Solar Express (44 page)

“What's the position of the artifact with regard to the orbit of Venus?”

“2114 FQ5 crossed the orbit of Venus last night at 2133 UTC.”

“That's even earlier than you calculated from the Mauna Kea data, isn't it?”

“Twelve hours earlier.”

“It shouldn't be doing that.”

Marcel did not respond to that, obviously, because Alayna had offered an opinion and not asked a question.

She did need to find out if the optical array saw what Chris had reported.

“Marcel, are there any changes in the image of 2114 FQ5?”

“There are now no reflected wavelengths shorter than 370 nanometers.”

That certainly confirmed Chris's observation. “Are you certain?”
Dumb question!
The AI was connected to all the monitoring systems. “Is there any indication of what might have caused that change?”

“There is not, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

First the inbound speed issue, and now this! Chris was right beside the artifact, and none of his instruments recorded anything but an inert object. Yet what was occurring with the alien artifact was impossible, according to present theory.
Not necessarily theory,
she corrected herself. Since something was happening, it had to be undetected or undetectable by any instruments or equipment trained on the object. In turn, that meant it was concealed within the object by the impermeability …
Except we don't know of any way that could work without some external evidence—heat, radiation, energy flows … something.
In turn, that suggested some aspect of current theory wasn't either inclusive enough, overlooked a possibility, or was wrong.
Or the theory is right, and the builders of the artifact found a way around the theory.

Alayna didn't like any of the possibilities, but there wasn't anything she could do about it at the moment. “Please calculate the probable position of 2114 FQ5 at 1200 UTC each day for the next month, with the projected distance from the sun at that time. Put a copy in my incoming.”

“Yes, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

Alayna forced her attention from the alien artifact, the Solar Express that was living up to its name, and to the other matter at hand—the issue of the man who wasn't there, but was—the question of how to get a better insight on the sun's multi-fractal mini-granulations. And she needed to get on with finalizing her own observations when she got her block of time on the solar array later that afternoon—an unexpected cancellation—because she hadn't anticipated having the extra time.

After that, she had more repairs to make, this time in the cargo lock, and she really needed to replace an entire section of seals before the arrival of the “pack train” from Lunara Mining on Thursday.

The little repairs were continual, and they added up.
But that's really why you're here, so far as the Foundation's concerned.
And she needed to reply to Chris, but she could do that later, after her own work … and the repairs.

Yet somehow the alien artifact was working, or so it seemed, after thousands of years, and Daedalus Base needs constant attention after less than thirty-five years?

She forced her thoughts back to what other variables might have a regressive correlation …

 

59

HOTNEWS!

19 N
OVEMBER
2114

[Image Deleted For Off-Earth Transmission]

Chancellor Erek Rumikov's back in bed … we mean back on the job … rumor has it that the so-called Scottish separatists who wounded him two weeks ago were separatists in a different sense—separated spouses of Scots who didn't take kindly to Rumikov's attention to their exes. You'll notice we didn't mention gender, either. Rumikov's not talking about it, either, and no one's been able to find the attackers. Could be that no one wants to.

[Image Deleted]

It's getting crowded out there in space! Around that alien artifact, anyway. Word is that a Sinese “research” ship reached the Solar Express. No one's talking, not publicly, about the fact that it's armored and twice the size of anything else floating around out there. Except it's not floating. The Solar Express is sprinting toward the sun. That's what the very noted John Dorcaster, head of the Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, claims. We told you it was an express, right from the first. Remember that when it goes up in solar flames!

[Image Deleted]

Ramona Cunnard's not happy. Not at all. If you don't remember the name, well, she's Kitten on
Sex and the Sin-Team
, and she's anything but pleased to find out that her partner's taken up with a cougar, the female type. Worst of all, that cougar is none other than Elise Read, and she's the Kitten's agent. Lots of claws and screeches. More entertaining than
Sex and the Sin-Team
.

