Sight of Proteus

by Charles Sheffield

  When the image of a gleaming white sphere finally appeared on the screen in front of him, Alfeo looked at it with interest. It didn't seem to be one of the usual freighters. He glanced automatically at the display beneath the image giving the ship's distance. Then he frowned, gasped, and looked again at the image on the screen.

  "Tem," he said urgently. "Get over here. We've got a ship approaching, and according to these read-outs she's a real monster. The screen shows her subtending over six seconds of arc at the station, and she's still more than sixty thousand kilometers out. See if you can find her in the Register."

  Tem Grad unhurriedly uncoiled his long frame from the chair and sauntered over to the screen.

  "You're star-sick, Alf. Six seconds at sixty kay would mean something a couple of thousand meters across. The biggest ship in Lloyd's Register is only three hundred meters. You must be reading the display wrong."

  Alfeo did not deign to answer. He merely jerked his thumb at the screen by his side. Grad looked at it, then at the numerical displays. He looked again. His expression changed abruptly.

  "See if she has a voice channel active, Alf. I think we may have an alien out there."

  His voice was excited. Earth, the USF, and the whole Solar System had been pulsing with rumor and talk of aliens, ever since the first guarded and cryptic announcements had come from the Office of Form Control on Earth regarding John Larsen's metamorphosis. Speculation had been wild. With so little being said officially, the news media had gone back to the stories of the Mariana Monsters, combing sources in Guam for anything suggestive.

  As the voice and video link was completed, Tem hooked in the communicator channel. A chubby, boyish face suddenly appeared on the screen in front of them.

  "Hey, I know him," said Alfeo. "I was in school with him, for tertiary vacuum survival. You remember, the courses over in Hipparchus. He's no alien."

  Tem gestured him to silence. The voice circuit had corrected for Doppler shift and was now tuned correctly to the sending frequency of the ship.

  "This is Pearl, requesting approach trajectory approval and parking orbit assignment, Earth equatorial," said Green's holo. "Repeat, this is Pearl. Farside, please acknowledge signal and confirm orbit."

  Alfeo threw in the send circuit, permitting the computer to provide a message acceptance and a video link of Alfeo and Tem as they worked at the console.

  "Acceptance received," said Green, after a moment's pause. Then he blinked and leaned forward in his chair, obviously looking at his own screen. "Is that Alf—what was it?—Massey? What are you doing on Farside duty?"

  "I'm not sure. Penance, maybe," said Alfeo. "And it's Masti, not Massey. And you're Park, right? Park Green. A better question is, what are you doing in that ship? She's not listed in Lloyd's, and she's very peculiar looking."

  "Watch those comments, sonny," broke in a new voice on the circuit. "Remember, handsome is as handsome does. Look, you and Park can socialize later. We need the highest priority circuit you can give us to Laszlo Dolmetsch. Is he on Earth or on the Moon?"

  Grad held back his questions, responding to the note of authority and urgency in the unknown voice.

  "Last thing I heard, he was on Earth," he replied. "That was a week or so ago. I'll try and track him. Meanwhile, I'm giving you a slot that will take you to LEO, eight hundred kilometers perigee, zero inclination. I don't know if you'll be able to get landing permission. With the emergency down there, we've got a ban on everything except top-priority traffic down to the surface."

  "We heard that things are getting bad. The newscasts on the way in were full of it." The four-tenths of a second round-trip delay between Pearl and Farside Station was decreasing steadily as the ship flew closer on her lunar fly-by. "Anyway, there's no way that Betha could land on Earth. She's not right for it."

  "What's the problem?" said Alfeo. "Need a special suit? They can fly one out to you from the Libration Colonies, if you're willing to wait a day for it. Where is Betha, anyway?" He stared hard at the screen. "All we're picking up is a picture of you, Park."

  "I'd need a special suit, all right," said Mestel. "But I'll guarantee they don't have one that would fit me. How are you doing on that circuit to Dolmetsch?Do you have it yet?"

