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“I suppose. But what really scares me is that I’ve gotten the Dyson Sphere’s attention,” Larry said. “We’ve had a real blessing in disguise all this time: the Sphere, all the Charonians, were utterly unaware of human beings. But they’ll have to take notice of someone stealing a whole solar system out from under them, and killing all their operatives here. I may very well have made the Charonians into a desperate enemy.”

Simon Raphael looked startled. “I can see them as an enemy. But why do you call them desperate?”

Larry hesitated for a moment. “There’s that one image I can’t get out of my mind, that picture of the shattered sphere. I don’t think the Sphere just wanted the Solar System. I think it needed it. And still does. As a refuge, as a hiding place, or maybe as a diversion, a decoy. I don’t know. We don’t know what that picture of the shattered sphere means, but we do know that the moment the Lunar Wheel received it, every Charonian in the Solar System went into panic overdrive.

“And there’s the way all the Charonians hid themselves in the Solar System. Think about that. Somehow we all took it for granted, never really considered that they had to be hiding from somebody. The Landers, disguised as asteroids, as comets in the Oort Cloud. Think about the way the Lunar Wheel was dug into the Moon. My God, what is there out there powerful enough to smash open a Dyson Sphere, frightening enough to scare something the size of the Lunar Wheel into hiding?”

Larry shrugged. “We can give it a name, I suppose. I’ve been thinking of it as the Sphere Cracker. But what is it? What does it want? Maybe it hunts for Dyson Spheres the way the Charonians hunt for life-bearing planets. And maybe the Earth’s Dyson Sphere is just about ready to be cracked open. What happens to Earth then? Imagine what would happen to the Multisystem if the Sphere weren’t there to keep the orbits stable.”

Larry stopped, and stared out the viewscreen. The Ring of Charon wheeled sedately through the darkness, as if nothing in the Universe had ever gone wrong, or ever could. At last he spoke again. “I don’t think Earth is going to be safe for very long at all. Not with a Dyson Sphere saving it for use as a breeding cage. Not with a Sphere Cracker out tracking down the Sphere.”

“Safe,” Simon said. “When have any of us ever been truly safe? Sometimes we’ve had the illusion of safety, but there’s always been something out there that could kill us. Name one person who’s ever lived through being alive.”

Larry smiled at the old joke, but then the sadness overtook him again, a wave of homesickness swept through him. Could it truly be that he would never see Earth, see home, again? “Will we ever find them again, Simon? We lost Earth once, and had to hunt for it through the worm-hole. Now we have to hunt for it again, but working blind. Can we find it this time, with the Lunar Wheel dead?”

Simon smiled gently, and nodded. “I think so. We know about wormholes, and Dyson Spheres, and we’ve got a Solar System full of alien technology to pick through. There must be some clue somewhere, buried in all those memory stores. And Earth will be looking for us, as well. We’ll find each other. In a week, or a lifetime, or a millennium.”

Larry smiled at last, and looked out the viewport, out past the Ring of Charon that had destroyed—and then rescued—so much. Past the invisible Plutopoint black hole imprisoned in the Ring’s centerpoint, past the wreckage of alien invaders strewn across the Solar System, past the battered planets shrouded in dust and his far-scattered friends picking their ways out of the rubble, past the ghosts of the dead lost in this fight, past the far-off gleam of the loving Sun that the Charonians had sought to entomb in a new Dyson Sphere—past all fear to the clean, clean stars.

Gravity power and wormhole links. Those were the keys to the stars—and Earth was out there somewhere, waiting for the good people of the Solar System to put that key to the lock and find them.

Gravity power, wormholes, the simple knowledge that intelligent life had once existed elsewhere, even if it were now mutated into something strange and incomprehensible. The sure knowledge that the stars were reachable. They had learned a great deal from their tormentors, back here in the wounded wreck of the Solar System. And there was a great deal more to learn, locked in the broken machines and dead servants of the enemy.

And what of the Earth, surrounded by the wonders of the Multisystem, with who knows how many habitable worlds just out of reach? The knowledge Earth and Terra Nova might find was limitless.

For there must be other wormholes in the Multisystem, other links to other multisystems, links to ancestors and relatives of this Sphere, reaching in all directions of space, back to every place the Charonians had journeyed in uncounted millions of years.

Look at it that way, look at it the right way, and humanity was not merely clinging to life, battling for survival, but quite accidentally poised for new and great adventures, both here and on the lost Earth.

Today was for rest.

Tomorrow the Hunt for Earth could begin.

THE END

A note on Charonian terminology

The Charonians do not use language in the human sense, but instead rely almost entirely on visualized imagery for communication and instruction. (As they do not use language, there is some legitimate question as to whether their visualizations can be considered thought at all.) The portions of the book described as seen by Charonians are therefore not in any sense translations, but human-style verbal labels of convenience on the visual images processed or transmitted by the Charonians.

A Note on Naked Purple terms, names, and usages

Each Person in the Naked Purple community earns a name, which is in large part determined by his or her work status and personal attributes. Names shift and change over time.

Productive work of any type is seen as a necessary evil to be discouraged, and ultimately stamped out altogether. How society will function when that is achieved has never been made clear. Language is seen as the direct tool of ideology, and thus there is a constant search for better or more socially correct ways to say things. Puns and combined meanings, particularly those that take the wind out of a self-important person or activity are highly thought of. That such constructions, and the emphasis upon them, frequently become self-important themselves merely adds to the tension of the concept. Purity of expression is valued over clarity, with the result that much Naked Purple prose and speech is almost undecipherable. Incomprehensibility itself is highly regarded. Furthermore, many names and terms are assigned ironically.

Glossary

Amalgam Creature. A merged group of several Landers. See Lander.

Autocrat of Ceres. The absolute ruler of the largest asteroid, and the only effective instrumentality of law or justice in the Belt Community. The Autocrat’s reputation for draconian justice serves to prevent most from daring his wrath.

Barycenter. The center of gravity for any orbiting system; the point around which two bodies in an orbital relationship revolve. In most systems, for example the Sun-Mars system, or the old Earth-Moon system, the larger body contains such a large fraction of the system’s mass that the barycenter is actually inside the large body. In the case of more nearly equal masses, for example Pluto-Charon, the barycenter can be a point in open space between the two masses.