Star Fields

Chapter No. 164. Scale

Chapter No. 164. Scale

Expectations are often wrong.

I looked at what appeared to be a humongous one-story rectangular cement building on the surface of the planet we had found in a spiral galaxy of a universe we had not explored yet.

"I don't see anything threatening. What's inside the building?"

"My guess is a few hundred thousand androids," Molly said.

"Where's the Tyco trap?"

"I don't see anything that would suggest a trap," she said.

I turned to Alexa. "I suppose we have no other choice than to go down there."

She replied with a frown.

We teleported to the surface and began walking toward the building, which looked much larger than it did from space.

"They have chemical explosives," Alexa said. "But I don't think they're rigged to explode at the same time."

I looked around. "There has to be a catch."

"I'm not detecting any antimatter or . . . wait! Judy reports that there's an asteroid incoming,"

I waved my had to stop time. "Okay, that's the catch."

"I place it at about ten minutes to a collision that will destroy this building and the androids,"
Alexa said. "That doesn't give us enough time to transfer all of the androids to our ships."

"How about we extract all of the chemical explosives and transport them to the asteroid. The detonation of two hundred thousand explosives should cause the asteroid to miss."

"Maybe along with a full gamma ray blast," Alexa added.

"Right. Let's do it."

After we competed the transfer of the explosives and told Madison to hit the asteroid with the blasters, we waited for the asteroid to fly over after I started up time. We saw the explosions on the asteroid, which was clearly visible. The planet's atmosphere brilliantly lit up from the asteroid's penetration, causing a thunderous sonic blast as it skipped off the atmosphere and flew away.

"That was close but no cigar."

Alexa gave me a funny look.

"Let's start transferring the androids," I said.

Once we had that completed, we teleported back to the command deck of the Intrepid-1.

"Take us back to the Dyson world system, Judy.""

After several hours of spin drive and multiverse portal traverses, followed by a final warp drive trip, we arrived at our fully functional Dyson sphere world. Since our sphere was installed around a M-class red dwarf star, its inner surfaces were only 0.5 AU from the star. It had required ten to the sixteen kilograms of material to construct it, which is a sizable amount but not insurmountable. It was only possible because we had a huge army of androids to construct it.

"We'll begin transfer of the android capsules, Judy. Inform the workers to prepare for them."

"They are ready. Jason."

"Is there enough room for them?" Helen asked.

"Despite the fact that the inhabitable surface on a Dyson sphere is limited to a five-thousand-kilometer wide strip at the equator of the rotating sphere and there are several lakes, the amount of usable land is huge. I estimate that it could easily accommodate a trillion individuals."