He glided out from the tunnel into a level-seven compartment shaped like a slice of cake. It didn’t have any hatchways, only more tunnel entrances. He touched his boots down on the rumpled floor, allowing the sole cilia to grip the flaking surface. The open space was a welcome relief from the confines of the tunnel. Emmanuelle came out behind him, flipping her fingers against the edge as she passed, to turn a lazy circle before placing her boots firmly on the floor. Dudley was already sticking a comrelay to an empty mounting block.
“This has been cleaned out,” Emmanuelle reported. “No direct connection to other compartments.”
“Okay,” Oscar said. “Tunnel entrance three leads down into the rock itself. We don’t have an accurate plan of it after twenty meters or so; the deep scan can’t penetrate any farther. You guys want to check it out for me?”
“We can manage that,” Dudley said confidently. At last, some real uncharted territory.
“All right, proceed with care. Don’t forget the comrelays.”
Dudley wanted to say something like: Of course we won’t, but it lacked professionalism. In fact, Oscar’s calm voice in his ears was reassuring. You can always depend on Oscar. It was a pleasant psychological safety net.
He ordered his boots to release the floor, and pushed himself toward entrance three. With his suit lights shining down into the slate-gray interior it didn’t look any different from the dozen others he’d already passed, it was curving away counterclockwise. “Start recording the route,” he told his e-butler, and pulled himself in.
After fifteen meters the surface changed from the usual tough carbon composite to a thin aluminum skin, dull with age, and cracked to reveal rock directly underneath. The curvature tightened, becoming regular. Dudley stuck a comrelay to the wall. Twenty-five meters later, he had to use another.
“According to my inertial guidance, this is a spiral,” Emmanuelle said. “We’re descending almost along the rock’s axis.”
“Oscar, is there a hole anywhere on the rock surface?” Dudley asked. “Anything that could be the other end?”
“Difficult to say. There are a few fissures that could be openings. This is why we need you guys.”
“Thanks.”
After a couple more twists, they came to the first junction. It was a straight tube seven meters long. Dudley shone his suit lights down it.
“It just leads to the other side of the spiral, like a shortcut.”
“I don’t think so,” Emmanuelle said. “The angle is wrong. Hey, you know what? I bet this whole shaft is laid out like DNA. Two spirals running parallel, with cross links between the two.”
“You could be right. Oscar, I’d like to try something. If we put a comrelay at the other end of this link, then we might be able to pick it up if there’s another cross link below us.”
“Go ahead, Dudley, it’s worth a try.”
Dudley zipped through the short length of tunnel, happy at how easy he was at moving himself about in these conditions. The skill training memory was finally settling in—along with his natural aptitude, of course. He stuck the comrelay inside the second spiral, and hurried back.
Wilson stared at the small triangles inching their way across the big portal’s tactical display. Digits flickered around each one, delivering yet more bad news. The lead ship was eighty-two million kilometers distant, and accelerating hard at eight gees. It was going to reach them in just over three hours. That was bad enough, but what he really didn’t like was that it hadn’t flipped over to decelerate.
All eight ships had launched from the moons or inhabited asteroids of the outermost gas giant, three AUs distant, the closest center of any alien activity. If that lead ship didn’t decelerate at all, it was going to have a relative velocity of over seven and a half thousand kilometers per second when it reached them. No human machine had ever reached a fraction of that speed in real space. Even now, he could see it on the visual display as the Second Chance’s main telescope tracked it. The fusion drive was a streamer of near-invisible violet fury stretching for hundreds of kilometers behind a scintillating golden sphere. Every stray gas molecule and charged particle impacting on the force field was dying in a burst of radioactive splendor, contributing to the coronal hue around the ship. If it hit the Second Chance or the Watchtower at that velocity, the explosion would briefly rival a solar flare.
“Only ships five and seven have flipped,” Anna said. “They’re decelerating to rendezvous. Falling a long way behind the others. And three more have left the gas giant on an interception course for us. I think we’ve also got about fifteen on their way from Dyson Major; it’s a little early to be sure but their vectors are matching up.”
