In the City of Tomorrow: Chapter 22

“What do you mean, the Starfire is gone?” Amanda Stryker asked. “Where did it go?”

“It didn’t go anywhere, Atzi – it just disappeared!” Amy exclaimed. “It’s no longer in this universe. It was there just a minute ago and then – poof! – it was gone.”

“I find it a little hard to believe that it’s entirely gone,” Amanda replied. “Do you mean that the bot you built to watch it isn’t there anymore?”

“No, no, of course not!” Amy replied. “I mean the whole ship is gone. I don’t know what’s happened to it. One moment everything was fine and then it just vanished. The Poneri must have done something!”

“But wouldn’t that mean that the portal had been activated? Shouldn’t your bot have noticed something?”

“I guess,” Amy replied. “Maybe I built the bot wrong or maybe the Poneri found a way to fool it. I don’t know. Maybe we should have stayed on board. But the fact remains that the ship is gone.”

“What does that mean?” Tim asked. “Should I be concerned?”

“That depends on why it’s gone,” Amanda replied. “If it’s out there hiding somewhere then yes, that’s bad – we need to keep track of it so we can destroy the Poneri portal. But if the portal has collapsed then it’s not entirely bad.”

“But there were people on that ship!” Amy exclaimed. “And what about Steve? He was inside that portal!”

“I admit it’s bad for them. But if the portal is gone then the Poneri are gone too and that’s not bad. In fact, for all we know this might be something that Steve did.”

She turned to her brother. “I guess we’re going to have to go find out.”

“Isn’t it kind of late for you two to be out exploring the galaxy?” Tim asked. “I mean, if that ship is gone then it’ll still be gone in the morning. Why not get some sleep and take care of it tomorrow? After all, it’s almost midnight.”

Amanda shook her head. “For all we know the whole galaxy could be in danger. Besides, neither of us are tired. As far as I can tell the nanites can keep us going indefinitely. I know we still sleep, but technically speaking we don’t really have to.”

“Oh,” Tim replied. “Ok then. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Probably not,” Amanda replied. “Sorry. This is something we need to do ourselves.”

“All right,” Tim replied. “Take care of yourselves, then. Try not to get into too much trouble out there. And if you could stop by the apartment before going off into the future I’d appreciate it. That way I won’t be left wondering what happened.”

“Sure,” Amy replied.

The two sisters looked at each other. Amy nodded, and the twins vanished.

Tim shook his head. “I’ll never get used to that,” he muttered.

* * * * *

The girls reappeared at the Cedar Grove colony a few moments later. They were standing on a small hill that overlooked the spaceport, which was currently empty. It was night on that portion of the planet and the stars were out, shining in the darkness. No moon was visible and there was no activity to be seen.

“Alpha Mensae?” Amanda replied, frowning. “Why here?”

“We’ve got to start somewhere,” Amy explained. “Besides, I didn’t want to just float around in space. From this vantage point we can easily scan all the surrounding systems. If the Starfire is anywhere nearby our nanites should be able to detect it.”

“All right,” Amanda agreed. “I guess that will work.”

Using the nanites within them the two girls began scanning for signs of the Starfire. In their minds it was as if reality had disappeared and was replaced with a small scale model of the surrounding star systems. They could see each star, planet, and spaceship in the vicinity. With a single thought they could focus their attention on any object and see it in much greater detail.

“I’m not seeing it,” Amy said at last.

“I’m not either,” Amanda replied. “In fact, I’m really not seeing much of anything out here. This colony just doesn’t have any neighbors. The nearest starship is a good twenty light-years away.”

“Could it just be cloaked somehow?” Amy asked. “If Steve did something then it might have messed with the Starfire. That anomaly was pretty hard to see and we knew exactly where to look.”

“I guess that’s possible, but I don’t even know what to look for. Our nanites can penetrate normal cloaks. If the Starfire is hidden and it’s in this area then something different must be going on.”

Amy shrugged. “All we can do is try different things and see what turns up.”

The two girls spent the next few hours attempting to look deeper into the fabric of spacetime, but they came up empty. Amanda even used the Ranger’s flight control network to see if the ship might be somewhere else in space, but no Ranger colony had sighted the ship in the past few hours. It was simply nowhere to be found.

“I don’t understand,” Amy said at last. “There’s no debris or anything. If the ship was destroyed then there would at least be some remains but I’m not even seeing that.”

“Maybe we’re just overlooking something,” Amanda replied. “There are lots of possibilities.”

“I guess. Do you think we should deploy a galaxy-wide network to look for it, the way the Sentinel hunted for us? Surely if the entire galaxy was saturated with nanites we would find something.”

“Or we might just get into a lot of trouble,” Amanda argued. “Besides, that would take days. I think it would be a lot better if we tricked the Poneri into revealing themselves.”

“What do you mean?” Amy asked.

