The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  It’s awesome here in the Rings. The big planet’s beauty creeps up on you, no matter how long you’ve been here. The planet seems nearby, floating casually, except something that big can’t really be casual. In my sleep I sink through its mysterious ocean of gas and liquid, feeling with my feet for a bottom which may or may not be there, thousands of miles below …

  A dozen habitats are nearing completion around Titan alone. Ro and I learned today that the Centauri Starship’s crew will be chosen from those of us who go on the polar jaunt. It’s the only way of having a chance at the starship.

  Where is home?

  All of Sunspace is home. Those of us who work outside Earth’s planetary womb are the eyes, ears, and hands of humanity, reaching out to the stars. Our Sun is only a common star, but the starlight sings eternal across the Milky Way, which is only one of the countless galaxies fleeing toward the edge of space-time. To go out among them, you have to keep changing; you have to burn inside, to hold back the dark; you have to want the vastness that is so full of possibilities, and know that it is a place of infinite beauty in which to test human courage and intelligence; you must feel deep space opening up in your heart, drink the strange light that flows into your eyes from far stars, and love the singing silence in your ears.

  You have to care a lot.

  |Go to Table of Contents |

  Book 2

  The Stars will Speak

  1

  Lissa liked to listen.

  Not only when people spoke to her, but when they talked to each other. She overheard conversations and tried to figure out who the people were, what they did, and what they were like from what they said. People didn’t really know how much they showed about themselves when they spoke. Smiling, seemingly friendly people sometimes hid mean streaks in their words. Glum people, who appeared uncaring and thoughtless, were caring and thoughtful underneath. Lissa was always looking to catch people at being their true selves, but only her father seemed to be completely himself inside as well as outside.

  “It only seems that way to you,” he had often told her, “because you don’t know the individuals. So when you hear them, you’re really only imagining what they’re like inside. If you heard them at different times, you’d get different impressions. It all depends on where you start.”

  “But that’s just not true,” she had insisted. “Some people are the same no matter how often you listen to them. You’re always the same. Inside, I mean.”

  “Some people is not everyone,” he had said, smiling.

  At the age of ten she had found out that scientists were listening to signals from an alien civilization somewhere among the stars—and she knew immediately that she wanted to help decode the messages. She had been only a year old when the signals had started coming in; by the time she was halfway through high school, she knew that she had to learn what they were saying.

  It had seemed to her, at first, that it would be similar to what she had done when she had learned to read. Put the letters together into words, then make sentences out of the words—sentences stating things, describing, or commanding.

  It wasn’t that simple, of course. She knew that long before she sent her application to the Interstellar Institute, but she still felt that she could find out what was in the signals. She imagined herself making the breakthrough that no one, not even the best Artificial Intelligences, had been able to make.

  “But what is it that makes you believe you can do better?” her father asked her, in as serious a tone as possible. He had learned long ago not to make fun of her ambition. “Besides, it’s such specialized training. Don’t you think you should have some normal college first, so your education won’t be one-sided?”

  He was one of the best physicists on Bernal One, as well as her father, so it seemed that he deserved to be answered carefully. “I feel sure that if I went through the training and could see the data, I’d have an idea about what the aliens are trying to tell us.”

  “You can’t know that, Lissa,” he replied gently.

  “Ifeel it, and I’m willing to put it to the test.”

  He smiled. “I can almost believe you, but I guess you’ve got to learn for yourself if you’re wrong.”

  “Right,” she said proudly.

  He looked worried. “And that may be all you’ll find out—that you’re wrong.”

  “But what if I’m right? Don’t others my age apply for the schooling? Are they smarter than I am?”

  He shook his head. “That’s not the point. Look—that research hasn’t gotten anywhere in nearly two decades.”

  “Why should that mean anything?” Lissa demanded. “Have you figured out all the physics you want?”

  “No, of course not, but I have results.”

  “Some things are naturally harder. You admit this is a hard field.”

  “Yes, but this one may be beyond all humanity, including the computer minds. It may be centuries before results are even possible.”

  “I just don’t believe it,” she said, afraid that he might be right. “Why should that be?”

  She watched him get ready for a bigger answer. He closed his eyes halfway, leaned forward in his chair, and rubbed his chin. “Because the origins of the alien race that sent the signals are probably very different from ours. Their biology and psychology are probably incomprehensible.”

