The Architects of Hyperspace Read online

  Thomas R. McDonough is Coordinator of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Program (SETI) at The Planetary Society. He has worked in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has served as science adviser to writers Frederik Pohl, Parke Godwin, and the team of Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. He belongs to numerous professional organizations and was awarded a Special Citation by NASA for his work on the Pioneer spacecraft flyby of Saturn.

  Dr. McDonough is the author of two nonfiction books, The Search for Extraterrestrial intelligence: Listening for Life in the Cosmos and Space: The Next Twenty-five Years. His short works have appeared in Analog and other magazines. The Architects of Hyperspace is his first novel.

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  The Architects of

  Hyperspace

  Thomas R. McDonough

  Avon

  Publishers of Bard, Camelot, Discus and flare Books

  THE ARCHITECTS OF HYPERSPACE is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  AVON BOOKS

  A division of

  The Hearst Corporation

  105 Madison Avenue

  New York, New York 10016

  Copyright © 1987 by Thomas R. McDonough

  Front cover illustration by Ron Waiotsky

  Published by arrangement with the author

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-91602

  ISBN: 0-380-75144-5

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Sharon Jarvis & Co., Inc., 260 Willard Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10314.

  first Avon Printing: December 1987

  Avon Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Hecho en U.S.A.

  Printed in the USA.

  K–R 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the memory of my father,

  Lt. Col. Redmond A. McDonough,

  and to my mother,

  Sophie T. McDonough,

  for providing my life-support system

  on a primitive planet far from

  the Galactic Center

  Prologue

  In the year AD. 2087, explorer Alexandros Zepos was dying on an alien, artificial world unlike any before seen by humans.

  “For you, my little Ariadne,” he whispered in Greek as he programmed a viewcrystal. He worked slowly, painfully, awkwardly, one-handed. Only bloody bandages showed where his left arm had been. Doped with painkiller, the silver-haired man desperately connected wires to an alien video transmitter, his eyes aching from ultraviolet burns.

  Angrily, he fought the fog threatening to cloud his mind forever. Why had those creatures built this bizarre world, roaring around a neutron star a thousand times a second? Where had they vanished to? Now he would never know, and the pain of having come so close to solving the mystery was worse than the agony of impending death. If only this accursed world hadn’t killed his entire crew!

  The transparent wall revealed a vast panorama in which unfamiliar stars drew colored streaks in a faintly pink alien sky. The very fabric of space and time was warped by the Herculean pull of neutron-star gravity. Only the unknown powers Of alien technology kept Alexandros from being squeezed into molecular cream by the star’s tidal force. The transparent floor showed the forbidding surface of the star just meters away, filling the room with flashes from lightning powerful enough to vaporize a planet. Each burst roared with unearthly thunder as its plasma hit the station.

  His vision blurred. He spoke briefly into the viewcrystal recorder, then switched it off.

  “Twenty light-years to Earth,” he whispered as he connected the recorder to the transmitter. “Twenty years from now, Ariadne, you may get my message, when I’m a corpse, with a neutron star for a tombstone.

  “What will you look like then? Will you remember me? I’d give anything to know…”

  He hit the transmission key. The viewcrystal began to broadcast endlessly at the faint circle in the sky where spun a tiny star called the sun and a small planet called Earth.

  “Ariadne!” he whispered.

  Chapter 1

  Twenty years later and many light-years away, the battered old two-man starship Shillelagh entered the atmosphere of planet VII of the star Luyten 789-6. The Shillelagh was piloted by Sean O’Shaughnessy and Pelham “Plum” Chalmondeley III, who were visiting for the second time a frigid, alien world where only a dozen humans had ever walked.

  They landed by the shore of a lake of lox—liquid oxygen—and emerged from their battered starship in cryosuits that protected them from the star’s cosmic rays and from temperatures that made the coldest winter night of Antarctica seem tropical. On his shoulders, Plum carried a quantarifle and Sean a cryogun of his own design. Each bore a roidknife—the sign of the experienced asteroid miner—sheathed on his thigh.

  They were greeted by the sight of giant three—eyed reptilian cryocrocks swimming lazily offshore while a flock of frisbeebirds whirled noisily overhead. Little three-footed fluffniks, like hairy orange tennis balls, lapped at the liquid oxygen with their duck bills, making little org-org-org sounds.

  Sean knelt and studied the many tracks in the green crystalline sand. The fluffniks scurried out of the way. Plum lay down on his back, joyfully giving his rotund body a rest from the two-gee gravity. The extra weight was made tolerable by anti-gee pills that temporarily strengthened muscles at the expense of slowed bodily processes and strains that would be felt for days after the drug wore off.

  Sean pointed at several huge three-clawed prints and spoke on his suitradio: “Cryocat.” He studied the stride and size of the paw prints. “Young one, maybe half a year from full grown.”

