Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Okay, I’m touching it. No apparent reaction. Seems like ordinary solid matter, there’s none of that slight surface instability you get on our force fields.’

  ‘Understood, Mac,’ Oscar said. ‘We were all waiting for some demonic claw to come through and drag you in.’

  ‘Hey, thanks for that.’

  ‘My pleasure. You feel like applying some sensors for us?’

  ‘Will do.’ He reached down to the equipment clipped on his belt. One by one, he stuck sensor pads against the barrier, taking measurements. He had to hold each one in place. The high-temperature epoxy was no use at all. When he squeezed it out of the tube, it simply rebounded off the barrier like water splashing off teflon. ‘We didn’t think that would work,’ Oscar said. ‘There aren’t any atoms there for it to adhere to. Worth a try, though.’

  ‘Sure, but I’m using up gas at quite a rate keeping these sensors applied.’

  ‘Copy that. Please apply the meson rate detector.’

  ‘Okay.’ He settled the fat little cylinder against the surface. Once again that notion of there being something on the other side was strong in his mind. He was scratching away on the barrier like some mouse behind the skirting board, and the house cat was listening intently, unseen, just the thickness of an electron away. Irrational, he kept telling himself. But surely something knows we’re here? He twisted his head to one side until he could see the starfield. For a moment he was upright, pressed against a wall, with the night sky behind him, the ground lost beneath his feet. The vertical horizon between red and black was perfectly straight and clear. When he looked down, that same horizon was below his boots. A human mind simply couldn’t grasp the size of the thing. Whoever established this incredible artefact must have had a phenomenally compelling reason.

  Defence? Confinement? The sweepstake on board was running eighty/twenty. Both implied aggression somewhere; again on a scale beyond human comprehension.

  ‘You all right there, Mac?’ Oscar asked.

  He realized his heart was thudding again, and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Sure, no problem. What’s next?’

  ‘Exotic waveform detector. Tunde wants to know exactly where the infrared emission originates. That should help define the barrier interface with spacetime.’

  ‘Sure.’

  After forty minutes he placed the last sensor back on his belt, and jetted back to the shuttle. The physicists were pleased with the results, they had moved another step towards under-standing the nature of the barrier. But as to how it was generated, and the why of it, they hadn’t got a clue.

  *

  Two days after Mac’s EVA, the morning meeting of the department heads decided that information gathering had progressed about as far as it could from a static observation point. Wilson was concerned that they weren’t making enough progress in other directions.

  ‘We were sent here to establish the reason why the barrier was erected,’ he told them somewhat formally after they’d had the usual round-up of results from the previous day. ‘Tunde, I know your teams are doing a great job on the characteristics of the barrier, but we need more than that. Now you’re identifying its quantum structure, is there any way we can reformat the hyperdrive to get us past?’

  ‘No,’ Tunde said. ‘In fact, I don’t think there is a way through. We might not be able to generate a barrier like this for ourselves, but we do understand enough about its proper-ties to just about rule out any kind of circumvention through hyperspace. A wormhole simply cannot be opened through it.’

  ‘What about forcing our way in?’ Oscar asked. ‘Can we break through in real space?’

  ‘Again, no. Absolutely not. Even if you could generate collapsed state energy levels and apply them directly against the barrier, it wouldn’t have any effect. It’s not physical. It can’t be damaged or stressed in the way solid matter can. One day we might be able to manipulate quantum fields in such a way as to destabilize a section, but that won’t be for a long time. To use a very bad pun, we haven’t even scratched the surface.’

  ‘Then we must look for clues elsewhere,’ Wilson said. ‘Admittedly, given the size we’re dealing with here, that can only be the most perfunctory search, but it must be done. We’re back to our original two theories: offensive or defensive. If the barrier is defensive, there may be signs of the attacking force left somewhere outside.’

  ‘Signs, or the whole armada?’ Oscar asked lightly.

