NEGATIVE.
Because the room was tit only by that glorious starlight, he had not noticed the examiner until the word appeared white on a black screen. There was no sensor plate on top, and this examiner, Martin thought, was not fooling around with colored screens and subtle psychological pressures. He knew that his questions here would be answered simply and directly.
Unless they were forestalled…
THIS IS THE FEDERATION WORLD.
… or he began to see the answers for himself.
IT IS A HOLLOW BODY FABRICATED FROM MATERIAL WHICH COMPRISED THE PLANETS OF THIS AND MANY OTHER STAR SYSTEMS. IT CONTAINS THE INTELLIGENT BEINGS OF NEARLY TWO HUNDRED DIFFERENT SPECIES WHO ARE THE CITIZENS OF THE FEDERATION OF GALACTIC SENTIENTS. THIS WORLD, WHICH AMONG EARTH SCIENTISTS WOULD BE CALLED A MODIFIED DYSON SPHERE, ENCLOSES THE SYSTEM’S SUN AND USES ITS OUTPUT FOR LIGHT. HEAT. AND POWER FOR ITS SOIL SYNTHESIZERS, ATMOSPHERE PRODUCTION AND WEATHER CONTROL MACHINERY, GENERAL FABRICATION, AND FOOD SUPPLY
THE DIAMETER OF THE FEDERATION WORLD IS IN EXCESS OF TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILLION MILES AND IT HAS A USABLE SURFACE AREA, INCLUDING THE CONICAL EXTENSIONS AT THE POLES, OF NEARLY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY QUADRILLION SQUARE MILES, OR WELL OVER ONE BILLION TIMES THE SURFACE AREA OF EARTH.
THE PROJECTED FUTURE POPULATIONS OF ALL THE PRESENT MEMBERS OF THE FEDERATION, TOGETHER WITH THOSE OF THE HUNDREDS OF AS YET UNDISCOVERED INTELLIGENT SPECIES WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN INVITED TO JOIN. WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FULLY POPULATE THIS WORLD.
The words, diagrams, and sharply detailed pictures flashed onto the screen, describing the Federation World, its topography, atmospheres, temperature and weather control machinery, and the light neutralizer fields which provided night and day for those species which needed them. It rotated ponderously and with seeming slowness, furnishing maximum gravity in the equatorial areas for those Citizens who had come from high-gee planets, and a diminishing artificial gravity approaching the poles where the surface was stepped and terraced so that the centrifugal force would be at right angles to the ground.
Citizens wishing to make contact with those of another species used ultralong-range aircraft or intra-plane- tary spaceships. Such contacts were encouraged, but only if they did not involve the risk of individual or species invasion of privacy. So touchy were some of the cultures that the stratosphere of the entire Federation World had been rendered opaque so that Citizens would not be able to watch each other through telescopes by looking upward and across their hollow superplanet.
The vast structure was a superthin eggshell of metal which was ultra-hard and fantastically dense, and the soils and atmospheres covering its inner surface were synthetic and produced when population additions required them. Where the atmospheres of adjoining species were mutually toxic, one-hundred-mile-high walls, transparent in the higher altitudes so as not to interfere with the sunlight, separated the two areas. These were similar to the walls which encircled the five-hundred-mile entry ports, positioned at the points of the conical polar extensions, to keep the atmosphere from being lost into extraplanetary space.
In the gravity-free polar areas were the great, thou-sand-mile-square tracts of bare metal on which were built the atmosphere and soil synthesizers, the matter transmitter units, searchship building and maintenance docks, and the power sources for the long-range projectors which could turn aside or destroy any astronomical body large enough to endanger the giant sphere by collision.
All at once the awful immensity of the Federation World, the incredibly high level of knowledge which had created and maintained it, and the inutterable pettiness of his suspicions made Martin want to run away and hide himself. He felt like an aboriginal grasshut dweller suddenly confronted with a block of skyscraper offices and Rush-hour traffic.
“You are inviting us to join you,” he said numbly, “and you built that!”
WE DID NOT BUILD THE FEDERATION WORLD; NOR WOULD WE BE CAPABLE OF DOING SO IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. PLEASE TURN AROUND AND REGARD ME.
