Von Neumann’s War

“I have a question,” Sergeant Cady asked. “If this tube sticking out of the Moon is so big, why can’t we see it?’ Cady, having seen the wing trick, reproduced it perfectly his first try and stuffed the chicken into his mouth. Tom was too busy to notice what he had done.

“That’s a good question, Master Sergeant,” Alice replied. “I was thinking the same thing. But I’m not an optics person, I deal with atoms, substrates, junctions, gates, and hole pairs.”

“What?” Shane asked.

“Itsy bitsy things down at the atomic level,” Roger translated absentmindedly.

“It’s simple telescope optics, y’all,” Traci stated. “The Hubble has a primary aperture diameter of 2.4 meters. That’s a powerful telescope, but it can only resolve about 150 meters at the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The tube is maybe fifty meters, max, in diameter. The tube is just too small in diameter for the telescope to see clearly. Now you might see a little bump in the long dimension. I’m not sure why we don’t on that one.”

Alan rubbed his chin. “Yeah Rog, why is that?”

“Traci.” Roger adjusted his Roll Tide cap and turned it around backwards. “Why can’t you see the light from a planet around a distant star real easy?” Roger waited a few seconds for the light bulb to go on over Traci’s head. He could see in her eyes that she figured it out.

“Of, course! You clever bastard, you,” she said. “The Moon is reflecting way more light than the little tube. So it’s just washed out.”

“Atta girl!” Roger swigged at his beer, proud of himself and his new pupil.

“Is there a way to get a closer look at this thing?” Cady asked. “I mean, it’d be a lot easier to figure out how to blow ’em up if we knew what the hell they are.”

Gries nodded approvingly to the sergeant. “Yeah, Doc, how’s about it?”

Before Roger could respond Tom slapped the table, “Gravity!”

Alice nearly fell off her stool.

Gries sloshed his beer again.

Thomas choked on a wing.

Roger and Alan were used to it.

“What about gravity, Tom?” Alan asked.

“That’s why the tube isn’t any bigger and doesn’t stretch all the way to Mars.”

Roger and Alan had often thought that Tom was autistic because he had a tendency to answer a question that had been asked ten minutes earlier. This was just more data in support of their theory.

“You want to expound on that a little, Dr. Powell?” John asked. Everyone else seemed either indifferent or afraid to ask.

“Most certainly, I shall. You see, a tube this size if it were the length of the distance from Earth to Mars, well, that would have significant mass. That would really affect and effect the things in the solar system that function due to gravity. The orbits of the planets or asteroids or comets might get a little perturbed. Not much, but enough. The tides would get confused and it might even confuse the lunar orbit. These things are smart. You see?” Tom smiled and snapped his fingers.

“Uh, sorry, Doc, I don’t see,” Gries said.

“Of course,” John replied.

“I see,” said Traci. “But why not just land all asunder?”

“All right, hold on a minute and let’s get everybody up to speed.” Roger held up his hands. “Tom is saying that if these things maintained a tubeway from Mars to the Moon this large that it would be so massive that it would fuck the orbits of the planets up.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have said it quite so crudely,” Tom responded with a smile.

“Crude or not, correct right?”

“As near as makes no difference,” Tom said. “Also, the relative position of the planets is constantly changing. A solid tube wouldn’t work anyway.”

“Okay. So these things do not want to f-up the gravitational mechanics of the star system. That makes sense. If they plan to take it over and keep it for themselves, they wouldn’t want to muck it up too much.”

“Dr. Reynolds?”

“Yes, Alice?”

“Please do me a favor and promise not to speak that way in front of my daughter. She’s incorrigible enough as it is,” Alice scolded him politely.

“Right, sorry,” Roger said with a sheepish laugh. “Anyway, these things appear to fly in a broad sweeping disoriented array then conglomerate when they get close to the planet and all land at the same place. Loosely speaking.”

“Sounds right,” Tom agreed with a nod. “That’s why the Hubble didn’t pick up any of the mass prior to landing. For that matter, Spacewatch probably would have spotted it if it was solid.”

“Yeah, but what makes no sense to me is why they don’t just land all over the place like Traci said. Why would they care?” John asked, fingering his tie-clip and looking at the ceiling. “It would give them broad coverage, they could spread out faster… Landing in one spot makes no sense.”

“You know, I have no clue. That’s alien motivation for you.” Roger wiped his hands on his napkin, removed his ball cap, rubbed his fingers through his brown hair thoughtfully, and put his cap back on.

“I never thought of it that way,” Traci said with a grin at Roger. “Now we’re supposed to read alien minds.”