  ‘If they were here, they’d be investigating us by now,’ said Antonia Clarke, the engineering chief. ‘We’ve created enough disturbance in every spectrum going since we’ve arrived. Even a few perfunctory warning satellites scattered round the barrier would have found us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tunde said. ‘But we certainly haven’t located any active observation equipment. And it is a long time since the barrier went up. The threat might not exist any more.’

  ‘It’s only long on a human scale,’ Oscar said.

  ‘All right,’ Wilson held up his hands to prevent any full-scale argument erupting. ‘If the attacking force or entity is still here, we need to find it, preferably without it seeing us, which I admit is a long shot, however we have to try. If they’ve gone, then they might have left something behind. And if the barrier was put up for the opposite reason, to confine the star and its inhabitants, then we have an even greater chance of finding the builders. Therefore, I have decided we’ll take the Second Chance on a complete circumnavigation of the equator. We’ll stand off an AU and use the hyperdrive at low speed. If we take a week, the hysradar will be able to complete a very accurate scan of the surrounding space. Following that, and taking the worst-case scenario that we find nothing, we’ll fly to both poles and examine them. If after that we still draw a blank we’ll review the situation then.’

  ‘Captain,’ Tunde said. ‘I’d like to raise the issue of communication.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Both our scenarios imply that there is some kind of sentient life to be found inside the barrier. Now we’re this close it may be possible to attract their attention, possibly even initiate a dialogue.’

  ‘How? I thought you said the barrier was impervious.’

  ‘It is to everything except gravity.’ He indicated the chief engineer. ‘I’ve discussed this with Antonia. It shouldn’t be too difficult to modify the energy configuration of the hyperdrive to create simple gravity waves. If the civilization inside has a working gravity detector, they should be able to pick it up.’

  The notion surprised Wilson; given the analysis he’d been getting from the science teams since they arrived, he’d dismissed the notion of any attempted contact a long time ago. ‘How difficult would the adaptations be? I will not authorize taking the hyperdrive off line at any time.’

  ‘It’s a matter of programming,’ Antonia said. ‘That’s all. Standard gravity wave emission would be a simple modification of the hysradar function. The ship’s RI can give us a reformatted routine within a couple of hours.’

  ‘Okay then, you can go ahead with the program. If the circumnavigation flight doesn’t produce any results, we’ll certainly try it. Good idea, both of you.’

  *

  It was the second day of their week-long flight around the equator when the hysradar finally found something of interest. The first scan returns came back just after midnight, ship’s time. Oscar was in command on the bridge; he ordered the Second Chance back into normal space, and put a call in to the captain’s cabin.

  By the time Wilson arrived, pulling on his jacket and shaking his head to rid himself of sleep, the starship’s main sensors were fully deployed. A picture was building up on the bridge portals. He squinted at it, not quite believing what he was seeing. The radar graphic of neon-green grid lines was the most detailed, showing a perfect hemisphere rising out of the barrier. Its base was twenty-five thousand kilometres in diameter.

  Tunde Sutton and Bruno Seymore arrived on the bridge. Both of them stood behind Wilson, staring in perplexity. �
��Wow,’ Bruno muttered. ‘Talk about a fly in amber.’

  ‘Okay,’ Wilson went over and sat behind his console. ‘What am I looking at? Is that a planet?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Russell said. The screens on his console were shimmering with light as he ran the in-coming data through analysis routines. ‘I’d say it’s some kind of extension of the barrier itself. Surface is uniformly smooth, just like the barrier, and it is a perfect hemisphere as well. It has an extremely strong magnetic field, at least an order of magnitude above a standard planetary field; and it’s fluctuating wildly, almost as if it’s spinning. There’s no gravity field, as such . . . sensors are picking up gravity wave emissions, though. They’re regular, pulses of some kind. Not synchronized with the magnetic shift, though. Very odd.’

  At that, Wilson turned to face Tunde, who was just sitting down behind his own console. The astrophysicist gave him a confused frown.

  ‘A signal?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The pulse sequence hasn’t varied,’ Russell said. ‘If it’s a signal, it’s not saying much.’

