Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [46]
“They were not a priority,” Picard explained. “We’ve only just now gotten them away. Can you see yet?” He waited for the android’s answer.
Data glanced at the forward screen and saw nothing except his own, Enterprise-eye view of the Sphere’s outer surface: a level, airless plain that seemed endless. For an instant, he admired the complete lack of wear and tear on Dyson’s skin, then cut short the amount of time devoted to the irrelevant. Sometimes, his human tendencies seemed annoying; but to be annoyed was also a human tendency. A rational being would never have even made the irrelevant observation.
“Riker to Picard,” the commander said from the captain’s station. “No downlink yet from your sun probe. It is—please stand by, sir.”
Data watched the screen image brighten to reveal a strange star rushing up from below. Indeed, through the probe’s eyes, it now ceased even to resemble a star. No longer sapphire-orange or even sapphire-pink, it glowed with the red of a ruby. Yellow spines sprang out of the corona, appallingly large, and made of plasma. The impression Data received was of a fiery sea urchin dangling in space.
“Got it!” Riker shouted from behind him.
Data checked his display and saw at once, based upon triangulations among four different probes, exactly how far off-center the central sun had been shifted; or more accurately, how much the Sphere had moved, leaving the star in place. This told him more precisely when the sun would reach the Great Scott Sea. It was “falling” faster than he had anticipated.
“Captain,” Riker said, “we’re getting readings that just don’t make sense. The sun is transmitting enormous amounts of energy directly into the Sphere’s surface.” His voice was more high-pitched than usual, full of what Data recognized as urgency. “I’m looking at a scan of the grapplers, opposite the Great Scott Sea, on the ice fields. The power surges are off the grid. They’ve got to be fully charged by now. More than fully charged. But they’re not doing anything!”
Riker’s face was impassive, Troi noted, in the moment before he passed on a probe image to Darwin’s bridge screen. She saw a necklace of computer-enhanced grappler fire, burning brightly, accomplishing nothing. From their mountings atop the Darwin’s hull, the ship’s own probes revealed nothing of the calamity happening in the world above. The sun was completely obscured by a warm haze, and because the screen automatically adjusted the lighting to changing conditions, keeping its level of illumination constant, it was only when Troi looked at the meter and scanner readings that she knew that daylight had increased its brilliance threefold. And Data had said that the sun was shrinking, fading…
One of the probes panned across the face of the sun. On its surface, a yellow-white fountain appeared, a new urchin spine, a blaze that streamed out higher than the distance separating Earth from the moon. It hovered for a moment, then came out again—higher, heading purposefully toward the probe. Without any fuss at all, the probe died. Then another probe winked out. Then another.
“That’s it,” Picard said grimly next to her. “No hope of correcting Dyson’s problem. No hope of getting anywhere near that star again.”
“That is not entirely true,” Data said from the Enterprise. “You are already too close to the star for safety.”
“Warning appreciated,” the Horta said, with what seemed to Troi to be deep feeling. She sensed no recklessness or fatalism in Dalen now, only grim determination.
From a great distance, a surviving probe near the Dyson Homeworld showed urchin spines flaring erratically, as if the star were signaling to any interlopers:
I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING. STAY AWAY.
Troi wondered if one or more of the civilizations infesting Dyson’s walls had managed to wrest control of ancient machinery and create, by accident or by design, the illusion that Dyson and its star were alive, and suffering, and aware. Biological overtones. Superorganism. Troi could not shake off the impression—the stubborn illusion—that Dyson was alive.
As she watched, the