The Fleet of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  “We would fain do whatever we may be able, for your ease, pleasure, and purpose," she said. "You need not have sought me on the instant. An apartment stands prepared for you. If it lacks aught, I request of you that you demand the thing."

  "Many thanks." While his Lunarian was reasonably fluent, he had never mastered all the nuances and elegances. In his speaker, it bore the mark of his mother tongue, American English of the late twentieth century, as did every modern language he had acquired along the way. "I will. But I'm in no hurry about settling down, whereas when your officer told me you wanted a private meeting, that got me impatient."

  She took him at his word. "Yes, it seemed to me that before we hail you publicly, Lord Guthrie, you and I should hold a quiet talk or two."

  "That's fine by me, my lady. I'm not much for banquets and toasts—not in this shape I've currently got. But, um, mightn't it cause trouble?"

  "Nay, I've seen to that. My fellows of the seigneury know they will encounter you presently. They care not to show themselves overly eager."

  He made a chuckle. "Beneath their dignity, eh?"

  "Rather, beneath their desire," she said a trifle coldly.

  "Right. I'm sorry, I misspoke." Same Lunarians as ever, he thought. To them, scrambling for a chance to get next to somebody famous is a Terran trick, a monkey trick. They're no more capable of being snubbed than a cat is. But in their own fashion, they can be almighty touchy. "No offense meant."

  She nodded, took a nacreous goblet off the table, and sipped of the wine in it. Although she couldn't have provided him refreshment in any event, this might well be a subtle means of putting him in his place.

  He brushed it off. "What I intended to say," he told her, "was that it's been a long spell since our two breeds met in person. Neither knows a lot about what the other's been up to. I'd hate for any of your colleagues to suspect I was trying to work some stunt, when in fact my mission is perfectly straightforward."

  She gave him a new smile. “Fear not. I hold the balance here."

  In other words, he thought, they'd see no point in worrying about a conspiracy; she can slap them down all by herself anytime she wants to. Or so she's claiming. I suppose I hope that's right. You're never quite sure with Lunarians. "I see. And, naturally, the two of us can clear away misunderstandings faster than a conference would. There must be some misunderstandings on both sides. Dialogue's kind of slow and awkward across light-years."

  "Truly the waiting for you grew long," she sighed. "Also to me, who am not young."

  "Easier for me. I... slept through it."

  She gave him a narrow look. "You were able to."

  Did she think of him as machine, rather than as transformed human? That could make for a terrible hindrance. He'd better explore attitudes a little before getting down to facts. "Lunarians can too, you know, if they want. We'd give any visitors to Beta Hydri a royal welcome."

  The chill became unmistakable. “You should know that that will never happen."

  Yes, he thought, he should, though more from the history he had witnessed than from word received since the last Terrans forsook Demeter. While Lunarians of Alpha Centauri had taken a leading part in the development of the field drive, no download of one had ever fared in a c-ship. Had any Lunarians ever downloaded at all, anywhere, for any reason?

  Test the waters, he thought. She may get mad at me, but she won't kick me out, not when I might have something worth her while.

  "I wasn't thinking of an existence like mine here," he said. "I was thinking of how we evacuated nearly everybody before the crash. Your traveler could do the same. Download but stay inactivated en route. Take along his genome specs. Amaterasu Mother would be happy to grow a flesh-and-blood body for him and reload his mind into it. Or hers, or theirs."

  "You speak as if that can be done as easily as transcription of a recording. It is not so."

  "Well, no, 'fraid not. And most likely it never will be."

  "We need suckle no Life Mother, we who cringe not from Father Death."

  Their sentiments haven't changed, Guthrie thought. Like their ancestors, they flat-out won't live the way they'd have to for rebirth, integral with a living world that's dominated by a person wiser and mightier than we will ever be, a quasi-goddess—no matter how loving she is or how much personal liberty she gives us. They can't endure having superiors. That must be a strong root of their hatred for the cybercosm at Sol.... The idea had passed through him, over and over, for centuries.

  “My notion was that the adventure would be worth an emotional price," he said. "And afterward, the freedom of all space-time."

