Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [21]
“Difficult to say whether it was a vessel, a small moon, or … or, who knows what?”
“Mostly who knows what,” said Captain Dalen, as she hauled herself out of the pit. “I saw it, too. It’s another sphere, Captain. About thirty-three kilometers across.”
Picard frowned. “A prototype of the prototype?” he asked.
“A sphere, within a sphere, within a sphere,” sang the Horta as Lieutenant Jee emerged from the tunnel. “And who knows? Is yet a smaller prototype hidden within the prototype’s prototype?”
“Or another within that?” Picard wondered aloud. “And another, and another, each with its own dwarf sun and a replica of the Great Scott Sea? If we can find the first prototype, and if it is small enough to be contained in the shuttle bay of the Enterprise, the information we could take with us would be priceless.”
“Those are very big ifs, Captain,” La Forge said.
“Beautiful ifs, Geordi.”
Sherd and Kodo were now exiting the tunnel. “Riker to Picard,” a voice called.
“Picard here.”
“Captain, we’ve just sighted a ship coming around the far side of the homeworld. It’s in orbit, and not putting out many signs of power. But it is equipped with cryocontrolled antimatter pods. I presume it’s the source of those gamma flares you detected. No signs of a subspace cooling system. It uses space itself as a dump for engine heat.”
“A real museum piece, then.”
“Yet brand new, in working order,” Riker said, with what sounded like admiration. “The ship’s almost all engine. Payload capacity: no more than two dozen people, living in very cramped quarters.”
“Can you see them?”
“The Darwin’s scans do confirm life forms, Captain.”
Picard considered this for a moment, realizing that he was now faced with the fact of intelligent, space faring life that would die in the next two weeks. He wondered if they could be aware of the coming destruction. To hide from them would protect the Darwin; to keep at a distance from them would eliminate the risk of both conflict and cultural contamination. In the vastness of the Dyson Sphere, the life forms aboard that alien ship might simply assume that the Darwin and its crew were only yet more denizens of Dyson that they had not yet encountered.
But he knew that he and his human and Horta colleagues could not try to evade the unknown beings. There was too much to learn, and possibly even a chance to aid them if they were friendly. Still, he and Captain Dalen would have to be cautious.
“Picard to Riker,” he said, “we’re coming back to the Darwin immediately.”
“Understood.”
He looked at the tunnel—which had to be plugged before the Balboa pulled away, lest they create a geyser on the moon’s surface and kill, a little sooner, whatever still lived near the entrance. He wished he could learn more about the troglodytes in the red wilderness—for he could not shake the nagging feeling that his and Captain Dalen’s first impression of them had been as far off the mark as Captain Kirk’s first impression of the Horta and their world. And what about the mini-spheres, if such existed? He wished he could think of his departure from the moon as temporary, but he knew with reasonable certainty, as the entrance was sealed and the airlock detached, that he would never set foot here again. Yet he allowed himself to risk thinking—to risk wishing—that Dyson’s peculiar movements were an awakening, of sorts, and that the Sphere might somehow protect itself from the coming onslaught. If that was what was happening, then Dyson was at best putting up an imperfect defense, but Picard allowed himself the little victory of hoping in the persistence of a will to live.
Where there was life, there was hope, even if certainty was an elusive gift.
“What do you make of it?” Picard asked from the bridge of the Darwin.
“My guess is they’ve been hiding from us,” Riker said from the Enterprise, “but have now decided to come out and show themselves.”
“Or it’s chance, and they can’t help being seen.”
“That seems most likely,” Data said over the link.