Chapter 1

All of our wives wanted to join in the exploration of the Dyson Sphere, so we took two fighters on our return. Jane Montgomery, the wife of Ed Snow, and Sarah Hammish, the wife of Bill Hudson, were the two new members of the group. For lack of any other ideas, we landed at the same building that we had previously visited and left the fighters. We all stripped off our flight suits and donned our weapons and water canteens.

Something just occurred to me. "AI, how can we feel essentially normal gravity if the construct is not moving fast enough to generate the gravity?"

"I don't know the details, but there must be some sort of artificial gravity built into the construct. I'll see what I can find out."

This time, the door was locked, so we simply went down the line a little bit and found a door that was not locked. Jim and I opened the door and went in while the rest of the group covered us. Fortunately, all of us were experienced combat troops, so we knew how to handle a situation like this. Jim and I quickly moved into the room with our weapons ready to fire.

The room was empty, so we waved the others to join us. It was probably a misnomer to call this a room because of its very large size. It was definitely a lobby capable of handling at least 100 people without crowding. A line of desks was along one side of the lobby, and it was easy to imagine a receptionist sitting behind each one. There was a display board above the central desk, and there was something written across it that none of us could read.

"AI, can you make out what is written on that display board?"

"Not really, but I can speculate that the column of markings along the right edge are floor or room numbers, perhaps both. I will need many more samples of the writing to begin to interpret what I am seeing. Wait a minute, I can detect another AI trying to contact me."

There was some delay, and AI resumed talking to me. "I have just been given a crash course in reading the local language. The local AI which does the oral translations was able to give me a memory dump of the written language.

"Yes, that board you mentioned does list where one should look for various social services and departments. It appears that we have been very lucky in selecting a government building for our first entry. The computers here are all active and contain a history of their activities over the last few thousand local years. By the way, each local year is 238 Wolfian-days long.

"The length of the day is somewhat moot because there is no nighttime, so you can ignore it. Just rest when you feel tired. I will keep you posted on the day and the year if it becomes important.

"Well, back to the current problem. People stopped visiting this building approximately 80 thousand years ago, and the computers have no record of the reason for that. I will keep probing every time I find a new computer so that we may have an answer eventually."

"What can we do for local transportation? This place is so large that we may never discover anything if we have to walk."

"That I can help you with. There is a rental office two blocks to your left as you exit the building, and there you will find what most people used for local transportation. Just go to the office and select what you want. You should not need training with the use of the vehicles."

That was good enough for us, and we headed down the "street." This time, the door was easy to open, and we went in. What we found was rank after rank of scooter-like vehicles. I sat down on the saddle and a yellow light flashed immediately. "That is the signal that you have not yet registered as a renter of the vehicle. You will have to visit the desk to fill out a rental form. Do that now and have everyone join you."

We approached the desk and a form appeared on the display. It was already filled out, except for the signature. "Just sign your name as you would do if you were back on Earth, and I will take care of the rest." I did as AI instructed and returned to the scooter that I had originally sat on. This time, a red light flashed and some instructions appeared on a display screen. AI read them to me, and I found out that they were local traffic regulations. Hopefully, I could ignore them, and I pressed what looked like a "Start" button.

I pushed the button, and I felt a gentle vibration through the saddle. The steering mechanism was a simple handlebar. On the left side was a twist-grip accelerator, and the brake was a peddle on the floor board. The power seemed to be electrical in nature, so I twisted the accelerator and followed a red line that led me outside the building. There I waited until the rest of the crew showed up.

They formed up behind me and waited until I started to move. I thought that it would be a good idea to look over this group of buildings before we ventured "out of town." We passed a number of buildings that each had a label on it. AI provided translations of what the sign said, but there was nothing that was of especial interest to us at the moment.

We were tooling down one street when I came to a screeching halt, if one could do that while not making actual contact with the ground. I had spotted a store, at least I guessed that was what it was, that had this same kind of vehicle on display. However, the item of interest was almost out of sight. There was some sort of trailer that could be fastened to the rear of the scooter. I figured that could come in handy, so I pulled over to one side of the street and parked.

The others joined me, and we went inside the store. Yes, there were 12 of the trailers, and we took the time to hook one up to each of the scooters. Now we had a place to carry extra water and food, as well as any local artifacts that we might want to save. I was back to my squad leader persona, and I felt a lot better about being able to carry extra water. The food was nice, but the water was essential!

We kept looping back and forth through the town's streets looking for something interesting, but nothing else showed up. It was time to move on. As it happened, we were located in a wooded area, so it seemed appropriate to explore the forest. The trees were far enough apart to allow easy passage of our scooters and trailers, so we had no trouble with this part of our trip.

For the first time, we saw signs of wildlife. An animal cut across our path making more speed than I would have thought possible on its very short legs. The thing that was most interesting was that the animal had 10 or 12 legs. They were moving so fast that I could not get an accurate count. The animal was about the size of a large piglet, and that brought to mind just how dangerous full grown hogs could be. I used the internal mental intercom to tell everybody what I had seen and to warn them about the danger of hogs.

I was not concerned about shooting the animal for food since we had the replicators on board the fighters, and AI could bring them to us whenever we asked for them. We could get water the same way, but I wanted us to drink a lot of water because it was a hot day, and it was a nuisance to stop every time anybody wanted a drink of water. It was bad enough to have to stop for toilet breaks.

I called for the fighters at the first large clearing we came to. We made a picnic out of this stop, and everybody indulged in one bottle of beer. Man, that cold beer went down well on this hot day. We were careful to police the area before we started back up on our trip. We didn't want to start the conversion of some animal because we had left a little bit of Wolfian food for it to find. Such would have been wanton cruelty, and we were all against that.

We had progressed a little into the forest when we were suddenly attacked by a flying animal that seemed like a cross between a bird and a bat. The animal had the head, and noticeably the jaws, of a vampire bat, but the rest of the body was pretty much that of a bird. Anyway, a flock of 20 or so of the creatures swooped down upon us from up in the trees hidden by the leaves. es hidden by the leaves.

They were silent in their dive and they caught us completely by surprise. The animals flew so fast that it was impossible to shoot them, but they had to get close to us to bite, and them we were able to hit them with our hands and arms. With our hardened skin, it was like us hitting the animals with clubs. A solid hit anywhere on the animal's body would crush bones and make it impossible for the animal to fly. On the other hand, our hardened skin made it impossible for them to bite us for more than scratches. but that was about the worst that could be said about them. Our flailing around of arms and fists was enough to kill most of the attackers, and the rest flew away after a few minutes of frustrated ineffectualness. We killed those animals lying on the ground unable to fly by stomping on their heads with our hardened feet. As far as the animal was concerned, it was about the same as being stepped on by a small elephant. Most of our wounds had already started to heal, but they sure did itch while that was going on. We guessed that the itch was caused by some sort of poison excreted by the animals. We left the bat-birds where they fell, assuming that their bodies would be eaten by some scavengers.