  "But no freedom within."

  More than once he had had to decide whether he would rather die on his feet or live on his knees, and had always chosen the first. Regardless, he knew he would never really understand this stark feeling of hers. Terran and Lunarian were two separate species—they couldn't even interbreed—and that was that.

  "Pardon me," he yielded. "I hope I haven't said anything too distasteful. It's true, your travelers would be stuck amongst us, not having a Life Mother here to come back to. But how about you sending us a sophotect? It wouldn't just register data like a robot; it would have actual experiences to share with you when it returned."

  Her lips tightened. "We have no sophotects. We will not." After a moment, as if seeking to reduce the tension: "They do keep some at Proserpina, but those are few, and severely limited. Our race has seen far too well that land to which a cybercosm would bring us."

  Now we're getting to the point I was trying for! thought Guthrie. "You approach my main reason for coming here, my lady. You're in closer touch with Sol than any Terran colony can ever be. But we've gotten worried ourselves, you know. An alliance with you makes sense."

  She took up her goblet again, stepped over to the well, and stared for a minute at the streaming stars before she looked his way again and replied, "Maychance there is a certain commonalty of interests. We must consider it together, you and I, I and my compeers."

  "I don't expect you to empty a bucket of information over my head right away," Guthrie conceded. "And at first I'll be keeping my own cards pretty close to my vest, if you'll bear with the scrambled metaphors." She'd hardly recognize his reference to a long-forgotten game, but he expected that she would catch his drift. "However, today we can save time and trouble if you'll be so kind as to lay out what I'm bound to learn sooner or later. For my part, ask me whatever you want, and I'll give you either an honest answer or none."

  She purred a laugh and came back toward him. "Your bluntness is arousing, Lord Guthrie. Much have I studied olden accounts and showings of you, yet this daycycle promises more pleasure than I envisioned."

  "Thanks. Likewise." With a rueful interior grin: "It'd be still more fun for me if this self of mine were a man."

  She laughed louder and made a sinuous gesture. "Ho-ay, and for me!"

  She probably has at least two husbands, phyle alliances—Guthrie thought—and God knows how many lovers. Hell on wheels in bed, I'll bet.

  The longing to be human gripped him suddenly and cruelly. He pried it loose.

  "Tell me, then, what you have in mind," Jendaire was . saying.

  He spread his hands in lieu of a shrug. “That'll depend on what I learn here, and what help I can get from you people. Which is why I took the long way around instead of making straight for Sol."

  A frown crossed the clear brow. "It would have been ill-advised, my lord," she said slowly.

  "Maybe. Repeat, that's what I'm here to find out. If I can."

  "Mean you that we might mislead you?" This time she didn't seem affronted. Well, to her, chicanery was perfectly okay. "What end of ours could deception serve?''

  "None, I suppose, But you are, well, partisan. Unavoidably. Who isn't, one way or another? Look, though. You're in contact with Proserpina. Earth too?"

  "With its Synesis and cybercosm?" Scornfully: "Nay, not at all. Liefer would we discover how close their contac
t is with us."

  "Spy robots, you mean?"

  "What else? We have detected a number of them in space, destroyed three, captured one."

  A hunter's thrill cast the lingering regrets out of Guthrie. He kept his tone level. "Yeah, the cybercosm, even this Teramind your news to us has mentioned, it's bound by the laws of physics, hm? Instruments can only be so small if they're to do their jobs. What'd you learn from that prize you took?"

  She spread her fingers. It corresponded to a shrug of her own. "Scant, I am told. The design is too alien. You shall talk with our scientists."

  Yes, thought Guthrie, if the cybercosm hasn't shared all its technology with humans, what it's kept back is sure to be way in advance of theirs, maybe close to whatever limits nature sets. But as for those, well, for instance, you can't travel or transmit faster than light, not nohow, and we with our c-ships are pushing that. No, we aren't necessarily doomed. Nor necessarily destined to win.

  "Surveillance doesn't have to mean hostility," he said. "I'd call it natural to want to know how we're doing."

  "Then why have they not asked us?" she challenged.

