Orbitsville

six

The ships were invisible to the naked eye, yet on the detector screens on board the Bissendorf they appeared as a glowing swarm, numerous as stars in a dense cluster. High-resolution radar, aided by other forms of sensory apparatus, revealed them to be of many different sizes and shapes, a vast and variegated armada poised above one point on the enigmatic sphere.

“You could have told me they weren’t Starflight ships,” Garamond said, easing himself into his seat in central control, his eyes fixed on the forward screens.

“Sorry, Vance — it didn’t occur to me.” Napier handed Garamond a bulb of hot coffee. “As soon as I saw the lack of standard formations I knew they couldn’t be Starflight vessels. The silhouettes and estimated masses produced by the computers confirmed it — none of the ships in that bunch can be identified by type.”

Second Officer Gunther gave a quiet laugh. “That was a pretty nervy moment up here.”

Garamond smiled in sympathy. “I guess it was.”

“Then we realized we were looking at a collection of hulks.”

“You’re positive?”

“There’s no radiation of any kind. Those are dead ships, and they’ve been that way for a long time.” Napier shook his head. “This is turning out to be one hell of a trip, Vance. First there was the sphere itself, and now… We always wondered why no Saganian starships had ever been found.”

One hell of a trip, Garamond repeated to himself, his mind trying to deal with the magnitude of the new discovery and at the same time cope with the shocking and unexpected presence of something akin to hope. He had fled from the Earth as an obscure flickerwing commander, but now had the prospect of returning as the most celebrated explorer since Laker had founded Terranova and Molyneaux had found Sagania. It was bound to make things more difficult for Elizabeth. In practice she was outside the law, but even for the President of Starflight Incorporated there were limits to how far she could go in full view of the mass television audience — and Garamond was going to be a public figure. A rigged trial, with witnesses primed to swear Harald’s death had been the result of wilful action, would destroy Garamond. It would, however, focus the world’s attention on him even more firmly and help deny Elizabeth the personal revenge she had never been known to forgo. If he and his family were to die it would probably have to appear accidental. And even the most carefully planned accidents could be prevented, if not indefinitely, at least for a reasonable length of time. The future still looked dangerous, but its uncompromising blackness had been alleviated to some extent.

Maintaining its height above the surface of the sphere, the Bissendorf — which had been closing with the immense fleet at a combined speed of almost two hundred thousand kilometres an hour — swung out of the equatorial plane. It described a wide semicircle around the ships and approached them from the opposite direction, carefully matching velocities until it shared approximately the same parking orbit. In the latter stages of the manoeuvre, telescopic observations by Chief Astronomer Yamoto revealed that several of the vessels at the centre of the swarm were shining by reflected light. He deduced that there was a beam of sunlight being emitted from an aperture in the surface of the sphere, and reported to Garamond accordingly. Shortly afterwards the aperture revealed itself in the telescopes as a thin line of faint light which gradually opened to a narrow ellipse as the Bissendorf crept closer.

The big ship’s central command gallery took on a crowded appearance as officers who were not on duty found reasons to stay near the curving array of consoles. They were waiting for the first transmissions from the surveillance torpedo which had been dispatched towards the spaceships illuminated by the column of light escaping from Pengelly’s Star. There was an atmosphere of tension which made everyone on board the Bissendorf aware of how uneventful all their previous wanderings in the galaxy had been.

“I’m not used to this excitement,” Napier whispered. “Round about this stage on a trip I’m usually tucked away quietly with a bottle of ninety-proof consolation, and I almost think I liked it better that way.”

“I didn’t,” Garamond said firmly. “This is changing things for all of us.”

“I know — I was kidding. Have you tried to work out what the prize money ought to be if it turns out that all these ships can still be flown?”

“No.” Garamond had finished his third bulb of coffee and was bending over to put it in the disposal chute.

“Forget it,” Napier said, with a new note in his voice. “Look at that, Vance!”

There was a murmur of shock from the central gallery as Garamond was raising his head to look at the first images coming back from the distant torpedo. They were of a large grey ship which had been ripped open along its length like a gutted fish. Twisted sections of infrastructure were visible inside the wound, like entrails. Lesser scars which had not penetrated the hull criss-crossed the remainder of the great ovoid’s sunlit side.

“Something really chopped her up.” “Not as much as the next one.”

The images were changing rapidly as the surveillance torpedo, unhampered by any considerations of the effects of G-force on human tissue, darted towards a second ship, which proved to be only half a ship. It had been sliced in two, laterally, by some unimaginable weapon, sculpted ripples of metal flowing back from the sheared edges. A small vessel, corresponding in size to a lifeboat, hung in space near the open cross-section, joined to the mother ship by cables.

After the first startled comments a silence fell over the control gallery as the images of destruction were multiplied. An hour passed as the torpedo examined all the ships in the single shaft of sunlight and spiralled outwards into the darkness to scan others by the light of its own flares. It became evident that every vessel in the huge swarm had died violently, cataclysmically. Garamond found that the ships illuminated dimly by the flares were the most hideous — their ruptured hulls, silent, brooding over gashes filled with the black blood of shadow, could have been organic remains, preserved by the chill of space, contorted by ancient agonies.

“A signal has just come up from telemetry,” Napier said. “There’s a malfunctioning developing in the torpedo’s flare circuits. Do you want another one sent out?”

“No. I think we’ve seen enough for the present. Have the torpedo come round and take a look through the aperture. I’m sure Mister Yamoto would like some readings on the sun in there.” Garamond leaned back in his seat and looked at Napier. “Has it ever struck you as odd that we, as representatives of a warlike race, don’t carry any armament?”

“It has never come up — the Lindstroms wouldn’t want their own ships destroyed by each other. Besides, the main ionizing beam would make a pretty effective weapon.”

“Not in that class.” Garamond nodded at the viewscreens. “We couldn’t even aim it without turning the whole ship.”

“You think those hulls prove Serra’s theory about the sphere being a defence?”

“Perhaps.” Garamond’s voice was thoughtful. “We won’t know for sure until we have a look inside the sphere and see if there was anything worth defending.”

“What makes you think you would see anything?”

“That.” Garamond pointed at the screen which had just begun to show the new images being transmitted back from the torpedo. The aperture in the dark surface of the sphere was circular and almost a kilometre in diameter. A yellow Sol-type sun hung within it, perfectly centred by the torpedo’s aiming mechanisms, and the remarkable thing was that the space inside the sphere did not appear black, as the watchers on board the Bissendorf knew it ought to do. It was as blue as the summer skies of Earth.

Two hours later, and against all the regulations concerning the safety of Starflight commanders, Garamond was at the head of a small expedition which entered the sphere. The buggy was positioned almost on the edge of the aperture, held in place against the surface by the thrust of its tubes. Garamond was able to grip the strut of a landing leg with one hand and slide the other over the edge of the aperture. Its hard rim was only a few centimetres thick. There was a spongy resistance to the passage of his hand, which told of a force field spanning the aperture like a diaphragm, then his gloved fingers gripped something which felt like grass. He pulled himself through to the inside of the sphere and stood up.

And there — on the edge of a circular black lake of stars, suited and armoured to withstand the lethal vacuum of interplanetary space — Garamond had his first look at the green and infinite meadows of Orbitsville.