Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [19]
How strange that the first snowfall should come to Dyson, now that it is so close to the neutron flame.
Not much time left
The hole in the moon had been cut at a forty-five degree angle, so it was possible to slide part of the way, in the direction that a sixth gravity would present as “down.” But after a point, the gravitic direction reversed to “up,” and Picard knew that he would emerge onto the inner surface of the sphere at four-fifths Earth gravity. Both he and Geordi were wearing traction soles and gloves, in case it became necessary to brake or climb.
“Ready?” Picard asked.
“Lead the way, Captain,” La Forge replied.
Picard went in head first, and saw at once that the slide was slow enough to make braking unnecessary. He slid along slowly, feeling his way down toward the dim red light, and the opening grew larger. After twenty seconds he stopped, feeling the increased gravity in his heavier limbs.
“Mr. La Forge?” he asked.
“I’m right behind you, Captain.”
Picard started to pull himself forward with his hands, then pushed with his feet. He was now climbing. He pulled himself along for what he estimated were about three minutes until he was at the opening. Grasping the edge with both hands, and pushing with his feet, he climbed out of the hole, sat down on the edge, and rolled away to one side.
He stood up and surveyed a dull red landscape. It was rocky and barren, save for a small stand of trees and bushes nearby, and similarly colored patches on the up curved horizon. The trees were bare—dead, apparently. Geordi climbed out and stood next to him, and they looked up at a miniature red sun, radiating its pitiable energy into the hollow.
The Horta away team was waiting for them. “Air seems dusty,” Picard said, and exhaled a cough that, in the surrounding atmosphere, became a breath of warm condensation. “Low oxygen, too.” This was deliberately sealed up,” La Forge said. “The Dysons must have seen this place as a failure.”
“That sun,” Picard said. ‘I’ll bet it’s artificial, and they couldn’t get it to work, so they continued by enclosing their natural sun.”
“No,” said Captain Dalen. “I think this was all a test. A practice sphere, if you will.”
“Could be,” Geordi acknowledged. “It strikes me that they were looking far ahead. When this moon was constructed, all those missing stars and planets were probably still visible in the homeworld’s night skies.”
As Picard’s eyes adjusted, he started to see by the red light. The curve of the inner land swept away from them in all directions, revealing a craggy, pitted, desert interrupted by distant oases of oddly shaped trees. More than a thousand kilometers away, lay the nearer shore of a circular sea whose center was located almost on the far side of the sun. It was the same continental and oceanic contour he had seen on the two worlds outside. It was the Great Scott Sea writ small.
Peering upward and seaward, Picard became aware of a sharp clicking noise, then noticed that some five hundred meters away, the rocks seemed to rise and move forward.
“Do you see that?” La Forge whispered in the redness that seemed to belong to some hell at the end of time. Then he began to scan with his tricorder. “Yes,” Picard replied.
“Definitely biological, with no implant modifications.” The engineer turned in a circle, penetrating the gloom with his visor. “They shouldn’t be there, but they are.”
“Biological life forms,” Dalen said. “I was afraid of that. The Federation had better think about upgrading all of its scanning equipment.”
“They’re moving toward us in a circle,” Geordi said.
Picard and La Forge stood back to back. Slowly, Picard began to see the creatures: tall, long-legged bipeds that reminded him of stick figure marionettes. They moved slowly in the red wilderness, reminding Picard of ancient wooden plows struggling