Gregory Benford - Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel

Captain Redwing had set the outside view to follow him around the ship. Now it was superimposed on a forward wall in the Garden.

Though he was the only human being awake among thousands of crew and colonists in cold sleep, he did not lack company. He was in the Garden now, surrounded by plants and smelling of earth. He was in fragrant mud, trying to plant some beets while two finger snakes were hugging him. Their weight was just about all he could handle, and he laughed as he carefully peeled them off. They werent just affectionate and playful; they had a sense of humor besides. Plus a liking for tickling him when he least expected it.

Since SunSeeker had left the Bowl, six generations of finger snakes had done maintenance on the ships infrastructure. The ape with tools for hands, Handy, worked alongside them. Handy seemed to be immortal. The altered spidow, Anorak, was in the Bowls version of cold sleep.

Even stranger beings were resting, too. Daphne and Apollo, the Diaphanous plasma beings from within the Bowls star, were living deep inside SunSeekers motors. They occasionally woke if something jittered in the fusion torch, altered the electrical currents and controlling magnetic fieldsthen went back to sleep. They were better than anything Earthside engineering had achieved, at least when SunSeeker left the solar system well over a century ago. Mere humans always worked with the conflict between the needs of science and the exigencies of balancing a budget. The Diaphanous plasma species had evolved under selection pressures for more millennia than anybody could count. That always worked better. Darwin bats last.

But none of these aliens talked much.

The view forward showed a wealth of stars amid a golden glow. That fuming cloud was fusing hydrogen plasma, piling up ahead of the decelerating spacecraft SunSeeker. Centered was a yellow-white orb theyd decided to call Excelsius, the host sun of their goal.

Redwing asked of the empty air, Can you magnify Glory?

Excelsius flared large and ran off-screen. A pale blue dot grew bigger than a point. Thats not a sphere anymore, is it?

No, Captain, the Artilect said. It appears Glorys image has a lump, perhaps a large moon.

Why in hell didnt we know that earlier? The finger snakes wriggled away from his anger.

Extrasolar planets are harder to find when their orbits dont transit across Excelsius, as seen by us from Sol system.

Of course Redwing had known that. Talking to the ships artificial intelligencesArtilectswas somewhat like talking to himself. He did it anyway. Does it sometimes strike you as stupid, that were ordered to explore and colonize at the same time?

The original plan was quite different.

What was that? Funny hed never asked before. Or was his memory faulty?

The Artilect said in a warm monotone, SunSeeker was designed and built as a colony ship. My destination was Tau Ceti. SunSeeker was finished and nearly ready to launch when Tau Ceti flared. Not enough to be called a nova, but enough to burn out the rocky moons around TC5, a gas giant that had been in the Goldilocks zone. An exploration team was already in place on the likeliest moon. Very embarrassing for the administration.

That same year, a G star not that much farther away dimmed as if something had passed across it. Perhaps artificial. Telescopes gave us a strong spectrum for a breathable atmosphere somewhere near the star. There was a burst of gravity waves from the same direction. The United Nations called the hypothetical planet Glory, and it was just too interesting to ignore. They then designated SunSeeker an exploration and colonization vehicle. It got built bigger, to accommodate more cold sleep people for the entire long haul. Thats where your orders came from.

Ah yes. My first cold sleep mustve erased some memories. And then we found the Bowl of Heaven. He beckoned to the finger snakes, which came snuggling up. Comfort animals. They purred and murmured and wriggled.

Yes, that must have been what passed across the face of Excelsius. A momentary lineup. A half Dyson sphere capable of traveling between stars, halfway en route to Glory. Are you wondering how that affects your mission?

Not really, Redwing said, though he was. He had long ago learned that the Artilect system liked to be baited a bit. The computer minds liked talking to other, different minds, just like humans with their pets. He really should have warmed up an ordinary house cat to keep him company on this long, careful approaching maneuver to the Glory system.