“Perhaps the mechanism assumed you were going to deposit some new treasure in its repository,” said Ondo.
“I guess so. That, or the data held on the bead.”
“The archaeology suggested it was held within its owner's cranium. That would make it hard to insert it into that reader you used.”
“Sure, but there may have been other mechanisms we didn't see.”
She tried one more time to activate the door, then gave up. At least it meant the treasures beneath her feet would be safe for a while longer. She bounded her way back to the safety of the Dragon, and this time instructed the ship to power up for orbital insertion.
“You wish to begin the metaspace jump sequence to return to the Refuge?” the ship asked.
She bundled the second suit into the same pod as the first and made her way up the observation deck. “One more side-quest, and then we'll leave.”
“Where now?” asked Ondo. He couldn't keep the faintest note of exasperation from his voice.
“I want to take a closer look at that mesh.” She instructed the ship to take them to the rift they'd observed in the circumference.
“It might be better to save that for a subsequent visit.”
“Yeah, maybe. But since we're here, it's a shame not to go and see.”
They rose from the surface of the planet and away from the stellar mass on reaction drive. Once they were clear, a series of three short metaspace hops took them to the impossible chain-link wall that surrounded the entire solar system. As Selene nudged them nearer, the dazzling size of the artefact's scale left her awe-struck. This close, the curvature of the construction was undetectable to her natural eye. It looked like someone had constructed a wall of infinite size right across space. Only her augmented eye was able to discern the mesh's slight bend in all directions.
It was composed of hexagonal holes, each a couple of centimetres across. She could get no energy signature off the material, but it was certainly doing something. Space beyond was visible, but blurred and indistinct; it was like looking at it through a sheet of misted glass.
“Ondo, what do you make of it?”
The wonder was clear in his voice, too. “Again, I've no idea. This is completely new to me.”
“We're agreed it isn't natural?”
“I think so. The regularity of its structure suggests that clearly, although such uniformity is obviously common enough on the atomic level. The scale of this, though. Whatever it's constructed from, it must weigh trillions of tonnes.”
“I'm going to EVA out to take a closer look. Maybe I can cut a sample off it.”
“I think you should be very careful to stay on this side of it.”
“There's nothing for light-years around on either side. Nothing is going to happen.”
“We can't be absolutely sure. Someone built this for a reason, and my guess is they were trying to protect something.”
Back in the EVA vestibule, Selene double-checked that her tether to the Dragon was reliable, then cast herself off into space. The mesh was some thirty metres away. She steered herself up to it with the suit's microreaction thrusters. She hesitated for a moment, then clawed her fingers through the mesh. It was thin, the tubes of its structure a little under three millimetres in diameter.
She expected it to ripple as she touched it, but it was utterly solid. She ran spectrographic and electromagnetic scans but could make nothing of its physical structure. The best she could come up with was that it was a semimetal, something like a graphene sheet but many orders of scale larger.
She hesitated for a moment, then released the seal on her left gauntlet. She amped up heat distribution to her fingers so that they could survive near-absolute zero for a few seconds, then touched the mesh with her bare skin. The structure felt smooth, glassy, with no microimpact abrasions at all. It also felt utterly strong, utterly unbreakable. There was some sort of power humming through it, but she couldn't discern what it might be, what the power source was. Perhaps the entire structure was resonating with background radiation, singing in harmony with the galaxy.
She sealed the gauntlet back over her hand and pulled herself along to the gap. The exposed edges of the mesh were utterly smooth. It didn't look like some mass had crashed through; so far as she could tell the wall had simply never been completed. Why was that? What had happened? Why assemble such an artefact only to leave it incomplete?
She tried in vain to sheer off a section of the mesh with her suit's weaponry, but as she'd expected she couldn't even make a mark. She hovered for a moment in the gap, one hand grasping the mesh. Without the intervening wall, space beyond looked completely normal, the blazing stars shining. The temptation to launch herself through was enormous. She was still tethered to the Dragon, and her suit's power was at 80%. She could return to the ship whenever she needed to.
With a flicker of her suit's reaction drive, she pushed herself through the rift into space outside the wall. Ten metres, twenty. Nothing happened. The blue star was a hazy blur through the wall, but nothing changed and nothing attacked her.
After a moment, she reversed the thrusters to take her back to the Dragon. Once there, she instructed the ship to make for the egress point and begin the steps in the dance to escape Dead Space.
Unseen, back outside the mesh, something drifted against the background stars, blotting them out completely, although whether it was small and nearby, or much larger and farther away, there was no one to see.
4. Masks
She followed the sequence of jumps out of Dead Space, reversing the dance steps she'd made on her way in-system. Once again, the alarms clanged in her brain, and once again the Radiant Dragon calmly and apologetically claimed it could do
