With every passing hour, Hans Rebka became more convinced that his presence on the expedition to the Sag Arm was a mistake. Sure, it was nice to have been saved at the eleventh hour from what, even being optimistic, still looked like certain death by execution on Candela. But saved to do what? No one on the Pride of Orion seemed willing to let him do anything.
He had tried to make Julian Graves see reason. The Ethical Councilor simply shook his bald head and muttered to himself for a few moments.
"I hear you, Captain Rebka," he said at last. "And yes, I admit that so far you have been given little or nothing to do. That does not change my opinion. I possess a deep inner conviction that at some point you will prove to be essential to the success—even the survival—of this group."
"Doing what? How can I be needed for survival, when you brought along your own specialist survival team to ensure that?"
Hans Rebka's tone was sarcastic. He had met the "survival specialists" just before the ship made the final Bose transition to the great, frigid stellar system within which the Pride of Orion now floated. He had been appalled—appalled at their youth, at their lack of experience in dangerous situations, and most of all by their utter self-confidence. If you wanted to get yourself killed, there was no better way than to think you knew all the tricks. It took experience to make you realize that the universe could always pull another one out of the bag and throw it at you.
The irony of his words was lost on Julian Graves. The councilor frowned, pondered, and replied, "It is difficult for a logical mind to accept the idea that a redundancy of talents for survival might be a bad thing. In any case, my belief does not stem from logic alone. It draws also from personal experience. You saved my life in the past, not once but at least three times. I rely upon you to do it again."
So far as Graves was concerned, that ended the conversation. It was left to Hans Rebka to grit his teeth and sit on the edge of his seat when the Pride of Orion, signal beacon turned on and a dozen transmission devices blaring to betray its presence, made its Bose transition to a new stellar system which Hans had every reason to suspect might be dangerous.
That upon their arrival it seemed more dead than dangerous was nothing for which Hans or anyone else on board could take credit. He was wary as the survival team children—his term for them—oohed and aahed over observations of the cold, dark star and its frozen retinue of planets. The return of the signal beacon from the Have-It-All was less reassuring to him than to anyone else on board. He knew, even if they did not, that Louis Nenda had silenced the beacon and all other emanations from his ship until the crude but shrewd Karelian human felt there was no immediate danger. The Pride of Orion must have helped, a sacrificial goat that had bleated its beacon message non-stop from the moment of its arrival in the new stellar system.
Now Nenda was here, on board the Pride of Orion, and Hans didn't think for a moment that he had come to help. Nenda was here to improve his own chances of survival—and who could blame him?
Hans nodded a wary greeting as Nenda arrived. He placed himself at a point in the meeting room where the two men could keep an eye on each other. Behind Nenda, towering over everyone, was the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial. The twin yellow horns on the eyeless white head moved constantly from side to side. Hans knew that those horns received return signals from high-frequency sonic pulses emitted by the pleated resonator on Atvar H'sial's chin. They provided the Cecropian with vision through echolocation. What else they received, and whether or not human speech could be collected and interpreted, was anyone's guess. Atvar H'sial's slave and interpreter, the Lo'tfian J'merlia, was not present. He must have remained behind on Nenda's ship. How much could Nenda, with his pheromonal augment, tell the Cecropian of what was going on?
Louis Nenda was not about to say. He remained as silent as his Cecropian partner while Julian Graves introduced to them the five members of the survival specialist team.
"Ben Blesh, Torran Veck, Lara Quistner, and Teri Dahl." Graves waved a hand at the five, two men and three women sitting in a tight group. "And Sinara Bellstock, whom you have already met."
Nenda nodded. From his inscrutable smile, Rebka decided that the man was as underwhelmed as Rebka himself by the youthful "survival specialists." Nenda was squat and grubby and uncouth, but as the man at your back in a crisis you'd choose him over all five.
"We are here," Graves went on, "but clearly we are not where any of us expected to be. This is not the Marglotta system. Therefore we must decide what to do next. To aid in that, we should pool any new knowledge. Mr. Nenda, perhaps you would begin by telling us what you and your associates have learned. I assume that you will be happy to speak for all."
