Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Garabed shrugged. “It was still a reasonable bet. We have artificial gravity, and a field drive system which can be described as a space warp without lying too grossly. It still seems to me that those should ease us into FTL flight before I’m very much older.”

  “In spite of the fact that both the gadgets you mention were developed on the assumption that Einstein was right? And that even the warp which makes a portable fusion engine practical is an Einstein application? I seem to be missing a rung or two in your ladder of logic.”

  Garabed glanced at the captain before answering. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “In spite of that.”

  “And in spite of the fact that this trip was only a political gesture to quiet the people who don’t think Earth is home enough? And that there were long, loud screams about the better things which could be done with the resources which went into the Manzara and her equipment? Why-should—we-explore-the-stars, practically-no-chance-of-life, a-waste-of-resources, we’ve-solved-all-our-real-problems, let’s-sit-back-and-live? You’ve heard it all.”

  “Sure I have.” Garabed did not look at the captain this time. “But people are still curious—that’s what makes them people. Once we were on the way some of them were bound to want to find out what we’d see—first. It’s being human. You have the same drive, whether you want to admit it or not; I’ll show you.” He reached across and flicked off the display in the computer’s tank. “How sure are you that there’s nothing really unexpected to be found in the Sirius system? And would you bet there isn’t a clue to it in your data banks right now?”

  The older man looked into the blank display unit, and thought. The kid might have seen something, though Sforza himself should have noticed anything important; it was certainly possible. On the other hand, Sforza had known the young con artist to bluff his way out of one or another of the ship’s less popular jobs on at least four occasions during the trip, three of them at Sforza’s own expense. Had there been anything surprising on the display? Something he should, of course, have seen himself?

  The captain had come over to the ballistics console to look for herself, though she of course said nothing. She knew, far better than Sforza, that Garabed might not be bluffing.

  The ballistician hesitated a moment longer, straining his memory with no useful result, and decided to take a chance.

  “All right. Two hours’ worth.” He put the slugs he had just won on the panel before him. Garabed covered them with two more, and turned the display back on. For a moment there was silence. “What was the time limit on this?” the older man finally asked. The captain, unseen behind him, smiled and slipped back to her own station, where she busied herself at the intercom. The instrument specialist paid no obvious attention to her; the smile on his face might have been simply one of triumph.

  “No time needed. Look at the white dwarf’s radial velocity”

  “I see it. So what? You wouldn’t expect it to match A’s. Even a fifty-year orbit means a few kilos per second—”

  “Changing how fast?” asked Garabed pointedly.

  “Not very—” Sforza fell silent again, glued his eyes to the display, and within a minute the eyebrows were climbing toward the desert above. “It’s changing!”

  “How right you are. Do you pay now, or calculate first?”

  Sforza waved the slugs away with an impatient gesture of his head; his fingers were already busy. He didn’t stop to wonder why the velocity variation had not been spotted sooner; it was obvious enough. The axis of the previously unknown orbit must point almost exactly at the Solar system. The Manzara was now so close to the Sirius group that the A star and the white dwarf appeared fully forty degrees apart, and the ship was well off the line between Sol and the dwarf. Hence, there was a radial velocity component not previously detectable.

  This clue to the line of the orbit axis permitted an assumption which would otherwise have been a wide-open guess in Sforza’s computation. He plugged it in, let the spectral sensors which Garabed kept in such good condition feed their readings and the Manzara’s clock signals in after it, and waited until the display steadied. Then, and only then, did he speak.

  “Take your pirated money, and call Physics and Policy—”

  “They’re coming,” the captain interjected quietly. Sforza continued.

  “The white dwarf is in a nearly perfect-circle orbit with something too small to see, but of comparable mass. The period is seven hundred seventy-two seconds. The dwarf is thirty-two thousand miles from the barycenter, orbital speed two hundred seventy-seven miles per second—”

  “Miles?” queried Sarjuk. “I can sympathize with the Creative Anachronism urge, but—”

  “Fifty-one thousand five hundred, four hundred forty-six. The invisible body’s radius vector is open until we can get a mass ratio, but can hardly be more than a few tens of thousands of kilometers. We have a dividend. It’s either a neutron star or—”

  “Or nothing,” pointed out the captain. “It can’t be more massive than the total previously measured for Sirius B—point nine suns. Too little for a black hole.”

  Garabed was nodding slowly, his face nearly expressionless, but both his companions could tell he was containing strong excitement. His only words, however, formed a terse question.

  “New flight plan, Captain?”

  The Manzara had been free-falling in an orbit intended to make a close swing past Sirius B, enter a slingshot transfer to A with a periastron distance from the latter of only a fifth of an astronomical unit, and a second sling to interception with the largest, outermost, and probably most Earthlike of A’s four planets.

  Sarjuk was by training an engineer specializing in safety extrapolation, which naturally included administrative psychology and hence qualified her for her present command status. She was certainly no ballistician, but she knew what a change in orbit meant in terms of fuel reserve—which after all was a major safety factor for the Manzara. In this case, of course, a good secondary-school student could have performed the appropriate calculations.

