After seven minutes more, thought I saw a darker oval on the right, where the Magellan should have appeared, but the oval began to get smaller.
I tried another burst transmission. Navigator Control, Needle Tigress, all systems down. No nav, no drives, hab-itability marginal. Awaiting pickup this time.
In the silence, the only sound continued to be my breath. Peered at the dark oval. Without power, there wasn’t a thing I could do… just watch myself drift away from the Magellan.
The oval diminished more.
Another five minutes went by that seemed like a stan.
Was there a flash of light?
I squinted. Was I seeing what I wanted?
Another three minutes passed, then two more.
The armor beeped. Meant that I had less than a stan left. Such irony. Survive a fire fight, and freeze or suffocate after almost passing beside the Magellan. Perfect example of how close doesn’t count.
Couldn’t believe the way time passed. The whole fight hadn’t taken much more than five minutes, if that. I’d been drifting without power for five times that.
Another flash of light glinted on the fuselage beyond the visual port.
Rrraspp… thunk!
Bolted upright in the armor. Had to be grapples. Couldn’t help smiling as I felt the needle being moved.
Once we got back, I just might embarrass Lerrys and give him a hug in public. As for Liam…
DETERMINING
75
Fitzhugh
“All personnel to General Quarters… all personnel to General Quarters. This is not a drill.”
At something like six-thirty in the morning, the announcement definitely did not declare a drill, as it shattered through a collage of troubled dreams, phantasms that mixed Jiendra with the artifact whose image I had studied at all too great a length on fiveday.
For General Quarters, I could, as I understood the parameters of action, remain in my stateroom or go to my work space, in either case ensuring that I did not hamper those who had more urgent duties relating to combat and safety.
I decided upon and embarked upon a swift shower, doubtless violating the letter of the General Quarters decree, but not the spirit, since I was remaining well out of the way of those engaged in defending the Magellan. My decision to undertake that ablution was predicated upon the observation that detection of intruders and antagonists in space was likely to occur well before any physical proximity was attained. My quickness in completing it was based upon the possibility that I might be mistaken.
Nonetheless, by six-forty-one, I found myself dressed, generally in a state of consciousness, standing in the middle of a closet-sized stateroom. With little to do in that locale, save to undertake reading of the least-intriguing sections of the professional material I had downloaded to accompany me, I made my way, if cautiously, up the ramps—deserted by the time of my peregrination—to my work space, and my analyses of Danann and the artifact, an eternity artifact, of sorts, I had decided.
I did strap myself into the chair before the console, the one anchored to the deck, with a safety harness, before calling up the sections of the analysis I’d been working on. I began to reread what I had set forth, trying not to skim through my words.
While not all sections or towers of the megaplex had been thoroughly investigated, more than fifteen percent of the towers had been opened and viewed in a cursory fashion, according to the reports filed on the system by Kaitlin Henjsen. Less than five percent had been inspected in any detail. Even so, given the gridding and the sampling used, the fact that only a single artifact of any size whatsoever had been discovered suggested most strongly that it had been left deliberately.
My tentative conclusion along those lines was bolstered by the expedition’s theoretical mathematician. Misha Nalakov had entered an analysis of the patterns of tower placement, and his analysis, which employed abstruse mathematics the accuracy of which I could not verify from my own expertise, concluded that the tower in which Chendor had discovered the artifact did in fact occupy the sole unique position within the entire megaplex. To my mind, that suggested the placement was neither coincidental nor meant to be easy to discern.
In turn, that intimated that the megaplex—perhaps all of Danann itself—had been constructed from its inception for multiple purposes meant to be accomplished over an infinitely long period of time. From that, and from the anomalous materials used in construction, few of which we could even analyze accurately, and none of which we knew how to duplicate, even theoretically, one could also conclude that the builders had not only possessed great technological talents, but equivalent skills in cultural self-patterning, social organization, and prognostication of the development and exploration patterns of other intelligences.
For a culture less advanced than ours, those capabilities might well have been considered godlike…
At that thought, I stopped. Was it remotely possible that the Sunnis or the Covenanters entertained such an idea? No. Any creation by humans—or even by other intelligences—by definition could not be divine. But how would they regard something so far advanced?
If mankind—and the leaders of those theocracies all thought of human beings primarily as men—were indeed the creation of a deity, would that deity allow a greater creation to usurp mankind? Theologically speaking, as well as politically, that was not conceivable, and that would suggest that, since there was but one God, with no others above, before, or beside Him, any such technology had to be, by definition, the creation of some incarnation of the devil, or Satan, or Iblis. The fact that its possessors and creators had vanished, doubtless extirpated by the One Deity billions of years earlier, would be proof enough that the artifact discovered by Chendor—the Eternity Artifact—was a creation of the evil one, the Hammer of Lucifer, the Morning Star, or the Spear of Iblis. That might be bolstered by the fact that the other aliens had vanished as well. Any monotheistic theologian could sermonize that even the attempt to obtain the knowledge of Lucifer had resulted in their demise, and that the same could indeed befall humanity.
By extension, that suggested why the Sunnis had attacked the Magellan. Since I had not discovered what polity’s fleet currently threatened us, I could not complete that section of the analysis, but, in general terms, the Comity faced opponents of both secular and theocratic origins. Those of a secular nature would most likely be interested in obtaining the technology for an advantage, and in destroying us only if it could not be detected and reported and could allow them to obtain such technology.
At that point, the entire ship lurched, and my mass was restrained from impacting the overhead by the harness straps with which I had secured myself, even while doubting their efficacy.
The first disruption was followed by three more, each of decreasing severity.
After a period of silence, in which I pondered remaining strapped into my chair, I accessed the general information net, but found nothing that had not been there previously. The wall screen options were nonexistent, the single image available showing only the darkness of a galactic void, a blackness sprinkled with the distant faint-ness of other galaxies.
I attempted to concentrate upon the analysis, but the conflict between curiosity and apprehension effectively annihilated my capacity for concentration.