Star Fields

Chapter No.27 New World

Chapter No.27 New World

Possibility is always a surprise

After being in warp for two weeks, Molly and I were relieved to be in normal space just outside the Andromeda galaxy. However, normal was not the norm here.

After we slowed to a reasonable cruising speed, Molly employed her virtual mirror and began searching for habitable planets. After several minutes, she said something that made me perk up.

"This is odd! I'm detecting a dark circle that's the size of a solar system."

I swiveled my chair nearer to her. "What do you mean?"

She pointed. "Look at that. It's at least 322,000 kilometers in diameter."

"It is a black hole?"

"No," she said. "A black hole would distort the image of the stars near it. This looks like a void."

"How far away is that?" I asked.

"About 125 light years," she said. "It has to be large to see it at that distance."

"Maybe we should go check it out," I said.

"Just don't get too close," she warned. "That could be a dark matter void."

I turned to Judy. "Take us warp and put us within a hundred thousand kilometers of that void."

"Yes, Jason."

The trip over to the void took only fifteen minutes. When we came out of warp, we were amazed by how large the object before us was.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "That's a humongous sphere!"

"That's an understatement," Molly said. "It's the size of a solar system."

"Can you detect any markings on it?"

"There are what appear to be radial seams, but they're very thin." She paused. "Wait! I'm detecting motion. That thing is rotating."

I stared at the object for a minute before I realized what I was looking at. "Holy hell! That's a Dyson sphere!"

"That's unbelievable!" she squeaked. "Such a large object like that would require a huge effort to erect around a star. Plus, it would require some method to keep it from drifting relative to the star."

"Can you get a reading on what it's made of?"

"Wait a second," she said while she punched several keys on her command station. "It has a very powerful magnetic field reinforced by a strong plasma shield. I can't get any readings through it."

"I'm not surprised. They have the full energy output of a star to maintain that." I rubbed my jaw. "I wonder how one could get in that?"

She turned to give me a rebuking stare. "You can't be serious. We have no idea what sort of defense systems that thing has."

I gave her a frown. "I'm not talking about us trying to move this vessel in there. We could send a probe to see what's inside."

She turned back to her screen. "I can't find any obvious signs of a door way, but there is a domed structure at the top pole of the sphere."

"Move us to a position near the top pole, Judy."

The ship moved to give us a better view.

"I can see light spilling out of a hole at the pole," she said. "That would indicate that this is the entrance point."

I turned to Judy. "Set up a Class-X probe with entanglement communication and launch it to that hole."

"Yes, Jason."

The probe shot out of a missile tube and flew to the hole. After some careful maneuvering, it entered the hole, and we began to receive visual feed from the probe as it flew down into the sphere.

We sat mesmerized by the images of the interior. A strip ten thousand kilometers wide was filled with cities, sections of vegetation, and bodies of water as it stretched around the interior of the sphere at the equator. A thick atmosphere was held in place by the artificial gravity of the spinning sphere and a force field that kept it from leaking out as the artificial gravity lessened up from the equator. This strip constituted a living area a hundred million times that of the Earth. The rest of the interior above the equator strip was filled with what appeared to be solar panels.

There was room enough for trillions of aliens to live comfortably on this mega structure.

"The star is a G5 class dwarf about three quarters the luminosity of our Sun," Molly said. They're obviously protecting the habitable zone from solar radiation by employing a magnetic field. I would also assume that they're controlling the weather too."

"I'm having trouble believing this," I said. "It would require a momentous engineering effort to create this mega-structure."

"They must be a very technically advanced species," Molly said.

I turned to Judy. "Move the probe nearer to the atmosphere and then launch the insect probes."

I turned back to Molly. "I wonder how they're maintaining the correct alignment with the star."

"I think there are thrusters mounted around the sphere's interior." She pointed to a close up of three nozzles.

The insect probes began sending back visuals.

"Ah," I said. "They have large heads on small bodies. That means that their brains are larger."

"They look like cartoon characters," Molly said, smiling. "They're all wearing overalls with suspenders. They look like munchkins."

That made me smile, but I had to admit that they were not what I would expect.

"I'm not hearing any conversation," Molly said. "Could they be communicating by mental telepathy?"

"It would make sense. They must have evolved to do that."

Molly turned to me. "Are we going to make contact?"

"I don't think it would do us any good. They have probably given up space travel and are content to remain on their artificial world. I'm not sure it would be safe to go inside their sphere. If we get trapped in there it wouldn't be easy to get back out."

I turned back to Judy. "Retrieve the insects and return the probe."

"The probes have been destroyed, Jason."

My eyebrows shot up. "Get us the hell out of here now!"

Judy shot us away from the sphere at full plasma speed.

"We are being tailed by a device," Judy reported.

"Destroy it with an antimatter missile."

The missile flew out of a back tube and detonated on contact. The explosion caused a sudden rush of high energy gamma rays that caused our shields to sing.

"Move us to warp," I commanded. "Just get us away from here."

"Yes, Jason."

The ship entered warp and didn't come out of it until we were a thousand light years away from the Dyson sphere.

I blew out a relived breath. "It seems that they're not very hospitable."

"Good thing we didn't attempt to take the ship in there," Molly said.

I concurred with her statement. We would have had to resort to a major weapons engagement that would have destroyed us and the Dyson sphere.