The Compleat McAndrew

by Charles Sheffield

  Unlike McAndrew, I could be quite as happy without the Cassiopeia supernova.

  I accuse McAndrew of things, but sometimes I wonder if I’m just as guilty myself.

  The Europan ocean is eerie and spectacular and unlike anything else in the Solar System. People talk about the silence of space, floating in the void beyond Neptune with all engines off. Fair enough. But I’ve been there, and I can tell you that it’s nothing like as uncanny as the quiet of Europa’s abyssal ocean, a hundred kilometer depth of water and above that a thick shield of ice-cap to seal you off from the rest of the Universe.

  I loved it. The young captain who piloted the Spindrift was half my age, flatteringly attentive, and a few times he allowed me to take the controls of the deep submersible. We drifted along just above the ocean floor, very slowly, so we would not disturb the sea-floor furrows with their rows of aperiodic self-reproducing crystals, Europa’s own contribution to life in the Solar System.

  Of course I stayed down longer than expected—as long as I could. When we finally surfaced through Blowhole it was because we were running low on air and supplies, not on interest. I looked at a calendar for the first time in a week and realized that McAndrew might have left and already returned. Chances were against that. My bet was, he was out at the solar focus, fooling around with his instruments and totally unaware of what day or week it was.

  Communication to space from the Europan deep ocean is difficult and reserved for emergencies, but it was easy enough to send messages from the surface station at Mount Ararat. I called the Penrose Institute, personal to McAndrew. Then I spent the seventy minute round-trip signal delay packing my bag in preparation for the ascent to Jovian system orbit.

  I rather expected a “Not Present” return signal, together with a message that he was out at the focus. Instead, when the screen filled it showed an image of McAndrew’s face. He was scowling, not at all like a man who had just returned from an exciting and successful journey.

  “Aye, Jeanie, I’m here.” His voice was decidedly mournful. “And I suppose you can come see me if you feel like it.”

  Not the world’s most enthusiastic invitation, even by McAndrew standards. What had happened to his supernova-generated excitement? The newcomer in Cassiopeia still blazed in the sky as brightly as ever, but there was no joy in McAndrew.

  Rather than attempting questions with seventy-minute delays on the answers, I said goodbye to Europa and headed sunward for the Institute.

  McAndrew didn’t meet me when I docked. That was all right. I had been to the Institute often enough, I knew the layout of the place, and I knew exactly where his office was. He would probably be there now, staring at the wall, theorizing, cracking his finger joints, oblivious to the passage of time. It was no surprise that he did not meet me.

  What did surprise me was old Doc Limperis, hovering near the lock when I emerged to the Institute’s interior. Limperis was long-retired as Director of the Institute, and he could have had his pick of Solar System locations. But as he said, where else would a man interested in physics want to be?

  He approached me, held out his hand, said, “Jeanie Roker, how are you?” and then continued without a pause for breath, “Maybe you can get through to him, because it’s certain sure none of us can.”

  He didn’t need to say who. For many years, Limperis had been McAndrew’s closest friend and champion at the Institute. All the same, it was a curious opening. Limperis possessed all the social skills that McAndrew lacked. He was not one to plunge straight into business.

  “It went badly?” I took my cue from him. “The trip to the solar focus didn’t work out the way it was supposed to?”

  “Not at all. The trip went very well. It is going very well.”

  It took me a second. “You have an expedition out there right now. And McAndrew’s not on it?”

  “That is correct.” Limperis led me away along the corridor—in a direction, I noted, opposite to McAndrew’s office. “There has been some—er, some disagreement with the Director. Some unpleasantness.”

  “What did he do?”

  “It’s more what McAndrew refused to do. Do you recall the name of Nina Velez?”

  “Oh, Jesus. Is he mixed up with her again?”

  Nina Velez was the daughter of President Velez, and for a while—until, in fact, they had been marooned together for weeks in the three-meter life capsule of the prototype balanced drive—she had been infatuated with McAndrew. Enforced intimacy had put an end to that. It was all years ago, and I really thought that he had learned his lesson.

