Kaspar's Box

"They aren't acting like anything else. We're cut off from our mother world and more than half of all that's human, and if you aim at the area where they were that we can no longer reach, you find the place boiling, almost a hell of gamma ray eruptions strong enough to sterilize the whole sector. They don't tell you that because if they did the combination of panic and despair would be incalculable. We've seen such things happen before, but never this close, never even in this galaxy. Until now, there was no reason to think that it wasn't natural, some kind of thing that just happens in the physics of the cosmos. Now, though, we have a question. So far, all the major emissions have been away from us; it's barely been a ripple here. But if they were to go off in this direction, or almost anywhere in this sector, all of us, and everything we've ever known, everything that is left of the human race, would be gone forever. All life gone, a sterilized museum."

"You really want to fill a man with cheer," the captain commented. "And you think all this is a part of that?"

"We don't know. It doesn't seem likely that we encounter this kind of nasty business wielding this kind of power and have it not connect." The sergeant turned back to the controls. "Full second-floor sweep done?"

"Yes, sir," Broz responded. "Large formal dining room, a number of meeting rooms, library, formal study, that sort of thing, as well as one heavily sealed security zone right in the center behind the atrium stair. House maintenance has started, so we'll have to watch it. Lots of robotic cleaning and polishing, but if they happen to detect the ferrets, then they'll bring security on full."

He nodded. "All right, then, we'll ease down to the ground floor. Watch the floors and lower halves of the walls, though. Keep to the inside walls. This will be where maximum security would be deployed."

"I'm well aware of that, sir," Broz responded. "I know my job." Even as the ferrets descended on either side of the giant statue, though, the controller looked at the monitors and the instruments and suddenly had a sharp intake of breath, freezing both ferrets.

"Corridors in back of the security column aft of the statue," Broz noted. "Both sides are protected with pretty strong force fields powered from within the security unit and separate from the house power. These are full fields, backed up with lasers and ray sweepers. They sure don't want anybody or anything going back there."

"Think we can get in there?"

"I'm running the checks now. The security room's out of the question. Sealed right, best I've ever seen, and in a vacuum as well. That woman and her company know the business. No way to tell if it runs over all the way to the back of the house through the ceiling. Not without ripping up the ceiling from the top, which is more than these ferrets can do. Under is even less likely. Under that fake polished-wood veneer is an energized plasma running through layers of weapons-grade material."

"How does the air get in and out?" Maslovic asked.

"It appears common air molecules pass without hindrance in and out and through the force field. Interesting effect, too. Note that thin line of material on the floor there? That's dust and pollen, possibly a few insects. The air that gets through is purified as it goes."

"Messy. How do they clean it, I wonder?" the captain mused.

"Eh?" All three of the military team there turned and looked at him in puzzlement for a moment.

"Fancy pants like these, they sure as hell won't let some nice, thin lines of dirt show up so clearly just beyond the entrance. What would Lord and Lady Triplefarts think when they came for tea? You see what I mean?"

"No," they all answered at once.

"You just don't have no experience with these kinds of folk. That floor, and that line of crud, has just got to be the most cleaned up and maintained little place in the whole damned house. And if it even cleans the dust and pollen in the air, then it's got to happen just about all the time, not just when the house is bein' treated, y'see. I'll bet you that the two lines are vacuumed and polished every couple of hours. No longer, surely."

"So it's blown and vacuumed. So what?"

"No, no. Can't be. That just winds up with a lot of it goin' back and forth into the air. We'd have dust all over, and we can't have that. It'd show on the white gloves. And there's no border or seam, so the thing has to be close vacuumed or washed and then repolished, and I mean repolished directly under the beam. Are you gettin' it now?"

Maslovic gave a low whistle. "You've saying that something, some gadget, is immune to the force field. Either that, or the force field's off for a few seconds, maybe longer, while that happens."

"Got to be."

"Let's see. Broz, keep one ferret on that force field where it meets the floor. If the captain's right, it shouldn't be too long considering the size of that dust ring right now. The other we can use to carefully survey the rest of the place."

"Fair enough."