Dark Matter

by S. W. Ahmed

  “Sharjam, there’s obviously a lot I don’t know about Aftaran customs and traditions, but I truly believe Raiha is a very special individual. For what it’s worth, all I can say is that you’d be a fool to let her go a second time.”

  Sharjam looked into Marc’s eyes and smiled. “Thank you for the thoughtful advice, my friend. I will pray that the Creator one day leads you back to your home world, back to the arms of the love of your life.”

  Marc smiled back, and stood up to return to his own corner in the cabin. At that moment, the door to the cockpit slid open, and Sibular floated into the cabin.

  Marc suddenly felt a wave of excitement. “Any news?”

  “Yes,” Sibular said. “One of the signal probes has finally returned. This means the end of the consar is now less than 2 million light years away.”

  Chapter 35

  It took another 24 hours for the scout ship to reach the end of the consar. In all, it had spent a full 8 Earth days inside the confines of the tunnel, covering a distance of over 16 million light years of equivalent space in regular 3 dimensions.

  According to Sibular, the exit point was inside the heart of a galaxy known to Mendoken astronomers as LG65325. Human astronomers knew it as galaxy M94 in the CVn I Cloud, a group of galaxies at a distance of between 14 and 20 million light years from the M81 group that the Milky Way (Glaessan) and Andromeda galaxies belonged to. As with all visible galaxies, however, humans on Earth could only see a small percentage of M94, thanks to the silupsal filter that surrounded their solar system.

  The Mendoken didn’t know much about this galaxy, other than that its shape, size and age were similar to those of the Glaessan. Needless to say, no Mendoken or any other beings from the Glaessan had ever traveled to this galaxy before.

  “So this is where Wazilban is from,” Marc said, sitting in the cockpit beside Sibular.

  “We can only assume so,” Sibular replied. “We shall hopefully find out for certain soon enough.”

  Outside, the consar tunnel’s walls were lighting up again in a mix of different colors, and the bands of matter passing through the ship were thinning out. A hole opened up ahead, marking the exit point. Then, in one big burst of deceleration, the ship flew through the hole and broke free from the consar. The protective blue sphere shriveled up and vanished, as did the opening to the consar behind. The ship was once again back in regular space.

  Or was it? Marc’s jaw dropped in surprise as he looked out through the cockpit window. “Sibular, didn’t you say this galaxy is similar to ours? What’s going on here?”

  “I do not know, Marc. This does not at all conform to the coordinates I have. We should be right in the center of LG65325.”

  But they were staring at a pitch black sky, with hardly a star in sight. Marc thought he could probably count the total number of stars by the fingers on his hands.

  “The charts our astronomers have of LG65325 may be outdated,” the Mendoken pilot suggested.

  “Yes,” Sibular agreed. “The charts are outdated by 16 million years, or the time it takes for the light of the stars in this galaxy to reach ours. Something significant has evidently happened to this galaxy in the past 16 million years.”

  Dumyan stepped into the cockpit. “By the power of the Creator!” he gasped, seeing the empty sky outside. “What’s this?”

  Marc shrugged. “Well, it seems that galaxy LG65325 doesn’t really exist anymore.”

  “How can that be? Any sign of Wazilban? Any ships nearby? Planets or moons?”

  “Nothing within a 500 million mile radius,” the pilot said, eyeing one of the navigation screens beside her.

  Dumyan shook his head. “We must not be in the right place. Something’s wrong. Could the consar have shifted its path while we were traveling through it?”

  “No, that is physically impossible,” Sibular said confidently. “A consar path, once created, will remain as it is for eternity, even after its openings have disappeared and it is no longer accessible. We are in the right place, without a doubt.”

  “Then how do we explain this?” Dumyan pointed at the sky outside.

  Everyone was silent, trying to make head or tail of the situation. A couple of minutes passed before a small dot suddenly appeared in the rear corner of one of the navigation screens.

  “What’s that?” Dumyan asked.

  Sibular tried to identify the dot with the help of the ship’s computer. But the computer returned no matches from its extensive database.

  “The unidentified object is heading our way,” the pilot announced, pointing at the navigation screen. “It is approaching from behind.”

  Sure enough, the dot was moving towards the center of the screen, advancing a few millimeters every minute. It was also growing in size as it moved.

  “Why is it growing?” Marc asked, starting to get worried.

  “It is not growing, Marc,” Sibular replied. “The computer is continuously recalculating the size of the object as it obtains more information about it.”

  As the minutes passed, the dot, now grown into a full-blown sphere, was moving ever closer.

  Marc felt a rising apprehension. “Uh, guys, we should move out of this thing’s path.”

  Sibular and Dumyan both agreed. The pilot moved the ship to the left by a million miles, and then resumed the course forward.

  “The object should come into visual range in 5 minutes,” Sibular said.

  Exactly 5 minutes later, Marc heard several cries from the cabin. He stepped out of the cockpit, and saw Sharjam, Zorina and everyone else in the cabin huddled around one of the windows on the rear right side of the craft. He ran up to them, and once he could see what they were looking at outside, cried out in shock himself.

