“Kyle, open up the cameras,” said Sandra. “Let me see out!”
“Just a second,” I said, breathing hard. That star in the center looked kind of—big. Too big.
“Socorro, what is the class of the main star in this system?”
“The closest star is spectral class B.”
I blinked in surprise. “A blue giant?”
“Can I see it?”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped. “Socorro, increase the hull thickness. I need more anti-radiation shielding.”
The ship hesitated. “Insufficient mass available.”
“Increase the mass around the bridge, then. Thicken the walls and make the densest wall the one facing the blue giant.”
“Specify mass increase.”
“I want it thick enough to stop all radiation from that star,” I said.
“Mass unavailable.”
“Cannibalize the mass from the troop cargo hold,” I ordered. “And from primary holds A and B. Begin shielding now. Get it as thick as you can with available mass.”
“Working.”
“What’s wrong, Kyle?” asked Sandra leaning forward in her jumpseat.
I turned to her and gave her a shaky smile. I tried not to look as if I was sweating—but I was. “I should have thought of this. I should have thought of a lot of things. We came out near a blue giant.”
“So?”
“So, they are big stars that pour out a lot of radiation. We could be frying.”
“Wouldn’t we feel that?”
“Probably not instantly.”
Sandra blinked at me and turned to look at the back wall of the ship. There, the wall was bubbling, as if it were a pot of mercury on a stove. I followed her gaze. The wall grew thicker as I watched.
“The ship is moving mass from other parts of the vessel to that wall, in order to protect us.”
“Is it lead?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Just talk to the ship. Keep me from frying.”
I nodded and stared at the wall that bubbled up behind my chair. I imagined the ship had jettisoned all those seats I’d put in the back for carrying troops. So much for that idea.
Sandra made a strangled sound. I snapped my head back to her. Had she gotten a heavy dose? Had she felt it first because I had the pilot’s chair between me and the blazing star behind us? I knew that blue giants could be twenty times as big as our sun, and worse, they could be 100,000 times brighter.
When I looked at Sandra, however, she was pointing at the forward wall. I followed her finger and saw red contacts floating there. Some of them were heading in our direction.
“Identify incoming contacts!” I ordered.
“They are Macro ships. Detailed identification pending. Six vessels are converging on our location.”
“Maybe we can talk to them,” I said, thinking aloud. I’d taken the time to transfer to my ship everything I could from the neural nets of the brainboxes I had available. We’d lost most of the Nano knowledge of the universe when the Nano ships had left us. I constantly berated myself for not having copied Alamo’s big, experienced brainbox and kept it as a backup. What kind of a computer teacher couldn’t be bothered to backup software? Fortunately, this ship had learned enough from the brainboxes that ran the factories on Earth to speak the primitive binary language of the Macros. With my edits to the communication script, we should at least be able to talk to them.
“We’ve got to run, Kyle,” Sandra said.
“Running away may not be our best choice,” I said. “I think they are programmed to be cautious when confronted by brazen behavior. That’s worked so far.”
“You are theorizing with my life.”
“The stakes are much higher than that,” I said. “I’m gambling with our entire species. Let me think for a second.”
I looked at the trajectories of the ships. They seemed to be coming from various planets—one from each. Could they be mining ships?
“Are the incoming ships armed, Socorro?” I asked.
“Unknown.”
“Do they have any weapons ports you can detect at this time?”
“Their range is too great for configuration data.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How far away are they? How long will they take to get into our weapons range?”
“The closest is approximately three hours from longest effective range.”
I relaxed a fraction. We had some time to think. I studied the schematic of the star system. “How long would it take to visit the closest of these neighboring bodies?”
“One hour.”
I nodded appreciatively.
“No way, Kyle. Don’t you even think about it,” said Sandra.
“Socorro, put us on a course for the nearest planetary body,” I said, not looking at Sandra. “Execute.”
“Kyle, dammit, we should just run.”
“Why? They already know we’re here. We can scout a planet then come back to the ring and run before they can even reach us.”
“You want to know why we shouldn’t spend a few hours sniffing around in their territory? I can’t believe you even have to ask, but I’ll give you a reason: What if they turn the ring off, Kyle? Did you think about that?”
“Good point. But I still think it’s worth the risk. We came here to scout the system. We’ve learned a lot—but I want to know more.”
“Do you really want to restart the war?”
“If we’ve done that by coming here, then we need the intelligence all the more.”
Sandra looked terrified. I began to worry about her health. This little adventure seemed causing her a lot of stress.
“When we get home, I think you need a vacation,” I told her.
“Yeah. That’s what I need. Let’s take our next radiation bath on the beach.”
For an hour, the red contacts grew closer. More appeared as well. There were nearly twenty by the time we reached the dark, gloomy rock we’d been flying toward.
“Socorro, move us behind the planet so the blue giant is on the far side.”
We were whisked away to the night side of the barren, nameless world. Huge growths of crystal loomed toward us. I could only imagine the treasure trove of strange minerals they represented. Perhaps heavy elements that were fantastically rare on Earth would be commonplace here.
“Ship positioned,” Socorro said.
When we were shaded by the planet, on the dark side of it and thus shielded from the radiance of the blue giant, we went into the observatory where Sandra had first stowed away. I scanned everything and took many pictures, storing them for the spooks back home to analyze. There were some amber contacts on this nameless rock with us. Ground-based machines, the Socorro told me. I had the ship take us to examine one of them close-up. It was busy sucking at the surface of the planet. Leeching valuable minerals. It was a mining robot, something bigger than any machine I’d ever seen. It was nearly a mile long and looked like a beetle with twenty spherical wheels. The wheels weren’t normal either, being covered with vicious spikes. Each spike was fifty yards long. Some of the spikes were broken. All were gleaming and worn from stabbing into rubble.
“Kyle, that is about the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Sandra after we watched the spike-wheeled robot churn and probe for several minutes. The machine ignored us completely as we glided around and observed it closely.
“Only another robot could love it,” I agreed.
“The Macros must need lots of steel to construct more of themselves,” she said.
“These machines aren’t hunting for steel. Common elements like iron, nickel and carbon are easy to come by. I think they are hunting for heavy metals—radioactives and unusual alloys.”