The alien femur lay clamped in its cradle within the sealed chamber, not showing much of anything yet. Primarily a tube of steel, the interior crosshatched with countless interwoven struts, the bone was extremely strong. It was the sort of thing one might expect to find in a piece of heavy equipment, like a bulldozer or crane, which befitted creatures who relied on hydraulics—pistons, cylinders, and pumps—to make their bodies go.
The bone looked slimy.
It was covered with a thin nutrient solution, a close copy to the wet environment inside of a living Phinon. Or so Samantha MacTavish hoped. Right now, her genanobugs were flitting through that slime. They had work to do.
Sammi watched the monitors with intensity. In addition to the camera viewing the bone from the side, another was situated to look down the long axis through the interior of the tube. She wanted to observe the activity of the genanites from both angles.
Though it was through her toil that this set of bugs had come to be, she wasn't certain how they'd behave in the real environment. Would their attack on the surface of the bone appear first, or would the interior structure suffer the initial ravages of the bug invasion?
Blond, beautiful, with a smile so bright it had earned her the nickname of "Sunshine," Sammi had of late borne witness to none of the usual adjectives her friends would use to describe her. Lately she'd been tired, drawn, and it was obvious that she'd lost weight, and most certainly not in a good way.
An internal sensor indicated that the bone's temperature was rising slowly. Sammi continued to watch.
She'd been toiling in the lowest regions of the System Patrol High Command complex for weeks now, working hellishly long hours, sleeping only when she had to. The work kept her mind busy, kept it off the recent loss of her husband Steve. Sleep had too often brought dreams, which had too often brought desperate, lonely awakenings. And tears; a profusion of tears.
She hadn't been back to Luna City in over a month. Martha had tried to contact her several times by phone, as had some of Steve's buddies. She had read their messages, but hadn't answered them. What was there to say? Her friends at the High Command were concerned about her, too. Lieutenant Nachtegall checked up on her whenever he was at the base. She was glad for that, even though she knew his concern was out of more than friendship. Dr. Vander Kam and his sidekick Dr. Hague dropped by her lab on occasion, always pretending to be interested in her professional progress, bless their kind, dishonest hearts.
The temperature was climbing steadily now. Sammi increased the magnification on the exterior view monitor and noticed the first beginnings of discoloration. A pale red was emerging out of the featureless gray of the bone surface. She did the same trick with the axial view. Some of the thinner struts had already frizzed and separated.
The corners of her lips began to curl up.
Lately, it was only with Dykstra that she'd been willing to open up. Since that night the old genius had shown up at her apartment with his cane and his story of how Steve had really died, they'd formed a bond. Though he was a full century older than she, there was a connection between them that knew nothing of clocks and calendars. There was nothing sexual about it. There was none of that father-figure nonsense about it either.
Minutes passed. The reaction continued. Now things were really moving. Reddish-black ragged patterns were appearing all over the outside of the femur. Flakes were forming and precipitating to the bottom of the chamber. The interior view revealed that all of the crosshatching bars had disintegrated, wrecking the structural integrity of the bone.
With grim delight Sammi formed a picture in her mind of an infected Phinon, a clear image of a biped, with arms and legs that bent backwards and came out of the body at funny angles, every joint knobby with a connected, rigid tendon tied to an organic piston. Then slowly, as her bugs worked, she imagined the body starting to crumple as the skeleton weakened, internal stress causing the limbs to bend where there were no joints.
Inside the chamber, the bone was only a blackened shell of flakes, something that would shatter at the flick of a finger.
Samantha's husband had died fighting these aliens. She wanted to get even. She had just seen the successful completion of step one. It brought to her face a fierce version of the thousand-kilowatt smile that had earned her the nickname of "Sunshine."
"Colonel, the data from the Belt Defense Forces is available now," the aide said.
The quick, crisp man behind the desk said nothing, just swiveled around in his chair and hit the control stud to the main holoscreen on the office wall. This information from the BDF was the colonel's first tangible benefit from the hastily negotiated cease-fire, now all of a day old. The aide departed without a dismissal while Colonel Thomas Knoedler took in the visuals from the display.
