one. Cass and I have the technique down cold.
We can make one for each star in the Galaxy — if you want us to.”
There was an implied suggestion behind Mel’s words.
It was a solution, but one that Drake could not use. Not yet. Someday, maybe, when he had exhausted every other hope, or when absolute proof was produced to show that the Shiva were the destroyers that they seemed to be. But for the moment…
“Stay here. Make as many of the caesuras as you need for the firebreak. As soon as all the colonies are relocated to a safe region, remove the stars and get the break in position.”
“Very good.” Mel sounded disappointed. “And how should I use the caesuras, fast or slow?”
“Fast enough to avoid the problem of stellar collapse.”
“If you say so. And the Silent Zone?”
“Stays silent, and untouched.” Drake looked one last time toward the outer edge of the Galaxy, knowing that colonies were disappearing from the human community as he watched. He felt Mel Bradley’s disapproval, weighted by the thoughts of hundreds of trillions of other composites across space.
“I intend to do something else about the Silent Zone,” Drake continued. “You can start the return transmission any time. As soon as I’m back at headquarters I’m going to try a new approach.”
It was one of the rare occasions when the thought of his own dissolution was preferable to the idea of what he had to do next. Dying once was not so bad. Everybody did it eventually, and it was part of your personal future even if you didn’t know how or when.
Dying a billion times was less appealing.
The location of every lost world was well known. Drake had chosen one of the most recently silenced, vanished from the human community since the time of his own involvement.
He and Tom Lambert were on board a probe ship, downloaded to an inorganic form that shared the ship’s eyes, ears, and communications unit.
Tom had taken charge of the ship’s drive. “According to the records for other similar places,” he said, “we’re approaching the danger zone. That’s the planet ahead.”
They stared in silence at the image of a peaceful world. It was a look-alike for another planet about three hundred light-years away: same K-type primary; mass, size, orbital parameters and axial tilt within a few percent; atmosphere modified very slightly, if at all, to an Earth analog. Both worlds had been colonized by a human association of organic and inorganic forms within two million years of each other. Here were sister planets, celestial twins with one difference: this world, Argentil, after billions of years of active presence in the human community, had dropped all contact and refused to respond to any signals.
Tom finally broke the silence. “Do you want to hold our distance?”
“Everything we see is being sent back to headquarters?”
“Everything.”
“Let’s hold our position for one full Argentil day, and make sure we’ve seen everything that’s down there. Then we’ll go closer.”
Drake suspected they had already seen all they were going to. Whatever the Shiva had done to this planet, they had not destroyed it or made it uninhabitable for humans. Changes had taken place in Argentil, particularly an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor, but those could be the result of natural long-term climatic changes. They could just as well be the work of humans. Either way, the planet was still comfortably habitable.
They were hovering far off on the sunward side. As the world turned slowly beneath the ship, Drake suddenly imagined himself with Ana, restored to human body form, strolling unsuited and bareheaded among the dark-green forest lands of Argentil.
The thought came as a shock. Ana had been absent from his mind for a long time. Once he would have sworn that could not happen, that no hour could pass in which he did not think about her.
“All right, Tom.” Drake had to act. His mind felt oddly unbalanced. Maybe he had watched Argentil for too long. “Let’s go. Take us closer. Take us all the way down to a landing.”
How could he
He heard Tom screaming, but his own mind was far away. He was not seeing Argentil as the ship closed in for its final approach pattern. When the fusion fires rose from the surface to vaporize the descending ship, he saw only Ana. She was standing before him, telling him not to worry: they would still enjoy the future together, when all these events were nothing but a remote blip on the distant horizon of time.
The ship’s communications unit was not controlled by Drake’s wandering consciousness. A brief final message, triggered by the attack, went as an S-wave signal back to headquarters: it said that this ship, like so many others, was being destroyed — by a system sent to Argentil to defend the planet from the Shiva.
One more attempt. After how many?
Drake had lost count.
He studied the screens. It was information of a sort, even though it only confirmed what he already knew.
Where a giant artificial colony had once floated in free space, the sensors now showed nothing at all. However, the outer layers of the nearest star, only four light-minutes away, revealed subtle changes in its spectrum. There were more metal absorption lines than had been shown in the old records. And a nearby planet, which had once supported a human colony, was silent but apparently untouched.
It seemed as though the Shiva destroyed free-space colonies, while leaving the planets that they conquered able to support life. Drake pondered that fact as his lead ship turned cautiously toward the planet. Instead of Tom Lambert accompanying him, Drake had been downloaded to both ships. His two electronic versions had decided on a strategy on the way out from headquarters. Ship combinations had been sent out before, without success. After a million failed attempts he no longer hoped for definitive answers. He would settle for some small additional scrap of information.
When the first ship was within a few light-seconds of the planet, the second one released a tiny pod. It lacked a propulsion system, but it contained miniature sensors, an uploaded copy of Drake, and a low-data-rate transmitter.
The pod hung silent and motionless in space, while Drake on board it watched the approach of the two main ships to the planet. The first one vanished in a haze of high-energy particles and radiation. The second turned to flee, but a rolling torus of fire arrowed to it from the place where the other ship had been destroyed.
Drake reached a conclusion: the transmission link was an Achilles’ heel. The second ship should have been at a safe distance, but after the Shiva had killed the first ship they had been able to follow the tiny pulses of communication between the two.
It was another crumb of information about the Shiva. It told him that he had to be ultracautious in his own transmission. He began to send data out, warily and slowly, varying the strength and direction of the signal. Thousands of receiving stations, all over the Galaxy, would each receive a disconnected nugget of information. When he was finished, headquarters would face the task of time-ordering the sequence of weak signals, allowing for travel times, and collating everything to a single message.
Drake sent the pulses out a thousand times, varying the order of the signal destinations. By the time that he was finished, twelve thousand years had passed and he had drifted far from the star where the ships had died.
He had no propulsion system. Even now, he dared not risk a rescue signal.
He waited. For another one hundred and forty thousand interminable years, he waited. The pod contained minimal computing facilities and no other distractions. There was nothing for him to do.
At last he gave the internal command to turn off all systems within the pod.
“
“That is my instruction.”
“I am sorry, but I am unable to perform that command.”
