Peter Hamilton - Pandora's Star

“Why would they hold out on us?”

“God knows. But then there’s a great deal about this which doesn’t seem logical.”

“All right, I’ll add it to my list.”

Wilson’s e-butler announced that the wormhole connecting Half Way to Far Away had begun the ten-hour active phase of its cycle. The unisphere established a link to the small data network in Armstrong City. From there, a solitary landline carried the call to the Institute.

The big portal at the far end of Wilson’s study fizzed with multicolored static. It cleared to show Director James Timothy Halgarth sitting behind his desk, a fourth-generation member of the family that founded EdenBurg, which gave him a reasonable level of seniority within the dynasty.

He wore a simple pale blue suit of semiorganic fabric that stretched and contracted around his limbs whenever he moved, giving him unrestricted movement. His apparent age was mid-thirty, though he was completely bald, an unusual style in the Commonwealth. Small OCtattoos shimmered platinum and emerald on his cheeks.

“Captain Kime, finally,” the Director said with obvious enthusiasm. “I apologize for the delay in enabling this conference. The Guardians of Selfhood are annoyingly tenacious in their attacks on our landline. The current repairs were only completed three hours ago. No doubt we shall suffer our next cut within a few days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Wilson said. “Wouldn’t you be better off with a satellite relay?”

“We used to have one. The Guardians shot it down, and its three replacements. It’s actually more cost-effective to have a landline and keep a repair crew permanently on the payroll. Fiber-optic cable is very cheap.”

“I didn’t realize the civil situation was quite so bad on Far Away.”

“It’s not. We’re the only ones suffering from assaults by the Guardians. They are deplorably xenophobic, not to mention violent.”

“I’m not too well briefed on their objectives; I never did pay much attention to conspiracy theories before. They think you’re helping an alien survivor from the arkship, don’t they?”

“Actually, they believe we transported the Starflyer into the Commonwealth, but that’s the general thrust of their argument, yes.”

“I see. They have been releasing a great deal of propaganda about how the Starflyer arranged for the whole Second Chance mission. What I really need to know, from the horse’s mouth as it were, is if it is in any way possible the Marie Celeste did come from the Dyson Pair. Does it have that kind of flight range?”

“In theory, yes. Once the ship accelerates to its flight velocity of point seven two lightspeed, its range is limited only by the amount of fuel it carries to power the force field generators, and indeed the lifetime of the generators themselves. However, our research determined that the actual flight time was five hundred and twenty years. The arkship didn’t come from, or even pass by, the Dyson Pair. It came from somewhere closer.”

“That could be a planet which didn’t have the kind of protective barrier the Dyson Pair possessed,” Oscar said. “They couldn’t defend themselves against whatever was threatening the Dyson aliens, so they left?”

“We can speculate on the reason for the flight as much as you like,” the Director said. “As we don’t yet know which star the arkship came from, we can hardly determine anything for certain. It could have originated from inside Commonwealth space for all we know.”

“What about if the Marie Celeste species was the reason for the enclosure?” Wilson asked.

“I’m sorry,” the Director said. “I don’t follow your reasoning.”

“If more than one arkship set off from its origin star, the civilization at the Dyson Pair could be defending themselves from the arkship aliens. After all, look what the Marie Celeste did to Far Away’s star when they arrived there.”

“Ah, the mega-flare. Yes, I suppose that’s a valid argument, although I don’t see why the barriers would remain on for such a long time. But we do believe that the sterilization of Far Away was an unfortunate side effect. The flare was only triggered to act as the power source for the message.”

“That’s one hell of a side effect.”

“You have to take the alien viewpoint. They triggered the flare to communicate across the entire galaxy. Whatever machine manipulated the star into flaring then went on to modify the emission into a coherent radio signal powerful enough to be detected as far away as the Magellanic Clouds. We humans certainly picked it up easily enough, you barely needed a dish when the signal reached Damaran, let alone the SETI scanners they were using back then.”

“But nobody knows what they were saying,” Wilson observed. “We’ve had a hundred and eighty years to decode the signal, and I’m not aware of any breakthrough yet. They must have been broadcasting back to their own home planet.”

“That’s certainly one theory proposed by the Institute, Captain. We have a hundred more if you have the time to listen. All we can do is work through the wreckage and try to put together as many pieces of the puzzle as possible. One day we shall have our answers. Regrettably, it won’t be in the near future.”

“You must have some idea where they came from,” Oscar said. “If they traveled at point seven lightspeed for five hundred years that gives you an origin point roughly three hundred and fifty light-years from Far Away. Surely you can match a star to the light spectrum in the ship’s life-support section?”

“That would be difficult, Mr. Monroe, the tanks had a multispectrum illumination source. They weren’t trying to match their home star’s emission.”

“Tanks?”

The Director’s face displayed mild disappointment. “There was no planetary surface environment replicated inside the Marie Celeste. The starship carried tanks. As far as we can tell from the residue, they were filled with water and a type of monocellular algae.”

“It was an aquatic species?” Wilson was fascinated. He’d never done any research into the arkship. Far Away had been on his list of worlds he wanted to visit in his sabbatical life.

“Again, that is one theory,” James Halgarth said. “There were no remnants of advanced creatures in the tanks, and we have never identified any such species in Far Away’s ocean. Another theory is that the Marie Celeste is actually an automated seedship. It was programmed to sterilize whatever habitable world it found, and seed it with genetic samples from its own world ready for its builders to colonize once the alienforming was complete.”

“Another good reason to throw up a barrier,” Wilson said.

“I doubt it, Captain. Firstly, if you have the technology to erect the kind of barrier found at the Dyson Pair, then you certainly have the capability to deactivate a robot ship before it begins its in-system mission. Secondly, it is a dreadfully flawed method of interstellar colonization. The resources spent on constructing such a ship are enormous. And it didn’t work. The flare killed off most but not all of Far Away’s native life, yet no trace has been found of any nonnative life. And if the Marie Celeste is one of a fleet, then where are all the other flares presumably set off by the rest of the ships? Thirdly, if you are a space-faring civilization intent on spreading out of your own solar system, then you will be constantly improving your technology. Whether you will develop faster-than-light travel is questionable. But certainly better ships than the Marie Celeste can be built, and the second wave would overtake the first and travel farther. Why haven’t we seen any other ships from the species which launched theMarie Celeste ? I’m afraid, gentlemen, that we are presented with a unique puzzle with Far Away. It is as the saying goes: a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But I must conclude, it has nothing to do with the Dyson Pair.”