Darya, even though she was from one of the richest worlds in the Fourth Alliance, had never dreamed that ships like the Pride of Orion existed. It was a miracle of compact structure. Although it was not especially large, and although it looked like and operated as one perfectly integrated body, the ship could divide into six self-contained vessels. Each had its own drive and its own Bose transfer capability. The ship had been renamed before they set out from Upside Miranda Port. Darya suspected that was a Council act. The Pride of Orion and everyone within it would be the first representatives of the local arm to visit its inward neighbor.
Or not quite the first. The Pride of Orion was about to pass through yet another a Bose transition. Just ahead, a mere pulsating speck on the screen, flew a much smaller ship. Even as Darya watched and wondered, the Have-It-All entered the node and the signal beacon vanished.
Its presence on the expedition was the result of a terrific argument with Julian Graves on the eve of their departure; an argument, moreover, in which the unheard-of took place: Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda had agreed with each other completely.
"The Pride of Orion is effectively indestructible." That was Julian Graves.
"I don't care if the Pride of Orion is made of solid neutronium and could fly up the wazoo of a Bolingbroke giant and come out in one piece." Nenda stood arms akimbo, glaring at the councilor. "Smart people don't do things that way, an' I can't believe you don't know it."
"Nenda's right." Hans Rebka poked an accusing finger at Graves. "You saw it for yourself during Summertide and on Genizee. No matter how secure you feel, you don't travel without a back-up. Especially when you're heading beyond known space."
"We have a back-up ship, for Heaven's sake. We have six back-up ships, right on the Pride of Orion. If you want to inspect them, you have my permission to visit every one."
"Yeah, an' that's real easy to do." Nenda looked around as though seeking a good place to spit. "You know why? Because they are right there on board the Pride of Orion. It gets zapped, they get zapped."
"What could possibly, as you put it, 'zap' the Pride of Orion?"
"If we knew the answer to that, we'd be a lot less worried." This time Rebka's outstretched finger actually touched the councilor's chest. "I don't understand your logic here. Taking an extra ship along will cost the Council a negligible amount."
"Cost nothin', you mean." Nenda jerked a thumb toward the silent Cecropian. "At an' me, we'll fly the Have-It-All in scout position for free."
"Even better. Councilor, are you listening? You have somebody willing to fly on ahead of the Pride of Orion, to make sure that there are no problems waiting. "Hans Rebka gave Nenda a quick sideways glance at that point—the offer to lead the way into possible danger sounded a little too good to be true—but he went on, "A lead scout is in everyone's best interests."
"It would not be right to ask Mr. Nenda and Atvar H'sial to expose themselves to risks not borne by the rest of us. In any case, we will have a special group of humans on board the Pride of Orion, with unique training in survival techniques. The inter-clade council insists on it."
"Oh yeah? Training acquired where? Sitting on their asses on one of the cushy worlds of the Fourth Alliance? If you took 'em to Karelia—"
"—or to Teufel."
Nenda glared at Hans Rebka. "Hey, Captain, we're not competin' on this one." He turned back to Graves. "Take 'em to Karelia or Teufel, an' the locals'd eat 'em for supper an' spit 'em out with the pits."
"I have no reason to question the survival team's competence. They were trained under the direct supervision of Arabella Lund, whom I happen to know personally. And I do not want you to take unnecessary risks."
"Fine. You're not askin' me an At to do that. We're askin' you. An' we're not offering miracles. If there's trouble on the way, all we'll give you will be a few minutes of warning."
The argument went on and on. But Hans and Louis had finally won. The proof of that was the presence on the expedition of the Have-It-All, which had already made its next Bose transition. Darya stared hard at the screen, seeing nothing but knowing that the node entry point for the Pride of Orion could be no more than a few minutes away. One advantage of this ship's curious structure was the existence within its hull of scores of private chambers where a person could retire with her thoughts and hide away from others. Each room had access to the Pride of Orion's external viewing sensors, and what Darya wanted to see on the display was the reassuring beacon of the Have-It-All as soon as their own ship completed its transition.
