Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  Kenri stood up. The room around him lay as sharp as if he saw it in open space. He no longer heard the music. A metallic singing filled his skull.

  He did hear Nivala: “Oms! You whelp!” and from Canda: “Silence!” The sounds came from light-years away. His left hand caught hold of the tunic and hauled the Honorable Oms to his feet. His right hand made a fist and smote.

  Oms lurched back, fell, and moaned where he lay. Nivala quelled a scream. From Canda leaped to his own feet.

  “Arrest me,” Kenri said. A detached fraction of him wished he could speak less thickly. “Go on. Why not?”

  “Kenri, Kenri.” Nivala rose, too. She reached for him. He saw at the edge of vision but didn’t respond. Her arms dropped.

  Oms pulled himself to an elbow. Blood coursed from his nose. “Yes, arrest him,” he squealed. “Ten years’ penance confinement. I’ll take everything he’s got.”

  From Canda’s shoe nudged his grandson in the ribs, not gently. “I ordered you to stay quiet,” he said. Oms whimpered, struggled to a sitting position, and rocked to and fro.

  “That was reckless of you, Lieutenant Shaun,” stated from Canda. “However, it was not unprovoked. There will be no charges or lawsuit.”

  “The Kith girl—” Kenri realized he should first have said thanks.

  “I daresay she’ll be all right. They’ll raise the money for her father. Kithfolk stick together.” The tone hardened. “Bear in mind, you have renounced that allegiance.”

  Kenri straightened. A hollow sort of peace had come upon him.

  He remembered a half-human face and eyes without hope and A man’s only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live and die for. “Thank you, sir,” he said belatedly. “But I am a Kithman.”

  “Kenri,” he heard.

  He turned and stroked a hand down Nivala’s hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. He never had been good at finding words.

  “Kenri, you can’t go, you mustn’t, you can’t.”

  “I must,” he said. “I was ready to give up everything for you. But not to betray my ship, my people. If I did that, in the end it would make me hate you, and I want to love you. Always.”

  She wrenched away, slumped onto the bench, and stared at the hands clenched in her lap. The blonde tresses hid her face from him. He hoped she wouldn’t try to call him tomorrow or the next day. He didn’t know whether he hoped she would take treatment to adjust her mind-set or wait and recover naturally from him.

  “We’re enemies now, I suppose,” the colonel said. “I respect you for that more than if you’d worked to be friends. And, since I presume you’ll be shipping out and we’ll never meet again—luck to you, Lieutenant Shaun.”

  “And to you, sir. Good-bye, Nivala.”

  The Kithman passed through the ballroom, ignoring eyes, and through the anteroom to the ascensor. Well, he thought vaguely on his way down, yes, I will be shipping out.

  I do like Theye Barinn. I should go around soon and see her.

  The time felt long before he was back in Kith Town. There he walked in empty streets, breathing the cold night wind of Earth.

  22.

  After her last zero-zero leap, Envoy paused a while, some seven astronomical units from her goal. Again Dayan and Cleland took instruments out onto the hull.

  The destination sun glared as bright as Sol at the orbit of Saturn; it was a K0, with about two-thirds the luminosity. Already the searchers knew that eight worlds attended it, that the second was in the zone of habitability and indeed had an oxynitrogen atmosphere, and that thermonuclear power plants operated not only on it but at several other sites around the system. Now they gathered more data, more precise, for forecasts and warnings.

  For a long span, however, their attention was on a point where eyes found nothing but the dark. Meter readings computed numbers, graphic displays bore them the tidings. Their hearts knocked.

  “Yes,” Dayan said, “there’s no more doubt. A pulsar, within one-third parsec of us. And it has planets.”

  No mere white dwarf like Sirius B—a neutron star, self-compressed remnant of a giant that burst itself asunder, clinker still shooting its furious radio beams into space with no message but its own ferocity—Unless ships from Earth had traveled well beyond Sol’s neighborhood since Envoy left, humans had never before been this close to one.

