Across the Sea of Suns (26 page)

The Europeans and Americans backed a pure exploratory program. Behind this was calculated advantage. The Asian economies were doing better at capitalism than the societies that had invented the notion in the first place. The Western economics were broke. If colonization started right away, the stars would belong to the short and slant-eyed.

Lancer
was ordered to investigate Ross 128, then return home. But Ra was not finished with them. After a year of acceleration,
Lancer
leveled out at 0.98 light speed. When it damped its fusion plume, the plasma exhaust unfurling behind it dropped in density. The thinner the plasma, the easier radio waves can get through.

At 15:46 hours, June 11, shipboard antennas picked up an intense burst of microwave emission. It came from dead aft and lasted 73 seconds. After that, nothing.

No look I can’t break it down further like I was telling you the data’s all over the board

Dispersion in the pulse from all that crap we’re throwin’ behind us just plain messed up the signal

Not from the EMs though that’s not their frequency we never got anything from ’em up at ten GHz

Okay sure but Ted here wants to know if there’s any chance they sent it

Who can tell Christ no info in that burst at all

Yeah right but lookit the power man—I’d say doesn’t look like a solar flare or anything natural

Course not, too tight a band, and a little star like Ra can’t do much better than hunnert megahertz never make it up to ten gigs and you’re right about the power no way it can be those Ems

Ted I got the calibration on it and it’s a helluva shot of power innat burst doesn’t make sense

Too much power yeah I mean no artificial source would put out that much it’s crazy

Right, if you think they’re broadcasting in all directions, a spherical pulse, then it would take a bloody avalanche of power to register as much as we’re getting

Who’s ’at on the line

Walmsley sounds like, look Nigel, this’s just a tech-talk

Merely sitting in, don’t pay me any mind

Must be artificial though the burst’s so short

This is Ted I’m sure your results are right overall but honestly gentlemen and ladies I don’t believe we can reconcile a power level like that from the EMs or anyone else it must be Ra itself some sort of occasional outburst or

Nonsense, I say

Well Nigel I don’t see how you can simply brush aside

Interesting isn’t it that our exhaust plume distorts the signal enough so that we can’t read it? Decidedly convenient

Well sure but that’s just an accident of

In a seventy-three-second burst you can pack a lot

If there
is
information content sure but who says

Ted this is Nigel, if someone were to beam a tight-focused signal along our trajectory it would seem to have a huge power, because we’re analyzing it as though the emission was flooding out over all space, rather than being squeezed into a small angle

Well sure I guess but natural emissions from Ra oh I see

So this tells us somebody sent a message our way but pitched at a frequency that would get bloody well swallowed by our own exhaust so we couldn’t unscramble it

Well okay I mean that’s an alternate hypothesis

This is Ted give me the visual on that would you?—guess you’re right there’s no way to decode a mess like that but look Nigel I don’t buy that one I mean why would the EMs broadcast at that high frequency they can’t with their body structure and anybody who wanted to communicate would use something we could decode at least

Quite so, if they wanted us to

I don’t get

We’re on a line of sight from Ra remember

You mean if it wasn’t targeted for us at all but instead

Right we’re on a dead straight line and Ross 128 is another point on that line

Well we’ll take that under advisement Nigel thanks for sure yeah thanks

“Well, I, I don’t know,” Nigel said.

“Come now. You’re positively
shy
.” Nikka grinned.

“Dead right.” He liked her in this mood, but sometimes she was, well, too much. He
was
shy, and quite properly so. He looked around at the neat rows of improbably tall vegetables. “Rather public for my taste.”

Above he could see a distant figure working a wheat field on the other side of the slowly spinning cylinder. Along the axis a fleet of puffy clouds streamed, ships with a single destination. Nikka said, “Let’s go into those trees, there.”

Obediently he followed. “Won’t we embarrass God?”

“God? She tries to encourage this kind of thing.”

“Um.” Nigel appreciated her cajoling him into this; it was precisely the craziness of it that would draw him out of himself for a while. They entered a stand of birch. Above, fresh clouds dispersed a blue light. The engineers had rigged mirrors and lenses to bring the exhaust flame’s fierce luminosity into the life volume, where its glow brought an irridescent warmth to the air.

