Звезда Пандоры

“I don’t believe the barrier could have been imposed on those stars by an external agency,” Lee Ki said. “It’s not logical. If you fear someone so much and have the ability to imprison entire stars, then you would not make the barrier permeable. You would use it as a pressure cooker, or do worse than that. No, for my money it was defensive. Something very nasty was heading toward the Dyson Pair, and they slammed the gates shut in its face.”

“In which case, where is it now?” Thompson Burnelli asked.

“Exactly,” Brewster Kumar said.

“It no longer exists,” Ozzie said. “And you guys are all far too paranoid.”

“Care to qualify that?” Thompson Burnelli said impassively.

“Come on, man; the Dyson Pair are over twelve hundred light-years away from Tanyata. This all happened when the fucking Roman Empire ruled the Earth. Astronomy is history.”

“It was closer to Genghis Khan than the Romans,” Brewster Kumar said. “And no culture as powerful and advanced as the Dyson Pair or their aggressor is going to fade away in a single millennia. We certainly won’t, and we’re nowhere near that technology level yet. You can’t just bury your head in the sand over this and hope it all blew away all those years ago.”

“I agree,” the Vice President said. “Far Away is only five hundred and fifty light-years from the Dyson Pair, and they’re observing the barrier still intact.”

“One other piece of information which CST hasn’t made public yet,” Nigel said. “We also used our exploratory wormhole to track down the envelopment time for Dyson Beta. Unfortunately, our first guess was the right one.”

Rafael Columbia was suddenly very attentive. “You mean they’re the same?”

“Yes. As seen from Tanyata, the Pair have a two-light-year linear separation distance. We opened a wormhole two light-years closer to Beta from where we made our observation of Alpha’s enclosure. We saw Beta’s enclosure, which is identical to Alpha’s. They occur within three minutes of each other.”

“It’s defensive,” Eugene Cinzoul said. “It has to be. A civilization inhabiting two star systems was approached by an aggressor.”

“Curious coincidence,” Ozzie said.

“What is?” the Vice President asked.

“Something aggressive and immensely powerful closes in on the one civilization in this part of the galaxy that was technologically savvy enough to protect itself from them. I don’t believe it, man. Galactic timescale simply won’t allow that to happen. We only coexist with the Silfen because they’ve existed for like millions of years.”

The Vice President gave the SI portal a troubled look. “What is your interpretation of this?”

“Mr. Isaac is correct in stating that such a conflict between two balanced powers is extremely unlikely,” the SI said. “We know how rare it is for sentience to evolve on any life-bearing planet; as a consequence, technological civilizations rarely coexist in the galaxy—although the High Angel is an exceptional case. However, the proposition cannot be excluded simply because of this. We also acknowledge Mr. Kumar’s point, that any civilization capable of performing such a feat will not quickly disappear from the galaxy.”

“They can evolve,” Ozzie said quickly. “They can throw off all their primitive instincts. After all, we leave a lot of our shit behind us.”

“You also generate a great deal of new ‘shit,’ ” the SI said. “All of which is depressingly similar to your old ‘shit.’ And no primitive culture could erect these barriers around the Dyson Pair. But again, we concede the point. The barrier mechanism may simply be an ancient device that has been left on for no good reason other than its creators have indeed moved onward and upward. There are endless speculations which can be made from the presently observed data. None of which can be refined as long as that data remains so scarce and so old.”

“What are you suggesting?” the Vice President asked.

“That is obvious, is it not? This Council was brought into existence to formulate a response to any perceived threat to the Commonwealth. No coherent response to the Dyson Pair can be made based on the currently available data. More information must be acquired. You must visit the Dyson Pair to ascertain their current status, and the reason behind the enclosures.”

“The cost—” exclaimed the Vice President. She gave Nigel a quick guilty glance.

He ignored it; the SI had made things considerably simpler for him. “Yes, it would cost a lot to reach the Dyson Pair by conventional methods,” he said. “We’d have to locate at least seven H-congruous planets, stretched out between the Commonwealth and the Dyson Pair, and then build commercial-size wormhole generators on each of them. It would take decades, and there would be little economic benefit.”

“The Commonwealth treasury can hardly subsidize CST,” Crispin Goldreich said.

“You did for Far Away,” Nigel said mildly. “That was our last alien contact.”