The scene was from somewhere out in deep space. The exact coordinates were available, though at the moment not of interest to the colonel. What was important was that the spot was located dozens of astronomical units beyond the Hague Limit.
What were even more important were the white streaks converging on the spot, several every minute. Of an intense, brilliant white, the streaks were the deceleration signatures of Phinon spaceships dropping out of hyperdrive. Dropping out, but for days none of them had been reentering.
And there isn't a damn thing out there for them to be interested in. Nothing of ours. Nothing of the Belt's. Even the outer asteroid belt doesn't extend that far. So what are those bastards up to?
As head of System Patrol Intelligence (in practical terms, though he answered to the Joint Staff), Knoedler had found trying to outthink the Belt entertaining. Trying to figure out the Phinons was a torment.
They were clustering out there for some reason. Massing for an attack? The possibility had to be planned for; preparations would have to be made to meet the threat if it materialized. But by now tens of thousands of spacecraft would be out there.
There was another possibility. The Phinon ships might be speeding off with their sublight drives. But why do that? There was a lot of territory out there. Intelligence had learned a lot from the wreckage of the Phinon ship returned from the attack on Slingshot. Dykstra had even figured out their hyperdrive. Their sublight drive used the same engine, but it could not be used inside the Hague Limit anymore than their ships could enter hyperspace inside the Limit.
The display ended. It had been nothing more than ten minutes' worth of streaks converging on one part of space.
The colonel hit the button to play it again.
What are those bastards up to?
Dykstra was enjoying a happy state of confusion. This was pleasant—happiness had been in scant supply of late. Having solved the secret of how the alien FTL drive must work (in theory), he had been engrossed in his work of duplicating the alien engine hardware into equivalent human machinery. The damaged Phinon engine sitting in the lab had yielded up countless secrets; yielded them up to perhaps the only person in the entire Solar System with the ability to understand them.
The work had been a delight so far, so vastly different from the low period where he'd had to fight with his younger self, the inventor of Dykstra field physics. His physics had said that faster-than-light travel was impossible. Had said. The aliens' FTL drive had forced him to tear down his old ideas, and build them anew, getting nowhere in the process.
In his mind, he again relished the instant when, like the hand of God unrolling a scroll before him, like when he was young, the answer came.
Chris Dykstra knew how the Phinon FTL drive worked. He was well on his way to designing the human version.
And it had just now occurred to him that he was going to be able to go the Phinons one better.
Dykstra continued his walk inside System Patrol High Command, using his cane infrequently. Just how big the complex had grown was anybody's guess. Rumor had it that some tunnels snaked their way for fifty kilometers underneath the regolith, with a labyrinthine array of interconnections and spiraling turns, as if each corridor was an individual strand in a vast spider web. From this vast web the orders had originated to conduct the war between the Solar Union and the Belt. Had originated. The war was now under a cease-fire; the Belt's recent experience with the Phinons at Glacierville had caused the combatants to pause.
But Dykstra's concern was with the possibility of war with the Phinons. He mulled over the circumstances that had brought him to this place. Even as memories of the recent past coursed through his brain, another part continued to sort out the tricks of the FTL drive. He knew he was on to one humdinger of a new wrinkle.
Ah, this was how it used to be for him. When he was a young man, he'd often take walks, just leave the workstation and the lab behind, heading out into the woods or strolling along the beach, wherever, and watch as his mind would solve problems for him, delving into the deep mysteries of physics and coming up with astonishing surprises. (At least, that's how his biographer had put it. Jenny was the dearest of his old and long departed friends, but he'd always felt she'd gushed a bit too much in that biography.)
