Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [52]
As the details of the coming sunstrike became more clearly visible, it was hard for Picard to imagine how the Darwin, or anything else, would survive. Where the porcelain city had been, scalding steam was now blowing to all points of the compass, forming huge streamers. Where the streamers grazed each other at varying speeds, eddies broke off into strings of hurricanes, each wider than the Atlantic Ocean, yet microscopic at Dyson’s hyperplanetary scale. The streamers themselves resembled cometary veils—which, in fact, they were. At the center of the comet, Picard knew, the porcelain towers were being roasted like dishes left too long in an oven. On distant shores, if shores still existed, torrential rains would be falling out of the veils, as if making an effort to lessen the sun’s heat.
In the Balboa’s cockpit, Worf waited for word from the bridge, while far below, great distance and great size made the falling sun appear to be hovering over the sea, as if reluctant to make the fearsome contact. Everything in him was tense, ready for battle—or for a rapid retreat.
His aft screen showed the two refugee ships, secured by invisible magnetic “tow lines.”
Back there, in the Darwin’s shadow, the ship of the sea swifts was a little white star sinking toward what was formerly a large turquoise blotch, long known to its inhabitants, as, simply, “the sea.” A mosaic of glassy tiles—each so foamy and so light that, left alone in a field, it would have blown away on a gentle breeze—gave the ark’s skin a sinister, reptilian aspect. Burned indelibly into the scales, on both her starboard and port sides, the ship displayed her name in bold red script—swept astern to give the illusion of speed. As the wind from the sun increased a hundred fold, something shivered inside the ship, and her arms flexed back, like the wings of a bird of prey descending upon an unwary target.
It was designed to do that! Worf realized, and something in him warmed at a sight that reminded him a little of the movements of those most admirable and beautiful examples of Earth’s avian species, the hawks and falcons and eagles. At first glance, the thing they had called a “starfish” looked nothing at all like a spaceworthy vehicle—yet there it was, transformed into an alien raptor worthy of space.
A beep from a console near his arm warned him that the solar wind, as it hissed past the Darwin’s magnetic field envelope, was increasing another hundred fold. On the descending sun, three brilliant white fountains—sea urchin spines—had swung suddenly in the same direction. They were pointing directly at him, like searchlight beams converging.
Suddenly Worf was aware that someone was entering the shuttlecraft from behind him. His hand reflexively darted toward his phaser as he swung around in his seat.
Deanna Troi had come aboard the Balboa. “It’s seen us,” Troi said as she came toward him, followed by Guinan. Beverly Crusher and Geordi La Forge were behind them, climbing down from the Darwin into the Balboa’s hold.
“What are you doing here?” the Klingon demanded.
“Captains Dalen and Picard ordered us to go below,” said Troi. “Just in case,” she added absently.
Worf noticed that they were all transfixed—Troi, Guinan, Crusher, and Geordi—all held captive by the sun’s approach to the Sphere’s inner surface. He turned back to his screen. On the Darwin-facing hemisphere of the solar urchin, a dozen more spines were moving slowly into position, sweeping their gaze toward Darwin, like the eyes of Argus come awake.
On the bridge, Picard understood that the sun stations, when they had swatted at the Darwin once before, must have retained a memory of the ship’s configuration, much as human blood cells retain a memory of every new virus’s configuration, in case they should encounter it again.
It recognizes us! he thought, just before the force of the blast turned the aft wall suddenly into the floor; and the floor and ceiling into walls.
Captain Dalen struck the aft “floor” with a sickening thud, and Picard