“Here,” Nikka said, and efficiently shucked her coverall. Underfoot, the earth cracked with a swelling of pseu-dospring, cradled by the microenviron mechanisms into fresh life. The pace of change was forced by fine-tuning at the molecular level. Still, as Nigel lay down he caught from afar the sodden autumnal ripeness of leaves, mingling with a crisp flavor of new shoots in the birches overhead, and underlying it all, a humid dry richness of the summer crops that blossomed across the axis, where harvesttime was soon to come. On tradition-minded Earth, one never walked amid such a cross-current of seasons.

Kneeling, he noted that they both had begun to sweat. He licked the rivulet between her breasts and found it lukewarm, salty. He encircled her, sipped at her, traced whirlpool wisps that left spittle shimmering in her pubic hair. The faintly violet shafts from a man-made sun shifted through branches and fell across lips, lurid as slices of salmon, as he lost himself in her; seeking some deeper taste, the swollen nerves beneath the moss. His hands traced the waist that billowed downward into an hourglass, and to where the flowing body forked. This portal of curls became the crux of her Euclidean theorem, a pivot where all lines must intersect and lemmas could be learned. She seemed to tumble out of the air to him in this trimmed gravity, breathing shallowly, heart tripping. He took her with the simplicity their years allowed. He clutched her wineglass center and cupped her to him. By easing steps he felt her widening sense of him. He closed his eyes. A breeze stirred boughs above them. Distant machines chugged. He opened his eyes as she gripped him and abstractly he studied her eyelids, veined in wriggles of purple, and beneath, a sly smile. A slick pace came upon her and a swirl of laughter welled out. He kissed her shoulder and felt it as round as a moon. Her face snapped sideways and lifted him so that he felt her to be a craft under him, running to its own currents, something vast from the natural darkness, and in that strange gulf he leaped, and leaped again, to join her. “Oh,” she said, and then again.

In a while he found he was on his back, solemnly studying the field tenders a kilometer away who labored upside down. She lay sprawled like a broken toy, accepting entirely the shafts like sunlight. Nigel watched a flock of chickens swim down the axis, out for their constitutional, following corn kernels. Here and there small globs fell from them. Dung, descending in straight lines. In his spinning frame the droppings curved in spirals, Newtonian whorls.

“You’re looking contented,” Nikka murmured.

“This was a bloody good idea.”

“Glad you approve. I was going to ask Carlotta to come also, but she has a shift now.”

“Just as well. She and I haven’t, well, been getting on lately.

“I thought perhaps that was so… . Any particular reason?”

“None I can spot. She simply seems skittish.”

“She’s been very busy, of course.”

“Right. I think that, sexually, we’re just not on the same wavelength any longer. Sharp and pungent while it lasted, though.” He stretched lazily and rolled in the grass. “Who was it who said that simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex?”

“Oscar Wilde.” Carlotta’s voice came from behind them. She approached, apparently having missed the earlier talk. Her dark hair swayed as she looked from Nigel to Nikka.

“I never saw this woman before in my life, Officer,” Nigel said.

“Likely story. Neighbors asked me to come hose you two down.”

“Why not jump in?” Nikka asked.

“Looks like the main event’s over. I always thought gentlemen rose when a lady entered the room.”

“Me? I’m a wizened old anxiety case. No gentleman, either. Never learned to hunt or ride or insult waiters.”

Nikka said, “I’m sorry, we would have waited, but I thought you’d still be working.”

“No problem. Not in the mood.” Carlotta said abruptly, “I ducked out when I got copies of these.” She waved a handful of photographs. “Batch of results from the gravitational lens. Fresh from the noise-eraser program.”

“Ah,” Nigel said, wondering why she had rushed over at precisely this moment, when she knew the two of them would be—but no, that was silly. Could Carlotta know them well enough to guess that Nikka would plan a playful seduction here? Well, he thought grudgingly, maybe so. With a bit better timing, she’d have interrupted them. And though they were still ostensibly on intimate terms, he realized Carlotta’s arrival would have embarrassed them all. Created more friction. And the net outcome would have been—what? Difficult to tell. He wondered if Carlotta knew what she was doing, or why. In any case,
he
certainly had no idea.

