Hex (11 page)

“I understand that.” Andromeda gestured at the screen. “But I'm also keeping in mind the fact that the
danui
aren't exactly the most forthcoming race we've met. They didn't tell us that this wasn't a normal planet. There must be a reason for that, and until we know what it is, I'm not going to make any assumptions. So we're going to treat Hex as if it's potentially dangerous and study it before we jump into anything.”

D'Anguilo looked as if he wanted to argue with her, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Andromeda looked at Cayce again. “Do I remember correctly that one of your crew is a trained biologist?”

“Corporal Wright, ma'am.” Cayce hesitated. “She's not actually a scientist. She just had scientific training before she joined the Corps. Her degree is in xenobiology, though, and she studied under Dr. D'Anguilo while she was at the university.”

Kyra Wright. Andromeda wondered if she was the same young woman who'd been with Sean in the wardroom. Her maternal intuition told her that there was something between the two of them; at the very least, she certainly looked like Sean's type. “That's fine. We could use another hand up here once we get closer to that thing . . . That is, if it's all right with you, Tom.”

D'Anguilo nodded. “Ms. Wright was one of my better students. I wouldn't mind having her help at all.”

“I'll send her up here as soon as possible.” Cayce started to turn toward the hatch again, then stopped. “Just one more thing, Captain. What do I tell my people?”

Andromeda blinked. “Come again?”

“They were expecting a planet, ma'am. Instead, we got... well,
that
.” The lieutenant paused. “It's spooked a couple of them, to tell the truth.”

Andromeda doubted that Sean could be made nervous by anything besides his own mother; she wondered if Cayce wasn't really speaking for himself. Yet she was aware of the uncomfortable silence that had fallen across the command center. Since they'd been together,
Montero
's crew had visited nearly a half dozen alien worlds. Yet none were as strange as what lay before them. Hex was an appropriate name; it appeared to have spooked everyone.

“Tell them the truth,” she said. “This isn't what we were expecting... and they'd do well to remember that as they get ready to go down there.”

O
VER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS, THE
MONTERO
made the journey to Hex. Andromeda would later reflect that the least of her surprises was how quickly her crew and passengers accepted the name that Tom D'Anguilo had given this place. Hex, a human word, was simple, easy to remember, and oddly appropriate. So when she sent her first report to Coyote via hyperlink, that was the name she used.

The response she received from the merchant marine was terse:

Reading this in the privacy of her cabin, Andromeda rolled her eyes. Intrigued, indeed; that had to be the understatement of all time. If Harker had been aboard the
Montero
, she would have loved to see the look on his face when the ship came through the
danui
starbridge.

Sure, Ted, I'll send you more info,
she thought.
Soon as I figure out what the hell I'm dealing with.

The closer the
Montero
came to Hex, the more mysterious the sphere appeared to be. Anne's original transmission went unanswered; nothing came through the com network even though she frequently retransmitted the text message on multiple wavelengths. With D'Anguilo's assistance, she rephrased the message in more diplomatic terms, using the translation program to reiterate it in the
hjadd
,
nord
,
kua'tah
, and
soranta
languages (the
danui
native tongue being still unknown). Still, there was no response. It was as if the
danui
—or, for that matter, anyone else who might be present—simply didn't want to speak with their newly arrived visitors.

And yet, near the end of the second day, the
Montero
discovered that they were far from alone in the
danui
system. Andromeda was having a late dinner in the wardroom when Jason's voice came through her earpiece, asking her to come to the command center. When the captain returned to the bridge, she found her first officer peering at the nav table.

Hex was so immense, it was impossible for the table's holographic imaging system to construct a model that wouldn't crowd out everything else, including
Montero
's present position. In the end, a significantly downscaled version of the Dyson sphere had been projected instead. Ever since the
Montero
had fired its main engines to begin the long trip, the only images above the table had been Hex, the
danui
starbridge, and the tiny white dot of the
Montero
itself, with red and blue dotted lines showing the distance the ship had already traveled and the course it was projected to take.

But that had changed. About one-sixth of the way around Hex, at a distance of 1.5 AUs, was a second ring, identical to the starbridge the
Montero
had come through. And next to it was another white dot, leaving behind a broken red trail of its own as it inched toward Hex.

“A second starbridge,” Jason murmured, pointing to the new ring. “We didn't spot it before now because it wasn't active. It opened just a few minutes ago, when that ship came through.”

Andromeda stared at the ring and the adjacent dot. “What kind of ship? Do we know?”

The first officer said nothing but instead glanced over his shoulder at Rolf Kurtz. In D'Anguilo's absence, the chief engineer had assumed his position at the remote survey station. “Still trying to get a visual fix, skipper,” he replied, not looking up from his console. “Judging from its energy signature, though, I'd say it's using a negmass drive.” He hesitated. “My guess is that it's
hjadd
.”

Andromeda turned toward the com station, only to see that it was vacant as well.
Hell of a time for this to happen, with most of the bridge crew off duty and only a couple of officers standing watch.
Perhaps it was just as well that Anne was in her bunk; her failure to make contact with the
danui
had been giving her fits, and another unanswered communiqué would only vex her even more. Andromeda decided to let her sleep.

“Where's the second starbridge?” she asked.

“That, I can tell you.” Jason typed a command into the navtable keyboard. An instant later, numbers appeared beneath the new ring, with a green line appearing as a parabolic curve between it and the first starbridge. “How interesting,” the first officer murmured, staring at the computations. “The two starbridges are in the same equatorial orbit, half an AU from Hex and exactly 14,602,140.88 miles apart.” He hesitated, then pointed to an empty point in space one-third of the way around Hex. “I'll bet anyone here their dessert for the next week that there's another starbridge right there... same orbit, same distance.”