Crossing the Gulf was nothing like normal interstellar travel, where you were always comforted by the sight of nearby stars that might send help if your superluminal travel modes failed. Around the Pride of Orion lay only a vast sea of emptiness. The spiral arm from which they had come lay far behind. Ahead the Great Unknown of the Sag Arm sprawled across half the sky.
And within that unknown, perhaps, lay completely new Builder artifacts. Darya had not been able to focus on anything else since Julian Graves mentioned the possibility. She had rejected from Louis Nenda a suggestion that they compare notes on what they knew about the Sag Arm—"I'll show you mine an' you show me yours." She had also been unable to return to her previous intimacy with Hans Rebka, and it had little to do with the fact that they had been apart for two years.
Even the delivery of what Councilor Graves clearly thought of as a warning seemed to lack reality.
That had come in answer to Hans's protest, at the end of the first meeting. "You're crazy if you think a handful of us can run off and in a few weeks sort out the problems of a region as big as all our territories put together."
Graves's forehead added a few more worry lines. "Captain Rebka, I have never suggested any such thing. Our goal is the exploration of what is happening on Marglot, and possibly an attempt to help the Marglotta. We do not expect to understand the mystery of dying worlds, or to determine the fate and future of the whole Sag Arm. However, I would be remiss if I failed to inform you of another important point concerning our journey. As you remark, we are small in numbers, even if large in experience of the Builders and their artifacts. But our expedition is as small as it is because this is viewed by the Council as a high-risk endeavor."
In other words they don't want to send too many of us, just in case we don't come back. But even that thought hadn't had as much effect on Darya as it should. Artifacts! What wouldn't she give to see new Builder artifacts? She realized now how boring it had been for the past couple of years, sitting in her office at the Institute on Sentinel Gate and methodically recording every element of the disappearance of Builder presence. It had been like making notes on your own death.
With that thought, Darya felt within her the near-imperceptible quiver that told of impending passage into and through a Bose node. She peered at the screen, seeking that other dot of light.
And there it was, a signal beacon blinking its message. The Have-It-All was safely through, with the Pride of Orion following close behind. But the thing that made Darya catch her breath lay beyond the two ships. They had attained the far side of the Gulf. A final and short Bose transition should take them to the Marglot system. However, even before that there might be evidence of Builder artifacts.
Darya eagerly scanned the glittering starscape that filled the sky ahead. Many years of experience told her that she was probably wasting her time. Builder artifacts were infinitely varied in appearance. They ranged from apparently normal structures, like the Umbilical that ran between Opal and Quake, to the near-unfathomable space-time convolutions of the Torvil Anfract. An artifact could look like anything or nothing.
She looked anyway, swinging a high-resolution scanner across the sky. Stars and to spare—they seemed more thickly clustered than in the home Orion Arm—but nothing to hint at Builder presence.
She jumped as a voice behind her said, "Too soon, I fear."
She turned to see E.C. Tally standing there.
"How did you know what I was looking for? And how did you know where I was?"
"The latter question is easily answered. The Pride of Orion's central data bank contains a complete occupation directory for every chamber at all times."
"So you know where the survival team is housed?" For whatever reason, Julian Graves had kept his team of survival specialists in seclusion.
"Of course."
"Do you know how many of them there are?"
"There are five, all of human form. None, alas, appears to be an embodied computer. As to what you were seeking as you scanned the sky, I assume that it is what all others seem to be seeking: a first look at the Marglot system."
"Are we close enough for that?"
"No. Nor will we be, until the final Bose transition is accomplished. However, logic is not at work here. Every being on board, in spite of known facts, stares impatiently at the screens. It is curious, but even I, who according to my designers lack circuits for the emotion known as excitement, feel a sense of impending fulfillment."
"But you're not staring at screens."
"No. Logic still plays a significant part in my actions. Our final Bose transition to the vicinity of what we hope will be the Marglot system lies an hour in the future, and I have calculated that the whole system subtends less than a second of arc from our present distance. It is therefore invisible to the naked eye. I sought you out in order to ask for your assistance on something else, something for which the data banks provide no guidance."