  “Wouldn’t the supernova have sterilized the planet here?” Cleland saw immediately that his question was stupid, blurted in excitement.

  Dayan’s head shook, shadowy behind the helmet. “No, it wasn’t near at the time. High proper motion; it’s only passing by. I’ve detected an expanding nebulosity yonder.” She pointed at another object which distance made invisible. “If it’s from the eruption, then that happened about a thousand light-years off and ten million years ago.”

  “Only ten million? M-my God, those planets must still be re-evolving!”

  Dayan’s own voice quivered. “Yes, and the pulsar itself probably hasn’t reached a steady state yet. The physics—” She set about directing instruments to more urgent concerns. “I imagine the Yonderfolk can tell us about it,” she finished a bit harshly.

  Envoy proceeded inward at a full g, ignoring economy, to cut the passage time down to a week. Her people were impatient.

  “Look at that,” Kilbirnie breathed. “Just look at that.”

  “Apa Isten.” Ruszek did not seem to notice he had crossed himself.

  The ship was passing within twelve million kilometers of the third planet. Her crew had gathered in the reserve saloon-galley to see what her optics could screen for them. Magnified and enhanced, a thick crescent stood ruddy, mottled—and silver-spotted with seas. Air slightly blurred the limb and softened the edge between day and night. Clouds, elongated and patchy rather than marbling, shone less brilliantly white than Earth’s; but they shone. Three firefly sparks glinted against the blackness beyond, satellites. Instruments had found at least a dozen more.

  Only a third again as big as Mars, receiving at its distance no more light from the weaker sun, the globe should have been a similar desolation, its atmosphere almost as thin. But: barely discernible as a shimmer where sunlight struck at particular angles, a transparent shell enclosed it, twenty-odd kilometers greater in radius. A few of the travelers thought they could make out one or two of the pillars upholding the structure. Spectroscopy showed the air within to be thicker than Earth’s, and as warm. It was carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor, traces of methane and other gases, nothing to sustain creatures with lungs. Nevertheless waters and land gave reflection spectra of complex organic materials. Life-stuff?

  “Those satellites are neutrino radiators,” Dayan said. Not everyone aboard had yet heard of her newest discoveries. “Thermonuclear reactors. I think they’re beaming energy down to the planet, heating it. And there are areas of violent activity on the surface. The waste heat from them contributes.” Awe underlay her dry words.

  “The Yonderfolk are terraforming,” Mokoena marveled.

  Sundaram smiled, less calmly than he was wont. “Not precisely ‘terra,’ Mam.”

  Cleland spoke confidently, in his element. “It can’t be that simple. I daresay they brought in ices from comets, and roofed everything in to keep volatiles from escaping. Probably the shell also filters out excessive ultraviolet and screens off hard radiation. The planet’s not massive enough to have much of a magnetic field for protection, if any. But neither can it have plate tectonics. How do they propose to maintain the carbonate-silicate cycle and the other equilibria necessary for life to last? For that matter, transforming raw gases into breathable air and rock into soil takes huge amounts of energy. Which means time—geological time.”

  “Perhaps the Yonderfolk think that far ahead,” Yu said low.

  Nansen’s gaze brooded on the image. “All that time, all that effort,” he murmured, “when they have zero-zero—or did—and could go find new worlds. Why this?”

  “We’ll learn, skipper,” Kilbirnie said
.

  “And learn how they’re doing it.” Zeyd’s enthusiasm drove off the momentary chill.

  Brent’s eyes smoldered at the burning moonlets. “The power,” he said, deep in his throat. “The power.”

  Envoy took orbit around the world of her quest.

  It glowed as beautiful as expected, royal blue with a tinge of purple, wreathed and swirled with white. To adaptable human vision, the sun disk seemed well-nigh homelike.

  Differences abounded. The planet was darker than Earth, of lower albedo, for only half was under water, there were no polar caps, and the vegetation covering most of the land ranged from red-brown to almost black. A single moon, small but close, showed a disk one-seventh the familiar width of Luna, like a tiny gold coin; scars had been smoothed over, and magnification revealed curious shapes scattered across the surface.

