The Freedom of Space

"Captain, there's something on the sensors," lieutenant Chambers said. He swiveled in his chair and looked over his shoulder at Mohinder Omja, Captain of the Blind Man. "It's big."
    "What sort of big?" Omja asked, rising from his chair in the center of the room and joining the lieutenant at his console. "Another ship?"
    Chambers shook his head. "Much bigger, sir. I'm trying to calibrate the sensors to pick it up better."
    "A planet?"
    "No sir. Bigger." The lieutenant tapped on his computer. He squinted at confusing numbers. "Good Lord."
    "What is it?"
    "According to this, sir," the lieutenant said, "the object in front of the ship is lightyears long."
    The command deck of the interstellar ship went quiet. "I'm sorry lieutenant. Did you say lightyears?"
    "Yes sir. The sensors can't grasp its full size," the lieutenant said. He pointed at the numbers on his screen. Captain Omja leaned in and studied them.
    "Kerrigan, come here," he called. The woman stood next to him. "Look." Omja pointed at the screen and the numbers. Kerrigan looked. Her stony face changed to confusion and mystery.
    "I don't believe it," she whispered, standing straight. "Captain, do we send a team?"
    "Of course we do! This is incredible! A structure this big! Get our best people ready to go. Lieutenant, how far are we?"
    "We'll be within landing distance in a day, Captain."

In the Blind Man, the ship sent to explore the area near the edge of the galaxy, head science officer Emanuel London sat with the stacked instruments that would follow him to the surface of the gigantic structure. His body buzzed with excitement. What wonder! When Captain Omja had brought the news to him, he'd nearly shot through the roof!
    Was it an alien race's creation from long ago, precursors to humans that had disappeared thousands of years ago, even with their technological marvels? Had they found a bone of the universe, a pillar that kept their dimension from shredding and disintegrating under them? Was it an unlikely natural formation from some titanic, shattered easel of rock from a distant corner of the galaxy that had sent shards shooting through the deep dark of space? They would find out; Emanuel and his small team would discover.
    All six of them watched out the window as their ship slipped into orbit around the massive piece of space's geography. It stretched in both directions, filing to points as it continued on unseen. Bleached bone white it reflected the lights of the ship that flashed down on it. Jones whistled; the rest of them just stared. In front of them was the biggest thing ever seen by humans; in front of them was the biggest thing to exist. Numbers failed it. Small human minds stretched trying to comprehend its greatness. Emanuel's fingers itched with desire to touch it through a gloved hand and step on it through a boot. He would always remember the long plain viewed through the helmet of his suit.
    His small group -- six people from a crew of barely one hundred -- strapped themselves into their suits and climbed into the interstellar ship's small lander. They pressed themselves around their cargo, the things that would help them measure and understand the structure that was their destination.
    Emmanuel felt his mind twist as he tried to comprehend it. The distance they floated away from the main ship was a hair's breadth compared to the overwhelming size of the space structure.

