Starfarers (13 page)

“Light streamed on me in many colors through the windows of faerie York Minster and soaring Chartres Cathedral. At the University of Salamanca, which remembers the wise Moors, I lost myself in books.

“I looked into the big eyes of the Empress Theodora at Ravenna and knew why men had loved her. I saw Michelangelo’s
Judgment Day in Rome and wished that the doom in our cosmology had such a meaning.

“The columns of the Parthenon rose before me, broken, eroded, but softly golden from centuries of weather, and they made my spirit stand as true as they.

“In the tombs of Egypt, where the paintings still cried forth love of life, I wondered at the steadfastness that hewed them from the rock beneath that furnace sky.

“Shwe Dagon recalled another faith, which yearned beyond life for oneness but which wrought splendor.

“I stood on the Great Wall, where brave men had kept watch against the barbarians, and I searched through the Forbidden City for the loveliness that dynasty after dynasty had gathered together.

“Under blossoming cherry trees in a Kyoto twilight, it was as if I heard temple bells ringing again.

“The halls where Washington and Jefferson spoke of freedom are no more; but I have walked over the Virginia hills that they knew.

“On an Andean mountain I did homage to the stones of Machu Picchu, whose builders followed dreams of their own.

“I tell this to your winds, Feng Huang, that they may strew it wherever they will. There is no other remembrance known to me.

“Now soon I shall lay my bones in your soil, where my Eileen laid hers these many centuries ago.”

Sixteen hundred
light-years from home, her clocks reading four months into the journey,
Envoy
paused. Shielding force fields down, she moved on intrinsic momentum, at mere tens of kilometers per second, through space that was not shrunken and time that went not as in Elf Hill, among stars that the eye saw in their own colors and at their own stations around the heavens. Need was to take fresh, more accurate navigational sightings and realign the velocity vector accordingly. Here was an ideal place for that, where those aboard who were able to could meanwhile do science.

Spacesuited, Dayan worked outside. Induction boots held her fast to the outer hull; similar footings secured her instruments. Cleland stood by, her assistant.

The great cylinder reached fifty meters right and left. At either end spun the wheels, cliff-sheer, but stars agleam beyond them and aflicker when spokes hurried across. Metal glimmered in the light of star throngs, icily tumbling Milky Way, querning nebulae, galaxies dimmed only by distance. But instruments and minds were aimed straight outward. It had been planned that
Envoy
would pass within a few light-years of the open cluster NGC 5460.

Some forty suns were gathered close together, a fire-swarm of ruby, gold, and diamond. The brightest burned with the radiancy of more than a hundred Sols. Like Venus at its most brilliant in the sky of Earth, they cast shadows, but they did not glow, they were frozen flame.

Dayan adjusted a spectrometer, switched off the control panel illumination, and waited in weightlessness for night vision to return to her. The noises of her body were the
barest flutter beneath silence. When she again saw fully, she breathed, like a prayer, “
Yafeh
—The glory of it.”

“And—and the questions,” Cleland stammered louder.

“Yes. I’ll be analyzing these data for I don’t know how long. I think we’ll discover things they never could, peering from the Solar System.”

“There may well be some remarkable planets. Formed under those conditions,” in the roiling gravitational fields of huge masses swinging near each other. “And life?”

“I doubt we’ll find signs of that,” in the spectra of planetary atmospheres. “Supernovae going off at such quarters, within ten parsecs or thereabouts, wouldn’t they kill it off?”

“Be that as it may, what could exist—Do we
have
to go on right away?”

Dayan’s rapture yielded to sympathy. “We’re committed, Tim.” Her gloved hand patted his. “Don’t worry. You’ll find plenty of interesting stuff where we’re bound, I’m sure.”

His mood plunged. “No doubt. I can keep busy.”

Dayan looked at him. His face in the helmet was a chiaroscuro of darkness and faint highlights. “You miss Earth badly, don’t you?” she asked.

“No point in that, is there? The Earth we knew is—is in its grave, with… all we cared about … forgotten.”

“And you are maybe feeling you have given it up for nothing?”

He had avoided mention of the situation between him and Kilbirnie, obvious though it was to everyone. He straightened so fast that the motion was plain in his spacesuit. “No, of course not. I said I’ll have my work. Everybody will. Work like, uh, like no work ever done before.”