  The humans’ attention was wholly on the planet. Rapt at their instruments and screens, they beheld forests, fields that clearly were tended, buildings that curved and soared, vehicles that skimmed and floated and flew, creatures walking about who must be the dwellers. Settlement was dispersed, with few concentrations, none comparable to a terrestrial metropolis. Much seemed to be underground, including fusion power plants, though most energy was evidently generated on the moon and beamed down via half a dozen artificial satellites.

  “A clean nuclear cycle,” Dayan said when the neutrino spectrum had identified it for her. “Extremely high transmission efficiency. But nothing like the gigawattage at home. The population must be much less.”

  “And less greedy?” wondered Sundaram.

  The ship’s exocommunicators rolled through band after band, visible, infrared, radio, calling, calling.

  No more than three breathless hours had passed when Nansen’s command rang through the wheel: “All hands to emergency stations. A spacecraft is approaching.”

  His hands poised over the control console of the weapons. He expected no hostility, he prayed for none, but who could tell? After the robots in the star cluster, who could tell?

  The vessel converged at a fractional g. It must have risen from the ground, for nothing like it had been in ambient space when Envoy arrived. Torpedo-shaped, coppery-hued, some fifty meters in length, it maneuvered as smoothly as an aircraft into the same orbit. There it took station, three kilometers ahead.

  “N-n-no jets.” His crew had never before heard Nansen stammer. “Dios todopoderoso, how does it boost?”

  “We’ll learn,” Kilbirnie called once more.

  Silence stretched.

  “They are probably scanning us,” Nansen said.

  “Wouldn’t we do the same with surprise visitors?” Zeyd replied. “I think we can safely go back to our proper work, and be more useful.”

  Nansen hesitated a bare second. “Yes. Engineers and boat pilots, stand by. The rest may leave their stations.”

  “No, let me go outside,” Ruszek proposed. “Give them a look at one of us.”

  Nansen considered. “That may be a good idea. Proceed.”

  “Damn you, Lajos, you spoke first,” Kilbirnie lamented.

  Before the mate had his spacesuit on, receivers awoke—visual flickers, audio clicks and glissandos; response from the Yonderfolk.

  The quickness was not overly astonishing. Although it could not be expected that equipment would be compatible, scientists(?) should soon analyze what was coming in and devise means to send back the same kind of signals. Thereafter the humans could explain how to make audiovisual sets that would work together with their own. Best do it thus; the Yonderfolk undoubtedly had more resources, on a whole planet vis-à-vis a single spaceship from five thousand years ago.

  Envoy’s database contained the work of many bright minds who had dreamed about exchanges with aliens. Programs were ready to go. After the simple initial flashes, messages became binary, describing diagrams on a grid defined by two prime numbers. By showing such easily recognizable things as the black-body curve of the sun and the orbiting of its planets, they established units of basic physical quantities, mass, length, time, temperature. The Yonderfolk replied similarly, with refinements—for instance, the quantum states of the hydrogen atom. Not everything was immediately comprehensible on either side, but computers sifted, tested, eliminated, deciphered, electronically fast. Nature herself was providing a common language.

  The time seemed long aboard ship—where nobody slept well or ate with any appreciation of the food—but it was not really—until circuit diagrams crossed the gap, and circuits were built, and pictures and sounds began to pass to and fro.

  Nansen chimed Sundaram’s door. It opened. He entered the cabin. Austere furnishings revealed little that was personal other than some views and mementos from the India that had been. An incense stick sweetened the air. Sundaram sat studying a recorded image. He would activate it for a few seconds, then stop it and think.

  “Good evenwatch, Captain,” he greeted absently. “Please be seated.”

  Nansen took a chair. “I’m sorry to disturb your concentration,” he said, “but I do need to know how your work is progressing, and you didn’t want to discuss it openly.” Sundaram had practically sequestered himself.