Emanuel was the first one out. His foot landed on the untouched surface and he stopped. One hand still gripped the ladder. Phomello looked down and asked him what was wrong over the intercom.
    The structure, as they could understand it, was an infinitely long tube with a flat top. It had wide sides of several hundred yards.
    "The ground. It's strange." Emanuel took a few steps. The gravity was close to Earth or above it; moving in the suit was easy. Phomello, Jones, and Terra joined him.
    "It's not dust," Terra said, scuffing her boot on the ground. "It doesn't look organic."
    Jones bent down to bring his face and camera closer to the ground. He rubbed it with one hand. "It's smooth. Has anybody done an atmosphere test?"
    "Just finished," Phomello said. "There's nothing here. It's big enough to have an atmosphere, but there's nothing except trace elements."
    "No star," Emanuel said. "No heat. No chance of chemical reaction. This is just a rock."
    "Bigger than any rock I've seen," Ned said as he stepped off the ladder onto the strange dark plain. "This has got to be the largest thing in the galaxy if not the universe." He put a box down and began unpacking it. "Terra, give me a hand with this." He and the woman took out a small drill for harvesting materials and set it up. The drill, suspended on four legs, began to whir. The four of them felt the vibrations through their suits.
    "The Captain wants a status report," Alex, the one remaining in the lander, told them.
    "Okay Alex, I got it," Emanuel said. "Put me through." He heard the crackle of static as Captain Omja's voice landed in his ear.
    "Emanuel? Do you copy?"
    "Copy, Captain. We're here safe and sound."
    "Good. Anything to report?"
    "It's astounding, sir. The size of this thing is enough to make you weak in the knees. I've had to avoid looking down the length of it to keep from getting dizzy." He paused. "And right now it looks like everyone else is doing the same thing. They're setting up the instruments now."
    "Any clue on its origin?"
    "No sir. So far we've just commented on its strange material and lack of atmosphere. A little bit of time should give us something more."
    "How long do you expect to stay down there?"
    "A few hours at the least. But who knows? There may be something here that warrants a longer look. We're just now-" Emanuel broke off and looked over at the other three on the ground. One of them was waving at him to come over. "Hold on sir, I'm being flagged down."
    He switched back to the team channel. "What is it?"
    "The drill," Terra said, pointing. "It busted." Emanuel looked. Instead of the sharp point it was dull and broken.
    "What happened?"
    "As soon as it hit the ground it snapped," Ned explained. "Didn't even make a scratch." Emanuel looked closer. The ground under the drill's mangled bit was pristine and untouched.
    "Let's try something else," he said, straightening. "Do some other scans to see if we can figure out what this thing is."
    The four of them started unpacking the other instruments. Emanuel busied himself setting up a machine that would help them figure out if anything was inside the structure.
    At one point he took a break and, despite what he'd told Captain Omja, he looked down the staggering length of the thing they stood on as the others worked around him.
    Its eternity chilled him. He wished he could rub his eyes, but his hands were trapped on the other side of his helmet. He looked down at his feet, took in a cold breath, and looked again.
    Something seemed strange about it. It reached on, forever and more, yes. Yet.
    Yet something made him draw his eye along the edge of the wide arm he stood on. It was a large area, large enough for even the Blind Man to land safely. Emanuel shook his head, trying to rid himself of the strange feeling he got when he looked deep into space along the length of what they stood on.
    He couldn't shake it off. He set down the unconnected components of the scanner and went back to the lander.
    When he climbed in, Alex looked up at him with surprise. "Emanuel? Is something wrong?"
    "No, no, I just want to check something. Did we bring an SCMT?"
    "I think it's in here somewhere," Alex said, digging about in the boxes that were packed in the back. "What do you need it for?"
    "I get a weird feeling every time I look down the length of the . . . structure."
    Alex shrugged. "Do you think that it has a curve?"
    "I'm not sure. Maybe. I just want to see if I can find anything." Emanuel left the lander, holding the small instrument. "Phomello, give me a hand please."
    "What do you need?" Phomello said as he joined Emanuel.
    "I'm going to go to the edge and see if I can pick up a curve. Just make sure I don't go spinning off into space, will you?"
    Phomello didn't answer, instead he looked down the length of the structure. "Why do you think it's curved?" He asked through the intercom.
    "I get a weird feeling whenever I look at it. Like I'm tilting, or I'm off center somehow. Do you get anything like that?"
    "I just think it's really long," Phomello said. Emanuel shrugged -- a motion not translated very well through the insulated space suit -- and they walked to the edge.
    The SCMT, or surface curvature measurement tool, used three quick beams of light to find the apparent arc between the points. Emanuel, with Phomello anchoring his legs, laid himself down on the edge of the spire, and extended his arms out in front of him with the SCMT pointing back at the edge of the spire. The edge, a gentle curve, felt slippery and loose under Emanuel, and he made sure Phomello's grip on him was secure before getting a reading. He pressed a button, there was a quick beep, and he got back to his feet away from the edge. The readout stated a 0.00% curve on the measured surface.
    "I guess that answers that question," Phomello said. "Come and help me with the-"
    "No, hold on, I'm going to measure again. Anchor me." Emanuel changed the points on the SCMT to measure a larger distance apart, and got back down to his stomach. Phomello sighed and gripped his legs. Emanuel took another reading. Still 0.00%.
    "Are you satisfied?" Phomello asked. "Now come on."
    "Come in Captain," Emanuel said into his comm. Phomello groaned but was unheard.
    "Yes Emanuel? Is something wrong?"
    "I have a hunch that the structure possesses a curve, but the instruments we have with us aren't detailed enough to pick up on it. Do you know of anyway we could do it from the ship.
    "A curve, Emanuel?" Captain Omja's staticky voice asked. "It doesn't look like it. Are you sure?"
    "No sir, I'm not sure; it's a hunch. That's what a hunch means. This thing is millions of lightyears long you said. It could have the most subtle curve known to man."
    "I'll see if any of our sensors can be used in such a way. Keep at it." There was a dead pause. "By the way, Emanuel, your snark has been noted. Omja out."
    For the next few hours Emanuel and the others set up the equipment used to measure and discover the spire. Data began to come in. There was nothing inside or under it. It was a solid, unknown material. There was no heat and no radiation besides the normal. They could harvest no sample of the material; anything they tried to use broke or became useless, whether it was a diamond drill, a steel shovel, or a plastic knife. After enough time, they packed the instruments away, got into the lander, and flew back to the ship.
    Shortly after that, Emanuel was summoned to the bridge.
    "Captain. I apologize for my behavior."
    "Apology accepted. As for your request, lieutenant Chambers says he might be able to help you," Omja said, sitting in the Captain's chair. "Lieutenant?"
    "What I've been able to do is modify some of our basic instruments to act like a wide-range SCMT," Chambers said. "It will act in the same way, simply sending out three beams of light and waiting for it to return, and then calculating a curvature based on the distance, angle, speed of light, etc. The Captain assumed that the widest range possible would be best."
    "Yes, that's right," Emanuel replied.
    "In that case, we'll have to back away from the structure. We have quite a range available to us. The Captain has already okay-ed it."
    "Thank you. It's possible that I was wrong about it. Seeing it from this angle . . . it looks just as straight as anything else. But when I was standing down there I couldn't help but think it had a curve."
    "Get us moving, ensign," Captain Omja ordered. The ensign at the helm began to move the ship away from the structure.

Quickly it disappeared from view. It orbited no sun; it became a dark barrier found only with the help of the ship's sensors. Emanuel watched as lieutenant Chambers made calibrations to help them scan it and the ensign piloted them away.
    The Captain came to stand next to him. "Emanuel," he asked softly. "What are you hoping to find?"
    "I'm not sure." Emanuel hesitated. "Just something I guess I'd like to know."
    "Why is that?"
    "Captain, we're at the farthest reaches of known space. We're exploring areas never before found." Emanuel gestured at the screen, and the hidden structure. "Now we find this thing. Why hadn't we seen it before? The grandest structure ever seen, and we stumble upon it like a hidden treasure."
    "It is not very wide," Omja said. "Perhaps five hundred yards. It isn't even that tall. Its length is the only thing that sets it apart as far as structures as far as dimensions go." The Captain stroked the natty beard on his chin. "Especially at the distance we are from Earth, it's possible to think that it simply couldn't be seen."
    "I feel like someone would have seen something. Other than that, though . . . what is it for? Is it natural? It looked constructed. It's hard, and smooth. Infinitely smooth, just as it seems to be infinitely long."
    "Sir, we're ready," lieutenant Chambers said. "The sensors are pointed at the structure, as wide as possible."
    "Shall we?" Captain Omja said. Emanuel nodded. "Do it lieutenant."
    Chambers pressed a few buttons, and the computer pinged.
    They waited; the air was still. Emanuel didn't breathe.
    The computer pinged again. Chambers read the results. "Sir," he said over his shoulder. Omja went to him.
    "Emanuel, look at this," he said. Emanuel went to the computer and read what was on the screen.
    "A 0.0000373363 degree curvature." Emanuel expelled air. "Are you sure? How wide is the sample?"
    "I can run it again. The distance that the three sensors are picking up is about a hundredth of a lightyear. That means over the distance scanned, it curves less than one hundred-thousandth of a degree."
    "But how-"
    "Listen," the lieutenant said, turning in his chair. "I know you're about to ask me something like 'how do the sensors read something that far away' or 'shouldn't it take a lot longer than that?' Please believe me when I say that it's better just to not ask."
    "Okay, well, please run it again, then."
    "Will do," Chambers said, typing in the command to repeat the scan. The computer beeped, paused, churned, and beeped again. The same result appeared; the long string of zeros ending with 373363.
    "It's a repeating pattern. Those six numbers repeat forever," Chambers said. "Anyway, it looks like you're right."
    Emanuel didn't know why, but when he saw those numbers again -- heard that they repeated -- a chill went down his spine. He read the sequence of numbers once, again. Three seven three three six three. Three seven three three six three. He shook his head.
    Chambers watched him. "What do we do now?"
    "Contact Earth," Omja said. "Tell them everything. Send them the information that Emanuel's crew has gathered, as well as everything that they couldn't, and send this data too." He waved his hand at the computer Chambers sat in front of. "In the meantime, we follow this."
    "Follow it, sir?" the ensign at the helm asked.
    "Follow the structure and see if we can find an end. How are our fuel cells?" Omja asked after a brief pause.
    "Ninety percent, Captain," Kerrigan said from her chair. "We have enough power to go at full speed for months.
    Omja nodded. "Get us moving, then."

