But then, he told Anna charitably one night, they had only been there for five days. He shouldn’t expect miracles.

The starship hung above the stubborn barrier for another eight days, picking at it with various beams of radiation, like a small child with an intriguing scab, eager to see what lay beneath. Their wormhole generator distorted spacetime in many convoluted perturbations, the wave function of each one bouncing off the near-invisible surface without any significant resonance pattern. During that time, their only major discovery was the planets inside the barrier. Tunde confirmed that gravitational readings showed two gas giants and three small solid planets were orbiting the star, with indications of several large asteroids. It livened up the daily department heads meeting when he told them that one of the solid worlds was within the life band, the distance from the star that would allow carbon-based life to evolve should the planetary conditions be favorable, such as the availability of water and a decent atmospheric pressure.

Finally, for morale’s sake rather than practical science, Wilson allowed McClain Gilbert to fly out to the surface. After the long, boring flight, the crew was becoming restless. Like Wilson, they’d all expected something a little more substantial, some hint as to the origin of the barrier, the reason behind it. One of their own actually going out there and examining it in person should help alleviate some of the tension that was building up in the life-support wheel.

So the whole starship was watching as the small shuttle flew out of its hangar in the cylindrical superstructure. It was a simple spherical life-support capsule capable of transporting up to fifteen passengers, sitting on the top of a drum-shaped propulsion section containing the environmental equipment and two small plasma rockets. A short-range vehicle, with a ten-day flight margin, it was intended to ferry science officers between any “items of interest” to be found at the Dyson Pair. Although it didn’t have an atmospheric entry ability, it could set down on small airless moons, or more hopefully rendezvous with alien starships, alien space stations, or if they were really lucky, even a barrier generator. Nearly everybody on board had volunteered to accompany Mac, including a very vocal Dudley Bose, but Wilson had vetoed any passengers on this trip. Mac had a backup exploration team member, a pilot, and an engineer riding with him, but that was all.

The shuttle used its tiny chemical reaction control engines to hold station a hundred meters away from the barrier, and Mac wriggled his way carefully out of the craft’s cylindrical airlock. His space suit’s inner plyplastic layer gripped his skin, constantly adjusting to accommodate his every movement yet always fitting snugly. On top of that he wore a thermal regulator garment, woven out of heat duct fibers, which would carry away any excess body heat. Above that was a thicker suit, a pale gray in color, combining a radiation baffle cloth and an external impact armor layer, resistant to most micro meteor strikes. It had a built-in force field generator web, which was his real protection in space. If that failed, then procedure was to abandon the EVA and head for the nearest airlock. His helmet was a reinforced transparent bubble, also radiation proof and temperature resistant, which he could opaque depending on the light level, giving him all around visibility, which was boosted by various collar sensors he could access through his virtual vision. Batteries, the heat regulator, and the air regenerator system were all contained in a neat little pack built into the front of the outer suit, with a couple of circular radiator fins to discard surplus body heat. The whole thing was interfaced and controlled via his e-butler, with its system schematic icons sprinkled around his virtual vision.

As soon as he was clear of the airlock hatch rim he anchored himself to the fuselage grid. The cilia on his boot soles adhered to the lattice with a grip strong enough to hold him in place against the kind of torque his body might apply by mistake in the confusion of freefall. He bent over, his stomach muscles pulling hard in the absence of gravity, and unfastened the maneuvering pack from its storage rack. It was a simple unit, a slim backpack with fat plastic mushrooms on each corner sprouting cold gas nozzles that could jet him about freely over a range of several kilometers.

As he was strapping it on, a new set of icons appeared in his virtual vision. He made sure the diagnostic software ran a full check before his virtual hand began to manipulate the joystick. Now he was actually out here, with so many of his crewmates watching over his shoulder, it was tempting to twist the throttle and scoot over to the barrier right away. But he forced himself to get through the physical test routine, burping all the cold gas nozzles, confirming their thrust. Only when his little practice flight around the shuttle was complete did he say, “Ready for crossing.”

“You look good from here,” Oscar said. “Telemetry at one hundred percent. Clear to proceed.”

That familiar voice, with its perpetual tone of dry amusement, was one Mac found absurdly reassuring. In this awesomely bizarre situation it was a welcome touch of normality, the same voice that had led him out onto a dozen new worlds. Virtual fingers tilted the joystick forward, and the maneuvering pack nozzles snorted nitrogen, moving him out away from the shuttle. As far as he could see in the standard visual spectrum he was heading into total darkness; the barrier could be a couple of centimeters in front of him, or fifty light-years. His radar said ninety-three meters. He bumped the speed up to a couple of meters per second, then told his e-butler to switch on the craft’s spotlights. His space suit glowed a dusky pewter as the beams followed him. Up ahead he was sure he could see the triple circles where they were striking the barrier; they formed a royal-blue patch; the effect was almost as if someone was rendering a cartoon shimmer on the surface.

Mac activated the infrared function in his retinal inserts. Half of the universe turned a lambent carmine. Even though he could see the barrier, there was still no way to judge physical distance. The radar put him forty meters out. He began to reduce his closing speed, and the spotlights were showing up as circles with a slightly greenish tint. But he could finally see his own shadow projected onto the flat wall ahead.

He came to a halt a meter away, and just floated there for a moment. The biomonitor showed him his racing heartbeat, and he could hear the adrenaline buzz in his ears. He started to raise his arm, fingers extending to touch the enigmatic surface, then paused. He hadn’t received permission, but if he checked before doing anything the EVA would take all day. The reason he’d been chosen was because of his contact experience. Not in this situation, he told himself evilly, and managed a small grin. His heart rate had slowed a little now, so he completed the motion. His fingers touched the surface.

For one twisted-up moment he imagined the barrier vanishing like a soap bubble, punctured by his ignorant touch. But it didn’t, and he chuckled slightly at the notion. By now he was drifting away, propelled by the slight contact; so he moved the joystick forward, and put his hand out again. This time the maneuvering pack held him in place.

“Okay, I’m touching it. No apparent reaction. Seems like ordinary solid matter, there’s none of that slight surface instability you get on our force fields.”

“Understood, Mac,” Oscar said. “We were all waiting for some demonic claw to come through and drag you in.”

“Hey, thanks for that.”

“My pleasure. You feel like applying some sensors for us?”

“Will do.” He reached down to the equipment clipped on his belt. One by one, he stuck sensor pads against the barrier, taking measurements. He had to hold each one in place. The high-temperature epoxy was no use at all. When he squeezed it out of the tube, it simply rebounded off the barrier like water splashing off Teflon. “We didn’t think that would work,” Oscar said. “There aren’t any atoms there for it to adhere to. Worth a try, though.”