  A gigantic white sphere, easily the size of a large planet, was approaching rapidly from the rear. Over a million miles away, it was passing by the ship along a parallel course. It had an outer spherical shell that looked like a transparent balloon, and inside was a glowing red sparkle. The sparkle seemed to have no fixed shape. Instead, it just kept dancing around inside the shell, sometimes looking like a star, at other times like a cube or a series of disconnected lines.

  It was an eerie sight, and easily the largest moving object Marc had ever seen in his life. It was larger than any ship, planet destroyer, space station or anything else. This thing was, simply put, humongous!

  Sharjam looked at Dumyan, who had just arrived in the cabin. “Dumyan, you won’t believe this!” he cried, his eyes wide open in amazement. “That’s a Starguzzler out there!”

  Dumyan looked out the window, and also cried out in surprise. “This is unbelievable! It must be, what, maybe a hundred million times larger than the ones we saw on Droila?”

  “At least! The resemblance is unmistakable, though. It clearly is a Starguzzler, without a doubt. This must be the size they can grow to.”

  “Grow from a tiny sphere to something that size? That thing is larger than any planet you’re suggesting it could have originated from. It’s impossible!”

  “That would depend on the material they’re made of and how they’re grown,” Zorina said.

  Dumyan’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s simple, really. How different would this be from, say, a silupsal filter? We create a small amount of the membrane, and then let it self-replicate. A small amount that fits in the size of my palm is all that’s needed to eventually cover an entire solar system. We just have to keep providing the membrane with a constant energy supply while it grows, then shut off the supply once the growth is complete. Perhaps that monster out there uses a similar mechanism to grow that big. The only question is, where does it get its energy from? And why would anyone create something that big to begin with?”

  “Weapons,” Sharjam said. “At that size, those Starguzzlers could surely be very powerful.”

  Marc nodded. “Exactly what Wazilban needs for his grand scheme. I dread to find out how it actually works.” He then walke
d back to the cockpit, along with Dumyan, Sharjam and Zorina.

  The giant Starguzzler kept on moving, seemingly oblivious to the tiny scout ship nearby. Its gravitational force, however, was not at all oblivious to the ship’s presence. The force began pulling on the ship as soon as the massive body had passed by and moved on ahead.

  The Mendoken pilot reversed the ship’s kilasic engines, trying to break free from the Starguzzler’s gravitational pull.

  “Wait!” Dumyan said, raising his hand. “Perhaps we shouldn’t break free completely, but just maintain enough thrust in the opposite direction to keep a safe distance. That monster doesn’t seem to have noticed us, or even if it has, doesn’t care. So following it might make more sense than blindly searching through empty space. It might even lead us to what we’re looking for.”

  Marc stared at the looming giant through the cockpit window. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  The scout ship followed the Starguzzler silently through dark, empty space, at close to 100,000 times the speed of light. Several hours passed before something else finally appeared on one of the cockpit’s navigation screens.

  “A star system, 300 million miles ahead,” the pilot announced.

  “Any planets?” Dumyan asked, awakening from his slumber. He was seated on the floor of the cockpit, propped up against the wall.

  “Yes, two on the far side. It is still too early to tell how large and what types. But there are also several other large objects in close proximity to the star.”

  “More Starguzzlers, it seems,” Sibular said, doing a quick check on the ship’s computer. “Five of them surrounding the star.”

  The Starguzzler they were following slowed down as the star system came into visual range, and it seemed to be heading straight for the sun to join its five counterparts. In order to avoid a meltdown from getting too close to the sun, the pilot broke the ship free from the gravitational pull of the Starguzzler, and took it along a different course toward the planets on the far side.

  The ship passed by the sun at a distance of 10 million miles, allowing everyone on board to see with their own eyes what the Starguzzlers surrounding it were doing.

  “Hence their name,” Sharjam whispered, breaking the stunned silence in the cockpit.

  “Indeed, hence their name,” Marc thought. And hence their size. The Starguzzlers were literally sucking plasma out of the sun, through long tubes emanating from the surfaces of their spherical shells. The bright gas could be seen traveling through the tubes and into the inner layers of their transparent bodies. Their red sparkles seemed to dance around with delight, thankful for the energy that was steadily flowing in.

  Marc was amazed. He could never have imagined consumption on so grand a scale. An entire star was slowly being eaten up by huge, sentient objects. The stars themselves were evidently the energy sources these objects tapped to grow so big and sustain themselves.

  “This is likely how the majority of stars here have disappeared over time,” Sibular said, “due to these Starguzzlers.”

  “Which means there are probably many of them in this galaxy,” Dumyan said. “I can’t understand how even Wazilban would be crazy enough to create such a catastrophic creature or weapon.”

  “We may find out soon enough,” Sibular said, pointing to one of the screens beside him. “The computer is saying there are ships in orbit around the nearer planet.”

  As the scout ship approached the nearer planet, the Mendoken troopers began using the sophisticated surveillance equipment on board to study both planets and their surroundings, and to try to locate Wazilban or any of the other aliens who had escaped from Bara Dilshai. To their surprise, they found both planets to be hospitable for life, but empty of any signs of it. Just as surprisingly, there seemed to be no security grid or any other defense system protecting either of the planets.

