“Understood,” Geary said. “And I agree with you. I should have spoken more carefully. Do you have any indication of what your mission will be at Unity?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank you, General. Let me know if you need any assistance preparing for the movement of your Marines.”
He sat back when the call ended, now having even more questions than before he had spoken to Carabali. I was thinking I might need some of my Marines if I could locate the dark ship base. Someone who could seize the dark ship facilities and disable them without destroying them. I want the evidence of those facilities if anyone tries claiming the dark ships never existed or weren’t official or some other nonsense.
If I do need some Marines for that task, it sounds like the Third Brigade is the unit I would have picked. And that’s the unit that is being left for me. But why do that without talking to me about it?
And it’s all meaningless anyway if I don’t know where the base for the dark ships is located.
Ancestors, I really, really need some help here.
The alert on his stateroom hatch announced a visitor.
Nine
“Admiral.” General Charban displayed his now-usual attitude of trying not entirely successfully to deal with frustration. “I’m back from my stay on Inspire. May we speak?”
“Of course,” Geary said. “Take a seat. I imagine that you’re glad you weren’t with us at Bhavan.”
“I know something of how you must have felt, Admiral.” Charban shook his head. “I was in a few ground battles where I was praying for a miracle. Fortunately, either the living stars are fond of me or chance worked in my favor. I don’t think I would have been able to get my force intact out of a situation like that you faced at Bhavan, though.”
“You probably would have thought of something,” Geary said. “Any breakthroughs in the matter of the Dancers?” he asked, naming the alien species which resembled the unholy offspring of giant spiders and wolves, and which were the closest things to friends that humanity had found among the three alien races so far encountered. Given that the other two races, the mysterious enigmas and the homicidally aggressive (as well as cute) Kicks, were both dangerous foes, it did not take much to be friendlier toward humanity. But the Dancers, in their own, mystifying ways, did seem to regard humans as allies.
Charban sat down and shrugged. “Breakthroughs are even harder to come by with no Dancers actually present to talk to. On the other hand, I’m not dealing with vague and simplistic replies from them on a routine basis, so it could be worse.”
“It could definitely be worse,” Geary said. “The dark ships won’t even talk to us.”
“Neither would the Kicks, and the enigmas only do it when they absolutely have to. But you would think something that humans had built like the dark ships would at least give us a little respect.” Charban paused, looking upward, his eyes distant. “Being left here at Varandal did have the benefit of giving me a lot of time to think, and since I didn’t want to spend my time worrying about what might be happening at Bhavan, I spent it thinking about the Dancers. Specifically, about that trip they took.”
“Going home, you mean?”
“No, before that. The trip the Dancers took to Durnan Star System. I didn’t want to talk to other people about this because I didn’t know how important it could be, and I didn’t know whether you would want to keep it as quiet as possible. Can I see your star display?”
“Sure.” Geary called it up, the stars floating in the air between them like jewels suspended in space.
Charban leaned toward the display and used one hand to adjust its scale and focus. “Here. Let’s see. Ah. Look.” Lines appeared, one branching out from Varandal, connecting some of the stars, then going back to Varandal. “This was the path the Dancers took, jumping from star to star.”
“They were going to Durnan Star System to look at those ruins of an ancient Dancer colony,” Geary said.
“Yes,” General Charban agreed, “but aside from the question of how an ancient Dancer colony got there when it did is the question of why the Dancers took the route they did.” He indicated the lines between stars again. “It wasn’t as straight a path as it could have been going out, and wasn’t straight at all coming back. Look how they looped around on their way back to Varandal.”
Geary studied the display, intrigued. “It’s almost like the fragmentary outline of a rough sphere, isn’t it? Why would the Dancers have taken such a roundabout path?”
“I’m assuming they must have wanted to send us some kind of message,” Charban said. “But what?”
“What message could they send with a rough spherical shape?” Geary asked. “Do the names of the star systems they visited spell out anything?”
“No,” Charban said. “I think forming a coded message in the names humanity gave those stars would be even too subtle and convoluted for the Dancers. But it did occur to me that perhaps the message was not in the sphere but in what it contained.”
“What it contained?” Geary looked again. The region of space inside the rough sphere defined by the path of the Dancers contained a few stars with little or no human presence and no particular reason to visit them. “There’s nothing there.”
“What about that?” Charban asked, pointing. “Our systems can’t tell me much about it.”
Geary looked closely. “You’re pointing at a close binary star. I’m not surprised there is little in our systems about it. It’s not really worth noticing.”
“Why not?” Charban asked. He leaned over the low table between them, his extended finger almost touching the image of the binary. “Do the systems on Dauntless know anything more about it than I could have found elsewhere?”
Geary shook his head, frowning in puzzlement at the question. “Probably not, but since Dauntless is the flagship, it’s possible we might have supplemental files. We know it’s a close binary star system, two stars orbiting each other. Let’s see if there have ever been long-distance observations of that star system.” He called up the data. “Yes. It has been viewed from other star systems. That’s not the most detailed way of surveying a star system, but it does pick up larger objects. That particular binary system contains six planets in eccentric orbits, most of them probably captures of wandering planets that got too close to one of the two stars. That’s all we know.”
“That’s what I learned before.” Charban nodded in agreement, but still looked confused as well. “Why is that all we know? No one has ever gone there? Why wouldn’t the Dancers jump there if they were interested in it?”
“You don’t know?” Geary eyed Charban in astonishment that gradually changed to comprehension. “You’re ground forces. Not a sailor.”
“Or a scientist. I was pondering the last message from the Dancers, you see,” Charban explained. “ ‘Watch the many stars.’ And I realized that there was an alternate meaning. It could have been meant to say ‘Watch the multiple stars.’”
“Multiple stars.” Like binaries and the occasional triple star system. “Why would we watch them?”
“Why don’t we ever go to them?” Charban asked again.
“Because we can’t. Not by using jump drives. Do you know how the jump drives work?”
“Vaguely. Something about thin spots in space that the drives can take ships through into somewhere else where the distances are much shorter.”
“Right,” Geary said. “I’m not a scientist, either, but the basics are that space-time isn’t rigid. It bends. The gravity of objects makes space-time bend or dimple, as if you put a heavy object on a flexible sheet. Big objects create big dimples. Stars are massive enough to bend and stretch space-time sufficiently to create thin spots in it. Those thin spots are jump points, places where our jump drives can push ships through into jump space and back through to get out of jump space at the next star. There’s nothing in jump space except that endless gray haze—”