It was impressive and even terrifying to think that the inhabitants of this planet had the desire and ability to move and reshape rings and moons.
For that matter, what was this planet’s name? Every window bore the same notation, but in Aggregate lettering and figures. He would have loved to have just that single term translated, though it was entirely possible, given the Aggregates, that their designation for the target world required a string of sixty-odd figures.
Whit decided to just think of it as “Rainbow,” since the progression of its banding seemed to match up with the visible spectrum seen in a rainbow.
Where was Rainbow? Almost certainly very far away. Whit wondered if the planet was a relatively close neighbor of Earth’s, possibly circling Alpha Centauri or some star like that. Probably not. A starship like Keanu could make the voyage from Alpha Centauri to Earth. A rational intelligence would choose that mode over the energy portal, if said energy portal left your departure planet a smoking ruin. . . .
But who ever said the Aggregates were rational? By human standards?
And who lived there? Were its inhabitants machinelike bugs similar to the Aggregates? Or something entirely different?
Maybe this was the home of the Sentries or the Skyphoi, some of the other aliens inhabiting Keanu. Either of them could have been Aggregate enemies.
Or humanoids?
So far Whit had to be satisfied with aerial views, satellite imagery showing broad rivers and immense forests, the usual mountains and plains. The undeveloped areas, if that was what they were, looked much like those of planet Earth, allowing for an unusual color tint (everything seemed more purple than green, though that might have been the Aggregate filtering, not true color). Whit guessed that undeveloped landscapes looked pretty much the same everywhere.
(It also seemed that Rainbow was prone to storms. Every relatively close image had a wall of menacing thunderclouds on the horizon. Wider angles had swirling cyclonic structures in their hearts.)
There were cityscapes, too, though, and these were something else . . . one of them covered an entire continent. Whit had seen images of urban sprawl from space, but human cities had winding rivers and freeways and obvious downtowns and parks and twisty streets.
Rainbow’s giant cities were like . . . well, they reminded him of circuit boards in their angularity and their utter lack of any apparently organic life.
Of course, he was still seeing everything from a great height. He blinked to see if there were other windows or tools—
Oh, much better. Suddenly Whit was falling very fast, like a passenger on a meteoroid or, more likely, some kind of space probe. Given the way the ground was rushing toward him, not a probe expected to be returned.
The image went black.
Whit clicked: Here was another view, from a more stable platform. Now he was flying above a purple Rainbow forest, thunderclouds ahead of him and likely making the ride a bumpy one (the imagery seemed to vibrate).
It was not just a visual experience: Whit could feel stinging wintry wind on his face, hear air rushing past his ears, smell a mossy fragrance so thick it almost choked him.
He spied a formation in the distant mountains . . . a giant dish embedded in a valley with a tall spike of some kind pointing skyward.
That image died abruptly, too.
A new one . . . now Whit skimmed across a body of water, then low tidal land as he approached a city. Unlike a human habitation, there were no suburbs, no gradual transition from open field to town, just an abrupt here you are, flying over blocky golden towers. The wind dropped; he heard a low, rumbling hum; he smelled smoke.
He was swooping low now, barely skirting the tops of the Rainbow buildings. (And unlike human buildings, roofs here seemed to be designed with as much care as the fronts. They probably had some function.)
Suddenly his platform, probably some kind of remotely piloted spycraft, made an abrupt turn and dive . . . now Whit could see creatures in the “streets,” and miracle of miracles, they were humanoid, though slow moving—
“Fifteen minutes.” Whit heard the countdown voice for the first time in three quarters of an hour. Had he been so absorbed in his “tour” of planet Rainbow that he’d missed the other announcements?
He gave the Ring windows more attention. Most were as they had been earlier: static views, graphic representations of power levels and aiming points, all moving in one direction or another.
One quadrant of Whit’s display had an orange overlay, however, and several figures pulsing in red.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a pair of operators emerging from their cubicles. One seemed quite agitated, gesturing so violently that a trio of THE officers immediately appeared.
Followed by a formation of Aggregates. That was never a good sign.
“Whit!” Counselor Kate’s voice hissed in his headset. “Get back to your screen!”
Whit realized he had poked his head up like a prairie dog. He turned away from what was becoming a scuffle and tried to concentrate on his screen, especially his views of planet Rainbow, the city, its slow-moving inhabitants.
He wondered when and how this imagery had been obtained—if Dehm and Carbon-143 were telling the truth, the energy portal was something the Aggregates had never used before. Not only had they never sent themselves or military hardware across the gulf of light-years, they hadn’t sent data, either. Both were subject to the same limitations.
If so, it meant that this imagery was old . . . centuries at least. Or, if the rumors about Keanu’s age were true, millennia.
It was crazy enough to think about invading a planet—though given the Aggregates’ success in taking over a good chunk of Earth, not entirely crazy—but to do so based on information that was current when humans had yet to plant a crop of wheat . . . that was audacious.
The size of Rainbow explained the need for a massive force. (And Whit had seen one tiny window displaying what he believed to be the “order of battle,” with the “portal” opening in three different locations on the planet.)
The tour of the Rainbow city ended, and when Whit tried to click to additional images, he found himself back where he started, falling through the atmosphere.
It occurred to Whit that he might not be seeing imagery at all, but rather generated material, like a video game. Hadn’t Counselor Kate said there would be simulations? Weren’t sims just like games—?
In spite of his misgivings, both about THE enforcement methods and the nasty side effects of the Ring’s ignition, Whit couldn’t help being excited about being involved with this . . . it sure beat the work he’d been doing in Vegas.
“Five minutes.”
Time to pay attention. Everything seemed to be going fine . . . except for the orange displays in the corner of his screen. It didn’t seem to be a critical area—the windows were labeled RANGE and I-STRUCTURE and ENVIRONMENT.
Whit wished he could talk to Dehm. It was possible, he supposed, that his older friend was in one of the other cubicle stations. Without Dehm, he was stuck with Counselor Kate. “What’s all this orange?”
“Deviations from design.”
“Shouldn’t they hold until it doesn’t deviate?”
“Humans might,” Counselor Kate said. “Aggregates won’t. They have faith in their designs that we don’t.”
“Yeah, but some of this material may not be included in their design.”
“Do us both a favor and don’t tell them.”
“I’m only talking to you,” he said. He hoped.