"The warping field can be damped out, though," Gibson said. "Adjacent generators operating at different phase levels will heterodyne at a frequency representing the mean variance between levels. The resulting beat-phase will be too low to maintain either field, and one or the other, or both, will blank out. If you remember, all Terran-designed power plants are set to the same phase for that reason."
"But these natives can't have a Ringwave plant!" Farrell argued. "There's only this one village on Sadr III, Gib, an insignificant little agrarian township! If they had the Ringwave, they'd be mechanized. They'd have vehicles, landing ports...."
"The Hymenops had the Ringwave," Gibson interrupted. "And they left the dome down there, the first undamaged one we've found. Figure it out for yourselves."
They digested the statement in silence. Stryker paled slowly, as if it needed time for apprehension to work its way through his fat bulk. Farrell's uneasiness, sourceless until now, grew to chill certainty.
"I think I've expected this, without realizing it, since my first flight," he said. "It stood to reason that the Hymenops would quit running somewhere, that we'd bump into them eventually out here on the fringes. Twenty thousand light-years back to 70 Ophiuchi is a long way to retreat.... Gib, do you think they're still here?"
Gibson did not shrug, but his voice seemed to. "It won't matter one way or the other unless we can clear the Marco's generator."
From another man it might have been irony. Knowing Gibson, Farrell and Stryker accepted it as a bald statement of fact.
"Then we're up against a Hymenop hive-mind," Stryker said. "And we can't run away from it. Any suggestions?"
"We'll have to find the interfering generator and stop it," Farrell offered, knowing that was the only obvious solution.