Caine shrugged. “From what I hear, he’s usually less prickly than this. But either way, he’s the real deal when it comes to high-energy physics.”
“But I thought you and Richard had your doubts about his being assigned to the delegation.”
“Yeah, we did. We were worried that he might be an overpraised heir-apparent to the family’s reputation for genius. He’s got a lot to prove if he’s going to be someone other than the nephew of the Wasserman who invented-as much as any one person did-the shift drive.”
“But he’s got the goods?”
“And then some. Mark my words: he’s going to outdo his uncle. He’s rough around the edges, but in all our meetings, it’s been obvious he really knows his stuff. He can almost see the next generation drive.”
“So in the Wasserman family, the lightning of genius struck twice.”
“Looks like it.” Half of the screens starting scrolling off reams of data. Caine stepped forward. “What’ve we got?”
Downing gestured. “Come take a look: first visuals of the Dornaani’s arrival.”
In the largest screen, there was a sudden flash and then a blurred shape arrowed out of view to the left.
Lemuel-by dint of expertise-had effectively taken control of the suite. “Get me the first frame image of that ship, and zoom in on it. Ladar 3-D interpolation and densitometer sweeps?”
“Working through them now.”
Caine leaned forward to study the still image that popped up. “Lemuel, did that ship put out any thrust-did it accelerate-as it arrived?”
“Nope.”
“So it came in moving at that speed?”
Lemuel turned around, a smile on his face and one eyebrow raised. “Yeah-so you understand.”
Caine nodded, staring at the screen again. Opal cleared her throat. “Why is it important that their ship came in moving?”
“Because ours can’t do that. In order to achieve the power levels necessary to effect a shift, our shift carriers have to both accelerate to near-relativistic velocities and then use the energy output of an antimatter reactor. The shift drive uses up every bit of that energy, so when our ships come back into space normal, they’re at full stop.”
“So that means-?”
Lemuel’s tone was almost congenial. “So that means that the Dornaani either don’t need as much energy, or are much better at generating it, because they just came out of shift moving at one hell of a clip. The mere fact that they have any exit velocity means they can generate excess energy-kinetic energy, in this case-before shifting. That means that they might not even need the weeks of near-relativistic preacceleration that our ships require. And here’s another indicator of just how far ahead of us they are: take a close look at the hull design.”
Caine did: it wasn’t at all akin to the long modular frames of Earth’s gargantuan shift carriers. Shaped like a blunted arrowhead with down-angled edges, the Dornaani vessel was essentially a delta-shaped design. As Caine studied the finer details, he noticed what seemed to be vents or intakes on the underside of the ship’s drooping “wings.” “Are those-?”
“Fuel scoops, yeah.”
“And the significance of that is what?” Elena’s question announced her arrivaclass="underline" Caine turned, saw Durniak, Trevor, and Hwang file in behind her.
Wasserman leaned far back in his chair. “Well, if the Dornaani can use any gas giant-and maybe any water world-as a gas station where they can tank up on hydrogen, then their experience with interstellar travel is going to be entirely different than ours. In every one of our systems, we have to maintain a multi-billion dollar infrastructure to provide fueling and cargo handling for our shift-carriers. But with a ship like theirs, you could conceivably go anywhere that there’s a gas giant insystem. Interstellar travel made fast, cheap, and easy.”
Trevor squinted at the arrowhead image of the Dornaani ship. “No sign of fuel booms or receptacles for tanker interface?”
“Maybe theirs don’t look like ours, or are hidden, but I’m guessing they work with internal fuel only. The architecture is all wrong for drop tanks.”
Caine turned to look at the ship again. “So that tiny hull also holds all the fuel they need.”
“Looks like it.”
“So how in the hell…?” Caine let his astonishment swallow the many different technological puzzles posed by the ship they were staring at.
“How the hell, indeed.” Lemuel shook his head, kept scanning the data.
Downing frowned. “It’s disconcerting that they can put that kind of performance in this little box.”
“And it’s a damned mystery box,” interrupted Lemuel. “We’re hitting it with ladar scans, but I’m getting garbage back.”
“Garbage?”
“Yeah. Beam reflection is shot to hell. I’m just getting a froth of photons pushed back at me. And I’ve got no return at all on the radar-no, wait: radar is registering their hull, now.”
Caine studied the screens; he couldn’t make much sense of the reams of data. But he had a guess. He leaned toward the lieutenant who was the suite’s ranking officer. “Tell me: as you got radar contact just now, did it look like anything you’ve seen before?”
She thought for a moment. “No-wait, yes: like when you’re trying to get through electronic countermeasures and then the target’s ECM goes offline. The garbage straightens out and you’ve suddenly got clean data. Except here there wasn’t any signal at all-and then, all of a sudden, there was.”
Lemuel turned around. “What are you thinking?”
“That they decided to give us a better look by turning off their electronic stealth measures.”
“But active stealth measures would put out an energy signature-and we’re not getting any electromagnetic emissions at all from their ship.”
“That’s because they must have the system built right into their hull materiaclass="underline" probably some kind of electrobonded matrix-”
Lemuel’s down-curving eyebrows reversed upward into an arch of surprise. “Sure, some kind of radar absorbing and reflecting material that only works when they’re pushing current through it. Like stealth materials, only you’ve got an off-switch, since the antiradar molecular structures-or whatever-only have that property when they’re getting juiced.” Lemuel smiled at Caine. “And now, I’m thinking the same thing regarding the problems with our ladar. Probably some kind of hull coating that works like a scattering prism: breaks up coherent light. Might be a good defense against lasers, too.”
“Could be-but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Hey-it’s like you said about the Marine sergeant: I’m just doing my job.”
Caine smiled back. Good: Wasserman may occasionally be a jackass, but he doesn’t hold a grudge. And he may be right in another way about the parallel between him and the Marine sergeant: for all we know, the information he’s gathering in this dull little room may ultimately save us all.
The external commo screen was suddenly bright with data. Caine moved toward it, announced, “We’ve got activity on tight-beam commo,” and thought: here I go, Speaker to Aliens.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
MENTOR
Downing turned toward Caine. “What is it?”
“Don’t know yet. If I’m reading this screen correctly, the signal we’re receiving is high-speed, high-compression encrypted.”
Downing turned to the suite’s operator. “Is it the same data protocol as their first communique, four months ago?”
“Looks like it, sir. Decompressing and decoding now.”
“Excellent,” affirmed Visser with a decisive nod. “Mr. Wasserman, you will please continue to share your findings with us so we can collectively assess their strategic significance.”