The clocks in Envoy had counted one year and thirty-seven days. By computation she had been under way, including time spent in the normal state, four millennia, nine centuries, fifty-six years, and eight days. Somewhere near the middle of the region she had been seeking, Envoy once more halted her zero-zero engine, lowered her defenses, and peered about with every relevant instrument at her command.
Naked vision would have availed little. Stars teemed through crystalline dark. They were no longer in their familiar constellations, though you might have recognized pieces of a few, partial and distorted, in the direction of vanished Sol; but it was hard to pick any array out of such a multitude. The Milky Way still girdled heaven, bayed with the same nebular blacknesses; you had to look closely and remember well if you would find the changes brought by this perspective. Neighbor galaxies glimmered as remote as ever.
Devices capable of registering single photons were soon overflowing with news. When it seemed enough, the ship made a leap of some two hundred astronomical units and repeated the observations. Automated and computer-evaluated, they went quickly. Again she jumped, again, again. Interferometry thus evoked further data. After less than a week, during which some aboard went short on sleep and excitement mounted in everyone, the picture was complete.
Not surprisingly, the region resembled that around Sol. A thirty-parsec radius, the approximate practical limit for the equipment available, defined a sphere containing perhaps ten thousand stars. A thousand or so rated as "Sol-like" — single, main sequence, spectral class from middle F to late K and therefore prime candidates for closer examination. Fifty-three proved each to have a planet at a distance where it would be reasonable to expect liquid water. Some of those planets were probably giants or otherwise unsuitable. Dayan's team did not spend time on that. Instead spectroscopy searched out indications of atmospheres in chemical disequilibrium, which ought to betoken life. Identifications were uncertain at greater distances, but within forty light-years it found three.
And this was well out in a spiral arm, where the stars thinned away toward emptiness. Most were crowded close to the galactic nucleus, with a radiation background that made organic evolution unlikely almost to the point of unthinkability. Life must be rare in the universe, hardly ever burgeoning into sentience, and the chance of a high technology vanishingly small.
Notwithstanding, when Envoy left Sol humans had found spoor of four spacefaring civilizations, widely separated. More must exist, their traces hidden by the dust clouds around the nucleus — unless all had perished by now. So enormous is the number of the stars.
When knowledge is slight, making every action a gamble, you play the odds, as nearly as you can judge them. One sun with a presumably life-bearing planet was a middle-aged G8 dwarf, less bright than Sol but virtually a twin of Tau Ceti, twenty-seven light-years from Envoy's, last stop. With a short burst of plasma drive, she aimed her velocity at it. The interstellar crossing took two of her days.
It ended at a distance of nine astronomical units. She could have come somewhat closer before getting so far down in the sun's gravity well that zero-zero was forbidden. The maneuvers would have been trickier than they were worth. She simply trudged ahead on jets, correcting her vectors as she accelerated toward rendezvous, reversing herself at midpoint and braking. At one-half g, a compromise between impatience and reaction-mass economy, the passage took a pair of weeks. Nobody commented on the irony. Well before Envoy left home, starfarers had grumbled it threadbare.
Dayan returned from the reserve saloon-galley bearing a tray with a teapot, two cups, and a few cookies. She set it down on a tiny table unfolded at the middle of the cabin and herself on her bunk alongside. Yu already sat on the one opposite. Dayan poured. "Here," she said. "To steal a phrase from an old book I once read, the cup that cheers but does not inebriate. Unfortunately."
"Thank you." The engineer sipped. "It's good." "Anything would be, wouldn't it, at this stage of things?" Dayan gestured about her. The low, cramped space held the table, a cabinet, and two curtained bunks tiered on either side. Doors at the foot ends gave on a corridor, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze past another, and on the bath cubicle shared with the men, whose dormitory lay beyond. Except for the captain, the men were worse off than the women, since an extra bunk had had to be fitted in. Again the crew perforce spent most of their waking hours in the saloon-galley, which offered screens, games, and a few hobby materials, or in the exercise chamber, where workouts were possible if they didn't require much room. Such were conditions on the gimballed decks.
"I'm not complaining," Dayan added quickly. "But I am glad we could get together for a while by ourselves, Wenji, and speak our minds without worrying what someone will think." They had done that off and on since Jerusalem.
"I imagine Selim feels restricted, too," Yu remarked, slyly demure.