  She smiled at him. “Come on, Dad, you’re not playing fair. That’s not the only view there is of the problem. Besides, don’t you think they might have tried to make the message understandable to a dumber species like us? Or maybe they’re even like us. Maybe whole sectors of the galaxy are shot through with similar life-forms, all having a common type of origin. The really alien races probably wouldn’t be sending us signals that we could make out as even being signals.”

  “That would all be nice, if it were true.”

  “Well, we won’t settle this just by talking about it, Dad. I’ll have to go and try to find out!”

  He sighed. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to stop you.” He looked at her sadly with his steel-blue eyes. “I’ll miss you. I guess I always thought you’d go to school here on Bernal One, but Earth is a big and very different place, and you should get to see it sooner or later. Getting your professional schooling there is as good as any way to do it.”

  “I know, Dad. I’m apprehensive about going away, but I’m not scared.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Oh, I’m sure you’re not scared of anything.”

  “Do you have any ideas about why the signals won’t decode?”

  He leaned back. “Maybe they don’t want us to catch on too quickly, so we can get used to the idea of their being out there.…”

  “That’s not a new idea, either.”

  “Maybe they want us to travel halfway up the sky before we meet them.”

  “We’ve got a starship on the way to Alpha Centauri,” she said.

  “Maybe their signals are all that’s left of them.”

  “That would be sad. But I have a feeling that this radio signal isn’t their main communication. It’s only a way of getting our attention.”

  “Now that sounds interesting!” Her father smiled and shifted in his recliner. “But why should you think that? There’s no evidence for it at all.”

  “People can think of what’s possible even if there’s no evidence, can’t they?”

  “Sure—but it’ll remain only a stab in the dark unless you come up with experimental evidence.”

  “I know that, Dad. But it’s good to play with possibilities.” She got up from her deck chair and went to the railing of their backyard terrace. As she looked out into the great hollow ball that was Bernal One, she noticed her mother motoring up the road from the medical center. “Here comes Mom, late as usual.”

  “Well, we had a chance to talk,” her father said.

  As she watched her mother’s scooter make the turn near the house, Lissa wondered if she could ever match Dr. Sharon Quintana’s dedicati
on to work. Dad worked as hard, but it didn’t seem to show. Maybe that was why Dr. Morey Green-Wolfe hadn’t won the Nobel Prize for physics yet. Lissa turned away from the view of her world and gazed at her father. He was leaning back with his eyes closed, enjoying the sunlight from the rings that circled the north and south poles of the sphere.

  “Mom won’t like my going, will she?” Lissa asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” her father replied without opening his eyes.

  “You came here from Earth just to study physics, and you stayed,” she said, knowing it was a useless comparison.

  “Have you discussed it with Sharon?” Morey asked. Lissa swallowed and looked toward the equatorial lake that spilled a river around the world. “A little. Only when we’ve all been together. I don’t really know what she thinks. She’s never around long enough. You at least sit around here working in your head, and I can come talk to you.”

  The lake glistened beyond the outer circle of the University. She saw a pedal-glider come down into the water.

  “Surgery is a demanding field, Lissa,” her father said in a serious tone. “Surgeons need a lot of sleep to stay fresh. And remember that your mother also has to teach.”

  “She does too much.”

  “She started late, when you were five.”

  A boat picked up the pedal-glider pilot. “Well, it’s not as if she’s going to run out of time, Dad. She can practice well into her nineties.”

  He opened his eyes and sat up. “Not with all the youngsters coming up. They’ll want their chance, and they’re eager to compete for it. Your mother wants to do something that she can be proud of, and if that means working harder to beat out the up-and-coming competition, then so be it.”

  “Don’t you want that too, Dad?”

  He nodded. “I thought so a long time ago, and maybe I’ll still get it. But it’s getting harder. A thousand people have the very same bright ideas every year, and the Network informs them of the fact almost as soon as it happens. I’ve done a lot of work. My papers are often cited in the work of others. I can’t really complain. Maybe somewhere in my work there’s a breakthrough waiting for me.”

  “Do you really think there is?” Lissa asked, intrigued by the possibility. “Like what? What kind of thing would it be?”

  Morey shrugged. “What would you like?”

  “An interstellar space drive! Something that would take us across the galaxy in a month! We could go to Centauri and meet our own starship when it arrived.”

  He brushed back his short brown hair and looked at her carefully. “It’s gotta be there, somewhere.” He looked very boyish, she thought, admiring him. “Why don’t you stay here, study physics at O’Neill College, and find out where I’ve hidden it?” He sat back again, smiling. “Here’s Sharon.”

