Missile Gap

"A CAB is a joint committee feeding into the Central Office of Information's external bureaux on behalf of a blue-ribbon panel of experts assembled from the intelligence community," Gregor recites in a bored tone of voice. "Stripped of the bullshit, we're a board of wise men who're meant to rise above narrow bureaucratic lines of engagement and prepare a report for the Office of Technology Assessment to pass on to the Director of Central Intelligence. It's not meant to reflect the agenda of any one department, but to be a Delphi board synergizing our lateralities. Set up after the Cuban fiasco to make sure that we never again get backed into that kind of corner by accidental group-think. One of the rules of the CAB process is that it has to include at least one dissident: unlike the commies we know we're not perfect." Gregor glances pointedly at Fox, who has the good sense to stay silent.

"Oh, I see," Sagan says hesitantly. With more force: "so that's why I'm here? Is that the only reason you've dragged me away from Cornell?"

"Of course not, Doctor," oozes Brundle, casting Gregor a dirty look. The East German defector, Wolff, maintains a smug silence: I are above all this. "We're here to come up with policy recommendations for dealing with the bigger picture. The much bigger picture."

"The Builders," says Fox. "We're here to determine what our options look like if and when they show up, and to make recommendations about the appropriate course of action. Your background in, uh, SETI recommended you."

Sagan looks at him in disbelief. "I'd have thought that was obvious," he says.

"Eh?"

"We won't have any choice," the young professor explains with a wry smile. "Does a termite mound negotiate with a nuclear superpower?"

Brundle leans forward. "That's rather a radical position, isn't it? Surely there'll be some room for maneuver? We know this is an artificial construct, but presumably the builders are still living people. Even if they've got green skin and six eyes."

"Oh. My. God." Sagan leans forward, his face in his hands. After a moment Gregor realizes that he's laughing.

"Excuse me." Gregor glances round. It's the German defector, Wolff, or whatever he's called. "Herr Professor, would you care to explain what you find so fu

After a moment Sagan leans back, looks at the ceiling, and sighs. "Imagine a single, a forty-five RPM record with a centre hole punched out. The i

The astronomer sits up. "Do any of you gentlemen have any idea just how preposterously powerful whoever built this structure is?"

"How do you mean, preposterously powerful?" asks Brundle, looking more interested than a

"A colleague of mine, Dan Alderson, did the first analysis. I think you might have done better to pull him in, frankly. Anyway, let me itemise: item number one is escape velocity." Sagan holds up a bony finger. "Gravity on a disk does not diminish in accordance with the inverse square law, the way it does on a spherical object like the planet we came from. We have roughly earthlike gravity, but to escape, or to reach orbit, takes tremendously more speed. Roughly two hundred times more, in fact. Rockets that from Earth could reach the moon just fall out of the sky after ru

The astronomer pauses to pour himself a glass of water, then glances round the table. "To put it in perspective, gentlemen, this world is so big that, if one in every hundred stars had an earth-like planet, this single structure could support the population of our entire home galaxy. As for the mass — this structure is as massive as fifty thousand suns. It is, quite bluntly, impossible: as-yet unknown physical forces must be at work to keep it from rapidly collapsing in on itself and creating a black hole. The repulsive force, whatever it is, is strong enough to hold the weight of fifty thousand suns: think about that for a moment, gentlemen."

At that point Sagan looks around and notices the blank stares. He chuckles ruefully.

"What I mean to say is, this structure is not permitted by the laws of physics as we understand them. Because it clearly does exist, we can draw some conclusions, starting with the fact that our understanding of physics is incomplete. Well, that isn't news: we know we don't have a unified theory of everything. Einstein spent thirty years looking for one, and didn't come up with it.

But, secondly." He looks tired for a moment, aged beyond his years. "We used to think that any extraterrestrial beings we might communicate with would be fundamentally comprehensible: folks like us, albeit with better technology. I think that's the frame of mind you're still working in. Back in sixty-one we had a brainstorming session at a conference, trying to work out just how big an engineering project a spacefaring civilization might come up with. Freeman Dyson, from Princeton, came up with about the biggest thing any of us could imagine: something that required us to imagine dismantling Jupiter and turning it into habitable real estate.

"This disk is about a hundred million times bigger than Dyson's sphere. And that's before we take into account the time factor."

"Time?" Echoes Fox from Langley, sounding confused.

"Time." Sagan smiles in a vaguely disco

Sagan shrugs, then lapses into silence. Gregor catches Brundle's eye and Brundle shakes his head, very slightly. Don't spill the beans. Gregor nods. Sagan may realize he's in a room with a CIA spook and an East German defector, but he doesn't need to know about the Alienation Service yet.

"Well that's as may be," says Fox, dropping words like stones into the hollow silence at the table. "But it begs the question, what are we going to tell the DCI?"

"I suggest," says Gregor, "that we start by reviewing COLLECTION RUBY." He nods at Sagan. "Then, maybe when we're all up to speed on that, we'll have a better idea of whether there's anything useful we can tell the DCI.