They all looked at her. “It’s possible,” said Digger. “That might be it.”
Kellie’s eyes shone. It was a pleasure to be first to solve a puzzle.
“Well,” said Jack, “let’s go see if we’ve got one.”
THE CLOUD’S SHAPE had changed during the few weeks since they’d first seen it. It had become distorted, and was throwing jets forward and to one side, blown off by gee forces as it continued to decelerate and to turn. At the rate the thing was braking, Digger had trouble understanding how it managed to hold together at all. He was not a physicist, but he knew enough to conclude that the stability of the gas and dust, in the face of those kinds of stresses, demonstrated that this was no natural phenomenon. There were widespread claims by mystics, and even some physicists, who should know better, that the omegas were an evolutionary step, a means by which the galaxy protected itself from the rise of the supercivilization, the one entity that could raise havoc, that could eventually take control and force it away from its natural development.
It was a notion very much in play these days, fitting perfectly with the idea that the present universe was simply a spark in a vast hypersky, one of countless universes, afloat in a cosmos that was perhaps itself an infinitesimal part of an ever-greater construct. Grains of sand on a beach that was a grain on a much bigger beach.
Where did it all end?
Well, however that might be, the omega clouds were too sophisticated to have developed naturally.
“How do you know?” asked Kellie, sitting quietly looking out at the monster, while Digger went on about stars and universes.
He explained. How it held together. How it had long-range sensors far better than anything the Jenkins had. How it had spotted Athens from a range of 135 billion kilometers when they couldn’t find it from orbit.
She listened, nodding occasionally, apparently agreeing. But when he’d finished, she commented that there were people around who’d argue that Digger couldn’t have happened simply as a result of natural evolution. “I think,” she said, “you’re doing the argument from design.”
“I suppose. But this is different.”
“How?”
“It’s on a bigger scale.”
“Dig, that’s only a difference in degree. Size doesn’t count.”
He couldn’t find an adequate response. “You think these things are natural objects?”
“I don’t know.” The cloud was misshapen, plumes thrown forward and to one side. It was a dark squid soaring through the night. “I’m keeping my mind open.” Neither spoke for a minute. Then she said, “I’m not sure which scares me more.”
“Which what?”
“Which explanation. Either they’re natural, which leads to the conclusion that the universe, or God, however you want to put it, doesn’t approve of intelligence. Or they’re built and set loose. That means somebody who’s very bright has gone to a lot of trouble to kill every stranger he can find.”
AT THEIR CURRENT range, Lookout’s sun was only a bright star.
The Jenkins had begun a sweep when it had approached within 12 million klicks of the cloud. They moved steadily closer over the next three days but saw nothing.
On the fourth day of the hunt Kellie suggested they terminate.
“You’re sure there’s nothing there?” said Jack.
“Absolutely. There are a few rocks but that’s it. Nothing remotely resembling the dingus.” She waited for instructions.
“Okay.” Jack’s attitude suggested the hell with it. “Let’s go back to Lookout.”
Kellie directed them to belt down and began angling the Jenkins onto its new course. It was going to be a long turn and they’d be living with gee forces for the better part of a day. Consequently, she wasn’t particularly happy. “If I’d used my head,” she told Digger, “I’d have arranged things differently. We could have been on a more efficient course at the end of the pattern. But I assumed we were going to find something.”
“So did I,” he said. “If you’re right, though, that the hedgehogs are lures, they won’t be everywhere. Only close to clouds that are threatening something their makers are interested in.”
Jack sent off a message to Hutch, information copies to the al Jahani: “No hedgehog at Lookout. Returning to orbit.”
While they made the long swing, they decided to watch a sim together, and Kellie, at their request, brought up a haunted house thriller. Digger didn’t have much taste for horror, but he went along. “Scares me though,” he told them, making a joke of it, as if the idea were ridiculous, but in fact it did. He took no pleasure watching a vampire operate, and there’d been times even here, in the belly of a starship, maybe especially here, when he’d gone back through a dimly lit corridor to his quarters after that kind of experience and heard footsteps padding behind him.
