Across a Billion Years (23 page)

Dyson thought that any intelligent species would be capable of converting its home world into such a sphere within two or three thousand years after it entered the industrial age. So we ought to be able to do it about 4000 A.D. However, it must be a tougher trick in practice than in theory, if the Mirt Korp Ahm, whom we know were at the stage of galactic travel 1.1 billion years ago, waited until a mere thirteen
million
years ago to do it. Or did they just not bother to get around to it any earlier?

A Dyson sphere would not, of course, show up on optical telescopes, since all of the sun’s light output is trapped inside the sphere. That explains Dihn Ruuu’s failure to see the star when he looked for it in the sky. Nevertheless, even a Dyson-sphere civilization would be unable to make use of
all
the energy that was available to it, and would have to get rid of some of it in the form of heat, that is to say, infrared radiation. Dyson suggested that the sphere would have a surface temperature of 200° to 300° K., and would be emitting plentiful radiation in the far infrared wavelengths. This, of course, could be detected easily by outside observers.

Dihn Ruuu could stop grieving, then. The home star of his creators had neither burned out nor blown up. It was still there—under wraps, so to speak.

Small surprises eclipse big miracles. Old Paradoxian proverb, just invented by your humble servant. Dihn Ruuu had thrown so much astonishing news at us in a dozen sentences that for a moment, in the excitement of the Dyson-sphere discussion, we forgot to get excited over the real orbit-smasher, which was …

That the High Ones possibly weren’t extinct at all….

And that Dihn Ruuu was inviting us to help him pay a call on them.

Wonders were multiplying too swiftly.

Of course, Dihn Ruuu’s guess that the High Ones were still alive was
only
a guess. The McBurney IV robots had heard neither beep nor plink from the Mirt Korp Ahm in thirteen million years, and it’s dangerous to think of thirteen million years as anything but a zog of a long time. On the other hand, we were accustomed to thinking of the High Ones as beings buried a billion years in the past; if they had survived until thirteen million years ago, it was a reasonable bet that they still existed. On the third hand—

We did a lot of talking all at once, shouting out theories, disputations, suppositions, postulates, hypotheses, and even some plain old guesses. Nobody could hear anybody else in the uproar, until suddenly one voice cut across all the rest:

“Help!”

We fell silent and looked around.

“Who called for help?” Dr. Schein asked.

“I did,” Pilazinool said in a small voice. “I finally did it.”

He finally had. During our excited outburst, the Shilamakka had given way to his old nervous habit of unfastening hands and feet and limbs, and this time, in a kind of supreme act of self-mutilation, he had contrived to unscrew everything at once, arms and legs. Don’t ask me how. I guess he was simultaneously unscrewing his right arm with his left, and his left with his right; however it happened, he had stripped himself down to a bare torso and was looking piteously at his heap of discarded limbs, unable to start assembling himself again. His expression of bewilderment was so intense that I was afraid something was seriously wrong. But then Dr. Schein began to laugh, and Mirrik snorted, and Kelly picked up one of Pilazinool’s arms and put it in place, whereupon Pilazinool began hastily and in huge embarrassment to get the rest of himself attached.

The interruption was just what we needed. We were calm again.

Dr. Schein said quietly, “Dihn Ruuu asks us to follow him to the planet of the High Ones. I’ll call for a vote. All in favor—?”

Guess how
that
vote turned put.

But certain practical difficulties keep us from blasting off at once for Mirt, which is what the home world of the High Ones is called. Such as the fact that Mirt is seventy-eight light-years from McBurney IV, and the only transportation available to us at the moment is Nick Ludwig’s ship, which can’t travel at ultradrive speeds. If we set out tomorrow for Mirt in Nick’s ship, I’d celebrate my hundredth birthday before we got there.

So we have to go through the cumbersome business of waiting for our ultradrive cruiser to come back this way on the prearranged checkup flight. That’ll be a month from now. And then to charter a flight to Mirt, if we have the stash to swing it.

Actually, that isn’t too bad. It gives us some time to explore McBurney IV before we rush off to the next wonderworld. It’s unhealthy to gulp down a surfeit of miracles; gives one indigestion of the imagination. Whole careers could be spent just in this one place. Not archaeological careers, I suppose; the story of the High Ones has exploded out of archaeology now. But McBurney IV holds a million times as much to dazzle us as did the cave on the asteroid in the 1145591 system; and we thought
that
was a high-spectrum load!

