The Abyss of Time

Chapter Fourteen

     "De-spin burn complete," said Pangiran's voice from a wall speaker. "We have stopped turning and are now oriented correctly for the planetary approach burn."

     "Very good," said Miller, who had arrived at the new, makeshift and very cramped Operations room just a couple of minutes before. He was bumping knees with Caroline Bennett at the navigation station to his left and Amanda Raptakis at the power systems station to his right. Facing him across the small table, stacked high with portable computers and monitor screens, were Kevin Singh and Samantha Jawad, frowning at their own readouts. Despite the haste with which the room had been converted to its new function everything seemed to be working very well.

     There was an electric heater standing on the floor against the far wall. The room was fairly close to the ship's outer hull and was growing cold as heat radiated away into space. Miller had asked  Nabb whether they could restore power to the ship's heating elements and had received a long lecture on the intricacies of thermal conductivity and the reactions of different materials to heat. It was such a complex task that only the ship's computer could handle it, the engineer had said.

     So, all they could do was keep the ship turned so that the new Operations room was on the night side and add an electric heater to keep this room warm. It created a hot spot right in front of it, though, and Bennett, who was closest to it, had turned her chair a little to keep her legs away from it. Raptakis, on the other hand, was almost shivering and was wearing a blanket around her shoulders. It didn't help that they had to keep the door open, or else the five people in the small room would have soon run out of air. Someone had hung a blanket across it, though, to try to keep the warmth in as much as possible. They were coping. The other side of the ship, the side facing the sun, had long since become too hot to live in and everyone within fifty metres of the hull had been forced to abandon their posts and move to the cooler interior.

     He looked at the image of the planet on the screen in front of him. The ship had drifted a little in the time since they'd arrived, but the planet, three million kilometres away, still looked much the same. A thin, featureless white crescent. Soon, though, they'd be able to get a proper look at it.

     "When can we turn on the main engines?" he asked.

     "Whenever you like," Pangiran replied. "Engines are hot and ready."

     "Very good. Fire her up, Mister Seakgosing."

     "Aye, Sir. Main engine ignition in five, four, three, two, one..."

     They felt nothing. The thrust was too small to be perceptible at first and it built gradually. When Miller looked at one of Bennett's screens, though, he saw that a red flame had appeared at the end of the simplified, cartoon image of the ship. In reality, Miller knew, the engine exhaust would be almost invisible, if there'd been anyone outside the ship to see it. A jet of elementary particles accelerated almost to the speed of light by the power of the main reactor. Only someone directly behind the ship would have seen it as a blaze of actinic white light, and they would only have had a moment to appreciate it before they were blasted to oblivion by the energies slamming into them.

     "If there's anyone or anything still alive in the Dyson swarm," said Amanda, "if they didn't know we were here before, they do now."

     Miller nodded. There were so many swarm elements arrayed in a sphere around them that some of them would be directly behind the ship. Far enough away not to be damaged by the engine exhaust, hopefully, but the ship would still be blazing as brightly as the sun. Was some alien being suddenly sitting forward, staring in surprise at their version of a display screen? And if so, how would they react? With hostility, curiosity, or indifference? Only time would tell. Miller would have preferred not to do something so blatantly obvious, but they had no choice. Their survival depended on reaching the planet. Maybe Felgin's right, he thought. Maybe the creatures who created the swarm are all dead. Is it wrong of me to hope that they are?