Design for Great-Day

1
 
The little ship, scarred and battered, sat on the plain and ignored the armed guard that had surrounded it at a safe distance. As an example of an extraplanetary vessel it was remarkably unimpressive. A featureless, flattened ovoid devoid of ports or visible doorways, no bigger than one of the lifeships or escape pods utilized by the dominant race of the world on which it had just arrived. It looked barely capable of transporting a few individuals between cities on the same continent, much less conveying them between worlds.
In fact, more than one of the newly emplaced guards wondered if it might not actually be some sort of lifeboat or emergency craft that had been cast off from a damaged mother ship locked in orbit high above. Though they had yet to receive any indication that this might indeed be the case, it seemed a plausible enough explanation. Possibly the parent vessel had been destroyed, or tumbled helplessly to burn up in the thick atmosphere. There were any number of rational possibilities that offered more plausible explanations.
Not only did the eccentric craft look too small to be capable of interplanetary travel, it did not give off a glow suggestive of rapid passage through the atmosphere, which meant that it either moved very slowly or exceptionally fast. The heavily armed soldiers who had hastily formed a defensive perimeter around the vessel's landing site were not prepared to speculate either way, but nothing could stop them from making offhand guesses. They were neither scientists nor engineers but ordinary troops.
In the average soldier speculation was a potentially dangerous quality, one devoutly to be avoided at all costs. Indulging in the process frequently brought down disapprobation and disaster and was only rarely rewarded. It was an activity best left to officers and non-military personnel. The heavily armed troopers were more than content to follow orders, aim weapons, and wait for someone to tell them what to do next.
It was impossible, however, not to wonder at the tiny vessel's composition or means of manufacture. Though without running appropriate scientific analysis it was impossible to tell for certain, it did not appear to be fashioned either of metal or the more familiar metaloceramic composites. There was some discussion among the more knowledgeable onlookers of nanocarbon tubes embedded in a bonding ceramic or glass matrix, but the dullish appearance of the intruder's matte epidermis provided little in the way of support or rebuttal for such theory.
In fact, depending on which way the early morning light happened to strike the ship's surface, it was not only difficult to guess what it might be fashioned of, but whether it possessed a solid skin at all. Light played tricks with the onlookers' eyes and with the ship's exterior. At times it seemed one could see halfway through the vessel, while when clouds scudded by overhead it appeared far more substantial.
In actuality, the little ship was possessed of a consistency that fell somewhere between an aerogel and the core of a neutron star. Its component atoms were arranged in such a way as to not only baffle an experienced observer but utterly defeat the best analytical instruments that could be brought to bear; so the urgently assembled troops could be excused their confusion.
A few voices suggested that the vessel itself might be nothing more than an illusion, a projection designed to deceive the eye and fool the mind. The War Department was known to be working on all manner of new projects. Perhaps the troops had been rushed out to check the efficacy of some new aspect of psychological warfare. Some suggested that if it were nothing more than a facile apparition it was an extremely clever one, because it had scorched the ground in its immediate vicinity and gave every indication from the earth that was depressed around its outer edge of having real mass and weight. It was no lustrous phantom, no incorporeal composition of smoke and carefully shaded floating films. It was real, and what it was made of might be quite prosaic, or contrastingly extraordinary. As the soldiers had been issued strict orders while outbound from the nearby city not to approach the craft too closely under any circumstances, they could not satisfy their curiosity even by simple touch.
Not that any of them particularly wanted to stroll up to the outlandish vessel and run a hand along its eerily indistinct flanks anyway, but it was natural to be curious about its makeup as well as its origins. There was always an air of mystery about the unknown, and this little ship trailed one behind it like an ethereal cape blowing in the wind. The hastily assembled squadron of guards could be ordered not to touch, but they could not be ordered not to think. Like ordinary soldiers anywhere, they had plenty of spare time in which to engage in that entertaining if not necessarily educational practice. Squatting on the open plain distant from the city, they availed themselves of the opportunity frequently and with inspired sarcasm.
However rapidly the intruder had penetrated the local atmosphere it gave off no heat from its passage. None, zero. Instruments confirmed what the soldiers suspected. It was most remarkable. All descending vessels gave off some residual heat, if not as a result of the passage through atmosphere, then from their engines and drives. Notwithstanding the singed soil that formed a blackened halo of modest dimensions around the base of the vessel, the temperature of the air in its immediate vicinity was no different from that elsewhere on the plain.
Some continued to argue that whether real or illusionary, it was nothing more than a clever training exercise, a trick of advanced dimensions designed to test their readiness and reactions to the unexpected and not immediately explicable. As time passed and nothing happened, this hypothesis gained credence among the assembled and increasingly bored ring of guards.
One suggested that a single shot would make myth of the vessel's reality. This headstrong individual was quickly restrained by his friends. Being friends, they had no interest in seeing their bold companion sentenced to an extended term in gaol. Besides which, he owed some of them money.
So they sat or stood, and guessed and guarded, the latter task in this particular instance turning out to be a very dull deal indeed.
A large, bluish sun burned overhead, illuminating their surroundings if not their thoughts. It lit the edges of flat, waferlike clouds in brilliant purple. While some might have found the scene starkly beautiful, few of the attending soldiers bothered to remark on what was to them a common occurrence. Regardless of species, soldiers on duty rarely had the time or inclination to ruminate on the aesthetics of their surroundings.
The strange sun was not alone in the sky. It was accompanied by two tiny moons shining like pale spectres low in the east. A third--larger, rounder, and more mellow in aspect--was diving into the westward horizon.
At considerable altitude above the stolid mass of the sprawling city roamed its aerial patrol, a number of tiny, almost invisible dots weaving a tangle of vapor trails. There were more now than there had been a little while ago, as distant craft continued to assemble in tardy response to the laggard alarm that had finally announced the visitor's presence, but the latest arrivals were as confused and concerned as their predecessors.
The dots displayed the irritated restlessness of a swarm of disturbed gnats, for their crews were uncomfortably aware of the strange invader now sitting motionless on the plain far below. Their speculation was driven by a greater urgency than that of the soldiers on the ground, for they were acutely aware that they had missed something, and would be called to account for it sooner rather than later.
It was not that any one of...