Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

“More than a few planes.” Tully had been leaning close to the screen as the General spoke, studying the enlarged picture. “Look over here, well outside the camp. It’s not easy to see them because they match the color of the ground. But isn’t that more aircraft?”

“Six, seven, eight.” The way that Dag Korin counted made each word sound like a curse. “Aye, and there’s another batch of the damned things, farther over. They’re camouflaged to match the background, but not very well. I’d have expected these alien buggers to do a better job, they’re careful enough about other things. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.”

Elke was working the keypad in front of her. “Well, if there is hope,” she said, “I’d credit our technology more than alien weaknesses. The orbiters had the best sensors that humans know how to build, and they could record signals at wavelengths all the way from ultraviolet to radar. Here’s what the ground would look like if the orbiters only sensed the range of wavelengths that human eyes can see.”

The picture as a whole remained the same — except that Tully, staring, could now see no details within the burned area. Buildings, boundary fence, airstrips, aircraft were gone. All had been swallowed up within the dark background.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Korin squinted at the image. “Bring it back the way it was, Elke. Ah, that’s better. We’re going to need a couple of printed copies of this, with compass settings marked.”

“No problem.” Elke did not move, leaving it to the ship’s computer to take the necessary action.

“Plus any other information we can deduce about what’s down there. For instance, what do you make of that?” Korin was pointing to a pair of oval shapes, close to one cluster of the triple-lobed aircraft but much larger than any. “Can you make those bigger?”

Elke shrugged her thin shoulders. “I can enlarge the picture, but you won’t get any more detail. We’re at the resolution limit of the orbiter’s sensors.”

“Pity.” Korin rubbed at his jaw. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough if I’m right.”

Tully didn’t think that Dag Korin had a high opinion of him. In fact, he had overheard himself referred to by the General, soon after his arrival on board the Hero’s Return , as `that long brain-dead streak of shivering misery.’ Well, Tully had improved a lot since then, and Korin’s favorite had also once been a Slither slave. He risked what might be a stupid question. “Sir, how do you know what those blobs might be? I can’t make out any detail on them at all.”

“No more can I, son, no more can I.” Korin took a couple of steps away, as though he had said all he was going to, then swung around and added sharply, “I imagine , you see. What my eyes won’t provide, I imagine with eighty years of war experience to guide me. And the more I look at that picture, the more a little voice inside me says, military expedition . Not a full-scale army, mind you, because the scale of operations is wrong for that. This is more like a scouting party, sent out to learn the lie of the land. Maybe sent to find out if Limbo is worth a bigger investment, or decide that the place is a dead loss and not worth another visit.

“Now, there’s a logic to a scouting expedition, one that I’d suspect is common to all times and all species. First, you need a base of operations. We see that on the image. You also need the aircraft or ground vehicles to make sorties away from base, and you need to have enough of them to stand some losses from accidents or hostile action. That’s what the aircraft are for. And there’s one other must-have. You may be able to live off the land to some extent, but you’ll need bigger transports — call them mother ships if you like — to bring you to your sphere of operations in the first place. Little scoutships won’t be enough for that, and they won’t be able to carry everything you need for weeks or months of operations. That’s what I think the two ovals are. They brought them here to Limbo, through a Link point of their making and under their control. And in our present situation, those mother ships represent our own best shot at a way to go home.”

Korin paused and frowned at the other two. “Now, that’s my thinking. It may be wrong, so feel free to poke holes in it. Ask questions.”

Elke said softly, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather ask about the other part of what you said earlier.”

“Other part.”

“You told us, `we’ll find out soon enough if I’m right.’ What made you say that?”

“No secret there. We can’t sit here until this ship rots around us. I’m organizing a shore party to explore the land—”

“That’s terrific! I’ve been analyzing data from the orbiters, and I’ve been wondering about a thousand other things—”

“ — but you won’t be part of the shore group, Elke.”

“What! I’m not an engineer. I don’t know how to keep things running on the ship. But ashore, I can—”

“No. You have other things to do, and they may be a lot more important than going ashore. You were the one who came up with the idea that we’re lost, not just somewhere in our own universe but somewhere in an infinity of universes. You’re our best shot — I’d say our only shot — at cracking the secrets of the multiverse. I want you focused on that, and the properties of the alien Link. I want to know about other universes that we might be able to reach — are they more or less similar to our own, could humans survive in them. I don’t want you distracted by thoughts of Limbo’s other life-forms, or war games, or shore parties. Understood?”

It was a few moments before Elke turned away and said softly, “Yes, sir. I’ll explore the multiverse, and the Link.”

Dag Korin nodded. Only Tully, sitting so that Elke had been forced to face him when she swiveled around, saw the look of secret joy — and wondered if this was exactly what Elke had wanted all along.

Friday Indigo sat on a rock ledge with his legs immersed in water up to the mid-calf. He was inside a long, stone-walled room with a dark pool down the middle. The edge of the pool was marked by a set of tapered columns, conical towers taller than a man. Scores of lumbering Malacostracans, all bigger than Two-Four, scuttled and splashed to and fro at the poolside in what seemed like random motion.

The One stood motionless behind Friday. The thin snaky fingers had withdrawn little by little from his ears, until now they barely touched the skin.

“Once more we will test.” The voice that Friday heard did not come from the translation unit. It was inside his head, warm and friendly and infinitely comforting. “Tell us your name.”

“I am Friday Indigo.”

“That is satisfactory.” The tendrils withdrew completely, slithering back into the body of The One. “We detect no signal loss. We will later confirm the efficiency of operation over greater distances. Now, however, you will answer questions concerning your universe, your world, and your people. You have said that the universe from which you came has `countless’ suns and many habitable worlds. How many suns? How many worlds? How many habitable worlds? How does your universe compare with this one?”

Friday struggled to answer. He wanted to do it right, with every nerve, with every brain cell, with every ounce of his strength and concentration. But he could not do it. He lacked information. At last he said, “In our universe, stars are organized into large groups called galaxies . Each galaxy contains many billions of stars. One star in every ten of our own galaxy has planets around it. One planet in a thousand is able to support life like our kind and yours. There are theories to explain why planets converge toward common life-supporting properties, but I do not understand them. We have little knowledge of any galaxy except the one that our own sun is in, but we think that they are all similar in their ability to create planetary systems, and that an equal fraction of planetary systems probably supports life. But I cannot compare with this universe, because I do not know the properties of this universe.”