Ironic that this would happen on the day that Alva had asked for help and Hutch had brushed her aside. Even Alva had not seen the real danger, the immediate danger. A few years ago, one of the clouds had drifted through the Moonlight system, had spotted the ruins on the fourth world, and had gone after them like a tiger after a buck. What would have happened had they been populated? Millions would have died while the Academy watched, appropriately aghast, unable to help. In the end, they would have shaken their heads, made some philosophical remarks, and gone back to work.
Within the next ten years, clouds would approach seven planetary systems that the Academy knew about. All were presumed empty, because virtually all systems were empty. But who could be sure? The systems in question were outside the range of finances rather than technology, so she simply didn’t know.
“Data’s attached,” Vadim continued. “I’ve diverted the Jenkins to take a look. They were about to start home, so they won’t be happy. But I think this is too important to let slide. I’ll notify you when I have more.
“How’s life in Woodbridge these days?”
Not as good as it was an hour ago.
She looked at the numbers. The cloud in question was another five hundred light-years beyond Broadside. It was approaching a class-G sun known to have three gas giants, but that was all that was known about the system. The star was located in the direction of the Dumbbell Nebula.
There were images of the cloud, and she recognized the streamers exploding away from it, trying to continue along the original course while the cloud turned a few degrees onto a new vector.
It had spotted something.
NEWSDESK
MOB CHIEF ASSASSINATED IN PHILLY
Hobson Still Insists There Is No Mob
SALUTEX CEO INDICTED FOR INSIDER TRADING
McBrady Could Face Ten Years
MIRROR STRAIN SPREADING IN CENTRAL AMERICA
Dr. Alva Headed for Managua
Outbound Flights Halted
ECONOMY WORSENS
Recession Is Now Official
DEMONSTRATORS OUT IN FORCE AT POSTCOMM SUMMIT
Morrison Has No Sympathy
“They’re Against Us, but They Have No Suggestions”
WASHINGTON AREA VOLCANO BECOMING ACTIVE AGAIN?
Disaster Center Issues Warning
ARAB PACT DEMANDS REPARATIONS
Claim Oil Supplies Sold At Fraction of Value To Keep West Afloat
Al-Kabarah: “Without Our Sacrifice, the World Would Still Be in the 18th Century”
IS THERE REALLY A MULTIVERSE?
Gunderson Proposes Hunt for White Hole
“It’s Out There Somewhere”
SYRACUSE COPS ARRESTED IN LIGHTBENDER CASE
ACLU Will File Suit To Ban Invisibility
TIME TRAVEL MAY BE POSSIBLE
Technitron Claims to Have Sent Stop Watch Forward Ten Seconds
Hoax or Error, Say Most Experts
GIANTS FAVORED IN TITLE GAME
Jamieson Says He Is Okay to Play
chapter 2
On board the Peter Quagmor, near the Bumblebee Nebula.
Sunday, February 23.
THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in all Academy ships had been given the name Bill. His demeanor, and his appearance, tended to change from vessel to vessel, depending on his relationship with the captain. Whatever seemed to work with a given personality type, under whatever local circumstances might prevail. He could be paternal in the best sense, quarrelsome, sympathetic, persistent, quiet, even moody. Bill was sometimes a young and energetic companion, sometimes a gray eminence.
The Quagmor’s version reminded Terry Drafts of his garrulous and mildly ineffectual uncle Clete. The AI took everything very seriously, and seemed a bit on the frivolous side. Terry had been asleep when Bill got him up and asked him to come to the bridge. Jane was waiting.
“What is it?” Terry Drafts was the most senior physicist on the Academy staff among those who had worked actively at trying to solve the various problems associated with the omega clouds. He had been with the Frank Carson group during the initial encounter, had watched that first cloud attack the decoy shapes that Carson had set out for it on the lifeless world now celebrated as Delta.
Terry had been so entranced by what he’d seen that he had dedicated his life to the omegas. He’d appeared before Congress, had done interviews, had written the definitive account, Omega, which had caused a brief stir, all in the hope of rallying public opinion.
But the problem was almost a thousand years away, and he’d never been able to get past that. In the end, he’d given up, and settled for spending his time on monitoring missions. It was Terry who’d discovered that the clouds incorporated nanotechnology, who’d theorized that they manipulated gravity to navigate, that their primary purpose was something other than the destruction of cities. “Horribly inefficient if that’s what they’re supposed to do,” he’d argued in Omega. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the things never see a civilization. They’re something else—”
But what else, he didn’t know.
Terry was tall, quiet, self-effacing. A believer. He was from the Ivory Coast, where they’d named a high school and a science wing at Abidjan University after him. He’d never married because, he’d once told an interviewer, he liked everybody.
At the beginning of his career, he’d formulated a series of ambitions, which awards he hoped to win, what level of prestige he hoped to achieve, what he wanted to accomplish. It had all narrowed down to a single unquenchable desire: to find a way to throttle the clouds.
One of them was currently on the ship’s scanners. As was something else.
“I have no idea what it is,” said Jane. It was an object that looked vaguely like an artistically exaggerated thistle, or a hedgehog. It was enormously larger than the Quagmor. “Just spotted it a couple minutes ago.”
Jane Collins was the ship’s captain, and the only other person on board. She was one of Terry’s favorite people, for reasons he’d have had trouble putting into words. She was in her sixties, with grandchildren out there somewhere. Pictures of them decorated the bridge. She was competent, he could trust her, and she was good company.
“It looks artificial,” he said. But not like any kind of vessel or package he’d ever seen. Spines stuck out all over it. They were rectangular and constructed with geometric precision.
“There’s somebody else out here,” said Terry, barely able to contain his excitement. Someone else worrying about the omegas.
“It has a low-level magnetic field,” said Bill. “And it is running on the same course as the cloud.”
“You’re sure, Bill?” asked Jane.
“No question.”
“Is it putting out a signal?”
“Negative,” said Bill. “At least, nothing I can detect.”
“Odd,” said Jane. “Range to the cloud, Bill?”
“Sixty thousand kilometers.” In their rear. “Something else: It is moving at the same velocity as the cloud. Or if not, it is very close to it.”
“Pacing it.”
“Yes. It appears so.”
“Somebody’s keeping an eye on the thing,” said Terry. “Bill, is the cloud likely to enter any system in the near future?”
“I have been looking. I cannot see that it could pose a near-term threat to anyone.”
“How about long-term?”
“Negative. As far forward as I can track with confidence, I see no intersection with, or close passage past, any star system.”
“How far forward,” asked Jane, “can you project? With confidence?”
“One point two million years.”
Then what was it doing here? In a half century, no one had yet run into any living creatures with star travel. They’d hardly run into any living creatures, period. “Bill, what are we getting from the sensors?”