Again Dayan’s hand sought his, and now squeezed. “That’s the spirit, Tim. Don’t give up personal hope, either.”

He stared through the enormous night. “What? Do you really think—” Dayan and Kilbirnie were friends, often talking privately.

“We’ll have to see,” the physicist replied. He could not tell whether she was unwilling to disclose confidences, or had none to share, or had been too sharply reminded of her
own losses. She turned back to the instruments. “Let’s get on with our observations.”

Like the voice of a providence, Nansen’s sounded in their helmet receivers. “
Hola
, out there. I think you two should suspend your project and come inboard as soon as possible.”

The physicist tautened. Unknownness reached everywhere around. And lately the captain and chief engineer had seemed troubled about something they did not speak of. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing wrong.” Nansen’s tone had regained a lilt. “But Yu has tuned the neutrino detectors as you requested. They seem to be registering a nonstellar source—from the cluster.”

Dayan and Cleland poised rigid. The blood thundered in their ears.

“My God,” the planetologist said, “that could mean nuclear power plants. A high-tech civilization.”

“Life after all,” Dayan whispered. “In spite of everything.”

“Now we do have to go see!”

“First we learn whether this is real. Come on, let’s bundle up our gear and get inside. We have more urgent business!”

In a
dozen zero-zero jumps, the ship took as many vantage points and harvested data for the computers to interpret: interferometry, spectroscopy, analysis, done on every aspect of matter and energy available to her. Among those crew members not engaged, talk rattled and swirled, except for those who drew back from the excitement to think.

They all met in the common room, as they did whenever Nansen called a session. He stood before his crew, who had taken chairs in a semicircle. For a short while, nobody spoke. Ventilation rustled, stronger and cooler than usual. Views of space filled two large screens, the cluster splendid in one of them, the Milky Way chill in the other.

His glance went over the gathering from left to right. Sundaram sat calm, a trace of a smile on the full lips. Cleland’s gaze kept wandering to Kilbirnie, then springing back to the captain. Now and then Yu shivered just a bit. Brent held himself
upright, hands flat on thighs. Ruszek had folded powerful arms across broad chest. Mokoena’s eyes glistened—tears catching the light? Kilbirnie well-nigh crouched. Zeyd looked deceptively at ease. Dayan’s fists lay clenched on her lap.

Our good biochemist seldom fails to position himself with a woman on either side
, Nansen thought. The amusement flickered out. “Order, please,” he said without preliminary. The dryness was a mask for the turmoil within him, where a fledgling eagerness danced above the concern that had more and more gnawed. “We know why we’re here. May we first have a report from Dr. Dayan?” He believed formality as well as reserve was necessary when he presided over a gathering.

She cast a look across the group but addressed herself to him, though he was aware of what she would say. “It’s definite. Unless nature is playing some trick we never suspected she could, we’ve found a source of neutrinos near the heart of the cluster. It appears to be at a star, but is not a star itself. The distributions of energy and type don’t fit. However, they do fit a thermonuclear reactor more or less like ours.”

A sigh and a stirring went among them. Rumor and conjecture had become fact.

Sundaram raised his hand. “Excuse me,” he said, “I am no physical scientist, but how can anything artificial be strong enough to detect at this distance, especially above the background emission of that many crowded suns?”

“Our equipment has the sensitivity, given sufficient data, bearing in mind that the emission
is
different from any that a star would give off,” Dayan explained. “Actually, we haven’t identified a point source. It may be a number of reactors within a limited region. I expect it is.”

“If beings there have such power plants,” Kilbirnie wondered, “why haven’t they spread through space?”

“No zero-zero drive, apparently,” Dayan said.

“But yon stars are clustered! They could reach others
using plasma jets, or could at least send robots to explore, and you could detect the ships boosting, could ye no?”

“We can’t project our psychology on them,” Mokoena said. “They may be nothing like us.”

“We’ll go find out,” Ruszek boomed.

Mokoena winced. Nansen had overheard part of an exchange between them. The mate had not taken well her reluctance to approach the suns. He hungered for a break in a sameness that seemed to wear on him more heavily than he had awaited.

Kilbirnie waved clasped hands above her head. “Whoops, aye, and hear, hear!” she cried.

