by Larry Niven
“I have agreed,” Tregennis said. “The philologists can bestow official names later, or whoever is to be in charge of such things. Let us give you a précis of what we have learned to date.”
He consulted a notator in his hand. “Prima,” he recited. “Mean orbital radius, approximately 0.4 A.U. Diameter, approximately 16,000 kilometers. Since it has no satellite, the mass is still uncertain, but irradiation is such that it cannot be icy. We presume the material is largely silicate, which—allowing for self-compression—gives a mass on the order of Earth’s. No signs of air.
“Secunda, orbiting at 0.7 A.U., resembles Prima, but is slightly larger and does have a thin atmosphere, comparable to Mars’. It has a moon as well. Remarkably, the moon has a higher albedo than expected, a yellowish hue. The period tells us the mass, of course, which reinforces our guess about Prima.
“Tertia is almost exactly one A.U. out. It is a superterrestrial, mass of five Earths, as confirmed by four moons, also yellowish. A somewhat denser atmosphere than Secunda’s; we have confirmed the presence of nitrogen and traces of oxygen.”
“What?” broke from Saxtorph. “You mean it might have life?”
Laurinda shivered a bit. “The water is forever frozen,” she told him. “Carbon dioxide must often freeze. We don’t know how there can be any measurable amount of free oxygen. But there is.”
Tregennis cleared his throat. “Quarta,” he said. “A gas giant at 1.5 A.U., mass 230 Earths, as established by ten moons detected thus far. Surprisingly, no rings. Hydrogen and helium, presumably surrounding a vast ice shell which covers a silicate core with some iron. It seems to radiate weakly in the radio frequencies, indicating a magnetic field, though the radio background of the sun is such that at this distance we can’t be sure. We plan a flyby on our way in. Quarta will be basic to understanding the dynamics of the system. It is its equivalent of Jupiter.”
“Otherwise we have only detected radio from Secunda,” Laurinda related, “but it is unmistakable, cannot be of stellar origin. It is really curious—intermittent, seemingly modulated, unless that is an artifact of our skimpy data.” She smiled. “How lovely if intelligent beings are transmitting.”
Markham stirred. He had put his chair behind the row of the rest. “Are you serious?” he nearly shouted.
Surprised looks went his way. “Oh, no,” Laurinda said. “Just a daydream. We’ll find out what is actually causing it when we get there.”
“Well, Quinta remains,” Tregennis continued, “in several respects, the most amazing object of all. Mass 103 Earths—seven moons found—at 2.8 A.U. It does have a well-developed ring system. Hydrogen-helium atmosphere, but with clear spectra of methane, ammonia, and . . . water vapor. Water in huge quantities. Turbulence, and a measured temperature far above expectations. Something peculiar has happened.
“Are there any immediate questions? If not, Laurinda and Dorcas have prepared graphics—charts, diagrams, tables, pictures—which we would like to show. Please feel free to inquire, or to propose ideas. Don’t be bashful. You are all intelligent people with a good understanding of basic science. Any of you may get an insight which we specialists have missed.”
Markham rose. “Excuse me,” he said.
“Huh?” asked Saxtorph, amiably enough. “You want to go now when this is really getting interesting?”
“I do not expect I can make a contribution.” Markham hesitated. “I am a little indisposed. Best I lie down for a while. Do not worry. I will soon be well. Carry on.” He sketched a bow and departed.
“What do you know, he is human,” Carita said.
“We ought to be kinder to him than we have been, poor man,” Laurinda murmured.
“He hasn’t given us much of a chance, has he?” replied Yoshii.
“Stow that,” Saxtorph ordered. “No backbiting.”
“Yes,” added Dorcas, “let’s proceed with the libretto.”
Eagerness made Tregennis tremble as he obliged.
In his galley, Ryan frowned. Something didn’t feel quite right. While he followed the session he continued slicing the mahimahi he had brought frozen from Earth, but his mind was no longer entirely on either.
