by Isaac Asimov
And yet he sent the Far Star forward at little more than half the speed he might easily have maintained. There was still the question of the presence or absence of a habitable planet, and he was in no hurry to find out. Even after three days of approach, there was still nothing to be said about that, either way.
Or, perhaps, not quite nothing. Circling the star was a large gas giant. It was very far from its star and it gleamed a very pale yellow on its daylight side, which they could see, from their position, as a thick crescent.
Trevize did not like its looks, but he tried not to show it and spoke as matter-of-factly as a guidebook. “There’s a big gas giant out there,” he said. “It’s rather spectacular. It has a thin pair of rings and two sizable satellites that can be made out at the moment.”
Bliss said, “Most systems include gas giants, don’t they?”
“Yes, but this is a rather large one. Judging from the distance of its satellites, and their periods of revolution, that gas giant is almost two thousand times as massive as a habitable planet would be.”
“What’s the difference?” said Bliss. “Gas giants are gas giants and it doesn’t matter what size they are, does it? They’re always present at great distances from the star they circle, and none of them are habitable, thanks to their size and distance. We just have to look closer to the star for a habitable planet.”
Trevize hesitated, then decided to place the facts on the table. “The thing is,” he said, “that gas giants tend to sweep a volume of planetary space clean. What material they don’t absorb into their own structures will coalesce into fairly large bodies that come to make up their satellite system. They prevent other coalescences at even a considerable distance from themselves, so that the larger the gas giant, the more likely it is to be the only sizable planet of a particular star. There’ll just be the gas giant and asteroids.”
“You mean there is no habitable planet here?”
“The larger the gas giant, the smaller the chance of a habitable planet and that gas giant is so massive it is virtually a dwarf star.”
Pelorat said, “May we see it?”
All three now stared at the screen (Fallom was in Bliss’s room with the books).
The view was magnified till the crescent filled the screen. Crossing that crescent a distance above center was a thin dark line, the shadow of the ring system which could itself be seen a small distance beyond the planetary surface as a gleaming curve that stretched into the dark side a short distance before it entered the shadow itself.
Trevize said, “The planet’s axis of rotation is inclined about thirty-five degrees to its plane of revolution, and its ring is in the planetary equatorial plane, of course, so that the star’s light comes in from below, at this point in its orbit, and casts the ring’s shadow well above the equator.”
Pelorat watched raptly. “Those are thin rings.”
“Rather above average size, actually,” said Trevize.
“According to legend, the rings that circle a gas giant in Earth’s planetary system are much wider, brighter, and more elaborate than this one. The rings actually dwarf the gas giant by comparison.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Trevize. “When a story is handed on from person to person for thousands of years, do you suppose it shrinks in the telling?”
Bliss said, “It’s beautiful. If you watch the crescent, it seems to writhe and wriggle before your eyes.”
“Atmospheric storms,” said Trevize. “You can generally see that more clearly if you choose an appropriate wavelength of light. Here, let me try.” He placed his hands on the desk and ordered the computer to work its way through the spectrum and stop at the appropriate wavelength.
The mildly lit crescent went into a wilderness of color that shifted so rapidly it almost dazed the eyes that tried to follow. Finally, it settled into a red-orange, and, within the crescent, clear spirals drifted, coiling and uncoiling as they moved.
“Unbelievable,” muttered Pelorat.
“Delightful,” said Bliss.
Quite believable, thought Trevize bitterly, and anything but delightful. Neither Pelorat nor Bliss, lost in the beauty, bothered to think that the planet they admired lowered the chances of solving the mystery Trevize was trying to unravel. But, then, why should they? Both were satisfied that Trevize’s decision had been correct, and they accompanied him in his search for certainty without an emotional bond to it. It was useless to blame them for that.
He said, “The dark side seems dark, but if our eyes were sensitive to the range just a little beyond the usual long-wave limit, we would see it as a dull, deep, angry red. The planet is pouring infrared radiation out into space in great quantities because it is massive enough to be almost red-hot. It’s more than a gas giant; it’s a sub-star.”
