Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [22]
The ship on the screen was indeed all engine: two magnetic rings separated by several kilometers of tether, reminding Picard of a flying spider’s web.
Suddenly faces appeared on the screen, as if someone had assembled them for a group photograph. As Picard gazed into a half dozen pairs of alien eyes, he tried to make out the nature of the staring expressions. The eyes were humanoid, set in a humanoid face that seemed vaguely feline, but with only a hint of fuzz on almond-colored skin. There was no hair, only black fuzz, neatly shaved into a skullcap, it seemed. The ears were round.
Picard asked, “Troi, can you pick up anything from them?”
“Very little, Captain, but I don’t think they’re either a predecessor or offshoot of the Borg.”
Picard said, “I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise. Can you understand me?”
The faces on the screen seemed to smile, as if expecting that their picture would finally be taken. The face closest to the screen seemed confused by his words, then said, “Do you … know … our speech?”
Picard waited a moment, then said, “No, we are using a translator device. The translation may not be perfect.” He identified himself again.” It is working,” Troi said, “which means the language must have some far-back link with others in the translator.”
The translator rarely failed to work, Picard reminded himself, but one day it was likely to encounter a race whose language was inaccessible.
“Captain,” Data said, “I see from your scans that these people carry no implants or other technological variations in their physiology. They are purely biological.”
“Unusual,” Riker added, “for a species with that much command of technology.”
“I would like to ask a question,” Picard said to the assembly on the screen. “Would you tell us some of your history?”
“History … ?”
“Your time before this,” Picard explained, “what has happened to your people. Who are you?”
A look of what seemed to be understanding crossed the alien’s face. “We call ourselves the Dooglasse,” he said.
“Tell us of your … times,” Picard said.
“We … of the Dooglasse … stand alone,” the alien speaker began. “That is our way … whenever too many Dooglasse, some must leave …”
Picard realized that this meant migration to other parts of the Sphere’s surface.
“Did you build your ship?” Picard asked.
“Build?”
“Where did you get the ship?” Picard asked, guessing the truth. The history of this race was lost to them. Far in the past, they had probably turned away from the great technology of the sphere, to live much like the marionettes of the red wilderness: as (presumed) troglodytes, squatters on the inner surface. But the Dooglasse inhabited a much larger surface area. Whenever populations expanded, fell into disagreement, or threatened one another with war, there would be virtually unlimited territories into which the dissidents would migrate. They had more than a couple hundred million Earth-sized territories from which to choose.
“We … repaired the ship,” the alien speaker continued, “to go… home.”
This was a reasonably articulate group, Picard concluded, possibly among the youngest of the dissident lineages inside Dyson. They seemed to have recently rediscovered antimatter propulsion within the great open space of the Sphere.
“Home?” Picard asked.
The alien pointed down. “This world… we circle … we believe to have been our home … not the great curving surface. We have been mapping that… whence on the great surface have you come?”
Picard realized that they believed him to belong to another group from the inner surface. The Darwin, the Enterprise, and the neutron star had arrived in time for a Dyson Renaissance of sorts, a new beginning among some of those who had come out of the Sphere’s historical amnesia.
It would be best not to volunteer too much information about himself and his crewmates, for the moment. He looked back to the friendly Dooglasse on the screen and said,