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rriving at the Ring was a political fiction, but that didn’t keep it fro real There was no physical boundary to say that this ithin the realm of the object There was no port to dock at The Behe since before they’d left Tycho The Martian science ships and Earth military forces that had been there before the doomed Belter kid had become its first casualty were still there, where they had been, but resupplied now The new Martian ships had joined the quietly in the sky The Earth flotilla, like the Behe up to whatever range they’d chosen to stop at To say, We have come across the vast abyss to float at this distance and noe are here We’ve arrived

As far as anyone could tell, the Ring didn’t give a damn

The structure itself was eerie The surface was a series of twisting ridges that spiraled around its body At first they appeared uneven, almost messy The mathematicians, architects, and physicists assured theht of the ridges in a co between the peaks and valleys The reports were breathless, finding one layer of con all laid bare without any hint of what it all ht mean

“The official Martian reports have been very conservative,” the science officer said His name was Chan Bao-Zhi, and on Earth, he’d have been Chinese Here, he was a Belter froiven a lot of summary and maybe a tenth of the data they’ve collected Fortunately, we’ve been able to observe most of their experiments andtoo,” Ashford said

“Without doubt, sir,” Chan said

Like any ritual, the staff nificance than information The heads of all the major branches of the Behe, Bull for security, Chan for the research teams, Bennie Cortland-Mapu for health services, Ana the two dozen seats around the great conference table Ashford sat in the place of honor, another beneficent Christ painted on the wall behind hiht hand, and Bull—by tradition—at his left

“What have we got?” Ashford said “Short for weird, sir,” Chan said, and everyone chuckled “Our best analysis is that the Ring is an artificially sustained Einstein-Rosen bridge You go through the Ring, you don’t come out the other side here”

“So it’s a gate,” Ashford said

“Yes, sir It appears that the proto or whatever you want to call it was launched at the solar syste for Earth with the intention of hijacking pri that whoever created the proto travel to the solar system more convenient and practical later”

Bull took a deep breath and let it out slowly It hat everyone had been thinking, but hearing it spoken in this official setting et here Not just a gateway A beachhead

“When the Y Que went through it, the ered soood dataset fro of energy within the Ring structure and a whole cascade of es The entire object went up to about five thousand degrees Kelvin, and it has been cooling regularly ever since So it took a lot of effort to get that thing running, but it looks like not much to maintain”

“What do we know about what’s on the other side?” Pa asked Her expression was neutral, her voice pleasant and une hiet

“It’s hard to know h a keyhole, and the Ring itself seeetting consistent readings difficult We know the Y Que wasn’t destroyed We’re still getting the video feed that the kid was spehen he went through, it’s just not showing uswe can start to navigate fro doesn’t have any stars, and the background nificantly different fro what?” Ashford said