  Alfeo glanced across at the computer output. "We know just where he is now. He's down on Earth meeting with a group from the General Coordinators. I don't have the priority codes that will let me interrupt a session there. I can get a short message to him, that's about all. There's no way that I can give you a two-way unless he wants to initiate it from that end."

  "Fine. Send him this message," said the invisible voice. "It's short enough. Tell him that it's Lungfish Project, Phase Two, calling."

  "Lungfish Project," said Tem, keying in a second connection. "Right. But what about a message for him?"

  "That's all you need. He'll be on the circuit fast, unless the shock knocks him flat."

  "But who are you?" persisted Tem. His own curiosity was thoroughly aroused. "Don't you even want to give him your name? You must be a friend of his."

  "I was a friend of his long before you two were cutting teeth. But I haven't seen him for a long time, and I've changed a little since then. If you can send a video with the message, give him a shot of Pearl. There's no point in sending him the video signal that we're sending you."

  "You mean give him a picture of the ship?" Alfeo looked dubious. "You don't look like any ship in the Register. I thought I knew every type, but there's nothing that's anything like your size and shape. What sort of drive units do you have? They must be something special."

  "They're kernels," said Park Green, "with McAndrew plasma feeds. The same as the Titan freighters, but the bracing is all done internally, instead of externally. Pearl started out as a natural formation. It was an asteroid in the Egyptian Cluster."

  The two men on Farside duty looked again at the image on the screen, then at each other.

  "I guess that makes sense," said Tem Grad. "That way, Alf, she'd be in the natural feature listings, not in Lloyd's. Even so, I've never seen an asteroid that looked anything like that." He turned back to the screen. "You know, you should have applied for a re-classification, the way they did when they put drives on Icarus for the solar scoop. You should be classified now as interplanetary passenger."

  "Not quite," said Betha Mestel's voice. "For one thing, there's only one passenger—I count as crew. For another thing, as soon as I can get old Laszlo and be sure he'll act on what we're going to tell him, Pearl's status will change again. She'll be interstellar, not interplanetary."

  "What the devil is all this?" broke in an impatient voice on the incoming circuit. "If this is a hoax, you'd better be ready to answer to the General Coordinators. Who sent that message about Project Lungfish?"

  Alfeo turned nervously to the screen, where Dolmetsch's angry face glared out at them. "This is Farside Station, sir. We have a direct video link with Pearl, former asteroid of the Egyptian Cluster, now an interplanetary—interstellar—ship." He choked a little at the words, and looked at the other screen for moral support. "They requested a priority link to you at GCHQ, and asked that specific message to be sent to you."

  There was a perceptible pause as the messages went from Farside, through lunar low orbit relay, down to Earth via L-5 relay, then all the way back. Dolmetsch's face was a study as he saw the gleaming sphere appear on his screen. Confusion, alarm, and finally excitement showed there in turn, before he finally spoke again.

  "Is that Betha? Where are you? The picture that I'm getting can't be from the Cluster, it's much too clear."

  "I moved, Laszlo. You know, we were planning to do it anyway in a year or two. We felt we had to advance it. You may be able to guess why—the situation down on Earth, with the economic breakdown, and then the Logian changes to John Larsen. I'm flying Pearl around the Moon at this moment, piloting her down to low Earth orbit."

  Dolmetsch was nodding his head gloomily. With his great, beaked nose, he se
emed like some bird of prey ready to dive on its victim. "You're quite right about the situation here," he said. He sighed. "It's getting worse by the hour. We've even stopped trying to keep it secret. We are trying every empirical correction I know, but it's like a sandheap against a tidal wave. Is Robert there with you?"

  "No. He has already started on the other mission. Look, Laszlo, you know I can't come down to Earth. All the changes are still going well, and I'm ready to begin Phase Two. We've picked out the target star. There's no way I can approach a planetary surface, in this form. But both Robert and I felt that my appearance, here, might be the only way we could persuade you to act on the information that we want to give you."

  "Who's Robert?" said Alfeo to Tem in a low voice. "Weren't you telling me just a few hours ago that nothing interesting ever happens on Farside Watch?"