  Limperis nodded. “I’m afraid so. Ms. Velez, as you may know, now has a senior position with AG News. She somehow learned, by means unknown to us, that an expedition was planned to the solar focus. She offered money for permission to send a representative with the expedition, and for exclusive media rights.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me.”

  “And to Director Rumford. I should mention that the money offered was, by Institute standards, most considerable.”

  “But she wanted to be the representative, and McAndrew refused to take her.”

  “Not at all. She wanted her new husband, Geoffrey Benton, to go on the expedition. Benton has scientific training, and has been on half a dozen expeditions within the Solar System.”

  “I know him. Tall, good-looking guy.”

  “Then you may also know that he has a fine reputation. Savvy, experienced reporter. McAndrew was all agreed. Then something happened. I think Mac met with Benton—just once—and afterwards went to the Director. He said Benton would go on an expedition with him, McAndrew, over his dead body.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s something I rely on you to find out—he won’t tell me or anyone else. Director Rumford said, rightly in my opinion, that McAndrew’s attitude left him little choice. In these days of shrinking budgets, we need the funds. Paul Fogarty would lead the expedition to the solar focus instead of McAndrew, and Geoffrey Benton would go with him. That is exactly what happened. It has not left McAndrew in the best of moods, and I wanted you to know that before you meet him.”

  He paused. “And, of course, although this is strictly speaking no concern of mine, I would like to know what is really going on.”

  Shrewd old Limperis. A razor-sharp mind lay behind the innocent, pudgy black face. He sensed, as I did, that there had been a set-up. On questions of theoretical physics, McAndrew sits among the immortals. On matters involving human motivation and behavior, he is an innocent—and that’s being kind.

  “Let me talk to him,” I said. “Is he in his study?”

  “There, or more likely in the communications center.” Limperis hesitated. “I should mention that Fogarty and Benton have reached the solar focus, and they are obtaining spectacular findings concerning the supernova. McAndrew’s mood is…hard to judge.”

  I knew what he meant. McAndrew should have been experiencing one of his big thrills in life, the rush of data on a new scientific phenomenon; but instead of being on the front line, he was getting it all second-hand. To someone like McAndrew, that is like being offered for your dining pleasure a previously-eaten meal.

  He was in the communications center. I approached him uncertainly, not sure what his mood might be. He looked up from a page of numbers and gave me a nod and a smile, as though we had just seen each other at lunch time. And far from being out of sorts, he seemed delighted with something.

  “Here, Jeanie,” he said. “Take a listen to this. See what you think.”

  He handed me a headset.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Report from Fogarty. He was heading for the solar focus, but the media asked him to put on a bit of a show for them, just to demonstrate what the Hoatzin can do. Of course, he couldn’t resist. They went zooming all the way out past three hundred billion kilometers, horsing around, then wandered in again toward the focus. I want you to hear what they picked up on the way back. It came in a while ago, but I only just got
round to it.”

  “Shouldn’t I—”

  “Listen to it. Then we’ll talk.”

  McAndrew!

  I put the headset on.

  “We are on the way in again, approximately two hundred and eighty billion kilometers from Sol.” Paul Fogarty, his voice young and slightly nasal, spoke in my ears. “We are heading for a solar focus point appropriate for receipt of radiation from the Cassiopeia supernova. The Hoatzin is performing perfectly, and we normally turn off the engine during flight only for observations and sampling of the local medium. However, anomalous signals received in our message center are prompting us to remain longer in this vicinity. We are picking up a message of distress from an unknown source. We have travelled to various locations, but we are unable to discover a message origin. We will keep looking for another twenty-four hours. After that we must proceed toward our original destination of the solar focus. The received message follows.”

