The fully space-adapted Ouster broadcast, “I have already done so. Many are looking forward to the spectacle.”
Dem Lia grunted softly. “Let’s hope it’s not more of a spectacle than we’ve all bargained for,” she said.
The Helix made the jump safely, with only minor upset to a few of the ship’s subsystems. At a distance of three AU’s from the surface of the red giant, they surveyed the system. They had estimated two days, but the survey was done in less than twenty-four hours.
There were no hidden planets, no planetoids, no hollowed-out asteroids, no converted comets, no artificial space habitats—no sign of life whatsoever. When the G2 star had finished its evolution into a red giant at least three million years earlier, its helium nuclei began burning its own ash in a high-temperature second round of fusion reactions at the star’s core while the original hydrogen fusion continued in a thin shell far from that core, the whole process creating carbon and oxygen atoms that added to the reaction and… presto… the short-lived rebirth of the star as a red giant. It was obvious that there had been no outer planets, no gas giants, no rocky worlds beyond the new red sun’s reach. Any inner planets had been swallowed whole by the expanding star. Outgassing of dust and heavy radiation had all but cleared the solar system of anything larger than nickel-iron meteorites.
“So,” said Patek Georg, “that’s that.”
“Shall I authorize the AI’s to begin full acceleration toward the return translation point?” said Res Sandre.
The Ouster diplomats had been moved to the command deck with their specialized couches. No one minded the one-tenth gravity on the bridge because each of the Amoiete Spectrum specialists—with the exception of Ces Ambre—was enmeshed in a control couch and in touch with the ship on a variety of levels. The Ouster diplomats had been silent during most of the search, and they remained silent now as they turned to look at Dem Lia at her center console.
The elected commander tapped her lower lip with her knuckle. “Not quite yet.” Their searches had brought them all around the red giant, and now they were less than one AU from its broiling surface. “Saigyô, have you looked inside the star?”
“Just enough to sample it,” came the AI’s affable voice. “Typical for a red giant at this stage. Solar luminosity is about two thousand times that of its G8 companion. We sampled the core—no surprises. The helium nuclei there are obviously engaged despite their mutual electrical repulsion.”
“What is its surface temperature?” asked Dem Lia.
“Approximately three thousand degrees Kelvin,” came Saigyô’s voice. “About half of what the surface temperature had been when it was a G2 sun.”
“Oh, my God,” whispered the violet-band Kem Loi from her couch in the astronomy station nexus. “Are you thinking…”
“Deep-radar the star, please,” said Dem Lia.
The graphics holos appeared less than twenty minutes later as the star turned and they orbited it. Saigyô said, “A single rocky world. Still in orbit. Approximately four-fifths Old Earth’s size. Radar evidence of ocean bottoms and former riverbeds.”
Dr. Samel said, “It was probably earthlike until its expanding sun boiled away its seas and evaporated its atmosphere. God help whoever or whatever lived there.”
“How deep in the sun’s troposphere is it?” asked Dem Lia.
“Less than a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers,” said Saigyô.
Dem Lia nodded. “Raise the containment fields to maximum,” she said softly. “Let’s go visit them.”
It’s like swimming under the surface of a red sea, Dem Lia thought as they approached the rocky world. Above them, the outer atmosphere of the star swirled and spiraled, tornadoes of magnetic fields rose from the depths and dissipated, and the containment field was already glowing despite the thirty micromonofilament cables they had trailed out a hundred and sixty thousand klicks behind them to act as radiators.
For an hour the Helix stood off less than twenty thousand kilometers from what was left of what could once have been Old Earth or Hyperion. Various sensors showed the rocky world through the swirling red murk.
“A cinder,” said Jon Mikail Dem Alem.
“A cinder filled with life,” said Kem Loi at the primary sensing nexus. She brought up the deep-radar holo. “Absolutely honeycombed. Internal oceans of water. At least three billion sentient entities. I have no idea if they’re humanoid, but they have machines, transport mechanisms, and citylike hives. You can even see the docking port where their harvester puts in every fifty-seven years.”
“But still no understandable contact?” asked Dem Lia. The Helix had been broadcasting basic mathematical overtures on every bandwidth, spectrum, and communications technology the ship had—from radio maser to modulated tachyons. There had been a return broadcast of sorts.
“Modulated gravity waves,” explained Ikkyû. “But not responding to our mathematical or geometrical overtures. They are picking up our electromagnetic signals but not understanding them, and we can’t decipher their gravitonic pulses.”
“How long to study the modulations until we can find a common alphabet?” demanded Dem Lia.
Ikkyû’s lined face looked pained. “Weeks, at least. Months more likely. Possibly years.” The AI returned the disappointed gaze of the humans, Ousters and Templar. “I am sorry,” he said, opening his hands. “Humankind has only contacted two sentient alien races before, and they both found ways to communicate with us. These… beings… are truly alien. There are too few common referents.”
“We can’t stay here much longer,” said Res Sandre at her engineering nexus. “Powerful magnetic storms are coming up from the core. And we just can’t dissipate the heat quickly enough. We have to leave.”
Suddenly Ces Ambre, who had a couch but no station or duties, stood, floated a meter above the deck in the one-tenth g, moaned, and slowly floated to the deck in a dead faint.
Dr. Sam reached her a second before Dem Lia and Den Soa. “Everyone else stay at your stations,” said Dem Lia.
Ces Ambre opened her startlingly blue eyes. “They are so different. Not human at all… oxygen breathers but not like the Seneschai empaths… modular… multiple minds… so fibrous…”
Dem Lia held the older woman. “Can you communicate with them?” she said urgently. “Send them images?”
Ces Ambre nodded weakly.
“Send them the image of their harvesting machine and the Ousters,” said Dem Lia sternly. “Show them the damage their machine does to the Ouster city clusters. Show them that the Ousters are… human… sentient. Squatters, but not harming the forest ring.”
Ces Ambre nodded again and closed her eyes. A moment later she began weeping. “They… are… so… sorry,” she whispered. “The machine brings back no… pictures… only the food and air and water. It is programmed… as you suggested, Dem Lia… to eliminate infestations. They are… so… so… sorry for the loss of Ouster life. They offer the suicide of… of their species… if it would atone for the destruction.”
“No, no, no,” said Dem Lia, squeezing the crying woman’s hands. “Tell them that won’t be necessary.” She took the older woman by the shoulders. “This will be difficult, Ces Ambre, but you have to ask them if the harvester can be reprogrammed. Taught to stay away from the Ouster settlements.”