Here, he didn't have a beach or a wooded path, so he'd made his way to the elevator to the observation bubble. It took him up to the top of the mountains and he stepped out to survey the beauty of desolate Luna. It was local night, but the half Earth hung bright and beautiful. He picked out California. Up until a few months ago he'd had a house there. A Belt raiding mission had destroyed it. Once again he fought down the sickening feeling that the memory brought on, rationalizing that hollow place inside him off to the side. He looked lovingly at his walking stick. It was all that remained of home.
But there was another place, and he moved his eyes to the Great Lakes region. It was under clouds, except for most of Lake Superior. Dykstra had been born in Michigan.
If things went well, he'd be going back there soon, to continue the fight against the aliens.
The Phinons, so mysterious, so implacable, so evil. Or was "evil" even a word that had any meaning with them?
Dykstra recalled the moment when he opened up the alien drive unit for the first time. By then, he'd already had a pretty good idea of what sorts of things he should find. He was right. Now he was designing equivalent machinery out of garden variety Solar Union technology.
But as Dykstra stood looking at the Earth, he was certain that, like with much of the other examples of Phinon technology he'd examined, the Phinons had missed something obvious.
Their ship had only had one engine.
And if you turned on a hyperdrive engine inside the Limit . . . ?
Dykstra continued to look at the Earth, trying to note her slow rotation into the diffuse terminator lying across the North Atlantic and the bulk of South America. Evening was approaching in Michigan, and would arrive in a few hours. Dykstra recalled lazy, sticky summer evenings, and watching the waves break against the shores of Lake Michigan. He thought of old times, and old friends, and the heady excitement of youth in those years before the Collapse.
He had rarely found his way back there in the past century—it was time to go home again even though there would still be work to do.
Steadily, the subconscious part of his mind projected visions into the front. Even as he watched the Earth with his eyes, other eyes on the inside were showing him 4-space waveforms, deformations curving into hyperspace, oscillating, tuning to resonance. The scene faded into another, and Dykstra knew it was the shape of the field generated by the Phinon hyperdrive. He watched its evolution in time, noting how the hypervelocity vector emerged. Then he played the vision through again, this time assuming the engine was activated within the Hague Limit. The waveform vibrated erratically before disintegrating. There was no stable form for initial velocities above zero.
But . . .
Dykstra turned away to the stars, those glorious embers, sparks dusting the heavens. People would be going to them. Soon.
Unless the Phinons prevented it. That was the big question. What were these hostile aliens anyway? Were they scattered throughout the Oort cloud? If so, were they scattered throughout other Oort clouds? Was the Universe populated with the beings, or was "infested" a better term?
One problem at a time, please.
Suppose you turned on two engines? The waveforms evolved differently then. Outside the Hague Limit, if you tuned those engines to each other just right—a tremendous increase in efficiency. And it looks like an obvious thing to do. So why didn't the Phinons do it?
But never mind that. Try those two engines again within a Hague Limit. . . .
The waveform evolved, a "ridge" appeared, a velocity vector emerged normal to the ridge.
"I'll have to consult Dr. Hague about this," Dykstra said aloud to the stars. "I'll let him do the hard calculations. Once I explain what to look for he'll spit out the numbers in no time."
"Yes, yes, Lieutenant, oh yes. The work goes along well, oh yes, the work, the research, it's all going along so well."
"Glad to hear it, Arie," Lieutenant Robert Nachtegall said. "But where's Rick? And are you two ready? I've got to have you back to the High Command by 1600 hours." They were at the System Patrol research facility in Paracelsus crater on lunar farside. Doctors Hague and Vander Kam had been working there for weeks.
Before Dr. Arie Hague could answer, Bob heard: "Hey, you're here already," and Dr. Rick Vander Kam entered the lab.
"Yeah. Arie just filled me in on things," Bob said.
"Did he show you the finished unit?"
"Oh, yes, the final product," Hague said. "A wonderful device, just a wonderful device!" He was beaming and rocking with excitement.
Rick led them over to a corner of the lab where a solid-looking packing crate sat on the floor. Its cover leaned against the wall. Inside was a cylindrical device. It didn't look like the kind of thing that would change the world forever.