  "Yeah, Earth did break off communications a long time ago. Said there was no more point in it, as far apart as the societies had grown. Which never looked quite reasonable to me, but I figured, like most of us at the time, that sophotects and machine-partnered humans could have developed a very different psychology from us. Anyway, we had enough else to keep us busy."

  "Nor did they ever respond," Jendaire pursued, "though well you must remember how the Centaurians called to them, over and over, before finally giving it up." She paused before stating: "Eyach, now the Proserpinans have begun. From them we have heard that in the Solar System the story was that we, the Centaurians, were those who broke off the discourse."

  Guthrie was not surprised. "Yes, I figured that would be the case. If governments have no other reason to lie, they will from force of habit. But this particular flimflam suggests that something goddamn funny has been going on. Plus everything else you told us on the laser that the Proserpinans had told you—antimatter production starting up after a long hiatus, and what appear to be
  "Somewhat, year by year. You shall see the details."

  "M-m-m.. . . Do they have field-drive ships by now?"

  "They are beginning to. Twelve years agone"—that would be about fifteen of Earth's—"we decided to take whatever risk might lie in revealing to them the science and technology of it. A part of the risk was simply that while that immense volume of data was in transmission, scant bandwidth remained for aught else."

  Guthrie's phantom self nodded; his turret could not. A bundle to send indeed. Sure, it'd become known already in his first lifetime that the vacuum is not passive emptiness; it roils with the creation and annihilation of virtual particles, its energy shapes the conformation and evolution of the universe. Laboratory observations had lent their evidence: the Lamb shift, the Casimir effect, he couldn't immediately recall what else—but how tiny, all of it, how insignificant. It seemed as though nothing less than the entire cosmos was big enough and endured long enough to feel the whole reality.... Had the freshness of new worlds—and new minds, new human species—and of ongoing spacefaring, had that been what brought a fresh insight, mathematics, theoretical investigation, empirical tests, devices, demonstrations, and suddenly the new ships? Interaction between the quantum states of matter and the quantum states of the vacuum—direct thrust, momentum still conserved, but the momentum of the plenum—no more need for jets and their horrible wastefulness—

  When first he heard about the possibility, Guthrie had in imagination reached back to shake the hand of an unknown prehistoric man, paddling his dugout, who thought to raise something that would catch the wind.

  Jendaire grinned. "But if naught else," she said, "this speed that Proserpina has gained ought to discomfit the powers that be on Earth."

  He must not let himself get carried away. "That's assuming your suspicions of them are warranted," he said. "Right now I frankly don't know. None of us do at Amaterasu, nor, as far as I can tell, on Isis or Hestia."

  "You are Terran," she retorted. "You see things otherwise than we do."

  "Uh-huh. Well, you Lunarians may have a good case. I'm here to listen."

  Her nostrils flared, her slenderness tautened. ."Then hearken to this. Lunarians are extinct upon Luna."

  "Yes, I know from your message, and it did shock us on Amaterasu. It looks as though orbiting that Habitat and encouraging Terrans to move in was deliberate government policy." But there could have been justifications, Guthrie thought. How I do remember what troublemakers Lunarians are apt to be—from a Terran viewpoint, at least. And it isn't as if a pogrom were mounted against them or anything like that. "Nevertheless, my lady, I need to know more. Remember how new I am to this slew of news. What else have the Proserpinans told you, especially while I've been in transit?"

  With characteristic swiftness, her mood cooled. "Rather little," she admitted. "They have attempted closer surveillance missions than erstwhile to the inner Solar System, with their field-drive vessels, but the gain has been slight. Those vessels are few as yet, and experience in their use lies mainly futureward. Also, truth to tell, they wish more to employ the capability in expanding outward through the realm of the comets." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "And thus, at last, starward."

  Yes, he thought, the Oort Cloud of comets reached so far and far that its outermost fringes mingled with the comet clouds of neighbor suns. You didn't really need downloading and c-ships to go forth into the galaxy. Enduring adventurousness was enough.

