With the satellites launched, he brought the starship’s active sensors on-line and conducted a sweep of local space.
“We’re now officially here,” he told them.
“Aligning main dish,” Sarha said. She followed the grid image, waiting until the coordinates matched the diskcity.
Joshua datavised the flight computer to broadcast their message. It was a simple enough greeting, a text in the Tyrathca language, spread across a broad frequency range. It said who they were, where they came from, that humans had cordial relations with the Tyrathca from Tanjuntic-RI, and asked the diskcity to return the hail. No mention was made of the Oenone being present.
There were bets on how long a reply would take, even of what it would say, if all they’d get back was a salvo of missiles. Nobody had put money on getting eight completely separate responses beamed at them from different sections of the diskcity.
“Understandable, though,” Dahybi said. “The Tyrathca are a clan species, after all.”
“They must have a single administration structure to run an artefact like that,” Ashly protested. “It wouldn’t work any other way.”
“Depends what’s tying them together,” Sarha said. “Something that size can hardly be the most efficient arrangement.”
“Then why build it?” Ashly wondered.
Oski ran the messages through their translator program. “Some deviation in vocabulary, syntax and symbology from our Tyrathca,” she said. “It has been fifteen thousand years after all. But we have a recognizable baseline we can proceed from.”
“Glad to see some sort of change,” Liol muttered. “The way everything stays the same with these guys was getting kind of spooky.”
“That’s drift, not change,” Oski told him. “And take a good look at the diskcity. We could build something like that easily; in fact we could probably do a much better job of it like Sarha says. All it demonstrates is expansion, not development. There’s been no real technological progress here, just like their colonies and arkships.”
“What do the messages say?” Joshua asked.
“One is almost completely unintelligible, some kind of image, I think. The computer’s running pattern analysis now. The rest are text only. Two have returned our greeting, and want to know what we’re doing here. Two are asking for proof that we’re xenocs. Three say welcome, and please rendezvous with the diskcity. Uh, they call it Tojolt-HI.”
“Give me a position on the three major friendlies,” Joshua said.
Three blue stars blinked over his neuroiconic image of Tojolt-HI. Two were located in the bulk of the disk, while the other was at the edge. “That settles it,” he said. “We concentrate on the rim source. I don’t want to try and manoeuvre Lady Mac anywhere near the interior until we know for sure what’s there. Do we know what that section’s called?”
“The dominion of Anthi-CL,” Oski said.
“Sarha, focus our com beam on them, please, narrow band.”
Joshua ran through the message from the rim to get a feel for the format, and composed a reply.
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
TOJOLT-HI, DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL.
MESSAGE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. WE HAVE TRAVELLED HERE IN THE ANTICIPATION OF EXCHANGE OF MATERIALS AND KNOWLEDGE BENEFICIAL TO BOTH SPECIES. WE REQUEST PERMISSION TO DOCK AND BEGIN THIS PROCESS. IF THIS IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, PLEASE PROVIDE AN APPROACH VECTOR.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
YOU ARE WELCOME TO MASTRIT-PJ. IGNORE ALL MESSAGES FROM OTHER TOJOLT-HI DOMINIONS. WE RETAIN THE LARGEST DEPOSITS OF MATERIAL AND KNOWLEDGE WITHIN OUR BOUNDARIES. YOU WILL GAIN THE MOST BENEFIT BY EXCHANGING WITH US. CONFIRM THIS REQUEST.
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
“What do you think?” Joshua asked.
“Not quite the kind of response you’d get from our Tyrathca,” Samuel said. “It could be their attitude has changed to adapt to their circumstances. They seem to be tinged with avarice.”
“Resources would be scarce here,” Kempster said. “There can be no new sources of solid matter for them to exploit. A kilo of your waste may well be more valuable to them than a thousand fuseodollars.”
“We’ll bear it in mind when we start negotiating,” Joshua said. “For now, we have an invitation. I think we’ll accept.”
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR INVITATION, AND CONFIRM THAT WE WISH TO EXCHANGE EXCLUSIVELY WITH YOU. PLEASE SEND APPROACH FLIGHT VECTOR.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT.
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
ARE YOU UNABLE TO COMPUTE APPROACH VECTOR? ARE YOU DAMAGED?
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
“Could be they don’t have traffic control here,” Joshua said. He ran a search through his neural nanonics encyclopaedia file on Hesperi-LN. “The Hesperi-LN Tyrathca didn’t have any formal control system before they started receiving Confederation ships.”
“You also need to have a lot of ships flying before that kind of arrangement becomes essential,” Ashly said. “We haven’t even detected one ship around Tojolt-HI yet. I’ve been running a constant scan.”
“They’re certainly scanning us in return,” Beaulieu said. “I’m registering seventeen different radar beams focused on us now. And I think there’s some laser radar directed our way, too.”
“No ships at all?” Joshua asked.
“I can’t find any drive emissions down there,” Sarha said. “With our optical sensor resolution, we ought to be able to see even a chemical reaction thruster flame inside that umbra.”
“Maybe they’ve used something like the voidhawk distortion field,” Dahybi suggested. “After all, Kempster said mass was precious to them. Maybe they can’t afford reaction drives.”
