Nevertheless, he knew what the decision would be.
14.
In carefully planned leaps, Envoy neared and entered the cluster.
Within, she all but lost the galaxy. Nebulosity lingered here, dust and gas, still a hard vacuum but enough to dim most of the distant stars out of naked-eye vision. The members of the group shone practically unhindered, to overwhelm the rest; you could see those faint glimmers, but you gave them no heed. Almost half a hundred radiances gemmed the sphere of heaven. Even dwarfs shone as bright as Rigel or Aldebaran above Earth; giants blazed, the red of fire or the blue of steel, like scores of Siriuses come together, and when you turned your gaze aside an afterimage burned in it for a while. The crew fared onward in awe.
Yet the everyday needs of life stayed with them. To these were added the needs of science, which might prove necessary to survival.
“I definitely know the sun we want,” Dayan told Nansen at their third stop for observations. The computers had integrated the new data with previous findings and she had read the meaning in the numbers and graphics. “It’s a late G type, about four-fifths Solar mass, and, yes, it has planets. The second one shows oxygen absorption lines in its spectrum.”
“It is not the source of the neutrinos,” Yu added. “Their generators move about through interplanetary space, favoring what’s probably an asteroid belt, although we can’t pick out something so small at this distance. They are intermittent. It suggests engines, powerful engines, boosting spacecraft to hyperbolic velocities and decelerating again.”
“How many?” Nansen asked. The question sent an electric thrill along his spine and through his skin.
“Impossible to say. I have found ninety-five so far, but can’t tell which are from the same ship, especially when we jump about across light-years and confuse the proper dates of events. And no doubt most of the time they are all on trajectory, with their reactors running at too low a level for us to detect before we get much closer.”
“A big fleet, de calquier modo. Has all the industry of those beings moved into space?”
“That doesn’t quite make sense to me.” Dayan clicked her tongue. “One more anomaly to put on the list.”
Nansen seldom barked a question. Now he did. “What else?”
“Well, the sun is hotter than would be standard for its mass. That indicates it’s old, still on the main sequence but well on the way to moving off. The metallicity of others in the cluster support that. So does the frequency of white dwarfs. In fact, there’s a recurrent nova just a few light-years from the star we’re interested in.”
“Won’t it have harmed life on its planets?”
“I said ‘nova,’ not ‘supernova.’”
Nansen nodded. “I heard that, also that you said ‘recurrent.’ The outbursts aren’t violent enough, then, across such a gap, to raise the background count very much?”
“Right, to judge by what I’ve observed. The companion is only middle type M. The spectral data show there was a recent eruption, several thousand years ago—I can work out exactly when, if you like—so it’ll be quiet for a goodly while to come. But it must have been a spectacular sight in the skies that we are bound for.”
Nansen stared into the viewscreen. He didn’t know where to find that faded resplendency. Imagination evoked it: two stars whirling close about each other, one a dim and long-lived red dwarf, one a spendthrift giant that had flared up before collapsing into the tiny, superdense, incandescent globe of a neutron star. It kept most of its great mass and gravity. Thus it stole material from its companion. A fiery bridge of gas joined them—no, a river, a cataract, tumbling from the red to the white—hydrogen piling up on the neutron surface, jammed together by weight, heated by the energy of its Lucifer-like fall, until it reached the thermonuclear flash point and exploded, a cosmic bomb, briefly outshining fifty or a hundred Sols. … The cycle went on and on, through millions of years, but slowly the one sun would dwindle to a fragment while the other would grow and grow. … Finally, perhaps, in a remote future, the last catastrophe, a supernova of Type I, and afterward the mystery that humans called a black hole. …
“Of course, the radiation in its vicinity is fierce,” Dayan was saying.
Some places in the universe we will never visit ourselves. Only our machines, our robots, dare go, and even they may find they are in danger.
“But I suppose it’s irrelevant to us, except as an extra indication that things hereabouts are old,” Dayan continued. “We may be bound toward a civilization that was ancient when the dinosaurs ruled Earth.”
