“The ship’s atmosphere had bled out,” Lankin said, “so the techs just allowed it to fill with nitrogen; it’s a good neutral, nonreactive gas. So far we haven’t monitored any adverse reaction in the structure.”
“Do you know what the original atmosphere was?” Loi asked.
“Preliminary examination of the life support indicates an oxygen nitrogen mix. The percentages seem to be different from Earth, but not much; slightly heavier on the oxygen percentage.”
“What are all the wing-things?” Callum asked. “Are they functional?”
“They have a core of material similar to our active-molecular technology. As near as the physics team can figure it, they’re negative energy conductors.”
“Negative energy? You mean exotic matter? Wormholes?”
“Yes.”
“So it is an FTL drive?” Eldlund said excitedly.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“The fins are only conductors,” Lankin said. “We think they were used to channel a flow of negative energy. So far we haven’t found anything on board that can create negative energy.”
“So how did it fly?”
“Best guess, it rode along a wormhole the way trains used to ride along railway tracks.”
“But something went wrong,” Yuri said suddenly. “It jumped the rails.”
“Most likely. If it fell out of the wormhole somehow, and emerged back into space-time, it might not have been able to get back in. There are fusion chambers in the aft section, which would serve as rockets as well as generators.”
“So…it dropped out of a wormhole tunnel into interstellar space, then flew here on a fusion drive?”
“That’s pretty much the consensus here, yes.”
“Holy shit!”
“And you said there are humans on board,” Loi said. “Which means there’s an alien wormhole terminus open in a human star system?”
“Yes,” Lankin said. “That’s about the size of it.”
“The amount of energy required to create a wormhole is phenomenal,” Loi continued, as if he was voicing thoughts as they formed. “Even the combined output of Sol’s solarwells would probably fall short. It would take a type two civilization on the Kardashev scale to generate the power levels required.”
“Again, yes.”
“Oh, Je-zus wept,” Alik hissed. “Are you telling me the conspiracy crazies were right all along? We’re being fucking spied on by little green men? We have been since the 1950s? And they do shove things up our ass when they abduct us?”
“Oh, no,” Lankin said in a darkly amused tone. “They do much worse than that.”
“What the actual fuck—?”
“Let’s go in, shall we?”
We followed him inside. The hatch opened into a simple airlock chamber. Engineers had removed the inner door, allowing a dozen power and data cables to snake through and work their way into the ship, branching at every junction.
Sandjay splashed up a schematic of the ship; ninety percent of it had been mapped. The missing sections were mainly big chunks of machinery, like the fusion tubes and various tanks. Corridors were wide tubes, illuminated with strings of lights threaded along them, stuck into place by dobs of takhesive. A human ship would have corridors running the length of the fuselage with branches at right angles. This ship had them in overlapping circles, some of which were inclined steeply, with the cylindrical chambers arranged in clusters.
Lankin took us to the central compartment, which ran the full height of the ship. It was divided into three levels by walkway grids, but without any handrails. All the bulkhead walls were made of a smooth, dull metal that looked like it had been extruded as a single unit, with no displays or control panels visible anywhere. The only breaks in its surface were small life-support grilles.
Several science techs were working inside, their instruments stuck to the bulkheads. Optical cables formed a messy spider’s web, hanging between them and three G8Turings encased in their protective black metal cases, ribbed by cooling fins.
Lankin climbed a rope ladder up to the middle walkway.
“We’re calling this the bridge,” he said, “because this is what seemed to be in charge.”
There was a two-meter-diameter sphere suspended in the center of the chamber by ten radial rods as wide as my hand. We crowded around it, feet close to the edge of the walkway. It was as blank as the rest of the structure, giving nothing away. Except now it had about twenty sensor pads stuck to it, and some big 3-D screens resting precariously on the rods. The image they were showing was like a deep scan of a big egg.
“Okay,” Yuri said wearily. “What is it?”
“An organic neural processor unit,” Lankin said. “Or to put it bluntly, the ship’s brain. The onboard network isn’t optical, or even digital. It’s neurological.” He patted the rods. “These are a combination of nerve conduits and nutrient feeds; think of them as the spine. The nerve fibers link every piece of machinery, and plenty of them are biomechanical.”
“Is it still alive?” Kandara asked in alarm.