“I have a possibility,” Bruno said. He was close to blushing as the bridge crew all looked at him. “Well, it’s active, right? Something inside is generating gravity waves, and magnetic fields; and that’s just what we can detect. It’s also absolutely right on the equator; and as near as our sensors can tell, it’s perfectly aligned with the plane of the ecliptic. Though I’m not sure how relevant that is…” He glanced around, unnerved by the attention. “I just thought it might be a generator, that’s all, where the whole barrier is being produced from, or at least this area of it.”
Wilson looked at Tunde and raised an eyebrow in query.
“Gets my vote,” Tunde said. “Until something else comes along to disprove it.” He gave Bruno a thumbs-up. “Smart.”
Oscar launched the Moore-class satellite twenty minutes later. Its ion drive accelerated it away from the big starship, sending it curving over the apex of the dark hemisphere. Nearly every screen on board relayed the image from its visual spectrum cameras. The violet glow didn’t reveal much; certainly there was nothing lurking just inside. A very detailed analysis program picked up a slight but regular fluctuation to the output intensity. It didn’t match the oscillations of either the gravity waves or magnetic field.
Four hours after leaving Second Chance, the satellite was directly above the opening. Even on the highest magnification it could see nothing but the homogeneous dark blue glow, as if the hemisphere contained nothing but a fluorescent fog. Twenty minutes later, when half of the crew had lost interest, the light vanished, leaving the opening completely dark. Eighteen minutes later it reappeared.
Intensive slow-motion replays coupled with image enhancing programs showed that something had moved across the opening, cutting off the light.
“Your evil lord just blinked,” Oscar told Jean.
After three days of observation they knew the light was blocked on average every seven and a quarter hours, though this could vary by up to eight minutes. The eclipse duration was more constant, lasting a fraction over eighteen minutes, except once when it had gone on for nearly thirty-five.
As nothing had come out of the hole in all that time, Wilson finally authorized a close observation. A larger Galileo-class satellite left its launch bay on the Second Chance, equipped with a more expansive sensor suite than the Moore. Anna slowed its approach as it closed in on the hole, keeping it twenty kilometers above the hemisphere’s perfectly black surface. Telemetry showed her the little craft was taking a beating on the magnetic and electromagnetic wave fronts; even with circuitry hardened to withstand the kind of treacherous energy environment found around the most active gas giants she had to watch out for overloads and temporary glitches. Interference caused a lot of static within the datastream link back to the starship, resulting in poor imagery and broken instrument readings.
Everyone on board the starship watched as the hole slowly slipped into view, its gentle lavender radiance appearing like the dawn of a weak sun. It was an illusion that was broken soon enough as the satellite crept closer; the illuminated hole was small by any standards. Then the satellite passed over the rim, slowing to a relative halt. The magnetic flux in tandem with the gravity waves were strong enough to induce a detectable wobble, as if the satellite was floating on a sea. Anna did her best to counter the tiny vibrations, allowing the sensors to peer down carefully.
Four hundred kilometers below the hole, a curved lattice of immense dark strands were gliding slowly across the blue glow that came from deeper inside. As the satellite focused on the strands it became clear that the lattice was anything but a uniform hexagonal honeycomb. The interstices ranged from simple triangles up to twelve-sided grids with some of the strands curving them into near-ellipsoid geometries. The holes were the size of small countries, with strands up to a couple of hundred kilometers wide. One thing was obvious from the curvature and ponderous motion: the lattice was a sphere.
A thousand kilometers beneath it, a second lattice sphere was visible, also composed of dark strands, though this one had a more regular geography, mostly comprised of triangles and pentagons. It, too, was rotating, but in a completely different direction to the outer layer. And below that was a third lattice grid, with wider spacings. Its continent-long strands glowed a strong indigo, helping to create the pervasive glow. Its radiance was complemented to a large degree by streaks of amethyst light that came from underneath it, the indicators of a fourth lattice sphere spinning somewhere in the deeps. Exactly where was unclear; the third lattice appeared to be surrounded by some kind of lambent vapor.
