DalRiss voice said in his mind.
“I don’t understand all of the math,” he replied. “But just as a rotating black hole could theoretically open up pathways—wormholes, we call them—to distant points in space or time, a cylindrical mass like this, rotating at relativistic speeds, should open up… gateways in the space around it. A number of these cylinders could have paths lined between them. Or you could send a ship through to a point in empty space, light years away.”
His DalRiss hosts—and of course the Nagas who rode with them—had never imagined such a thing and could not follow the concept as he tried to explain it. If he’d had the math, possibly he could have done a better job, but as it was, all he could do was observe and try to describe what he was sensing to the others.
“You are saying, then,” the DalRiss continued, “that this is a machine for traveling instantly from point to point. Like our Achievers.”
“That’s right,” » DEVCAMERON « replied.
Achievers were artificial, DalRiss-grown life forms that could visualize a distant point in space and somehow—no one, not even the DalRiss themselves, was quite certain how it worked—move the ship in a blink across tens or even hundreds of light years, killing the Achiever in the process. When humans first contacted the DalRiss, there’d been speculation that their mode of travel through interstellar space was far superior to the slower, shorter-ranged abilities of human K-T ships, and there’d been discussion about how humans could adopt the DalRiss method.
That was unlikely, at least in the short term, no matter what the advantages might be. DalRiss starship-cities were immense living organisms grown for the purpose; so far as human experimentation had been able to determine in the years since First Contact with the DalRiss, the process they used to move their ships from point to point required that the vessels be organic, their lives meshed symbiotically with those of the Achievers in ways human biotechnology didn’t yet understand. Someday, living human ships might be grown as well, but in the meantime, the only way to use DalRiss technology was to get them to literally carry human ships inside the far larger DalRiss ship-creatures. And, for their own reasons, the DalRiss rarely agreed to do that. Humanity would have to learn how to grow its own ship-creatures.
The DalRiss themselves were the product of artificial symbiosis. The “Riss” portion of the joint creature was a roughly crescent-shaped, many-armed rider atop the bulky, six-legged starfish shape which was the “Dal.” The two were extremely closely linked, sharing one another’s sensory perceptions, a single organism in fact.
Something moved across » DEVCAMERON’S « field of view—not in deep space but in close to the Device, a black shape flickering into existence some tens of kilometers above the spinning silver cylinder. “What is that?”
“We perceive nothing—”
“Quickly! On my scan! Enhance! Enhance!”
Two more shapes followed the first, as quick as thought. His first impression was that they were alive, so fast and agile were they… but the reality was swiftly apparent. The three were dissimilar in details of shape, yet alike, organic-smooth forms, jet black in color, with a line of wickedly curved blades down one side, like saw teeth, or the fins of some aquatic creature, but angled to stab forward instead of trailing behind.
“Ships!” » DEVCAMERON « announced. “I’ve never seen their like! They just materialized out of the space close to the Device.”
He could sense more of the DalRiss hosts shifting linkages within the network, their equivalent of standing on tiptoe to see as they switched to their Perceiver arrays for primary input.
The alien ships were moving almost too quickly to follow, and once they were clear of the Device they were virtually impossible to see against the blackness of space. In seconds, however,
“I don’t understand all of the math,” he replied. “But just as a rotating black hole could theoretically open up pathways—wormholes, we call them—to distant points in space or time, a cylindrical mass like this, rotating at relativistic speeds, should open up… gateways in the space around it. A number of these cylinders could have paths lined between them. Or you could send a ship through to a point in empty space, light years away.”
His DalRiss hosts—and of course the Nagas who rode with them—had never imagined such a thing and could not follow the concept as he tried to explain it. If he’d had the math, possibly he could have done a better job, but as it was, all he could do was observe and try to describe what he was sensing to the others.
“You are saying, then,” the DalRiss continued, “that this is a machine for traveling instantly from point to point. Like our Achievers.”
“That’s right,” » DEVCAMERON « replied.
Achievers were artificial, DalRiss-grown life forms that could visualize a distant point in space and somehow—no one, not even the DalRiss themselves, was quite certain how it worked—move the ship in a blink across tens or even hundreds of light years, killing the Achiever in the process. When humans first contacted the DalRiss, there’d been speculation that their mode of travel through interstellar space was far superior to the slower, shorter-ranged abilities of human K-T ships, and there’d been discussion about how humans could adopt the DalRiss method.
That was unlikely, at least in the short term, no matter what the advantages might be. DalRiss starship-cities were immense living organisms grown for the purpose; so far as human experimentation had been able to determine in the years since First Contact with the DalRiss, the process they used to move their ships from point to point required that the vessels be organic, their lives meshed symbiotically with those of the Achievers in ways human biotechnology didn’t yet understand. Someday, living human ships might be grown as well, but in the meantime, the only way to use DalRiss technology was to get them to literally carry human ships inside the far larger DalRiss ship-creatures. And, for their own reasons, the DalRiss rarely agreed to do that. Humanity would have to learn how to grow its own ship-creatures.
The DalRiss themselves were the product of artificial symbiosis. The “Riss” portion of the joint creature was a roughly crescent-shaped, many-armed rider atop the bulky, six-legged starfish shape which was the “Dal.” The two were extremely closely linked, sharing one another’s sensory perceptions, a single organism in fact.
Something moved across » DEVCAMERON’S « field of view—not in deep space but in close to the Device, a black shape flickering into existence some tens of kilometers above the spinning silver cylinder. “What is that?”
“We perceive nothing—”
“Quickly! On my scan! Enhance! Enhance!”
Two more shapes followed the first, as quick as thought. His first impression was that they were alive, so fast and agile were they… but the reality was swiftly apparent. The three were dissimilar in details of shape, yet alike, organic-smooth forms, jet black in color, with a line of wickedly curved blades down one side, like saw teeth, or the fins of some aquatic creature, but angled to stab forward instead of trailing behind.
“Ships!” » DEVCAMERON « announced. “I’ve never seen their like! They just materialized out of the space close to the Device.”
He could sense more of the DalRiss hosts shifting linkages within the network, their equivalent of standing on tiptoe to see as they switched to their Perceiver arrays for primary input.
The alien ships were moving almost too quickly to follow, and once they were clear of the Device they were virtually impossible to see against the blackness of space. In seconds, however,
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