"That's our puppy," Rick said. "Dykstra figured out how to build it; Arie and I perfected it. The mass converter." Rick leaned in and pointed to a projecting tube. "Run any kind of gas into this tube; molecular hydrogen, air—hell, farts if you want to—and electricity comes out of that end with the power coupling on it. The conversion efficiency is above ninety-nine percent, too!" Now Rick was also beaming, forming a close binary with Hague.
Dr. Vander Kam was in his twenties, a brilliant electrical engineer snapped up by the System Patrol to serve a term in the research arm of Intelligence. When the aliens had been discovered, he'd been shifted onto the project to work on understanding the Phinon technology. Of lean but sturdy build, he had dull brown hair and eyes that took in everything. He was also one heir to the vast Capitol Products fortune. He could have grown up a playboy, spent his youth rocketing from planet to planet in perpetual pursuit of carnal pleasures. But Rick's pleasures came in science; his passion was for technology.
As for Dr. Arie Hague, it wasn't even clear if he was a scientist in the formal way at all. As best the System Patrol could figure out, Arie Hague had been born in the Belt, but no one knew exactly where. Autistic and utterly inept socially, it was a complete mystery as to when his incredible talents had been discovered. Some autistic, or "idiot," savants have been known to memorize and play back perfectly literally thousands of pieces of music. Others have been able to do phenomenal feats of mental calculation. Many are inordinately gifted in the visual arts.
Hague's special domain was Dykstra Field Theory and any of the technology based on it. At some point in his life, someone had taken Hague under his wing and gotten a paper published in his name, the infamous "Mistake in Dykstra Field Theory" paper. Shortly after that, the Belt military had gotten its hands on him and he nearly disappeared from the scene entirely, for the Belt had been using him to improve its weapons. Technology evolves incrementally from generation to generation. Hague was able to skip a few generations when he made his improvements.
Just a little guy was Dr. Hague. No more than a meter and a half tall, chubby, flabby, with a pointy nose and weasel eyes, a pinched face and nearly nonexistent lips. And a speech habit that could drive a man insane if he had to listen to it long enough. But apparently not in Rick's case, Bob thought. Rick got along with Hague just fine, not seeming to notice any longer the repetitive speech habits, probably in a state of continuous awe at the little man's talents.
"Chris is going to be thrilled when he sees this," Bob said. "Are you shipping it back to the High Command, too? This crate isn't that big. We can probably fit it into my courier boat."
Rick looked surprised. "Haven't you heard? This is being shipped down to Earth. Didn't Chris tell you?"
"I haven't talked to him in a week. Since Major Moore got the boot the brass has had me running all over the place." Bob was no longer the personal courier for Major Moore. The major had been—unwillingly—transferred back to Earth after his mishandling of Dykstra. Bob hadn't. "When I saw there was an assignment open to haul you two back to Command, I jumped at it just so I could see some familiar faces again."
"Oh. So you haven't seen Sunshine lately, either?"
Bob had to suppress a laugh at the way Rick had tried to make that question sound innocent. Sammi had cast her spell over most of the men she'd lately come into contact with. Bob doubted that she'd noticed. Clearly Rick too felt the attraction, and Bob could sympathize, being no more immune to her charms than anyone else.
"I ran into her just before I left," Bob said. "She's still grimly pursuing her work, trying to forget she's a widow, I guess."
"She's had it tougher than any of us," Rick said. "For me, the Phinons have just been interesting technological trinkets, and monsters from stories set in faraway places. But every day she wakes up, alone, and knows she lost her husband because of them. They're a hideous reality to her. I try to understand what she must feel, but it's just an intellectual exercise."
"I think before everything is done there won't be a one of us who doesn't feel the reality of the Phinons the way Sammi does," Bob said sardonically.
Hague had wandered away to one of the benches. "Hey, Arie, c'mon. Time to get going," Rick said.
"Where's your stuff," Bob asked. "Back in your apartments?"
