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chapter 2

On board the Peter Quagmor, near the Bumblebee Nebula.

Sunday, February 23.

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in all Academy ships had been given the name Bill. His demeanor, and his appearance, tended to change from vessel to vessel, depending on his relationship with the captain. Whatever seemed to work with a given personality type, under whatever local circumstances might prevail. He could be paternal in the best sense, quarrelsome, sympathetic, persistent, quiet, even moody. Bill was sometimes a young and energetic companion, sometimes a gray eminence.

The Quagmor’s version reminded Terry Drafts of his garrulous and mildly ineffectual uncle Clete. The AI took everything very seriously, and seemed a bit on the frivolous side. Terry had been asleep when Bill got him up and asked him to come to the bridge. Jane was waiting.

“What is it?” Terry Drafts was the most senior physicist on the Academy staff among those who had worked actively at trying to solve the various problems associated with the omega clouds. He had been with the Frank Carson group during the initial encounter, had watched that first cloud attack the decoy shapes that Carson had set out for it on the lifeless world now celebrated as Delta.

Terry had been so entranced by what he’d seen that he had dedicated his life to the omegas. He’d appeared before Congress, had done interviews, had written the definitive account, Omega, which had caused a brief stir, all in the hope of rallying public opinion.

But the problem was almost a thousand years away, and he’d never been able to get past that. In the end, he’d given up, and settled for spending his time on monitoring missions. It was Terry who’d discovered that the clouds incorporated nanotechnology, who’d theorized that they manipulated gravity to navigate, that their primary purpose was something other than the destruction of cities. “Horribly inefficient if that’s what they’re supposed to do,” he’d argued in Omega. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the things never see a civilization. They’re something else—”

But what else, he didn’t know.

Terry was tall, quiet, self-effacing. A believer. He was from the Ivory Coast, where they’d named a high school and a science wing at Abidjan University after him. He’d never married because, he’d once told an interviewer, he liked everybody.

At the beginning of his career, he’d formulated a series of ambitions, which awards he hoped to win, what level of prestige he hoped to achieve, what he wanted to accomplish. It had all narrowed down to a single unquenchable desire: to find a way to throttle the clouds.

One of them was currently on the ship’s scanners. As was something else.

“I have no idea what it is,” said Jane. It was an object that looked vaguely like an artistically exaggerated thistle, or a hedgehog. It was enormously larger than the Quagmor. “Just spotted it a couple minutes ago.”

Jane Collins was the ship’s captain, and the only other person on board. She was one of Terry’s favorite people, for reasons he’d have had trouble putting into words. She was in her sixties, with grandchildren out there somewhere. Pictures of them decorated the bridge. She was competent, he could trust her, and she was good company.

“It looks artificial,” he said. But not like any kind of vessel or package he’d ever seen. Spines stuck out all over it. They were rectangular and constructed with geometric precision.

“There’s somebody else out here,” said Terry, barely able to contain his excitement. Someone else worrying about the omegas.

“It has a low-level magnetic field,” said Bill. “And it is running on the same course as the cloud.”

“You’re sure, Bill?” asked Jane.

“No question.”

“Is it putting out a signal?”

“Negative,” said Bill. “At least, nothing I can detect.”

“Odd,” said Jane. “Range to the cloud, Bill?”

“Sixty thousand kilometers.” In their rear. “Something else: It is moving at the same velocity as the cloud. Or if not, it is very close to it.”

“Pacing it.”

“Yes. It appears so.”

“Somebody’s keeping an eye on the thing,” said Terry. “Bill, is the cloud likely to enter any system in the near future?”

“I have been looking. I cannot see that it could pose a near-term threat to anyone.”

“How about long-term?”

“Negative. As far forward as I can track with confidence, I see no intersection with, or close passage past, any star system.”

“How far forward,” asked Jane, “can you project? With confidence?”

“One point two million years.”

Then what was it doing here? In a half century, no one had yet run into any living creatures with star travel. They’d hardly run into any living creatures, period. “Bill, what are we getting from the sensors?”

“The exterior is stony with some nickel,” said the AI. “But it’s hollow.” He put a picture of the object on-screen. The projections were blunted triangles. There was a wide range of sizes. They were similar to each other, although of different designs, some narrow, some wide, all flat on top. The overall effect was of a hedgehog covered, not with spines, but with sculpted polygons.

“Can you tell what’s inside?”

“Not clearly. Seems to be two chambers in the base unit. And shafts in the spines. Beyond that I can’t make out any details.”

“The spines?” asked Jane.

“Some of them measure out to a bit over two kilometers.” Taller than the world’s tallest skyscraper. “If we consider it as a globe, with the tips of the longest spines marking the limits of the circumference, the diameter is six and a half kilometers. The central section is about two kilometers.” Bill’s image appeared, seated in a chair. Although he could summon whatever likeness he wished, he usually showed up in his middle-aged country lord demeanor. Beige jacket with patched elbows, cool dark eyes, black skin, silver cane, receding silver hair. “It’s a polyhedron,” he said. “Specifically, a rhombicosidodecahedron.”

