“You’re a beautiful woman, Hutch,” he said.
That brought a smile. “Thank you, Antonio. You’re a bit of a looker yourself.”
“That’s good of you to say, Priscilla. But I was never much able to turn heads.”
She studied him for a long moment. “You might have turned mine, Antonio.” She switched back to the AI. “Phyl?”
“Yes, Hutch?”
“Still no indication of activity?”
“Negative. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
The wall had become almost a blur. “How fast are we traveling?” he asked.
“Relative to the cloud, we’re moving at almost seventy-five thousand.” That was, of course, kilometers per hour.
“How long would it take us to look at the entire thing?”
“At this rate?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a long cloud.”
“Right. I know.”
She passed the question to Phyl. Phyl’s electronics picked up a notch, the equivalent of clearing her throat. “About 130 years.”
Antonio grinned.
“That would be just one side,” Phyl continued. “To do it properly, multiply the figure by four.”
The situation was not made easier by the fact that the cloud was simply too big for the sensors to penetrate adequately. “Somebody could be planting lemon trees in that thing,” Hutch said, “and we wouldn’t know it.” The displays showed murky and overcast. The ship’s navigation lights were smeared across the screens. “What do you want to do?” she asked him.
“How do you mean?”
“Did you want to go in and look around?”
“What would you do if I said yes?”
“Try me.”
“Ah, no. Thanks. Let it go. But I do have an idea.”
“What’s that, Antonio?”
“Let’s put all four of us in one ship, and use the AI to send the other one in for a test run. See what happens.”
“The transfer would not work,” said Phyl. “How would you get from one ship to the other without exposing yourselves to the radiation?”
“You don’t want to go,” Hutch told Phyl. The AI was right, of course. But the pilot couldn’t resist testing her sense of humor.
“No, ma’am, I do not. May I point out that if you send a ship in there, you may not recover it.” One of her avatars appeared, a young woman. She had Hutch’s dark hair and eyes, looked remarkably vulnerable, and was about eight months pregnant. “I don’t think it’s a chance worth taking,” she said. “But if you insist, I’ll do it, of course.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Antonio. “I’d feel the same way.”
EVENTUALLY, ANTONIO’S ATTENTION wandered from the cloud to the crowded sky. A couple of nearby yellow stars were almost touching. He tried to imagine Earth’s sun bumping its way through the chaos. Phyl reported a planet adrift. “Range is twelve million kilometers. I can’t be certain, but it doesn’t seem attached to anything. Just orbiting the core. Like everything else. It appears to have been a terrestrial world.”
“You wouldn’t expect it to be attached to anything out here,” said Antonio. “Maybe it’s what we’re looking for.”
“Phyl, any sign of life? Or activity of any kind?”
“Certainly not any kind of living thing we’d know about. There’s no electromagnetic cloud, either. Did you want to inspect it more closely?” A picture appeared on-screen. The world appeared to be nothing more than a battered rock.
“No,” said Hutch. “It’s not a very likely candidate.”
Something rattled the ship, a burst of wind and sand, and was gone. “Got in the way of a dust storm,” said Hutch. “Phyl, are we okay?”
“Yes.” The AI sounded doubtful. “It wasn’t enough to activate the particle beams. And, anyhow, the shielding covered us nicely.”
“Scopes and sensors okay?”
“Yes. I read no problems, maybe some minor scratches to the lens on number three. Although I have to say these are not ideal conditions for them.”
“Okay. Keep the forward and starboard scopes active, and the starboard sensor.” That was the one in the best position to work the cloud. “Seal everything else for now.”
“Complying.”
The pictures on the displays went down one by one until Antonio was looking either straight ahead or at the cloud.
AFTER AN HOUR or so, they jumped twelve million klicks. “All readings are still inside the parameters,” said Phyl.
Antonio had gotten hungry. He went back, made sandwiches for them, and carried everything onto the bridge. Hutch already had a cup of hot chocolate. After he got settled in his seat, she touched something, and his harness settled over his shoulders. Damned thing was annoying. “How long are we going to stay?” he asked. He expected her to make a crack about maybe only a couple of years. But she contented herself with a shrug and a smile.
“So when are we going to leave?” he said again.
She surprised him. “I don’t know.”
“We aren’t going to stay here the rest of the month, are we?” He was losing any serious hope that they’d find anything.
“No,” she said. “Let’s just give it a little more time, though. You don’t want to go back and face your colleagues and tell them we got nothing.”
“That’s a point.”
Phyl broke in: “Hutch, we’re getting some odd readings.”
“Specify, please.”
“Recurring patterns of nontypical electromagnetic radiation.” Details appeared on-screen, but they meant nothing to either of them. “There are also quantum fluctuations indicative of biological activity.”
“What?” said Hutch. “Biological? In there?”
“We need Rudy,” said Antonio.
“Explain, Phyl.”
“Data is insufficient to draw conclusions. I can say with certainty, however, that activity here is at a different level and more coherent than in the other clouds or at other sites in this cloud.”