“Why are they not starfaring, too?” Nansen wondered, half under his breath. “Why have they never come to us?”
“That’s what we want to learn, isn’t it?” Dayan answered.
Learn. Yes! Nansen straightened where he stood.
The quantum gate could function as near to a sun like this as seven astronomical units. By adroit zero-zero maneuvers, Envoy arrived in the ecliptic plane at approximately that distance, with less than it between her and the living planet. However, her relative velocity was of little help. She must go the rest of the way by means of her reaction drive. Nansen chose a continuous half-g with turnover at midpoint. That would take about ten days. A higher acceleration was possible but would have squandered more delta v than the time it saved was worth, while building up a velocity not easily changed. As it was, she would reach speeds at which she was less nimble than he preferred.
Under such thrust, when linear and angular vectors combined to skew the direction of “down,” people must move from their private cabins, from all their comfortable and convenient facilities, to cramped quarters on the gimballed decks, which swung to give horizontality underfoot. The crowding couldn’t be avoided. The flexibly coupled sections of deck must be short, to fit in the curvature of the wheel; also, they must not interfere with whatever else was around them, everything from laboratories to the park. There and on the upper level, objects that were not permanently fastened in place had been well secured.
Between the gimbals, the captain occupied his own cubicle, but, crammed with instruments and controls, it doubled as the temporary command center. Two dormitory rooms, for men and for women, shared a bath. Small wonder that the crew spent most of their waking hours in the saloon-galley, where they found screens, games, and a limited selection of hobby materials. An exercise chamber adjoined, where couples or trios could take turns doing workouts that didn’t require much space.
On the whole, they took it well. They had rehearsed it in the past; it would not go on too long; and at the end they would find surprises, revelations, adventures. Even those who had spoken against the diversion were, mostly, excited.
Besides, they could leave the area for limited times, if they were careful. Some had to, in the course of their duties. Others chose to.
Hilbirnie skipped along a corridor, leaning over, flexing to and fro with every leap, as if it were a steep hillside. The biomat gave some grip to her shoe soles, but it was slight and she risked taking a tumble. Around the curve into sight came Nansen, bound the opposite way. Though he moved agilely, too, it was not so fast and his left foot used the bulkhead that angled from the deck. They saw one another, paused for a startled instant, and continued more slowly. When they met, they stopped.
Zeyd had decorated this stretch in Pharaonic style—the overhead royal blue studded with stylized golden stars, sides with a marshscape of papyrus, lotus, and wildlife, transcribed from the database. The air happened to be right for it at this hour, warm and moist, simulating a scent of growth. Kilbirnie and Nansen were a little sweaty; flesh odors mingled. They both wore skinsuits, bringing forth his wide shoulders and narrow hips, her spare curves and small, firm bosom.
“Hola,” he greeted. “What are you doing here?”
She grinned. “I might ask you the same.”
“I’ve been on inspection rounds. What else?”
Kilbirnie shook her head. The light brown locks stirred acros
s her brow and beside her cheekbones. “I have my doubts,” she said merrily. “For what, then, are you doing here?” The burr thickened in her voice. “’Tis no on any direct route frae bridge or transfer bay or where’er, nor e’en your ain cabin.”
“Bien—” He cleared his throat. “Well—”
She laughed and lifted a hand. “At ease, skipper! You have my leave to be honest.”
He stared, got back his composure, and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll believe you were making your rounds, dutiful as always. But on the way back, you couldn’t resist taking a while to scramble about on these crazily slanted decks, could you? Like me. Except I need no excuse.”
Nansen smiled. “Well, yes. We do come to feel rather hemmed in, don’t we?”
“Now, I was making for the gym, the real gym, to swing on its rings and wrestle with its machines at twenty-six and a half degrees from the vertical. Do you care to join me?”
He frowned. “That would be hazardous.”