The robots here have been very cooperative. Dihn Ruuu explained to them that we were stranded here until our ultraspace ship picked us up, and they accepted that. Whereupon we became honored guests and tourists, instead of prisoners. For the past week we’ve been using the ship as our base, and taking off each day on a sightseeing trip through the Mirt Korp Ahm’s outpost here.

It’s clear now why this place is so different, architecturally, from what we saw in our globe. The cities shown by the globe were a billion years old. McBurney IV was still inhabited by the Mirt Korp Ahm less than a hundred million years ago. Even among so conservative a race as the High Ones, architectural styles do change in hundreds of millions of years. Dangling cities went out of fashion here.

We are only skimming the surface of this world of course. Hairy primitives that we are, we can hardly begin to understand what we see. The power accumulators, draining energy from McBurney’s Star and socking it away underground. The master brain centers that run the transit systems. The automatic repair mechanisms that come scuttling out to fix any mechanical difficulty instantly. The great scanners that tirelessly search the sky for a hint of a signal from the Mirt Korp Ahm—a signal that never comes, alas! The robots themselves, the Dihn Ruuu, self-lubricating, self-repairing, seemingly immortal. The aircars: do they run on antigravity engines? Everything dazzles and bewilders.

Fantastic as their cities are, though, the Mirt Korp Ahm aren’t really a billion years ahead of us in technological development. Considering the head start they had, the High Ones actually seem a little backward, as though consciously or otherwise they froze their culture at this level long ago. I mean, this super-civilization of theirs is just about what I’d expect Earth to have in, say, the year 10,000, if I projected our technological growth forward on the same curve as it’s been following since about A.D. 1700. But it’s not what I’d expect Earth to have in the year 1,000,002,376. Not by plenty.

I don’t think I can even imagine what a culture that’s been developing steadily for a billion years
ought
to be like. Disembodied electrical essences, maybe. Ghostly creatures flitting in and out of the eighth, ninth, and tenth dimensions. Cosmic minds that know all, perceive all, understand all.

Maybe I’m being unfair to the Mirt Korp Ahm. Perhaps the growth curve of our technology in the years 1700-2300 was wildly atypical; perhaps the growth curve of
any
civilization inevitably flattens out once it reaches a certain level. I can’t help feeling that the Mirt Korp Ahm should have gone farther than they did, with all the time they had to evolve, but possibly they bucked up against the absolute limits of ingenuity and went static. Possibly the same thing will happen to us, two or three thousand years up the line. I wonder.

In any case, we’re having a glorious time, in an unreal and dreamy way. Did any of this seem probable when we set out to grub in the dirt on Higby V?

Same cube, four days later. Much confusion.

Scene: our ship. Hour: late. Cast of characters: me, Jan, Pilazinool. Everyone else asleep.

Mysterious bleeping sounds emerge from ship’s audio system. Who calls us here? Local robots tuning in on our channel? Unlikely. Maybe some Earth ship calling. No Earth ships within a dozen light-years, at least. None expected here for several weeks. What spins? Pilazinool says, unworried, “Tom, see what’s happening over there.”

Tom Rice, Boy Radioman, goes to audio panel, ponders its intricacy a moment, taps buttons and spins dials, meanwhile making official-sounding noises like, “Come in, come in, I’m not reading you, come in.” And so forth. Simultaneously does his best to improve reception so that unknown message from space can be detected. Also switches on recorder, in case anything important is arriving, though he knows innate improbability that someone would call us
here.

Out of the receptor comes male human voice, reciting the call numbers of our ship. “Confirm,” voice says. “Do you read me?” it inquires.

“I read you,” I say, feeling like a minor character in a bad tridim film. “Who’s calling? What’s going on?”

“Ultradrive cruiser
Pride of Space,
Commander Leon Leonidas, calling Captain Nicholas Ludwig.”

“Ludwig’s asleep,” I reply. “So’s just about everybody else. My name’s Tom Rice, and I don’t really have much authority, but—”

Jan, coming over to listen, nudges me and whispers, “Maybe they’re in distress, Tom!”

Thought seems logical. Unscheduled arrival of unknown ultradrive cruiser—emergency landing, maybe—difficulties on board—

I say, “Are you in trouble,
Pride of Space
?”

“We aren’t. You are. We have orders from Galaxy Central to place you under arrest.”

It dawns on me that the conversation is not going well.

I boost the gain so Pilazinool can catch what’s being said.

“Arrest?” I repeat loudly. “There’s some mistake. We’re an archaeological expedition conducting research in—”

“Exactly. We have instructions to pick up a team of eleven archaeologists and bring the bunch of you back to Galaxy Central at once. I advise cooperation. We’re right upstairs, in orbit around McBurney IV, and we want you to wrap up your work within two hours and get up here into a matching orbit so we can bring you on board. If you don’t cooperate, I’m afraid we’ll have to come down and get you. Please take down the following orbital coordinates—”

“Wait,” I say. “I’ve got to notify the others. I don’t understand anything of what’s going on.”

Jan is already scurrying toward the cabins to wake people up. Pilazinool has removed several limbs. The voice out of the receptors, sounding terribly calm and very, very military, asks me to find one of my superiors and put him on the line right away. I stammer something apologetic and ask my caller to wait.

Dr. Schein, looking sleepy and grim, stumbles into the room.

“It’s a Navy ultradrive ship,” I say. “Sent here by Galaxy Central to arrest us. We’ve got two hours to get off this planet and turn ourselves in.”

Dr. Schein makes a face of disgust, squinting eyes, clamping lips. Goes to audio. “Hello,” he says. “Schein speaking. What’s all this nonsense about?”

Not a good approach. Calm military voice gets icier, explains all over again that our galactic odyssey is at its end. By now everybody else has crowded into the cabin. Nick Ludwig, yawning, demands to know the story. I tell him. Ludwig chews on knuckles and groans. Steen Steen says, “They can’t make us do anything. We’re safe here. If they try to land without permission, the robots will blow them up.”

Jan tells him patiently, “We’d be crazy to defy a Navy ship. Anyway, what good would it do? We’re stuck here until we get ultradrive transport out.”

Dr. Schein, meanwhile, is speaking in low, earnest voice to
Pride of Space.
Impossible to hear conversation because of general hubbub. When he turns away from audio, he looks old, gray, beaten.

“Somebody go and find Dihn Ruuu,” he says. “We’ve got to leave. Galaxy Central has its clamps on us at last.”

“Don’t give in!” Steen Steen cries. “We’re free agents! The era of slavery is over!”

Dr. Schein ignores him. “Nick,” he says, “get the ship ready. We’re going upstairs.”

Dihn Ruuu arrived; we explained things; and the robot arranged for our quick exit from McBurney IV. We left as we had come, with our engines cut off, and went eerily whistling upward in the grip of the same powerful force that had drawn us down. The robots who were controlling our ascent inserted us neatly into the orbit of the
Pride of Space
and let go; we switched to our own power, matched velocities with the big star-ship, and let ourselves be pulled into the custody of the Galaxy Central Navy. The sight of Dihn Ruuu brought the whole crew out to gape, up to and including the commander.

Commander Leonidas turned out to be a crisp, dapper little man of about fifty, with pale blue eyes and a warm, sympathetic nature. He made it very clear as soon as we were on board that he was simply doing his job, nothing personal in it.

“I’ve never had to arrest archaeologists before. What were you people doing—smuggling on the side?”

“We have done nothing but legitimate research!” snapped Dr. Horkkk, furious as always.

“Well, maybe so,” Commander Leonidas said, shrugging. “But somebody at Galaxy Central is upset about you. Pick you up at once, that’s what I was told! No delay! Tolerate no opposition! As if I was catching a bunch of sposhing mutineers.”

“What you are doing,” said Dr. Horkkk in his thinnest and nastiest of voices, “is preventing us from completing one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of the past ten thousand years.”

“Really, now? I hadn’t realized—”

“By your interference,” Dr. Horkkk went on, “you interrupt our journey just as we are about to solve the final mystery of the Mirt Korp Ahm, the High Ones, as you call them. You snatch us away at the moment of greatest accomplishment. The stupidity of the military mind is a universal curse that—”

Commander Leonidas’ sunny expression was beginning to darken, and I could see that if Dr. Horkkk kept it up, we’d finish the voyage in irons. Mirrik and Pilazinool saw it too, and tactfully moved in on Dr. Horkkk from opposite sides, pinning him between them and shutting him up.