Spinneret

Chapter 33

"It's called a Dyson sphere," Hafner explained, the dull throbbing in his head and leg forming an odd counterpoint to the giddy feeling of unreality seeping into his brain. After the Spinneret he'd thought he could handle anything. But this— "It was supposed to be a way for a civilization to trap all the energy from its sun.

Odds are that thing's made of sheets of cable material, supported by a framework of the cables themselves."

"I'll be damned," Meredith murmured. "That would explain what they needed a planetworth of cable for, wouldn't it?"

"Possibly," Carmen said slowly. "But it doesn't explain why they left the Spinneret running."

"We're back to them assuming they'd be coming back when they left," Hafner agreed. Something was gnawing at the back of his brain, something about that huge artifact that seemed wrong. But he couldn't place it. "I gather the boat's heading for a passage through the sphere. Colonel, you mentioned last night you brought a telescope along?"

"A small one, yes." Meredith turned away from the viewport. "Perez, give me a hand and we'll set it up in here."

The two men left, and Carmen and Loretta resumed their examination of the boat's manual. Easing into the seat beside Carmen, Hafner stretched out his leg and tried to nail down what was bothering him.

He hadn't succeeded by the time Meredith and Perez had the telescope set up between the two control panel seats … but an hour later, as Carmen was calling attention to a curious flattening of the sphere's limb, he got at least a piece of it.

"Best guess is that the sphere wasn't finished and that we're coming up on the uncompleted edge," Meredith was suggesting as Hafner limped over from the side viewport to the group huddled by the telescope.

"Seems silly to start a project that size and then not finish it," Carmen said.

"Their Congress must've cut the funding," Meredith said dryly, eliciting a snort from Perez.

"Or maybe they discovered it wasn't working," Hafner offered. "A superconductor like cable material would be great for collecting light and particle energies, but I'm not at all sure how you'd then turn the heat into something useful."

"What's wrong with thermocouples?" Perez asked.

"You need a temperature difference somewhere for those to work," Meredith said.

"As a matter of fact, it seems to me that almost all energy-extraction schemes require an energy differential."

"Maybe they know a method that doesn't," Loretta suggested. "After all, they built at least half the sphere before they quit."

"The Poms told me the radiation spectrum from cable material lacks some lines,"

Carmen said doubtfully. "Could something like that be the 'cool' part of the extraction cycle?"

Meredith shrugged. "That's as good a guess as any. Maybe we'll know better when we get a look at the inner surface."

"There's something else, though," Hafner muttered. "Something else that's not right … "

"Well, when you think of it, let us know," Meredith said,peering through the telescope. "Carmen, is there anything like an emergency beacon aboard that we ought to trigger?"

"It's already on," Loretta told him, pointing to one of the indicators. "I believe it's been going since we got here."

"And no response. Doesn't look very promising."

He spent the rest of the day struggling to hide his feelings from the others.

Fortunately, everyone was so busy discussing and observing the sphere that they didn't seem to notice his silence. When, during dinner, Carmen did, he passed it off as temporary discomfort in his leg. She didn't press the point then; but when they all returned to the passenger cabin that evening she casually took the bed next to his, and a few minutes after Meredith turned down the lights he sensed her lean over the narrow gap separating them.

"You all right, Peter?" she whispered. "You're quieter than I've ever seen you."

In the darkness he shook his head. "There's nothing you can do," he whispered back. "If I'm right … and we'll know in a day or two."

"Want to talk about it?"

"No. Not until I know for sure."

She didn't say any more, but a moment later her hand reached across to touch his.

He gripped it tightly … and, eventually, tell asleep.

By morning the sphere filled nearly half the sky, giving a bright red glow to everything within range of a viewport and triggering a low hum that Carmen finally identified as the boat's cooling system. The light was too intense for telescopic viewing to be safe, but Perez discovered that by using a piece of cardboard with a small piece cut out, enough of the glare could be eliminated to see the holes through which glimpses of the true sun had earlier been visible. In all he located twenty-eight gaps of various sizes, their positioning on the surface following no pattern anyone could detect. For a while there was a lively discussion of their possible function, but it eventually died from lack of data.