“Not really. I know we can’t well afford broken bones, but we’re in good condition and space-trained. Why don’t you join me?”
He stood silent, between an ibis and a crocodile.
She touched his arm. “Oh, skipper, I know you think you must always be reserved and correct and impartial and everything else that goes with a proper aristocrat.” Again she went Scots. “But dinna be pompous.”
“I did not think I was,” he replied stiffly.
She stepped back, stricken. “I—I’m sorry. I didna mean—No, it was, was altogether the wrong word. I am sorry.”
His pique had dissolved. He smiled more warmly than was his habit. “That’s all right. If we couldn’t let out a frank word now and then, we would soon have real trouble.”
Through the skinsuit, he could see how she tensed herself. “But you won’t let yourself speak free.”
He could only reply, “How do you know I have anything I need to speak?”
“You’re human, aren’t you? Maybe you try not to be, but—” She veered off to a kindred matter that had been on her mind. “You and Wenji are certainly keeping a secret.”
His face turned expressionless. “No,” he said. “It is a matter that we are not yet sure of. Temporary administrative confidentiality—”
She regarded him. He sensed the wicked flicker behind her eyes, threw up his hands, and laughed. “Ha! You’re right, Pilot Kilbirnie. I do get pompous.”
Gladness flooded. “That’s better.” Softly, half reaching toward him: “Dinna fash yersel’ aboot whate’er ’tis, not till the bogle comes at ye for sairtain. Belike he ne’er will.”
He let out a breath. “I dare hope so.”
“And meanwhile, here’s this grand discovering ahead of us.”
“Yes.”
His brightening waned. He stood pensive, a crease between his brows. She had recalled to him the unforeseeables and the decisions he must make, which could prove lethally mistaken.
She took his arm. “And meanwhile,” she said, “we have our canted gym. What say you to a bout of handball? It ought to be wild.”
He hung back. “Well, really—”
“Come along, now.” She tugged. He stood for a second more, then yielded.
That was two days before the onslaught.
15.
The sun cast bleak light and knife-edged shadows across Envoy. Brightness reduced in a viewscreen, the disk showed tiny; but it was no longer another star. The ship had passed turnover and was decelerating, backing down toward her goal.
Nansen retrieved an image and frowned at it. The optical system had obtained it an hour ago, across a distance of some two million kilometers. A large asteroid lay athwart the sky, slowly rotating. The shape was too perfect a sphere to be natural, and just half a dozen small meteor craters pocked the gray surface. Therefore they must be recent, probably under one hundred thousand years old. It was other gouges and pits that disfigured the surface, black in their depths, jumbled with debris around outlines that were not round but angular. A squared-off bluff came over the horizon as the body turned. Its top was flat, except where holes showed that something had been dug out and taken away.
“A foundation,” he muttered. “This was some kind of space center. A port, I would guess, perhaps supporting communication relay towers as well, and who knows what else?”
“And everything was demolished and abandoned,” said Yu as low at his side. “Why? Did it become obsolete? A technology capable of building it would scarcely have needed to salvage parts. And why do we find no signs of what replaced it?”
“Spacecraft moving about—Something seems to be going on at a few sites—” other asteroids, two moons of giant planets, but they were off Envoy’s path. Nansen glanced at a viewscreen. The living world stood as a blue spark near the sun. “Well, we are on our way to inquire.”
A voice broke in, melodious, calm, sexless, the central computer speaking. “Attention. Attention. The detector program reports a thermonuclear power plant brought to full output, driving a plasma jet. It may be a spacecraft moving to intercept.”
Yu caught her breath. Shouts, whistles, and a Magyar oath flew over the intercom. Nansen sprang from his seat. “Quiet!” he ordered. “Stand by, ready for action. We need more information.”
Kilbirnie could not resist calling back, “You might show a bit of enthusiasm, skipper.”
Nansen’s grin was brief and tight. “I’m rather busy. We’ll have time to cheer later.”
