Between the Strokes of Night

“We don’t know how the Gossameres do it,” went on Ferranti. “But they maintain themselves at less than one degree absolute, well below cosmic background temperature, without emitting radiation at any frequency that we’ve been able to detect. And they suck up all the power that a ship can give out. If you didn’t know that and were in charge of a ship, you could get into terrible trouble.” “But what are they?” repeated Peron. “I mean, are they intelligent?” “We don’t know,” said Ferranti. “They certainly respond to stimuli. They seem to interpret signals we send them, and they stop the power drain on us as soon as they receive a suitable non-random message. Our best guess is that the Gossameres are not intelligent, they’re no more than power collection and propulsion systems. But the Pipistrelles — those bat shapes that you can see alongside the Gossamere — they’re another matter. They ride the galactic gravitational and magnetic fields, and they do it in complex ways. We’ve never managed a two-way exchange of information with them — they never emit — but they act smart. They really use the fields efficiently to make minimum time and energy movements. That could be some kind of advanced instinct, too, the way that a soaring bird will ride the thermals of an atmosphere. But watch them now. What does this mean? Are they saying goodbye? We’ve never been sure.”

She had completed the signal sequence. After a brief delay, one of the Pipistrelles swooped in close toward the ship. There was a flutter of cambered wings, a dip to left and right, and a final surge of power drain on the meters. Then the panels and filaments of the Gossamere began to move farther off. The silver connecting lines shone brighter, while the whole assembly slowly faded. After a few minutes, the winged shapes of the Pipistrelles closed into a tighter formation and followed the Gossamere.

“We had ships drift helpless, with all power shut down for months, until we learned how to handle this,” said Ferranti. “We even tried aggression, but nothing we did affected the Gossameres at all. Now we’ve learned how to live with them.”

“Can you bring them back?” asked Sy.

“We’ve never found a way to do it. They appear at random. And we encounter them far less often now than when our ships first went out. We think that the ‘power plant failure’ on Helena when the arcologies first set out was probably an encounter with a Gossamere. When the colonists turned off the plant to repair it, they couldn’t find anything wrong. That’s typical of a Gossamere power drain. They certainly don’t seem to need our energy, but they like it. The science group in the Jade sector headquarters argue that we’re a treat for the Pipistrelles, a compact energy source when they are used to a very dilute one. We’re like candy to them, and maybe they’ve learned that too much candy isn’t a good thing.”

She switched off the display screen and rose from her seat at the port. “Stay here if you like, and play with the com link. Maybe you can find a way to lure them back. That would certainly please our exobiologists and communications people. I wanted you all to see this, and absorb my message: you can’t learn all about the Universe crouching in close by a star. You have to know what’s going on out in deep space.”

“What else is going on?” asked Elissa. She was still peering out into the milky depths of S-space, watching as the final traces of the Pipistrelles slowly faded from sight.

“Here?” said Ferranti. “Nothing much. On the other hand, we’re not in deep space. Sol is less than three light-years — we’ll be there in less than a week. Now, if we were in deep space, with no star closer than ten light-years…” Olivia Ferranti stopped abruptly. She had seemed about to say more, but thought better of it. With a nod at the others, she turned and left the control room. * * *

“So what do you make of that?” said Elissa. Sy merely shook his head and offered no comment.

“She’s telling us there are more surprises on the way,” said Peron. “I like Olivia, and I think she’s doing her best for us. She knows there are still things she’s not supposed to reveal to us, so she gives us hints and lets us work on them for ourselves. That was another one — but I don’t know how to interpret it. Damn it, though, I wish that the others were here. I’d like Kallen’s comments on the Gossameres. Do you think we made a bad mistake, splitting up like that?”