“Gravitonic detectors say you’re wrong,” Liol said. “I’m not picking up any kind of distortion pattern in this neck of the woods.”
“They’re not going to tip their hand this early in the game,” Monica said. “They won’t show us what they’ve got, especially if it’s combat capable.”
Sarha shifted under her restraint webbing to frown at the ESA agent. “That’s absurd. You can’t suddenly shut down all your spacecraft traffic the instant you detect a xenoc. You’d leave ships in transit. Besides, they don’t know how long we’ve been watching them.”
“You hope.”
Sarha gave an exasperated sigh. “They don’t have ZTT technology, so the only interstellar ships they can conceive are arkships. And if one of those used its fusion drive to decelerate into this system, they’d be able to track it from half a light-year out. They must be curious about us and how the hell we got here, that’s all.”
“Never mind,” Joshua grumbled.
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
WE ARE NOT DAMAGED. WE HAVE CAPABILITY TO COMPUTE AN APPROACH VECTOR TO YOUR LOCATION ON TOJOLT-HI. WE DID NOT WANT TO BREAK ANY LAW YOU HAVE CONCERNING APPROACHING VEHICLES. ARE THERE ANY RESTRICTIONS COVERING APPROACH SPEED AND SEPARATION DISTANCE FROM YOUR PHYSICAL STRUCTURE?
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
NO RESTRICTIONS CONCERNING YOUR APPROACH. WE WILL PROVIDE FINAL HOLDING POSITION COORDINATE WHEN YOU ARE WITHIN ONE THOUSAND KILOMETRES OF DOMINION TERRITORY.
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
&
nbsp; COMMUNICATION DIRECTED TO
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
UNDERSTOOD. EXPECTED RENDEZVOUS TIME 45 MINUTES.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
Joshua datavised the flight computer to ignite the fusion drives. Lady Mac headed in towards the diskcity at a half-gee acceleration. He refined the vector so they’d finish the main burn a hundred kilometres out from the rim. If fusion drives weren’t in common use in this system, Lady Mac ’s exhaust might prove disconcerting. A smile touched his lips at what they’d think of the antimatter drive.
“Joshua,” Syrinx called. “We’ve found another diskcity.”
“Where?” he asked. Everyone on Lady Mac ’s bridge perked up with interest.
“It’s trailing Tojolt-HI by forty five million kilometres, inclined two degrees to the ecliptic. Kempster and Renato were right. The odds of us emerging so close to the only inhabited structure are non-existent.”
“Jesus, you mean this redoubt civilization is strung out all around the star’s equatorial orbit?”
“Looks that way. We’re scanning probable locations for more of them. Assuming the separation distance is constant, and they’re not in wildly high inclination orbits, that would mean there’s well over a hundred of the things.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Over a hundred,” Ashly said. “That makes quite a civilization all told. How many Tyrathca do you think one of those diskcities could support?”
“With a surface area of twenty million square kilometres, I should think anything up to a hundred billion,” Sarha said. “Even with their level of technology, that’s a lot of area. Think how many people we cram into an arcology.”
“Look at it from the population perspective, and no wonder the Anthi-CL dominion wanted exclusivity,” Liol said. “The demand on resources must be phenomenal. I’m astonished they managed to survive this long. By rights they should have drowned in their own waste products a long time ago.”
“Societies only have waste products while acquiring fresh raw material remains a cheaper option than recycling,” Samuel said. “This close to the star, the diskcities are extremely rich in energy. There can be few waste molecules that cannot be reprocessed into something useful.”
“Even so, they must have strong prohibitions on reproducing. I see a circle of life like this, and all I can think about is a culture growing in a dish.”
“That analogy doesn’t hold for sentient life. The Tyrathca nature is inclined to logically empowered restrictive behaviour. After all, they regulated themselves perfectly on a ten thousand year arkship voyage. This situation is no different for them.”
“Don’t assume their dominions are uniform,” Sarha said. “I’m detecting some areas on the disk with a much higher temperature than the others, their thermal regulation has completely broken down. Heat from the star is flowing straight through. They’re dead.”
“Maybe so,” Beaulieu said. “But there’s still a lot of activity down there. We’re being bombarded with radar signals from every section. A lot of dominions are very interested in us.”
“Still no ship launch,” Joshua said. “No one’s trying to intercept us before we reach Anthi-CL.” He accessed the sensors to watch Tojolt-HI growing against the radiant crimson expanse of the giant star. Apart from the scale involved, it was similar to their approach to the antimatter station. A jet-black, two-dimensional circle cutting right into the photosphere. The cold light of the nebula behind them was unable to illuminate a single feature on the back of the diskcity. Only Lady Mac ’s sensors could reveal the topography of mountainous towers pointing blindly away from the disk’s median level. The flight computer’s cartography program was having trouble compiling an accurate chart; the glare of electromagnetic emissions aimed at them was interfering with their radar return.
“What are they all saying?” he asked Oski.
“I’m running a keyword discrimination program on the datatraffic. From the samples so far, it’s all pretty much the same. They all want us to dock at their own section of the diskcity, and each claims to have the greatest resources, as well as unique information.”
