.” He put the forward screen into a quick three hundred and sixty degree sweep to illustrate the fact.
On the world below, and in the sky above, the Great Scott Sea was unmistakable—circular and huge, as one might imagine the eye of God. Geordi supposed that it must originally have been an asteroid crater, bigger than Earth’s so-called dinosaur killer, bigger than the Great Hudson Bay. Flooded for more than a billion years, it bad held sway as the homeworld’s most dominant geologic feature, until its offspring projected it onto a surface larger than some planetary orbits.
“Further evidence?” Picard asked.
“Further evidence that the Dysons did indeed enclose their original sun when they built the Sphere,” Geordi replied.
“And they kept their homeworld,” Captain Dalen added.
“Perhaps out of aesthetic, or even sentimental reasons,” Troi said; she was seated on a cushion at the Horta captain’s right.
“Yes, very likely,” Picard said from his seat near the Horta helmsman, “since to keep the world meant setting aside materials that would have contributed to the building of the Sphere. It was a deliberate choice not to use up their original world. Do you hear that, Data?”
“I agree, Captain,” Data answered on the subspace link.
“I assume that you would wish to take up an orbit around the planet?” Captain Dalen asked.
A surprising reading suddenly came up on Geordi’s scans. “Captain … Dalen,” he said, “that world’s moon: It’s mass is much too small for a solid body. It has to be hollow. Has to be.”
“Lay course for the satellite,” Captain Dalen ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” the Horta helmsman answered.
Far astern of the Darwin, Data tested the lock again, flooding the bridge of the Enterprise with the sapphire-orange glow of a low mass flare star. He adjusted the lighting, now that he knew precisely where to look. The off-center sun and the double world that orbited it were blue-shifting slowly but ominously toward him. Wheels within wheels. Data thought, recalling the words of the ancient Earth prophet Daniel. And here he was, looking upon a hollow sphere, orbiting a sphere, within a hollow sphere.
By his command, the giant levers began to close again; and before the doors shut out the light completely, his screens pinpointed and enhanced the signature of the Darwin’s impulse engines. When he knew where to look, and how to look, the engine burn was just barely visible, scratching a thin veil of antimatter flame and subspace distortion across the face of the sun. He watched proton-antiproton exhaust eclipse fusion; he watched the starship Darwin in transit of Dyson’s star, and in his head he recorded it—all of it—and at that moment he had an odd sensation, a sudden conviction that he might be seeing the Darwin for the last time, that like the Flying Dutchman and the Mary Celeste, the Challenger and the Intrepid, no ship would ever again bear the name Darwin.