[Image Deleted]

Talk about takeovers! The evangelical cooperative BibleTruth has just purchased the century-old Creation Museum from the ailing Answers in Genesis Foundation for one billion dollars. That's right. That's the biblical theme park that allows visitors to experience the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and be chased through the Sinai desert by a tyrannosaurus rex after barely escaping the Red Sea swallowing the Egyptian army under the sinister gaze of one of the pharaohs Ramses. Must still be a lot of dollars in being a true believer!

[Image Deleted]

That school explosion in Xigase? Chinese Minister of Defense Wu Gong claims the school, holding more than a hundred children, was destroyed by an Indra missile launched from Bhutan. Indian Prime Minister Ravindra denies the charge. He claims that if India wanted to target anyone in the Sinese Federation, it would have been Minister Wu Gong. Just kidding! That's what the Prime Minister should have said. He only denied that it was a missile and said that nothing came from either Bhutan or India. Rumors abound, but one source claims it was a natural gas explosion. For the Sinese, everything is someone else's plot.

[Image Deleted]

The last free-floating section of the west Antarctic ice sheet broke free yesterday … The remnants of the Thwaites Glacier collapsed. A chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island is now drifting away from Antarctica. Between 2110 and 2113, the once massive ice sheet retreated almost fifty kilometers. Scientists are forecasting another ten meters of ocean level rise in the next century. What's next? Beachfront property in Philadelphia or Dallas? Swamps in California's central valley?

 

60

R
ECON
T
HREE

23 N
OVEMBER
2114

By Thursday Tavoian's spy-eyes had investigated another thirty-three hexagonal chambers, none of which were open, without finding anything new or different. In the process, he'd lost two more of the large spy-eyes. Exactly how, he had no idea, since neither returned. One of the other spy-eyes had captured a momentary image of one of the errant remotes, wobbling side to side for several moments before suddenly heading down a passageway not on its programmed route.

The Sinese continued to send their remotes and the crewed tug/sled to various parts of the artifact. The AI reported occasional flashes of light, reflected or scattered laser beams. Spectrographic analysis of the two flashes that reached Recon three without spreading revealed the same elements that Tavoian had discovered. Faithfully Tavoian sent daily reports to the colonel, and just as regularly received requests for any additional data or information Tavoian could muster.

The ship's AI had calculated that Recon three had crossed the orbit of Venus late on the night of the twentieth. With a continuing increase in speed over what solar gravity could account for, the artifact and Recon three were now over eight million kays farther inside the orbit of Venus.

If not farther,
thought Tavoian as he readied the ISV and the four spy-eyes for their next exploration mission. At the rate he was losing spy-eyes, he just might have four of the ten large ones left by the time Recon three needed to depart the vicinity of the artifact.

By 0743, the ISV was headed to the side of the dark green expanse directly opposite where the AI rover had discovered both the possible ship launching bay and the passageway leading to the drive chamber. Given the use of hexagons by the builders of the artifact, Tavoian had decided to investigate the areas that would have formed a hexagon with one vertex located at the point of the passage already discovered. He would have made that expedition on Wednesday, but the Sinese space-sled had been hovering in the area; so Tavoian had sent the slightly larger ISV with the remaining laser to study as many of the circles as possible.

The circles had bothered him because, outside of the circle caused by the severing of the artifact from its original sphere or spacecraft, there were no other circles anywhere. The only explanation he could come up with for their explanation was that the hexagons below had projected some form of energy in a hexagonal field, but that field had spread slightly and manifested itself as a circle in whatever effect it had upon the substance of the hull. In terms of the physics he knew he wasn't sure that made sense, but he mentally termed it a working hypothesis, until he came up with a better explanation.

While the ship's AI monitored the ISV after it released the programmed spy-eyes, Tavoian positioned himself roughly on the control couch, strapped loosely in place, and began to compile, once again, what he had discovered about the artifact, a listing of the obvious, the apparently mundane, and the not-so-mundane:

The materials of both hull and interior were impregnable, and showed no impact damage from thousands of years in space.