  ‘Can you see where they’re coming from?’

  ‘They seem to be from within the hemisphere, although the actual origin point appears to be moving around in there.’

  ‘Okay, anything else?’

  ‘There’s no infrared emission.’ He nodded at the large portal. It was showing the barrier’s blank surface in bright carmine. A large circle in the centre of the image was black, as if a hole had been cut through. ‘Wait! There’s something at the top.’ Russell’s voice rose in pitch as he interpreted the raw data. ‘The apex isn’t curved, it’s flat, or . . . maybe some kind of crater. An opening! There’s an opening there.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Bruno called out. There was a wild grin on his face. ‘Slight photon emission. There’s light shining out, wavelength just outside ultraviolet. It’s not infrared, not like the rest of the barrier. That could be the way in!’

  Wilson and Oscar exchanged a shocked glance. ‘Calm down,’ Wilson said. ‘I want realities not speculation at this point. Get me a decent image from the main telescope. Oscar, what’s our current stand-off distance?’

  ‘A hundred thousand kilometres above the barrier; seventy thousand from the hemisphere.’

  ‘Good enough.’

  ‘Focusing now,’ Bruno announced.

  The bridge portal showed a fast-expanding ring of red flashing outward. Then it was completely black. ‘Here it comes,’ Bruno said triumphantly. A speck of luminescence getting bigger rapidly, jumping up to a crescent of lavender light that shivered in the middle of the portal.

  ‘Size?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘The hole is seventeen kilometres across.’

  ‘This wavelength doesn’t match Dyson Alpha’s known spectrum,’ Tunde said. ‘That’s not the star shining out.’

  Wilson couldn’t take his gaze off the sliver of light. ‘Any local activity that would indicate spacecraft or sensors?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know if that hole was open when we emerged from the wormhole?’

  ‘We know the apex was flat, but the hysradar return doesn’t tell us if it was open.’

  ‘Very well. Recommendations?’

  ‘Send a probe in,’ Russell said immediately.

  ‘Eventually, yes,’ Tunde said. ‘But we’ll need to observe it for a while first.’

  ‘While we’re doing that we could send a satellite on a flyby above the opening,’ Oscar said. ‘Keep it at our current standoff distance, and take a look directly down inside. Our position gives us a lousy angle of view.’

  Wilson was mildly surprised at the suggestion. He’d expected Oscar to be more cautious, although a satellite flyby was reasonable enough. If anything was in there, they must surely be aware of the Second Chance. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’ll start the prep sequence.’ Oscar went over to the console Anna normally used, and called up the launch sequence.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Wilson said dryly. ‘Does anyone have any ideas about what this thing is?’

  Jean Douvoir chuckled softly. ‘Fortress of Darkness, where the evil lord hangs out.’

  ‘Thanks. Anyone else?’

  ‘I have a possibility,’ Bruno said. He was close to blushing as the bridge crew all looked at him. ‘Well, it’s active, right? Something inside is generating gravity waves, and magnetic fields; and that’s just what we can detect. It’s also absolutely right on the equator; as near as our sensors can tell, it’s perfectly aligned with the plane of the ecliptic. Though I’m not sure how relevant that is . . .’ He glanced round, unnerved by the attention. ‘I just thought it might be a generator, that’s all, where the whole barrier is being produced from, or at least this area of it.’

  Wilson looked at Tunde and raised an eyebrow in query.

  ‘Gets my vote,’ Tunde said. ‘Until something else comes along to disprove it.’ He gave Bruno a thumbs up. ‘Smart.’

  Oscar launched the Moore-class satellite twenty minutes later. Its ion drive accelerated it away from the big starship, sending it curving over the apex of the dark hemisphere. Nearly every screen on board relayed the image from its visual spectrum cameras. The violet glow didn’t reveal much, certainly there was nothing lurking just inside. A very detailed analysis program picked up a slight but regular fluctuation to the output intensity. It didn’t match the oscillations of either the gravity waves or magnetic field.

