Jack McDevitt: Cauldron

Eagle’s real name was Jack Hopewell. He was a Native American, the mission’s astrophysicist, the department chairman at the World Sciences Institute. He claimed to be a full-blooded Cherokee, but he always smiled when he said it, as if he didn’t really mean it. François thought there might be a German back there somewhere, and maybe an Irishman.

Tolya was Anatoly Vasiliev, a nanotech specialist from the University of Moscow. She was on the verge of retirement, had never seen an omega, and had pulled every string she could find to get assigned to this mission.

Leah responded with that very precise Oxford voice: “ François, what’s going on? ”

He explained, while—one by one—the three indicator lamps brightened. Everybody was belted down. Ben slipped into his seat, and the harness closed around him. “All right, guys,” François said, “I’ll let you know when we’re done. This is going to take a few minutes.” He switched back to the AI. “When you’re ready, Bill.”

The Jenkins was, of course, moving in the same direction as the cloud, pacing it. François extracted the yoke from the control panel and pushed it gently forward. The engines grew louder, and the cloudscape began to move aft. Swirls of mist accelerated, swept beneath the glow of the ship’s lights, and blurred. Bill announced he’d lost contact with the probe.

It took a while, but eventually the horizon approached.

“ The omega is still turning, ” said Bill.

More electricity flashed through the depths. To François, the cloud seemed alive . It was a notion that had respectability in some quarters. No one had really been able to demonstrate the validity of the proposition one way or the other. And François would readily have admitted he had no evidence to support his impression. But the thing felt alive. That was why he didn’t entirely trust the assurances of the engineers who told him the Jenkins , because of its rounded edges, was safe. Who could really predict what one of these monsters might do?

They soared out past the rim, the leading edge of the cloud. “See anything yet, Bill?” he asked.

“ Negative. But the turn is slowing. It’s settling in on a vector. ” Bill adjusted course and continued to accelerate.

François looked out at the stars. There was no nearby sun. No nearby planet. Nowhere it could be going. “You figure that thing can see farther than we can, Ben?”

Ben sighed. “Don’t know. We still don’t know much. But it has potentially a much larger reception area than we do. So yes, it probably can see farther. Maybe not optically, but in some sense.”

The cloud was dwindling behind them, becoming part of the night, a dark presence blocking off the stars, illuminated only by periodic lightning. It could have been a distant storm.

“Still nothing?” asked François.

“ Not yet, ” said Bill. “ Whatever it is, it’s dead ahead. The omega has begun to decelerate. ”

He eased back on the yoke and opened the allcom: “Going to cruise, folks. If you need to get anything done, this would be a good time, but don’t go too far from your couch.”

Minutes later Leah’s head pushed through the hatch. “Nothing yet?”

“Not a thing,” said Ben.

Leah was in her nineties. She was tall and graceful, with dark brown hair and matching eyes. A good partner for Ben, given to trading quips with him, and easily, as far as François could see, his intellectual equal. “Okay,” she said, starting back. “Let us know if you see something.”

François had known Leah for thirty years, had hauled her to various destinations during his Academy days, before she’d married Ben. Before she’d known him, as a matter of fact. He’d made a play for her once, in those halcyon times, shortly after his first marriage had gone south. But she hadn’t been interested. He suspected she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to hold on to him.

A half hour slipped past while Bill sought the reason for the omega’s course change. François began to wonder if the AI had misread the omega. Ben had fallen silent, was going over some notes, and François was sitting with his head thrown back, half-asleep, when Bill stirred. You could tell Bill was about to deliver an announcement of some significance, because it was inevitably preceded by an electronic warble, the AI’s equivalent of clearing his throat. “ François, object ahead. Range 3.4 million kilometers. ”

Ben immediately looked up. Studied the display. “What is it?” he asked.

“ It appears to be a ship. ”

“A ship?”

“ Yes. An artificial construct of some kind. It is not under power. ”

Ben turned to look out the viewport. “François, who else is out here?”

“Nobody. Not supposed to be anybody.”

What the hell? “Bill, what kind of ship?”

“ I don’t know. We’re too far away. ”

It looked like a collection of cubes, or boxes, of varying sizes connected by tubes. Some of the tubes ran straight from one box to another, others angled off in various directions. None curved. It was all right angles, a target made for an omega.

The thing resembled a child’s toy, a puzzle to be manipulated until all the cubes lined up one way or another. Despite Bill’s assessment, it was most definitely not a ship. “ I was in error, ” said Bill. “ I see no visible means of propulsion. Furthermore, if there were a method not apparent to us, I doubt the thing would hold together under acceleration. ”

“A space station of some kind?” asked Ben.

“Possibly a habitat,” said François. “I really don’t know what to make of it.”

“What’s it doing out here?”

François gave them a ride. With the cloud coming up in the rear, he wanted to get to the object as quickly as he could. So he accelerated, then threw on the brakes. He burned fuel heedlessly. Ben grinned down at him. “That’s good, François. You’re learning.”

“Bill,” he said, “how much time do we have?”

“ The omega is still decelerating. If it continues to slow at its present rate, after we arrive, we will have approximately twenty-three minutes before the cloud comes within strike distance. ”

Ben stared at the object and looked pained. “François, it’s alien .”

“I know.”

“It’s priceless.”

“I know that, too, Ben.”

“Can we save it? Push it aside?”

“How big is it, Bill?”

“ I am not able to estimate its mass. But the largest of the segments is eleven times the diameter of the ship. It dwarfs us. ”

“Couldn’t we accelerate it?” said Ben. “It’s big, I know, but it’s adrift.”

François counted nine boxes. “It wouldn’t matter. We have no way to control its flight. The thing would just roll off to the side when we started pushing. All that would happen is that the goddam omega would adjust course.”

Eagle and Tolya had crowded into the hatchway. Leah was behind them. “We have to do something,” Tolya said. “We can’t just let this happen.”

“Damn right,” said Eagle.

François raised his hands. “We don’t have much choice. For what it’s worth, we’re recording everything.”

“That’s not worth much ,” Leah said.

“There’s nothing else we can do.” He pulled at one ear. “Bill.”

“ Yes, François. ”

“Is the thing hollow?”

“ It appears to be. ”

Leah broke in. “When we get there, we’ll have a few minutes. We need to find a way in.”

François squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. That’s the last thing we want to do.”