"Then it's not likely that I can help."
"Councilor Graves suggests otherwise. The subject calls for opinion, rather than fact. May I speak?"
Had Julian Graves sent Tally to her just to get rid of the embodied computer, with his endless what-why-how? Darya gave up on screen-watching. The chances of finding evidence of Builder presence in the first five minutes in the Sag Arm was as low as that of seeing the Marglot system itself. She resigned herself to an E.C. Tally lecture. "What's your problem?"
"The nature of the Builders."
"You're out of luck. Nobody knows that."
"My question is specific, and concerns the generality of their distribution. Were you present during the dissection of the Marglotta corpses?"
"No, I was not." And Ugh! as well. From what Darya had heard and the pictures she had seen, the bodies had been shrunken mummies by the time they were discovered in their sealed chamber on the Polypheme's ship. She wondered just when they had died.
"Nor, regrettably, was I present. However, I understand that the Marglotta are very different in external body structure and internal organs from any creatures in our local arm."
"That's not surprising, E.C. The Sag Arm is so far away, you'd expect the development of life to have occurred there independently. Their beings should look and act utterly differently."
"So Councilor Graves suggested. Yet tests of the Marglotta living quarters on the Polypheme ship suggest that they were not segregated because they breathed different air from the Polypheme. In fact, they could have breathed the same air with no difficulty. And the Chism Polyphemes—who also developed in the Sag Arm—can breathe the same air as humans and Cecropians. Analysis of material in the Marglotta digestive tracts shows that they were also able to eat the same kinds of food as humans. Now, you are of course familiar with the ancient theory of panspermia?"
Darya groaned mentally. One problem in dealing with E. Crimson Tally was the embodied computer's built-in urge to acquire as much information as possible—no matter how old, no matter how useless. She shook her head.
"Really? Then I will explain." E.C. Tally casually fitted a neural cable from the room's terminal to the socket on his chest, and went on without missing a beat. "Panspermia posits that life on many worlds was seeded there from outside. This leads at once to a question: Could such seeding take place not merely among the neighboring stars of a galactic arm, but clear across the Gulf?"
"I have no idea."
"But I do. I performed the necessary calculation of Gulf crossing-time for spores of living matter when propelled by light pressure. I made plausible assumptions as to the mass/area ratio of such spores. And the result I obtained was a survival probability so close to zero that it can for all practical purposes be ignored."
"And?"
"I decided that interstellar seeding can indeed take place, but not across so great a span as the Gulf. From which one would conclude that any living beings who inhabit the Sagittarius Arm must have arisen as and be descended from independent life. And yet we can breathe the same kind of air as the Marglotta and Polyphemes."
"That's because of the Principle of Convergence." It was rare for Darya to find simple facts of which Tally remained ignorant. "We have good theoretical grounds for expecting all worlds within the habitable zone of a star eventually to tend to develop one of just two kinds of atmosphere. Either they remain hydrogen-rich, or photosynthetic forms develop and they become oxygen-nitrogen rich. Taskar Lucindar proved that principle using very general arguments, more than three thousand years ago."
"Indeed she did. She also pointed out that the Principle of Convergence applied to biospheres as a whole, but not to the living forms that might inhabit them. To explain observed similarities in edible materials, Taskar Lucindar invoked the principle of panspermia; which, as I have proved to my own satisfaction, cannot operate across any empty space as wide as the Gulf."
Go away, Tally. You make my head ache. What was the old comment about the ancient who knew everything? "He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop." Darya said mildly, "So what's your question, E.C.?"
"Why, it is as I said: the Builders. They occupied our spiral arm long ago, and they filled it with their artifacts. Did they also occupy the Sag Arm, and perhaps the whole galaxy? Were they, rather than panspermia, the instrument by which life forms with similar metabolic requirements were able to appear on both sides of the Gulf?"