Three days passed. Their small ship zoomed -- whisking past lights from distant suns -- a thousand kilometers from the maddeningly straight-but-curved structure. The news of the structure's atomically subtle arc had spread through the ship, eliciting mostly confused questions and unknowing shrugs. Several people asked Emanuel if he knew what it was, but of course he didn't. He asked himself the same question over and over during those interim days as he and his crew did a few experiments on the structure as they flew.
    Earth responded with similar questions, saying they would hand the details to their top scientific men. The news was already creating a splash on Earth's news networks, according to Captain Omja when he bumped into Emanuel in the hallway.
    Emanuel stood in his cramped lab, shoulder-to-shoulder with Phomello and Alex. He was staring at his hand, on which six numbers were written. One on line: three, seven, three, three. Under those: six, three. Emanuel wasn't sure why, but it felt right to separate the numbers in this way.
    "They don't mean anything," Terra said, fiddling a piece of equipment with a pair of pliers across from him. "They're just numbers."
    "I know," Emanuel said. He dropped his hand and looked at a long equation on a notepad, some information from a spectrometer's readout. "I can't get rid of that weird feeling, though. It's like the numbers are trying to say something."
    The entire room groaned. Emanuel had gone on, talking about the numbers every day, without pause.
    "We know. We know," Ned said. "Emanuel, come on over here and help me with this."
    "Fine, fine," Emanuel shuffled to where Ned stood in front of two screens. "Why are you using this thing, anyway? We haven't needed this during this entire trip."
    Ned stood in front of the logical construction analyzer, a machine that was able to take information fed into it and create a display of the item. "We don't need this thing right now. Turn it off."
    "Just a minute," Ned said. "I put all the info we know into it to try and create an image of the structure. It's taken all this time. Once it was done, I calculated where we are in accordance to Earth, and then populated the area inside it. Look." Ned hit a button. A ring appeared. "That's the structure, made so that we can see it.”
    "Okay," Emanuel said.
    Ned hit another button; dots started appearing, clustered near one section of the ring. "Those are discovered planets, moons -- anywhere humanity has a hold. They also represent the locations of ships we have out, more or less. Still with me?"
    "Of course. What next?" Emanuel said. The rest of the room looked over his shoulder.
    Ned hit a last button. An image of their galaxy appeared, and laid itself perfectly inside the ring. Ned looked at Emanuel. "The ring circles the entire galaxy. It's the very edge."
    Emanuel tilted his head. "How do you know it's a ring?"
    "I don't. Not really," Ned said. "I just did that to see how big it would be if it was. As it turns out, just big enough to fit our entire galaxy right inside it." Ned crossed his beefy arms. "I'm a man who believes that coincidences will happen . . . but this . . ."
    Emanuel nodded. "Send this up to the Captain. Good work."

