In an instant, the ship’s armor evaporated. Washen could make out the largest caverns and chambers and the deep cylindrical ports, plus the hyperfiber bones that gave the structure its great strength.
Then the next few hundred kilometers were removed. Rock and water, air and deeper hyperfiber were exposed.
“The perfect architecture,” the Master declared. She stepped closer to the shrinking projection, its glow illuminating a grinning face. Resembling an enormous young girl with her favorite plaything, she confessed, “In my mind, there’s no greater epic in history. Human history, or anyone else’s.”
Washen knew this speech, word for word.
“I’m not talking about this voyage of ours,” the Master continued. “Circumnavigating the galaxy is an accomplishment, of course. But the greater adventure was in finding this ship before anyone else, then leaving our galaxy to reach it first. Imagine the honor: to be the first living organism to step inside these vast rooms, the first sentient mind in billions of years to experience their majesty, their compelling mystery. It was a magnificent time. Ask any of us who were there. To the soul, we consider ourselves nothing but blessed.”
An ancient, honorable boast, and her prerogative.
“We did an exemplary job,” she assured. “I won’t accept any other verdict. In that first century—despite limited resources, the shadow of war, and the sheer enormity of the job—we mapped more than ninety-nine percent of the ship’s interior. And as I could point out, I led the first team to find their way through the plumbing above us, and I was the first to see the sublime beauty of the hydrogen sea below us…”
Washen hid a smile, thinking, A fuel tank is a fuel tank is a fuel tank.
“Here we are,” the Master announced.
The projection had shrunk by nearly half. The ship’s main fuel tanks were emerging from the frozen mantle, appearing as six tiny bumps evenly spaced along the ship’s waist—each tank set directly beneath one of the main ports. The leech habitat was beneath the Master’s straightened finger, and on this scale, it was no larger than a fat protozoan.
“And now, we vanish.”
Without sound or fuss, another layer of stone was removed. Then, another. And deeper slices of the fuel tanks revealed great spheres filled with hydrogen that changed from a peaceful liquid into a blackish solid, and deeper still, an eerily transparent metal.
“These hydrogen seas have always been the deepest features,” she commented. “Below them is nothing but iron and a stew of other metals squashed under fantastic pressures.”
The ship had been reduced to a smooth black ball—the essential ingredient in a multitude of parlor games.
“Until now, we knew everything about the core.” The Master paused, allowing herself a knowing grin. “Clear, consistent evidence proved that when the ship was built, its crust and mande and core were stripped of radionuclides.The goal, we presumed, was to help cool the interior. To make the rock and metal still and predictable. We didn’t know how the builders managed their trick, but there was a network of narrow tunnels leading down, branching as they dropped deeper, all reinforced with hyperfiber and energy buttresses.”
Washen was breathing faster now. Nodding.
“By design or the force of time, those little tunnels collapsed.” The Master paused, sighed, and shook her golden face. “Not enough room for a microchine to pass. Or so we’ve always believed.”
Washen felt her heart beating, a suffused and persistent and delicious joy building.
“There was never, ever, the feeblest hint of any hidden chamber,” the Master proclaimed. “I won’t allow criticism on this matter. Every possible test was carried out. Seismic. Neutrino imaging. Even palm-of-the-hand calculations of mass and volume. Until some fifty-three years ago, there wasn’t one sane reason to think that our maps were in any sense incomplete.”
A silence had engulfed the audience.
Quietly, smoothly, the Master said, “The full ship. Please.”
Again, the iron ball was dressed in cold rock and hyper-fiber.
“We pivot ninety,” she said.
As if suddenly bashful, the ship’s leading face turned away from her. Rocket nozzles swung into view, each large enough to cradle a moon. None were firing, and according to the schedule, none would fire for another three decades.
“The impact, please.”
Washen stepped closer, anticipating what she would see. Fifty-three years ago, passing through the Black Nebula, the ship collided with a swarm of comets. Nobody was surprised by the event. Brigades of captains and their staff had spent decades making preparations, mapping and remapping the space before them, searching for hazards as well as paying customers. But avoiding those comets would have cost too much fuel. And why bother? The swarm wasn’t harmless, but it was believed to be as close to harmless as possible.
Gobs of antimatter were thrown at the largest hazards.
Lasers evaporated the tumbling fragments.
The captains watched the drama play out again, in rigorous detaiclass="underline" off in distant portions of the room, little suns flickered in and out of existence. Gradually the explosions moved closer, and finally, too close. Lasers fired without pause, evaporating trillions of tons of ice and rock. The shields brightened, moving from a dull blanket of red into a livid purple cloak, fighting to push gas and dust aside. But debris still peppered the hull, a thousand pinpricks dancing on its silver-gray face. And at the bombardment’s peak, there was a blistering white flash that dwarfed the other explosions. The captains blinked and grimaced, remembering the instant, and their shared sense of utter embarrassment.
A mountain of nickel-iron had slipped through their vaunted defenses.
The impact rattled the ship. Gelatin dinners wiggled on their plates, and quiet seas rippled, and the most alert or sensitive passengers said, “Goodness,” and perhaps grabbed hold of something more solid than themselves. Then for months, Remoras had worked to fill the new crater with fresh hyperfiber, and the nervous and bored passengers talked endlessly about that single scary moment.
The ship was never in danger.
In response, the captains had publicly paraded their careful schematics and rigorous calculations, proving that the hull could absorb a thousand times that much energy, and there would still be no reason to be nervous, much less terrified. But just the same, certain people and certain species had insisted on being afraid.
With a palpable relish, the Master said, “Now the cross section. Please.”
The nearest hemisphere evaporated. In the new schematic, pressure waves appeared as subtle colors emerging from the blast site, spreading out and diluting, then pulling together again at the stern, shaking a lot of the ship’s plumbing before the waves met and bounced, passing back the way they had come, back to the blast site where they met again, and again bounced. Even today, a thin vibration was detectable, whispering its way through the ship as well as the captains’ own bones. “AI analysis. Please.”
A map was laid over the cross section, everything expected and familiar. Except for the largest feature, that is.
“Madam,” said a sturdy voice. Miocene’s voice. “It’s an anomaly, granted. But doesn’t that feature… doesn’t it seem… unlikely…?”
“Which was why I thought it was nothing,” the Master concurred. “And my most trustworthy AI—part of my own neural net—agreed with me. This region defines some change in composition. Or in density. Certainly nothing more.” She paused for a long moment, carefully watching her captains. Then with a gracious, oversized smile, she admitted, “The possibility of a hollow core has to seem ludicrous.”
Submasters and captains nodded with a ragged hopefulness.