“What makes you think that?” Rolf asked.

“With something this big, why settle for having only two starbridges to get here?” He shrugged. “Or even three, for that matter.”

Neither Andromeda nor Rolf took him up on his wager, which was wise on their part. A day later, the existence of the third starbridge was confirmed when another starship—most likely
nord
, judging from its lightsails—came through it, and it wasn't long after that before they realized that the first officer was right. In all, six starbridges were in equatorial orbit around Hex, each one located at equal distances from its nearest neighbors.

It soon became apparent why the
danui
had chosen to build six different points of entry to their system.

By the fourth day, Hex completely filled the forward screen until nothing else could be seen. The sheer size of the thing was staggering: 93 million miles in radius, 186 million miles in diameter, with a circumference of 584,336,233.568 miles and an estimated volume of 1.086
¹⁷
miles. As abstract as the figures were, they were the only way Andromeda could comprehend just how bloody
huge
the sphere was.

Except for the small gas giant in close orbit around HD 76700, the only other object in the
danui
system besides its sun was Hex. If Tom was right, and the sphere had been built more or less on the same principles originally postulated by Freeman Dyson, then any other planets that might have once existed here had long since been destroyed, their mass used for the sphere's construction. Indeed, the amount of matter and energy—not to mention time—required for such an effort was utterly mind-boggling. Andromeda knew that she would've deemed such a feat to be impossible had she not seen it with her own eyes.

Once the ship was within ten million miles of Hex, D'Anguilo was able to study its hexagons a little more closely through
Montero
's optical telescope system. Their dimensions were identical; each of their six sides were one thousand miles long and one hundred miles in diameter, giving them a total perimeter of six thousand miles. By then, it was obvious that Hex revolved around HD 76700 at a rate that would produce an internal surface gravity of 2 g's for the hexagons at the equator and nearly none at all for those at its poles. It was difficult to tell exactly how many hexes made up the sphere, but D'Anguilo estimated that Hex was comprised of approximately six trillion hexes.

Even more astonishing, it appeared that the sides of a given hex were individual cylinders, joined together at their corners by spherical nodes, with the adjacent hexes linked to them by the same nodes. Examining them through the ship's telescopes, Kyra Wright arrived at the conclusion that these cylinders were hollow, and most likely were serving as habitats. She dubbed these objects
biopods
, since
biospheres
was not an accurate description of their shape. If D'Anguilo's estimates were correct, then Hex was made up of thirty-six trillion biopods... every one of them potentially habitable.

Now they knew why the
danui
had put six starbridges in orbit around Hex. The sphere was so large, multiple points of entry had to be provided in order to reduce the travel time to its far-flung habitats. And it was obvious that Hex was well visited; by the end of the sixth day, the bridge crew had counted nearly a dozen alien vessels coming and going through the starbridges they could see, and there was no telling how thick the traffic was on the other side of the sun.

And yet, the
danui
still hadn't made contact with them, nor had any other ship responded to Anne's attempts to communicate with them. It was as if the
Montero
, and the humans aboard, were being deliberately snubbed.

“I don't get it. I really don't understand.” Absently gnawing at a thumbnail, Andromeda slumped in her seat as she scowled at the wallscreen. From a distance of less than eight million miles, Hex had all but completely lost its spherical shape; instead, it appeared to be a curved wall of hexagons that slowly moved from left to right, the sun behind them shining through like a distant spotlight. “If they wanted us to come here, then why give us the silent treatment?”

“The
danui
are naturally reclusive...” D'Anguilo began. He was standing at the remote survey station, Kyra seated beside him.

“I know. You've told me that over and over again.” Andromeda glared at him from over her shoulder. “But this is downright rude. It's like...” She paused, searching for the right words. “Getting invited to a party, then being made to wait at the front door while all the other guests are let in.”

“Not only that, but the other guests aren't saying anything to you either.” From the helm station, Melpomene gave her captain a sympathetic nod; she didn't bother to hide her disgust. “I'm with you, skipper. This is really pissing me off.”

Seated at the communications console, Anne quietly nodded in agreement. Andromeda was about to reply when Kyra shyly raised her hand. “Pardon me, Captain, but...”

She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “Go ahead, Ms. Wright,” Andromeda said, not unkindly. “You have something to say?”

“Well...” Kyra hesitated. “I think you're overlooking the obvious. The question isn't why the
danui
haven't communicated with us. It's why they built Hex in the first place.”

That was one of the few times in the past six days that Kyra had spoken directly to her. Ever since she'd starting working with D'Anguilo in the command center, she'd been a quiet presence, sharing the console with the astroethnicist as the two of them studied Hex. But Andromeda had gradually become aware that, when she wasn't on the bridge, Kyra spent most of her free time with Sean. The captain had seen the two of them together in the wardroom, and on one occasion she'd spotted her emerging from Sean's cabin. It was probably just as well that Kyra hadn't seen her, or otherwise, D'Anguilo might have lost his assistant; Andromeda apparently intimidated her.

So Kyra was Sean's new girlfriend. On the one hand, Andromeda found herself liking her, albeit reluctantly. Before their relationship had gone sour, and Sean had moved out of the house, she'd met most of the girls Sean had hooked up with in the past, and the majority of them had had more beauty than brains. Kyra was good-looking
and
smart, and the fact that she had manners was a bonus. But Sean had probably told her all about his mother, and by then Kyra probably thought Andromeda flew a broomstick when she wasn't commanding a starship.