“A what?”

“It has 240 sides.”

“It’s an odd coincidence,” he said.

“What is?”

“We know the clouds rain down fire and brimstone on anything that has right angles.”

“Okay.”

Terry pointed an index finger at the image on the screen. “This thing is loaded with right angles. That’s what it is: An oversize complex of right angles.”

They looked at one another. “Is it designed to be a target?” Jane asked. “Or are the clouds intended specifically to kill these things?”

“IT IS UNDER power, ” said Bill. “There’s only a trace, but we’re getting an electronic signature.” It was rotating. The spines caught and manipulated light from the Bumblebee. “Once every seven minutes and twelve seconds,” Bill continued helpfully.

They had drawn within a hundred meters of the object. The spines turned slowly past them. Bill switched on the navigation lights so they could see better. Terry was reminded of the puzzles he used to do as a boy, enter here, find your way through the labyrinth, come out over there.

There were no sharp points anywhere. The tops of all the spines were flat. Ninety degrees.

Jane submitted a report to Serenity. While she talked, Terry studied the object. It had no thrusters, no visible communication devices, no sign of a hatch. It had enough dents and chips to suggest it was old. A couple of the spines had been broken off. Otherwise, the surface was smooth, as if it had come out of a mold. “Bill,” he said, “train the lights into the notches. Let’s see what it looks like down there.”

It was a long way. No central surface was visible; the spines seemed simply to rise out of each other. Jane took them in almost close enough to touch.

The Quagmor was dwarfed.

“Still no reaction of any kind, Bill?”

“Negative, Terry.”

They approached the top of one of the spines. It was rectangular, about the dimensions of a basketball court, perfectly smooth save for a couple of chunks gouged out by collisions. The Quagmor passed over it, the ship’s navigation lights sliding across the surface, over the edge and into a chasm. Then he was looking down the slanted side until the lights lost themselves in the depths, to reappear moments later coming back up another wall, wider and shorter and angled differently.

“Bill,” he asked, “do you see any more of these things in the neighborhood?”

“Negative. I haven’t been able to do a complete sweep, but I do not see anything else.”

Jane finished recording and sent her message on to Serenity. Then she got up and stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve always assumed the universe made sense, Terry,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder.”

“I’ve been looking for a hatch.”

“See anything?”

“Nope.”

“Just as well. I don’t think I’d want to go calling. Maybe we should try talking to it.”

“You serious? From the looks of it, there hasn’t been anything alive in there for the last few million years.”

“That’s an interesting estimate. It’s derived from—?”

“It looks old.”

“Good. In the end, I can always count on you to fall back on hardheaded logic.” Her eyes sparkled. “You know, it might be programmed to respond to a signal.”

“It’s a thought.” He swung around in his chair and gazed up at the AI’s image. “Bill, we’ll use the multichannel. Audio only.”

“Ready when you are, Terry. The circuit is open.”

“Okay.” He leaned forward, feeling foolish, and allowed a glib tone to creep into his voice. “Hello out there. Is anybody home?”

Another spine rotated past.

“Hello. This is us out here talking to you over there.” He looked at Jane. “Why are you laughing?”

“I was just thinking how you’d react if somebody answered.”

He hadn’t even considered the possibility. “We getting anything, Bill?”

“There is no response. No reaction of any kind.”

He stayed with it a few minutes before giving up. The hedgehog sparkled and glowed in the lights of the Quagmor. His own interstellar artifact. “Going to have to break in,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not a good idea. Serenity will have the information in a few hours, and they’ll be sending somebody right out. Let’s wait for them.”

There was no way he was going to be sitting on his rear end when they got there, and have to confess he didn’t know any more than he and Jane put in the report. “I want to see what’s inside.”

“We don’t know what it is.”

“That’s why I’d like to see the inside.”

“Let’s let the experts do it.”

“You know any experts on interstellar artifacts? Jane, nobody knows anything about this stuff. Nobody’s better qualified to open it than you and I.”

She made a face. Don’t like the idea. Not a good move. “You know,” she said, transparently trying to change the subject, “it’s one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I mean it.”

“Jane, it has all the lines of a porcupine.”

“No.” She was looking past him, out the viewport at the bizarre landscape passing by. “It’s a rhombi-whatever. It’s magnificent.” She turned a sympathetic smile on him. “You really don’t see it, do you?”

“No.” Terry followed her gaze, watched the shadows from the navigation lights creep up, down, and across the artifact’s planes and angles. “I don’t like the clouds. And I don’t like these things.” He got out of his chair and headed for the storage locker. “You want to come along?”

THEY STRAPPED ON e-suits, which would project a Flickinger field around them, protecting them from the void. The field was flexible, molded to the body except for a hard shell that arced over the face, providing breathing space.

