Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [20]
“I don’t think we’re going to communicate with them,” Captain Dalen said.
The clicking sounds grew louder and sharper.
“It’s not a language,” Geordi said, examining his tricorder. “At least nothing we can translate.”
“Signals—very simple, primitive signals,” observed Picard.
“Yes,” said the Horta archaeologist Sherd. “We’ve got a partial interpretation: something like, ‘The hunger, the hunger,’ over and over. That’s as close as we can come.”
“It would be a hard, restricted life in this sphere,” Picard said. “This may be what… devolved…from the life forms that stayed inside. A very small population.”
“And apparently a very hungry population,” Captain Dalen said emphatically. “And not necessarily small. We happened upon them in the very first place we popped up, and they could be spread over an area as large as North America. And I’ll give you a fair bet it’s not rocks they hunger after.”
Geordi increased the range on his tricorder and shook his head. “Too right, Captain Dalen. I’m beginning to worry that charcoal broiled humanity may be the flavor of choice.”
“Then you should leave?”
“I think we’d better. Good safety tip.”
“We’ll come after you,” Captain Dalen said. “If these creatures don’t regard us as tasty, better to have us between them and you.”
A dusty wind came up as Picard followed Geordi toward the opening in the ground. The marionettes stopped, and seemed to sway slightly. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind was gone.
The clicking resumed.
Picard and Geordi reached the opening and looked down. A faint light showed from the bay of the shuttle.
“You first,” Picard said.
La Forge nodded, sat down on the edge, and slid away.
Picard waited, then took a last look at the desolate landscape beneath the red dwarf. Here all hope, it seemed, had ended, and these poor devils had somehow survived to pay the price of the experiment in Dyson Sphere construction. Why had this been permitted? Why had no one thought to sweep the surface clean before abandoning it… ?
It occurred to him then that if these life forms had survived here, however wretchedly, then there might be others lost inside the vastness of the Dyson Sphere. He could not assume that any other beings would be any more friendly than these—and others might have some of the resources of the Sphere’s builders at their command.
The circle of stick figures was closing now, like a noose.
A sudden gust of wind caught his cheek, scraping it with a burst of dust. Picard touched his face, and saw blood on his fingers.
“Hurry!” Captain Dalen called out. “They look as though they might be considering the virtues of a silicon-based diet.”
Captain Picard sat down on the edge of the opening and readied to slide down, then took a last look at the dwarf sun. Something black was moving across its surface, in a fast, close orbit as he watched; it reached the rim and disappeared
He was out of time. The alien figures were only a few tens of meters away. He let go and slid, feet first, into the opening. At first it was quick, then “down” became up and Picard realized that he would have to turn around to climb. He managed it after two tries, and in a few minutes was ascending through low gravity, into the brightly lit shuttle compartment.
“There’s something else in there,” he announced, thinking again of the catastrophe that was coming, and how little time there was to explore. A decade might not be enough merely to visit all the important places on the inner surface of the sphere he had just exited, and no one would give him decades, unless somehow the Dyson Sphere could be saved. “It’s in close orbit around the red dwarf. Might be a vessel.” And now he had another problem—the presence of biological life forms that might be a danger to him and the crew of the Darwin.
“But we’d have to get the shuttle inside,” Geordi said, “which means a bigger hole. Or find another way in.”
“We have to decide,” Picard said, “whether to continue here or to spend our time elsewhere.”
“What did it look like?” Geordi asked. “Do you suppose it was an old