  “Not yet. Too early in the game.”

  “I understand. I wouldn’t have asked for this meeting, except that—Well, Zeyd has now examined those biospecimens the others shot over to us from their spacecraft, in that capsule full of containers. The quarantine conditions were unnecessary, he’s found. Not that the aliens would mean to harm us. If they did, they could blow us apart with a nuclear warhead.” Nansen seldom spoke superfluously. He was under stress. “No hazard of disease. The biochemistries are too unlike. Mokoena confirms. I daresay the others have reached the same conclusion about the material we sent them. So, how soon can we communicate well enough to take the next step, whatever it may be? Can you give me some hint? Lying idled like this is beginning to fray people’s nerves.”

  Sundaram gestured at the screen. Although by now Nansen had often seen what it showed, and pored over similar images for hours, a tingle went along his spine.

  A being stood unclad against a background of enigmatic apparatus. The first word aboard for it had been “centaur,” but that was like calling a man an ostrich because both were bipeds. It stood on four stout legs with four-toed, padded, spurred feet. The body was likewise robust, lacking a tail and any obvious genitalia. Its back rose in a shallow ridge. The torso in front did not rear very high above. Two long, sturdy-looking arms ended in hands around each of which four nailless fingers were symmetrically arranged; they seemed flexible, boneless, like an elephant’s trunk.

  The head was big, round, high-browed, a lipless mouth in the blunt muzzle but no nose. Apparently the being breathed through two slits, somewhat resembling gills with their quivering protective covers, in the neck under the jaw. Above the muzzle, two elliptical eyes—presumably eyes—were set close together, while two large circular ones flanked them on the sides of the head. The inner orbs were black, the outer green, and none had whites, nor pupils resembling the human. From the brow rose two short antennae crowned with clusters of cilia. Pointed earflaps stood a trifle higher than the head, hairless, thin, and yellowish; Mokoena had guessed that that was the color of blood, or blood’s equivalent.

  Neck and shoulders were blanketed by a mane of small, leaflike growths, of the same hue, like a kind of ivy. They were constantly astir, as if winds blew changeably through them. Otherwise a velvety pelt decked the skin, dark brown on this individual; on others it had been seen to vary from black to pale green.

  From direct observation the humans knew that they—adults, at any rate—ranged from about 130 to 140 centimeters long and stood about as tall: the height of a child some ten years old, though with more mass. They moved gracefully, sometimes quite fast.

  “They shall have to take the initiative,” Sundaram said.

  “Can we do nothing?” asked Nansen. “We did send the first keys to language.”

/>   “That was the easy part.” Sundaram leaned back, bridged his fingers, and looked straight at his visitor. “On ancient Earth and in the Age of Discovery, explorers found people new to them, speaking languages unrelated to theirs. They could soon talk to each other. But you see, they shared the same world, the same body pattern and needs and instincts; they could point, they could pantomime, and be understood. Here we begin with separate origins and evolution of life itself, from billions of years ago.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that discussed, of course. But still—bien—”

  “They have voices,” Sundaram said. Nansen nodded, recalling whistles and rumbles. “However,” the linguist went on, “I am beginning to think their language is only partly vocal, perhaps only in minor part. It gives me the impression of being principally a body language, employing especially the countless possible configurations of those leafy, erectile manes. And what other elements does it have? How do they write it? The eyes suggest that they see the universe differently from us. What are their pictorial conventions? No, we will not quickly be able to speak in their manner. I doubt we ever will be.”

  Nansen sighed. “I suppose we are just as weird to them.”

  “Well, now, there the situation may not be quite so difficult. That is why I believe they will take the lead. Their ancestors went to hundreds or thousands of stars. They doubtless have a far larger database to work from than we do.”

  “Do you mean they can retrieve parallels to us? I wonder. How many intelligent races, primitive or civilized or—whatever else—did they ever find?”

  “That is one thing we have come here to learn.”

  “Let’s begin, then!”

  “Give us time. They appear to be willing, interested—”