  “New flight plan, of course,” she agreed quietly. “But let’s hear what Physics wants before Mr. Sforza does any number work.” She swung her seat about as a dozen excited researchers entered the bridge, motioned them to the seats which ringed the chamber, and turned back to Garabed. “Jeb,” she asked, “can you possibly get anything with real resolving power to cover this object? I know it must be small, but until we know just how small and just where it is we’re going to be crippled in any planning. Sforza can give you the direction from the dwarf to the orbit center, and you can search along the projection of that line with whatever seems likely to work best. Build something if you have to.”

  Without waiting for the two men to get to work, she turned back to the newcomers and gave them a summary of the new information. They listened in near silence, their eyes never leaving her face until she had finished.

  “How close can we get?” Tikaki and Distoienko spoke almost in unison.

  “Will it take too much fuel to park beside it?” was the more thoughtful question from Dini Aymara, a warp theoretician. Tikaki answered instantly.

  “Of course not! Look—it’s a binary, with the two bodies similar in mass. All we’ll need is maneuvering power; we can use an orbit which will transfer our energy to one of the bodies instead of slinging us away. When we do want to leave, we can slingshot out in the same fashion. We can get as close to the neutron star as you want—meters, if your experiments need it—”

  “Three objections, Mr. Tikaki,” the captain spoke quietly still. “First, at a distance even of kilos, to say nothing of meters, not even our best cameras could get clear images—figure the orbital speed at such a distance. Second, neutron stars are likely to have strong magnetic fields, and there are plenty of conductors in this ship, starting with the main hull stringers. Finally, there is such a thing as tidal force. I will not permit this ship into a gee-gradient of more than five inverse-seconds squared, and only then if
all main and backup artificial gravity units are in perfect condition. Mr. Sforza, what distance would that tidal limit mean from the two bodies?” The ballistician had finished providing Garabed’s needed figures, and was able to answer the captain’s question almost instantly.

  “For the white dwarf it would be somewhere inside; you’ll be worrying about other things first. For the neutron star, it of course depends on the mass, which we don’t—”

  “I have it—at least, I have a respectable mass on the line you gave me, affecting the gravity-wave unit,” cut in Garabed.

  “Line?” responded Sforza. The instrument technician supplied a set of numbers which the ballistician’s fingers fed into his computer as they came; a set of luminous symbols appeared in the display tank, and were translated at once. “Mass is point three eight suns. The tidal limit distance you want is a hair under five thousand kilometers—about three quarters of an Earth radius.” The captain nodded, and glanced around the group. “I thought so. Gentlemen and ladies, the Manzara is half a kilometer long—not a point.” If she expected Tikaki to look properly sheepish or disgruntled she was disappointed. He simply nodded, and after a moment she went on. “Very well. If Mr. Sforza can warp us into a capture orbit without exceeding tidal and radiation limits, and without using more than five hundred kilograms of hydrogen, I approve a pass. If you can all work from the mass center of the pair, I set no time limit; those who want to stay will have to make their peace with those who want to get on to A and the planets. Engineers, let’s get the umbrella out. Mr. Sforza, report if we can’t conform to the restrictions I’ve set. Meeting adjourned.”

  The “umbrella” was a thin sheet of highly reflective, highly conducting alloy which could be mounted on the bow of the Manzara, giving her rather the appearance of a fat-stemmed mushroom. Like the hull itself, it could be cooled by Thompson-effect units whose radiators were ordinary incandescent searchlights, able to send the waste energy in any convenient direction. The whole unit was something of a makeshift, a late addition to the mission plan intended to permit a brief but very close pass by each of the stars being studied. It had to be set up manually, since it had not been included in the ship’s original specifications—and even a fusion-powered giant like the Manzara was rationed in the mass she could devote to automatic machinery. Once again, the versatility of the human researcher was being utilized.

  Space-suit work, still called EVA, was still taken seriously by those who had to perform it. There is a human tendency to ignore the dangers in a given action if they become familiar enough—people who cannot bring themselves to look down from a twelfth-story window are often quite casual about the equivalent energy exposure of driving a ground vehicle at sixty miles per hour. On the other hand, the high steel worker seems as casual about walking a twelve-inch beam five hundred feet above the street.

  There is, however, a difference. The professional high steel worker, or submarine engineer, or for that matter racing driver, has his apparent unconcern underlain by a solid foundation of hard-won safety habits which in turn grow from a fully conscious awareness of the dangers of his calling. Also, the professional does not like to be distracted by amateurs, though he will usually admit the necessity of devoting some time to the training of new professionals.

  Space workers are professionals—normally. Some two thirds of the Manzara’s personnel, however, were researchers whose space-suit and free-fall experience were strictly for the occasion. This would not by itself have been serious, since the ship’s space professionals could have put out the umbrella without their aid—and would have been glad to do so. Unfortunately, the makeshift aspect of the umbrella included the assumption that it could serve more than one purpose. It was basically protection for the ship, of course; but the ship was a research instrument, and it had been taken for granted that the umbrella would also serve the researchers directly. They would mount instruments on it. They would study, and alter, its own activity as it absorbed and converted the radiation flux.