  “These aliens may have consar technology, but they seem to lack basic protection infrastructure,” Sibular observed.

  “Well, either that or they just don’t care enough to set it up,” Zorina said. “They may not have any real enemies in this galaxy, or at least what’s left of this galaxy. And it sure doesn’t seem like they’re expecting us.”

  No, the aliens really didn’t seem to be expecting the visitors, nor did they seem particularly concerned about their presence. There were a number of ships orbiting the nearer planet, none of which bothered to budge or hail the approaching Mendoken scout ship. In fact, none of them seemed to register any life signs on board. And what turned out to be most surprising of all was that all the ships orbiting the planet were carrying identification signatures of Aftaran, Mendoken and Volonan vessels.

  “Impossible!” Dumyan and Sharjam exclaimed in unison.

  “Maybe not,” Zorina said, pointing at the cockpit window’s magnification system.

  The first alien ship came into view. It looked like a Volonan warship, red in color, with its familiar rectangular shape and overhangs at its edges. But the ship was still under construction, its entire upper half no more than a mesh of foundation rods. Other Volonan ships nearby were already completed. In the vicinity were a large number of Aftaran Gyra-class vessels and a few Mendoken battlecruisers, most of them whole but some under construction. And they all had one thing in common – they were deserted.

  Zorina bobbed her head up and down in excitement. “You see, my man?” she said, addressing Sibular. “Just as I kept telling you! These ships are replicas, built by the aliens. They used these ships to attack your worlds, and then blamed it on my people.”

  Marc studied the scene outside intently. “It’s funny, you know. There doesn’t seem to be a single ship out there that isn’t a replica. Don’t these aliens have any ships of their own?”

  Nobody knew the answer.

  Marc went on. “The aliens must have used these Gyra-class replicas to travel freely into and out of the Dominion. The presence of Mendoken replicas seems to indicate they also traveled to the Republic. I wonder to what extent they infiltrated Mendoken society.”

  “I doubt to the same extent as ours,” Dumyan said. “The Mendoken are far more difficult a species to infiltrate. I hate to admit it, but it’s the truth. They are a lot more rational and not as easily swayed by words of emotion as my people are. Wazilban wouldn’t have gotten very far in the Republic with his ornate speeches.”

  “You are probably right,” Sibular agreed, as the scout ship flew right between two partially completed replicas of Mendoken Kril-2 battlecruisers. “But there definitely was some level of infiltration. Since the beginning of our current war with the Volona, we repeatedly tried to research and master consar technology. But our research facilities were always mysteriously destroyed before we could make any reasonable progress. We never found the culprits, but I now believe these aliens were behind it. They probably kept a close watch on our scientific work across the Republic, and always made sure that we did not master consar technology. But they ultimately failed, because they did not anticipate Marc’s emergence and were not able to stop him in time.”

  “Why would these aliens go to such pains to ensure your people didn’t develop consar technology?” Zorina asked, frowning.

  “To avoid being detected, obviously,” Dumyan said. “They wouldn’t have wanted anyone to trace their paths back here to their home worlds.”

  Marc nodded. “And once Wazilban realized the Mendoken had gained hold of consar technology anyway, he decided to use this fact to his advantage to form an alliance and accelerate the wars between the different civilizations.” He smiled. “I have to say, these aliens are obviously very smart, and quite adept at strategizing.”

  “Combined with their evil nature, that makes them one dangerous enemy,” Sharjam added.

  “No doubt,” Marc thought. The aliens had gone to great lengths to plan for the destruction of the Glaessan’s civilizations. But the fundamental question still remained – why? He didn’t know, but he was fairly certain these Starguzzlers had something to do
with it. And if there was anywhere in the entire universe to find out the answer, this had to be the place. But then, there was also the other big question – where had the aliens all disappeared to, leaving these replica ships behind?

  One of the Mendoken troopers from the cabin floated into the cockpit. “We have located the signatures of the Aftaran Shoyra-class vessels that the aliens used to escape from Bara Dilshai,” she announced. “They are parked on the surface of the planet, in a clearing in the midst of a dense forest. But there is no sign of Wazilban or any of the other aliens.”

  Without a word, the Mendoken pilot flew the scout ship directly towards the midsize planet. As the ship got closer, Marc noticed that the surface of the planet was mostly grayish-green with isolated patches of blue, indicating the presence of large masses of land and smaller seas of water. In some ways, it looked like the reverse of Earth, which had smaller sections of land and wide expanses of ocean water covering its surface.

  “What if this is a trap?” Zorina suggested. “They may be luring us to this planet to destroy us.”

  “Why go to the trouble?” Sibular said. “They could easily use one of their large replica ships out here to fire at us right now and blow us apart with one shot. A scout ship this size is no military match for any of those vessels. I think it is more likely the aliens may all be communing somewhere in secret. Perhaps deep below the surface of the planet, which is why our scanners cannot detect them. They must be preoccupied with bigger things at the moment, and are therefore paying no attention to us.”