They confirmed that the light emanated from a black body whose temperature peaked at one hundred million degrees. The black body was as hot as a star’s core, like hydrogen undergoing the nucleosynthesis of nuclear fusion and becoming helium. Moreover, the light blinked at the rate of about 2,500 times per second. At first, the interval was considered random.
Further study showed eight separate groups of lights, each pulsing at a rate of 316 times per second. The light source was surrounded by a faint halo. The halo area was much cooler than the center. Spectral analysis indicated that the object contained nearly every fundamental element. Confirmation from several astronomy satellites indicated that gamma radiation was also being emitted from the same point. Theodore almost fell from his chair, lips trembling. He said, “Almighty. It can’t be! They’re not using laser sails to slow down. They’re burning off their speed with nuclear pulse engines.”
“Eight separate engines. When they discovered their laser sails weren’t going to work, they went with a backup plan, implementing a fail-safe.”
“It’s unbelievable. What could they be using for fuel? Laser sails obviate the need to carry that much fuel in the first place. To decelerate from 6 percent of the speed of light to zero would mean almost all their mass is fuel. There’s no way they’re carrying that much. This isn’t making sense.”
“Nanotech, Theodore.”
“Nanotech can’t generate matter out of nothing. I can’t catch my breath. You think they gathered fissionable matter when they passed through the Oort Cloud? Grabbing a comet might work, but at their speed such a maneuver would shatter their ships to bits.” Ted Pike’s job was to watch the screen, but he thought he had considered every possibility. This was flabbergasting.
“That’s not it. They’re using nanotech to convert the ship itself into nuclear fuel,” the other analyst said.
“What? That’s not…” Ted realized that it was possible, even though he had been about to say otherwise.
“Fifteen billion tons of mass, right? They take that mass, bit by bit, and hurl it into their nuclear reactors like fifteen billion logs on a nuclear fire.”
“Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Their hull, walls, and food. Everything,” Ted said, his voice shaking as he leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He said, “They slow down, but not much is left. Charred on arrival.” It came out muffled.
The Builders had already slowed to two thousand kilometers per second and were decelerating gradually. Calculations concluded that the Builders would need to burn all but one ten-thousandth of their mass. When they brought the craft to a stop, they would have 1.5 million tons of matter left on arrival, the mass of three oil tankers. That much effort to put on brakes showed how determined the Builders were to come to a stop in this particular solar system.
Humanity was terrified. No one knew why the Builders were coming, but coming they were. Six years, and they would be here.
ACT X: NOVEMBER 20, 2037
AKI’S PHYSICIAN MANDATED a full-body CT scan for her every single month. Aki felt that twice a year would be sufficient. Her extensive exposure to solar radiation still had not manifested any acute symptoms. Admittedly, delayed effects of the genetic damage that she had surely suffered could present themselves at any time. But twice annually seemed frequent enough to her, considering how long ago the high-energy ionization of her molecules had actually occurred.
“Don’t grumble about it this time, Aki. We all have missions in life. Keeping you tumor-free is mine. Nobody wants to find out you had a lesion that could’ve been lopped off but it metastasized too quickly because we weren’t paying enough attention to your body. Think of the fleet. Think of morale.”
Aki knew he was half joking. He had treated her for many years.
“Fine, no more grumbles. But I have a favor to ask.”
“That costs extra.”
“How do I sneak out of this hospital so I can ditch my bodyguard?”
Without asking a single question, he smirked and drew her a map.
IT WAS AFTER sunset. The crowd created a warmth that overcame the cold air. The ceremony at Pac Bell stadium was starting soon. Aki had managed to lose herself in the swarm. She had turned down multiple requests to attend this disturbing ceremony in Washington D.C. Yet she had come after all, disguised in a scarf and sunglasses, out of morbid curiosity. She had no good explanation for why she had come. It was going to be a veritable sky parade of the military force that had been assembled to battle the Builders.
Aki had taken over the directorship of the ETICC. No progress had been made in communicating with the Builders before her tenure began. In her four years, nothing had changed other than the public growing more opposed to throwing money into communications research.
Aki tried to instigate change at the ETICC and promote the discovery of new options for talking to the Builders, but she knew all too well that there was little hope left. Even her promotion had actually been an attempt to strip away the influence she had at the UNSDF. The only reason the UNSDF kept the ETICC alive was to go through the motions. Their promise to welcome the Builders with an attempt at peaceful dialogue had rung hollow for years.
Aki had not come to the ceremony in the hope of seeing a demonstration staged by welcomers. She wanted to see the faces of the people who were in attendance. After all she had been through, after all the animosity and failure, Aki wanted to sense the life in the eyes of the opposition. She wanted to understand their explanations and how the doubters saw the Builders. She needed to be touched by their desire to survive even though she did not agree with their methods.
Once it had become known that the Builders were trying to stop their ship under their own power, the UNSDF mission to protect the solar system changed on all levels. Along with the mass they had to shed before arriving, the Builders were incinerating the threat they had posed as a massive, solid body traveling toward Earth at eighteen thousand kilometers per second. The Builders’ ship was now small and slow enough that it could easily be met by UNSDF ships and even attacked if necessary. Aki still held to the possibility that multiple Builder ships had been dispatched, but no other objects had been located and the idea had waned in popularity.
Aki knew that nuclear weapons had substantially less power in the vacuum of space. The destructive force extends over an area only a few hundred meters from the hypocenter, making such a device relatively impotent when used on a large enough target. Regardless, thermonuclear weapons were the most powerful weapons in humanity’s arsenal. Special nuclear missiles and a device named the “spiderweb” had been developed in case aggressive action was needed. Each missile was as large as an eighteen-wheeler truck and was propelled by a pebble-bed reactor nuclear rocket. The spiderweb device was a four-kilometer wide net of coarse mesh. It was stored in a large capsule and was deployed using centrifugal force so that the net extended fully when launched. Despite seeming harmless, colliding with the spiderweb at a speed of sixty kilometers per second would cause massive damage. These were the ideas that were funded when we should have been trying to communicate.
The clock on the large outdoor screen showed eight o’clock. Then the screen switched to the feed from a camera mounted on the weapons suspension rack of the UNSS Millikan. A sleek, cylindrical, and smoothly reflective missile that appeared to be made of liquid mercury gradually drifted away from the ship.