Hafner stayed out of the discussion; for him, the gaps merely added to his gloom.

And two hours after lunch the lifeboat rounded the ragged edge and entered the sphere.

"You know," Carmen said, shaking her head slowly, "I don't think I really believed Peter was right … until now."

There were murmurs of agreement; and even Hafner found his depression lifted temporarily by the sheer grandeur of the sight. This side glowed, too, but its intensity was considerably muted, as if the Spinners had coated their superconducting material with something to send the light outward. Attached to the sphere they could see clumps of rock spaced at regular intervals in all directions; on the very closest the telescope was just able to pick out spiderwebthin lines leading outward like latitude-longitude markings on a globe.

"Asteroids," Meredith identified the rocks, shading his eyes as he peered farther away down the vast curved surface. "Held in place by a framework of Spinneret cable. So that's why they needed something that strong—they've got to support umpteen tons of rock against the sphere's rotation."

"Ideal for the job, too," Perez murmured. "Flexible enough that you don't need to smooth out the asteroid much to make good contact."

"What are they for?" Loretta breathed. "The asteroids, I mean."

"Customs ports, maybe," Perez suggested. "Those holes must have been how ships were going to get in and out when the sphere was finished."

"More likely they were where the antigrav stabilizers were located," Hafner spoke up. "Even rotating, the sphere's position isn't really stable; they'd need some way to make periodic corrections." He hesitated. "And they must also be where the sphere's heaters are set up."

They all turned to face him. "The what!" Perez asked.

Hafner took a deep breath. "We were wrong about the sphere's purpose. Even if it collected and radiated every bit of the interior sun's light, it couldn't possibly get any hotter than about three hundred degrees absolute—room temperature, essentially. But in fact it's at least ten times that hot. There's no way that could happen without a massive input of energy."

"That's ridiculous," Perez snorted. "You must have made some order-ofmagnitude error."

Hafner shook his head. "I almost wish I had. But it's a perfectly straightforward Stefan-Boltzmann calculation."

"All right, then, let's assume you're right," Meredith said. "Can you give a reason why they'd go to that kind of trouble?"

"It wasn't just to heat their planet up," Hafner said. It was odd, a small observer in his brain noted, how even now he avoided simply coming out and saying it.

"Orbiting reflectors could have done that. A smaller sphere would have done if they'd decided they wanted a red sky. It wasn't built to live on; they wouldn't have needed to heat it like that and I suspect we'll find the main shell is too thin to support much weight." He paused. "Colonel Meredith … what would you do if you knew there was an enemy looking for your position and you didn't have the strength to fight him?"

Meredith's eyes gazed unblinkingly into his. He's figured it out. Hafner thought. I was right, then: it does make sense. God help them … and us. "I would retreat," the colonel said quietly. "Or else try and camouflage myself. Is that it?"

"No," Carmen whispered. "You don't mean—they built the sphere to make themselves look like a red giant star system?" Hafner nodded. "It fits, doesn't it?

The superconducting shell to spread the heat out evenly; the missing spectral lines you mentioned undoubtedly corresponding to those of a real red giant. The hard edge wouldn't be noticed at any real distance, even if they thought to look for it."

Perez stirred. "And the lack of completion … "He left the sentence unfinished.

"The holes aren't entrance ports, then, are they?"

"Blast damage," Meredith murmured. "Whoever they were afraid of found them too soon."

For a long moment there was silence. The edge of the sphere was slowly receding, and looking ahead Hafner thought he could see a small dot of reflected light a few degrees from the sun. Spinnerhome, undoubtedly. He wondered how much of the devastation of that long-past war would be visible from orbit. He wasn't looking forward to finding out.

"But why!" Loretta finally voiced the question Hafner knew they were all thinking. "Why did they sit here and let themselves get blown up? Surely they knew these enemies were coining—they had to be centuries building this thing.