Some force had sheared the artifact from a larger body of which the artifact appeared to constitute less than five percent.

The hull was largely silicon and silver, but fabricated in a fashion that made it harder than any human-created material and a nearly perfect mirror, but finished with microscopic diffraction gratings, impossible as retaining impregnability seemed for such a finish.

The interior was largely carbon, again fabricated in a fashion that made it harder than any human-created material.

Attempting to sever a “thread” of the hull material, roughly some eighty micrometers thick, released enough energy in vacuum to vaporize the closest parts of the tunable laser.

The chambers were flat hexagons, almost all of which were one of two sizes, the majority having sides of somewhat less than twenty-five meters, the larger having sides of somewhat less than fifty meters. They were arranged in a fashion with the flat sides roughly parallel to the hull, suggesting the artifact could have been rotated to provide artificial gravity.

The material comprising the hexagons was nonconductive, except at certain select wavelengths where it exhibited apparent photoconductivity.

Several days inside the orbit of Earth, the hull began to absorb electromagnetic wavelengths in the UV range and shorter. There was no discernible increase in the hull temperature and no additional radiated heat or energy.

All functional technology had to be within the impermeable wall structures, but had been able to be extruded when required.

There did not appear to be pressure doors sealing various sections of the artifact.

If the crystals were frozen atmosphere, that atmosphere was largely nitrogen and oxygen, with a larger-than-expected component of argon.

There was at least one large and empty chamber that appeared to have been an airlock, large enough to hold a spacecraft as large as Recon three.

The “drive” chambers contained thirty-two hexagonal gray columns. On the exterior hull, there were thirty-two circles that appeared to coincide with the placement of the columns beneath the hull. The circles reflected all wavelengths of visible light except one, and one of UV not visible to most human eyes, a difference of two nanometers, precisely. And the circles were one point five percent less reflective than the rest of the hull.

The only less than common elements detected, and each in only one location, were rhenium and palladium.

With no detectable radiation, or other energy, the artifact was accelerating toward the sun faster than accounted for by solar mass/gravitation.

After close to an hour, Tavoian could not think of anything else. He also knew he'd think of more in time. He hoped he would.

He also felt guilty, in a fashion, for not sending out the other ISV on some sort of investigation or mission, but his stocks of thruster propellant were now below forty percent, and he didn't want to use up any more, not immediately, unless he had a better purpose than randomly pursuing investigations.
Maybe the spy-eyes will find something new.

THE CONCENTRATION FOR CO2 HAS REACHED ZERO POINT NINE PERCENT.

Tavoian frowned. That was two-tenths of a percent over the maximum recommended long-term SMAC level. The atmosphere maintenance system was supposed to be able to handle five weeks without strain. “Supposed to” wasn't the same as doing it, and not many fusionjets had been continuously inhabited for as long as the more than three weeks he'd been aboard Recon three. “Status of atmosphere maintenance system?”

SYSTEM IS OPERATING NORMALLY. RESERVE AIR SUPPLY IS AT FORTY-FIVE PERCENT.

“Keep me posted if the SMAC level goes up more than another tenth of a percent.”

WILL COMPLY.

The rising SMAC level was a concern, but not urgent.
Not yet.

At that moment, the message indicator flashed, showing three incomings. Tavoian glanced through the senders' names—the news summary, Kit, and Alayna. The news summary could wait.

Although he dreaded reading Kit's message, he decided to begin there.

Dear Chris—

As usual, I'm still worrying about you, wherever you are. The news never seems to get better. Now the Sinese are trying to blame a natural gas explosion on the Indians. That's as if the Indians would waste a missile that costs more than some countries' total environmental improvement budgets on a school in an out-of-the-way mountain town with no military significance. The Indians are suggesting they might use those missiles on personnel targets. If that means high Sinese military officials, I can understand the thought, but what happens to the world then?