Kris was glad the problem of producing a Smart Metal™ probe for the jump point before them was someone else’s problem.
Two hours later, a tiny object jetted away from the Wasp. It paused just short of the jump point and appeared to do nothing.
The screen on the wall of Kris’s Tac Center changed to show a black-and-white picture of wavering space.
“The bandwidth . . . between the camera . . . and the transmitter . . . is very narrow.”
“Sorry about that,” both the scientists said together.
“Now let’s see . . . what we get.”
The picture didn’t show much change for a few seconds. Then suddenly the roiling view of twinkling stars disappeared. In its place was . . . not much of anything.
“I always wondered . . . what null space . . . looked like.”
“Null space?” Kris said.
Professor mFumbo, who had joined them again only moments before the probe was launched, smiled from ear to ear. “They are the first to get a picture of it. They can name it what they bloody well choose.”
Kris was not about to dispute that right.
“Ready to go . . . the rest of . . . the way?” the boffins asked no one in particular.
Apparently they were asking each other, something that struck Kris as amazing if they actually needed to. With no further words, the picture changed.
Changed and vanished so quickly that if you’d blinked, you never would have known a different picture had been there.
“Nelly, get that picture back.”
“I’m already working on it,” Nelly snapped.
“What the hell is that?” Jack said, as a snapshot appeared on the screen. Wispy tendrils in different shades of gray formed all sorts of patterns that said very little to Kris.
“Have you ever seen the inside of a fusion reactor?” Professor mFumbo asked.
“Can’t say that I have,” Jack said.
“The inside of a sun, then?”
“Never even wanted to,” Kris said.
“I’ll wait for others to weigh in with their ideas,” the professor said, “but I think we ought to search the sky for a nova. I will bet you ten Wardhaven dollars that this jump will take you right into the heart of that nova.”
Kris leaned back into her high-gee chair, hardly necessary since the ship was in zero gravity. “You think someone knew that was waiting on the other side?”
“I doubt if anyone knew what was through that jump,” Commander Fervenspiel said. “I will bet you that they knew that nothing that went in there ever came out. Cunning, these scumbags.”
“Captain Drago, make best speed for Jump Point Beta.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Captain Drago said, “but I am one happy man that we did not go charging in there.”
“I think I’ve learned a good lesson. Look before I leap,” Kris said.
“Good lesson,” Jack said aloud. “Very good lesson.” To just Kris he added, YOU THINK THAT MAY BE WHAT IS EATING THE ITEECHE SCOUTS?
“Can we find the nova this jump leads to?” Kris asked aloud. To Jack she added, I HAVE NO IDEA. YOU REALLY WANT TO BET HUMANITY’S FUTURE THAT THE PROBLEM IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT?
Jack offered only a shrug for a reply.
Professor mFumbo and Commander Fervenspiel pushed off from their chairs to drift in front of the star map on the wall. As the Wasp slowly put on acceleration, they settled to the floor, their fingers roving from star to star.
“Nelly, please highlight the star this jump point is supposed to go to.”
“Kris, I don’t know which star it goes toward. I know where the star was that it went to.” A dot began flashing on the map, about equal distance between three different stars.
“None of them look like novas,” Kris said.
“They’re fifty to a hundred light-years from here,” the commander pointed out. “One of the problems with instantaneous transportation is that what you look at may be quite a few years out of date from what you leap to.”
“At least two of these suns are very old,” Professor mFumbo noted.
Kris nodded at them. To Jack and Nelly, she thought, I THINK I’VE DISCOVERED HOW TO GET A PEEK AT WHATEVER IS BEHIND THOSE KILLER JUMPS THE ITEECHE HAVE FOUND. NELLY, GET A COPY OF THE DESIGN FOR THOSE PROBES. GET SEVERAL COPIES AND SAVE THEM IN A WHOLE LOT OF PLACES.
I AM ALREADY DOING IT, KRIS.
31
Twelve hours later the Wasp coasted to a halt before Jump Point Beta.
“Captain Drago, launch a probe with a full-spectrum reconnaissance suite. No need for it to whisper a word about us,” Kris ordered.
“Probe away,” came from the captain only seconds later.
Kris had considered several options for this probe, including seeing if they could get more bandwidth for a wire to peek though the jump point. Some very smart people were now working on solutions to those problems. “Working on” them was the operative phrase.
Today, Kris would do things the old-fashioned way.
The probe was gone for ten long minutes. A second one stood by immediately to take its place on the other side the moment it slipped back and began a download to the Wasp. For the next six hours, the two probes rotated stations, one downloading what it observed while the other continued the observations.
There was a warm yellow sun on the other side. A beautiful blue-green world orbited it in the life zone. Blue oceans showed plenty of water. The planet shimmered with a thin sheen of atmosphere. It would take the boffins a half hour to confirm what Kris knew at first glance.
This planet was as lovely to the human eye as Mother Earth ever had been.
In orbit around the planet was a rudely-knocked-together space station that held three ships, one of which matched the electronic profile of the Cushion Star. During the first three hours of observation, two shuttles fell away from the station and headed for the same lake dirtside.
On a bay of that lake was a medium-size town with an agrarian hinterland far too large for its own needs. Examination easily identified that the crops growing over about half the land were those usually needed to feed a growing population: grains, fruits, vegetables. What was growing on the other half of the land’s ground cover didn’t match anything known in the farming database.
“Do we have a spectrum fingerprint on the latest new drug turning up on the older worlds?” Kris asked.
Abby shook her head. “No. But I suspect we do now.”
The radio frequencies were active . . . but hash to the listening probes. “Every word on the bands is encrypted,” Chief Beni reported. “I’ve got Da Vinci working on cracking the cipher, but if it’s a daily throwaway, and they’ve already sent the key, I don’t think we’re going to crack it today.”
“And I thought I was paranoid,” Kris said. “Jack, Commander, do you see any defenses?”
“Nothing visible,” both said, then Commander Fervenspiel went on.
“There’s no reason they should be active. As for the station, since it’s not a standard model, there’s no telling what defenses it has.”
“But it likely does have defenses,” Jack added.
“Any way we can find them out?”
“Attack them,” the commander suggested.
“I’d hoped to have something better to tell your admiral before he has to do that.”
The commander shrugged. “I can’t see anything on that station standing up to a Fury-class battleship. I doubt anybody on the ground there has the weapons to stand against a brigade of our Marines.”
Brute force did seem to be the Greenfeld solution to most problems. Having been on the receiving end of that approach once or three, Kris knew someone could throw a spanner into it.