Emanuel got to the bridge as soon as he could. "Captain-"
    "We just got the information; Chambers is putting it together now. Why is this so urgent, Emanuel? Is something wrong?"
    Emanuel thought of the numbers on his hand. "Probably not, no. It's an incredible coincidence. Ned did some work with the logical construction analyzer. He thinks he found the size of the ring."
    "Ring? You think it's a ring?" Omja asked.
    "It could be. It will make more sense when you see the data."
    Chambers nodded, and Kerrigan put it on the main screen. They watched as the ring appeared. "That's the structure in a full three-hundred and sixty degrees, which it might not even be. Go to the next one." The lights appeared; one of them flashed. "Those are discovered planets and ships. The flashing one is us. See we're adjacent to the ring." Omja nodded. Chambers went on. Emanuel watched the galaxy slide and lock into place inside the ring, lining up with the planets and ships.
    The ship's bridge was as quiet as the space outside.
    "No," Omja whispered out. "Impossible."
    Chambers, whom Emanuel suddenly saw as very young, looked at him with a confused expression. "It surrounds us? How can that be?"
    "We don't know," Emanuel said.
    "Captain!" Kerrigan said loudly. Emanuel jumped. "We're getting a message from Earth." She looked down at it. "It looks like they've found the same information. They're asking you if we've discovered anything else."
    "Open a comm channel to them," Omja said, sitting in his chair. "Emanuel, stay. There may be questions for you."
    Shortly a video of a portly man sitting behind a desk appeared. Emanuel recognized him as an admiral from Earth.
    "Captain Omja, greetings," the admiral said. "You've read our message?"
    "Yes admiral," Omja said. "In fact we'd just been told of the same sort of information. Emanuel London here is our senior science officer, it was his team that visited the structure, and his team that discovered the possibility of the ring." Omja leaned forward in his chair. "We have no information other than that. No hypothesis, no data. We've been following the structure for three days, but have not even gone a hundredth of a degree. It certainly looks as if it could be big enough to swallow our entire galaxy."
    "We agree," the admiral said. "Our scientists here are doing their best to try to find more evidence of it, but it's such a thin ring that it's difficult to spot by any means." The admiral sighed. "In the meantime, keep following it. There's a chance that it isn't a ring. By many of your expressions, I don't need to tell you that this would come as a relief to a number of us. We don't really like the idea of being trapped, even at a scale this large. Earth out."
    The video disappeared, and the peering stars returned. Omja rose from his chair. "Emanuel, why don't you take a walk with me. Carry on all of you."
    Omja and Emanuel exited the bridge and began pacing the hallways. Emanuel waited for Omja to say something, but the Captain just walked with his hands linked behind his back and his head high.
    After a few minutes, he spoke.
    "Emanuel, I know you have those numbers written on your hand. I spotted them during your presentation. You think they mean something?"
    Emotions crashed inside Emanuel. A part of him wanted to shout yes, yes!!! and yet other parts of him fought to beat it back. "I'm not sure, sir."
    "Talk freely now," Omja said. "I want to know what you're thinking."
    Emanuel took in a breath. "You asked for it.
    "I can't shake the numbers out of my mind, just like I couldn't get rid of the feeling that the structure had a curve, a theory that ultimately proved to be right on a scale even I didn't imagine. I have the numbers memorized. Three seven three three six three. I have it written on my hand, yes, but I feel like I had it memorized since the moment I first heard the sequence. Captain, speaking frankly, it's a damn ring around our galaxy! I don't know how I'm supposed to think, I don't know how I supposed to feel; part of me wants to start writing those six numbers on every flat surface I see, and another part of me believes that my mind, something that is now being asked to accept that there's a damn ring around our galaxy, is latching on to something, anything, that might give me an answer. I was there, on it! I saw it! You can't believe how smooth it was! I mean, it broke a diamond drill! We couldn't get a sample the stuff was so hard! Smooth like a cue ball, hard like a diamond, forever reaching like a hand from a dream come to collect me!" He paused to breathe, and Omja blinked, given a respite from the torrent. "It boils down to this question: Is there a giant, super-durable ring around our galaxy just because? Or did someone or something put it there?"
    "A philosophical question for people brighter than I," Omja said. "Anything else? Perhaps you'd like to guess as to a function."
    Emanuel shook his head. "I have no idea. Not a single thing comes to mind, except for something that the admiral said. He said that they didn't like the idea of being trapped. We're a disc galaxy; the ring just happens to surround us along the length of the disc. Another coincidence?" He shook his head again; his curly black hair whipped back and forth. "Is it really trapping us? No! And yet I, Earth, perhaps you and perhaps others on the bridge equated it with being trapped." He stopped and pondered. His brain churned. "No, not quite. Not trapped. Caught."
    "Caught?" Omja asked.
    "And struggling to be free. Me, I don't think that we're really trapped." His gaze drilled at the floor.
    "Do you think another visit to the surface would gain you any more information? Anything at all? Think of every expensive piece of equipment you could use, every test you could do. Is there anything you could do to help us understand?"
    "I'll have to ask my team. At the very least, we'll be able to come up with something that can get us a sample. Even if that does fail, we'll find a way to take a microscope to it and take as good a look as we can."
    "Good. Get at it, and tell me if you have enough to warrant us stopping again. I doubt that we'll find anything worthwhile along the length of it," Omja said. They'd walked along the ship until reaching the bridge once more. "This is exactly the sort of thing you're prepared for, Emanuel. It's a perfect opportunity for you to show your skills. I know you won't let me down."

Emanuel burst into the lab, full of righteous energy. "All right people. What can we do to get more information about the ring?" He asked the stunned workers inside. "Anything and everything. If you think we can find something out by spraying seltzer on its surface, you let me know!"
    The other scientists inside looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
    "Let's shoot it," Terra suggested. "It might have a reaction to a violent stimulus."
    "We already tried drilling it," Ned said. "That's violent enough. I think we should try blowing it up."
    "Somebody get a white board!" Emanuel shouted, rubbing his hands together.
    They talked for hours. The strangest idea by far was when Jones suggested they try to feed it. "And how are you going to find a mouth?" Ned asked.
    They came up with a few ideas that held merit. Emanuel got them busy collecting materials to conduct the tests, and loped to the bridge to speak to the Captain.
    "Emanuel? You have some ideas?" Omja said when he saw the scientist appear.
    "Yes sir. A good number. I doubt more than a few of them will get us anything, but they're all worth trying."
    Omja nodded. "Let us know when you're ready to head down."

"It's all here," Phomello said to Emanuel. "Everything we could possibly need. "We've got the laser-scanning device, a kleptometer . . . " Phomello rattled off the items that were assembled in front of them, which also included an pulse cannon and enough nuclear material to destroy an asteroid. "Can you think of anything else?" Phomello asked Emanuel. Emanuel shook his head.
    "Not a thing. Load it up."
    Soon, with all of the equipment loaded into the back of the lander and the six of them stuffed in the cockpit, the lander again descended down to the ring. Alex set them down with their nose pointing out of their home galaxy, staring into the untethered emptiness. They all looked, seeing with their brief eyes the shine of galaxies distant and alone. Emanuel wondered if theirs was the only one circled by a ring.
    They exited, and began to conduct the experiments, one by one. They inspected it with the laser scanner, finding an unknown element under them. They used the kleptometer to see how quickly the material was decaying, trying to find if it was in any way radioactive or dissolving. What little data they could find they recorded and sent to the main ship as soon as they could. They tried using a few different things to get a sample, but nothing would work.
    During some down time, Jones wandered around the surface, offering a banana to the ring. It must have been full.
    Emanuel helped Terra set up the pulse cannon, which was sort of a misnomer. Less a weapon of destruction, the pulse cannon was actually a device to transmit a level of electricity at a specific point. It was also able to pulse the energy at many desired frequencies -- hence the name.
    None of the other tests had yielded much of anything. The most useful piece of information was that taken from the laser scanner, that the ring was made of a material as of yet unknown to them. The fact that they were unable to get a sample made that information nearly useless, however. Emanuel helped Terra not expecting to get any result from the pulse cannon.
    They didn't, but something else did happen.
    Terra first set the pulse cannon to a mere one hundred volts and a frequency of 1 hertz. Emanuel rested his hand on the cannon to keep it steady, and Terra started it. The cannon itself did nothing, but Emanuel suddenly felt a stinging pain on his hand. He jerked it away from the machine and began to inspect it for damage. He slapped the button on his arm to shut the passage between his hand and his arm.
    "What?" Terra asked, worried. "What happened?"
    "I'm not sure! I thought something might have hit me, but . . . " He rotated his hand, looking at each side. "I don't see any damage. It must have just been an ache."
    At least, that's what he thought at first. As time went on, the pain fluctuated, coming and going with a frequency of its own. Emanuel still couldn't find any damage in his suit, and had to make do with rubbing his hand to smooth the ache out.
    After an hour of trying varying voltages and frequencies and getting nothing in return, they packed up their equipment and carried out the nuclear material. They stacked it up and connected it to a transmitter, then boarded their ship and left.

