Звезда Пандоры

“But nobody knows what they were saying,” Wilson observed. “We’ve had a hundred and eighty years to decode the signal, and I’m not aware of any breakthrough yet. They must have been broadcasting back to their own home planet.”

“That’s certainly one theory proposed by the Institute, Captain. We have a hundred more if you have the time to listen. All we can do is work through the wreckage and try to put together as many pieces of the puzzle as possible. One day we shall have our answers. Regrettably, it won’t be in the near future.”

“You must have some idea where they came from,” Oscar said. “If they traveled at point seven lightspeed for five hundred years that gives you an origin point roughly three hundred and fifty light-years from Far Away. Surely you can match a star to the light spectrum in the ship’s life-support section?”

“That would be difficult, Mr. Monroe, the tanks had a multispectrum illumination source. They weren’t trying to match their home star’s emission.”

“Tanks?”

The Director’s face displayed mild disappointment. “There was no planetary surface environment replicated inside the Marie Celeste. The starship carried tanks. As far as we can tell from the residue, they were filled with water and a type of monocellular algae.”

“It was an aquatic species?” Wilson was fascinated. He’d never done any research into the arkship. Far Away had been on his list of worlds he wanted to visit in his sabbatical life.

“Again, that is one theory,” James Halgarth said. “There were no remnants of advanced creatures in the tanks, and we have never identified any such species in Far Away’s ocean. Another theory is that the Marie Celeste is actually an automated seedship. It was programmed to sterilize whatever habitable world it found, and seed it with genetic samples from its own world ready for its builders to colonize once the alienforming was complete.”

“Another good reason to throw up a barrier,” Wilson said.

“I doubt it, Captain. Firstly, if you have the technology to erect the kind of barrier found at the Dyson Pair, then you certainly have the capability to deactivate a robot ship before it begins its in-system mission. Secondly, it is a dreadfully flawed method of interstellar colonization. The resources spent on constructing such a ship are enormous. And it didn’t work. The flare killed off most but not all of Far Away’s native life, yet no trace has been found of any nonnative life. And if the Marie Celeste is one of a fleet, then where are all the other flares presumably set off by the rest of the ships? Thirdly, if you are a space-faring civilization intent on spreading out of your own solar system, then you will be constantly improving your technology. Whether you will develop faster-than-light travel is questionable. But certainly better ships than the Marie Celeste can be built, and the second wave would overtake the first and travel farther. Why haven’t we seen any other ships from the species which launched theMarie Celeste ? I’m afraid, gentlemen, that we are presented with a unique puzzle with Far Away. It is as the saying goes: a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But I must conclude, it has nothing to do with the Dyson Pair.”

“I’m sure this is in your reports,” Oscar said. “But what about the onboard electronics? You must have salvaged some programs, surely?”

“No. The processors left installed are fairly standard, using a basic gate principle like ours, though some of the chemistry involved is different from anything we employ. However the core control array is missing, salvaged or removed.”

“Before or after the crash landing?”

“After. It wasn’t so much a crash landing as a heavy landing. The arkship’s systems were working at the time otherwise it would have been a true crash and all we’d have to examine would be a very deep crater. The official Institute history is that the flare was successful in calling another ship and a rescue mission picked up the survivors. That certainly fits all the known facts. Anything else is pure conspiracy theory.”

“You mentioned technology levels,” Wilson said. “Is the Marie Celeste a product of a technology more advanced than ours?”

“By definition, we are more advanced because we have wormhole generators. However that is now. By our best estimate, the Marie Celeste was launched aroundAD 1300, and at that time we had barely begun the Renaissance.”

“I see what you mean. Even if they only had half of our technological progression rate, they should have the same kind of pathways the Silfen use by now.”

“Exactly.”

“What about now, though? Is what we have now equivalent to the Marie Celeste?”

“The easiest answer is equivalent but different. We could undoubtedly build a more sophisticated slower-than-light starship. Obviously they didn’t have our wormhole capability, but then we don’t know how they flared the star.”