Usurper of the Sun (9 page)

“That’s why I applied,” Mark said. “I thought, ‘Here’s a job where I can finally use the craziest thoughts that run through my head. All I need is to figure out how to destroy that thing.’”

“Our mission’s about that for you—the joy of morally acceptable mass destruction?” Aki asked.

Mark gazed at Aki for a moment. “I love what goes through that pretty little head of yours.”

“If you were at war with Italy, could you bring yourself to bomb Florence, to ruin the Uffizi Museum?”

“If the artwork inside it were a threat to me and mine? Then, yeah, I could bomb it to hell and sleep like a baby.”

“I guess you are lucky that your head can overrule your heart.”

Aki felt her excitement for the Ring drain out through her pores. She was surprised by how bitter they both sounded. She was doing the one thing the crew had been advised to avoid—starting a heated debate in cramped quarters.

“Tell me, Aki, what can I do to see the Ring like you do, like a masterpiece in the Uffizi that deserves protection?”

“The problem is that you do not know anything about it. What you need is to try to understand the Ring. You have to want to understand. It is like how you feel when you look at a painting or a sculpture. It is here for us to understand, to interpret, not just to annihilate. You look at beauty because it is one of the few profound things that humans can do. To destroy without even trying to understand is the impulse of instinct, not a result of cognition.” Aki looked away, frustrated and angry. “Finding joy in annihilation is fundamentally inhuman.”

SEVENTY-TWO HOURS
later one of the probehounds was launched. The hound’s propulsion jet nozzle could be seen in the lower part of the monitoring screen. In front of that was the small reflection of the faithful dog going out to sever the Ring. The probe dropped in freefall to a point about twenty meters away from the Ring’s outer surface. When its small NERVA IV fired, there was a flash of light that whited out the screen until the automatic brightness control adjusted to the new level of input.

The hound’s rear leaned slightly toward the ship and began moving at an angle that would minimize its exposure to solar radiation. When the blast from the hound’s nuclear-powered engine hit the Ring, the Ring melted like butter hit by a blowtorch.

“Looking good! Let’s double the speed and see what happens. Per and Aki, keep an eye on the part that was cut,” said Commander Kindersley.

“Yes, Commander,” Aki said.

Aki lined up the images taken so far. Quick analysis showed that the edges of the burn had been bent inward but were slowly shifting back to their original shape and reintegrating with the curve of the Ring. Aki had never imagined such a resilient system. She was unsure whether any human had ever conceived that such technology might exist.

If massive stress were put on a substantial portion of the Ring, the strain might cause the structure to collapse, but it seemed to Aki like compromising the structure of one part of the Ring would be insufficient to affect the rest of its surface. Every square micrometer of the Ring was maintaining a perfect balance between the light pressure it was giving off and the weight created by the pull of the sun. Even carpet-bombing, while it would cover the Ring with holes, would only produce localized damage. Aki presumed that even a slew of holes would get repaired quickly.

“It looks like it has started to regenerate already. I wonder by which mechanism the Ring restores itself to its original shape,” Aki said into her intercom.

The light pressure and gravity were both inversely proportionate to the square of the Ring’s distance, giving the curved and flush shape of the Ring a peculiar plasticity. Normally, even in such a complicated system, any parts that became concave would remain that way.

“It is probably changing the albedo of the sunlit side of the Ring. It feeds back the intensity of the sunlight. If only the spectrometer on the hound were online,” Per said. “Look at the telemetry readings. Maybe trying to detect proton-antiproton mutual annihilation while blasting it was too simplistic.”

“Everything’s going surprisingly well over here,” Mark stated. “The hound’s slicing along at five hundred meters per second. At this rate, it should reach the southern edge in about a week.”

“The ship is about to approach the edge of the opening. What did you want to see here?” Kindersley asked.

“I would like a close-up look at its repair work, especially now that it is trying to repair a section that was sliced clean through instead of just a...divot,” Per said, sounding a bit unsure of how to describe topography or geomorphometry to the military man.

“There’s no chance that the Ring won’t repair, right?”

“A meteoroid crashing into the Ring and slicing it in two from top to bottom? I am sure the Builders are prepared for that; it is an inevitability. A catastrophic bump by some nickel-iron and ice is what we are replicating,” said Per. “If the Ring cannot survive that, entity or a machine, it would have failed already. Imagine a human being with no immune system—there is no need to try to give it the plague on its thirtieth birthday; it would have died in the cradle.”

“I hate to admit it, but you’re right,” Kindersley said.

“The question is the repair rate. If we attack the Island before it finishes, we might be able to do our job,” said Per.

“Commander, I think we could use the ship’s engines to help the hound cut,” said Mark.

“Good idea. Let’s head to that edge, start working our way from there. That should save us over two days of going around.”

“We’ll cut through from both sides, like building a tunnel. We got enough fuel for the go round?”