Dayan laughed. "Yes, poor man. Jean says she's seen him paw the deck and puff steam when I pass by."
"Jean has a lively imagination."
"She calls it second sight. Looking through that suave mask of his."
"I daresay you have grown a little frustrated yourself."
"More than a little, sometimes."
Yu turned serious. "You two do seem happy together."
Dayan glanced away. "Well, he is a — a charming and interesting fellow, as we know. His travels on Earth, his culture and — A first-class lover." Her fair skin pinkened.
"Do you think the relationship will become permanent?"
"I don't know," Dayan answered slowly. "Neither does he. Who can tell — out here? For now, we feel lucky."
"May you always be, Hanny."
The hazel eyes swung back to meet the brown. "And you, Wenji, dear. May you be lucky again."
"I am. I have memories."
Dayan hesitated before plunging ahead. "Will you be content with that, for the rest of your life?"
Yu cradled her teacup as if to draw warmth from it and breathe from the rising fragrance. "I may have to be."
"You're over your grief, that mourning you tried to keep hidden. Surely you are. You're a healthy young human being."
Yu spoke mildly, almost matter-of-factly. "But who else is there? With due respect, also for your Selim, Hanny, who among them could I compare to my Xi?"
Again Dayan paused. "Ricardo Nansen?" She sounded half reluctant.
Yu nodded. Light from overhead rippled over her midnight hair. "He is a remarkable person, yes. But he is ... distant. When he smiles, how often does it come from within?"
"He's the captain. He thinks — I believe he thinks he has to be our impersonal father figure."
"He may well be right."
A rueful smile flitted over Dayan's lips. "Pity. I confess to occasional thoughts of my own."
"Jean has them, too, I suspect."
"I know she does."
"Poor Tim."
"Not inevitably. He's too shy and socially inept, but he may learn better."
"Devotion like his should count for something."
"M-m, that's a handicap, I think. For Jean, it must be like having a large, clumsy puppy always bumbling after her and staring with wetly reverent eyes. He actually has a wide range of interests, you know. I wish they hadn't come to include Al Brent's theories, but that's probably faute de mieuux" Dayan observed parenthetically. "Tim is quite attractive when he relaxes and is himself. The problem is, he can't in Jean's presence, at least when he's sober. But do you remember our Apollo Day party, when he'd had an extra drink or two, and the songs he got to singing?"
Yu giggled. "How could I forget? I still blush. But they were comical."
"If someone seduced him, it might work wonders," Dayan speculated. "It might also make Jean take a new look at him."
The blunt pragmatism embarrassed Yu. She retreated to her cup before she replied, "Who should that be? I like him, but no."
"I, too, of course. Neither of us is the sort who can handle something like that well, especially so as not to leave wounds. Mam?"
"I — I don't believe she would, either, even as a kindness. Lajos —"
"They don't sleep together any longer. No, I have not snooped. That would be practically criminal, here aboard ship, wouldn't it? But I am not blind, either. Nor are you."
"He has stopped drinking heavily."
"Was he? I thought so, but couldn't be sure. That would explain the estrangement. Did Mam tell you?"
"No." Yu did not elaborate. "He is a — a warrior without a battle."
"What Al Brent imagines he himself is," Dayan said tartly.
Yu's tone was more sympathetic. "It may be true. Lajos, however — a man of action, condemned to what he feared would be inaction. And with memories harder to bear than he knew, than he admitted to himself until lately." Dayan refrained from asking for details. "Now, when he may soon have a challenge, a use for his strength, he stays fit to meet it."
"And she may take him back?"
"Who knows? Does she? At any rate, I do not imagine she will choose to do anything soon that would make the situation more tangled."
Yu drained her cup and set it down hard; the tray rattled. "Isn't this ridiculous?" she exclaimed. "Here we are, crossing the cosmos, bound into mystery, and we sit and gossip like village wives about petty sexual problems, things we already know and things we should not pry into. Are we really so shallow?"
Dayan smiled. "I'm not geared to be forever the pure scientist and bold explorer. Every once in a while I want some girl talk."
Yu returned the smile, wistfully. "Well, I also. Humans, apes. We do not groom each other with fingers. We use words. But it is the same instinct."
Dayan nodded. The red locks stirred on her shoulders. "We are what we are. Maybe we do our great things not in spite of, but because of it."
