The Unreasoning Mask by Philip José Farmer

500,000

tons per square millimeter, and that's the greatest force we have. It won't

melt at 100,000 K. It resists the most powerful laser -- so far, anyway.
     
     
"The smaller spheres are of the same substance or seem to be. They only

lack the nickel-iron shell of the larger. They've been subjected to the

same tests with the same results."
     
     
Wendell Tong shook his head. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it."
     
     
The screen split into three sections, and the heads of the chief geologist

and the chief astrophysicist appeared by Tong's.
     
     
"We've been listening in," the geologist said. "May I ask a question?"
     
     
Ramstan gave his permission. However, the question was not directed at him

but at Tong.
     
     
"You say that the nickel-iron shells were partially melted. I doubt that

the firestorm could account for that. Wouldn't you say that the melting

could only have come from great velocity through the atmosphere? That

these spheres are, in effect, meteorites of some sort?"
     
     
Tong nodded. "Yes, I'd say so. I'm not competent . . ."
     
     
"It's a matter of common sense, of logic," the geologist said. "Only . . .

damn! . . . whoever heard of meteorites like this?"
     
     
Ramstan said, "The hot nickel-iron shells could have started the worldwide

fires, right?"
     
     
"That's the only explanation we have at the moment."
     
     
     
     
Two days later, al-Buraq left, the jeeps having returned the day before.

The launch was over the northern continent now and sending in reports.

Al-Buraq proceeded to the western coast of the southern-hemisphere

continent, spiraled over a hundred-square- kilometer area, then flew to

one of the continents in the equatorial region. Another launch was sent

to the third continent. After a six-day sampling of the second continent,

al-Buraq plunged into the ocean and spiraled over the bottom. When she

emerged five days later, she went to the fourth continent. At the end

of the sampling there, she was joined by the two launches.
     
     
The results of the investigation were both puzzling and mind-numbing.
     
     
The spheres were undoubtedly of meteoritic origin or, it would be more

accurate to say, they had been launched at high velocity from outside

the atmosphere. Both the large and small spheres had been found embedded

in trees that had not entirely burned and even in stones and steel

beams. They were everywhere from pole to pole. Whatever had shot them

had covered the planet by making many orbital sweeps and by missing

neither land nor sea.
     
     
Walisk was slightly larger than Earth though of less density. Its surface

area was approximately 518,000,000 square kilometers. Estimates based on

the samplings indicated that approximately one of the larger spheres and

twenty of the smaller had struck every square meter. Or they had been

intended to do so, but atmospheric and oceanic variations in density

and current had resulted in variations in the number of meteorites or

missiles per square meter.
     
     
"Five hundred and eighteen billion of the large spheres," Tenno had

whispered when he heard the report. "Ten trillion, three hundred and

sixty billion of the smaller."
     
     
Each of the smaller weighed 50 grams. Twenty together weighed 1,000 grams

or one kilogram. This suggested that the large spheres had hollow centers.
     
     
The total mass of the missiles was an estimated 1,026,000,000,000 kilograms.
     
     
"No spaceship would be large enough or have power enough to deliver and

launch such a mass. She'd have to be as large as . . . what? . . . the Earth?

Larger? Let's get a computer readout."
     
     
"An object with that mass and coming so close to Walisk would cause

cataclysmic earthquakes and tidal waves," Ramstan said. "But . . .

you're right, Tenno. It couldn't be a spaceship or even a fleet.

Unconceivable. Anyway, if the thing or things were directed by Intelligence

. . . what sentient would use such inefficient means