  “So what have you two been gabbing about?” her mother demanded as she came out on the terrace and sat down in a recliner. “Lissa, can you get me a drink?” She closed her eyes and leaned back, brushing her red hair out of her eyes. Lissa noticed that her beige coverall suit needed cleaning.

  “The usual, Mom?” she asked softly, knowing that her mother was already asleep. She looked at her face for a moment, watching the tension drain away from around her mouth, to be replaced by a childlike pout. The fierce Dr. Quintana was gone, leaving only a mom named Sharon.

  “Let’s go fix dinner,” Lissa whispered to her father.

  They rolled dinner out onto the terrace. Dr. Quintana came back to life as the sun rings were fading into twilight.

  “Ummmm,” she said, sniffing. “Sweet and sour pork.”

  “It’s on the table,” Lissa said.

  Her mother nodded and found her place. She sat down, sipped a drink, and started eating immediately, using chopsticks. “Ummm, this is great. You two are always so good to me. I’ll have to do something special for you one day.”

  “Sharon, Lissa wants to study at the Interstellar Institute in the Himalayas,” Morey said as he sat down. “I think we should talk about it.”

  “On Earth?” Sharon asked as Lissa sat down next to her. “I thought they were on Lunar Backside.”

  “They are, Mother, but the school is on Earth. There are branches and listening posts on the Moon and Mars.”

  Dr. Quintana looked at her carefully, chewing her food. “And this is what you really want to do?”

  Lissa looked into her mother’s green eyes and nodded solemnly. “I’ve been wanting to all my life.”

  Sharon smiled and took another bite of food. “And I thought you wanted to be a cook.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Lissa replied.

  “Well, that’s it then, daughter. You’d better study up on goats and get ready for hard weather. They don’t turn it on and off like here, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you been accepted yet?” Sharon asked more seriously.

  “She will be,” Morey answered cheerfully. “Her grades are excellent, as you well know, and she wrote them a very pompous letter.”

  Lissa glared at him. “And what does that mean?”

  “Only that they want to hear from people who seem sure of themselves.”

  “How many apply?” her mother asked.

  “Fewer than fifty,” Morey answered, “and there are openings for over a hundred. As long as she has the grades and shows ambition, they’ll give her a try.”

  “Do you have to make it sound so awful?” Lissa demanded. “From what I know, very few people actually apply, and the Institute is picky besides.”

  “Darling daughter,” her father said sternly, “it will be what you can make of it, and you know what I think.”

  “We wish you well, dear,” her mother said, sipping some tea, “but we’ll always be here when you need us.”

  Lissa tensed. “You could show more confidence in me.”

  “It’s not you,” Morey said, “it’s the field of work. It could go on for centuries without results.”

  Lissa pulled back into herself. “I don’t admit that. They’re out there, talking to us, and we have to keep listening and trying to understand, because what they have to say may be the most important thing in all human history.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” her mother said as her father sighed impatiently. “You’ve given up the usual amount of dating and socializing, and you’re willing to go to Earth to study—not that it’s a bad place, but people your age don’t think it fashionable to go there. With all that and the dedicated interest you’ve shown, I think you deserve to do what you want.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Lissa said, pleased by the firmness of Sharon’s support.

  “Is there any more food?” her mother asked.

  “I’ll get you some,” Lissa said.

  The mail-alert was flashing on the screen when Lissa came into her room after dinner. She sat down at her desk and touched her thumb to the personal lock. The alert faded, and she saw that a communication had arrived from the Interstellar Institute. It was the formal letter of acceptance, together with some orientation material. She felt a thrill as the title of the brochure appeared over a picture of the Himalayan mountains:

  THE INTERSTELLAR INSTITUTE

  [ENTER YOUR PREFERENCE FOR VOICE NARRATION OR READING TEXT AND STUDY THIS MATERIAL CAREFULLY]

  She chose to read, because reading always conveyed more than a voice-and-picture program, but she hoped there would be at least a few pictures.

  Lissa read:

  THE INSTITUTE IS LOCATED IN NEPAL, NEAR THE BORDER BETWEEN THAT LAND AND THE INDIAN STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH. HERE, AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE FABLED “ROOF OF THE WORLD,” THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS, STUDENTS FROM ALL PARTS OF SUNSPACE ARE TRAINED FOR THE IMPORTANT TASK OF INTERPRETING A MESSAGE FROM THE STARS.

