Dinoshift

“It’s—” Gail was not an expert, but after months aboard the Francis Bacon, she knew what she was looking at. “It changed course!”

“That’s right. Even after Bertha shoved the asteroid into an Earth-missing trajectory, the object continued to maintain exact station with that confounded chunk of rock.” The grin relaxed, became a smile. “Interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

“Interesting,” she echoed weakly. She stared at the innocent blip on the screen. “It is a ship, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Not one of ours?”

“How can it be?” Degruton asked reasonably.

It was not the answer Gail Sovergarde wanted to hear.

Earth’s first multi-generation starship was still under construction. It was not scheduled for completion and launch for at least another five years, and then its crew would not see another world during their lifetime. It was their unborn grandchildren and great-grandchildren who would set foot on the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani. So on the threshold of what was hailed as mankind’s greatest (and most expensive) adventure, it was a humbling realization to know an alien star explorer had already visited the Solar System sixty-six million years ago.

It was as if Degruton read Gail’s mind. “You are thinking it was a visitor from outside. Right?”

She nodded. “Of course. What else can it be?”

“Too small,” he said. “That trace is of an object comparable in size to the Francis Bacon. Big, but not big enough to carry generations of star travelers.”

The journalist shrugged. “Perhaps it is a scout. One of several launched from a mother ship.”

“Too big. I told you, only something comparable to the Francis could return an echo that strong.”

“FTL.”

“I beg your pardon?” “Faster-than-light!”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Good science fiction, bad science.”

Gail was getting irritated. She muttered, “Small and sublight. So it’s either a robot, or manned by a crew kept in stasis during the years or centuries of transit.”

Degruton addressed the air. “What do you know? She is as smart as ever.” He shook his head. “Nevertheless, I don’t think so. Although you just mentioned a couple of remote possibilities, there is another scenario which is much more likely.”

“And that is?”

He told her.

Gail stayed with Degruton that night. She needed his company, although she persuaded herself it was the other way around. Yet Degruton was the one who after months of self-deprivation was now calm and rational, who had suspected a problem, discovered the nature of the problem, and then solved it to his own satisfaction.

That his solution anticipated the probable end of human civilization as everyone knew it, did not seem to bother him. He was transformed into a dispassionate observer, apart from life as a reader is apart from the characters and events in a novel.

Could they tell anyone of his conclusions?

Dare they?

Gail did not understand how Degruton could sleep as if nothing had happened, while she lay beside him and stared at the ceiling.

After all, even if he was wrong and mankind muddled through the next few decades more or less according to the prognostications of most futurists, there was no guarantee it would remain that way. Although “to the stars” had been the battle cry for generations, and the culmination of that yearning was currently nearing completion in lunar orbit, there were still those who persisted with the disconcerting question, “But what if the stars come to us first?”

Most people preferred not to answer that question, or even consider it. Although Copernicus had forever dislodged mankind from the center of the Universe, an unconscious but stubbornly insistent part of the human psyche held to the myth of human exclusivity. Degruton’s new evidence had the potential to shatter that exclusivity—although the threat was not from the stars, but from a co-existing continuum barely a thought away in space, and eons ahead in time.

Frederick Degruton had solved his problem.

But for Gail Sovergarde—journalist, instant insomniac and a member of the human race—the problem was just beginning.

It could have been the biggest scoop of the age, perhaps even of the past millennium, although that would predate the media by a few centuries. Yet despite the nagging insistence of Gail’s journalistic instincts, she continued her duties at the network as if nothing had happened. It was a burden she doubted she could carry for long. Either she would throttle Degruton, or vent her frustrations on some of the expensive appliances and furniture which were still unpaid for despite her exorbitant salary.

She even considered the purchase and installation of a punching bag.

But what Gail assumed was the scientist’s indifference, turned out to be a psychological smokescreen covering up an intense guilt. Degruton was convinced he had opened the ultimate Pandora’s box, and his guilt unleashed a side of his personality which, over hours of equal parts of cajoling and pleading, finally wore the journalist down to acceptance of his insistent, “No one must know about this. Ever!”

Ultimately, everyone would know. It was inevitable. But until then, as Degruton added with uncharacteristic passion, “Let people live their lives as if the future is theirs. .After all, until my stupid meddling, it was!”

Months went by.

Years.

Degruton immersed himself in theoretical physics, cutting himself off from all practical work. “A balanced equation is a lovely thing,” he told Gail, “but only if it remains a mental construct apart from any hardware.”

She doubted such a divorce was possible, especially considering the economic times and the natural requirement to recover costs. But she supposed the intellectual inertia of the academic establishment would keep the high-profile physicist going for a while, at least until some eagle-eyed bureaucrat cut off his research grants pending a review of “potential financial benefits.”

The Gaea Messenger was finally launched toward Epsilon Eridani, along with its complement of three hundred men and women, including second-in-command Geraldine Fuchs. In ninety-five years—barring accidents, epidemics, and whatever other hazards might wait between the stars—more than two thousand descendants would establish themselves on the verdant fourth planet.

But before man could reach the stars—

The Messenger was barely beyond the orbit of mighty Jupiter, when the alien ship appeared as if out of nowhere and assumed exact polar orbit just above Earth’s atmosphere. The alien did not communicate, did not interfere with local space traffic, and did not react to close inspection by a dozen remotes sent out from Orbiting Complex Three.

The visitor was a 120-meter soap bubble; perfectly spherical, almost completely reflective, and apparently without inertia. When one of the remotes extended a manipulator to touch the sphere, the sphere simply floated away—as if indeed it were merely a thin skin enclosing a vacuum. Eventually men joined their machines at this orbiting mystery, where they applied everything from diamond drills to a fusion torch in fruitless attempts to obtain even a few molecules of the stuff comprising the silkily smooth curvature.

Perhaps it would have been better if there was a minimum reaction to the crude probing, like a man brushing away mosquitoes. At least it would be a recognizable display of irritability. Worse and completely demoralizing was the sphere’s indifference, as if mankind’s most advanced technology was as ephemeral as a puff of smoke in the wind.