Nenda's smile vanished. Starting the ball rolling was obviously not his first choice, and from the way that the Cecropian behind him reared up and back, the information had been passed by Nenda to her and was not welcomed.
"Mr. Nenda?"
"Right." Nenda paused for a moment—for more communication, Rebka suspected, with Atvar H'sial. "One dark star, small enough and dense enough to be a white dwarf, but drained of all its internal energy by some process we do not understand. Forty-seven planets, just as cold. Nothing living or able to live on them, at least in any form known to us. And one other oddity. The biggest of the planets in the region where you might expect to find life in a normal system is a monster, bigger than the star it's goin' around, but it doesn't have the strong gravitational field to go with it. We detected all kinds of smaller bodies in nearby orbits, where the region ought to have been swept clean. The big planet is also the coldest of the lot, impossibly cold. We are tryin' to build up a detailed picture of the surface, but from this distance that will be a long job. As for explanations, we don't have any. This is all on a scale to suggest the work of the Builders, but we don't believe the Builders have been active in this system."
Almost from Nenda's first sentence, Hans Rebka noticed Darya Lang stirring in her seat. At first she was nodding agreement, but at Nenda's final words and his mention of the Builders, she burst out, "No! Wrong, wrong, wrong."
While Louis Nenda stared at her, apparently more in surprise than annoyance, she went on, "Oh, I don't mean most of what you said—I came to many of the same conclusions. This system isn't our final destination, it's a halfway-station used by a lying Polypheme, probably one Bose jump from where we really want to go. But Louis, when you say the Builders haven't been at work here, you are wrong."
Nenda opened his mouth, said, "Well—" and paused. Atvar H'sial had reached out to place one black paw on his shoulder, and was leaning over him so closely that the Cecropian's pleated pouch touched the top of his dark hair.
After a few seconds Nenda nodded. "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He turned back to Darya Lang. "Atvar H'sial says she knows the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog—all editions—forward, backward and sideways. And in none of those, dealing with more than twelve hundred artifacts in the Orion Arm, do you anywhere suggest that the Builders destroyed a whole stellar system. Why are you changing your tune now? Is it just because we're in the Sag Arm?"
"No. I'd say the same if we were back in our local arm. Louis, you had all the evidence staring you in the face, you just ignored it. The planet you mentioned is amazingly cold. In fact, according to the physics that we know, it is as you said impossibly cold. Colder than the microwave background radiation of the universe, which means there must be some mechanism at work on that planet to get rid of incident radiation falling onto it all the time from space. Otherwise it must increase in temperature to match its surroundings. Mentally, I tagged the place as Iceworld as soon as I made the first measurements. It's huge, just as you say, but it has hardly any gravitational field. You realized that, because it hadn't swept a region clear around its orbit. But you didn't take the next step. If you had measured the orbital periods of Iceworld's satellites—it has seven of them, all small—you could have calculated the planet's mass. I did that. The result is tiny, something you would expect from something one hundredth the diameter. What does that tell you?"
Nenda shook his head. He seemed to be waiting for Atvar H'sial to provide an answer, but a survival team member—one of the women, Lara Quistner—got in first. "Big diameter, small mass. Are you suggesting that your Iceworld is hollow?"
"I am. And that has other implications, ones that you don't know because you weren't with us on our earlier explorations. First, a hollow object that size can't be created by any natural processes that we understand. Second, we were led once before to a system and a giant planet, Gargantua, that seemed totally dead. But one of its moons, Glister, was hollow, and the evidence of Builder activity was inside it—including a transport vortex that could take you to other places. I bet that's happening here. If we want to reach our true destination, we have to go down to the big planet and explore below the surface."
Julian Graves said gently, "Professor Lang, even if you are right you didn't answer Atvar H'sial's question. Did the Builders destroy this whole stellar system, in order to make a single artifact on Iceworld?"
"I don't know. But Atvar H'sial is correct, in no other case have we found evidence that the Builders did such a thing."
"Not the Builders, Professor Lang. Then who?"