“Already checked.”

“We’ll rendezvous with the hound in the middle, then head for the Island.”

“Can we finish our analysis of the severed portion first?” Aki said.

“Get to it!”

ACT X: JANUARY 28, 2022
3,000 METERS ABOVE THE
SURFACE OF THE RING

TWO HOURS AFTER
the convergence of probehound and ship, a kilometer-wide gap between the severed edges of the Ring glistened in the sunlight like two giant fluorescent light bulbs standing on end. Since the Ring was no thicker than a sheet of aluminum foil, the bright edgewise shine was proof that some process was under way.

“The edges look lined with fur,” Aki said as she looked at an image capture from the
Phalanx
’s telescope. What she saw was pure white, reminiscent of a rabbit pelt. A closer look showed a massive number of small fibers growing densely near the severed edges.

“It is some sort of fibrous growth with dense threading.” Per paused, then added, “If we cut the Ring, the material starts to grow. If it comes into contact with something, the fibers expand and grow onto the foreign body. It is like a fungus that thinks, and its capabilities are unaffected by the heat of the engine blast. I would like to move closer if we can.”

“Leave that to me,” Mark responded, carefully lowering the ship toward one of the edges. “We’re at five hundred meters.”

A colony of white fibers began to shimmer just beneath them.

“We’re burning them.”

“No, the engine blast cannot reach from here. The Ring is deflecting the blast by bifurcating it.”

“Then why is the fur wavering so much?” Aki said.

Per thought for a moment and then yelled, “Commander, we need to get out of here. Now. It’s going to spread to the ship.”

“Mark, pull us up,” Kindersley ordered. Without a word, Mark revved the engines to direct the ship away from the Ring. Aki fell backwards from the sudden acceleration as the ship retreated to a distance of ten kilometers.

“Are you sure, Per?” asked the commander.

“That fungus was watching us!”

“Watching us?”

“It is a tropism; the fiber reacts to any heat source other than the sun by pointing toward it and growing fast.”

“How do we check for signs of contamination?”

“The sensors aren’t showing warnings. I’ll run a detailed inspection to be sure,” Mark said.

“We were five hundred meters away. We should be fine, don’t you think?” asked the commander.

“The gap it is trying to bridge between the edges is a full kilometer. I cannot be certain,” Per said.

“Good point. We’ll proceed with caution.”

“Commander, I’m getting abnormal readings from some of the gimbal actuator stress sensors,” Mark announced, his voice going soft.

Aki coughed. “Just a few is normal, right?” There were tens of thousands of sensors. It was not unusual for a few to show abnormal readings at any given time.

“No, this is different. We have a problem,” replied Mark, surprisingly calm now.

“Let’s hold out for a minute, see what happens.”

“If we lose only one actuator, we can still continue. We’ll just balance out a bit more slowly. But if something is hanging on out there,” Mark explained, “if the contamination has reached our backup, it’s game over. Let’s run an inspection to see where we stand. If there’s no infection, we go back. If there’s any contamination at all, then I’ll remove the parts by hand and dispose of them. That would mean working next to the reactors for several hours while the reactors are running. And, of course, it would mean that I wouldn’t come back inside since I would risk bringing the contaminant with me.”

“Wait. Could we eject the engine to solve the problem? We can continue with just one,” Aki protested, her fear hanging in the air.

“Yeah, but if the other engine fails, we’re stranded.”

“But if the only other choice is to leave you to die, I vote that it is worth the risk.”

“Think about that one, Aki,” said Per. “We have two engines, but four people. The math is clear.”

Mark said nothing.
An engineer does what his duties require of him whether he likes it or not.
Aki remembered Mark’s words, and now it was crystal clear what they meant.

“Out of the cocoons. Everybody to the crew area,” Kindersley said, his voice limned with authority.

MARK WAS SUITING
up in front of the airlock. The other two took turns offering farewells. Aki went last.

“Can I finally kiss you?” he asked.

Without speaking, Aki closed her eyes and leaned toward him. She was taken by surprise when she felt his tongue touch hers. Her instinct was to pull back, but she let herself go, giving in to the desire she had felt since the day they met. Mark was the one to finally pull away.

He looked small inside the oversized suit as he finished getting ready for the EVA. He ran a diagnostic, then entered the airlock. Closing the inner door, he gave a thumbs-up through the tiny round window.

Three hours later, Mark completed the mission. He had removed and discarded all of the contaminated parts. All that was left to discard was himself. Aki was unable to speak.

“Looks like you still have some time, Mark. You’re free to do whatever you like,” said Commander Kindersley. Mark mumbled a short prayer to himself, something about how dying was acceptable if his sacrifice led to saving what was left of the world’s population.

Then he said, “I think I’ll go check out that Ring over there.”

From inside her cocoon, Aki watched the ship diminish in size through Mark’s helmet camera as he propelled himself toward the Ring.