Back on the bridge with Captain Omja, Emanuel and his team – hundreds of miles away – looked at a zoomed-in video of the spot where the explosives were piled. Chambers waited for Omja to give the order, then detonated them.
    The result was unimpressive. In an instant the material was gone; not even a hint remained that it had ever existed. There was no mark on the ring, no burn or scar from the blast. The only indication that they had done anything were the sensors blaring that a radiation spike had been detected.
    "No need to worry about that," Omja said. "Our shields are sufficient. We'll need to go somewhere else anyway, though, to keep you safe. Your suits don't have the same kind of defenses."
    "Nothing happened!" Jones said. "It's like we weren't even there!"
    "Well, what did you expect?" Ned asked. "We couldn't even make a dent in that thing with our best equipment! Are you so surprised that a nuke wasn't able to do anything?"
    "A little bit . . ."
    "Do you have any more ideas?" Omja asked Emanuel.
    "No," Emanuel said. "Except for variations. Right now it looks like it's going to be ninety-nine percent perspiration with this thing. There are plenty more voltages and frequency combinations we can use with the pulse cannon, and we might be able to get some more information with the laser-scanner."
    "Okay. We'll go for a few days and then let you out again. I doubt we're going to find anything on its surface, but we need to get away from the fallout anyway," Omja said.

Emanuel stretched out on his bed. It was shoved under a curved bulkhead and squeezed between two shelves full of his possessions, and so to rest in it felt as if he was caged on all sides except for one. It was, on the other hand, a feeling you get used to quickly when on a ship, never allowed a look at the great open space. For months after leaving Earth, Emanuel and many of the other passengers had dreams of flying, deep blue skies that shimmered with the glorious heat of the sun, or a great, wide, safe place of unfettered motion.
    It got easier to deal with as time went on, and Emanuel quickly found his room a comfortable, livable place. However, on the second night flying away from where they nuked the ring, he also found himself unable to fall asleep. What had been a normal, if small, private area now became a pit he couldn't escape. The walls pressed in on him. He tried closing his eyes, but in the imagined darkness the walls shifted and buried him; he shot out his hand and it clanged against the bulkhead.
    He opened his eyes again, finding the room none the smaller. He sat up with his hand still pressed against the bulkhead. He removed it, and gazed at the numbers written there. Three seven three three, six three; he didn't need to see them anymore to know them.
    Sleep wouldn't come so he went to his desk. He opened a notebook and got a pen. He wrote the numbers at the top of the page.
    He totaled them. They equaled twenty-five. Emanuel wrote "25" next to them at the top. Two and five together made seven, he wrote that next.
    He wrote three-seven-three-three on one side, and six-three on the other. So it was then sixteen against nine, with a difference of seven. Emanuel sat back and marveled at the coincidence.
    Was it, though? Was he making magic with numbers mundane, solving the mysteries of the galactic ring on his pen and paper? Or was he finding images in the scattered tea leaves of space, seeing patterns where none existed? Was his tired mind reaching out of its cave, searching for a glimpse of true light? Yearning to see the things that had, before, only projected their shadows on his wall?
    Was he finding them?
    Emanuel bent down to the paper; his nose nearly touched it. He gathered his knowledge of numbers and began to experiment. He built a four-sided object out of the first set of numbers, a trapezoid. He measured the angles, but found nothing interesting. He plugged the numbers into all the formulas he could pull from his head; none of them made any sense when worked out. From algebra to trig to four-dimensional calculus, none of the numbers seemed to have any significance.
    He dropped his pen to the paper and sat against the back of his chair. Equations covered ten pages of his notebook, but none of them made sense. The recurring sevens was the most interesting thing he'd found.
    He pushed himself away from his chair and curled himself back into bed. He dreamt of a wide space, and a beast finally free.

"Me?" Alex shouted the moment Emanuel opened the door to their lab the next morning. His head ached. "At least I came up with a few ideas! You just wanted to feed it!"
    "We need to think outside the box!" Jones replied. "We tried it, now we don't have to worry about it anymore!" Jones narrowed his eyes at Alex.
    "Excuse me!" Emanuel shouted, a little too loudly. "Would you both please settle down! What's going on?"
    "Jones said I'm not helping," Alex said. "And then-"
    "Okay, I get it." Emanuel rubbed his head. "You both had good ideas. Jones is right, we need to think outside the box. Though I admit, trying to give the ring around our galaxy a banana might have been a bit too far outside."
    Alex smirked at Jones.
    "Remember though -- nothing at all we tried worked, really. In that case, Jones was just as close to figuring it out than Alex." Emanuel sat on a hard stool and stretched his back out. "Now, we're one day out from stopping again. Captain Omja doesn't expect to find anything on the ring's surface, and I don't know any reason not to believe that. I asked you all to try and come up with some things; tell me what you have." Nobody spoke. Emanuel heard a stool scoot. Somebody coughed. "Anything."
    "We could try hitting it with different forms of radiation," Terra suggested. "The material might react in some way."
    "Okay, good. Anybody else?"
    "What if we . . . " Phomello scratched a cheek. "Maybe if we tried . . . rubbing something on it."
    "Come again?" Ned asked.
    "What happens when it touches water, I mean? What about steam?"
    "We can't get steam in space." Alex said.
    "Well, okay, what about ice crystals? A small sample of plasma from the engines? Hell-" Phomello looked over at Jones. "Jam."
    "Too far outside the box," Alex said.
    "What if we covered it with a conducting gel?" Terra asked. "And then tried the pulse cannon again?"
    "Acid," Ned spoke up. "Something highly corrosive."
    Emanuel nodded through all of this. "There we go, we got some things. Let's get that whiteboard up here again. Say anything that comes to mind. There is no 'too far' outside the box for this thing. I mean, for Pete's sake people, it's a ring around our galaxy."