“Coherent? By that you mean—?”
“Occurring within more distinct parameters. More repetitive. Less arbitrary. Fewer extremes.”
“You said ‘biological activity.’ Do you mean there’s something alive in there?”
“That is probable.”
“Okay.” She was jiggling the yoke. Pulling them away from the wall. “Let’s give it some breathing space.” She was apparently talking to herself as much as to Antonio.
It was all right with Antonio. Something alive in there? Maledire. If he could see the cloud at all, they were too close.
She turned the ship left, to port, and Antonio was pushed against the side of his seat. On the displays, the cloud wall moved up, angled overhead, and became a ceiling, an overhead. Then it dropped back to the side again.
He looked at her for a long moment.
“What?” she said.
“You’re showing off.”
“A little. Thought you’d enjoy the ride.”
She called Matt and passed the information along. “The cloud might have a tenant.”
ONCE THEY WERE well away from it—or at least what Hutch apparently considered well away—she did more gyrations with the ship, rotating it along its vertical axis until the main engines were pointed forward. Then she used them to begin braking. Antonio, now facing backward, was pushed gently into his seat.
She had also turned the ship 180 degrees around its lateral axis, thereby keeping the starboard scope pointed at the cloud. It would have been a good moment for the Dr. Science show: I’m now upside down, boys and girls, except you can’t tell a difference because there is no up or down away from a gravity well.
The cloud brightened and darkened in the swirling light from the pulsar.
“Something’s happening,” said Phyl. “Quantity and intensity of signals is picking up.”
The lightning was becoming more frequent. And more violent. “Maybe it’s waking up,” Antonio said.
r /> Matt’s voice broke in: “Hutch, get clear.” He sounded frantic. “Do it now. Get out of there.”
Had Antonio not been harnessed in, he’d have jumped out of his seat. “What is it?” he demanded.
“Don’t know,” said Hutch. She nevertheless pulled back on the yoke. “Matt, do you see something?”
They’d been caught at a bad time. The ship was reversed, traveling backward, gradually braking. If she hit the mains, it would only slow them down more. She rotated the ship again, to get it pointed away from the wall. While they waited to complete the maneuver, Antonio hanging on to the arms of his chair, Matt’s response came in: “Up ahead. It’s watching you.” His voice was shrill.
“What’s watching me, Matt? What are you talking about?”
“The cloud.”
“Matt—?”
“For God’s sake, Hutch. The cloud is. Look at it.”
ANTONIO’S NOTES
When I heard Matt’s voice, heard how he sounded, telling us to clear out, I got pretty scared. I’d been hoping all along that the hunt for the omega factory would be fruitless, although I’d never have admitted that to anybody. I don’t think it had anything to do with my being a coward, per se. That place, where the sky crowded in, where everything was filled with lightning, was really scary. All I really wanted was to declare there was nothing there and go home.
—Wednesday, March 12
chapter 35
IT WAS LIKE being in a dark house and having something jump out of a closet. Hutch fought down the impulse to hit the main engines but continued waiting while the ship rotated away from the cloud. It seemed a painfully slow process. “Do you see anything, Antonio?”
Antonio looked as if he would have been hiding under his seat had he not been belted in. “Nothing. Just the wall.”
“Phyl?”
“Nothing, Hutch.”
It was an illusion. Matt’s imagination. Had to be.
Finally, she got clearance. She told herself not to panic, warned Antonio, and started to accelerate.
He yelped as they pulled away.
“I can’t see it now,” said Matt. “We’ve lost it.”
“What was it, Matt?”
“Priscilla, I know how this sounds. But it was an eye.”
“An eye? Matt, how could you have seen an eye from out there?” Her heart was pounding. Been away from this too long.
“Because it was big.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’re clearing.” She continued the turn, maintained thrust, and favored Antonio with a smile meant to be reassuring but which seemed only to alarm him more.
“You think he really saw something?”
“Get the right lighting here,” she said, “and you probably get a half dozen faces in the cloud.” She switched back to the McAdams. “Anything more, Matt?”
“No, Hutch. But I don’t think we were seeing things. Jon saw it, too.”
“Okay.”
“It was real.”
“Okay.”
Phyl cut in: “There,” she said. “That might be what they saw.”
A dark circle within the cloud. No. More ovoid than circular. With a black patch in the center.
Beside her, Antonio shifted, tried to get comfortable.
The picture was at maximum mag. Whatever the thing was, had they continued on their original course, they’d have passed directly in front of it. “Can you give us better definition, Phyl?”
The AI tried to adjust. Not much of an improvement. “We see it,” she told Matt.
“Yeah. We got it back, too.”
“It’s just the light,” she said.
“Maybe.”
It did look like an eye.
Pensive. Emotionless. Looking at her.
“How big is it, Phyl?”
“Ninety meters by seventy-four. Error range of five percent.” Phyl put up a map and located the position of the object.
Deep in the cloud, she saw lightning.