  "Come up and match us in orbit," went on Betha Mestel. "Then come over into Pearl. Bring the General Coordinators with you, as many as you can. They have to be persuaded even more than you do. The man who is with me, Park Green, will go back to Earth with you. He has all the materials that Robert left here—and he will have the general theory of stabilization with him."

  The pause before the answer came back was much longer than usual. When Dolmetsch spoke, his voice sounded guarded and suspicious.

  "Betha, we've known each other too long to lie, but I think you may be very mistaken. You know how long and hard we've looked for a general theory. I've said it before, many times, but let me say it again. The work I've done has been useful, no denying it. But at best I've been a Kepler or a Faraday. We're still waiting for our Newton and our Maxwell, to explain all my empirics with a few fundamentals—mathematical laws that underpin everything. Now, you're telling me we have it, just when we most need it. I find it hard to accept any coincidence that big. Are you trying to tell me that this fellow, Green, worked out the general theory, just like that?"

  "No. He's not an economic theorist, he doesn't know even the basics. Laszlo, I've learned something in the past month or two, and you'll have to learn it too. There is now an intellect present in the Solar System that makes you and Robert look like two children. Beginning with what he already knew of your work, he saw how to move to the underlying laws. It took him just a few weeks to do it."

  "Weeks!" Dolmetsch sounded even more sceptical. "And we've been working on it for many years. I'd like to meet your superman—and I'll want to see that theory, in detail, before I'll accept or use any of it."

  "You've met him already, but you won't be able to meet him now. I'll show you the theory when you get here. It's carried through far enough to define a set of corrective measures that you need to stop the economic oscillations."

  "Betha, that's impossible, general theory or no general theory. Don't you see, you have to treat the cause, not the symptoms. We have to know what it was that triggered the new oscillations."

  "I know. You'll understand too, when you see the formal evidence. We can tell you what started it, and you can check it for yourself. The root cause of the problems began the day of the first rumor that we had been contacted by aliens. In other words, the very day that John Larsen completed his change to a Logian form."

  Dolmetsch looked thoughtful. "The timing's right," he said grudgingly. "That's when it began, and since then things have gotten steadily worse. Go on, Betha."

  "You can do it for yourself. What's the most likely cause for the instabilities?"

  "Psychological perturbation." Dolmetsch frowned in concentration. "We've always suspected that a basic change in attitudes would be the most likely starting point for widespread instability. You're saying that the rumors about Larsen were the beginning? Maybe. People would change their views of many things if they thought aliens were here. Xenophobia is always a powerful force, and there are rumors about immortality and super-intelligence already running wild down here on Earth."

  He shook his head. "Betha, I'd love to believe you—but doesn't it just sound too unlikely, for the general theory to come along as a solution exactly when we need it?"

  "It would be, if the two events were independent. They're not. They are really one and the same. The Logian form produced the instability, and also created the intelligence that could understand it and develop a countermeasure. Not coincidence, consequence. There was one basic cause for both events—the Logian form-change."

  As the conversation proceeded, Pearl was swinging further around the Moon on her approach path to Earth orbit. When the geometry permitted it, the comlink to Earth was automatically re-routed through an alternate path by L-5 relay, and the reception of the signals at Farside began to fade. Tem and Alfeo bent over the screen, straining their ears for the weakening voices.

  "I'll be up there by the time that you arrive," said Dolmetsch. His voice was firm, and he seemed to have made up his mind. "You don't know how bad it is down here. If I wait longer before we begin new corrections, we may be too late to do any good. Can you begin sending me something here, as you fly in, so that I can get something going even before I get up there to meet you in orbit?"

  "No problem. We'll begin sending on a separate data circuit as soon as you can open one for us."

  The distortion in the signal received at Farside was growing rapidly. Alfeo had turned the gain to maximum, but the voices were fading in and out as the transmission to the Farside antenna was intercepted by the Lunar horizon.