He waited a little longer and then said, “And now let’s put that object out of our mind and look for the habitable planet that may exist.”
“Perhaps it does,” said Pelorat, smiling. “Don’t give up, old fellow.”
“I haven’t given up,” said Trevize, without true conviction. “The formation of planets is too complicated a matter for rules to be hard and fast. We speak only of probabilities. With that monster out in space, the probabilities decrease, but not to zero.”
Bliss said, “Why don’t you think of it this way? Since the first two sets of co-ordinates each gave you a habitable planet of the Spacers, then this third set, which has already given you an appropriate star, should give you a habitable planet as well. Why speak of probabilities?”
“I certainly hope you’re right,” said Trevize, who did not feel at all consoled. “Now we will shoot out of the planetary plane and in toward the star.”
The computer took care of that almost as soon as he had spoken his intention. He sat back in his pilot’s chair and decided, once again, that the one evil of piloting a gravitic ship with a computer so advanced was that one could never—never—pilot any other type of ship again.
Could he ever again bear to do the calculations himself? Could he bear to have to take acceleration into account, and limit it to a reasonable level? —In all likelihood, he would forget and pour on the energy till he and everyone on board were smashed against one interior wall or another.
Well, then, he would continue to pilot this one ship—or another exactly like it, if he could even bear to make so much of a change—always.
And because he wanted to keep his mind off the question of the habitable planet, yes or no, he mused on the fact that he had directed the ship to move above the plane, rather than below. Barring any definite reason to go below a plane, pilots almost always chose to go above. Why?
For that matter, why be so intent on considering one direction above and the other below? In the symmetry of space that was pure convention.
Just the same, he was always aware of the direction in which any planet under observation rotated about its axis and revolved about its star. When both were counterclockwise, then the direction of one’s raised arm was north, and the direction of one’s feet was south. And throughout the Galaxy, north was pictured as above and south as below.
It was pure convention, dating back into the primeval mists, and it was followed slavishly. If one looked at a familiar map with south above, one didn’t recognize it. It had to be turned about to make sense. And all things being equal, one turned north—and “above.”
Trevize thought of a battle fought by Bel Riose, the Imperial general of three centuries before, who had veered his squadron below the planetary plane at a crucial moment, and caught a squadron of vessels, waiting and unprepared. There were complaints that it had been an unfair maneuver—by the losers, of course.
A convention, so powerful and so primordially old, must have started on Earth—and that brought Trevize’s mind, with a jerk, back to the question of the habitable planet.
Pelorat and Bliss continued to watch the gas giant as it slowly turned on the viewscreen in a slow, slow back-somersault. The sunlit p
ortion spread and, as Trevize kept its spectrum fixed in the orange-red wavelengths, the storm-writhing of its surface became ever madder and more hypnotic.
Then Fallom came wandering in and Bliss decided it must take a nap and that so must she.
Trevize said to Pelorat, who remained, “I have to let go of the gas giant, Janov. I want to have the computer concentrate on the search for a gravitational blip of the right size.”
“Of course, old fellow,” said Pelorat.
But it was more complicated than that. It was not just a blip of the right size that the computer had to search for, it was one of the right size and at the right distance. It would still be several days before he could be sure.
61.
Trevize walked into his room, grave, solemn—indeed somber—and started perceptibly.
Bliss was waiting for him and immediately next to her was Fallom, with its loincloth and robe bearing the unmistakable fresh odor of steaming and vacupressing. The youngster looked better in that than in one of Bliss’s foreshortened nightgowns.
Bliss said, “I didn’t want to disturb you at the computer, but now listen. —Go on, Fallom.”
Fallom said, in its high-pitched musical voice, “I greet you, Protector Trevize. It is with great pleasure that I am ap—ad—accompanying you on this ship through space. I am happy, too, for the kindness of my friends, Bliss and Pel.”
