16

Dr. Shastri walked into the small auditorium and looked around at the assembly of students and observers. The now-familiar alien signal continued its strange dance on the screen.

“How does he stay so calm-looking?” Susan whispered to Lissa.

Dr. Shastri glanced up at the signal. “We’ve learned so little from it.” He sighed and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets, managing to look boyish despite his age. “However, we’ve now located the exact source of the signal.” He smiled. “We’re crossing the orbit of Pluto right now, and our acceleration is up to ten g’s.” He smiled again. “I still find that remarkable. A conventional acceleration that high could crush us, but with our negative-g drive it’s identical to free-fall, while spin gives us the illusion of slightly less than one g.” He shook his head. “I only wish that our four shuttles were large enough to carry negative-g generators. It will be more cumbersome exploring in them, but we can’t have everything.”

The screen flickered behind him. Starfields appeared, overlaid by a coordinate grid. One small square began to flash red.

“That’s where it is,” Dr. Shastri said, “over seven times the distance of Pluto from the Sun. We can’t see it because it’s a dark body, but we’ll be there in less than a month.”

The starfields drew Lissa, lifting her out of herself, away from the problems caused by people. The fact was brought home to her again that something was speaking to humanity from the darkness, that a small part of humanity was speeding outward to the source at millions of kilometers per hour, and that she was part of the adventure of reaching out . . .

“I’m still sorry to report,” Dr. Shastri continued, “that the tachyon receiver-transmitter is not yet working, and we can’t say when we’ll have the bugs out of it.” He looked around at the people in the chamber. “I’m hoping that a few more of you will visit our various projects as a supplement to your studies. We could use some extra help, and I think it would be good to poke your noses into the work of our older researchers. You might see something they don’t.” He smiled again. “That is my hope, at least. Too many of you have kept to your routine studies and minor duties. Break free a bit—don’t be afraid.”

* * *

Lissa kept very busy during the next month. When she wasn’t alone, she was visiting the tachyon installation, or the negative-g drive control area, or just watching the alien signal doing its endless cosmic dance. She learned a lot of advanced mathematics. It took her into another kind of universe, and into another part of her mind. Math quantified the universe into a system of fine limits, in which the unknown was encircled by known quantities, thus forcing the unknown to reveal itself. There was no unknown that did not leave a trail, somewhere, and could not in principle be unmasked by experiment and reasoning.

She surveyed what was known about the outer solar system, the region beginning at 40 times the distance of Earth from the Sun and ending at some 10,000 times that distance. This volume of space was filled with millions of asteroids and bodies as large as Earth—all moving with great slowness around the Sun. Beyond this region, 30,000 to 50,000 astronomical units from the Sun, lay the cometary halo, the fabulous Opik-Oort Cloud, made up of ice and frozen gas—a great barrier reef before the ocean of interstellar space. From the inner solar system the Cloud was as invisible as a swarm of bees a million kilometers away, but the Centauri starship had confirmed the halo’s existence on its way out of the solar system.

The asteroid wasn’t going out quite that far, but it could, and much more. This run was as much a test for the negative-g drive as it was an investigation of the source of the alien signal.

Lissa also read many of the great works in the humanities from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the novels in which the human heart struggled with itself, with restrictive social systems, and with other hearts. These works tuned her feelings and made her see clearly where thought alone could not. Her two favorites were Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart.

There were evenings of music. Many of the scientists and researchers were musicians, and they got together regularly to give concerts and recitals of chamber music. Lissa would sit in her window, listening to great chords sounding through the green hollow. The grand symphonic sound structures of Gustav Mahler and Ralph Vaughan Williams were great favorites, but Dr. Shastri complained that more modern works were being ignored.

Sometimes Lissa went to the concerts and sat on the grass with Susan, noticing the couples and hoping vaguely to see Alek. But he was never there, and the moment when she would have been glad to see him always passed. She wondered if she liked him better as someone she had left behind on Earth, a person to dream about but not have to deal with. I must be a very selfish person, she told herself in critical moments.

One day she saw Dr. Shastri outside the tachyon receiver control room, and decided to ask him a question.

“Doctor, I haven’t seen Alek Calder anywhere for some time. Do you know where he’s working now?” She took a deep breath as she waited for his reply.

Dr. Shastri smiled. “Of course. He’s moved to the engineering level. He’s training with the shuttle pilots. I’m told he’s quite good at it.”

“What?” Lissa asked, surprised by the information and by her sudden twinge of jealousy.

“Yes, it’s what he wanted from the start. He’ll probably be going out to chart the source of the alien signal if he checks out in time. I’m told he’s one of the best. He flew airplanes back home. We’re lucky to have him.”

“Thank you,” she said turning away, feeling confused as she headed toward the elevator that would take her up into the hollow.

Alek would get to go outside. He would explore, with only a suit and shuttle between him and the unknown. So this was what he had been planning all along!

She turned suddenly and ran back down the hall after Dr. Shastri.

“Oh, Doctor,” she said breathlessly as she caught up with him.

“Yes?” he asked as he turned to face her again.

“Will any of the rest of us get to go out and examine the source of the alien signal?”

“You wish to go?” he said impatiently, cocking one eyebrow.

She nodded. “Very much. Do you think it will be possible?”

He smiled. “I don’t see why not, assuming we don’t find it inaccessible or dangerous.” He was looking at her intently, as if he’d lived her life and countless others, and knew the motives behind all requests.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Lissa said, feeling much better.

“You will excuse me,” he said abruptly, “but I have an appointment.”

She nodded and turned away. As she walked down the long passageway, it seemed to her that she had become another person. What are you worried about, she asked her stranger self, that Alek Calder will beat you out of something? You’re only a minor member of this expedition, a student, she told herself, and you’re not likely to awe anyone with a major breakthrough. So what are you afraid of?

The stranger within did not reply. Lissa stopped, knowing that her feelings were irrational. None of this was real. Alek couldn’t be a threat; he was only doing what interested him. She should be proud of him. He might even be the pilot who would take her to the site of the alien transmitter.

Endless possibilities still waited for her. Nothing was decided.