“Same thing I’ve been saying, Wolf,” Gerald MacDougal put in. “We ought to search as much of the rest of this system as we can, and then consider a cautious approach to the Sphere. Think about how big the Sphere is. Even if you make the unwarranted assumption that the control system exists, and the further unwarranted assumption that it is on the exterior surface of the Sphere, and not the inside, you’ve got an incredibly large search area. Search the entire surface area of all nine planets in our old Solar System, plus the Sun as well while you’re at it, and you wouldn’t have done one percent of this search.”
“I agree completely,” Dianne said. “Your imaginary control center could cover as much area as Earth’s surface and still get lost on something that big. And what would it look like? What would we be searching for? And while we’re searching that Sphere, what are the people who run the Sphere going to be doing?”
There was the faintest flicker of a smile on Wolf’s face. “I see that you are already behaving as a captain should. Protecting your command. Very well. How would you use the Terra Nova!”
Dianne thought for a long moment and then spoke, choosing her words carefully. “I would explore a sampling of the worlds and stars in the Multisystem, perhaps gradually working in toward the Dyson Sphere itself—if we learned enough to give the Sphere mission some hope of success that would justify the risk. I would do everything I could to avoid risks to the ship or her personnel. I’d be extremely conservative about landings—and I’d run like hell if I was challenged.”
“And what would you do if I ordered you to do it my way?” Wolf asked. “What if I drafted you into the service of the DSI they’ve cooked up, and ordered you to head straight for the Sphere?”
Dianne shrugged. If the man wanted to ask hypothetical questions… “A captain in space is the absolute master of her ship, particularly as regards the safety of the ship and crew. I’d do it my way. Legally, I don’t know who’d be right. But as a practical matter, the Terra Nova was designed to take longer trips than this without help from Earth. You couldn’t do anything to stop me.”
Bernhardt grinned and looked up at Gerald, then back to Dianne. “I like this. I always appreciate a little ambiguity in circumstances. I find it brings out the best in people. As I’m sure it will in Gerald here. I’ve just decided to make him second-in-command as well as chief scientist.”
Gerald blinked and stood up straight. “What?”
“It only makes sense,” Wolf said smoothly. “After all, the main concern of this mission will be the research of extraterrestrial life, specifically the creatures that have done this to Earth. And you are an exobiologist. You have thought on all these matters. Besides, as we’ve just seen, the two of you clearly think alike.”
“But I know nothing of ship handling, or navigation, or anything related to running a spacecraft. If anything happened to Dianne—”
“Then I suggest you see to it that nothing does happen to Dianne until you have learned all those things. We have no time for all the precautions we should take. We need data now. And what Dianne Steiger will need from you is advice.”
Wolf turned his attention back to Dianne. “Very well, Captain Steiger. I hereby draft you into the service of the Directorate of Spatial Investigation and appoint you master of the starship Terra Nova, with orders to proceed directly for the Dyson Sphere. Have a pleasant trip. Our lawyers will have a nice fight when you get back.”
He leaned back over his desk, checked off one more item on his list of things to do, and got on with his work, leaving Dianne and Gerald to find their own way out.
NaPurHab, the Naked Purple Habitat, was the scene of bedlam, but that was nothing new. It was routine bedlam, the usual chaos. Ohio Template Windbag had an idea that many among the brothersandsisters (“blisters,” in the latest approved parlance, though many were holding out for “sisthers,” or perhaps “sibsters,” instead) didn’t even know something farout had happened.
Ohio sat in the graffiti-splattered comm and control room, behind Chelated Noisemaker Extreme. Ohio’s eyes were fixed on the main monitor. He stared at the image of the Big Ring, hands wrapped around the wide girth of his belly.
Even before the Earth had done its little dance, taking NaPurHab with it, NaPurHab had ridden a rather eccentric orbit, figure-eighting between Earth and Moon, swinging close over each world before flying out to the other. It wasn’t all that stable an orbit for a habitat, and NaPurHab had always needed a lot of course corrections. It had been about the only orbit slot in the Earth-Moon system open to a habitat when the old owners of the hab had built the thing, long before the Purples took it over.
NaPurHab had been close to Earth, just about to swing around the planet and head back toward the Moon, when the Big Jump had gone down. The first pass over the Big Ring hadn’t been that bad. Scary and low, and that was one weird thing to fly over, but the run was double-you slash oh incident. Still, it had been nice to get away from the alien Big Ring, and swing back toward the familiar— if sinfully life-corrupted—face of Earth.
But all good things come to an end, and the pass over Earth was done with now. NaPurHab was headed back out to where the Moon oughta be, out toward the Big Ring. And therein was the flaw. NaPurHab’s orbit had gotten a bit more jostled than anyone had thought. On this second pass, NaPurHab was going to go inside the Big Ring.
Worse, NaPurHab would strike the Earth on the return trip, just north of Johannesburg. Not good. And Earth wasn’t in much position to help there. The Mom planet had her own probs at the moment, to put it mildly—and NaPurHab had never done much to make itself popular to groundhogs. After all, the whole Earthside crazies movement had sprouted from NaPurHab, and the whole farging point of the crazies was to cheese off the normals.
No, never mind help what couldn’t come in time no-how: privately, at least, Ohio couldn’t blame the Earthsquares for nuking NaPurHab if it came to that. NaPurHab would be a goner anyway. Why flatten a chunk of southern Africa too? Given a choice between Jo-Berg and NaPurHab, the answer came back as about twenty kilotons rocketed into the collective Purple keister. Of course, in his public capacity of Maximum Windbag, Ohio would have to come down hard on Earth for the dastardly deed. Better do it beforehand, tho, cause there weren’t gonna be a chance on the flipside. Best to hope that Chelated could pull this one out.
“So, Chelated, talk to me,” Ohio said. “We got the gas in tank for the gig?” They could have had their talk in straight English, but the former Frank Barlow needed the practice in Purpspeak. It was a key precept of the Purple philosophy that Humpty Dumpty was right: the speaker, and not the words spoken, should be the master. But even for a temporary contract employee, the man’s grasp of the lingo was pretty bad. Too logical a mind, or something.
Ohio could see the man moving his lips, parsing out his response to himself before answering. “Not even close, Bossmeister. Nothing like the fuel to be cool and raise the Earthside half of the ride.” Not bad, Ohio thought. For Purpspeak, that was fair, if a little too readily understandable.
“Then we dead, Ned?” Ohio asked.
Chelated had to think again. “Be steady, Teddy. We got one other set of dice to roll. We got the gas, barely, to lay down an orbit inside the Big Ring.”