  I listened, wondering who could possibly be sending a call for help from so far away. Two hundred and eighty billion kilometers, sixty times the distance of Neptune, way south of the ecliptic and far beyond normal Solar System runs. No cargo or passenger vessel ever ventured in that direction, or so far out.

  Help, help, help. The standard Mayday distress signal was the only clear part of the message. “…limited chance for transmission…every year or two…” The voice was thin, scratchy, and distorted. “We transmit when we can, aim at Sol…” Help, help, help. “…we’ll keep sending as long as possible. We have no idea what’s happening outside…are trapped…except for this chamber. No control of resources except this unit…”

  Help, help, help. The automated Mayday signal bleated on, over and over. I heard nothing more from the desperate human voice.

  McAndrew was watching me closely as I removed the headphones. “Well?”

  “It couldn’t be clearer. There’s a ship out there in bad trouble, even if we don’t know what kind of trouble.”

  Mac said, “Not a ship.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’d guess it’s one of the Arks.”

  That made me catch my breath. The Arks were part of history. Before McAndrew and I were born, seventeen of the great space habitats had been launched by the United Space Federation. Self-contained and self-supporting, they were multi-generation ships, crawling through the interstellar void at a tiny fraction of light speed. Their destinations were centuries away. But even at minimal speeds, they ought by now to be well on their way to the stars. They should be far beyond the place where the signal had been picked up.

  McAndrew’s suggestion that it was one of the Arks seemed unlikely for another reason. “I don’t think it can be,” I said. “As I recall it, none of the Arks was launched in a direction so far south of the ecliptic. And I don’t believe they were capable of significant changes of direction.”

  “Perfectly true. They could start and stop, and that was about all.” McAndrew gazed at me blank-eyed as the Sphinx. He knew something he wasn’t telling.

  “But in any case,” I went on, “I can’t believe that Fogarty would simply leave them like that, and keep on going. They said they were in trouble.”

  “They also implied it isn’t a new emergency—they’ve been transmitting for some time. Anyway, Paul Fogarty didn’t just listen and run. There’s more from him. He stayed far longer than he expected, searching and searching; but he couldn’t track down an origin for the signal.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. He must have been right on top of it, to receive it like that.”

  “You think so?” McAndrew, that great ham, was full of poorly-disguised satisfaction. “If somebody knew where that signal was coming from, do you think that they should choose to go out on a rescue mission?”

  “It wouldn’t be a question of choice. They’d have to go.”

  “Exactly.” McAndrew didn’t rub his hands together, but only I think because he was tapping away at the keys of the console. “I’m checking out the status of the reconditioned Merganser. If it’s ready to fly, you and I will be on our way. And don’t worry, we’ll be going with Director Rumford’s blessing. I’ve already asked.”

  “But if Fogarty couldn’t find the ship—”

  “Then he must have been looking in the wrong place, mustn’t he? In a very wrong place. Wait and see, Jeanie. Wait and see.” And beyond that, for all my coaxing and urging and outright cursing, McAndrew the mule would not for the moment go.

  As I say, he’s more human than most people give him credit for. He likes to talk about what he does, but only in his own sweet time and in his own backhanded way.

  I waited until we were on board the new Merganser and heading out of the ecliptic. The balanced drive was on. The ship was accelerating at a hundred gees, while the disk of condensed matter in front of the life capsule drew us toward it at close to a hundred gees, leaving us with a residual quarter-gee field. Very comfortable, great for sleeping.

  And sleeping is what we might be doing, much of the time. Even accelerating at a hundred gees, we had a lengthy flight ahead of us. We could lie side by side in the cramped life capsule and sleep, relax, play—and talk.

  McAndrew had been a clam when it came to our destination, but it had not escaped me that we were going in exactly the wrong direction, toward Cassiopeia rather than away from it. The solar focus for the supernova lay on the other side of the Sun. I mentioned that fact casually, as though it was something of minor interest.

