Nemesis (3 page)

“It’s about her I wish to speak, as a matter of fact. Are we shielded?”

Pitt’s eyebrows arched. “Why shielded? What is there to shield and from whom?”

The very question activated Pitt’s realization of the odd position in which Rotor found itself. To all practical purposes, it was alone in the Universe. The Solar System was more than two light-years away, and no other intelligence-bearing worlds might exist within hundreds of light-years or, for all anyone knew, billions of light-years in any direction.

Rotorians might have fits of loneliness and uncertainty, but they were free of any fear of outside interference. Well, almost any fear, thought Pitt.

Insigna said, “You know what there is to shield. It was you who have always insisted on secrecy.”

Pitt activated the shield and said, “Are we to take that up again? Please, Eugenia, it’s all settled. It was settled when we left fourteen years ago. I know that you brood about it now and then—”

“Brood about it? Why not? It’s
my
star,” and her arm flailed outward as if in the direction of Nemesis. “It’s
my
responsibility.”

Pitt’s jaw tightened. Do we have to go through all this again? he thought.

Aloud, he said, “We’re shielded. Now, what’s bothering you?”

“Marlene. My daughter. Somehow she knows.”

“Knows what?”

“About Nemesis and the Solar System.”

“How could she know? Unless you’ve told her?”

Insigna spread her arms helplessly. “Of course I didn’t tell her, but I don’t have to. I don’t know how it is, but somehow Marlene seems to hear and see everything. And from the little things she hears and sees, she works things out. She’s always been able to do it, but in the last year it’s grown much worse.”

“Well then, she guesses, and sometimes she makes lucky guesses. Tell her she’s wrong, and see that she doesn’t talk about it.”

“But she’s already told a young man, who came to tell me. That’s how I know. Aurinel Pampas. He’s a friend of the family.”

“Ah yes. I’m aware of him—somewhat. Simply tell him not to listen to fantasies made up by a little girl.”

“She’s not a little girl. She’s fifteen.”

“To him, she’s a little girl, I assure you. I said I’m aware of the young man. I’m under the impression he’s pushing adulthood very hard and I remember, when I was his age, that fifteen-year-old girls were beneath contempt, especially if they were—”

Insigna said bitterly, “I understand. Especially if they are short, plump, and plain. Does it matter that she’s highly intelligent?”

“To you and to me? Certainly. To Aurinel, certainly not. If necessary, I’ll talk to the boy. You talk to Marlene. Tell her the idea is ridiculous, that it isn’t true, and that she must not spread disturbing fairy tales.”

“But what if it
is
true?”

“That’s beside the point. Look, Eugenia, you and I have concealed this possibility for years, and it would be better if we continued to conceal it. If it gets around, it will be exaggerated, and there will be rising sentiment about the matter—useless sentiment. It will only distract us from the job that has occupied our time ever since we
left the Solar System, and which will continue to occupy us for generations, perhaps.”

She looked at him—shocked, unbelieving.

“Have you really no feeling for the Solar System, for Earth, the world on which humanity originated?”

“Yes, Eugenia, I have all sorts of feelings. But they’re visceral and I can’t let them sway me. We left the Solar System because we thought it was time for humanity to spread outward. Others, I’m sure, will follow; maybe they are already doing so. We have made humanity a Galactic phenomenon and we mustn’t think in terms of a single planetary system any more. Our job is
here
.”

They stared at each other, then Eugenia said, with a touch of hopelessness, “You’ll talk me down again. You’ve talked me down for so many years.”

“Yes, but next year I’ll have to again, and the year after. You won’t stay down, Eugenia, and you tire me. The first time should have been enough.” And he turned away, back to his computer.

The first time he had talked her down had been sixteen years ago in the year 2220, that exciting year in which the possibilities of the Galaxy had opened up for them.

Janus Pitt’s hair was a dark brown then, and he was not yet Commissioner of Rotor, though everyone spoke of him as the up-and-coming man. He did head the Department of Exploration and Commerce, however, and the Far Probe was his responsibility, and, to a large extent, the result of his actions.

It was the first attempt to push matter through space with a hyper-assisted drive.

As far as was known, only Rotor had developed hyper-assistance and Pitt had been the strongest proponent of secrecy.

He had said at a meeting of the Council. “The Solar System is crowded. There are more space Settlements than can easily be found room for. Even the asteroid belt is only an amelioration. It will be uncomfortably crowded soon enough. What’s more, each Settlement has its own ecological balance and we are drifting apart in that respect. Commerce is being throttled for fear of picking up someone else’s strains of parasites or pathogens.