“Wait a minute—” Brent began.

“Is it wise?” Yu asked simultaneously.

“Would you really pass by a chance like this?” Zeyd demanded of them both.

“Unique,” Cleland put in.

Yu lifted her hand. They listened. “I thought likewise at first,” she said. “But then I thought further. We have not reached our goal. Here is no starfaring.” She cast a glance at Nansen. He stayed impassive. “The environment is unlike anything of which humans have had experience.”

Mokoena’s face showed complete agreement.

Kilbirnie could not refrain from interrupting. “At the time we left Sol, anyhow. The more reason for us to discover what we can.”

“We don’t know what the hazards are,” Yu continued. “Or the gains, compared to”—her words stumbled—“to what we hope for from the Yonderfolk.”

“And the time we’d spend,” Brent said.

Zeyd shrugged. “A few extra cosmic years. For us, perhaps a few months.”

“How could we learn anything worth knowing about utterly strange planets, whole worlds, in a few months?” Mokoena retorted.

“People worked hard and made sacrifices to send us on our mission,” Yu finished. “We should keep faith.”

Even if the mission turns out to be empty
, Nansen thought. The same foreboding must be in her.
Maybe especially if it does.

But here we have a fresh prize close by. It may even somehow bear on the mystery of the Yonderfolk, which is beginning to seem darker than we knew.

Yu’s reminder had given Zeyd pause. He stared into the air. “True,” he mumbled. “Osman Tahir.”

“Damn it to hell, this is a scientific expedition!” Cleland exclaimed. They had not seen him so vehement before. “We’ve come on a scientific treasure hoard. I say our duty is to at least go take a
look.”

“Hurrah for you, Tim!” Kilbirnie cheered. “I second that.”

“We’d proceed with due caution, of course,” Dayan said.

“What do you think, Captain?” Ruszek called. “You’ve been as silent as an unpaid spy, these past days.”

Yu Wenji knows why.

Nansen had chosen his words beforehand: “I personally favor a reconnaissance, taking no avoidable risks. If we make it, we should make it now. Who knows what will have changed in several thousand years? Besides, on our way back we will likely be tired, we will certainly be older, our ship or equipment may have suffered damage, and in general, the venture will be more dangerous. Here we may possibly learn something that will help us later, in our primary mission.”

Kilbirnie bounced on her chair. Ruszek’s mustache jutted upward from his grin. Dayan smiled. Cleland nodded jerkily. Zeyd retreated into thoughtfulness. Mokoena appeared to resign herself and then start lightening up; if all she got here was a tantalizing glimpse of some biology, it might still give a new insight. Sundaram sat quiet, with his customary expression of mild friendliness. Yu could not entirely conceal her distress.

Brent stirred. “One thing,” he barked. “One thing. If we go on into the cluster and spend time, how does that time count?”

Nansen raised his brows. “What do you mean, please?”

“The contract. The articles we signed. Five Earth years max, after we get where we’re going, before we start home. Will a side trip count toward that? I say it should.”

“Pardon me,” Sundaram said, “but may I ask what difference this makes across ten thousand years?”

“A difference to us. Our lives.”

“The question is ridiculous,” Dayan snapped. “The articles also provided we can vote to stay longer than five years.”

“Yeah, if seven out of ten want to.”

“Don’t you want to come home with the knowledge that’s our whole purpose?”

“Sure, sure. I’m not saying I wouldn’t vote to stay, even, if we need to. I just want this point clarified.”

“It’s valid,” Nansen ruled, “but not relevant yet. We’ll take it up if we find we should remain in the cluster any substantial length of time. That is if we do choose to investigate here. At present, don’t waste thought or energy on incidentals.”

Brent glared, swallowed, but kept his mouth shut.

“Captain,” Yu said, “we really ought to continue as we were. The traces—”

Nansen’s chopping gesture cut her off. “Please, Engineer Yu, we agreed to keep that matter aside till we have better information.” She sank back.

“What the devil is this?” Ruszek rasped.

“You will hear in due course,” Nansen assured him. “Now I’ll only say it would be a distraction, when we need our heads clear.” To them all: “I shall not dictate the decision. If there are no further questions or comments, we will adjourn for twenty-four hours. Think, inquire, discuss it among yourselves, and tomorrow we will vote.”