Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [50]
“I guess that shows us all where we stand,” said Captain Dalen from her command station.
Picard gave net an icv stare and said, “A. little to one side, I presume.”
They were two million kilometers high and the bridge screen’s main view was panning sideways across the sun. It does look like a sea urchin! Picard thought; and Captain Dalen, apparently taking Guinan’s reprimand at face value—do not become an irritating little virus—ordered the pilot to give the sun a wide berth with the Darwin.
Aboard the Enterprise, sitting at the command station, Riker uplinked a viewfeed from the Darwin’s main telescope. The officers on the bridge’s port side cupped their hands over their eyes as bright light suddenly suffused the area.
Riker squinted at the viewscreen. The grapplers— or, rather, what he had assumed all along to have been grapplers—were still drawing energy from the sun. By now they glowed so fiercely that it was hard to imagine why they had not turned whole oceans into scalding vapor; yet the machines remained surrounded by tropical islands and rainforests that were slowly disappearing under sheets of ice and snow.
“Why is that?” Riker exclaimed. No one on the bridge, not even Data, had an answer for him.
No, he told himself silently, the figures the ship’s computer was now showing him on one of his station’s small screens could not be true. A deep scan of an ice bound grappler revealed what had to be thousands of new holes opening into subspace. As he watched, their number doubled, then doubled again. Dimensional folding? Was that possible? Apparently so, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief as he bade farewell to the universe of Einstein, Hawking, and Cochrane.
A glance around the bridge at the other officers told him that all of them had drawn the same conclusions. A couple were gaping at the screen; others shook their heads at what the sensor readings on their consoles were telling them.
“Captain,” Riker called out, “Dyson is rewriting the laws of physics before our very eyes. I suggest you come to the exit lock right away.”
“Understood,” said Captain Dalen. “We’re coming as fast as we can.”
“Where’s the Dooglasse ship?” asked Picard.
“They’re ahead of us,” the Horta replied, “and already approaching the lock.”
“And the starfish?”
“About a half light minute behind the Dooglasse.”
“Good. Now—”
“The lock has its own set of grapplers,” Riker called excitedly, feeling simultaneously awed and defeated. “They’re behaving just as strangely as the ones on the snowfield, drawing tremendous amounts of energy from the sun and … Captain—the view aft—look at the sun!”
Picard found a strange and terrible beauty in the horror. The light inside Dyson was fading fast. The sun, as it shrank, flickered between red and gold, as if the Sphere were drinking in the sun’s power, drinking it to extinction.
“I see, Commander Riker,” Captain Dalen said from her station. “Now about the lock?”
Riker’s voice replied, “The Dooglasse ship is close enough to trigger it at any moment…”
Troi, standing near Guinan, was watching the viewscreen intently. Picard waited with Captain Dalen and the rest of the Darwin’s bridge personnel for Riker’s confirmation that the lock was opening; but the word did not come.
“Well, Number One?” Picard asked, keeping his voice steady.
“Negative, Captain. We have to try opening it from the outside.”
On the Enterprise’s bridge screen, the Darwin’s telescope showed the Dooglasse gamma flare coming into view like a false star, eclipsing the lock. Up ahead, on the ground, perhaps six Earth diameters from the lock, another star winked on.
Grappler flare, Riker thought—or “apparent” grappler flare. It was joined, a minute later, by a whole constellation of false stars, and the sun, in response, seemed to tremble.
“It’s no use!” Riker called out with dismay. “We can’t get you out.”
Picard was trying to think of what to do next. “It could be worse, Number One,” he heard himself say, surprised at how calm his voice sounded even