The problem with the superluminal was that, even though it was an embodiment of modern technology, a statement that the universe is governed by reason, a virtual guarantee that demons and vampires do not exist, it was still quite small. Almost claustrophobic. A few passageways and a handful of rooms, with a tendency toward shadows and echoes. It was a place you couldn’t get away from. If something stalked you through the ship’s narrow corridors, there would be nowhere to run.
His problem, he knew, was that he suffered from an overabundance of imagination. Always had. It was the quality that had drawn him into extraterrestrial assignments. Digger was no coward. He felt he’d proved it by going down on Lookout and sticking his head up. He’d worked on a site in the middle of the Angolan flare-up, had stayed there when everybody else ran. On another occasion he’d gotten a couple of missionaries away from rebels in Zampara, in northern Africa, by a mixture of audacity, good sense, and good luck. But he didn’t like haunted houses.
The plot always seemed to be the same: A group of adolescents looking for an unusual place to hold a party decide to use the abandoned mansion in which there reportedly had been several ghastly murders during the past half century. (It wasn’t a place to which Digger would have gone.)
There was always a storm, rain beating against the windows, and doors opening and closing of their own volition. And periodically, victims getting cornered by whatever happened to be loose in the attic.
He tried to think about other things. But the creaking doors, the wild musical score, and the tree branches scraping against the side of the house kept breaking through. Jack laughed through much of the performance, and energetically warned the actors to look out, it’s in the closet.
Midway through, strange noises come from upstairs. Shrieks. Groans. Unearthly cries. Two of the boys decide, incredibly, they will investigate. Only in the sims, Digger thinks. But he wants them to stay together. The boy in the lead is tall, good-looking, with a kind of wistful innocence. The kid next door. Despite the silliness of the proceedings, Digger’s heart is pounding as he and his companion climb the circular staircase, while the tempo builds to a climax. As they arrive at the top, another shriek rips through the night. It comes from behind the door at the end of the hallway.
The door opens, apparently unaided, and Digger sees a shadowy figure seated in an armchair facing a window, illuminated only by the flickering lightning. The second boy, prudently, is dropping behind.
Stay together. Digger shakes his head, telling himself it’s all nonsense. No sensible kids would do anything like this. And if they did, they’d certainly stick close to each other.
And he found himself thinking about the hedgehog. They’d overlooked the obvious.
“WHAT WOULD IT be doing way out there?” asked Jack.
Digger has used a cursor to indicate where he thought the object could be found. “We assumed the cloud and the hedgehog were a unit. Where one goes, the other follows. But here, we’ve got a cloud that has thrown a right turn.
“The cloud’s been turning and slowing down for a long time. Maybe over a year. But there’s no reason to assume the hedgehog wouldn’t keep going.”
“Original course and velocity?” said Jack.
“Probably.”
“Why would it do that?” asked Winnie.
“Why any of this? I don’t know. But I bet if we check it out, we’ll find it where the cloud would have been if it hadn’t decided to go for a walk.”
Kellie’s dark eyes touched him. Go to it, big boy.
“Why not take a look?” he asked. “It’s not as if we have to be anywhere tomorrow.”
THEY FOUND IT precisely where Digger had predicted. It was moving along at a few notches under standard omega velocity. As if the great cloud still trailed behind.
LIBRARY ENTRY
The discovery of escort vehicles with the omegas reveals just how little research has been done over the past thirty years on this critical subject. What other surprises are coming? And how many more lives will be sacrificed to bureaucratic inertia?
— The London Times
March 23
chapter 13
On board the Heffernan, near Alpha Pictoris, 99 light-years from Earth.
Friday, April 4.
THE PICTORIS HEDGEHOG made it six for six. They all have one.
It was twenty-eight thousand kilometers in front of the cloud. Its diameter was the standard six and a half kilometers. “Report’s away,” Emma said.
Sky didn’t like going anywhere near the damned thing. But they’d asked for volunteers, told him they’d probably be okay, but to be careful, don’t take any unnecessary chances, and keep your head down. Emma had said not to hesitate on her account, and the Heffernan was the only ship in the neighborhood.
Ordinarily Sky loved what he did for a living. He enjoyed cruising past ringed giants, lobbing probes into black holes, delivering people and supplies to the ultimate out-of-the-way places. But he didn’t like the clouds. And he didn’t like the hedgehogs. They were things that didn’t belong.