Kaspar's Box

"Never, as far as I know, except in simulation the past few days. Relax. Size doesn't matter as much on this one, I'm told, and the ship's own systems know what to do. I'm belting in. You should do the same."

Almost at the end of his sentence the warning klaxon sounded throughout the ship. Almost everyone else was already lying down and secured or belted in a proper jump chair.

"NEVER???" Georgi Macouri's voice sounded even as the ship suddenly accelerated from a near coast to fantastic speeds and headed for what the Macouri formula said would be the wild hole to the Three Kings.

* * *

"Definitely not what I expected," Darch commented. Although his primary job was security on this mission, he was also the de facto head of the entire science department aboard the ship. In fact, except for the computerized labs and research programs, he was the entire science department. "In fact, what I am seeing not only I but all our science computers say is damned near impossible."

They were lying several million kilometers back from the mini system, far enough outsystem that they could see both the strange dense star and the close-in massive gas giant as well. The visible-light screen view was impressive; it was almost as if they were looking at two suns, one on fire, the other not.

"Science is not my strong point," Maslovic told him. "In fact, I believe it because the folks who know it tell me about it."

"This kind of system is unprecedented, and for good reason," Darch explained, not just to his boss but to all of them. "The kind of gravitational forces I'm reading show that there is simply no way this system can be in this kind of stable formation. This is a system that should be at war, pulling things apart, pulling others in for incineration. That kind of star shouldn't even have planets. The turbulence on the big gas giant is an indicator of just how nasty things should be. These kinds of forces are why that wild hole field is where it is." He exhaled and shook his head. "No, I don't even envy the captain keeping us in any kind of stable orbit anywhere around here. No wonder almost nobody came back. Anybody who came along here who wasn't the best would have been sucked in or flung down and crashed. This kind of system makes no sense. It can't exist like this if physics is to be believed. There has to be a third force here, something not showing up on our instruments, that acts as the stabilizing constant between the warring sides. Otherwise it's voodoo, Chief. It's magic."

"I knew it! I knew it!" Macouri muttered. "This is Hell! The seat of the Powers of Darkness! Oh, my! Oh, my!"

Maslovic totally ignored him. "Any idea of the force?"

"Well, in one sense our quaking friend here is right. In a good simulator I might well be able to build this thing. Sure, this is the universe. Anything's possible out here, or so it seems, but it would be a lot easier to build it than to wait to find it, maybe, naturally, including some mysterious third force we haven't seen anywhere else."

Maslovic turned and looked at him. "And you could create a third force?"

"Maybe. It wouldn't probably work here, or be much like here, but I could kludge it. This, now-this is no kludge. This was designed. This was engineered. I'd bet anything I had that this whole damned place was built."

"Well, we sure couldn't build it," Broz noted.

"Irrelevant," Maslovic told her.

"Huh?"

"If it was built, and I defer to the experts on that, then the question isn't how, not unless you want to build another and I have no desire to do that. The question is why."

"Beg your pardon," he heard Murphy's voice behind him. "Sure'n it's obvious, I would think."

"More of your wheelbarrows, Captain?"

"No, not exactly. But the same analogy. On at least twenty worlds that I know of there exist plants, or what serves for plants, that don't eat sunlight and minerals or the usual. They got confused somewhere after creation, poor things, and decided to eat meat instead. There's a ton of them types back on Barnum's World. They keep the insect population down to that dull roar, or help to."

"Yes? So?"

"That's what that is, don't you see? It's a giant flycatcher. And we're the flies."

"He might be right," Darch commented. "Hold on. Let me do a hypothetical here." His tone changed and he adjusted something on his control panel, then said, "Computer, assume for problem that the data read in represents an intelligent construct."

"Postulating," the computer responded.

"Now, give me a visible representation of the missing energy force X that would be required by a builder to maintain the system at stasis."

On the screen, superimposed on the actual view, was a series of translucent spidery webs connecting the various parts of the inner solar system and particularly the secondary system around the gas giant. Primary energy flowed not from the moons or sun as expected but from the gas giant.