's cameras, truthfully; it was just a ring of some shining blue material, its faces polished and barely visible in the wan light of the Sun.
But that interior looked jet black, not reflecting a single photon cast by his helmet lamp.
He glared into the disc of darkness. What are you for? Why are you here?
There was, of course, no reply.
First things first. Let's do a little science here.
He pulsed his thrusters and drifted toward the hoop itself. It was electric blue, glowing as if from within, a wafer-thin band the width of his palm. He could see no seams, no granularity.
He reached out a gloved hand, spacesuit fabric encasing monkey fingers, and tried to touch the hoop. Something invisible made his hand slide away, sideways.
No matter how hard he pushed, how he braced himself with the thrusters, he could get his glove no closer than a millimeter or so from the material. And always that insidious, soapy feeling of being pushed sideways.
He tried running his hand up and down, along the hoop. There were... ripples, invisible but tangible.
He drifted back to the center of the hoop. That sheet of silent darkness faced him, challenging. He cast a shadow on the structure from the distant pinpoint Sun. But where the light struck the hoop's dark interior, it returned nothing: not a highlight, not a speckle of reflection.
Malenfant rummaged in a sleeve pocket with stiff, gloved fingers. He held up his hand to see what he had retrieved. It was his Swiss Army knife. He threw the knife, underhand, into the hoop.
The knife sailed away in a straight line.
When it reached the black sheet it dimmed, and it seemed to Malenfant that it became reddish, as if illuminated by a light that was burning out.
The knife disappeared.
Awkwardly, pulsing his thrusters, he worked his way around the artifact. The MMU was designed to move him in a straight line, not a tight curve; it took some time.
On the far side of the artifact, there was no sign of the knife.
A gateway, then. A gateway, here at the rim of the Solar System. How appropriate, he thought. How iconic.
Time to make a leap of faith, Malenfant. He fired his RCS and began to glide forward.
The gate grew, in his vision, until it was all around him. He was going to pass through it -- if he kept going -- somewhere near the center.
He looked back at the Perry. Its huge, misty main antenna was pointed back toward Earth, catching the light of the Sun like a spider web. He could see instrument pallets held away from the hab module's yellowed, cloth-clad bulk, like rear-view mirrors. The pallets were arrays of lenses, their black gazes uniformly fixed on him.
Just one press of his controller and he could stop right here, go back.
He reached the center of the disc. An electric blue light bathed him. He leaned forward inside his stiff HUT unit, so he could look up.
The artifact had come to life. The electric blue light was glowing from the substance of the circle itself. He could see speckles in the light. Coherent, then. And when he looked down at his suit, he saw how the white fabric was crisscrossed by the passage of dozens of points of electric blue glow.
Lasers. Was he being scanned?
"This changes everything," he said.
The blue light increased in intensity, until it blinded him. There was a single instant of pain--
Chapter 6
Transmission
"We think a Gaijin flower-ship is a variant of the old Bussard ramjet design," Sally Brind said. She had spread a fold-up softscreen over one time-smoothed wall of Nemoto's lunar cave. Now -- Maura squinted to see -- the screen filled up with antique design concepts: line images of gauzy, unlikely craft, obsessively labeled with captions and arrows. "It is a notion that goes back to the 1960s..."
Nemoto's home -- here on the Japanese Moon, deep in Farside -- had turned out to be a crude, outmoded subsurface shack close to the infrared observatory where she'd made her first discovery of Gaijin activity in the belt. Here, it seemed, Nemoto had
But that interior looked jet black, not reflecting a single photon cast by his helmet lamp.
He glared into the disc of darkness. What are you for? Why are you here?
There was, of course, no reply.
First things first. Let's do a little science here.
He pulsed his thrusters and drifted toward the hoop itself. It was electric blue, glowing as if from within, a wafer-thin band the width of his palm. He could see no seams, no granularity.
He reached out a gloved hand, spacesuit fabric encasing monkey fingers, and tried to touch the hoop. Something invisible made his hand slide away, sideways.
No matter how hard he pushed, how he braced himself with the thrusters, he could get his glove no closer than a millimeter or so from the material. And always that insidious, soapy feeling of being pushed sideways.
He tried running his hand up and down, along the hoop. There were... ripples, invisible but tangible.
He drifted back to the center of the hoop. That sheet of silent darkness faced him, challenging. He cast a shadow on the structure from the distant pinpoint Sun. But where the light struck the hoop's dark interior, it returned nothing: not a highlight, not a speckle of reflection.
Malenfant rummaged in a sleeve pocket with stiff, gloved fingers. He held up his hand to see what he had retrieved. It was his Swiss Army knife. He threw the knife, underhand, into the hoop.
The knife sailed away in a straight line.
When it reached the black sheet it dimmed, and it seemed to Malenfant that it became reddish, as if illuminated by a light that was burning out.
The knife disappeared.
Awkwardly, pulsing his thrusters, he worked his way around the artifact. The MMU was designed to move him in a straight line, not a tight curve; it took some time.
On the far side of the artifact, there was no sign of the knife.
A gateway, then. A gateway, here at the rim of the Solar System. How appropriate, he thought. How iconic.
Time to make a leap of faith, Malenfant. He fired his RCS and began to glide forward.
The gate grew, in his vision, until it was all around him. He was going to pass through it -- if he kept going -- somewhere near the center.
He looked back at the Perry. Its huge, misty main antenna was pointed back toward Earth, catching the light of the Sun like a spider web. He could see instrument pallets held away from the hab module's yellowed, cloth-clad bulk, like rear-view mirrors. The pallets were arrays of lenses, their black gazes uniformly fixed on him.
Just one press of his controller and he could stop right here, go back.
He reached the center of the disc. An electric blue light bathed him. He leaned forward inside his stiff HUT unit, so he could look up.
The artifact had come to life. The electric blue light was glowing from the substance of the circle itself. He could see speckles in the light. Coherent, then. And when he looked down at his suit, he saw how the white fabric was crisscrossed by the passage of dozens of points of electric blue glow.
Lasers. Was he being scanned?
"This changes everything," he said.
The blue light increased in intensity, until it blinded him. There was a single instant of pain--
Chapter 6
Transmission
"We think a Gaijin flower-ship is a variant of the old Bussard ramjet design," Sally Brind said. She had spread a fold-up softscreen over one time-smoothed wall of Nemoto's lunar cave. Now -- Maura squinted to see -- the screen filled up with antique design concepts: line images of gauzy, unlikely craft, obsessively labeled with captions and arrows. "It is a notion that goes back to the 1960s..."
Nemoto's home -- here on the Japanese Moon, deep in Farside -- had turned out to be a crude, outmoded subsurface shack close to the infrared observatory where she'd made her first discovery of Gaijin activity in the belt. Here, it seemed, Nemoto had
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