E.C. Tally now had Darya's full attention. For years it had been her conviction that the Builders would not have confined their presence to a single galactic arm. Her unplanned and uncontrolled trip to Serenity, the huge Builder artifact thirty thousand lightyears out of the plane of the galaxy, had supported her belief, although Professor Merada and others at the Artifact Research Institute on Sentinel Gate still regarded the story of that journey as a pure flight of fancy. Proving that the Builders had been active in the Sag Arm (and beyond) required access to that arm—which had until now been impossible. True, there were the wild tales told by the Chism Polyphemes. But Darya, like Hans Rebka, lacked faith in Polypheme pronouncements on that or any other subject.
She said, "If the Builders were active all over the galaxy, that explains a lot of things." She added, "Kallik and Atvar H'sial can tell you—" Then she paused.
She had been going to say that the Hymenopt and the Cecropian probably knew as much about the Builders as she did. Unfortunately, Kallik and Atvar H'sial were aboard the Have-It-All, along with Nenda, J'merlia, and the hulking Zardalu, Archimedes.
She glanced up to the display. The flashing beacon of the other ship was pulsing at a higher rate.
"E.C., that's a Bose entry signal. They're about to make another transition."
"That is correct. Another, and the final one."
"So soon?"
"As I said, this last stage of the journey is short and simple. Unless they return a warning drone after Bose node entry, our own transition is only a few minutes away. However, as to my earlier question, and our discussion of it—"
"Not now, Tally. If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk."
Unlike E.C., Darya definitely did have circuits for emotion. At the moment they were close to shorting out with overload. So many elements were converging. Louis Nenda was about to take a leap into unknown dangers—she found it hard to forgive herself for refusing his simple request for a meal together; mixed with worry for Louis came the excitement of encountering a new stellar system that sounded like nothing anyone had ever seen; and finally, most powerful of all, there was the promise of renewed Builder interaction. That hit her like strong wine after a two-year drought.
Darya watched and waited until the beacon of the Have-It-All vanished, then watched and waited again through the long minutes preceding their own Bose transition.
The moment came at last. The universe blinked. Darya sighed, leaned forward, and opened her eyes wide.
And saw nothing. She felt bewildered. The records left by the Chism Polypheme and the dead Marglotta should have brought the Pride of Orion to a system where the central primary was a greenish-yellow star alive with hydrogen prominences. Before her eyes lay nothing but darkness, lit by the wan gleam of far-off stars and galaxies.
At her side, E.C. Tally was not limited to wavelengths visible to humans. The embodied computer was in direct contact with all the sensors of the Pride of Orion, which had completed a first full-sky survey within milliseconds of transition. Darya heard Tally's exclamation of surprise.
"What is it, E.C.?"
"One star, but many planets—more than forty of them."
"Where? I can't see a single one."
"Nor can I, even with the superior eyes of my body. But the Pride of Orion reports the presence of a central star less than two hundred million kilometers away from us, orbited by a large train of planets."
"Then why don't we see them?"
"Because they are all, even the central star, at low temperatures. The Pride of Orion employs bolometers, able to detect and measure the radiation from objects only a few degrees above absolute zero. This is ridiculous!"
"What is?" Darya had heard—or imagined—excitement in Tally's voice.
"Why, the readings. The star and most of the planets are cold, no more than a couple of hundred degrees absolute. But one of those planets—a big one, in a close-in orbit—is at only 1.2 kelvins. That is lower than the temperature of the universe's microwave background radiation."
"Isn't that physically impossible?"
"According to the accepted theories of human and Cecropian scientists, it is. But perhaps the scientists of the Sag Arm employ different theories."
Darya hardly heard E.C. Tally's reply. A more disturbing thought had come into her head. Where was the beacon? Where was the flashing sign assuring them of the safe arrival of the others? Where was Louis Nenda?
Darya called for a new full-sky survey, centered on the frequencies of the signal beacon. She concentrated totally on the monitors as the results came in, ignoring E.C. Tally who was still babbling on at her side.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. The Have-It-All, along with all its crew, had vanished without a trace.