They had more tests. They had more equipment. They were on their way to the ring's surface for the third time, huddled in the nose of the lander with all their equipment -- somehow, even a jar of jam and a plastic knife -- stashed in the back. Again, they brought everything that they could think of with them.
    Emanuel stood near the edge of the ring, looking in at their galaxy. All the length of it glowed. Stars compounded on other stars to create a band of light that drew the eye. Ignoring the lights from the lander and the ship that orbited around the ring, the core of the galaxy was the brightest thing in the sky. Terra and Phomello set up the pulse cannon and then called him over.
    "I've spread the gel out under the cannon," Terra said as he walked to them. "Hopefully something will work."
    "We might need to start getting used to the fact that nothing we do will work," Phomello said. "There will be plenty of time for people to get to this and do tests. We don't have access to even one percent of the equipment that someone could use to figure out what this thing is."
    That day, before the six of them had traveled down to the ring, Earth had contacted the ship. They relayed that, yes, the ring surrounded the galaxy. Close study and calculations assured them that nothing else could be the truth. Still nobody had a clue to its purpose.
    "We have to try everything, though. Think about how far we are from any other ship or settlement," Alex's voice came through the intercom from the lander. "If we don't try everything we possibly can, we'll be wasting a lot of time and resources."
    "What should we try first?" Terra asked Emanuel.
    "Set it up to cycle through from one to a hundred volts in a continuous stream," he said. "Camera set up and everything?"
    "Yep." Phomello laid a hand on the camera, which pointed at the pulse cannon. "And I'm ready to take notes."
    "All right, let's go," he said to Terra. She punched in a few numbers as Ned and Jones argued about a different experiment.
    "I'm ready. Everybody stand back," Terra said.
    "Camera on and ready," Phomello said. He gave her a thumbs up. "All set."
    "Here we go," Terra said, and touched the button to start the pulse cannon.
    It began to shine, jumping energy to the gel-slick surface of the ring. Waiting for about a second at each level, it slowly moved up from one volt on to a hundred.
    By the time it hit twenty-three, Emanuel's hand ached.  He held it up for a quick inspection, trying to find a tear or break, and it flashed out in sensation again. He groaned. "You two keep watching this, I need to go back inside for something, just for a minute."
    "We'll be fine," Terra said.
    Emanuel raced to the lander and closed the door. "Pressurize the cabin. I need to take my glove off," he said to Alex. Alex nodded and hit a few buttons on the front console. Gas hissed as atmosphere returned to the lander. Alex nodded again and Emanuel stripped off his glove, expecting to find it bloody and torn.
    It was whole, uninjured. Emanuel stared at the back of it, and turned it over.
    There, almost as if they glowed, the numbers showed on his palm. The moment his eyes lit on them, the pain stopped. Instead, there was a constant, buzzing feeling.
    "Is something wrong?" He heard through his helmet. Alex had his off. The pilot pointed at his hand, and Emanuel unlatched his helmet.
    "It hurt really bad. I thought I was bleeding or something. But . . ." He looked his hand over. "I guess not. Now it feels like there's something under my skin," he said, pointing at his palm, right at the numbers.
    "Right where the numbers are?" Alex asked.
    "Yeah," Emanuel said. His voice trailed off. His finger touched one of the numbers on his palm.
    Blinding, shattering light filled their lander from the ring. Four people, those still on the surface, cried out in their unique voices, a chorus of surprise and shock. Struggling, Emanuel fit his helmet back on his head through a haze of spots in his eyes. Alex made his way back to the control panel clumsily.
    "Is everyone all right?" He yelled into the speaker. "What happened out there?"
    "There was a light!" They heard Terra's frantic voice. "It started right under the lander and moved out in both directions along the length of the ring!" They heard a thunk. "It was so bright! I couldn't see a thing!"
    "I bet they'll be able to see it from Earth!" Jones said. "I can still see it! It's moving so fast! I . . . oh my God."
    "What?" Emanuel asked. He pulled his glove back on.
    "It's starting to move around the curve! It almost looks like it's slowing down!"
    "I think it's because the light is taking longer to get to us," Ned's calm voice intruded. "It's moving around the ring faster than light."
    "Emanuel!" Captain Omja's voice penetrated his ear. "What the hell just happened?"
    "We aren't sure, Captain," Omja said, wincing. "Everybody seems to be all right. A light started to move down the surface of the ring."
    "Trust me, we saw!" Omja said. "Get everybody out of there, on the double! We don't know what that thing will do next, but I want us far away no matter what happens!"
    "Yes sir," Emanuel said. "You heard the Captain, everyone. Back inside! Alex, depressurize the cabin!" He clipped his glove onto his suit as Alex hit the buttons to drain the atmosphere from the lander.
    "We aren't done with everything yet!" Jones complained. "What about the equipment?"
    "Leave it!" Ned said, as the lander's door opened and the other team members started climbing in. "It's not going anywhere!"
    "Get us out of here," Emanuel said to Alex. Alex nodded and the lander lifted off the ring, driving through the black, back to the ship.