  They were searching for felis abboudi, a great six-legged catlike creature as large and vicious as a tiger, with three corrugated heat-sensing ridges growing from its back like stubby wings. Popularly called cryocats, they were prized on Earth, but were known to the public only by the single example captured by an exobiological expedition five years previously. Private ownership of extraterrestrial life-forms being prohibited on Earth, there was a thriving underground market for such beasts.

  Sean and Plum were two smugglers who catered to that market.

  Sean looked back along the track, then pointed into the frigid jungle. “She came along that path and stopped to drink. Then she went off along
the shore. There aren’t many fluffnik prints on top of the tracks, so they’re fresh.”

  “Then shall we pop off after her?” said Plum.

  “That’s what we came shopping for,” agreed Sean, setting forth with a great stride across the green sand. The Irishman seemed to make no note of the added gravity, but Plum had to drag himself up with the help of his quantarifle.

  They were on the edge of a frozen jungle of multicolored crystalline plant life, dusted with snow and inhabited by vicious, hungry animals. The men’s heavy backpacks contained lox for breathing and powerful heaters to protect them from the cold that threatened to seep through the bulky insulation. The heaters were all that separated them from a quick death as human Popsicles. Unknown to the men, two kilometers behind them, two blue catlike eyes in a massive red head observed them, tracking the trackers. It was a massive, full-grown cryocat, a beast weighing close to a ton in the terrible gravity. A third eye in the back of its head stared behind it. To the large infrared-sensitive eyes, the cryosuit heat-leakage made the astronauts stand out in the ulrafrigid landscape, like bonfires at twilight. The cat’s two forward eyes squinted at the brilliance; its great jaws yawned, revealing two sharklike rows of teeth. It stretched gracefully and padded forward, its six legs rhythmically moving in a complicated cadence.

  “Nice thing about this planet,” said Sean, waving toward the lox lake. “We may freeze to death, but at least we can get our beer decently chilled.”

  “Small comfort,” said Plum, “especially since I do not believe in spoiling good beer by excessive refrigeration.” His well-educated British tongue hinted at a bemused tolerance of Sean’s eccentricities.

  Sean shook his head uncomprehendingly. “I’ll never understand your fondness for beer warm enough to wash a man’s hands with.” He spoke in the mild brogue of his hometown of Galway, Ireland.

  They followed the animal path along the shore, past violet crystal vegetation. A scarlet auroral curtain shimmered in the sky, like a blanket of the gods waving in a cosmic breeze. Crystals crunched under their feet; something brown and slimy slithered away into a pile of white crystals. Waves of pale blue lox lapped softly at the shore, their gentle sounds picked up by the suit

  “It was very kind of her to leave us such a nice trail.”

  “Sean my friend, I know you’re quite the whiz at this game, but how can you possibly know this cryocat is a she?”

  “Instinct, me boy, from years of experience on a multitude of worlds.”

  “In other words, a wild guess.”

  “You could put it in that way, if you were determined to be unflattering.”

  They trudged on along the shore, taking care not to step into the lox, which might overtax their suit heaters and freeze them solid.

  “Bloody awful planet, if you ask me,” said Plum. “fit only for ice cubes and penguins.” Unaware of his faint resemblance to the latter, he stoically marched after Sean, taking smaller strides, falling ever farther behind. A blue wave rippled through the aurora overhead.

  The star’s dim light made the glacial planet seem even colder. Subarctic though the planet was, it teemed with life, unique virus-based life-forms that had first evolved when the planet was warmer—though still fiercely cold by Earthly standards. As its star cooled to the point where oxygen liquefied, the life had adapted to ever colder temperatures, growing steadily more complex until it positively flourished, turning the world into an icy jungle.

  The original virus had a threefold symmetry in its quasicrystalline structure, giving rise to similar symmetries in many of its descendants. In the high gravity, three-legged and six-legged creatures had the advantage of the extreme mechanical stability of the tripod to protect them from dangerous falls.

  The distance between Sean and Plum slowly grew until the latter could barely see his companion. “I say,” said Plum, puffing, “couldn’t you slow down just a tad?” He began to sweat, as the unaccustomed exertion overloaded the old suit’s life-support systems.

  Sean paused, glanced back and said, “Isn’t it just like an Englishman to let an Irishman set the pace and then complain about it? I’m anxious to find us that cat. She could get away from us if we’re the smallest bit late. Twenty thousand roidbucks—that‘ll pay for a lot of sore muscles.” He plunged on.

  A cryocrock roared from the lake, his groans traveling half a kilometer with ease. Plum shivered at the sound.

  The shore was the terminus of numerous trails, trails of animals that thrived under conditions that would quick-freeze any Earthly creature; animals superbly insulated by layers of silicone fat. Here, ice-eater viruses had evolved long ago, using the energy of the star’s intense cosmic radiation. The viruses broke down several types of ices, building hydrogen compounds and releasing oxygen vapor, which condensed into lox. Animals drank lox instead of breathing air and oxidized the hydrogen into water, later excreted as crystals, then eaten by the viruses. The reaction heat kept their bodies well above the average equatorial daytime temperature of −190° Celsius.