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that Steve is not in control. After all, if he was in charge then he would have gotten in touch with us and we’d know exactly what was going on. As it is we didn’t even get a message. That tells me that the Poneri are still out there, and as far as we know the only way they have to access our dimension is through the Starfire. So I think we should do something to attract their attention so we can find out where they’re hiding.”

“Like what?”

Amanda dissolved the local view of Alpha Mensae and planted a picture in Amy’s mind of a star system that was locked in a time stasis. “Do you remember this?”

“I think so,” Amy said uncertainly. “Isn’t that the Poneri system that Steve froze?”

“That’s it. The reason he froze it was because when he found it he didn’t have the authority to wipe it out, so he couldn’t destroy it – but we can. So I say we go there and finish the job. All we have to do is collapse the time field and everything inside it will be demolished. That’s sure to attract their attention – if they’re still out there, that is. Then we can figure out where they’re coming from and that will tell us where the Starfire is hiding.”

“Ok,” Amy replied. “But what are we going to do for a starship? I don’t want to just float around in the vacuum of space while you do your thing.”

“Why not?” Amanda asked. “It’s not like the vacuum can hurt us. The nanites will take care of that.”

“It’s just unnatural. I don’t like it. I’d feel better if we were inside something and could walk around and fight like normal people.”

Amanda frowned. “But how are we going to do that? I mean, sure, we can make whatever we want but we’ve got to have a pattern to work with. I don’t have any starship patterns, Tiger. Steve might but he’s not exactly handy right now.”

“What about the Starfire?” Amy asked. “We had to analyze it in order to find the Poneri and then we had to fix it after the battle. I’ve still got all of that data. It wouldn’t be hard to reconstruct it.”

“But that’s a terrible ship! Couldn’t we just go to Tau Ceti, find a better ship, and duplicate that instead?”

“But we’re familiar with the Starfire,” Amy argued. “Besides, the Poneri are familiar with it too. If they saw another one appear in space I’m sure it would attract their attention.”

“I guess we could use it as bait,” Amanda replied thoughtfully. “All right. We’ll give it a try. After all, the worst-case scenario is that nothing happens and we have to think up a new plan.”

Working together, the two girls used the nanites within them to turn a nearby asteroid into a large block of programmable matter. They then transformed their data on the Starfire into a pattern and applied it to the asteroid. Over the next few minutes the rock turned itself into the giant, ruined starship. When the process had finished the girls transported themselves to the ruined cafeteria on board the Starfire II. A familiar sight of decay and ruin greeted them.

“This is fantastic!” Amy said enthusiastically. “This looks exactly the way I remember it, right down to the huge breaches in the hull and the trashed furniture.”

Amanda shook her head. “It’s a complete wreck. You know, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. This ship didn’t survive its last encounter with the Poneri. Why would this time be any different?”

“It’ll be fine,” her sister replied excitedly. “Besides, it’s supposed to look like a wreck. That was the whole idea! Now let’s get going.”

The two girls disappeared and then reappeared on the ship’s bridge. Amy sat down at the navigation console and worked with it for a moment. Her sister settled down into the captain’s chair.

Amy spoke up. “This says it’ll take the ship nine days to get to that system.”

“There’s no way I’m going to wait nine days,” Amanda replied firmly. “We’ll just move the ship there ourselves.”

Using the nanites Amanda created a wormhole in front of the ship that linked their position in space with the Poneri star system. Amy then piloted the ship through the wormohle. When they were safely through it Amanda allowed the wormhole to collapse.

“Thanks,” Amy said. She tapped the console. “Hmmm. The ship’s sensors aren’t detecting anything.”

“But I am,” Amanda said. “The temporal anomaly is there – it’s just that this ship’s crummy sensors can’t detect it. All you have to do is look out into space and tune in to it. Are you ready?”

Amy paused. “Give me just a second.” The girl released a cloud of nanites onto the bridge, which rapidly multiplied. Over the next minute they spread over the entire ship. When they were in place Amy activated the mini-network and they created a protective shield around the Starfire II.

“All right,” Amy said. “Go for it.”

Using the nanites, Amanda reached out to the suspended star system. In her mind the system was depicted as a large room with gray walls. In the center of the room was a small black sphere. She knew that the sphere was a representation of the system itself, frozen and inert.

Amanda mentally issued the command to destroy the sphere. Instantly she saw cracks begin appearing all over its surface, and then all at once the sphere shattered into thousands of splinters. A second later the connection dropped and she found herself back on the bridge, staring at the forward viewscreen. The entire starship was shaking and alarms were going off. A dozen red lights were flashing on her sister’s console.

“What happened?” Amanda asked, trying to get her bearings. The ship violently shook again, nearly knocking her out of her chair.

“We’re under attack!” Amy screamed. “The Poneri are here – and they’re everywhere!”