“From what the data tell us, this gas will expand exponentially when superheated. That is why we are more concerned about what the Avatari are doing with the sun than we are concerned about their work in the mountains,” said Sweetwater.
“To the sun?” Several of the generals asked this at the same time.
“Dr. Breeze,” Sweetwater said with a nod.
Now that we had entered his specialty, Breeze took over the meeting. He paused to collect his thoughts and steel his confidence, then said, “I have not been able to experiment on the gas itself, of course, but from w-what I have been able to observe, this gas is a catalyst. Hypothetically, it has the ability to transmogrify everything around it into the same extreme-hydrogenation elemental compound distillation found on Hubble and the Mogat home world. Of course, before it can do that, it must be superheated.”
“And how exactly do you expect the aliens to superheat the gas?” asked General Newcastle.
“By causing the nearest star to supernova,” Breeze answered. He showed no emotion as he said this, merely blinking as he saw the commotion his announcement had caused.
“You think they are going to blow up the sun?” General Newcastle asked, his voice cutting through the confusion.
“They do not want to cause Nigellus to explode, they want to make it expand until it is large enough to incinerate New Copenhagen,” Breeze said.
“That is what they did to the stars in the Templar and Hadriean systems,” added Sweetwater.
This caused even more commotion.
“You’re telling us that it’s not going to make any difference if we beat these bastards or not; our goose is still cooked?” asked General Haight, who was clearly struggling to make sense of this.
“As a worst-case scenario, yes, that seems to be the case,” Sweetwater said.
“We’re stuck on a planet with an alien army we can’t kill. The sons of bitches are filling the mountains with enough toxic gas to poison the entire specking planet. Now you’re telling us that they’re getting ready to blow up the sun and incinerate the entire specking solar system. Sweetwater, you don’t think this qualifies as a worst-case scenario?” asked General Haight.
“So it sounds like you’re telling us we’re all going to die,” General Newcastle said.
The room went silent. Sweetwater and Breeze looked confused as to what they should say next. The generals stood in morbid silence. Everyone was running the same equations in their heads and coming up with the same bleak answers.
“They can’t beat us in battle so they’re going to fry the entire goddamned planet?” asked General Newcastle. “Is this some sort of a scorched-earth thing. If they can’t have the specking planet, they’ll make sure it isn’t any good to anyone?”
“They don’t appear to care whether we die or survive,” Sweetwater said. He climbed back on his stool. “If anything, we get the feeling they would be happy to see us leave so they could get on with their work. The map they sent out, the one showing their movements …We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re using the map as an eviction notice.”
“How very humane of them,” Newcastle muttered. Unlike Haight and some of the other generals, Morris Newcastle had a certain sarcastic wit. Now that he understood the extent of the crisis, he seemed more determined than the other generals to rise to the challenge. “What happens if we send a division into that pit and stop those bugs from digging?”
“Maybe we could bomb them,” offered General Hill. “If we caused a cave-in, it might force them to start digging all over again.”
“You know,” Glade said, “maybe we should nuke the bastards just for good measure. We have some nuclear devices back at our camp.” By “camp,” he meant the Hotel Valhalla.
Glade’s suggestion set off some nods of appreciation.
“I recommend against using a nuclear device,” Breeze said. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed the lenses vigorously with a handkerchief from his pocket. “And I caution you against any action involving their dig.”
More silence.
“Why is that?” Glade asked.
“Because it might cause the Avatari to step up the level of their attacks,” Sweetwater said. “We believe that the dig is their main operation. They haven’t come here to kill us. We’re like mice to them, as long as we stay out of their way, they won’t stop what they are doing and fumigate. We theorize that the attacks on Valhalla are only a safeguard to prevent us from disturbing their excavation.”
“A safeguard? They killed three hundred thousand soldiers during their last attack,” Newcastle said.
“We would hate to see what happened if they launched an all-out assault,” Sweetwater said.
“They destroyed our perimeter defenses,” Newcastle continued speaking over the scientist until Sweetwater said, “And that attack came on the heels of our sending men to investigate their excavation.” The little scientist snapped the words, his rough edge more apparent than I had ever seen it.
“You think we made things worse by sending in spies?” Haight asked.
“It had to be done,” said Glade.
“It most certainly did,” agreed Sweetwater. “If Raymond and the lieutenant had not gone in, we would still be in the dark about their plans.”
“I thought you said those things were like robots,” said Newcastle. “Didn’t you say they were drones?”
“Most of the workers in that cavern were drones,” said Sweetwater. “There are larger creatures that seem to perform the role of a project foreman or a guard. We think the larger ones may be avatars instead of drones.”
“And they spotted Harris?” Glade asked.
“There is no question that they spotted Raymond and the lieutenant,” Sweetwater said.
“Well, that is just specking great,” General Haight said.
“And you think the Avatari upped their attack because of it?” Newcastle asked, clearly placing a lot of weight on the scientists’ opinions.
“It seems like a reasonable assumption,” Breeze said. “Of course, I’m a physicist, not a xenopsychologist.”
A conversation began among the generals. At first they whispered among themselves, but their voices continued to rise as they blamed each other and the scientists. As they continued to point fingers at each other and everyone except themselves and the aliens, what started as whispers became shouting. The generals shouted and swore like schoolkids.
“We need to try a nuclear solution,” General Newcastle said, his voice rising above the din. “We can place a nuke out there and let them deal with that.”
“We’ve tried it,” Sweetwater said.
The room went quiet. “Tried what?” Newcastle asked.
“We deployed a small nuclear device,” Sweetwater said. He looked around the room nervously. “We had Raymond and Lieutenant Harris place a low-yield nuclear bomb beside the spheres,” Sweetwater answered. “It didn’t impact them.”
“You nuked them without telling us?” Newcastle asked. He sounded angry. Like so many officers I had known, he looked upon a show of initiative as a challenge to his authority.
“Look, General, we’ve tried burning them with fire, freezing them with liquid oxygen, corroding them with acid, distorting them with radio waves, and irradiating them with a small but dirty atomic device.” Sweetwater looked over at Freeman and smiled. “Oh, and we tried burying one of the spheres under several tons of soil.”
“You buried it?” Glade asked.
“Raymond and the lieutenant took a steam shovel out there.”
I looked over at Freeman, who kept apart from everyone else in a solitary corner of the room. He stood there like a statue, maintaining a grim expression on his face. He was tall and dark, the shadow of a giant that had somehow turned solid. He felt no compulsion to speak and had no need for recognition or approval. At that moment I respected Ray Freeman more than any man I had ever met.
“What happened when you buried it?” General Glade asked.
“The soil falls through the sphere and is altered, then the sphere rises to the surface,” Sweetwater said. “We didn’t seriously think it would destroy the sphere, but we wanted to see what would happen.”
