But it did not stop there.
The globe clouded over. It showed markings that looked like a satellite's view of a distant planet. First mountains and wide, shallow basins. Then the basins were filled with seas and lakes, and tiny spiderweb lines on the surface filled with liquid to become streams and rivers. The mountains sprouted forests; the lowlands were lush with vegetation or bleak with scarred rock and desert sands. At last the atmosphere began to fill with clouds, all sorts of clouds—glowing clouds in a thousand hues in one place, fleecy cumulus and towering cumulonimbus in others, and in one huge patch, covering nearly a tenth of the surface of the globe, a great swirling cyclonic mass.
A great, involuntary sound went up from the crowd staring at the display, then a loud, excited buzz. "It's Cuckoo!" cried Org Rider. "That's the big storm that's been developing for weeks now!"
And Ben Pertin laughed queerly. "You're right," he said, half sobbing, "it's Cuckoo. The artifact is Cuckoo. Cuckoo is an artifact. It's not a planet—or a star—or a mere astrophysical anomaly. It's a machine!"
A machine! It was unbelievable—and yet farlink was registering .999-plus certainty, and all around the chamber the flat screens were lighting up, one by one, showing details of the mechanism, cyclopean Cuckoo-girdling bands, great chambers with cryptic contents, vents, and thrust- mountings—it was an engineering plan of some immense edifice, no doubt of that! The hubbub grew to a crescendo, and then there was a silvery chime, farlink wished to speak. Its flat mechanical voice tolled, picked up and translated by a hundred Pmals into a hundred different tongues:
"Analysis complete! Object has been tentatively identified as a Dyson sphere, conjectural astrophysical artifact proposed by Freeman J. Dyson, planet Earth, mid- twentieth century. Dyson suggested that a truly advanced race of technological beings, using ever-increasing amounts of energy, would ultimately devise a scheme to capture the entire energy output of its parent sun by surrounding it with a sphere of matter produced by rearranging the non- stellar components of its solar system—planets, asteroids, comets, satellites, dust and gas clouds, etc.—into a shell, so that no radiant energy could escape the system without being made to do work. Signatures. Dyson proposed that a telescopic search be made for large, light objects radiating faintly in the infrared. No large-scale systematic search was made, and the proposal was forgotten. However, Object Lambda, a.k.a. Cuckoo, possesses these signatures. Details. Reference display one." One of the flat panels was suddenly surrounded by a halo of flashing color; it displayed the basketwork sphere of layered rings that had already been seen in the records of the wrecked orbiter. "Surface sphere is clearly supported by ring network. Hypothesis: Each ring consists of matter moving at more than orbital velocity, thus generating centrifugal force that keeps the shell from collapsing into the central sun. This high- velocity motion is evidently essentially frictionless. Exact nature of rings and means of their control at present not known. Reference display two." A tiny, incredibly bright spark of light, surrounded by cloudy glow. "This is the central sun, identified as a type F-4, now in an atmosphere of relatively dense plasma extending to the inner surface of the shell. Reference display three." An interior view of the shell, with some sort of tiny objects in slow motion within it. "These are apparent self-reproducing mechanisms, absorbing energy from the star and storing it for purposes not yet established. Reference display four . . ."
But Babylon could look no more. The fourth screen was showing the openings in Cuckoo's poles. High-rimmed holes, each tens of thousands of kilometers across. Nozzles! Thrusters for plasma jets that drove and controlled the incredible structure . , . but he had absorbed all he could, and he returned to the central marvel.
A Dyson sphere! Now he remembered. It had been in an early astronomy course, before he had settled on his major in linguistics. The instructor had joked about it. Now that communication between scores of alien races was a fact, he said, it was clear that the so-called "Dyson sphere" was simply the ludicrous fantasy of someone who had read too much space fiction as a boy.
Babylon grinned to himself. "If only my old teacher were still alive," he muttered, "this would kill him for sure!"
The T'Worlie that had been hovering unnoticed by his head emitted a cinnamon odor of perplexity. "Query: Referent not understood."
Babylon shook his head. "It doesn't matter." And then, wonderingly, "A Dyson sphere! But—out here, in the middle of nowhere? Where could it have come from?"
The T'Worlie danced silently for a moment, then offered: "Statement: Representation of galaxy in temple not our own. Conjecture: Home galaxy of artifact builder?"
Babylon stared at him without replying.
Another galaxy? But the nearest other galaxies—the Magellanic Clouds and the Mafei 1 and 2—they were tens of thousands of light-years away. The nearest really big one, M-31 in Andromeda, two million light-years!
He felt his flesh crawling. Who would create an artifact as immense as Cuckoo and send it hurtling through inter- galactic space on a voyage whose duration could not be less than hundreds of thousands of years?
And why?
TWorlie twittering and a sudden reek of new paint caught him: "Reservation," the T'Worlie chirped. "Hypothesis of structure surrounding sun difficult to accept. First demurrer: No known form of matter possesses the characteristics required for construction of hypothetical frictionless rings. Second—"
"No," Babylon interrupted, "but then no known object like Cuckoo exists, either!"
The T'Worlie chirped on, disregarding him: "Second demurrer: Position of stellar object at center of such hypothetical shell would be metastable. Inevitable small random displacements from central position would be accelerated by positive gravitational feedback."
Babylon shook his head rebelliously. "Cuckoo exists!"
"Laws of physics also exist," the T'Worlie twittered, and an odor of overripe muskmelon accentuated the words. "Axiom: Laws of physics apply equally throughout the Universe and may not be denied."
Ben Pertin cut in roughly, "What's the use of this arguing? You're just saying that what we can see to be true can't be true!"
"Negative," the T'Worlie responded. "Correct interpretation: To reconcile known physical facts with hypotheses regarding Cuckoo requires two corollaries." The T'Worlie danced thoughtfully for a moment, as if it hesitated to say what it must say. A diffident, wondering scent of lilac emanated from it and, although no human could read expression in a T'Worlie's tiny eyes, Babylon felt a stab of apprehension at what was coming next.
"Corollary one," the T'Worlie chirped firmly. "Design and construction of 'Dyson sphere' system required technological and scientific skill at levels not now attained by any galactic race. Corollary two: Sphere was constructed, and at present is still controlled, by existing intelligence."
The TWorlie's chirping, and the rattle of the Pmals, lingered in the vast chamber and died away into silence.
And then the noise came. For long minutes the swarm of beings had been quiet, hanging on the farlink data and the T'Worlie's observations; but they could be silent no longer. Buzzes, shrieks, whistles, brays—every being was speaking at once.