Hutch eased back on acceleration, gave it another minute or two, and cut forward thrust altogether. They were, of course, still racing away from the wall. When she was two thousand kilometers out, she angled to starboard and began running parallel to it again. “Phyl, are you reading any change in energy levels?”
“Negative,” she said.
“Very good. If there’s any shift, anything at all, up or down, I want to know about it. Right away.”
“Yes, Hutch.”
“You’re worried about lightning?” said Antonio, who obviously was.
“I’m cautious, Antonio.” She had no interest in trying to outrun a lightning bolt. “Phyl—”
“I’m listening.”
“Make sure we keep the Locarno charged at all times for an instant departure. Okay?”
“Hutch, that will be a severe drain on our fuel.”
“Do it anyhow. Until I tell you to stop. Matt, are you listening?”
“I’m here, Hutch.”
“I need to talk to Jon.”
Phyl was giving them a close-up of the disk. The eye. Whatever. “That is an eye,” said Antonio. “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”
Jon’s voice was usually a deep baritone, but at the moment it sounded a shade or two higher: “Hello, Hutch. What can I do for you?”
“What do you think about the eye?”
“Don’t know. I don’t think there’s any question there’s something alive in there.”
“Okay. Give me best guess: What is it?”
“How the hell would I know? It’s probably some sort of plasma creature. But it could be anything. I’d say we keep our distance.”
“You think it’s intelligent?”
“Not if it’s living out here.”
“Seriously, Jon.”
“No way to know. Look, Hutch, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing. My field is propulsion systems.”
“Nobody knows anything, Jon. I’m asking about your instincts.”
“Okay. I’m not convinced yet it isn’t an illusion.”
“It doesn’t look like an illusion.”
“Illusions never do. But if it’s really there, and it’s surviving out here, I’d say we don’t want to mess with it.”
“It, ah, isn’t possible the whole cloud could be alive, is it?”
“You mean a single living organism?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too big. If something happens at one end, it would take hours to get a message to the central nervous system. Help, I’m on fire.”
“Would it have to have a central nervous system? Maybe it’s dispersed in some way.”
“If we’re assuming this is what put together the omegas, then we’re talking intelligence. I don’t see how you could have that without a brain. One brain, centrally located. But what the hell do I know? Maybe it’s some sort of hive. Individual animals cooperating the way, say, ants do. But I’m damned if I can see how anything could live in there. Especially with all this radiation.”
“So we can assume they’re in the cloud.”
“I think so.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I’d say the smart thing now would be to assume this is the source of the omegas. And go home. We have what we came for. Let somebody else come and sort out the details.”
“He’s right,” said Antonio. “Phyl, we’ve got that thing’s pictures on the record, right?”
“Yes, Antonio.”
“What a story that’s going to make.”
No question. An eye twenty stories high. “Matt,” she said, “you had a wider angle on it than we did. Could you see anything else in there? Any indication of a shape, possibly?”
“Like maybe tentacles?” Antonio was trying to lighten the mood.
Matt relayed the McAdams record to her and Phyl put it on-screen. Nothing else of note was visible. Just the eye.
“Matt’s pictures aren’t
as clear as ours,” he said.
“That’s because they’re farther away.”
“Phyl? Is that the only reason?”
“The range accounts for some of the blurring. But not all of it. The image they sent should be more defined.”
“Maybe the scope took a few seconds to focus,” said Antonio.
“That’s enough for me,” said Matt. “I’m for starting back.”
“I guess,” said Hutch.
“Smart move.” Jon was trying to sound disappointed, trying to mask his enthusiasm for turning around. “I don’t think we want to give that thing a shot at us.”
“It’s lighting up,” said Antonio.
He was referring to patches of the cloud on either side of the eye. “Light globules,” Hutch said. Deep inside somewhere. They were like summer lightning. Or lights coming on in a dark house.
And going off again.
“We ready to go, Hutch?”
And coming back on.
“Hold it a second.”
“You know,” said Matt, “it might be possible to come back here and nuke the thing after all. Get rid of it.”
“Not that it would do us any good,” said Jon.
“How do you mean?”
“We’ve got more than a million years’ worth of omegas already in the pipeline. I mean, we’ve seen seven of them in the last couple of weeks. By the time they could get anywhere near our part of the galaxy, we’ll have evolved into something else. You can forget about the omegas. They’re a done deal, and the galaxy will have to put up with them for a long time.”
Matt didn’t care. “We owe them something. If we do send a mission back to take the things out, I’d like to be here when it happens.”
Antonio was watching the light display. “Matt,” he said, “what makes you think this is the only cloud that’s infested? This area might be a family of the things. Or a colony. I mean, why would there only be one?”
“I think there’s only one,” said Hutch.
“I agree,” said Jon. “There’s a kind of rhythm, a pattern to the release. The omegas explode in a timed sequence, maybe four in Ursa Major, maybe a few months apart. But the same duration between events. Then six somewhere else. Again, same duration.”
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