Rift in the Races Read Free Page B

indicating the vast carpet of greenery spreading between the encircling foothills.
    At first the area appeared empty, a wide bowl-shaped expanse of verdant plain nestled within a ring of low hills, but then Orli noticed something odd, something of a blur several hundred meters up ahead. “Do you see that?” she said.
    “See what?” asked Roberto and Captain Asad together.
    “Up there, look, that smear of blue. It’s right below where the hills are kind of warping against the horizon. See? Something’s funky over there.”
    Everyone in the ship craned forward, squinting and focusing as the lot of them tried to spot what Orli was pointing at. Despite Captain Asad’s admonition about keeping expectations in check, they were all quite curious to see the War Queen’s new spaceship.
    Captain Asad moved to stand between Orli and Roberto, his hands braced on the backs of their seats. He stared out like the rest of them as he scanned the rise and fall of the horizon, looking for the distortion Orli had described. Finally he saw it. From the hums and ahas of his comrades, they saw it too.
    “That’s weird,” said Roberto. “It’s all shimmery.” He checked the sensors while the other passengers voiced similar ideas, some suggesting it was merely a heat effect, common enough in deserts and on hot roads, even though this locality was neither desert nor hot road. They all had an opinion of some sort or another, but everyone saw it, regardless of how they tried to make sense of the distinct smearing of grass and air that shaped itself before them. The closer they got, the easier it was to see. A circular expanse that seemed to be a tumultuous shuffling of sky and greenery, light warping and doing strange things within the visible confines of a perfect sphere. A very large perfect sphere.
    “What is it?” demanded Captain Asad as he motioned for Roberto to stop and hover where they were, still a few hundred meters away.
    “It’s beautiful,” said Orli.
    “I asked for an analysis, not an opinion, Ensign.”
    “It’s damn huge, is what it is,” said Captain Paxton with some trepidation in her voice. “Look at that thing. It looks like a giant crystal ball.”
    “It does!” Orli agreed, her voice filling with enthusiasm. “That’s exactly what it is. A giant crystal ball.”
    “ Giant ain’t the word for it,” said Roberto, tearing his attention away from it long enough to tap up a sensor scan. “It’s…,” he had to wait for the reading, then tap in a different set of commands. “It’s not letting me read it directly, but the sensor shadow says it’s 731.52 meters in diameter. Perfectly spherical.”
    “What’s it made of?” demanded Captain Asad.
    Orli leaned over to look at Roberto’s screen. She saw it even as he said it out loud. “Unknown. Sensors aren’t picking it up.”
    “What do you mean they aren’t picking it up? You just said it’s over seven-hundred meters.”
    “It could be a million meters, sir, and we still wouldn’t be reading anything from it. I’m using the edge of the light distortion to measure it, kind of like gravitational lensing. Here, look.” Roberto leaned away from his console so the captain could see.
    “And so it begins,” said the captain after the barest glance at Roberto’s monitor.
    Roberto kicked Orli again, but not before it came out: “And so what begins, Captain?”
    The captain turned on her so quickly Roberto had to stop the reflex that had him reaching to pull the captain back. Fortunately, he caught himself in time. The captain wasn’t going to hit her. He wouldn’t, but it had been a while since Roberto had seen how the two of them got when stuck together on the bridge. What with her spending so much time at the mining base back on the Naotatican moon, they hadn’t had to suffer one another much lately.
    “Don’t start, Pewter,” Captain Asad said. “Your service has been halfway decent for the last few months, but I won’t tolerate