  Sean stopped suddenly. “Whoa!” he whispered. “Something big, on the other side of that pink crystalbush.” The bush tinkled as the crystals rattled and hundreds of multicolored frostflies buzzed around it. Sean unslung his cryogun and slowly approached the bush. Plum trudged on, still far behind.

  A live animal was worth far more than a dead one, so capturing one without killing it was the purpose of their eleven-light-year journey. Sean carried the expensive custom-made cryogun he had designed expressly for this world. The meter-long gun would paralyze local animals by shooting hypersonic helium atoms. The atoms penetrated skin harmlessly, but filled the silicone fat with helium, increasing the heat conductivity so much that the animal would cool down and go into hibernation. At least, that’s how it worked in theory. They had yet to try it in the field.

  Plum’s powerful quantarifle was meant to kill anything Sean’s gun could not stop. Roidknives were their ultimate backup weapons. Similar in appearance to Bowie knives, the long blades were actually two parallel knives, angstroms apart. The handle’s power supply generated a high voltage across the blades, and the field-ion effect tore atoms out of any material it came, into contact with, ejecting them out the end of the handle and performing a mass-spectroscopic analysis in the bargain. With its ceramic coating to keep it from short-circuiting, it could cut through a nickel-iron asteroid like a laser through salami.

  As Sean came within a meter of the pink crystalbush, a creature stepped out and stared him in the face. Its head was massive, with three soft, huge blue eyes mounted equilaterally around its head, poised above a stout, green, cowlike body with six legs. It took one look at Sean, moaned, and ran clumsily in the opposite direction.

  Sean laughed. “A cryocow!”

  “Maybe we should bag the blighter and go home. Any creature from here is worth a pretty penny back home.”

  “I didn’t come eleven light-years to bag a cryocow.” said Sean. “We’d be the laughingstock of the roidbelt.”

  “I say, this really is rather more than I bargained for.” He tried to brush away a droplet of sweat from his forehead. “I was looking forward to a pleasant sojourn in an exotic vacationland, a bit of hunting, and then a spot of tea. I’d very much like that cuppa right now.”

  Sean pointed to the star overhead. “But look at that sun.”

  Plum stared at the small reddish star. “What about it?”

  “Nearly overhead. You Englishmen are supposed to be out in the noonday sun.”

  “Yes, along with you mad dogs.”

  Sean chuckled.

  “I rather doubt,” said Plum, “that the principle applies to extraterrestrial planets.”

  The cryocat was now a kilometer behind them and closing.

  A wind started to blow, tugging at their cryosuits and howling in their exterior microphones. Crystalbushes tinkled like wind chimes. Sean stared at the red clouds on the horizon. “Looks like a hailstorm coming.”

  Plum shivere
d. “Wouldn’t want to get caught in one of those.”

  “No sir, thank you kindly. Hailstones the size of your fist, falling like cannonballs on this high-gee planet. Knew a man who got his skull cracked by one.” He mimicked his companion’s accent: “No place for two civilized gentlemen like us.”

  Sean stopped at the edge of the green beach, twenty meters ahead of Plum. “I see something,” he whispered over the radio, afraid the sound might carry through the faceplate.

  “What, pray tell?”

  “There’s some motion in a blue crystalplant about five meters ahead. Move slowly.” Sean unslung the cryogun and crouched.

  Plumowed his already languid pace, using his quantarifle as a walking stick.

  The blue crystals stirred; several broke off and fell to the ground. A large red catlike head was visible, its three eyes glowing blue. “Cryocat!” whispered Sean. “Young one, all right.” He aimed the cryogun at the creature, centering her head in the cross hairs of the gun’s microscreen. “Move out a little more, me darlin’,” he murmured.

  The cat stepped back behind the bush.

  “Jesus, Mary, and all the saints!” exclaimed Sean.

  Plum slowly crept up toward Sean, keeping to the left to avoid shooting his friend if he had to fire. “Patience, old chum,” he said.

  Sean crept forward.

  The cat suddenly stuck her head back out and looked inquisitively in their direction, then slowly nodded in a circular motion to cool the cauliflowerlike infrared sensory organ in the center of her forehead, overloaded by Sean’s heat. Hesitantly, she stepped out, revealing a red, muscular body the size of a small tiger, six thick legs, and three stubby corrugated “wings” with serrated edges. In this gravity, she weighed close to half a ton.

  Sean aimed for her midsection and squeezed the trigger. Helium atoms shot out invisibly, silently, penetrating the thick hide. The cat snarled, leapt—and landed on him, knocking him down. She roared angrily and bit at his hot cryosuit.