I was worse than those guys. I’d talked the natives out of their land, offering only protection. I was more like the German guy who’d bought Manhattan from the Indians for twenty-four bucks. The Centaurs didn’t think of ownership the way we did. No individual wished to possess more territory than the patch of earth he roamed upon. They didn’t build fences or enforce no-trespassing signs. I knew that humanity, once we had sunk our teeth into those three planets, would defend them like wolverines defending their dens. Long after I was dead and gone-provided the Macros didn’t wipe us out-the Centaurs may well be abused by people who had even less scruples than I did.
But still, I couldn’t say no. Who could have turned down three blue-green jewels hanging in the perfect zone of space? Liquid water could only exist in a narrow zone around any star. The star I’d named Eden had a higher output of heat than our own sun, and the inhabitable zone of space was marginally larger, about a hundred million miles wide. Within that thin band six worlds circled. I knew that to find a system like this, with a yellow sun so stable and perfect, we might have to search for a thousand years.
Troubled and elated at the same time, I stood up and headed for the bridge. It was time to spread the news.
— 41
It was months later when the ring orbiting Hel shivered again. We detected it instantly this time, and I sent ships through to recon the situation on the far side. They came back and reported they’d seen nothing changed in the system owned by the Crustaceans. No Macro ships had appeared. Nothing appeared to have changed at all.
I paced and worried in the heart of my battle station. I was in a grand command center, buried nearly a mile deep inside rock and steel. At first, I’d hauled mass up from Hel to serve as armor, but I soon determined I needed too much, too fast. So, I’d sent a fleet of gunships to a region of the system peppered with asteroids, and had them bring home thirty or so of those floating rocks. The battle station thus had transformed from a dull metal cube into an amorphic mass. The cube inside was almost invisible now, coated in layers of hard rock. In between the brick-like stones, I’d troweled in nanite-laden smart metals and placed thousands of weapons. Sensor pods were located in clusters, aiming in every conceivable direction. The base even had repellers, and could slowly rotate itself in space. It didn’t have real engines, nor enough power to escape Hel’s gravitational influence. But it could maneuver, and if one side of the base took a pounding, it could turn to face invaders with a fresh set of weaponry.
The command center at the core of the station was very similar to the one I’d envied aboard Goa. I now had my own spherical tank of nanites taught to display thousands of moving elements simultaneously in three dimensions. Around it sat a team of operators. Soon, I knew I was going to have to return to Earth if only to gather more personnel to run this base. When I came back, I intended to bring colonists as well to inhabit the worlds I’d been given by the Centaurs.
“Sir,” Miklos said, “I don’t understand it. This has to be some form of communication using the rings, but how are they doing it?”
We’d all been puzzling over the phenomena. I’d originally thought it was the Blues who’d used the rings to call the Nano ships home to defend their planet. Miklos believed the Macros had used the rings to somehow alert distant bases.
“I’m not sure how they do it,” I said, “but someone just made the rings shiver. As the Macros are now absent from the star systems on both sides of this ring, and we know we didn’t do it, logic dictates-”
“Yes, yes,” Miklos said. “It looks like you were right. The Blues are transmitting messages via the rings. But to who?”
I raised a finger and paused in my pacing. I stepped to the spherical tank and touched the control screens. The nanites inside quickly reconfigured themselves and displayed the entire system. I drew a line from the gas giant known as Eden-12 to Hel.
“Maybe,” I said, “maybe we are down to only a few possible culprits. The Blues are number one on the list now, but don’t forget the Centaurs are still here, as are the Crustaceans on the far side. Hell, even the Microbes might be more advanced than we think.”
“But…it was most likely the Blues this time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But who knows for sure?”
A clattering sound made me turn away from Miklos. Marvin was shuffling his cameras. Only one watched me, as the rest were on the tank in front of him. The single eye that kept me in view was a sneaky one: he had attached it to a region that would be about knee-level on a human. That single camera eye was tilted up just below the lip of the circular table that surrounded the sphere. It was hard to see, unless you knew what to look for.
“Have you got something to say, Marvin?” I asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure? You’ve been remarkably quiet about the rings, and about these communications that appear to be relayed through them. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
Several more cameras peeped out from behind the sphere. I walked around it, and stood over him.
“I was curious, yes.”
“What do you mean, you were curious? What’s changed?” I asked with my hands on my hips. I frowned down at him.
“You are displaying a look of displeasure.”
Marvin had become better at recognizing expressions. He hadn’t missed this one. “Tell me what you know,” I said.
“The rings are capable of transmitting a signal. This signal has no detectable emission through space. Instead, it appears to operate on the same principle as the rings themselves.”
“You mean, you don’t know how they work-but they do?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know they can be utilized in this manner?”
“Because I just did it.”
We all stared at him. “You did what? ” I demanded, my voice turning into a shout.
“You are displeased.”
“Yes, I am. You didn’t tell me you were trying to make the rings send a signal. Who did you send it to? What did you say?”
“I sent an enquiry, and requested an acknowledgement. I’m not sure who may receive the message.”
Miklos made a choking sound that turned into a fit of coughing. I ignored him and glowered at Marvin. “You did this without authorization?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Marvin?”
“I wanted to see what would happen.”
At length, he explained how he had done his little parlor trick. He’d studied the ring and its composition carefully. By building a tiny replica, and exerting force upon it, he’d caused a sort of resonance to be set up between the model ring and the real one. When I asked to see it, he showed me something that looked like a smudge of charcoal. He explained that size was not an issue, and the key was to get the structure right. He’d used nanites to build a tiny ring of matching structure and composition. Then he’d applied forces to the tiny ring, which was almost microscopic. The larger ring had responded by relaying his signal to parts unknown.
I ordered him to cease and desist with all such experiments and transmissions. I raved for a time, telling him he might have alerted every Macro in the galaxy to our presence.
Marvin rejected this line of reasoning, however. “That is not a sensible conclusion.”
“Why not?”
“First of all, the Macros are clearly in possession of the technology to send signals through the rings, meaning they already know of our position here.”
“What proof do you have of that claim?”
“This was evidenced in several ways, but most directly by their use of simulated Star Force Marines. The Macros in this system had never witnessed those combat techniques directly, and yet they attempted to duplicate them. They must have gotten the design idea from somewhere.”
I thought about that. “Yes, we destroyed all the ships that ever witnessed our use of assault troops in space.”
“Similarly, Captain Miklos is clearly correct in his assumptions. The Blues have this technology and used it to recall the Nano ships from the Crustacean world when they felt threatened by the growing fleets in the system.”