shook hands with an irritating air of self-importance.
They were approaching the cluster of antennas.
'Historic moment,' Truscott said. 'We are getting a look at the first piece of alien high tech. We'll try to do an analysis, see if we can figure out precisely what we're looking at. How about you, Frank? Do you have an expert along who can give us some answers?'
Carson looked at his colleagues. He received no encouragement. 'We're a little short on experts,' he said.
Perth glided over the featureless blue-black terrain. Her lights played on the surface, producing muted yellow blurs. The ship might have been moving across a burnished marble floor.
'How does it get power?' asked Janet. 'Solar?'
'Probably,' said George.
Truscott looked at Carson. 'Do you want a sample?'
'Yes,' said Maggie.
Carson nodded. 'Try not to damage anything.'
The captain showed irritation. 'We'll take care of it,' he said coldly. He spoke into his commlink, listened, and looked puzzled. 'Melanie, we can't find the collision site.'
'Were we looking for it?' asked Carson.
Morris nodded. 'We tracked your course backward, as a navigation exercise for my junior officers. There's no hole anywhere in the impact area large enough to run a starship through. Or anywhere else for that matter.'
'Your junior officers flunked,' said Carson.
Morris responded with a superior smile. 'My junior officers are quite good. And we've checked the numbers. There is no error.' He looked at Hutch. 'You did not change course, I understand.'
'That's correct,' she replied. 'But we did take some damage. I had to adjust for a tumble, and it's possible that when I terminated the burn the thrusters didn't shut down simultaneously. That could have resulted in a new heading.'
Morris shook his head. 'There is a hole in the impact area. But it's not big enough to accommodate a shuttle, let alone Wink.'
'That's odd,' said Truscott.
'That's all there is,' said the captain.
'Why don't we take a look?' Hutch suggested. 'At the hole we did find.'
The site was plowed up, exploded outward. They floated above it, in Flickinger belts, looking down through the open space at stars on the other side.
'It's less than seven meters across at its widest point,' said the Ops officer, a young woman named Creighton.
'Well, we certainly didn't come through here,' said Hutch. 'There must be another one somewhere.'
'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 cannot imagine that, if the builders exist, we could enter this system unobserved. If they are here, they made no effort to assist people who were in desperate trouble. And I find that disquieting.
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 channels, and occasionally by substantial patches of ocean, so that it was in fact a series of narrow islands strung together. The coastline was highly irregular: there were thousands of harbors and peninsulas. It extended literally from the top of the planet to the bottom, sliding beneath both icecaps. In the south, it curved back up almost to the equator.
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.
