Subtler Wars, Part II

Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars, 19.

Gravity curves the paths of electromagnetic waves as well as of bodies. Galaxies generate multiple enhanced images of objects behind them. (Why enhanced?) Dark bodies can be detected by their distortion of the light from more distant stars. Gravitational lenses include the sun which, being nearly spherical, "...has little aberration." (p. 232)

Observatories at the "focal points" (ibid.), 550 a.u.'s out, as far away as "...the Kuiper Belt, although not necessarily in the same plane..." (p. 233), detect distant objects beyond the sun and transmit the data to Earth. Remote signals are too faint and sweep by too fast for the instruments to catch enough photons for optical images but radio waves suffice. An observatory in Taurus just south of the star, Elnath:

"...would be on a line between Sol and the center of the galaxy. It would be looking at hordes of stars." (p. 234)

I imagine that the sun would be between the observatory and the galactic center, not the observatory between the sun and the center?

Fireball put observatories in several sectors, including one in Taurus near Elnath. Locating many extra-solar planets and analyzing their atmospheres, the instruments found very few with free oxygen so interest flagged, then Fireball came to an end and the observatories decayed.

Meanwhile, the equation that explained every law of physics had been found:

"Its solutions described the origin and ultimate fate of all that was, all that could ever be." (p. 235)

Any possible observation now has a basic explanation although chaos and complexity prevent most calculations and only the Teramind fully understands most solutions. Most human scientists come to regard the remaining unexpected data as trivial although the cybercosm continues to investigate and establishes new solar lenses, replacing "...the old, dead observatories..." (p. 236) with forty new, improved versions, each with its own power source, maintainence and conscious directing intelligence.

Human scientists receiving the data find nothing to contradict the great equation but nevertheless map the universe in space and time until the data stream becomes unintelligible. The cybercosm, claiming not to understand this development, now restricts reports from the lenses only to sophotects. Proserpinans, not to be fobbed off, collect all the data that had been published from the lenses and identify the Elnath observatory as the source of the anomalies. The Selenarchs spend years to build and launch a lens whose carrier is wrecked by an improbable collision with a rock moving so fast that it must, even less probably, have come from outside the Solar System. Decades later, their second lens, reaching its intended orbit, fails to function and has to be transported back for examination since the Proserpinans refuse to use sophotects that could operate on the spot. The cause was a defect that should have been detected during pre-launch inspections. The Proserpinans suspect small robotic saboteurs and know that they can be spied on by similar means.

This has become a war and will escalate.