Save for lacking a moon, this planet, even more than the one in the cluster, recalled Earth, blue laced with white clouds, lands ruddy-brown on shining oceans, ice caps whitening the poles. Studies revealed unlikenesses in mass, axial inclination, rotation period, precise atmospheric composition, spectra and therefore composition of vegetable life — on and on, a catalogue that was never completed. They did not lessen the beauty.
They did not lessen the revelation. Down on the ground stood buildings, and artifacts more enigmatic: about a score of groupings spread around the globe, untenanted, often overgrown, like the relics of the other spacefaring age at the other world. These, though, were not wreckage; time had not much gnawed at their clear, strange lineaments.
It was as if an angel had unsealed and opened a book in a language none could read — yet.
Envoy lay in low orbit. Instruments would search and probe, machines descend on sampling expeditions, more machines analyze, computers and brains sift the data for meaning, before any human set foot on yonder soil. None would, were it deemed too hazardous. The crew accepted this. It was standard exploratory doctrine. For the time being, they had ample fascination of discovery, and the space and comfort of their regular decks.
Dayan finished helping Yu prepare an observer assembly and returned to quarters. She found Zeyd at prayer, prostrated toward a Mecca he could not face and that by now perhaps existed only in his heart. Respectful, she waited till he was done. Then, as he looked up, she grinned and jerked a thumb at the bed. He laughed and scrambled to his feet.
Mokoena knelt in prayer of her own. From a simulation of stained glass above the altar in the little Christian chapel, Jesus smiled down at her. She whispered not to him but to the spirits of her kinfolk, should they survive and remember her, using the dear tongue of her childhood. Afterward she walked to the park and worked with the flowers. Poor things, two weeks aslant had not been easy on them, and though robotic service was adequate, they must have missed the touch of living hands.
Brent looked his fill at the planet, sought his cabin, and bioconnected. In full-sensory interactive simulation, hardly distinguishable from reality if he avoided thinking about it, the program sent him riding and conquering beside Pizarro.
Cleland busied himself in the flood of information. For this while he was quite happy.
Sundaram savored the view of the world outside.
Nansen sat in his own cabin. It was no different from the rest, spacious, with a sliding partition that could divide it in two and a hath cubicle. Furnishings were likewise the same, chairs with lockable gripfeet, bed convertible to double width, built-in cabinets and large desk, viewscreen and computer terminal and virtuality unit and other standard items. His possessions made it his. On the deck he had laid down a multicolored carpet from the estancia of his family. Crossed sabers hung on a bulkhead. Framed opposite was a faded photograph of an ancestor, Don Lucas Nansen Ochoa. Picture screens displayed views from parts of the Earth he had known, mostly still although in one grass billowed and trees tossed on the plains of home. Another, currently reproducing Monet's La Meule de Foin, seemed no less alive. Shelves held a few mementos from planets where he had walked, together with a codex Spanish Bible. Otherwise the ship's database could provide him with anything he might want to read or watch or listen to. Most of humankind's entire culture as of the year of departure was in it.
He sat at the desk, beneath a small ancient crucifix, fashioning a statuette of a horse. It reared, mane and tail flying. Once he might have gone on to cast it in bronze, but here he must be content with the clay. It gave beneath his fingers, stiffly voluptuous.
The door chimed. "Open," he bade it, and turned around.
Kilbirnie stood clad in shorts and skinshirt. "Hi," she greeted. "Are you busy?"
"Not to notice." He rose and approached. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I thought I'd be appallingly brutal to a handball. We've been cramped such a long time. But I can't find anybody who wants to play. Are you interested, skipper?"
The wide white smile suggested that she had not tried very hard. He considered for a moment, then said, "I would be delighted. Let me change clothes."
He ducked behind the partition. She wandered about. It was not her first visit — everybody came now and then, for this or that reason — but three of the scenes were newly on display, a Parisian sidewalk cafe, a toucan perched on a tree she did not recognize, the view forward from the tiller of a sailboat heeling to a hard wind. She gestured at them as he came back. "Are these from your personal life?" she asked.
"Yes, recordings that happened to come out well," he answered. "Souvenirs."
"I have some myself."
He did not respond to the implied invitation. They went forth.
Their game was brisk and merry. At the far end of the gymnasium, Ruszek silently and doggedly lifted weights. To them he seemed askew, for the chamber was so long that its curvature neared the bounds of sight. Markings on the deck, hoops and whirlers on the bulkheads, assorted equipment in the corners, gave a wide choice of exercise or sport.