  "And where is Robert Capman now?" asked Laszlo Dolmetsch, his voice a faint wisp of sound among the background.

  Tem and Alfeo crouched by the console, waiting for Mestel's reply.

  "What did she say?" whispered Tem.

  Alfeo shook his head. All they could hear was the amplified hiss of interplanetary static, seething and crackling with the noise from suns and planets. Betha Mestel's reply was gone forever, lost in the universal sea of radio emissions.

  Farside watch, when it wasn't simply boring, could be most irritating.

  Chapter 23

  Outside the orbit of Jupiter, the Solar System displays a different tempo, a new breadth of time and space. The pulse of Saturn, only fifteen million kilometers ahead of the ship but almost one and a half billion from the Sun, beats thirty times as slowly as Earth's, in its majestic revolution about the solar primary. The great planet, even at that distance, looked four times as big as the Moon seen from Earth. From the angle of Bey's approach, the rings made the planet seem almost twice its solid width.

  Bey looked at the display that marked the time to rendezvous. Just a few ship-days to go, and he wasn't sure of the speed of the reverse-change process. He suspected that it would be fast—the sophistication of all the form-change equipment on the ship was an order of magnitude better than most commercial installations, and many of the programs in the change library were unfamiliar. Even so, it would be better to go into the tank a little early, rather than a little late.

  Capman would wait for him—that wasn't the issue. Bey didn't want to wait any longer than he had to, to hear Capman's explanations, and to confirm the ideas that had been fermenting in his mind ever since his departure from Earth. Longer than that, really. Bey thought back to his own first reaction, years earlier, when John Larsen had told him of the liver without an ID.

  The data bank on the ship, primed by Betha Mestel, had informed him of Pearl's mission, bearing back to Earth the precious stabilization equations. It had told him nothing about his own mission. Bey sighed. He would know soon enough.

  He took a last look at the ringed planet, growing steadily ahead of him, and at the Sun—still the wrong color—shrunk to a fiery pinpoint, far behind. With a little reluctance, knowing that a boring time was ahead in the tank, Bey set all the ship controls to automatic. He climbed slowly into the form-change tank in the central part of the ship, called out the necessary program, and began the change.

  By luck or skill, his timing had been good. When he emerged from the tank, the vast bulk of Saturn was filling the sky ahead, like a mottled and str
iated balloon. The trajectory maintenance system was already operating. The ship was past the outer satellites, moving from Enceladus to Mimas, then beyond, heading for a bound orbit inside the innermost ring of the planet.

  Bey looked back at the Sun. It was only a hundredth of its familiar area, but now it was the usual yellow orb, with all traces of blue-violet gone. The tackiness had gone from his lips. When he reached out to touch the control panel, his coordination already felt better. On the panel, the attention light was blinking steadily, like an insistent emerald lightning-bug.

  Bey had no nerves at all—or so he claimed. The tremor in his hand as he reached out to press the connect button had to be, he told himself, a lingering after-effect of the form-change procedure. He hesitated, swallowed, and finally pressed.

  The display gave him an immediate estimate of the direction and range of the signal being beamed to him. The other ship was less than ten thousand kilometers ahead of him, in a decaying orbit that would spiral it slowly and steadily down towards the upper atmosphere of Saturn. When the video signal appeared on the screen, Bey could examine the fittings of the other ship's interior. They were unfamiliar, neither form-change tank nor conventional living quarters. But the figure who crouched over the computer console was very familiar. There could be no mistaking that massive torso and wrinkled grey hide. Bey watched in silence for a few seconds, and finally realized that the other was unaware of his surveillance. The monitor must be on a different part of the console.

  "Well, John," said Bey at last. "Last time I saw you, I certainly didn't expect we would ever meet here. We've come a long way from the Form Control Office, haven't we?"

  The Logian figure swung around to face the video camera, and looked at Bey quietly through huge, luminous eyes.

  "Come on, John," said Bey, as the silence lengthened. "At least you might say hello to me."

  The broad face was inscrutable, but finally the head and upper body nodded and the fringed mouth opened.