  Four hours after leaving Second Chance, the satellite was directly above the opening. Even on the highest magnification it could see nothing but the homogeneous dark-blue glow, as if the hemisphere contained nothing but a fluorescent fog. Twenty minutes later, when half of the crew had lost interest, the light vanished, leaving the opening completely dark. Eighteen minutes later it reappeared.

  Intensive slow-motion replays coupled with image-enhancing programs showed that something had moved across the opening, cutting off the light.

  ‘Your evil lord just blinked,’ Oscar told Jean.

  *

  After three days of observation they knew the light was blocked on average every seven and a quarter hours, though this could vary by up to eight minutes. The eclipse duration was more constant, lasting a fraction over eighteen minutes, except once when it had gone on for nearly thirty-five.

  As nothing had come out of the hole in all that time, Wilson finally authorized a close observation. A larger, Galileo-class, satellite left its launch bay on the Second Chance, equipped with a more expansive sensor suite than the Moore. Anna slowed its approach as it closed in on the hole, keeping it twenty kilometres above the hemisphere’s perfectly black surface. Telemetry showed her the little craft was taking a beating on the magnetic and electromagnetic wavefronts; even with circuitry hardened to withstand the kind of treacherous energy environment found around the most active gas-giants she had to watch out for overloads and temporary glitches.

  Interference caused a lot of static within the datastream link back to the starship, resulting in poor imagery and broken instrument readings.

  Everyone on board the starship watched as the hole slowly slipped into view, its gentle lavender radiance appearing like the dawn of a weak sun. It was an illusion which was broken soon enough as the satellite crept closer; the illuminated hole was small by any standards. Then the satellite passed over the rim, slowing to a relative halt. The magnetic flux in tandem with the gravity waves was actually strong enough to induce a detectable wobble, as if it was floating on a sea. Anna did her best to counter the tiny vibrations, allowing the sensors to peer down carefully. Four hundred kilometres below the hole, a curved lattice of immense dark strands was gliding slowly across the blue glow which came from deeper inside. As the satellite focused on the strands it became clear that the lattice was anything but a uniform hexagonal honeycomb, the interstices ranged from simple triangles up to twelve-sided grids with some of the strands curving them into near-ellipsoid geometries. T
he holes were the size of small countries, with strands up to a couple of hundred kilometres wide. One thing was obvious from the curvature and ponderous motion – the lattice was a sphere.

  A thousand kilometres beneath it, a second lattice sphere was visible, also composed of dark strands, though this one had a more regular geography, mostly comprised of triangles and pentagons. It, too, was rotating, but in a completely different direction to the outer layer. And below that was a third lattice grid, with wider spacings. Its continent-long strands glowed a strong indigo, helping to create the pervasive glow. Though its radiance was complemented to a large degree by streaks of amethyst light which came from underneath it, the indicators of a fourth lattice sphere spinning somewhere in the deeps. Exactly where was unclear. The third lattice appeared to be surrounded by some kind of lambent vapour.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Wilson whispered. Out of all the things he’d expected to see within the Dark Fortress, a kinetic sculpture bigger than planets was not high on the list. The scale of the barrier was already hammering at his beleaguered human senses. But that at least had been a projection, energy manipulated and folded on a stellar scale, while these lattice spheres looked resolutely solid. This was matter organized and fashioned in quantities incomprehensible to Commonwealth technology. Yet the barrier creators had produced something which from a simple visual viewpoint was almost laughably mechanical, in the truest sense of the word. He wouldn’t be at all surprised now if they were to find gearboxes with cogwheels the size of moons driving the entire edifice. ‘Are those strands really solid?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ Anna said. ‘The electromagnetic environment in there is playing hell with the satellite’s radar.’

  ‘That much matter would coalesce under its own gravity,’ Bruno said. ‘They have to be energy forms.’

  ‘Not so,’ Russell immediately claimed. ‘There’s nothing like a terrestrial planet mass in there. And their spin rates will keep them inflated.’