Tears shone in Yu’s eyes. “Oh, wonderful, wonderful,” she whispered.
“No surprise,” Nansen said needlessly. “They were bound to notice us.” After a moment: “What is surprising is—No, first I have to study the parameters. Engineer Yu, please take your emergency station.”
“Not an emergency, Captain. Surely we have nothing to fear. But, yes, we should be alert … for surprises.” She left the cabin. Nansen sat back down and threw questions at the computer.
Presently he reported to the crew: “Yes, it is an interception boost. She’s going at nearly eleven gravities. We just picked up another acceleration farther off, which will bring a meeting, too. The first will be in about three hours.
“That’s if we continue decelerating as we are. Instead, we will shut down. We’d want to anyway when we come together, and this will give us time to settle in. It won’t affect the rendezvous time much, if those ships change vectors when they see what we have done, which they doubtless will.”
“Eleven gravities?” Zeyd cried. “But that planet has only—what?—seven percent more than Earth’s on the surface.”
“Drugs or fluid immersion for the crews,” suggested Mokoena.
“Or they are machines, or God knows what,” Nansen answered. “You may all take one hour after shutdown for personal preparations, food, drink, change of clothes, whatever you need.” His tone gentled. “A prayer, perhaps. Then go to your stations and make ready for duty.”
He entered a command. The drive cut off. Still facing rearward, Envoy flew on at high speed, almost in a straight line. Weight inside returned to normal, decks level, bulkheads upright, walking easy.
Time sped, time crept. The crew waited at their posts—Yu and Brent in central engine control, Dayan in the nerve center of instruments, Ruszek and Kilbirnie at their boats, Mokoena in the sick bay–surgery, Zeyd and Cleland at opposite ends of a wheel diameter, poised to go wherever summoned. Sundaram had joined Nansen in the main command center. There might be a sudden need for one who could guess what was meant in an alien language, and immediate physical presence was somehow better than intercom. Words did pass through now and then, fugitive speculations, small talk, attempts at humor. They died away after a spell, and silence brimmed the ship.
She signaled on every available band, and silence replied.
“It is not to be expected that their equipment will be compatible with ours, is it?” Sundaram wondered at last.
Dayan’s voice: “They jolly well kno
w the electromagnetic spectrum. If they can’t pick up any of our transmissions, and can’t at least send a burst of the same kind, they’re more stupid than I think is possible.”
Cleland: “Maybe they’re, uh, sizing us up first. We could be the f-f-first visitors they’ve ever had.”
“We’ll see,” Nansen said.
Mokoena: “Will we necessarily?”
The stranger hove in optical range, maddeningly minute and blurred to begin with, then the magnified image strengthening second by second. Nansen and Sundaram strained forward, peering.
They did not need to describe what they saw. Every station had a readout screen. A long cylinder terminated aft in an accelerator lattice not unlike Envoy’s, the same plasma fire blue-white to drive it onward. At the bow another mesh-work formed a great, shallow bowl, pierced by a mast. The hull was dull metallic, well-nigh featureless—except for the second fourth of its length, counting from the bow. That section was bare ribs and stringers, open to space. It enclosed an intricate web, in which solid shapes bulked. No details came through the screening effect of the metal and the tricky light-and-shadow of vacuum.
“About one hundred meters long, apart from the drive assembly, and thirty maximum diameter, apart from that dish in front,” Nansen reported. “I can’t be sure, of course, but I suspect the dish is intended more for transmission than reception, if it uses radio frequencies. It must be made from a composite as strong as any of ours, to stay unwarped at the acceleration it’s been through.”
“The entirety seems more and more as though it is purely robotic,” Sundaram ventured. “That would fit with an industrialized planetary system, and perhaps the mother world a residential park. When the dwellers became aware of us, they dispatched patrol machines to investigate.”
“Too much that we have seen does not fit with that,” Nansen said. “Wait. Soon we may know.” The tension hurt. He willed his body to ease off, muscle by muscle.
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