“What is it, E.C.?”
“One star, but many planets—more than forty of them.”
“Where? I can’t see a single one.”
“Nor can I, even with the superior eyes of my body. But the Pride of Orion reports the presence of a central star less than two hundred million kilometers away from us, orbited by a large train of planets.”
“Then why don’t we see them?”
“Because they are all, even the central star, at low temperatures. The Pride of Orion employs bolometers, able to detect and measure the radiation from objects only a few degrees above absolute zero. This is ridiculous!”
“What is?” Darya had heard—or imagined—excitement in Tally’s voice.
“Why, the readings. The star and most of the planets are cold, no more than a couple of hundred degrees absolute. But one of those planets—a big one, in a close-in orbit—is at only 1.2 kelvins. That is lower than the temperature of the universe’s microwave background radiation.”
“Isn’t that physically impossible?”
“According to the accepted theories of human and Cecropian scientists, it is. But perhaps the scientists of the Sag Arm employ different theories.”
Darya hardly heard E.C. Tally’s reply. A more disturbing thought had come into her head. Where was the beacon? Where was the flashing sign assuring them of the safe arrival of the others? Where was Louis Nenda?
Darya called for a new full-sky survey, centered on the frequencies of the signal beacon. She concentrated totally on the monitors as the results came in, ignoring E.C. Tally who was still babbling on at her side.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. The Have-It-All, along with all its crew, had vanished without a trace.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The wrong place
Louis Nenda wished to travel separately from the Pride of Orion for a very specific reason. Julian Graves, as you might expect of a numb-nuts Ethical Council member, was a hopeless pacifist who did not believe in the use of weapons. Maybe it hadn’t been Graves’s idea to add a “survival team” to the party, but it was unlikely that he had fought against it. Arabella Lund—whoever she might be—had trained them, and she was one of Graves’s buddies. So he trusted her and them. Nenda, on the other hand, trusted nobody but himself, and he had made too many blind and desperate leaps through Bose nodes to leave to chance whatever might lie on the other side.
Long before the Have-It-All made the final Bose transition, the ship had every weapons port open and every weapon primed. All warning sensors were on full alert. The ship was ready to fire on command, to make another Bose jump, or to run a high-speed route for whatever cover might exist. Nenda had also silenced any device that might signal their presence to an unfriendly listener. If anyone’s signal beacon served as a homing signal for enemy fire, it would not be Louis Nenda’s. What those morons on the Pride of Orion chose to do was up to them.
The Have-It-All emerged from the node and floated free in space, its drives turned off. Nenda took one look at the warning displays and released a long-held breath.
“Nothing. Not one blessed thing.”
He meant that he saw no signs of anything dangerous, but Atvar H’sial, at his side, was receiving the input of other sensors tuned to her own echolocation vision. Her pheromonal output murmured, “Less than nothing.” When Nenda turned to stare, she became more specific. “We are supposed to find here the home world of the Marglotta, are we not? It is the presumed source of much strangeness and who-knows-what wonders of alien technology, priceless when returned to the Orion Arm. Tell me, then. Where are these treasures?”
Nenda turned on the raft of displays not dedicated to warnings. The Have-It-All should have emerged close to the Marglotta home star, somewhere within a complex stellar system. All that showed on his screen was a central disk of darkness against a faint background of distant stars.
He scanned the other monitors. “Nothing at any wavelength. What gives? Has the Marglotta star been turned into a black hole? And where are the planets?”
The pheromonal reply from Atvar H’sial was tinged with uneasiness. “There are planets, in abundance. But all are cold. Too cold for liquid water, too cold for a breathable atmosphere.”
“No air, no water. So there’s no life. Unless the Marglotta don’t need any of that?”
“But they do, Louis. Remember, they were air breathers just as we are air breathers. They could not survive on any of the worlds we see.”
“Master Nenda, if I may with respect add to this discussion.” Kallik, crouched at Nenda’s side, had access to the same displays and was following Nenda’s spoken version of the conversation with Atvar H’sial. “The main body that you see on the screen cannot be a black hole. Our mass detectors indicate that it contains as much matter as a large star, and this is confirmed by the periods of revolution of the planets. However, a black hole of such a mass would have a diameter of only a few kilometers. What we observe is a dense object several tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter, at just a couple of hundred degrees above absolute zero.”
“The size of a large planet, but as heavy as a star. A white dwarf?”
“Except that it gives off no energy. I wonder.” The Hymenopt hesitated.
“Spit it out, Kallik. No time to get coy with me.”
“The body that we see does not lie at the end of any natural stellar evolutionary sequence known in our own spiral arm. It appears to be solid matter in a cold, crystallized form. Could it be that the laws of physics are different in the Sag Arm?”
“That is at best a remote possibility.” Atvar H’sial had been receiving pheromonal translation through Nenda, and her response revealed her chemical scorn at such an idea. “The laws of physics are the same throughout the universe.”
“Maybe. But either way we got us a mystery.”
“I think not. Louis, there is one other possible answer. Ask Kallik if she believes that the star arrived in its present state through natural processes.”
As soon as she received the question, Kallik shook her round head. “I can see no way for natural processes to achieve such a result.”
“Very good.” Atvar H’sial nodded as Nenda gave her that reply, and went on, “Tell Kallik, then it must have reached its present state through unnatural processes. The star has been drained of its energy, by some external agent.”
“I concur. And the same is true for the big planet.” Kallik gestured to the bank of monitors. “Observe. It is supernaturally cold. Nothing in this whole system is warm enough to radiate significant amounts of energy.”
“Not quite nothing. Not any more.” Nenda pointed to one of the monitors, where the signal beacon of another ship suddenly flashed bright against the dark span of the Gulf. “Look at those dummies. They’re certainly radiating energy. They come through the Bose node into possible danger, an’ they’re all lit up for the holidays. I’ll bet you Hans Rebka is foaming at the mouth, but he don’t have final say on the Pride of Orion. Lucky for them there’s nothing sittin’ here waitin’ to wipe ’em out.”
“Nothing now.” The chill in Atvar H’sial’s words was that of the frozen stellar system to which they had come. “But at some time, Louis, the fusion processes of that star were halted and it was depleted of its energy. Something has been at work here on a scale that I find hard to imagine.”