Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [29]
None of the Sphere’s inhabitants could have ever known a night sky of stars, or even a deep night. Their mythologies, Picard surmised, might speak of lights in the sky beyond the wall of heaven, and perhaps of a blackness. Having never seen the universe for themselves, they might have speculated about whether the inner surface went on forever or whether there was something beyond, another space containing their spherical space, and then perhaps yet another…
Now, as this side of Homeworld turned away from the sun, the sky was filling up from horizon to horizon with the incurving wall of the Sphere. In the west, the atmospheric glare of sunset was replaced by the wall behind the sun, shining with the misty whiteness of a thousand full moons. In that direction, Picard knew, lay the coming Ice Age. Directly overhead, according to details revealed on telescopic scans, a river wider than the Nile was long flowed all the way down the dome of heaven, yet it was completely invisible to the captain’s unaided eyes, across a span of light minutes. All of the canals Data had been mapping, even an island wider than China and Europe put together, were equally invisible. A hurricane the size of the planet Jupiter, if anything like it could form up there, might go completely unnoticed on the floor of Homeworld.
Jani, the Dooglasse officer, touched Picard’s hand. Picard looked down, as if at a curious child.
“You?” the Dooglasse asked. “You… from outside?”
“Yes,” Picard said.
‘Tell…” said the Dooglasse.
Picard did not answer at once, realizing that it would be against Federation regulations, and against the Prime Directive, to tell the Dooglasse, or any other pre-warp technology species, about the Sphere’s coming end.
There could be multiple billions—no, worse: multiple trillions of people as yet undiscovered. Even without a Directive restricting Picard’s role to that of a “watcher,” it was beyond his powers to evacuate even the tiniest fraction of those trillions aboard Enterprise and Darwin.
He felt torn, and overwhelmed.
What if there was a way to save the Sphere? He had no idea how. But what if?
What, then, of the Prime Directive?
What, then, of regulations?
But this group had a vessel; sub-warp, to be sure— still… they might conceivably survive on their own. Perhaps there were others like the inquisitive Dooglasse who deserved to know as much about their world as they could absorb.
“Later,” Picard said, taking in the view, “when I can speak to your whole group.”
Jani seemed to accept his answer. Then, as they watched in silent wonder, a lake of amber on the distant inner surface caught the rays of the setting sun like a bronze shield, and threw the light back into space. The lake must have been wider than forty Jupiters, to blaze into such beauty. It was gone in a moment, as the angle of incident reflection with their eyes was lost.
Gone in a moment, Picard emphasized for himself. What point would there be in telling even this one Dooglasse about the universe outside? What would be accomplished? What would be saved? More puffs of smoke jetted from the old, multi-storied building—from the upper floors, this time. Captain Dalen was busy and seemingly happy. The Horta, too, had once been pre-warp. She, too, had once lived unaware of the universe outside. But the starship captain remembered and so honored by her people had—
Had what?
Broken the chain of command? Done the right thing for the wrong reason? Or done the wrong thing for the right reason?
What would you do, old Captain Kirk? Picard asked himself. And he knew the answer at once; and Troi put a hand gently upon his arm, and a look of startled surprise crossed her face.
“The Prime Directive?” she asked.
“I believe that I’m about to interpret our orders … creatively, Counselor,” he replied.
The Furnace Below, The Firmament Above
WHEN PICARD HAD