Omja turned and shouted as soon as Emanuel burst onto the bridge. "What the hell happened down there? Everyone in here is blinded and our sensors start yelling at us that there's a huge energy spike coming from the ring!" He pointed at the console near him. "We're beginning to get reports from Earth and other installations; the energy is reaching them!"
    "The light is still moving around the circumference of the ring," Kerrigan said. "It's going around in both directions. Estimates say it will take about a day for the light to reconnect on the other side."
    "A day!" Jones said. Emanuel's team crowded in behind him. "How can something be so fast?"
    "Ensign, get us moving away from the ring!" Omja shouted. Then he walked next to Emanuel. "What did you do down there?" He asked in a subdued voice. "The light originated right where the lander was!"
    Emanuel showed the Captain his hand. "My hand hurt while we were setting up the pulse cannon. I thought I was bleeding, so I ran into the lander and had Alex pressurize it." Alex, between Terra and Phomello, nodded. "It felt like there was something under my skin. All I did was touch my palm, and then both Alex and I were blinded by the light from outside."
    "And that's really all you did?" Omja said, disbelief on his face. He looked at Emanuel's team. "Any of you?"
    Most of them shook their heads. "Nothing we did had any affect," Ned said.
    "So. You're trying to tell me the ring started glowing because Emanuel touched his hand? Where there were some numbers written?"
    "I don't have any other explanation," Emanuel admitted. "It doesn't sound plausible, I know, but . . . "
    "But what, Emanuel?" Omja raged. "What am I supposed to believe? Is the ring run by aliens? Goblins?" Omja turned away. "Until we can determine that the ring isn't dangerous, we're keeping away from it. I want the six of you doing what you can to study it from afar. Only then are we going to go back. Whether that takes a day or a year, that's what's going to happen. Do I make myself clear?"
    "Yes sir," Emanuel said. His team echoed him.
    "Get out of here, all of you. Chambers, is there any radiation that the-" Emanuel walked out of the bridge feeling defeated. His shoulders were slumped and his feet dragged. He felt nothing on his hand, and his eyes still stung slightly from the brilliant light the ring had radiated.
    "Come on," Ned said. "Let's get to the lab and start monitoring it. We'll be able to get back there soon, I know it."
    "That's uncharacteristically positive of you," Jones said.
    "I want to get back on that thing and figure out what makes it tick," Ned said. "Is that so strange?"
    "No," Terra said. "I want to go back too. There's something there that we haven't figured out. That's obvious; the light proves it. The light . . . "
    "The light felt good," Emanuel said. He stopped in the hall and looked at them. "Didn't it?" He remembered it. It was like the first breath of fresh air, or the first glimpse of the warm sun, after being trapped underground for a lifetime. "That was more than just light."
    "I felt it," Phomello spoke up from the back of the group. "I felt happy. I felt like I could keep going forever."
    "I just felt like laughing," Jones said. "And like I would never be unhappy again."
    "We all felt something," Emanuel said. "Let's get working."

Their work in the lab gave them nothing. The ring's light and energy was far reaching but seemed to have no consequences. The light wouldn't reach Earth for years, but the energy the ring released had no affect on systems of any kind. Emanuel dragged himself into bed hours later than normal exhausted.
    He didn't get to sleep long. After only an hour asleep, his body woke him up and he heard a strange, obscene hum. People could be heard in the hallway muttering back and forth, asking what was happening. Emanuel pulled a shirt over his head and heard a knock at the door. Ned stood on the other side.
    "Something's happening to the engines. We're being pulled."
    "What? By what?"
    "By the ring!" Ned exclaimed. "We're going full bore, but still moving backwards!" He gripped Emanuel's arm. "We need to get to the bridge." Emanuel nodded and retreated into his room to dress.
    Minutes later he went onto the bridge. Sleepy crew members talked to one another, trying to get the engines running correctly. Omja's vision latched onto Emanuel as soon as he appeared. "Captain?"
    "The ring is pulling us back toward it." Omja said. "We're putting out everything we can and it's still pulling us, and faster than we left. We'll reach it in an hour." He scowled.
    "An hour," Emanuel repeated.
    "That's what I said. One of a few things might happen." Omja crossed his arms. "We could smash into it, we could be hurled out of the galaxy, or we could start to orbit around it. We've sent a distress signal to Earth, but they aren't able to do anything. We're on our own."
    "What do we do?" Emanuel asked. Omja shook his head.
    "We try to get the engines running again, and hope that we don't turn into space dust. As long as the ring releases us, we'll be able to get back to Earth. It might take us a while, but we have more than enough supplies. I want you here."
    "What? Why?"
    "Will you be helpful anywhere else?"
    Emanuel opened his mouth to respond, then shut it slowly. "Yes sir."