"No. I brought it all down to the docking bay. That's where I came from when I found you here."
Bob shrugged. "Let's go."
On the way to the courier boat, Bob asked Rick to fill him in on the move down to Earth.
"We'll be heading down to the Capitol Products black docks. That's where we're going to put together the first FTL spaceship," Rick said.
"Yes, yes, Earth. The green hills, the fleecy skies, water, water everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Yes, oh yes," Hague said.
"You're excited about going, Arie?"
"Oh yes, Lieutenant. Oh yes. Sand dunes and lakes too big to see across and campfires and wind and trees and waves . . ."
"Anyway," Rick continued, "Capitol Products has a secret construction facility located under Lake Michigan. It was built during the Belt War of Independence."
"Why did they put a spaceship facility under water?"
"Not under water—under the lake. There's at least a hundred meters of rock between the docks and the bottom of the lake. I'm not clear on all the reasons for putting one there. But all the water wiped out infrared scans and it also provided a cheap heat sink. And they didn't want to put it off the coast into the ocean because in those days the North Americans were having trouble with other countries on Earth, and they didn't want to have to keep the navy around to protect the place."
"So you, Chris, and Arie are going to be working on Earth for a while. How long?"
"That depends on how long it takes to build a hyperdriven spaceship. Chris thinks we should use a streakbomber to start with, and just add modifications as need be. Believe you me, that facility has every advanced gizmo we're likely to need."
"Chris is looking forward to this, too?"
"He's originally from the Great Lakes region like me. All right, so he moved to California a hundred years ago, but I bet he still thinks of the area as home."
"It's the only home he has left, then," Bob said. "He's been happy since he figured out the Phinon hyperdrive, but I've caught him brooding over the loss of his house a few times."
The three walked out into the long, transparent tube that led directly to the docking bays from the main dome. Bob noticed the remains of a crashed something out near the crater wall toward the west, and another manmade crater scarring the floor of Paracelsus to the north, the only evidence of a power system that hadn't quite worked out.
Which reminded him:
"I hope this isn't a dumb question, Rick, but how are you guys going to test the hyperdrive engine on Earth, if it only works out beyond the Hague Limit?"
"That's not so dumb, Bob. We're going to do it by proxy. Capitol Products has its own research facility about 59 A.U. due solar south. We'll be designing and building components on Earth, and the team out in deep space will build duplicates and test them for us. Ideally, we should all be out beyond the Hague Limit. But then, the construction facilities aren't out there, and the Phinons have been known to attack bases out that way of late."
"I see what you mean."
They walked into the docking bay, and Bob and Rick went to retrieve the luggage from the storage lockers. On the way back, they saw that Hague, whom they'd left by the boat, had been joined by an enlisted man, who was handing the little savant a letter.
"What's up?" Bob asked.
The man saluted. "Just delivering a message Dr. Dykstra sent for Dr. Hague, Lieutenant."
Hague finished with the letter and just stood there by the entry to the boat, staring at nothing, divorced from the outside world. Rick took the note out of his hand and read it.
"What's it say?" Bob asked.
"Not much. Chris wants Arie to consider what would happen if two hyperdrive engines were operated close to each other."
"Why?"
"Doesn't say. But it's put Hague onto something. Look at him. He'll be like that all the way back to the High Command."
Rick led Hague into the boat, encountering no resistance, but no acknowledgment either, and Bob followed. Hague was placed in a seat and buckled in, and Rick joined Bob up front in the cockpit.
"That's what Arie's like when he's thinking real hard about something. Dead to the world, but, boy oh boy, just wait till he comes back to life."
They lifted from Paracelsus and the ship followed a low ballistic trajectory over the lunar surface. They were in sight of Mare Crisium when Hague uttered his first words of the trip. "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes! Two, two, two. Yes, two, two, two! It works better with two. It does. It does! Yes! Oh yes! Inside the discontinuity even, it—" But he cut himself off at that point, again staring blankly.
"Looks like he's got even more to think about," Rick said.