Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [33]
“Understood,” replied Captain Dalen from her station.
One of the objects became visible on the screen. It seemed an ancient armored thing, vaguely resembling a silvered version of the fossil cephalopod whose coiled, pearly white shell was among the few Earthly reminders Picard had chosen to decorate the Enterprise’s ready room. The “whiskers” emerged from the place where the cephalopod’s head and tentacles ought to have been; and as Picard watched, they flashed out across two hundred and twenty subspace dimensions.
“Data?” the captain asked from his helmsman’s station.
“I would say this is one of the control devices from which the attempt to steer the Sphere is coming,” Data’s voice replied. “Also, an attempt to drag the central sun’s core along, and hence the sun itself, and its orbiting homeworld.”
“And the energy to do this is being drawn from the star,” Picard ventured; then, as if on cue, the whiskers gleamed even brighter through subspace. Simultaneously, the Sphere’s wall added another spurt of acceleration, and the solar luminosity dimmed by one half of one percent. The screen showed five grapplers coming suddenly to life on the distant, snow-covered side of the Sphere; they flickered weakly, unable to get a firm grip on the objects—the hundreds of them—that formed a necklace around the sun’s core. As they watched, the distance between the furnace and the snow widened.
Another grappler came on.
And another.
And another.
And solar luminosity dropped another quarter of one percent. Then another. And another.
“If I may posit a theory,” Data said, “if the instability observed in this star when we discovered Montgomery Scott’s ship had only very recently begun—”
“Yes,” Picard interrupted, “I was coming to that conclusion myself.”
“Then the star must not really have been dead when we found it—or even dying, but merely awakening.”
“Transmitting power to the Sphere walls?” Picard asked. “Even before we found Montgomery Scott?”
“Powering up for the dodge maneuver?”
“Perhaps so,” said Picard. “In which case, Dyson truly was anticipating, somehow, the arrival of the neutron star. It knew it was about to be attacked.”
“Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,” said Captain Dalen. “Your archaeological site comes alive and starts fighting with another archaeological site.”
Picard glanced back at the Horta. “But right now,” he said, “the question is: Do you think we should try to approach the whiskers and correct the system’s defects?”
“That might save the Sphere,” Data replied, “assuming we can ever learn how the transmitters work.”
Picard nodded his head, very slowly. “I know, Data. So many unheard of quantum spatial dimensions. It may take a hundred years of learning.”
“Or a thousand,” Captain Dalen said matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Picard said. “And in the meantime, I feel like a Neanderthal walking into a modern day engine room, trying to pry loose its secrets with a stone axe. A hopeless venture.”
“And quite dangerous,” Data reminded.
“But warranted,” Captain Dalen decided, “even if the risk to the Darwin is large and the chance at saving the Sphere small.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Captain Picard.
And as the Dooglasse dropped behind, the off-center star swelled to a screen scape of fiery prominences and magnetic trenches. One of the whiskered cephalopods was crossing the sun’s face, and it seemed for a moment that it was a black opening in the star, revealing the space beyond, except that no stars shone in the deep well.
“Slow ahead,” Captain Dalen said. “Make parallel orbit to the station.”
“Aye,” Picard replied, pressing another panel on his console.
Deep within the solar corona, and down to a velocity of five hundred kilometers per second, the Darwin matched speed with the station, about ten kilometers off. One of its whiskers drifted a hundred meters to starboard, another approached a hundred meters to port, then held position.
“Data,” Picard said to the Enterprise, “is it safe to let those whiskers get any closer?”
“The subspace distortions do not rise