After a while Nansen and Kilbirnie were ready for a breather. Sweat sheened on her skin, darkened her shirt, and livened the air around her. Beneath a headband, the light brown hair was in elflocks. "What's got Hanny so excited?" she asked out of nowhere.
Caught off balance, he replied awkwardly, which was unusual for him, "Why, what — what makes you suppose she is?"
"I know her. And I saw you and her huddled together, buzzing. You're excited, too, skipper."
He cast a glance toward Ruszek and lowered his voice, though the other man was out of ready earshot. "A . . . preliminary indication. Possibly false. We shouldn't make any announcement before it's confirmed."
She quivered. "Aw, come on. I won't wilt if it turns out negative. Nor will I blather."
"The scientific tradition," Nansen said. "One does not publish until one is reasonably sure of one's results."
Kilbirnie looked aside, as if outward to the stars. She laughed. "Publish, here? Skipper, I've said it before, pomposity does not become you." He flinched just enough for her to see. She touched his arm. Admiration abruptly colored her words. "Yes, you do maintain traditions."
He yielded. "Well, if you promise not to tell or hint —"
"I do. I'd never break a promise to you."
"It is possible — it will take time and effort, given the low signal-to-noise ratio, and it may prove to be nothing more than a normal variation in the background count — it is possible that Dr. Dayan has acquired a nonstellar source of neutrinos. Within this region. But it is only a — it could be only a blip. She has not placed the source, if it is a source, more closely than several are minutes."
Kilbirnie whistled.
Then she said, "Aweel, maybe no muckle surprise. I didna believe a civilization that went starfaring could die just overnight. I didna care to believe that." She looked up at him. "If 'tis true, will we go there?"
"Of course," he said. "Remember, though, confirmation — or disconfirmation — will take time. Meanwhile we should investigate what is here. If nothing else, it may give us some pertinent information."
"Aye." Eagerness flared. "If only we can land, our own selves!"
"I hope so." Nansen's eyes shifted from hers. He forced them back. "You understand, do you not, in that case Pilot Ruszek goes first? We cannot risk both boats, and he is senior."
"Give him that," she agreed. "He needs it. Just don't keep me waiting too long, please."
"You are patient, Pilot Kilbirnie."
"Not very. But I understand."
"Thank you."
"And you —" It burst from her. "You're a saint."
"What? Disparate. Nonsense."
A sudden intensity pressed at him. "You want to go yourself, don't you? The way you once did. Now you're the captain, and the captain does not personally make exploratory flights."
"Well, when we find the Yonderfolk, if we do, that may be different."
Her smile gave way to something like tenderness. "It matters tremendously to you, this, doesn't it?"
"To our whole race," he said. "Otherwise why would I have accepted the mission? Alienation after my few short voyages wasn't reason enough."
Kilbirnie's head drooped a little. "Alienation. When we come back, will they care?"
"I like to imagine they will. That whatever they have become, we'll bring back what will make them care."
"Knowledge?"
"Yes, but more. New arts, new ways of thinking and feeling and living." All at once, though his demeanor stayed calm and his arms remained at his sides, he spoke more passionately than she had ever heard him do. "Creativity was dying in humans, before we left, before we were born. The modes were exhausted. Nothing original was being done. Science and technology were on a plateau, with no higher ranges in sight. Government, political and social thought, was devolving through Caesarism toward feudalism. Yes, one could paint in the manner of Rembrandt or Renoir, compose in the manner of Bach or Beethoven, write in the manner of Tolstoy or Joyce, and many did, but what was new, where were the fresh worlds? Yes, the fractal school sparked artists for a while, but it depended on machines, and it, too, was sinking down into sterile self-imitation. Perhaps colony planets have begotten dynamic civilizations, perhaps humans have met aliens who inspire them, but if not, or even if so, the works of an old and great foreign society would give us a renaissance."
He stopped.
"You've never said much about that," Kilbirnie murmured.
"No, I did not want to lecture." Nansen half smiled. "My hobbyhorse ran away with me. I'm sorry."
"Is enthusiasm unbecoming Don Ricardo, el Captain Nansen? I do wish you'd open up more, skipper."
He eased. "Oh, come, now. I am not — what is the word? — not that standoffish."
"Prove it."
"How?"
"Well," she purred, "you did say something once about teaching me an old South American dance."