Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [7]
“But what could they have feared from the builders of the Sphere?” Crusher asked. “Or from us?”
“Perhaps nothing more than that they would be destroyed if they didn’t destroy first,” Picard said.
“An old story,” Troi added,
CAPTAIN’S LOG, STAPSHIP ENTERPRISE IMPACT MINUS 13 DAYS EGRESS MINUS 10 DAYS
Who are they? What do they want?
Why are they doing this? I regret that we will probably never know.
Who would have believed, a year ago, that after tens of thousands of years of existence, the Dyson Sphere had only a year to live? What can be said, now, but that the universe has a severe sense of humor?
This time, the Enterprise will not venture inside the Sphere. A Voyager-class vessel, the Darwin, will join us for the purpose of exploring seas and continents and ruins, and to find a routine for entry and exit, but neither ship shall venture close enough to be seized by the lock’s tractor beams until the system is understood.
For all our efforts, these last sixteen months, we have had only one glimpse of the interior.
But-oh, the things we have seen in that glimpse. Beautiful things.
Originally, our forthcoming reconnaissance of the interior was to have lasted six months.
Then the sun turned out to be moving off center and we were down to perhaps a month of exploration before staying inside ceased to be an option.
And now-now it’s down to days. 13.6 days before the relativistic cannonball strikes. Already, that is too close for comfort. Long before that time, we must be out the door, and then we will lose Dyson, and I am afraid we will never see the like of it again.
2
Horta in Command
“Captain,” DATA SAID, “the Darwin and her commanding officer, Captain Dalen, are hailing us.”
“Open,” Picard said.
The image of a Horta seated in the command pit of its specially adapted starship was at once disconcerting and delightful to Picard: a rock in a saddle. The Horta community had come a long way since first contact with the Federation, partly through the efforts of the legendary Spock. Despite their physical peculiarities, some of the Horta had become explorers.
Inside those lumpy, physically rigid shapes lived imaginative, supple minds that also wondered and were curious about the universe, that gloried in the means supplied to them by the Federation, and looked outward from the stony tunnels of their world.
“Captain Dalen here,” the Horta’s electronic voice sang. “Captain Picard, we must enter the Sphere as soon as possible, if we are to learn anything at all before it is destroyed.”
“With all speed,” Picard answered, trying not to smile at the irony of his colleague’s new urgency. Rumor had it, Dalen had previously been irritated by Picard’s eagerness. “Data, what’s your latest estimate on the maximum amount of time we have?”
“Still holding at just under two weeks, Captain,” Data said from his station, “including a three day margin for retreat to a safe distance from the blast.”
Just days, Picard thought, to study the inner surface of a world whose Great Scott Sea alone was too large to run a sailing ship across in less than a century, where populations of tens of billions could conceivably live and never meet. Here was a vast archaeological universe, one that would haunt explorers for a thousand years to come. How much could really be learned during the single fortnight remaining?
“Captain,” the Horta sang, “do you have any ideas about how to solve the lock triggering problem?”
“Mr. Data,” Picard said, “may we have your thoughts?”
Data continued to face the forward screen, and said, “Yes, Captain. The simplest solution to the problem, short of finding and replicating whatever combination of electromagnetic and or subspace emanations from our ship activated the lock last time, would be to send either a probe, or one of our shuttle craft, to trigger the lock, then let it withdraw after the Darwin has entered. We are already running such a frequency search program,