Why didn't they use the time to build up their armaments, or even just pick up and leave?"

"Maybe they had nowhere else they could go," Carmen said. "Their star drive only allows them limited choices, remember."

"What about Astra?" Loretta countered. "It must have been habitable before they drained all the metals out of it."

"I think Carmen's essentially correct," Hafner said, "except that it may not have been a matter of conscious choice. I think they were so tied to their own world that they simply couldn't relocate elsewhere."

"Ridiculous," Loretta snorted.

"You're forgetting the Spinner cavern," Meredith said, shaking his head slowly.

"You're right, Dr. Williams; they could have lived on the surface while building and operating the Spinneret. But they chose instead to spend enormous time and effort in duplicating their home planet's environment, from the sunlight down to even the proper odors. If they could take the time from the defense of their race to do that, I can well believe they considered it something they couldn't live without.

You shake your head; but remember we're not talking about human beings but about aliens. They're under no obligation to think and react like we do."

"Or vice versa?" Perez's smile was bitter. "You're too kind to our species, Colonel.

How many wars have been fought, do you suppose, because two groups of people each considered the same little plot of land to be theirs? How many people have died in battle or withered in refugee camps because they would not move over to a new place that was often every bit as good as the one their ancestors had lived on?

You have an affluent, mobile American's view of land, I think. The rest of the world differs from the Spinners more in degree than in substance."

"Point," Meredith admitted. "But you're too kind in turn to modern Americans. I might not be willing to die for any given acre of land, but I would do so for my country as a whole. And when my car was stolen once I genuinely wanted to machine-gun the guy who did it." He looked out at the sphere.

"You see what that means, of course," Hafner said, the words trying to stick in his throat. "We can't allow humanity to get stuck in a single spot like the Spinners did." He looked at Carmen. "You remember—once—I said the Spinneret cable might have been used to make a giant cage for something. I was right; but it was a cage for their whole race." He shook his head. "And the only way to make sure that doesn't happen to us is to open immigration to Astra."

The others all looked at him. "You mean that?" Perez asked, frowning. "You're changing sides?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Hafner snapped. "I still think bringing a bunch of people into what's essentially a make-work situation is stupid. But putting our eggs in two baskets is at least a little better than leaving them in one. So go ahead: bring in your spies and parasites. I don't care anymore."

"I care," Perez shot back, glancing once at Loretta. "I was the one who originally worried about spies stealing our secrets, remember. And I don't want to bring people to Astra just for the sole purpose of having warm bodies lying around. If we can't get useful jobs for them—"

"Ease up, both of you," Meredith interrupted. "You'll wind up adopting each other's basic politics in a minute. I brought you here to end this battle, not to start it over again backward."

Perez cocked a suspicious eyebrow. "I thought we came to learn about the Spinners and the cable."

"We did; but since all the information I wanted probably got blown up with the rest of the planet, I'm going to have to try something else. Let's start with the problem and go from there."

Briefly, he outlined how possession of the Gorgon's Head security code opened up the possibility for terrorist attack. Hafner felt a shiver climb his spine; he hadn't realized they were that close to solving the code, and he certainly hadn't thought through all the implications. "As long as we don't know how to correct any sabotage that gets done to the control settings, we're extremely vulnerable to a Dunlop-style attack," Meredith concluded. "And the stronger the political tensions on Astra, the more likely that kind of operation becomes. What we have to do is drastically tone down the disharmony, at least past the election and probably a year or so beyond; and what that means is eliminating these budding political parties."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Perez asked. "A ban by royal decree?"

"No, I'm simply going to knock the props out from under them. Since they're both single-issue groups, all we need is for their leaders to publicly come out for a compromise. That'll take the wind out of everyone's rhetoric, at least until the new Council is elected."

Perez snorted. "So you dragged us all the way out here to talk about a compromise? We could have done all this back in your office."

Meredith gazed at him. "No," he said quietly. "I brought you here to tell you that you will accept a compromise—either mine or whatever else we can all come up with. One way or another, we're going to be in agreement before we leave this ship."

