Engines Of God

"No." Morris spoke from the bridge. "There is no other hole. We've looked everywhere."

"There has to be," Carson insisted.

Lights played across the damage.

"This is strange." George was holding his hand over the hole. He pushed it through, and withdrew it. And pushed it through again. "There isn't clear passage here," he said.

Janet, who'd been examining the membranous material of which the Bowl was constructed, directed her lamp into the hole. "He's right," she said. "There are threads or thin fabric or something in it—"

"Filaments," said Maggie.

ARCHIVE

"Yes, director?"

"Do you have anything yet on the sample?" "We've just begun." "What do you know so far?" "It's organic." "Are you certain?"

"Yes. I can give you more details in a few hours. But it looks like a spider's web."

Commlog, Ship's Laboratory, NCK Catherine Perth Dated April 10, 2203

Melanie Truscott, Diary

I have not been able to sleep tonight. We have withdrawn from the immediate neighborhood of that telescope, construct, creature—God help me, I don't even know how to think of it. Now we begin the business of trying to learn who put it there. And why.

There is no evidence of artificially generated electromagnetic radiation anywhere else in the system. Even the other telescopes are quiet. (I wonder, does that mean that their transmitting equipment has given out? Or that the telescopes are dead?)

The third and fourth worlds are both in the biozone, but only the third has life.

April 10, 2203

21

Melonie Truscott, Diary

Even the transmitter seems to be organic!

How old is this thing? Allegri says that dating the scrapings will require more elaborate techniques than we have at our disposal. She told me privately that she doubts whether they can be dated at all.

The technology level that produced this is unthinkable. I ca

April 11, 2203

On board NCK Catherine Perth. Monday, April 11; 05JO hours.

Beta Pacifica III floated in the windows and viewscreens of the Catherine Perth. It was a terrestrial world, with a global ocean and broad white clouds. There was a single land mass, a long slender hook, seldom more than two hundred kilometers across. The hook was often broken by cha

There were ribbons of forest, desert, and jungle, usually stretching from sea to sea. Plains crowded with tall, pulpy stalks dominated the equatorial area. Snowstorms were active in both hemispheres, and it was raining along the flanks of a long mountain range in the south.

Four moons orbited the world. They were airless, cratered rocks, ranging in size from a fifteen-kilometer-wide boulder to a giant a third larger than Luna.

After the discoveries at the Bowl, Truscott had found it easy to persuade her passengers that they were aboard an epochal cruise, and that they would not want to pass up a stop at Beta Pac III. To encourage their cooperation, she broke into the special stores, provided sumptuous meals, and passed out free liquor. Captain Morris objected to all this, and Harvey Sill sternly disapproved, but the passengers were happy enough. And that was all she cared about.

It was dusk over the westernmost arc of the continent. They had approached the world from sunward with a high degree of enthusiasm and were now on their first flyby. Among the members of the Academy team hopes were high, although no one would say precisely what he was hoping for, nor even admit to any degree of optimism. In this sense, Hutch was like the others, playing the hardheaded pessimist, but overwhelmed by the possibilities.

The passengers tried to stay close to them. When history happened, which Truscott's campaigning had induced everyone to expect, they wanted to be able to say they'd been on the spot. Consequently, Carson and Janet had been pressed into giving seminars, and they'd all signed autographs.

As Perth approached its rendezvous with destiny, the team retreated to their observation lounge, where Beta Pac III floated on the wall screen. Other monitors carried pictures of the moons, the Bowl, a schematic of the planetary system, comparisons between Beta Pac III and Earth, and rows of telemetry from probes.

Telescopes had been trained for days on the expanding world. They had not yet seen indications of intelligent activity: neither engineering works nor signs of environmental management were visible. But it was possible that an advanced society—this was Maggie's argument—would have learned to live in communion with the natural order. So they watched the continent slide past the terminator. And hoped for lights.

But no soft yellow glow punctuated the gathering darkness. The night swallowed everything.

Collectively, they let out their breath.

"Pity," said George.

Carson nodded. "Nobody home, I think."

Hutch had been sitting quietly, contemplating the image, but she was thinking about Richard, who should have been here for this moment, whatever the outcome. "Too soon to know," she said.

Captain Morris, seated on the bridge at the command console, looked up into the camera, straight into their eyes, and opened a cha

The numbers on the atmospheric lower levels appeared: 74 % nitrogen, 25 % oxygen, a goodly fraction of a percent of argon, a miniscule amount of carbon dioxide, and traces of neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, and xenon. Very Earthlike.

Snacks arrived. Snacks appeared constantly, adding to the generally festive atmosphere aboard ship. Coffee, cheese, pastries, fruit juices, beer, rolled in an unending stream out of the galley. Hutch ate more than she would ordinarily have allowed herself, and refused to give in to disappointment. The fact that they were here at all was cause to celebrate. If there was to be no welcome from the Monument-Makers, they had still achieved much. "What do you think?" she asked Carson.

He smiled encouragingly. "If they're not there, maybe they left something behind."

"I'd like to find something" said Truscott, who was standing beside Maggie Tufu, looking out at the darkness. "I truly would."

"You've gone well out of your way for this," said Hutch. "We appreciate it."

"You didn't leave me a lot of choice," she said. "It was a chance to be on the Santa Maria. I wouldn't have wanted to tell my grandkids that I could have ridden with Columbus, and passed it up."

Janet, who had been up all night watching the approach, retired to a corner chair and fell asleep. In a sense, it signaled the death of their wilder hopes.

Monitors displayed planetary characteristics:

ORBIT

SIDEREAL PERIOD: 1.41 Standard Yr

PERIHELION: 1.32AUs

APHELION: 1.35AUs

GLOBE

EQUATORIAL DIAMETER: 15,300 km