Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [2]
The surface of Captain Dalen’s Homeworld had been nothing except the cold vacuum of empty space, and any who had tunneled straight up and broken through were gushed out, naked, onto an airless deathscape. For their efforts, they left behind only two things: a screaming, out gassing tunnel that had to be quickly sealed, and a very poor inducement for continued space exploration. The theologians and the philosophers around her had declared that there was nothing on the other side of the sky. All life, all matter, and time itself ended at a world-encircling ceiling. And beyond that: nothing. Absolutely nothing.
And then out of nothing, out of that deep, impersonal nothing, had come the miners and the explorers and the starships, bringing with them the tools of subspace communication-which revealed to the Horta a sky that was full of voices. There had been a time when a nest of newly hatched Hortas had seemed crowded to her, even intimidating. But nothing, it seemed, was so crowded as cold, “empty” space.
One of the most prominent of the latest generation of explorers was, unsurprisingly, also the newest captain of the Enterprise. This Picard fellow wanted to conduct an archaeological survey of the Dyson Sphere now, and he wanted the Darwin’s Horta crew on site now. And he had an uncanny way … of getting his way. Captain Dalen’s shipping orders had come direct from Starfleet and the Federation Council in San Francisco.
She had no great desire to actually meet Picard. Clearly the man either didn’t know or didn’t care that Hortas always attended to the task immediately at hand before moving on to the next task, however long it might take. Hortas had the time.
Yet nonetheless she now found herself, her ship, and her crew speeding through subspace toward Picard and the Dyson Sphere. And she had the feeling that whether it took her seconds or centuries to reach her destination two facts remained constant. One: Many of the Federation’s assumptions about the nature and origin of intelligent life were, to her mind, probably wrong. Two: Many of the Federation’s assumptions about the nature and origin of subspace were probably wrong.
It was nice to know that the universe still had secrets to tell, and that the humanoids, for all their great ships, for all their explored frontiers, were still eager to learn.
Compulsively curious species, the Horta thought, and winced. What, ultimately, were the humanoids going to do with the universe? What would the universe do with them?
“Captain,” Data said, “the Darwin’s captain informs me that she and her ship will be coming through the Great Wall in three hours.”
“It’s about time,” Picard said, and lowered a hand to his stomach. This time, his passage through the wall had produced a queasy feeling. At present, no dust particles glowed and scratched warp trails on the bridge screen. Ahead of the prow, the nearest stars were two hundred light years away. This meant that in the view-forward, at normal magnification, there was absolutely nothing to be seen.
The captain had looked out across, and voyaged across, thousands of light years without this same queasiness. He reminded himself that he had known the stars too long to be disturbed by dark, empty places, but little banana fingers were curling around his spine anyway.
This time, he knew that the emptiness had been engineered.
Last time, there had been nothing ahead except Montgomery Scott’s distress beacon.
This time, he knew that the most impressive alien artifact ever discovered lay ahead; and while Dyson was huge by any standard, he knew that more than two hundred trillion kilometers of total darkness lay between the Enterprise and the Sphere, and that this, too, belonged to the artifact.
The Sphere was the only object of its kind in all the known regions of the galaxy, although Picard doubted that it was unique. It was simply too attractive a design possibility to have inspired