"Or else?" Perez prompted coolly.

"Or else you, Perez, will be arrested for treason. It was your actions that brought Dr. Williams and her fellow spies from Earth and ultimately resulted in Dunlop's coup attempt—and, yes, I can prove all of that in court. I think even your most avid supporters would fade back into the woodwork at that point."

"Blackmail," Perez nodded. "Do you have something similar to hold over Hafner's head, or am I a special case?"

"Dr. Hafner doesn't have your talent for influencing crowds," the colonel said.

"Besides, I expect him to be reasonable on this."

Perez sighed. "You know, it gets very tiring after a while to always be misunderstood," he said, shaking his head. "Did it never occur to you that I might jump at the opportunity to find some middle ground; that I might possibly prefer to lose half of my wish list in exchange for not making a long-term enemy?"

"It did," Meredith nodded. "But I didn't want to rely on it. You're very good at getting things done your way; this time, we're damn well going to do things my way. So you want to be a statesman? Here's your chance to get in some practice."

And with that he began to outline his plan.

The discussion lasted the better part of that day and the next, and through it all Perez indeed proved himself able to compromise. By the time the boat went into orbit around Spinnerhome and clicked itself back to manual control, most of the details had been satisfactorily worked out, leaving all aboard free to perform what studies they could on the shattered world below them.

It was as depressing a sight as Meredith had ever seen. Even after thousands of years the huge icecaps that must have formed after the saturation bombing still covered nearly a quarter of the planet. Elsewhere, a few patches of green and yellow could be seen through the clouds, but most of the land seemed to be desert hues of brown and gray-red. Nothing but solar noise existed on any band the radio could pick up; nowhere were any lights visible. By the fifth orbit Meredith called it quits. "Whoever they were, they were apparently very thorough," he said grimly. "If any of the Spinners had survived, they should have been able to recover at least some of their technology by now."

"That could be us someday," Carmen said with a shudder.

"Maybe we've got a chance to avoid it now," Perez said. "At least total extermination … " He looked at Meredith. "Have we seen enough? It seems to me we ought to be getting back." Meredith nodded, doing a rapid calculation. Four Spinner days each way, another one in orbit at Spinnerhome—eleven Earth days total. Plenty of time for Msuya to have made the necessary arrangements with Saleh and made it back to Astra. "Yes," he nodded. "Let's go home."

The return trip was uneventful but subdued. Meredith spent a great deal of time with the lifeboat's operating manual, taking advantage of the rare leisure time to learn as much as he could about the craft and the Spinner language generally. The others, too, seemed to keep to themselves, as if each needed to sort out privately the revelations of the past few days. At times Meredith found himself staring out a side viewport at the Spinner's grand failure, wondering if his own plans would crumble as theirs had, and wishing he could discuss them with someone. But he resisted the temptation. It was too late to change anything now, and there was no point in everyone else losing sleep as well.

And at last the twin black holes appeared on their screen; and when the nausea of the jump had passed and the viewports cleared again, they were indeed home.

Astra, marginally closer to the jump point than when they'd left, was a bright spot with an almost discernible disk. Surrounding it were smaller flecks of light that resolved in the telescope as spaceships.

A lot of spaceships.

"Wonder what's happening," Carmen said uneasily as Perez sat at the telescope counting the ships for a third time.

Meredith, in the seat beside her, adjusted the radio to what he hoped was the right frequency. "If I've read Msuya right," he said, "what we're seeing is a UN military attack."

"What!" Carmen gasped. "But—"

"The security code," Hafner said abruptly. "The other spies—he's got the code to make new supervisors, doesn't he?" He snapped his fingers. "That's why you wanted to take this trip right away, isn't it? To get the lifeboat out of his reach."

"You mean you deliberately left Astra open to that—" Perez began.

Holding up his hand for silence, Meredith mentally crossed his fingers and flipped the Send switch. "This is Colonel Meredith," he said into his mike. "Please patch me through to Major Barner."