  And during the year-and-a-half flight from the Solar system most of the scientists had improved their time developing new plans and projects to supplement the original programs and to replace them if unexpected conditions made them impractical. Consequently, the researchers expected to be on hand during the assembling and fitting of the umbrella.

  “How can I possibly wait until it’s set up?” Tikaki was hurt and indignant. “Look—four of these leads have to go through the mirror. I can’t possibly drill holes after the segments are assembled—I’ll have to groove the joints, and after they’re butted put in the interferometer units—”

  “Look—I obviously have to run impedance checks on every intersection junction as they’re put together.” Crandell was being patient. “Every stage of assembly will make changes in electrical and thermal properties of the whole unit. I can’t just use one term for the assembled unit—different segments will be getting their irradiation at different angles; it’s not a plane surface—”

  “Certainly these heat-flow meters have to be installed and calibrated during the assembly—” Cetsewayo was matter-of-fact.

  Captain Migna Sarjuk did not debate any of the issues. She did not point out that if any imperfections developed in the umbrella, all the proposed experiments would have to be cancelled because the Manzara would not be able to get close enough to either star to perform them. She assumed that the scientists knew this, just as an alcoholic knows what a cocktail will do to him. She was politely firm.

  “Nothing is attached to the umbrella until it is installed and its refrigeration system tested. After that, any installations will be done by engineers, engineers who know the umbrella systems and circuitry.”

  “But, Captain!” The howl was almost universal. “How can they—?” The details of the question varied, but the basis was constant and not very original. Scientific training does not always prevent a human being from falling in love with his own ideas and inventions; it does not always even let him recognize when he has done so. They had to install their own equipment—they had built it themselves, they had adjusted and calibrated it themselves, and no one else could be trusted to set it up properly for its intended use. Sarjuk was not even tempted, however, missionconscious though she was.

  On the other hand, she was not one to argue when it was not necessary. She used a technique which would not have been available to a ship’s captain on the oceans of Earth a century before: she made herself unavailable for policy discussion by going outside to oversee the work on the umbrella. At least, that was her declared purpose, and in view of her responsibilities and personality it was taken for granted by those inside that she was too busy to be interrupted by radioed arguments.

  She did, of course, oversee; she also relaxed. Space lacks the change, the sound, and the scents which impress human senses and combine to give planetary landscapes that subjective quality called beauty; but space, too, is beautiful, and the captain appreciated it. Between examinations of newly made connections she simply floated, drinking in her surroundings through the only sense available and reinforcing the visual images of the Milky Way, distant Sol, and blazing Sirius from the body of knowledge which was part of her heritage as a civilized, cultured being. She “saw” the four planets which the Manzara’s instruments had detected, just as she saw the more numerous and varied worlds of the Solar system and the frozen attendants of Proxima Centauri—she could look where she knew them to be, and let memory and imagination fill the gaps left by human sensory limitations.

  She spent more hours, perhaps, than she should have done at this combination of duty and pleasure. She was physically very tired, though emotionally refreshed, when she finally floated back to an air lock to face more argument from her scientists. She was met inside by Tikaki, who perhaps had been refreshed himself in some fashion during the past few hours; at least, he was changing tactics from pressure to compromise.

  “Captain, if we can’t do our own installing outside,” he suggested, “can w
e choose, or at least brief, the engineer who does it? Preferably the former, of course.”

  Sarjuk had known something of the sort was coming, of course; as her fatigue had mounted, out there in the blissful darkness, she had delayed her return out of reluctance to face it.

  But tired or not, Sarjuk was a professional. She was quite able to balance the overall safety of the Manzara against the reasons why the ship and crew were here at all. She was incapable of making a compromise which would be likely to cause total failure of the mission, but the idea of compromise itself did not bother her. She racked the helmet she had just removed, but made no move to get out of the rest of her vacuum armor as she considered the physicist’s proposal.

  “Whom would you select for your own installation job?” she asked after a moment.

  “Garabed, of course. He’s the best instrument specialist we have.” A shade of expression flickered across Sarjuk’s face.

  “That’s not because—” She cut off the remark, but Tikaki finished for her.

  “No, it’s not because he’s your husband. I wouldn’t budge an angstrom from my insistence on doing the job myself if I weren’t willing to admit how good he is—and you should know it!”

  She nodded. “Sorry. I do know it. Very well, I agree to the suggestion in principle, provided that Jeb—”

  “Provided that Jeb agrees? Who’s captain here?”

  “I am, Dr. Tikaki. Provided that Jeb has time enough after doing his routine work and the favors which three out of four of the so-ingenious researchers we have here keep asking of him when they can’t make their own improvisations work. I am quite aware that he is the best instrument specialist we have—and that everyone aboard this ship knows it. If you wish to put your suggestion to him, you may do so—when he comes in. Please be brief, however. He has been in a space suit for sixteen of the last twenty-four hours, and has just been delayed by another circuit problem in a Thompson unit. I don’t know when he will finish, but he is considerably more overdue for sleep than I am—and if you will excuse me, I am going off watch now.”