“My God,” Dianne said. “If something on the other side of that hole can force the wormhole open against the Charonians’ will, we are in deep trouble. It just takes one CORE to knock out a mid-sized asteroid, and hundreds of SCOREs are headed this way. What the hell can fight back against a hundred SCOREs crashing into it? If that’s even the way SCOREs fight. We don’t know.”
“We don’t know damn much of anything,” DePanna said, showing a bit more emotion than she usually did.
Gerald stared at the display screen as another SCORE moved into a parking orbit. “We don’t know much yet,” he said, “but things are happening. We’ll know more soon. But I don’t think we’ll enjoy knowing it.”
From where Eyeballer Maximus Lock-on was sitting, twas no great deal sussing the slides of the SCOREs. Half the damnthings were heading straight for the hab, or near enuff. NaPurHab’s orbit was so damn close to the singularity that anything heading for it had to slide rightby the hab. Eyeball could not help but whirry on the whatif re if the hab’s orbit round the black hole carried it right into the path of one of those mothers. At a guess, the SCORE would just smash right through the hab and keep right on going likit hadn’t hit anythang.
At least some SCOREs were scooting into various orbits around Moonpoint. Eyeball didn’t have to worry bout dodging them.
But Eyeball had other things to sweat ’sides SCORE orbits—like incoming cargo and the stability of the hab’s own orbit. Neither was in the greatest shape, and the two problems were more knit to the SCOREs than might seem at firstglance.
The S in SCORE might stand for “small,” but them whizbangs was plenty big—and plenty massive. Their gravity fields were jogging the hab around just a bit as they passed. Likewise, the Ghoul Modules were popping the wormhole open and shut, and using gravity waves to do it. Lots of perturbs coming at them.
She was gonna hafta boost this can into a higher, more stable orbit real soon, or hab was toast for sure. Cept no way to do it with the cargo still streaming in, and incoming SCOREs all over the place. The hab was a big old lump of a tub, easy to hit and hard to pilot. Chance of taking a major impact was way too high to risk maneuvering. Best wait until it all settled down, at least somewhat.
If ever did.
“We detected the second gravity-wave pulse eight minutes after the first,” Sondra said, reading off her notes. “We picked it up as a harmonic of one of the sub-frequencies we were working on. Of course we immediately retuned to zero in on that frequency. Then the third pulse came about ten minutes after the second, and they’ve been coming at intervals of between five and sixteen minutes ever since.”
“And you have never picked up anything like this before?” the Autocrat asked.
“No, never, not since we turned the Ring on.”
“And what does it mean?” the Autocrat asked.
“Before I get to that, there’s something else you need to know,” Sondra said. “Just a few minutes ago, I received a high-priority signal from Larry Chao on the Moon, reporting a moonquake at exactly the same moment we picked up the first pulse, with a follow-on quake exactly when we picked up the second pulse.”
“But don’t gravity waves move at light speed? No gravity wave that the Moon detected could possibly reach us here at the same moment, unless the wave generator was exactly the same distance from both points, on a plane exactly between the two points, here in the Solar System.”
“You know your stuff, Autocrat. Except these gravity waves did not come from anywhere in the Solar System. They were from an external source.”
“But that’s impossible,” the Autocrat protested.
“Except for the fact that it’s happening, I’d agree with you. Dr. Chao thinks he knows what is happening, and I am inclined to agree with him.”
“And what does he think is happening?”
Sondra hesitated a moment. “He thinks something—actually a whole series of large somethings—are moving through a wormhole link with a resonance frequency almost precisely the same as the Lunar Wheel’s natural tuning frequency. The pulse is coming, not through normal space, but through the contiguous planar space adjacent to the Wheel in a wormhole stack.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry. Let me try that again. Somewhere out there, something big is going from one point in normal space to another by way of a wormhole. That passage is setting up gravitic-wave vibrations, and the Lunar Wheel’s basal, default tuning is so close to the frequency of those vibrations that it is reacting. The automatic sensor part of the Wheel is trying to wake the Wheel up again, get it to respond to the pulse—but it can’t, because the Wheel is dead.”
“And the Ring of Charon?”
“Is a gravity-wave sensor. It would be pretty remarkable if it failed to pick up a wave pulse this powerful.”
“This is all most interesting. But why is it as important as you say?”
“Because the pulse frequency is so powerful, and so close to the Lunar Wheel’s default tuning.”
“So you think this all has something to do with where Earth is.”
“Yes. Yes I do. I think the Charonians are using the wormhole to send something into or out of the system where they have Earth— and I’d bet big money they’re using the same singularity that Earth came through. The tuning is that close.”
“But why? How?”
Sondra shook her head. “I don’t know. But I don’t think it is likely to be good news. It never is, with the Charonians.”
Tyrone Vespasian watched the last of the personnel come up out of the transit car, up from Wheel level to the lunar surface. Two dead, twelve injured. It could have been, should have been, a lot worse. “Everyone accounted for?” he asked the technician in charge, without moving his gaze off the transit car.
“Yes sir. Full roll call completed and confirmed.”
“All right then,” he said, though damn little was all right. “Seal it off,” he told the transit technician. “No one goes down without my specific written authorization until further notice. Until we know what the hell those pulses are, and until they stop, the Wheelway is off-limits. Period. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. Understood.” The tech turned and hurried back to his post, though he might as well have taken his time. The Lucian Dreyfuss Memorial Station was quite suddenly out of business.
And what of Lucian Dreyfuss himself? Alone in the dark again, down in the Wheelway, still entombed by the Charonians, still hooked up to the simulator system, lost to them once again. Did Lucian understand what was happening? Had he even survived this latest disaster? Damnation, they should have set up the control system on the surface, rather than down in the caverns. Then they could have tried to wake Lucian again, ask him what it meant.
But as it was… Lucian was gone again, lost to them once more. Sleeping still, or killed outright by the tremors, no one could say.
And yet Vespasian could not believe that Lucian was gone altogether. Not after coming so close to death, and yet returning, at least part of the way. No. Some part of what had been Lucian Dreyfuss was still down there, somewhere. He was lost to them for now, but not forever.