They zoomed. Light got out of the way for them. Whatever pulled them had monumental power. At six minutes to the ring, the ensign at the helm shouted out. "Captain! We're slowing down!"
    "What?" Omja said. "Chambers, energy readings!"
    "We still don't have any control, but it's true! Speed is decreasing!"
    A few minutes later the ring appeared, growing from nothing into a line that stretched out to both sides of the ship's front screen. Their ship had slowed to under impulse power, and it came to stop, hovering in front of the ring at a normal orbiting distance. The ring was stuck in the middle of their vision.
    "We're stopped, Captain," Kerrigan said. "Engines are still running at full power."
    "Cut them," Omja ordered. The loud hum from the end of the ship died.
    "Captain," Emanuel said. "Can you zoom in on the spot we're looking at?"
    "Ensign," Omja said, waving his hand. The ensign zoomed in. There, in the center of their screen, was the equipment Emanuel's team had left after their retreat.
    "It's brought us back to the same place," Emanuel said.
    "Why?" Omja asked.
    "Maybe we activated it or something like that," Emanuel said. "Maybe it needs us to finish."
    "What will that do?" Omja asked. "Something bad? I have to assume that. No, we aren't going to go near that thing. Ensign, contact Earth and have them send ships. There has to be some way to blow this thing apart."
    "Yes sir," the ensign said. "Come in Earth. Come in Earth. This is the Blind Man. I repeat, this is the Blind Man calling Earth." For a minute no answer. "Earth, please respond, this is the Blind Man."
    Omja sat in his chair and hit a button. "Earth, this is Captain Omja of the Blind Man. Respond please." He waited a minute. "Ensign, run a transmission test."
    "Sir," the ensign responded, hitting buttons. The ship started putting off a transmission. They waited the minute for it to get back to them. Nothing happened.
    "Run it again," Omja ordered. He rested his elbows on his knees and his linked fingers under his nose. The ensign ran it again.
    "No response, sir," the ensign said after enough time had passed. "That means either Earth's systems are down, or ours are."
    "I think I know which one," Omja said. He looked up at Emanuel. "Ensign, attempt to fire a torpedo on the ring."
    "Sir?"
    "Do it."
    Omja and Emanuel watched the ensign lock on. "Firing." He hit a button. They waited.
    "What happened?" Omja asked. The ensign hit the button again.
    "The torpedo isn't firing, sir. Munition reports all systems working properly. It just isn't firing."
    Omja's head turned and he slowly looked at Emanuel again. "What do you think the odds are that the ring will allow us to land you and your team on its surface?"
    "I'd say there's a chance," Emanuel responded. Omja nodded.
    "I'm trying one last thing," he said, and turned to the ensign. "Try to open a channel to the ring. Whatever you can do."
    The ensign stared down at his rack of buttons, figuring out how to do what the Captain answered. He hit a few buttons and spun a dial. "Go ahead, Captain."
    "This is Captain Omja of the Earth ship the Blind Man. If you are able to respond, please do so." The bridge listened to the empty cackle of space for a few seconds. "I repeat. This is Captain Omja of the Blind Man. Please respond."
    Still nothing happened. "Get your team ready," Omja said to Emanuel. "You're going out."

"We need to figure out a way to release the ship. As soon as we do that, we get into the lander and get out of there," Emanuel said to his drowsy team.
    "Emanuel, if I may," Alex said, looking over his shoulder as he piloted the lander down. "How are we going to do that?"
    Emanuel looked down at his gloved hands. "I don't know. Maybe if we had more time . . . but no, we have to figure this out. Communications, weapons, engines down. We're just lucky that the life support still works."
    His team started muttering. Terra pushed her hair out of her eyes, and Phomello rubbed his bald head. Jones had his face in his hands.
    "I know it seems impossible, but there has to be a way." Emanuel looked out the window. "It brought us back here. It didn't do that without a reason. Getting this lander out of the ship has been the only thing we've been able to do since the Blind Man stopped moving."
    Alex brought the lander down in nearly the same spot it had been before. The team walked out onto the surface of the ring. There was no way to tell that, only a few hours ago, it had flooded with light. They could only yet see the light that was edging around the curve of the ring; to see the light from the other side of the ring would take a hundred thousand years.
    "So . . . what do we do first?" Phomello asked.
    Emanuel shook his head. "I don't know." He looked down at the surface of the ring. Dropping to one knee, he pounded on it. "Hey! Let us go!" Nothing happened. "Tell us what you need us to do!"
    Still nothing happened, and now his hand hurt. He rubbed it as he followed his team to the equipment still set up. "I guess we can continue with the pulse cannon," Terra said. She wandered off in that direction. Ned, Phomello, and Jones all got back to their experiments. Emanuel watched them.
    Is the ring a creature? He asked himself. Maybe a vessel? Or is it something sinister? Maybe activating it will destroy everything inside the ring. He shook his head. First we have to figure out how to work it. He looked around. The surface of the ring was unblemished. There was no control panel, no entrance to a galaxy-long tunnel, no building. Nothing. Emanuel rubbed his hand and walked around.
    "Emanuel, what are you doing?" He heard Alex ask from the lander after a few minutes.
    "I'm just looking around. Trying to find something that looks different," he answered. He found himself looking in at the galaxy again. It spun in unseen slowness; he wondered if the ring spun with it. He tried to follow the ring with eyes, but the darkness and its size dissolved it after a short distance.

Seen by nobody, at the other end of the ring from Emanuel and his team, the light that raced around both sides and, even faster than expected, collided in the middle. This light, and its meeting, might never be seen by humanity.
    But Emanuel and his team felt the great crush of energy from the other end of the galaxy like a tsunami over them. Terra cried out, Ned dropped to the ground and covered his head, and Phomello raced up to Emanuel. "Let's go!"
    "No! I think I know! I know, I know!" Emanuel yelled into his mic. he pushed Phomello away.
    His hand burned with indescribable pain. Still feeling the wash of the ring's energy, he touched a button on his wrist to close the seal between his hand and arm. He unlatched his glove from his suit and pulled it off.
    He started screaming. Fire and ice collided; his hand felt like it was bubbling. He could feel the blood under his skin beginning to boil. He bent and pressed his bare palm to the surface of the ring.
    The pain from his palm stopped but the hurt of space continued. His hand would never be the same.
    "You damn idiot!" Phomello yelled in his ear. "Terra, Emanuel's just-"

Onboard the Blind Man, the wave of energy overtook them, bobbing the ship as if on a sea. "Chambers!" Omja yelled. "Status!"
    "The same energy as before, Captain!" Chambers replied. "The ring must have done something else!"
    "Get them out of there before it finishes!" Omja shouted, standing.
    "Emanuel, this is lieutenant Chambers! The Captain orders you to-"

The ring burst full of light, all of it at once. No piece of smooth material did not shine. The limitless space inside shot full of light; space itself became white. The rising light from the core of the galaxy peaked, climbing out in both directions away from the ring. Emanuel's fried brain knew that he should not have been able to see the light from so far away, yet he stared. He felt the most beautiful and profound of sensations, stood rapt in awe as the radiant being that the ring had held captive for eons freed itself with the touch of another. Emanuel felt dropped to the most primitive form at the sight of it; it sent its thoughts throughout, thanking him and all the universe for its freedom. No more would its kind be held by the rings of their dark counterparts and made to dwindle. They had been released.
    Emanuel, Phomello, and the others on the ring watched the great being rise higher and higher, struck dumb. Emanuel felt the being thank him; he saw the words as numbers, and knew what they meant. He looked at his injured, gloved hand. Three seven three three six three. Free me.