He turned quickly. The others, no doubt because they had already had this experience, turned more slowly. The wall on his right had become transparent, or maybe it was a wall-sized television screen showing a creature, lying or perhaps standing surrounded by a complex control desk. It was vaguely crablike, with too many legs; and appendages; the body was covered by warty excrescences and fleshy, frondlike growths. The single eye was wide and bulging, like a transparent sausage with two independently moving pupils. He had seen a pictoral representation of one of these beings in the reception area of the induction center, but this entity bore about as much resemblance to the picture as a real animal did to a cute cartoon treatment by Disney.
NO DOUBT YOU FIND ME AS VISUALLY REPULSIVE — AS I DO YOU. THE FEELING DIMINISHES AFTER REPEATED CONTACT BUT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU WERE ABOUT TO ASK. THE FED-WORLD WAS THE ULTIMATE PROJECT, IN PURELY PHYSICAL TERMS, OF AN INCREDIBLY ANCIENT RACE WHICH NO LONGER DWELLS ALTHOUGH THEY STILL MAKE NON-PHYSICAL CONTACT EVERY FEW CENTURIES IN WE NEED ASSISTANCE OR ADVICE. THE PROBABILITY IS THAT THEY HAVE EVOLVED TO A STAGE WHERE PHYSICAL EXISTENCE IS NO LONGER A REQUIREMENT. THEY ARE THE BUILDERS.
MY RACE, WHICH WAS THEN AND STILL REMAINS THE MOST HIGHLY ADVANCED OF THOSE ENCOUNTERED IN THE GALAXY, WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO BE INVITED TO JOIN THE FEDERATION WORLD. WE ALSO HAD OUR SHARE OF RESTLESS AND IMPATIENT ENTITIES WHO WERE NOT SURE THAT THE SAFE. PROTECTED, AND INFINITELY SPACIOUS FEDERATION WORLD WAS FOR THEM. THESE PEOPLE WERE SELECTED AND TRAINED BY THE BUILDERS TO DO THE RELATIVELY MENIAL TASKS. ON EARTH YOU WOULD CALL US ERRAND BOYS, ODD-JOB MEN, SERVANTS. WE WERE TAUGHT HOW TO USE AND MAINTAIN THIS WORLD’S EQUIPMENT. OTHER SPECIES COMMUNICATION AND ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES, AND THE CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF HYPERSHIPS FOR THE CONTINUING SEARCH PROGRAM.
WE FOUND THAT IN EVERY SPECIES SO FAR INVITED TO JOIN THE FEDERATION THERE WERE INVARIABLY A SMALL NUMBER WHO, INTELLECTUALLY OR EMOTIONALLY. COULD NOT ACCEPT THE INVITATION. THESE ENTITIES, THE NON-CITIZENS. CONTINUE TO JOIN US AND ASSIST IN PERFORMING THE TASKS SET BY THE BUILDERS.
One of the being’s appendages rose ponderously to indicate the dense, shining star field and the pointed, ovoid silhouette that was the great, single world of the Federation of Galactic Sentients, and it went on,
OUR PRINCIPAL TASK IS TO SEEK OUT THE INTELLIGENT RACES OF THE GALAXY AND BRING THEM INTO THE SECURITY AND FREEDOM OF THE WORLD THAT THE BUILDERS HAVE PROVIDED FOR THEM, BEFORE THEY PERISH IN THEIR OWN PLANETARY EFFLUVIA OR SOME OTHER CATASTROPHE BEFALLS THEM.
AFTER SUITABLE TRAINING, YOUR TASKS WILL INCLUDE ASSISTING US WITH SEARCHSHIP OPERATIONS AND CANDIDATE ASSESSMENT, WORK WHICH, CONSIDERING YOUR PRESENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT, WILL TAX YOUR ABILITIES TO THE FULL. TO AID YOU THERE ARE THE FACILITIES OF THE FEDERATION MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENTS WHICH WILL EXTEND YOUR LIFE SPAN AND PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES SO THAT YOUR LENGTHY TRAINING CAN BE PUT TO EFFECTIVE USE. IF AT ANY TIME YOUR WORK AS A NON-CITIZEN BECOMES TOO ONEROUS. YOU WILL BE GRANTED FEDERATION CITIZENSHIP AS A RIGHT.
LIFE IN THE FEDERATION WORLD IS MORE LEISURELY. ITS PURPOSE WAS AND IS TO BRING TOGETHER ALL THE INTELLIGENT RACES OF THE GALAXY AND LET THEM INTERMINGLE AND GROW SO THAT, IN THE FAR FUTURE, THE PURPOSE OF THE BUILDERS WILL COME TO FRUITION. THIS PURPOSE IS PRESENTLY
