“I see what you mean,” said Commander Kindersley.
“The solution, as we are seeing here, is using nanotechnology. The Builders launch lightweight nanomachines from the ship once it is on course. By accelerating them to a speed just slightly greater than their ship’s speed, the nanomachines arrive years before the ship does. These nanomachines land on Mercury, use its resources to replicate themselves, and then fabricate everything we see here before their ship has even arrived. It’s quite slick,” said Per.
“Why would they send a fleet of ships, Per?” asked Aki.
“Look around. This is far more massive than one ship would need,” answered Per. “A single sail-ship, or small ones, could just use solar pressure to decelerate. The sun is a fine source of photons.”
“I suppose you are right.”
“Aki,” said the commander. “Measure the optical axis of the laser as accurately as possible. Aki? Come in, Aki,” he repeated.
Aki had been lost in thought, thinking of Per’s solution and considering its ramifications. “Yes, sir. Uh, got it.”
“Relax, Aki. Use the gyro in your handy-cam. As accurately as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aki tried to concentrate. When the ship received the measurements, they cross-referenced them to the star catalog. HD 37605 was a star forty-three parsecs away —a perfect match. It was in the K0V spectrum, one class redder than the earth’s sun, peaking within the visible spectrum, which meant its temperature was somewhere between three thousand and six thousand Kelvin. It was part of a dual system with a red dwarf but in a planetary system that had been previously unknown.
Aki directed the flow of plasma from the nozzle of her torch and extracted several samples of the Island’s material. She placed them into a triple-layered container that had been designed to produce a warning if corrosion was detected. Since the Island was immune to the destructive powers of the Ring’s contaminants, understanding the corrosion process might allow duplication of its properties. Similar shielding could allow them to come into contact with the Ring without consequences.
Making her way around the graser battery, Aki dislodged another sample. She wished she had time to investigate how its gamma-ray laser and convergence mechanism functioned. She inspected the sighting telescope on the cannon. It was not that different from the telescopes found at public observatories. Wondering why it had both a short and a long lens, she hypothesized that one was long range and the other wide angle. Aki found it odd that there were no screws to adjust the optical axis and no actuator. Then she realized that their technology was self-correcting and removed the need for manual adjustments. Builder technology was not incomprehensible, just expressed in scales beyond easy imagining. Uneasy imagining, Aki thought to herself. Aki started to leave but glanced at the telescope. She felt an idea trying to take shape but could not formulate what it was.
“Well done, Aki. Return to ship.”
“Yes, sir.” Aki was about to fire her jet but stayed her hand. The answer to her idea was coming. She wanted to ignore it and get back to the Phalanx, but she could not let go of what was nagging at her. “The aliens are already on their way?” she said.
“The Builders? I am certain,” said Per. “Once this finishes prepping for their arrival, I doubt they would let it gather dust. They are probably closer than anyone thinks.”
Aki knew that without their braking system they would hurtle through the solar system with no means of slowing, speeding like an express train past a local stop. Humanity would be robbing them of their only opportunity to come to rest, damning them to a never-ending, one-way drift past the edge of the visible universe.
I can do this. I am capable of destroying this. The graser, the Island, the Ring…Aki tried to convince herself.
“Aki, pull out of there. The graser could come back online any second.”
This was my dream. I wanted to touch what the Builders created. The Builders are not trying to harm us. They just have different values; they exist on scales both nano and mega. We do not have time to try to set it to a new angle, one that would spare us. The ailing earth cannot wait, but can I just destroy them? Can we find a way to leave it? What choice do I have? Mark was so committed. He would not waver, not when it mattered this much. He would not let his conscience stand between him and the task at hand.
“Aki, can you hear me? Return to ship.”
“I am going to need more time.”
“You’ve done your job. Come back to ship.”
“Just a few minutes. Please. There is something I have to try.”
ACT XII: FEBRUARY 23, 2022
THE PHALANX CONTINUED its long journey back. They had left the Island twenty days ago. Eight million kilometers from the Ring, they sent their faithful probehound to retrace its steps and return to the Island. From their cocoons, the three surviving members of the crew watched the telescopic images from thirty seconds in their own past.
“The graser’s reacting, aiming at the hound. Aki, here’s hoping your hunch was right,” Commander Kindersley said.
The section of the Ring that they had severed was fully repaired; there was not even a trace that it had been damaged. They were certain that the graser had recharged. Their hound sped on, making a direct trajectory to cross the line of defense. There was a flash of static on the screen. The image cut out abruptly. The ship was engulfed in the electric surge from the graser discharge, though the damage was minimal this time because of the distance from the Ring. The image returned.
The area on the Ring where the Island had stood was a valley of incandescent and molten scrap. The material had vaporized, forming a shockwave that spread in all directions, leveling the entire structure and expanding concentrically like a ripple in a massive black pond. The sighting telescope was trained directly on the hound as it should have been. The muzzle, however, had been pointing directly at the Island. Before leaving, Aki had sliced off the sighting telescope with her plasma torch. With slight misgivings, yet knowing it was paramount, she had welded it back on at a new angle that aimed the graser at itself. With all the advanced technology at the Builders’ command, her intuition had been correct. It was simple to sabotage their handiwork because the Builders had never considered the possibility of another species intervening in their Ring’s systems. The telescope had lacked any built-in adjustment device. Since the Builders’ creations were regenerative and responded to stimuli without a complex heuristic that could take into account the possibility of false input, fail-safes had not been incorporated into their designs.
The Island was demolished. The propulsion system that had supported its mass came to a sudden stop. The Island collapsed inward as the gravitational pull of the sun grabbled hold of it. Having become unstable, the Island toppled and crashed into the Ring. In an upheaval of heat and light, the sun consumed the Island. A massive solar flare made a blinding light. The fires surged and spat out a plasmatic blast wave. The solar ripple expanded outward across the solar system, finally dissipating in interstellar space. If anything remained, it would not be enough to regenerate the Ring.