  “Quite right.” He was in his bare feet, wriggling his long toes and staring at them with apparent fascination. “If light comes toward Sol from a very long way away, so it’s close to being a parallel beam, then the gravity field of the Sun acts as a great big lens. Light that passes close to the Sun is converged. It is brought to a focus eighty-two billion kilometers away, on the far side of the Sun. So if you want to observe the Cassiopeia supernova, which is way north of the ecliptic, you have to go south.”

  “Which is what Paul Fogarty did.”

  “Aye. Him, and that Geoffrey Benton.” McAndrew gave me a strange look, which I could not interpret.

  “And the place where they heard the signal was south, too,” I said. “But we’re going north.”

  “We are indeed.” McAndrew looked smug. “Here’s a question for you, Jeanie. Suppose that you are in trouble, and you can only send out a distress signal now and again.”

  “Once every year or two, they said.”

  “Right. Now, you’re way out in deep space. Where would you beam the signal?”

  “Where people were most likely to hear it. Back toward the Sun.”

  “Indeed you would. But if you’re a long way out, and the signal is weak, chances are no one will hear you. Unless there’s some way you can amplify the signal, or you can focus it.”

  I’m no McAndrew, but I’m not an idiot. I almost had it. “A signal, sent back toward the Sun—a radio signal. That would be focused just the way that a light beam is focused. But what Paul Fogarty heard wasn’t at the solar focus.”

  “No more it was. You’ve had courses in optics, Jeanie, you must have. The Sun acts like a lens, one that takes a beam of light that comes from infinity and converges it to a focus at eighty-two billion kilometers. Now suppose you have a radio signal, but instead of focusing at eighty-two billion kilometers from the Sun it focuses itself at two hundred and eighty billion kilometers. Where would the origin of the radio signal have to be, to make that happen?”

  “On the other side of the Sun from where you receive it.” I tried to recall the relevant formula—and failed. I said, “How far out? It’s a standard result in geometrical optics…”

  “It certainly is. If a lens converges a parallel beam of light at a distance F from the lens, then light starting at a distance S from the lens will be converged at a distance D beyond it, where the reciprocal of S plus the reciprocal of D equals the reciprocal of F.”

  “Don’t gibber at me, McAndrew. I asked you a question. How far ou
t?”

  “You’re not listening, Jeanie.” The wretch went on regardless, probably imagining that he was speaking English. “Take F as eighty-two billion, and D as two hundred and eighty billion—that’s where Paul Fogarty caught the distress signal—and you find that S, the distance from Sol where the signal originated, is a hundred and seventeen billion kilometers from Sol. That’s where the distress signal came from, the other side.”

  “The other side of what?” As usual, he was turning my head into a muddled mess.

  “Of the Sun—the signal was generated on the opposite side of the Sun.”

  “You mean Fogarty and Geoffrey Benton have been searching in the wrong place?”

  “Of course they have. Completely wrong.” But there it was again, the curious tone in his voice when he said Benton’s name. And with it, a strange sideways look at me.

  Even at a hundred gees acceleration, we were going to be on the way in the Merganser for over a week. Too long to live with seething undercurrents of feeling.

  “Mac, what is it with you and Geoffrey Benton? Surely you hardly know the man.”

  “I guess I don’t. Not the way you do.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean? I’ve never even met him.”

  He stared pop-eyed at me. “How can you say that? He’s the AG Newsman who flew with you back from the Titan prison colony—just the two of you.”

  I groaned inside. A fifteen-year-ago fling, coming back to haunt me. “That wasn’t Geoffrey Benton.”

  “But he works for AG News.”

  “So do ten thousand other people. Mac, what on earth gave you the idea that it was Benton?”

  “Paul told me.” McAndrew put a hand to his balding forehead. “It wasn’t Benton? My God. Do you know what I did? Do you know what I called him?”

  “I know exactly what you did, and I can imagine what you told poor Benton. More than that, I know what Paul Fogarty did.”

  “But why would Paul…he wanted to make the trip to the solar focus as bad as I did.”