“Planets galore,” Carlotta said. “Around Wolf 359, Ross 154, Luyten 789-6, Sigma 2398, Kapteyn’s Star—
every
where.”

Dim dots near each star. Close-ups revealed rocky spheres, or gas giants, or bleak, Venuslike cloud worlds. “No Earths,” Carlotta noted.

“With so many planets around each star,” Nikka said, “the odds for favorable life sites somewhere nearby are good.”

“So goes the gospel,” Nigel said.

Carlotta said, “There’s a lot of analysis behind it. Data, too.”

“Yes. Perfectly plausible data.”

“Come off it,” Carlotta said. “You want to explain everything, using a couple of minutes of garbled talk with the
Snark
, none of it verified—”

“Unverified, yes, for want of trying. Ted won’t allocate the resources to interpret the EM language. We could learn a hell of a—”

“God, the computer memory needed to hold all that and process it—I did the study, I should know. Using shipboard systems, we wouldn’t have space left to store a lunch menu.”

Nikka said mildly, “I expect the Earthside teams will—”

“Ha!” Nigel exploded. “They’re busy with Swarmer and Skimmer studies. Banging their heads against the same sort of wall that’s between us and the dolphins. Pointless!”

“Look,” Carlotta said, “Ted worked over my projections real carefully, he conferred with
every
body concerned, it was a
good
decision. They heard you out, they really gave you every consideration. You keep up this cranky griping, everybody’ll start believing what Ted said the other … .” She stopped.

“Ah, yes. Ted’s always hard on people who’ve left the room.”

“And
you
aren’t?” Carlotta said sourly.

“Can’t stand close-mindedness, is all.”

“You’re more close-minded than Ted, for gossakes!”

Nikka said firmly, “No, he’s not!”

Nigel smiled wanly. “Maybe reality isn’t my strong suit.”

“Ted has to balance pressures,” Carlotta said. “You’re respected, that goes without saying, and if you’d just give him some public support—”

Nigel boomed out in a pompous voice, “Speak into the microphone, just say you’re happy, Ivan, in spite of some regrettable things you’ve done, and we’ll take care of the publicity.”

Carlotta sniffed. “You’re missing the point.”

“Probably. Been off my feed lately. This rack of bones could use a tune-up.”

Nikka said carefully, “Meaning?”

“Look at my last job rating. I’m sure Ted’s memorized it.”

Nikka said, “You’re exaggerating. Ted hasn’t got time—”

“No, he’s right,” Carlotta said. “Ted’s probably ‘building a file,’ as the administrators say.”

Nikka said, “But health problems aren’t grounds for—”

“If a majority of our esteemed crewmates think it is, then it
is
, period.” Nigel said. His face sagged with an inward-looking fatigue.

Nikka said softly, “They might put you in the Slots, then?”

“Slotting might bring you back up to specs for a manual job,” Carlotta said thoughtfully.

Nigel sighed and shrugged.

“Look.” Carlotta leaned forward. “At a minimum, it’ll make you live longer.”

“And miss most of the voyage to Ross 128.”

“Small price,” Carlotta said. “I don’t think you have to do it, though. You’ve got
lots
of sentiment behind you. They may all not agree with your theories, but the crew remembers all this started ’way back with the
Snark
and
Mare Marginis
and—”

“I’ve told you before, I
don’t
want to win by pinning on my medals and parading round the ship.”

“You want to convince them, right?” Carlotta said sharply. “Only they see things different. Well—”

“Stop, you two,” Nikka said, lean and lithe and distant on the grass. “Nigel, if you go into the Slots, I’m going with you.”

“What!” Carlotta jumped up.

“I could use some repair myself.”

“That’s not it.” Carlotta’s voice rose. “You want to stay with him even if he’s
asleep
!”

“My medmon index isn’t very high, either,” Nikka said neutrally.

“You’d leave me behind just to—”

“Bloody hell, must you forever think in terms of yourself?” Nigel jerked his head irritably. “We wouldn’t be slotted for more than a few years at most.”