Jeru cut him off. ‘Case, the fine structure constant is a measure of the strength of an electric or magnetic force.’
I could follow that much. ‘And if you increase lightspeed—’
‘You reduce the strength of the force.’ Pael raised himself. ‘Consider this. Human bodies are held together by molecular binding energy – electromagnetic forces. But here, electrons are more loosely bound to atoms; the atoms in a molecule are more loosely bound to each other.’ He rapped on the cast on my arm. ‘And so your bones are more brittle, your skin more easy to pierce or chafe. Do you see? You too are embedded in spacetime, my young friend. You too are affected by the Ghosts’ tinkering. And because lightspeed in this infernal pocket continues to increase – as far as I can tell from these poor experiments – you are becoming more fragile every second.’
It was a strange, eerie thought, that something so basic in the universe could be manipulated. I put my arms around my chest and shuddered.
‘Other effects,’ Pael went on bleakly. ‘The density of matter is dropping. Perhaps our bodies’ very structure will eventually begin to crumble. And dissociation temperatures are reduced.’
Jeru snapped, ‘What does that mean?’
‘Melting and boiling points are reduced. No wonder we are overheating. It is intriguing that bio systems have proven rather more robust than electromechanical ones. But if we don’t get out of here soon, our blood will start to boil…’
‘Enough,’ Jeru said. ‘What of the star?’
‘A star is a mass of gas with a tendency to collapse under its own gravity. But heat, supplied by fusion reactions in the core, creates gas and radiation pressures which push outwards, counteracting gravity.’
‘And if the fine structure constant changes?’
‘Then the balance is lost. Commissary, as gravity begins to win its ancient battle, the fortress star has become more luminous – it is burning faster. That explains the observations we made from outside the cordon. But this cannot last.’
‘The novae,’ I said.
‘Yes. The explosions, layers of the star blasted into space, are a symptom of destabilised stars seeking a new balance. The rate at which our star is approaching that catastrophic moment fits with the lightspeed drift I have observed.’ He smiled and closed his eyes. ‘A single cause predicating so many effects. It is all rather pleasing, in an aesthetic way.’
Jeru said, ‘At least we know how the ship was destroyed. Every control system is mediated by finely tuned electromagnetic effects. Everything must have gone crazy at once…’
The Brief Life Burns Brightly had been a classic GUTship, of a design that hasn’t changed in its essentials for thousands of years. The lifedome, a tough translucent bubble, contained the crew of twenty. The dome was connected by a spine a klick long to a GUTdrive engine pod. When we crossed the cordon boundary – when all the bridge lights failed – the control systems went down, and all the pod’s superforce energy must have tried to escape at once. The spine of the ship had thrust itself up into the lifedome, like a nail rammed into a skull.
Pael said dreamily, ‘If lightspeed were a tad faster, throughout the universe, then hydrogen could not fuse to helium. There would only be hydrogen: no fusion to power stars, no chemistry. Conversely if lightspeed were a little lower, hydrogen would fuse too easily, and there would be no hydrogen, nothing to make stars – or water. You see how critical it all is? No doubt the Ghosts’ science of fine-tuning is advancing considerably here on the Orion Line, even as it serves its trivial defensive purpose…’
Jeru glared at him, her contempt obvious. ‘We must take this piece of intelligence back to the Commission. It might be the key to breaking the Orion Line, at last. We are at the pivot of history, gentlemen.’
I knew she was right. The primary duty of the Commission for Historical Truth is to gather and deploy intelligence about the enemy. And so my primary duty, and Pael’s, was now to help Jeru get this piece of data back to her organisation.
But Pael was mocking her. ‘Not for ourselves, but for the species. Is that the line, Commissary? You are so grandiose. And yet you blunder around in comical ignorance. Even your quixotic quest aboard this cruiser was futile. There probably is no bridge on this ship. The Ghosts’ entire morphology, their evolutionary design, is based on the notion of cooperation, of symbiosis; why should a Ghost ship have a metaphoric head? And as for the trophy you have returned with’ – he held up the belt of Ghost artefacts – ‘there are no weapons here. These are sensors, tools. There is nothing here capable of producing a significant energy discharge. This is less threatening than a bow and arrow.’ He let go of the belt; it drifted away. ‘The Ghost wasn’t trying to kill you. It was blocking you. Which is a classic Ghost tactic.’
Jeru’s face was stony. ‘It was in our way. That is sufficient reason for destroying it.’
Pael shook his head. ‘Minds like yours will destroy us, Commissary.’
Jeru stared at him with suspicion. Then she said, ‘You have a way. Don’t you, Academician? A way to get us out of here.’
He tried to face her down, but her will was stronger, and he averted his eyes.
Jeru said heavily, ‘Regardless of the fact that three lives are at stake – does duty mean nothing to you, Academician? You are an intelligent man. Can you not see that this is a war of human destiny?’
Pael laughed. ‘Destiny – or economics?’ He said to me, ‘You see, child, as long as the explorers and the mining fleets and the colony ships are pushing outwards, as long as the Third Expansion is growing, our economy works. But the system is utterly dependent on continued conquest. From virgin stars the riches can continue to flow inwards, into the older mined-out systems, feeding a vast horde of humanity who have become more populous than the stars themselves. But as soon as that growth falters…’
Jeru was silent.
I understood some of this. This was a war of colonisation, of world-building. For a thousand years we had been spreading steadily from star to star, using the resources of one system to explore, terraform and populate the worlds of the next. With too deep a break in that chain of exploitation, the enterprise broke down.
And the Ghosts had been able to hold up human expansion for fifty years.
Pael said, ‘We are already choking. There have already been wars, young Case: human fighting human, as the inner systems starve. Not mentioned in Coalition propaganda, of course. If the Ghosts can keep us bottled up, all they have to do is wait for us to destroy ourselves, and free them to continue their own rather more worthy projects.’
Jeru floated down before him. ‘Academician, listen to me. Growing up at Deneb, I saw the great schooners in the sky, bringing the interstellar riches that kept my people alive. I saw the logic of history – that we must maintain the Expansion, because there is no choice. And that is why I joined the armed forces, and later the Commission for Historical Truth. Not for ideology, not for misty notions of destiny, but for economics. We must labour every day to maintain the unity and purpose of mankind. We must continue to expand. For if we falter we die; as simple as that.’
Pael raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps I have underestimated you. But, Commissary, sincere or not, your creed of mankind’s evolutionary destiny condemns our own kind to become a swarm of children, granted a few moments of loving and breeding and dying, before being cast into futile war.’