“Any threats?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep reviewing it.”
Lady Mac flipped over and began decelerating.
Sensor data on Tojolt-HI built up slowly during the approach phase, giving the crews on Lady Mac and Oenone a good idea how the massive diskcity was constructed. The median sheet which formed the actual disk itself was an amalgamation of dense webs made up out of tubular structures, varying from twenty to three hundred metres in diameter. Though closely packed, they didn’t touch except at end junctions; the gaps between them were sealed over with foil sheets, preventing any of the red giant’s light from penetrating and diluting the umbra. Individual web patterns were principally circular, also varying enormously in size, and overlapping in contorted tangles. Spectrographic analysis found the constituent tubes were mostly metallic, with some silicon and carbon composites stretching across large areas; over five per cent were crystalline, radiating a wan phosphorescence out towards the nebula. There were regions, spread at random over the darkside, where the tangle of pipes swelled out into complex abstract knots several kilometres wide. It was as if the tubes had been subjected to severe lateral buckling, though the radar image couldn’t determine any fractures.
The dense shade of the darkside was inevitably dominated by the thermal transfer machinery. Radiator panels stacked in kilometre-high cones stood next to circular fan towers of faint-glowing fins, minarets of spiralling glass tubes with hot gases rushing through them competed for root space with encrustations of black pillars like a spiky crystal growth, whose sheer ends fluoresced coral pink. Their meandering ranks formed mountain ranges to rival anything thrown up by planetary geology, running for hundreds of kilometres along the webs. Straddling the valleys between them on long stilt-like gantries were giant industrial modules. Dark metal ovoids and trapezohedrons of machinery, their exterior surfaces a solid lacework of pipes and conduits, rising to a crown of heat-dissipation fins or panels (a direct ancestry could be traced to the machinery on Tanjuntic-RI). Although the diskcity had an overall uniformity bestowed by its basic web design, no region or structure was the same, technologies were as heterogeneous as shapes. The standardisation and compatibility synonymous with the Tyrathca had clearly broken down between the dominions millennia ago.
As they drew closer, more movement became visible across the darkside. Trains, made up from hundreds of tanker carriages and kilometres in length, slid slowly along the valleys and embankments between the thermal transfer systems. Their rails were an open framework of girders; suspended above the tubes and foil sheets of the disk, undulating like a roller coaster track, dipping down to merge with the larger tubes, allowing the trains to run inside them, then rising up the stilt legs of industrial modules to pass straight through the middle.
“Who the hell built this place?” Ashly asked in bemusement as the grey pixels built up into a comprehensive image in this neural nanonics. “Isombard Kingdom Brunel?”
“If it works, don’t try and fix it,” Joshua said.
“There is more to it than that,” Samuel said. “Tojolt-HI is not a declining technology. They have selected the simplest engineering technology which can sustain them. Whilst humans would no doubt progress to developing a full Dyson sphere over fifteen thousand years, the Tyrathca have refined something that requires the minimum of effort to maintain. It does have a kind of elegance.”
“But it still fails repeatedly,” Beaulieu said. “There are dozens of dead sections across the disk. And each failure would cost them millions of lives. Any sentient creature should try to refine its living environment to something less prone to accident, surely?” Samuel shrugged.
The Anthi-CL dominion began issuing instructions for Lady Mac ’s final rendezvous coordinate. A blueprint they transmitted identified a specific section of the rim, which the fl
ight computer matched up to the sensor image. The Anthi-CL dominion wanted them to keep station two kilometres out from a pier-like structure protruding from the edge.
“How is the translation program update coming on?” Joshua asked Oski. “Do we know enough to communicate directly now?”
“It’s integrated all the new terms we’ve encountered so far; the analysis comparison subroutine response time is down to an acceptable level. I’d say it’s okay to try and talk to them.”
Lady Mac ’s drive thrust was reducing steadily as she drew level with the plane of the disk. In comparison to the desolate solidity of the darkside, the rim appeared to be unfinished. It bristled with slender spires and protruding gantry platforms wrapped in cables. Clumps of tanks and pods were attached to various open frame grids.
“At last,” Sarha said. “That’s got to be a ship.”
The vessel was docked to the rim a hundred kilometres along from their rendezvous coordinate. It had a simple profile, a pentagon of five huge globes scintilating with a soft gold and scarlet iridescence under the gas-giant’s illumination, each one at least two kilometres in diameter. They surrounded the throat of an elongated funnel made from a broad mesh of jet-black material; its open mouth was eight kilometres across. There was no recognizable life support section visible from Lady Mac ’s current position.
“Picking up a lot of very complex magnetic fluctuations from that thing,” Liol said. “Whatever it does, there’s a lot of energy involved.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a Bussard ram-scoop,” Joshua said. “It was a neat idea, pre-ZTT era interstellar propulsion. Use a magnetic scoop to collect interstellar hydrogen, and feed it direct into a fusion drive. A cheap and easy way to travel between stars, you haven’t got to worry about carrying any on-board fuel. Unfortunately it turns out the hydrogen density isn’t high enough to make it work.”
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