"Others. Destroyers, Voiders, Dead-Zoners, call them what you like. Whoever or whatever it is that the Marglotta believe is at work destroying the Sag Arm. Councilor, I have spent my life studying the Builders and their actions. What we find here does not match my instincts."
"But you may be wrong."
"Of course I may be wrong. It's only a theory. So let me go to the planet—and find out if I'm right! Something inside Iceworld should lead to our real destination, Marglot."
It was not Hans Rebka's job to tell Darya to stay away from inexplicable and probably dangerous worlds. He would have interrupted anyway, but Julian Graves saved him the trouble.
The councilor shaded his misty blue eyes with his hand and said, "Destroyers, Voiders, Zoners. Professor Lang, you desire to resolve a mystery by the somewhat risky procedure of introducing a greater one. Rather than one kind of super-being, the Builders, you now propose that we consider two. The avoidance of unnecessary complications has been a known working principle since the dawn of human history. Also, as you point out, what you have is no more than a theory. Others may have different ideas and suggestions."
As though on cue, E.C. Tally jumped in. "May I speak?"
The embodied computer was sitting well away from the others. A gleaming fiber-optic cable connected the socket on his chest with the computer system of the Pride of Orion.
Julian Graves glared at him. Tally was apparently not on the list of candidates likely to offer useful theories. "Is this relevant?"
"It is indeed most relevant. When we made the final Bose transition, I happened to be in the observation chamber with Professor Lang. However, after the transition she appeared uninterested in further conversation with me."
Hans Rebka saw Darya looking in his direction, and raised an eyebrow. You threw him out?
She smiled and shrugged, as E.C. Tally went on, "I then decided that I could perhaps employ my own extensive data bases to good effect. I made observations of my own. First I examined not the dark star system to which we have recently come, but our general stellar environment. I found an unexpected asymmetry in incident radiation. More starlight is coming to us from one region of the celestial globe than from its antipodes. It did not take long to discover why. The distance of the nearest visible stars varies from less than a lightyear in one direction, to more than twenty lightyears in the opposite direction. I asked myself, why should there be such a difference? But I found no obvious explanation. I therefore set out to make more observations, looking not at our local environment, but back toward the Orion Arm. Even across the distance of the Gulf, it is possible to identify certain of the supergiant marker stars employed in celestial navigation within the Orion Arm. And from their apparent locations, I could by triangulation compute an accurate position for us in the Sag Arm."
The embodied computer paused. E.C. Tally sensed that for the first time ever, others might be hanging on his words. "Before we started on this journey," the computer went on at last, "I had made my own estimates of the place in the Sag Arm where the Marglot system might be located. I was, unfortunately, wrong."
Graves said, "You trusted the Chism Polypheme's navigation files?"
"Regrettably, I did. However, my earlier error is not the point I wish to make. I believe from my observations and calculations that I know where we are now. If I might employ the displays?"
"You're hooked in? Then go ahead."
The lights dimmed. E.C. Tally said into the darkness, "This is a presentation of the Sag Arm as we observed it before we left Upside Miranda Port. Do you see the spherical region which, as Councilor Graves remarked at the time, is utterly lacking in light and life? Good. Now I am going to shift the origin of coordinates of the display, to one centered on a particular position at the extreme edge of that dark region."
The display seemed to zoom through space at an impossible speed, crossing the Gulf in seconds and plunging into the depths of the Sag Arm. When it slowed, a new and strange starscape revealed itself.
"You will probably not recognize this," Tally went on. "Nor might you expect to, since you could presume that no one from our spiral arm has ever been at such a location in the Sag Arm. This is, in fact, merely a portion of the Sag Arm as seen from the place that I computed by triangulation as our location. You would, however, be wrong in your assumption. I will now display the sky as it actually appears to sensors on the Pride of Orion at this very moment."
The image flickered. Tally continued, "If you fail to observe any difference, that is because there is no difference. We are where my computations suggested that we would be: at the very edge of the zone of darkness."
The lights in the chamber brightened. E.C. Tally, who had been standing, sat down to a baffled silence. It was finally broken by Julian Graves.
