The biggest question the three-ship fleet faced as it hovered near the Altair Sphere region was which of a dozen alien races, all probably dangerous, all apparently competing, to deal with first. The months of observation they’d done during their approach provided no clear basis for decision, so all three first-wave captains had at first gone along with Czernak’s XO Osmore, the foremost proponent of standing off and watching. Commander Osmore was a science officer through and through, so he was happy to watch and study until he and others grew long shaggy beards or no new data was retrievable, whichever came first.
But almost immediately after they stopped deceleration, Czernak began calling for immediate action, an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” tactic, and the question of who to join was a minor issue. He wanted to head in, hellbent-for-leather, ready to wheel and deal with whoever would talk to us. Well, not talk, of course, but use sign language to start bartering.
The shriller his insistence became, the more Jonas and Mandalay resisted him and the more Czernak claimed that they already had enough data, and it was a criminal waste to just keep collecting more. Two months after the first-wave rendezvous with the HX, Czernak ordered the Burroughs into the heart of the alien swarm. The helmsman on duty refused the order, and when Czernak relieved her of duty, her replacement refused, and so did his replacement. At that point the ship’s doctor formally declared Czernak insane and he was confined to his quarters with a guard. It was unnerving to Osmore (who became acting captain), the crew, and to the rest of the fleet.
But what they saw! What we in the second wave saw during the last months of our approach! It took all our breaths away!
The ships we watched all flew at four-to-ten times Earth’s gravity—4G to 10G—and best we could tell, at four-to-ten times the fuel efficiency that our best ships were producing. Their cloaking abilities were astounding; they blinked on and off our radar like fireflies. There were city-sized ships down to those so small we couldn’t detect them, though we could see bigger ships dodging them.
At the center of all this activity was an object with the low density of a building, such as a skyscraper—or the Sol HX Fragments!—that was not only moon-size but moon-round. Not a fragment, but intact! The larger ships stood off and the smaller ships were launched to what was immediately called the Altair HX Sphere, although Altair was only a very bright star shining on the Sphere.
But not even that spectacle, and all it implied, could take everyone’s breath away forever. Greed is a powerful motivator, and eventually people began to ask themselves how watching was going to make them rich. They started feeling—
At this point Captain Musso began coughing. Finding he couldn’t stop, he headed back to his quarters and we were done for the day.