Fallom finished and smiled prettily, and once again Trevize thought to himself: Do I think of it as a boy or as a girl or as both or as neither?
He nodded his head. “Very well memorized. Almost perfectly pronounced.”
“Not at all memorized,” said Bliss warmly. “Fallom composed this itself and asked if it would be possible to recite it to you. I didn’t even know what Fallom would say till I heard it said.”
Trevize forced a smile, “In that case, very good indeed.” He noticed Bliss avoided pronouns when she could.
Bliss turned to Fallom and said, “I told you Trevize would like it. —Now go to Pel and you can have some more reading if you wish.”
Fallom ran off, and Bliss said, “It’s really astonishing how quickly Fallom is picking up Galactic. The Solarians must have a special aptitude for languages. Think how Bander spoke Galactic merely from hearing it on hyperspatial communications. Those brains may be remarkable in ways other than energy transduction.”
Trevize grunted.
Bliss said, “Don’t tell me you still don’t like Fallom.”
“I neither like nor dislike. The creature simply makes me uneasy. For one thing, it’s a grisly feeling to be dealing with a hermaphrodite.”
Bliss said, “Come, Trevize, that’s ridiculous. Fallom is a perfectly acceptable living creature. To a society of hermaphrodites, think how disgusting you and I must seem—males and females generally. Each is half of a whole and, in order to reproduce, there must be a temporary and clumsy union.”
“Do you object to that, Bliss?”
“Don’t pretend to misunderstand. I am trying to view us from the hermaphroditic standpoint. To them, it must seem repellent in the extreme; to us, it seems natural. So Fallom seems repellent to you, but that’s just a short-sighted parochial reaction.”
“Frankly,” said Trevize, “it’s annoying not to know the pronoun to use in connection with the creature. It impedes thought and conversation to hesitate forever at the pronoun.”
“But that’s the fault of our language,” said Bliss, “and not of Fallom. No human language has been devised with hermaphroditism in mind. And I’m glad you brought it up, because I’ve been thinking about it myself. —Saying ‘it,’ as Bander itself insisted on doing, is no solution. That is a pronoun intended for objects to which sex is irrelevant, and there is no pronoun at all for objects that are sexually active in both senses. Why not just pick one of the pronouns arbitrarily, then? I think of Fallom as a girl. She has the high voice of one, for one thing, and she has the capacity of producing young, which is the vital definition of femininity. Pelorat has agreed; why don’t you do so, too? Let it be ‘she’ and ‘her.’ ”
Trevize shrugged. “Very well. It will sound peculiar to point out that she has testicles, but very well.”
Bliss sighed. “You do have this annoying habit of trying to turn everything into a joke, but I know you are under tension and I’ll make allowance for that. Just use the feminine pronoun for Fallom, please.”
“I will.” Trevize hesitated, then, unable to resist, said, “Fallom seems more your surrogate-child every time I see you together. Is it that you want a child and don’t think Janov can give you one?”
Bliss’s eyes opened wide. “He’s not there for children! Do you think I use him as a handy device to help me have a child? It is not time for me to have a child, in any case. And when it is time, it will have to be a Gaian child, something for which Pel doesn’t qualify.”
“You mean Janov will have to be discarded?”
“Not at all. A temporary diversion, only. It might even be brought about by artificial insemination.”
“I presume you can only have a child when Gaia’s decision is that one is necessary; when there is a gap produced by the death of an already-existing Gaian human fragment.”
“That is an unfeeling way of putting it, but it is true enough. Gaia must be well proportioned in all its parts and relationships.”
“As in the case of the Solarians.”
Bliss’s lips pressed together and her face grew a little white. “Not at all. The Solarians produce more than they need and destroy the excess. We produce just what we need and there is never a necessity of destroying—as you replace the dying outer layers of your skin by just enough new growth for renewal and by not one cell more.”