Time passed. It became clear that the Quarta approach was going to be an intellectual orgy, the more so because Quinta happened to be near inferior conjunction and thus a lot of information about that planet would be arriving, too. Ryan wiped hands on apron, left his preparations, and stumped up toward the flight deck.
He met Markham coming back. They halted and regarded each other. The companionway thrummed around them. “Hello, there,” the quartermaster said slowly. “I thought you were in your cabin.”
Markham stiffened. “I am on my way, if it is any of your business.”
“Long way ‘round.”
“It . . . occurred to me to check certain stations. This is an old ship, refitted. Frankly, Captain Saxtorph relies too much on his machinery.”
“What sort of thing did you want to check on?”
“Who are you to ask?” Markham flung. “You are the quarter-master.”
“And you are the passenger.” Ryan’s bulk blocked the stairs. “I wouldn’t be in this crew if I didn’t have a pretty fair idea of how all the equipment works. I’m responsible for maintaining a lot of it.”
“I have commanded spacecraft.”
“Then you know each system keeps its own record.” Ryan’s smile approximated a leer, or a snarl. “Save the skipper a bunch of data retrievals. Where were you and what were you doing?”
Markham stood silent while the ship drove onward. At length: “I should, I shall report directly to the captain. But to avoid rumors, I tell you first. Listen well and do not distort what I say if you are able not to. I beamed a radio signal on a standard band at Secunda. It is against the possibility—the very remote possibility, Mlle. Brozik assured us—that sentient beings are present. Natives, Outsiders, who knows? In the interest of peaceful contact, we must provide evidence that we did not try to sneak in on them. Not that it is likely they exist, but—this is the sort of contingency I am here for. Saxtorph and I can dispute it later if he wishes. I have presented him with a fait accompli. Now let me by.”
Ryan stood aside. Markham passed downward. Ryan stared after him till he was gone from sight, then went back to his galley.
10
Quarta fell astern as Rover moved on sunward. In the boat called Fido, Juan Yoshii swung around the giant planet and accelerated to overtake his ship. Vectors programmed, he could relax, look out the ports, seek to sort the jumbled marvels in his mind. Most had gone directly from instruments to the astronomers; he was carrying back certain observations taken farside. A couple of times there had been opportunity for Laurinda Brozik to tell him briefly about the latest interpretation, but he had been too busy on his flit to think much beyond the piloting.
Stars thronged, the Milky Way torrented, a sky little different from the skies he remembered. Less than 30 light-years’ travel—a mite’s leap in the galaxy. Clearly alien was the sun ahead. Tiny but perceptible, its ember of a disc was slow to dazzle his eyes, yet already cast sufficient light for him to see things by.
An outer moon drifted across vision. This was his last close passage, and instruments worked greedily. Clicks and whirrs awoke beneath the susurrus of air through the hull. Yoshii pointed his personal camera; photography was an enthusiasm of his. The globe glimmered wan red under its sun. It was mainly ice, and smooth; any cracks and craters had slumped in the course of gigayears. The surface was lighter than it might have been and mottled with yellow spots. Ore deposits? The same material that tinted most airless bodies here? Tregennis was puzzled. You got dark spots in Solar-type systems. They were due to photolysis of frozen methane. Of course, this sun was so feeble. . . .
It nonetheless illuminated the planet aft. Quarta’s hue was pale rose, overlaid with silvery streaks that were ice clouds: crystals of carbon dioxide, ammonia, in the upper levels methane. No twists, no vortices, no
sign of any Jovian storminess marred the serenity. Though the disc was visibly flattened, it rotated slowly, taking more than 40 hours. Tidal forces through eons had worn down even the spin of this huge mass. They had likewise dispersed whatever rings it once had, and surely drawn away moons. The core possessed a magnetic field, slight, noticeable only because it extended so far into space that it snatched radio waves out of incoming cosmic radiation—remanent magnetism, locked into iron as that core froze. For gravitational energy release had long since reached its end point; and long, long before then, K-40 and whatever other few radionuclei were once on hand had guttered away beyond measurement. The ice sheath went upward in tranquil allotropic layers to a virtually featureless surface and an enormous, quietly circulating atmosphere of starlike composition. Quarta had reached Nirvana.