  THE INSTITUTE’S LOCATION AND GROUNDS WERE MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF THE FAMILY OF ADRI SHASTRI, THE PROMINENT INDIAN SCIENTIST WHO FIRST PICKED UP THE ALIEN SIGNAL IN 2064. DR. SHASTRI’S FAMILY, WHO OWNED THE LAND AND BUILDINGS WHERE THE I
NSTITUTE IS SITUATED, CONTRIBUTED THESE HOLDINGS, AS WELL AS SOME OF THEIR WEALTH, FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE STRUCTURE, TOWARD THE FULFILLMENT OF THEIR SON’S DREAM—A SCHOOL WHERE THE UNUSUAL AND CREATIVE STUDENT COULD BE TRAINED IN WHATEVER KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNIQUES MIGHT BE NEEDED IN INTERPRETING THE ALIEN SIGNAL. IT IS HOPED THAT A STUDENT TRAINED HERE MIGHT BE THE ONE WHO WILL ONE DAY REVEAL THE MESSAGE OF THE STARS TO ALL HUMANITY.

  THE INSTITUTE ITSELF IS HOUSED IN A STRUCTURE ONCE USED AS A MONASTERY. IT IS PERHAPS APPROPRIATE THAT, IN THIS MOUNTAINOUS, ISOLATED SPOT, WHERE A COMMUNITY OF MONKS ONCE PONDERED THE REALMS OF THE SPIRIT, STUDENTS NOW PONDER A MYSTERY AS DEEP—A SIGNAL FROM AN ALIEN CIVILIZATION.

  STUDENTS ARE HOUSED IN THE MONASTERY ITSELF; AND IN AN INSTALLATION DEEP WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN UPON WHICH THE MONASTERY RESTS, STUDENTS, TECHNICIANS, AND VISITING SCIENTISTS MAY COME TO VIEW THE ALIEN SIGNAL.

  THE NEAREST VILLAGE IS IN THE VALLEY BELOW THE INSTITUTE. IT IS INHABITED BY BOTH CITIZENS OF NEPAL AND A FEW PEOPLE FROM OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD, MOST OF WHOM PURSUE A SIMPLER FORM OF LIFE AS FORESTERS AND HERDSPEOPLE. THE VILLAGE CAN BE REACHED BY FOOT OR ON HORSEBACK. STUDENTS MAY, DURING FREE MOMENTS, ARRANGE FOR TRANSPORTATION TO THE NEPALESE CAPITOL OF KATMANDU, BUT SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE NEPAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERPLANETARY TRAVELERS IS NOT WHAT THEY WILL FIND IN THIS SUBDUED SETTING OF MOUNTAINS AND FORESTS. STUDENTS ARE EXPECTED TO CONDUCT THEMSELVES WITH RESTRAINT IN THE VILLAGE, AND TO TREAT ITS PEOPLE WITH COURTESY SHOULD THEY CHOOSE TO SPEND TIME THERE. THESE PEOPLE LEAD LIVES QUITE DIFFERENT FROM THOSE MOST STUDENTS HAVE PURSUED, AND TEND, QUITE UNDERSTANDABLY, TO REGARD THE INSTITUTE WITH SOME AMUSEMENT.

  UNLIKE OTHER UNIVERSITIES AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING, THE INSTITUTE SELECTS A GROUP OF STUDENTS ONLY ONCE EVERY THREE YEARS. THIS IS SO THAT EACH GROUP CAN START FRESH AND FIND ITS OWN WAY WITHOUT THE INTERVENTION AND GUIDANCE OF OLDER AND MORE EXPERIENCED STUDENTS. AT THE END OF EACH THREE-YEAR PERIOD, A NEW GROUP WILL BE CHOSEN. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE PLACES FOR AS MANY AS ONE HUNDRED STUDENTS AT A TIME, THE INSTITUTE WILL TAKE ONLY AS MANY STUDENTS AS IT FEELS ARE QUALIFIED. APPLICANTS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE STANDARDS ARE AS HIGH AS AT MOST SELECTIVE SCHOOLS, AND THAT ACADEMIC ABILITY ALONE WILL NOT ENSURE THAT AN APPLICATION WILL BE ACCEPTED. A GROUP OF STUDENTS MAY NUMBER AS MANY AS A HUNDRED, OR AS FEW AS FIVE. EACH APPLICANT IS EXPECTED TO SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING: