MacRoscope (45 page)

The star was in business again, as a fast-living white dwarf.

But soon the helium ran out, and the tiny star faded into a blackened ball of matter no larger than a planet. It had come to a dismal end. It was dense with collapsed matter and peripheral heavy elements captured during its glory from galactic debris, but it was dead, a drifting ash.

After more millions of years this minuscule corpse was swept into the sphere of influence of a nascent star, a body forming from the more plentiful gas nearer the rim of the galaxy. As the new star, heedless of its degrading destiny, took on the characteristic brilliance of the long atomic conversion, this cinder became a satellite, sweeping up some of the gas for itself. It enhanced its mass and developed an atmosphere, but remained inert. Its day was done; it was never to regain its erstwhile grandeur.

“That’s Earth!” Afra said. Then, immediately: “No, it can’t be. Wrong composition, and the core is much too dense.” She was absorbing the symbols for material and density automatically, seeing the planet as it was.

A second ember was acquired by the young system, also representing the death of an ancient star. Then a third and a fourth, each accruing what pitiful lagniappe it could from the scant debris of space. The last two were much larger cores than the first, and acquired more atmosphere for their dotage, but had no hope of rejuvenation. Four planets orbited the star, each far older as entities than it was.

A neighbor had problems. The picture shifted to cover it for a geologic moment. This star was much larger than the original one and had consumed its hydrogen — and helium — lavishly. In a scant few million years it had run its course. But its mass, and therefore its internal heat, was such that the conversions did not stop at carbon. Oxygen, sodium, silicon, calcium — all the way down to iron, 26 on the atomic scale, the elements formed in this stellar furnace. A series of thermal intensifications — cataclysmic storms — broke through the shell of helium even before its breakdown was complete, producing trace amounts of heavy metals up to lead; but the basic, energy-releasing conversions predominated. The demise of a large star was not a quiet matter.

When nothing remained at the core lighter than iron, the gravitic collapse resumed. The heat ascended to a hundred billion degrees. Strength was drawn from this collapse, and energy poured back into the core to form new matter. The heavier elements all the way up to uranium now were manufactured in quantity.

But at this final collapse the star rebounded in an explosion that splattered its mass across the galaxy: a supernova. A splendid spectrum of heavy elements shot past the more conservative viewpoint star and through its satellite system, and some of this was captured while some fell into the star itself. The system was richer than it had been, feeding greedily upon the gobbets of its neighbor’s destruction.

The original planet intercepted a fair share of this largesse, and gained perceptibly thereby, as did the others. But the largest fragments, mostly iron, fell into orbit and coalesced into planets in their own right. Now three small satellites circled within the four large ones.

“Mars, Earth, Venus!” Afra said, caught up in this adventure. “And the first planet we saw is Neptune —
our
planet!”

Schön still did not bother to comment. Ivo felt Schön’s concentration as he identified and captured the diverse threads of the macronic tapestry and organized them into a coherent and chronological visual history. This was a task that required all of Schön’s powers, the artistic with the computational and linguistic. They were nevertheless exceptional powers for an exceptional undertaking; Ivo had tended to lose sight of just how potent a mind his mentor-personality possessed. If a mouse born into Leo remained a mouse, a lion confined to the harness of a mouse remained a lion. Or, in this case, a Ram.

More time passed, and the slow accretions continued. A billion years after the first, a second nova developed in the immediate neighborhood. More rich debris angled by, and the sun’s family levied another tax on it, acquiring material for two more inner planets and a number of major moons.

“Mercury and — Vulcan?” Afra inquired. “Or is that Pluto, misplaced?” For there were now five inner planets — one more than could be accounted for.

Schön kept on working.

From distant space, travelers came. Most passed, merely deflected by Sol’s gravity, not captured. One, however, lurched into a wobbly elliptical orbit that passed close to that of planet Jupiter.

“
Six
inner planets?” Afra demanded in a tone of outrage.

It was not to be. Jupiter wrestled the newcomer around in a harsh initiation, twisting it inward toward the sun… and toward the orbit of the next inward planet. Too close. They drifted, interacted — and came together.

And sundered each other before they touched.

“Roche’s Limit squared,” Afra murmured.

One fragment shot out to intercept planet Saturn, and was captured there — too close. Roche’s Limit exerted itself again: the apprentice moon shattered, and the tiny fragments gradually coalesced into a discernible ring.

A major fragment of the original demolition traveled farther. It intercepted Neptune, where it too broke up, forming two tremendous moons and some fragments. One moon escaped the planet but not the system, and became the erratic outer minion Pluto; the other hooked in close to Neptune and remained as Triton.

Another major fragment angled across an inner orbit and interacted there, too large for capture, too small to escape. The two bodies formed the binary planet known as Earth and Luna.

Then a close shot at almost normal time. The landscape of Earth, seven hundred million years ago: strange continents, strange life on both land and sea. The moon came then, sweeping terribly close, a tenth of the distance it was to have at the time of Man. No romantic approach, this, but the awful threat of another application of the Limit. The tides of Earth swelled into calamity, gaping chasms split the surface of Luna. Mounds of water passed entirely over the continents, obliterating every feature upon them and leaving nothing but bare and level land. No land-based life survived, even in fossil, and much of the higher sea-life also perished in that violence. The progression of animate existence on Earth had been set back by a billion years: the greatest calamity it was ever to know.

“And now we make love by the light of Luna,” Afra said, “and plot it into our horoscopes as ‘feeling.’ ”

It was Harold’s turn not to comment.

All this, stemming from the single trans-Mars wreckage — yet the bulk of the refuse dispersed as powder or spiraled into the sun, to have no tangible impact. Debris remained to form a crude ring around the sun in the form of the asteroid belt, and a number of chunks eventually became retrograde moonlets. It would be long before the disorder wrought by this accident was smoothed over.

A third nova, more distant, provided another cloud of dust and particles, adding several tiny moons. Some of the swirls become comets, but the complexion of the system did not alter in any important way. Sol had its family, collected from all over the galaxy, portions of which were older and portions newer than itself. Life recovered from its setback on Earth and individual species crawled back upon the reemerging land and drifting continents in the wake of a receding moon.

One thing more: a solitary traveler came from the more thickly-settled center-section of the galaxy. It was a planetary body moving rather slowly, as though its kinetic energies had been spent by encounters with other systems. It looped about Sol in an extraordinarily wide pass, hesitated, and settled down to stay, averaging seven billion miles out.

“What is
that
?” Afra inquired.

“That thing must be twice the size of Jupiter!” Harold said. “How could it be there, in our system, and we not know it?” But no one answered.

Ivo half-suspected Schön of joking.

The motion stopped. The picture remained: the contemporary situation, updated to within a million years. They had witnessed in summary the astonishing formation and history of the Solar System.

“Beautiful, Ivo!” Harold exclaimed. “If you can do that, you can do anything. Congratulations.”

Ivo removed the macroscope paraphernalia. They all were smiling at him, and Afra was getting ready to speak. “I didn’t do it,” he said.

“How can you say that!” Beatryx protested. “Everything was so clear.”

But Afra and Harold had sobered immediately. “Schön?” Harold asked with sympathy.

Ivo nodded. “He said it would take me two weeks, and he was right. He said
he
could do it in an hour. So I dared him to, I guess.”

“Wasn’t that — dangerous?” Afra asked.

“Yes. But I retained possession.”

Harold was not satisfied. “My chart indicates that a person like Schön would be unlikely to put that amount of effort into a project unless he expected to gain personally. What was his motive?”

“So it was
Schön
who called me ‘stupid,’ ” Afra murmured.

“I think he has found a way to get around the destroyer,” Ivo said carefully. “The memory trace in my mind, I mean, and maybe the rest too. I think he can take over, now — and I guess he wants to.”

“Are you willing to let him?” Harold asked, not looking at him.

“Well, that
is
in the contract, you might say. If the rest of you feel I should.” He said it as though it were a routine decision, but it was only with considerable effort that he kept his voice from shaking. It was extinction he contemplated, and it terrified him.

When Afra had feared loss of identity she had fallen back on physical resources and demanded the handling. Irrational, perhaps, but at least it had satisfied her. What did
he
have to bolster his courage?

“So Schön was merely making a demonstration for us,” Harold said. “An impressive one, I admit. Proving that he can make good on his claims. That he can get us to the destroyer, and with the advance information we need. All we have to do is ask him.”

Afra’s eyes were on Harold now, but she remained silent. Ivo wondered in what spheres her thoughts were coursing, and was afraid to guess. She was intent and exquisite.

“Is it necessary to take a vote?” Harold asked, casually. Thus readily did they accept the prospect of a companion’s departure.

“Yes,” Afra said.

“Secret ballot?”

She nodded agreement.

How badly did she want that destroyer?

Harold leaned over and filched the note-pad from Afra’s purse. Ivo wondered idly why he didn’t use his own pad for the dirty work. Harold tore out a sheet, folded it, creased it between his fingernails, tore and retore it. He handed out the ballots.

“I — don’t think I’d better vote,” Ivo said, refusing his ballot. “Three can’t tie.”
Did they realize
— ?

Harold shrugged and marked his paper. “The question is, do we ask for Schön, yes or no,” he said.

The two women marked theirs and folded them deliberately. Harold picked up the ballots, shuffled them without looking and handed the three to Ivo. “Read the verdict.”

“But I’ll recognize the script. It won’t be secret.”

The truth was that he was afraid to look. This was another nightmare, where everybody took things casually except himself, he being the only one to properly appreciate the nature of the chasm over which he leaned.

“Have the computer read them, then,” Harold said.
How could he be so indifferent?

Ivo dumped the slips into the analyzer hopper and punched SUMMARIZE. There was a scramble inside the machine as it assimilated the evidence.

The printout emerged. Ivo tore it off, forcing himself to read:

NO

NO

NO

IVO

LOVE

The relief was so great he felt ill. It took him a moment to realize that somebody had voted more than once, and another to discern the other oddities about the listing. Someone had written “NO” carelessly so that the first stroke of the “N” was unconnected, and the machine had picked it up as “I” and “V” and added the “O.” Thus the word became his name.

He was unable to explain how the last word had come about.

Harold stood up. “Was there any doubt?” he asked. “I don’t think we’ll need to do this again. Let’s get back on the job. We have a lot to do and none of us are geniuses.”

Only after they were gone did he realize that he still held the printout — that he had not read aloud or shown to any of them.

Reentry into the galaxy — was anticlimactic. Group confidence was on the ascendant. They had been unable to pinpoint the destroyer’s moment of origin; there had been nothing, then everything, and there was no emanation from the area except those terrible “tame” macrons. Apparently the destroyer broadcaster had been set up rapidly by a task force that jumped into location and away again in a few hours, and whose technicians could somehow interfere with wild macronic emission. Unless the observer happened to land at the very fringe of the broadcast, its inception could not be caught. But still they had confidence, sure somehow that the worst was over.

They centered on the destroyer source nearest Earth, jumping toward it and away again, but gaining from experience. The jumpspace map was sketchy, but it helped, and overall their approach was steady. Five thousand light-years from it; eight thousand, one thousand, seven thousand, four hundred, two thousand, seventy, twenty.

There they paused. “We can’t get any closer,” Afra said. “Our minimum jump is fifty years, and that would put us thirty years on the other side, or worse.”

“Nothing to do but back off and make another pass,” Harold said. “Shuffle the alignment and hope.”

“Schön says he can—”

“If he wants to give us the info, fine,” Harold said. “If he’s using it to buy his way into this enterprise, tell him to get lost. We idiots can muddle through on our own.”

They retreated and made another pass, coming within ten light-years. The third try was worse, but the fourth was very close: less than a parsec, or just over three light-years.