It fell ever farther behind. Fido closed in on Rover. The ship swelled until she might have been a planet herself. Instructions swept back and forth, electronic, occasionally verbal. A boat bay opened its canopy. Yoshii maneuvered through and docked. The canopy closed, shutting off heaven. Air hissed back in from the recovery tanks. A bulb flashed green. Yoshii unharnessed, operated the lock, crawled forth, and walked under the steady weight granted him by the ship’s polarizer, into her starboard reception room.
Laurinda waited.
Yoshii stopped. She was alone. White hair tumbled past delicate features to brush the dress, new to him, that hugged her slenderness. She reached out. Her eyes glowed. “W-welcome back, Juan,” she whispered.
“Why, uh, thanks, thank you. You’re the . . . committee?”
She smiled, dropped her glance, became briefly the color of the world he had rounded. “Kam met Carita. As for you, Dorcas—Mate Saxtorph suggested—”
He took her hands. They felt reed-thin and silk-soft. “How nice of her. And the rest. I’ve data discs for you.”
“They’ll keep. We have more work than we can handle. Observations of Quinta were, have been incredibly fruitful.” Ardor pulsed in her voice. The outermost planet was a safe subject. “We think we can guess its nature, but of course there’s no end of details we don’t understand, and we could be entirely wrong—”
“Good for you,” he said, delighted by her delight. “I missed out on that, of course.” Transmissions to him, including hers, had dealt with the Quartan system exclusively; any bit of information about it might perhaps save his life. “Tell me.”
“Oh, it’s violent, multi-colored, with spots like Jupiter’s—one bigger than the Red—and—the surface is liquid water. It’s Arctic-like; we imagine continent-sized ice floes clashing together.”
“But warmer than Quarta! Why?”
“We suppose a large satellite crashed, a fraction of a million years ago. Debris formed the rings. The main mass released enough heat to melt the upper part of the planetary shell, and, and we’ll need years, science will, to learn what else has happened.”
He stood for an instant in awe, less of the event than of the time-scale. That moon must have been close to start with, but still it had taken the casual orbital erosion of . . . almost a universe’s lifespan so far—how many passages through nebulae, galaxies, the near-ultimate vacuum of intergalactic space?—to bring it down. What is man, that thou art mindful of him—?
What is man, that he should waste the little span which is his?
‘That’s wonderful,” he said, “but—we—”
Impulsively, he embraced her. Astoundingly, she responded.
Between laughter and tears she said in his ear, “Come, let’s go, Kam’s spread a feast for the two of us in my cabin.”
Set beside that, the cosmos was trivial.
Saxtorph’s voice crackled from the intercom: “Now hear this. Now hear this. We’ve just received a message from what claims to be a kzin warship. They’re demanding we make rendezvous with them. Keep calm but think hard. We’ll meet in the gym in an hour, 1530, and consider this together.”
11
Standing with back to bulkhead, the captain let silence stretch, beneath the pulsebeat and whispers of the ship, while he scanned the faces of those seated before him. Dorcas, her Athene countenance frozen into expressionlessness; Kam Ryan’s full lips quirked a bit upward, defiantly cheerful; Carita Fenger a-scowl; Juan Yoshii and Laurinda Brozik unable to keep from glancing at each other, hand gripping hand; Arthur Tregennis, who seemed almost as concerned about the girl; Ulf Markham, well apart from the rest, masked in haughtiness—Ulf Reichstein Markham, if you please. . . . The air renewal cycle was at its daily point of ozone injection. That tang smelled like fear.
Which must not be let out of its cage. Saxtorph cleared his throat.
“Okay, let’s get straight to business,” he said. “You must’ve noticed a quiver in the interior g-field and change in engine sound. You’re right, we altered acceleration. Rover will meet the foreign vessel, with velocities matched, in about 35 hours. It could be sooner, but Dorcas told them we weren’t sure our hull could take that much stress. What we wanted, naturally, was as much time beforehand as possible.”
“Why don’t we cut and run?” Carita asked.