“I see what you mean,” said Trevize. “I hope, by the way, that you are considering Janov’s feelings.”
“In connection with a possible child for me? That has never come up for discussion; nor will it.”
“No, I don’t mean that. —It strikes me you are becoming more and more interested in Fallom. Janov may feel neglected.”
“He’s not neglected, and he is as interested in Fallom as I am. She is another point of mutual involvement that draws us even closer together. Can it be that you are the one who feels neglected?”
“I?” He was genuinely surprised.
“Yes, you. I don’t understand Isolates any more than you understand Gaia, but I have a feeling that you enjoy being the central point of attention on this ship, and you may feel cut out by Fallom.”
“That’s foolish.”
“No more foolish than your suggestion that I am neglecting Pel.”
“Then let’s declare a truce and stop. I’ll try to view Fallom as a girl, and I shall not worry excessively about you being inconsiderate of Janov’s feelings.”
Bliss smiled. “Thank you. All is well, then.”
Trevize turned away, and Bliss then said, “Wait!”
Trevize turned back and said, just a bit wearily, “Yes?”
“It’s quite clear to me, Trevize, that you’re sad and depressed. I am not going to probe your mind, but you might be willing to tell me what’s wrong. Yesterday, you said there was an appropriate planet in this system and you seemed quite pleased. —It’s still there, I hope. The finding hasn’t turned out to be mistaken, has it?”
“There’s an appropriate planet in the system, and it’s still there,” said Trevize.
“Is it the right size?”
Trevize nodded. “Since it’s appropriate, it’s of the right size. And it’s at the right distance from the star as well.”
“Well, then, what’s wrong?”
“We’re close enough now to analyze the atmosphere. It turns out that it has none to speak of.”
“No atmosphere?”
“None to speak of. It’s a nonhabitable planet, and there is no other circling the sun that has even the remotest capacity for habitability. We have come up with zero on this third attempt.”
62.
Pelorat, looking grave, was clearly unwilling to intrude on Trevize’s unhappy silence. He watched from the door of the pilot-room, apparently hoping that Trevize would initiate a conversation.
Trevize did not. If ever a silence seemed stubborn, his did.
And finally, Pelorat could stand it no longer, and said, in a rather timid way, “What are we doing?”
Trevize looked up, stared at Pelorat for a moment, turned away, and then said, “We’re zeroing in on the planet.”
“But since there’s no atmosphere—”
“The computer says there’s no atmosphere. Till now, it’s always told me what I’ve wanted to hear and I’ve accepted it. Now it has told me something I don’t want to hear, and I’m going to check it. If the computer is ever going to be wrong, this is the time I want it to be wrong.”
“Do you think it’s wrong?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Can you think of any reason that might make it wrong?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then why are you bothering, Golan?”
And Trevize finally wheeled in his seat to face Pelorat, his face twisted in near-despair, and said, “Don’t you see, Janov, that I can’t think of anything else to do? We drew blanks on the first two worlds as far as Earth’s location is concerned, and now this world is a blank. What do I do now? Wander from world to world, and peer about and say, ‘Pardon me. Where’s Earth?’ Earth has covered its tracks too well. Nowhere has it left any hint. I’m beginning to think that it will see to it that we’re incapable of picking up a hint even if one exists.”
Pelorat nodded, and said, “I’ve been thinking along those lines myself. Do you mind if we discuss it? I know you’re unhappy, old chap, and don’t want to talk, so if you want me to leave you alone, I will.”
“Go ahead, discuss it,” said Trevize, with something that was remarkably like a groan. “What have I got better to do than listen?”
Pelorat said, “That doesn’t sound as though you really want me to talk, but perhaps it will do us good. Please stop me at any time if you decide you can stand it no longer. —It seems to me, Golan, that Earth need not take only passive and negative measures to hide itself. It need not merely wipe out references to itself. Might it not plant false evidence and work actively for obscurity in that fashion?”