Existence

in space. Seas that rainbow-glistened like oil slicks lapped against corkscrew continents where patches of green threaded between gray peaks and dun-colored plains. The nightside was ablaze with brightly illuminated cities, laid out in near perfect concentric circles that brusquely ignored the dictates of mere geography.

Along with billions of others, Gerald found the scene transfixing. Though Ramesh complained, expressing his own unique priority. “I’m trying to record as many stars as I can, to get a location and time fix. If only the damn ugly planet weren’t in the way…”

Pulling backward, the portrayed point of view soon took in a large foreground object-a structure of girders and struts, of vacuum warehouses and flaring torches, all connected together in apparent orbit above the planet. An edifice far more vast than any space station Gerald had ever conceived. Zooming in upon this giant workshop, the story image cruised past bat-creatures wearing puffy, transparent, globelike space suits, who were supervising a production line where glittering, translucent eggs could now be seen emerging from a luminous factory shed, one at a time.

The story image zoomed in vertiginously, arriving next to one of the lambent, rounded cylinders, now revealed to have a boxy contraption attached to one end. Along with all the other recently produced probes, this one rode upon a prodigiously lengthy conveyor belt toward the base of a huge, elongated machine-a kind of gun, Gerald realized-that swiveled to aim at a chosen point in space… and then fired something that sparkled and quickly vanished into starry night.

Then the long, narrow artillery tube turned its open-sided muzzle slightly, facing a new spot in the sky, and fired again.

Ramesh decreed the consensus opinion of his own advisers and ais.

It’s great big mass accelerator. Prelimestimate… it might hurl these pellets up to maybe 3 percent of lightspeed. Impressive, though not enough to do the full job.

Gerald had a feeling that time was being compressed. The ride up the conveyor belt took only a few seconds, then he was looking backward, past the newly minted Artifact, at the factory and planet as the accelerator throbbed, preparing to shoot this probe into the great beyond.

Fascinated, Gerald saw a pack of glowing objects start to converge from several directions, approaching the place where the Artifact had been made. Bat-beings turned also to look behind them toward the planet.

Time was up. When the moment came-and even a bit before-the mighty industrial works and the nearest patch of planetary atmosphere seemed to flare, accompanying a fierce intensity of released energy as the great gun fired…

… and, in an instant, the homeworld of the bat-creatures fell away behind, diminishing to a bright speck… to nothing.

Now the simulated camera view turned and depicted the box at the front of the pellet opening up, unrolling an array of what looked like wires, that spread out like an unfolding net.

Huh. I was expecting a photon sail. Perhaps pushed by a laser beam sent by the home system. It’s the obvious way to boost speed at this point for a cheap, efficient interstellar craft. But that’s no sail it deployed. And look, the sun that we’re heading away from doesn’t seem to be sending any help. No pushing beam of light.

Judging from stellar movements, some years have passed already. A decade maybe, and so far there’s no…

Ah! Here we go!

Suddenly, the home star seemed to brighten, many times over, though in a strangely speckled coloration. The array of wires, which had been floating loosely, now billowed outward, tautening. And there came-Gerald could feel it-a sense of acceleration!

Okay. It’s not a laser, but a particle beam of some sort. Electrons, possibly. Or protons. Maybe even heavy ions, targeted exactly to pass through the wire array in order to transfer momentum via magnetic induction. How about that. More complicated than a light sail, but maybe they also use the wires to leverage against the galactic magnetic field over long distances. One way to steer…

In fact, I wonder if you can actually use the particles that have passed you by, when you later catch up with them…

Gerald felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped out of his chair.

It was General Akana Hideoshi. The petite officer motioned for him to get up and follow her.

“But-”

Akana’s expression was adamant. “This show is being recorded. You can see it all later. Meanwhile, there are developments.”

Reluctantly, Gerald stood up, only to realize that he badly needed to stretch. Body crackling propelled a sudden, overpowering desire to move about. Still, the Artifact’s tale spoke directly to the space traveler in him. It was hard to tear away.

Over in a corner of the contact arena, behind a partial privacy screen, the two of them joined Emily Tang and Genady Gorosumov. “What is it?” he asked, while extending his legs onto tiptoe and relieving tension by leaning, left and right.

Emily held up a finger.

“First, it’s confirmed-those micro-quakes that proliferated during the last day or so are from long-ago fallen pellet probes.”

“Really? Confirmed already? How could they-”

She pointed to a screen. There he saw a panorama of humans and assisting robots dredging through a muddy river estuary. Another showed men toiling amid boulders, freshly tumbled from a layered cliff of sedimentary stone. Emily sped through the work, arriving at a similar climax in four separate cases-shouts and the recovery of something that reacted to human touch by emitting a brief but excited glow.

Washed of muck and debris, or chipped free of eons-old rocky casings, what the workers revealed was never smooth or intact, like the Havana Artifact. But even in fragments, a family resemblance was clear. And, in two of the recovered specimens, one could see a definite effect as the surface felt its first sunlight in… a very long time. Ripples of cloudy gray. Flickers of color. Hints of pattern, struggling to emerge.

“Apparently, the detonations weren’t only to get attention. A few of them actually managed to explosively free themselves from the strata they were trapped in, thus making it much easier to find them. Of course, it was pure luck for those that happened to be near the surface, or next to a cliff edge. A vast majority simply blew up chunks of their own material for nothing, buried under a million years of muck or sediment. We’ll never find most of the relics, no matter how hard we-”

“Tell him the second thing,” Akana ordered.

“Yeah, right.” Emily click-commanded the screens and holos to show something new. This time-starry vistas. Gerald briefly expected to be back inside the Artifact’s storytelling vid. But no. He recognized Scorpio… the Southern Cross… Libra… These were views from Earth. Or relatively near.

“See that pulsation?” Emily pointed at a “star” that couldn’t be a star. Too green. Too regular in its flickering.

“Parallax?” he asked.

“Most of these seem to be located in the inner asteroid belt,” Genady replied. “A couple of hundred, so far. Though some have been spotted as near as L-3 and several on the surface of the Moon.”

“Jesus and the Maya. Hundreds? When-?”

“All in the last hour or so. Numbers are still rising.”

“But,” his mind was a whirl, “but how could these things know that it’s time to start yelling for attention? Sure, some may be close enough to pick up broadcasts of our interview with the Artifact. But way out there? Or deep underground?”

Emily and Genady glanced at each other. Clearly all this was happening too quickly, almost at the limit of human ability to process information.

“Has any of this been released to the public?”

Akana shrugged. “How can we hold it back? Look at Haihong Ming, over in that corner with a privacy hood over his head, consulting with his government. What else would they be discussing at a time like this? Obviously they already know. Indications are that five more nations and three guilds do as well. And the amsci clubs are sniffing like bloodhounds. Many of them have optics that can spot the phenomena… and surely