Saxtorph shrugged. “Whether or not we can outrun them, we for sure can’t escape the stuff they can throw, now that they’ve locked onto us. If they really are kzinti navy, they’ll never let us get out where we can go hyperspatial. They may be lying, but Dorcas and I don’t propose to take the chance.”
“I presume evasion tactics are unfeasible,” said Tregennis in his most academic voice.
“Correct. We could stop the engine, switch off the generator, and orbit free, with batteries supplying the life support systems, but they’d have no trouble computing our path. As soon as they came halfway close, they’d catch us with a radar sweep.
“From what data we have on them, I believe they were searching for some time before they acquired us, probably with amplified optics. That’s assuming they were in orbit around Secunda when they first learned of our arrival. The assumption is consistent with what would be a reasonable search curve for them and with the fact that there are modulated radio bursts out of that planet—transmissions to and from their base.”
Nobody before had seen Yoshii snarl. “And how did they learn about us?” he demanded.
Looks went to Markham. He gave them back. “Yes, undoubtedly through me,” he said. Strength rang in the words. “You all know I took it upon myself to beam a signal at Secunda—in my capacity as this expedition’s officer of the government. The result has surprised me, too, but I acknowledge no need to apologize. If we, approaching a kzin base unbeknownst, had suddenly become manifest to their detectors, they would most likely have blown us out of existence.”
Ryan nodded. “Without stopping to ask questions,” he supplied. “Yeah, that’d be kzin style. If they are. How’re you so sure?”
“I think we can take it for granted,” Dorcas said. “Who else would have reason to call themselves kzinti?”
“Who else would want to?” Carita growled.
“Save the cuss words for later,” Saxtorph counselled. “We’re in too much of a pickle for luxuries. I might add that although the vocal transmission was through a translator, the phrasing, the responses to us, everything was pure kzin. They are here—on the far side of human space from their own. You realize what this means, don’t you, folks? The kzinti have gotten the hyperdrive.”
That conclusion had indeed become clear to everyone, but Laurinda asked, “How could they?” as if in pain.
Yoshii grimaced. “Once you know something can be done, you’re halfway to doing it yourself,” he told her.
“I know,” she answered. “But I had the, the impression they aren’t quite as clever at engineering as humans, even if they did invent the gravity polarizer. And, and wouldn’t we have known?”
“Collecting intelligence in kzin space isn’t exactly easy,” Saxtorph explained. “Anyhow, they may have done the R and D on some planet we aren’t aware of. I’ll grant you, I’m surprised my
self that they’ve been this quick. Well, they were.” His grin was lopsided. “Once I heard about an epitaph on an old New England tombstone. I expected this, but not so soon.’”
“Why have they established themselves here?” Tregennis wondered. “As you observed, it is a long journey for them, especially if they went around human space in order to avoid any chance that their possession of the hyperdrive would be discovered. True, this system is uniquely interesting, but I didn’t think kzin civilization gave scientific research as high a value as ours does.”
“That’s a good question,” Saxtorph said.
His gallows humor drew a chuckle from none but Ryan. Dorcas uttered the thought in every mind: “They won’t let us go home to tell about them if they can help it.”
“Which is why we are being nice and meeting them as they request,” Saxtorph added. “It gives them an alternative to putting a nuke on our track.”
Markham folded his arms and stated, “I hope you people have the wit to be glad, at last, that I came along. They will understand that I am authorized to negotiate with them. They will likewise understand that my disappearance would in due course cause a second expedition to come, with armed escort, as the loss of an entirely private group might not.”
“Could be,” Saxtorph said. “However, I can think of several ways to fake a natural disaster for us.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for instance, giving us a lethal dose of radiation, then sending the corpses back with the ship gimmicked to seem this was an accident. The kzin pilot could return on an accompanying vessel after ours left hyperspace.”
“What would the log show?”
“What the ‘last survivor’ was tortured into entering.”
“Nonsense. You have been watching too many spy dramas.”
“I disagree. Besides, that was just one of the notions that occurred to Dorcas and me. The kzinti might be more inventive yet.”