They went down to the launch bay, picked up laser cutters and air tanks, and turned on the suits. While the bay depressurized, they did a radio check and strapped on wristlamps.

There was no launch vehicle in the bay, but it didn’t matter because it wouldn’t have been useful anyhow in the current situation. They pulled go-packs over their shoulders, and Terry hung an imager around his neck. “Bill,” he said, “I’ll record everything. Transmit live to Serenity.”

“Do you really think it’s that dangerous, Terry? Maybe we should reconsider what we’re doing,” said Bill.

“Just a precaution,” he said.

Bill opened the airlock and admonished them to be careful.

They had left Serenity seven months earlier and had spent the entire time studying the omega. It had a numerical designation, as all the clouds did. But they’d gotten into the habit of referring to this one as George. George was apparently a onetime boyfriend of Jane’s, although she refused to provide details. But it amused her to ridicule him. The cloud, she’d said, was inflexible, windy, and took up a lot of space. And it kept coming. No matter what you said or did, it kept coming.

George hung ominously in the background as Terry picked out a spine and directed Bill to match rotation with it, so that it became a stable fixture a few meters from the airlock.

The Quagmor, which was affectionately referred to by almost everyone as the Quagmire, was the first research vessel designed specifically to operate near the clouds without fear of drawing the lightning. Unlike the polygon object it was inspecting, it had no right angles. The ship’s hull, her engine mounts, her antennas, sensing, and navigation equipment, everything, was curved.

They’d even penetrated George’s surface mists, gone a few hundred meters into the cloud, taken samples, and tried to listen for the heart of the beast. That was a joke between them, a reaction to the insistence of one school of thought that the clouds were alive. It was not a view that Terry took seriously. Yet plunging into it had given him the eerie sensation that there might be some truth to the notion. It was a view easily dismissed when they’d emerged. Like laughing at ghosts when the sun was high.

“Ready?” asked Jane.

“All set.” He was standing at the edge of the airlock trying to decide on a trajectory. This was the first time they’d been outside the ship on this run, except for a brief repair job on the forward sensor pods; Terry nevertheless had long experience working in the void. “There,” he said, pointing.

One of the higher spines. Nice broad top for them to land on. Easy spot to start. Jane shook her head, signifying that she’d done dumber things but was having trouble remembering when. They exchanged looks that were supposed to register confidence, and he pushed out of the lock, floated across the few meters of space that separated the ship and the spine, and touched down on his target. But the stone surface was slippery, slippery even for the grip shoes, and momentum carried him forward. He slid off the edge, blipped the go-pack, did a 360, and came down smoothly atop the crest.

“Nice maneuver, Flash,” said Jane.

“Be careful,” he said.

She floated over and drifted gently onto the surface, letting him haul her down. “It’s all technique,” she said.

Terry rapped on the stone with the handle of the cutter. “Feels solid,” he said. “See any way in?”

She shook her head. No.

He looked into the canyon. Smooth rock all the way down, until the beam faded out. The spine widened as it descended. It looked as if they all did.

“Shall we see what’s below?” he asked.

She was wearing a dark green pullover and light gray slacks. A bit dressy for the work. “Sure,” she said. “Lead the way.”

He stepped into the chasm and used the go-pack to start down. Jane followed, and they descended slowly, examining the sheer wall as they went.

Plain rock. Smoother than on the roof, because the lower areas took fewer hits. But there was nothing exceptional, all the way to the bottom.

BILL MANEUVERED THE Quagmire directly overhead, leaving the spotlights off because they would have been a distraction. But the navigation lights were on.

There was nothing in Terry’s experience to which he could compare the place. The spines did indeed grow out of one another. There was no flat or curved surface at the center of the object that could have been described as housing the core. It was dark, surreal, the Quagmire no more than a few lights overhead, and the rest of the world walled out.

Terry felt light-headed. Even in the vacuum, he was accustomed to having a flat space underfoot, a moonscape, a ship’s hull, something. Something to relate to. Here, there was no up or down, and everything was at an angle. “You okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

He took the cutter out of his harness. “There’s a chance,” he said, “that this thing is under pressure. I’m going to cut a narrow hole to find out. But stand clear anyhow. Just to be safe.”

She nodded and backed off a few meters. Told him to be careful. Not to stand in front of it.

Terry grinned. How could he make the cut standing over to one side? He pressed the activator and watched the amber lamp come on, felt the unit vibrate as it powered up. “Big moment,” he said. The lamp turned a bright crimson. He punched the button, and a long red beam of light blinked on. He touched it to the wall.

It cut in. He knew not to lean on it, but simply held it steady while it went deeper.

Jane advanced a few steps. “How’s it going?”

He was about to suggest she try a little patience when it broke through. “Bingo,” he said.

Somewhere deep in the hedgehog, he sensed movement, as if an engine had started. Then the ground murmured. It trembled. Rose. Shook violently. He told Jane to get out, for God’s sake get out, and he stabbed at the go-pack and the thrusters ignited and began to take him up.

And the world went dark.