"Beg your pardon," he heard Murphy's voice behind him. "Sure'n it's obvious, I would think."
"More of your wheelbarrows, Captain?"
"No, not exactly. But the same analogy. On at least twenty worlds that I know of there exist plants, or what serves for plants, that don't eat sunlight and minerals or the usual. They got confused somewhere after creation, poor things, and decided to eat meat instead. There's a ton of them types back on Barnum's World. They keep the insect population down to that dull roar, or help to."
"Yes? So?"
"That's what that is, don't you see? It's a giant flycatcher. And we're the flies."
"He might be right," Darch commented. "Hold on. Let me do a hypothetical here." His tone changed and he adjusted something on his control panel, then said, "Computer, assume for problem that the data read in represents an intelligent construct."
"Postulating," the computer responded.
"Now, give me a visible representation of the missing energy force X that would be required by a builder to maintain the system at stasis."
On the screen, superimposed on the actual view, was a series of translucent spidery webs connecting the various parts of the inner solar system and particularly the secondary system around the gas giant. Primary energy flowed not from the moons or sun as expected but from the gas giant.
"Interesting. They're using the very instability of the system that's causing the tremendous storms and volatility on the planet to give them the power they need to stabilize the inner system," Darch noted. "There's no perfect stability, however. Eventually sufficient energy will be lost in the exchange to weaken the planet. Not much, but the tolerances here are very slight. It will slow, begin falling inward taking everything with it, and collide with the sun. The result will be a monstrous explosion and possibly the formation of a small singularity. We don't want to be anywhere around when that happens."
"How far away would be safe?" Maslovic asked him.
"Um, how about a hundred and fifty or so light-years minimum? No, when this goes, it's going to take the evidence with it."
"How long until that happens?"
"Hard to say. Remember, what you're seeing is presupposing an artificial construct with forces we can't measure or understand and which, if they exist, have been fairly stable for centuries, maybe longer. However, there is very small slippage, measurable slippage, of the big guy in system. Whatever process is going on, it's begun. Still, I don't think we're talking tomorrow or next week or even next year, but when it goes, it's going to go really quick."
"Which of those three big moons in the life tolerances zone around the big boy would be most likely to harbor the builders?"
Darch chuckled. "Oh, none of 'em. Whoever did this, assuming somebody did, wasn't from around here any more than we are. But, boy! Is that technology impressive!"
Maslovic thought a moment, then asked, "So, Darch, if they have that kind of power, could we blow it up if we have to?"
"All else being even, I'd say yes," the tech chief replied. "Depends on whether or not they deployed defenses at the same level as their building projects. I'd walk real careful on this one, Chief. If we could blow it, we'd almost certainly be killed in the same attempt, since it would destabilize everything. Wouldn't be much of an escape route."
"Have you done a lifescan of the big three moons there?"
"No sweat. Now, understand, there's a ton of moons around this baby, but only three that could sustain our kind of carbon-based life. That and the Macouri pictures identify those three as the Kings. They're not all resort spots, but I can tell you that all three are just teeming with life. The one that gives the weirdest readings is the little cold one. I'm not sure that the majority life-form there is carbon-based, but it's within our biological understanding. If there are any devils or even angels around, then they're made of something our sensors don't know about."
"What about humans?"
"I don't get any signs of our folks on any one except the middle one. Not real surprising, I don't think, if we're the smart ones. A land of milk and honey. Rich atmosphere, mostly warm to hot on all the land masses, vegetable life that might well produce stuff we can eat, all that. We're by no means the majority population there, but there's a lot of our kind. I don't get any close matches on the other two, which means that if any of us are there we're in numbers too small to register. Just what is there, well, we'll have to go and see, I guess. Not human. Not consistent types, either. I'd say at least twenty different major life-forms on the big volcanic one alone, and a couple on the little cold one, although in that case one really stands out. I think, though, Chief, we've broken the old puzzle. I don't know how intelligent they'll turn out to be, but I'll bet you pretty good that we've got not one but several thinking alien types out there."
"Well," Murphy muttered, "there goes the neighborhood."
"Let's go see," Darch suggested.
Maslovic wasn't quite as eager. "We aren't the first ship from our species to make it this far," he reminded them all. "And none of them got back. Murphy may be right. That may be a gigantic flytrap. It's definitely well baited."
"But we can't just sit here," Darch noted.
"True, but we may be able to take a bit of a lesser risk. Captain Chung! I believe it's time to tighten up all security at all points," he said in a particularly loud voice. "And then you and I will get some of the jewels out of the vault."
"What are you going to do?" Murphy asked, still feeling a bit protective of his wards.
"They, whoever they are out there, came and looked us over uninvited and without saying a word. Macouri seemed to think that the girls were a unique conduit to whatever's here. Let's see."
They were delighted to get their "jewels" back. Maslovic was careful to match each girl with the color of the stone she'd been wearing in the earlier encounter so that things would be replicated as much as possible. He did hope, though, that they wouldn't have to go through a long and boring ceremony painting their naked bodies and chanting over a pentagram. Nothing he'd seen indicated that what people like Macouri and his group had come up with or interpolated into this business had anything to do with what was really going on. He was, however, prepared to gather together Macouri and his bodyguard Joshua with the girls if he had to and endure almost anything.
Right away the girls all seemed to notice something different and tried to figure it out.
"They're talkin' to us, like as always," Irish O'Brian noted, and the others nodded. "Kind of funny, though."
"Yeah," Mary Margaret McBride responded. "None of the ceremonies done, and you can still sort of hear 'em. Like tiny voices."
Maslovic looked over at Darch who shook his head briskly in the negative. Nothing was being picked up on the instruments, although if his "simulation" was correct about the third stabilizing force in the system, then by now they were well within its range and influence.
Darch in particular seemed somewhat relieved by this. The observable phenomena was consistent with his model even if he had no way to actually detect this third force, and things like physics and practical sense didn't seem all that violated, either. These might well be some kind of alien transceivers, but they were of very limited range and power. He had theorized, though, that somehow there was an exponential power growth when these stones were combined. If so, this trio should be able to get increasingly clearer signals. They might well even be overwhelmed and dominated by whatever was out there, as had happened to a degree back on the Thermopylae.