"Very good. So we know where we are. I do not see how that is of much help to our present situation."
"May I speak?"
"I rather wish you would."
"We are at the extreme edge of the region where the stars have ceased to shine. The Marglotta, who came to us and sought our assistance, may be presumed to be just beyond that edge since their home system is currently in danger. And since we were directed here, it is logical to assume that the Marglotta home world is at no great distance from us. I therefore propose that we travel to and explore the nearest stellar system. It will be, with high probability, the Marglot system."
Hans Rebka had listened carefully to every word. He decided that he understood the problem: although E.C. Tally was totally logical, the embodied robot was also totally crazy. Unless you got lucky, and found either another Bose node or a Builder transport vortex, a subluminal trip to the nearest stellar system was a multi-year proposition.
But maybe you didn't have to be crazy—just have an indefinitely long life-span, like an embodied computer.
Julian Graves said, "You leave one important point unspecified. Who would undertake such a journey?"
"Why, I would. Who else?"
"Who else, indeed? I need time to consider your suggestion, and also Professor Lang's. Does anyone have other ideas to offer?"
Graves was already on his feet, ready to end the meeting, when Louis Nenda coughed and said, "Yeah. Well, maybe. Though the last thing I offered got shot to hell. Thing is, At and me figure the rest of you are missing a big piece of all this. What about the Polypheme?"
"Mr. Nenda, you are the one who pointed out that Chism Polyphemes are the most crooked, unreliable, deceitful species in the galaxy."
"Absolutely. Did I mention they're also totally self-serving? If I didn't, I should have. But you had a Polypheme piloting the ship with the Marglotta on board. More than that, by the time it reached Miranda it was a dead Polypheme, something nobody I know ever saw or heard of. Polyphemes may not live forever, but they do their best to. So At an' me, we asked ourselves, why would a Polypheme get mixed up in tryin' to help the Marglotta? We can come up with only one answer: the Polyphemes are involved because they're scared light green. An' why? 'Cause their home world is next on the list, or maybe next but one. Otherwise, they wouldn't give a damn what happened to the Marglot system. So if anyone can tell us what's goin' on, the Polyphemes can."
"Mr. Nenda, what you say may well be true. There is, however, a fatal flaw in your argument: we have no idea where the Polypheme home world might be, and we know they will do everything they can to conceal that knowledge from us."
"The hell with their home world. We don't need it. Polyphemes gossip and gabble like nobody's business. You can bet your ass and hat that if the whole species is in trouble, any Polypheme you run into is likely to know about it. I don't want all the Chism Polyphemes. I just want one, and a chance to pull information out of it."
"How would you do that?"
"Don't you worry your head. I got my methods."
"I would be concerned by that statement, but for one thing: you have no Polypheme."
"Not yet. But I think I know a way to snag me one. Only thing is, it's going to take a few more hours of work before we know what we got."
"Indeed? Then a few more hours is what you will have. Not, I should add, for your benefit but for my own." Julian Graves surveyed the group. "I am sure it is hardly necessary to point out that we have gone from a paucity of ideas as to where we are or what we should do next, to a superabundance of theories. It is perhaps also unnecessary to remark that when three suggestions appear equally plausible, there is a better than fifty-fifty chance that any given one of them is wrong. I will inform you tomorrow of the result of my deliberations."
Julian Graves stood up and left the chamber. It was obvious that he was in no mood for further discussion, but Hans Rebka hurried out after him.
"Councilor, I know you have not yet made a decision but I want to point something out to you. It would be absolutely criminal to permit Darya Lang to head down to the surface of Iceworld unless someone who knows what he is doing goes with her."
"It certainly would, Captain Rebka." Graves turned in the doorway. "Your concerns are noted. They are, however, premature. I request that you, like everyone else, wait until tomorrow before you jump to conclusions. Please do not pursue me farther."
A wave of his arm, and the door closed.
Hans Rebka was left alone in the corridor with another mystery to ponder: How could somebody with so little idea of danger be placed in charge of an expedition so far beyond the boundaries of known space?