Without recourse to a chamber orchestra, humans could not begin to reproduce Puppeteer languages. Puppeteers, fortunately, managed English without difficulty.
Approaching an intersection, Sigmund’s entourage met six people coming down the corridor from the opposite direction. Among the newcomers was a pallid, white-haired woman. Tall despite her pronounced stoop, she towered over her uniformed escorts. Turning the corner, the two groups merged.
“Hello, Alice,” Sigmund said. Meeting her here did not surprise him. Whatever motivated pulling him out of disgrace and retirement would merit retrieving her, too. But he had not spoken to Alice in over a century; seeing her so old was a shock.
Alice, coldly, said nothing.
They halted before a well-guarded entrance: the situation room. Sigmund knew this place all too well, having spent far too many days and nights there. Alice, as his deputy, too. One of their escorts pointed, unnecessarily, to the lockers on the right of the doors. Shielding in the walls, floor, and ceiling blocked unauthorized transmissions, but security also demanded that no one inside make illicit recordings. After Sigmund, Alice, and Julia deposited their comps in lockers and initialized the biometric pads with their handprints, a guard opened a door and waved them through.
Donald Norquist-Ng, minister of the New Terran Defense Forces, presided from one end of the long oval conference table. He was short, gaunt, and dour, with eyebrows like wooly yellow caterpillars. He sat stiffly, and rising to his feet to point into a tactical display, he moved ponderously, too. The man was not yet even a hundred; the stiffness was all for effect: would-be gravitas that struggled even to achieve pretension.
As Sigmund, Alice, and Julia entered, Norquist-Ng glanced up. His eyes slid over them without acknowledgment, and the session went on without pausing for introductions. Sigmund thought he recognized some of the faces around the table from the 3-V.
Current events held no interest for Sigmund, but what little he knew about the current minister suggested a Napoleon wannabe. Not that anyone on this world had heard of Napoleon. The Puppeteers had never admitted to their servants knowing … anything about humanity, its origins, or its culture. Even English — irregular verbs, illogical spellings, and all — had been designed by their selfless patrons. So, anyway, the slaves had once been taught.
The table offered no empty chairs. Julia found them seats against a wall, among the aides, adjutants, and flunkies, while the discussion continued.
This was not Sigmund’s first crisis and he thought he could bring himself up to speed. For all the tech improvements since his era, nothing meaningful had changed: too much data still spewed from too many displays. Star charts. Sensor scans. Ship statuses. Weapon inventories. Lists of speculations.
“… Compromise of the sensor array. Our security experts continue to search for the means of intrusion. Regrettably they have yet…”
“… Obviously spurious data. If ships were near, we would have found them by…”
“… Once we learned to leave the galaxy alone, it’s been content to return the favor.”
Sigmund let it all wash over him, categorizing the big themes, itemizing the points of contention, winnowing facts from assumptions. Alice, her lips pursed, her forehead furrowed, appeared to be doing much the same.
“… Audit trails in the intrusion-detection software…”
“… Another patrol ship reports finding nothing…”
He and Alice had yet to be recognized, much less invited to contribute. Were they here to help? Or, Julia’s earnest plea notwithstanding, had they been summoned so that Norquist-Ng could say later, if things should go wrong, “We even brought in the off-world experts.”
The latter, of course. Futzy fools.
The New Terrans Sigmund had been kidnapped to protect knew that the universe was a dangerous place. But that generation, the independence generation, had passed. Their children were gone, too, or retired, isolationism had long been the norm, and in their hiatus from history, Norquist-Ng and his ilk had come to mistake good luck for wisdom.
Sigmund was the only person on this world to have heard of ostriches. No matter: to deny danger by burying one’s head in the sand was folly. He stood, loudly clearing his throat.
Norquist-Ng turned to glower.
“If I may summarize,” Sigmund said. “One hyperspace ripple, immense beyond all precedent. You don’t believe sensors and patrol ships could fail to find any of the many vessels emerging from hyperspace. And you don’t see how sensors and patrol ships could overlook that many ships sneaking up on us through normal space, to startle us with a massive ripple when they dropped back into hyperspace. So you infer — ”
“We conclude, Mr. Ausfaller,” the minister snapped, “that someone compromised the sensor network. It’s the only logical explanation. Helping us to find the security breach, if you were not informed, is why you are here. The sole reason. Now if you will — ”
“You’re wrong,” Sigmund interrupted right back. “Because another explanation is staring us in the face.” The explanation you’re all too timid to imagine. Or, perhaps, too sane.
“And this explanation is?” Norquist-Ng asked.
“That the sensor data mean just what they say,” Sigmund said, “notwithstanding the absence of nearby ships.”
Alice nodded. “We need to consider the possibility.”
“Hyperspace ripples without hyperdrive ships,” someone stage-whispered. “Nonsense.”
“Enlighten me,” Norquist-Ng said, somewhat more pragmatically.
“Is a Jeeves present?” Sigmund asked. “I need some calculations done.”
“Yes, sir,” declared a voice from a ceiling speaker.
This wasn’t any Jeeves that Sigmund knew. Sir carried no hint of an English butler; this AI sounded like a junior officer addressing his superior.
Hyperspace-emergence ripples, like light and gravity, dropped off rapidly with distance. Sigmund asked, “Do I have this right? The ripple’s peak amplitude maxed out sensors at all locations? No discernible attenuation measured anywhere within the array’s volume?”
“Correct, sir. Saturation strength throughout.”
“Assume a single emergence ripple just powerful enough to overload all sensors throughout the array. What’s the nearest to New Terra that such a source could be located?”
The pause for calculation was all but imperceptible. “A bit over five light-years.”
“That’s ridiculous — ”
Sigmund cut off the freckle-faced aide. “And a stronger source for the ripple could be even more distant.”
“Correct, sir,” Jeeves said.
The early-warning sensors took bearings on any sightings. “Continuing to assume a single source, Jeeves, what is its triangulated point of origin?”
“Any differences in bearings are meaningless,” the same aide huffed. “With the sensors overloaded, the directional data are suspect.”
“Jeeves, please answer the question,” Sigmund persisted.
“All bearings point in more or less the same direction. The variations are smaller than the known tolerances in angular measurement.”
“Averaged across all the sensors, random differences will cancel out,” Sigmund guessed. “Right?”
“To an unknown degree, sir.”
“Caveat noted, Jeeves. Do the calculation anyway, please.”
“I have a result, sir, but that inferred point of origin is subject to considerable uncertainty.”