  "One fine trait you Lunarians have," he remarked. "You don't want conquest or power, at least for their own sweet sakes." Pride and greed could become murderous—he reflected—but as matters for the individual or, at most, for the clan. No Lunarians would ever perpetrate a nation-state.

  "But let's just see—" he went on. "Have you yourselves, here at Centauri, improved your spacecraft designs?"

  "Nay, little since you evacuated Demeter," she said. "Ey, we have launched robotic exploratory interstellar missions. But we have no cause to send off emigrants. Riches and wonders abundant lie virginal around the Centauri suns." She gazed beyond him. "The more true when shards of Demeter and Phaethon swing ever outward. Lately a prospecting expedition came upon a steel-frame house, ruined but recognizable, cast loose in some unlikely wise and orbiting free...."

  His spirit shuddered a bit. Aloud, as calmly as possible: "Okay. You do have a few c-ships. Uh, to make sure we understand each other, by c-ships I mean small field-drive craft with minimal payloads, which can come near light-speed because their mass is so little."

  "Yes, that is clear. Like yours. I have wondered whence you took its name."

  "From a boyhood hero of mine. Never mind. You must also have a larger number of cruisers of various classes. By that I mean bigger field-drive ships, with considerably more carrying capacity, though they can't manage c-like delta v's."

  "We have such. You shall, since you wish it, learn what those classes are and what they can do. I tell you . now, forasmuch as you touched on the matter, we possess none that can bear a load of colonists in cold sleep to a different star, for as said, we have ample frontier close at hand."

  Come the time, Guthrie thought, doubtless they would build vessels like that. Probably the duration of a voyage by humans in suspended animation would always be limited to a century or two. If nothing else, beyond that there'd be too much accumulated radiation damage. Inactive DNA couldn't repair it, and while nanotech performed remarkable feats, it was no magic wand. But a hundred Earth-years, or less, was plenty of time to reach nearby stars, given top speeds of a few percent of light's. And Lunarians need go no farther on any single venture. They didn't require planets. What they wanted were asteroids and moons. They lived and reproduced healthily
under low gravity, down to no gravity at all.

  It was different for Terrans. They had to have a minimum third of a g under them. And, okay, some had settled on Mars; but the tremendous journey to another sun simply wasn't worth the cost unless, at the far end, you could walk out in your shirtsleeves; and worlds where life had arisen to liberate oxygen and nitrogen were sorrowfully rare.

  It needn't be like that forever. Someday humans of the Terran kind would make dead planets over from scratch. The task was almost unthinkably huge. Consider the energy spent in those chemical conversions, that grinding of rock into soil and purifying of the waters.... Nature on Earth had taken the better part of a billion years doing it, before the globe was ready for the earliest primitive life. Air had not become humanly breathable for about another billion years, as near as Guthrie remembered. People didn't have that kind of time.... But someday, given sufficient marshaled resources, natural and technological and spiritual, they should be able to start making homes for themselves throughout the galaxy ... at last, throughout the universe.

  Someday. They weren't there yet by a long shot. Maybe they'd never get there. Maybe they'd never be allowed to.

  His mind had wandered. At electrophotonic speeds, though, it had been gone for only a fraction of a second. "I pretty well expected this, my lady," he said to Jendaire.

  She arched her brows. "What more have you expected, my lord?"

  If he had been generating a face-image, he could have grinned at her. He settled for putting cheeriness into his tone.

  "I told you, that'll depend on what I discover here about the general situation. But my strong hunch is that I'll try to talk you into providing me with a cruiser, and assorted gear, for my trip on to Sol."

  She did not completely mask surprise. "A cruiser? We were prepared to refuel your c-ship, but—but even a light cruiser will take some thirty years for the journey."

  "About what I've spent so far. How well I know," he said. "Look, my lady. I've arrived damn near helpless. You can have your men squash me like a cockroach if you'-ve a mind to." Fleetingly: Has she ever heard of cockroaches? "I don't want to reach Sol under the same handicap. I'm hoping you'll see fit to send me on with much more under my belt. That's another reason I've come via Centauri. A cruiser voyage straight from Hydri would've taken ridiculously long."