“The only solution, fellow Councillors, is to leave the Solar System—without fanfare, without warning. Let us leave and find a new home, where we can build a new world, with our own brand of humanity, our own society, our own way of life. This can’t be done without hyper-assistance—which we have. Other Settlements will eventually learn the technique and will leave, too. The Solar System will be a dandelion gone to seed, its various components drifting in space.

“But if we go first, we will find a world, perhaps, before others follow. We can establish ourselves firmly, so that when others do follow and, perhaps, come across us in our new world, we will be strong enough to send them elsewhere. The Galaxy is large and there are bound to be elsewheres.”

There had been objections, of course, and fierce ones. There were those who argued out of fear—fear of leaving the familiar. There were those who argued out of sentiment—sentiment for the planet of birth. There were those who argued out of idealism—the desire to spread knowledge so that others might go, too.

Pitt had scarcely thought he would win out. He had done so because Eugenia Insigna had supplied the winning argument. What an incredible stroke of luck it was that she had come to him first.

She was quite young then, only twenty-six, married but not yet pregnant She was excited, flushed, and laden down with computer sheets.

Pitt had frowned, he recalled, at her intrusion. He was Secretary of the Department and she—well, she was nobody although, as it happened, this was the very last moment when she would be nobody.

At the time, he didn’t realize this, of course, and he was annoyed that she had forced her way in. He cringed at the obvious excitement of the young woman. She was going to make him go through the infinite complexities of whatever it was she was holding in her hand, and do so with an enthusiasm that would quickly exhaust him.

She should give a brief summary to one of his assistants. He decided to say so. “I see you have data there, Dr. Insigna, that you wish to bring to my attention. I’ll be glad to look at it in due course. Why don’t you leave it with one of my people?” And he indicated the door, hoping ardently that she would about-face and move in that direction. (Sometimes, in idle moments in later years, he would wonder what would have happened if she had, and his blood would run cold at the thought.)

But she said, “No no, Mr. Secretary. I must see you and no one else.” Her voice trembled as she spoke, as though her inner excitement was unbearable. “It’s the greatest discovery anyone has made since—since—” She gave up. “It’s the
greatest
.”

Pitt looked dubiously at the sheets she was holding. They were quivering, but he felt no answering excitement of his own. These specialists always thought some micro-advance in their micro-field was system-shattering.

He said, resigned, “Well, Doctor, can you explain it simply?”

“Are we shielded, sir?”

“Why do we have to be shielded?”

“I don’t want anyone else to hear till I’m sure—sure—I have to check again and recheck, till there’s no doubt. But, really, I have no doubt. I’m not making sense, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” said Pitt coldly, placing his hand on a contact. “We’re shielded. Now tell me.”

“It’s all here. I’ll show it to you.”

“
No
. First tell me. In words. Briefly.”

She drew a deep breath. “Mr. Secretary, I’ve discovered the nearest star.” Her eyes were wide and she was breathing rapidly.

Pitt said, “The nearest star is Alpha Centauri and that’s been known for four centuries.”

“It’s the nearest star we’ve known, but it isn’t the nearest we can know. I have discovered one that is closer. The Sun has a distant companion. Can you believe it?”

Pitt considered her carefully. It was rather typical. If they were young enough, enthusiastic enough, inexperienced enough, they would explode prematurely every time.

He said, “Are you sure?”

“I am. Really. Let me show you the data. It’s the most exciting thing that has happened in astronomy since—”

“
If
it’s happened. And don’t show me the data. I’ll look at it later.
Tell
me. If there’s a star much closer than Alpha Centauri, why hasn’t it been discovered before now? Why was it left to you to do so, Dr. Insigna.” He knew he was sounding sarcastic, but she didn’t seem to pay attention to his tone. She was far too excited.

“There’s a reason. It’s behind a cloud, a dark cloud, a puff of dust that just happens to be between the companion star and ourselves. Without the absorption of the dust, it would be an eighth-magnitude star, and it would certainly have been noticed. The dust cuts down the light and makes it nineteenth-magnitude, lost among
many millions of other faint stars. There was no reason to notice it. No one looked at it. It’s in Earth’s far southern sky, so that most of the telescopes in pre-Settlement days couldn’t even point in that direction.”

“And if so, how is it you’ve noticed it?”

“Because of the Far Probe. You see, this Neighbor Star and the Sun are changing positions relative to each other, of course. I assume it and the Sun are revolving about a mutual center of gravity very slowly in a period of millions of years. Some centuries ago, the positions may have been such that we could have seen the Neighbor Star to one side of the cloud in its full brightness, but we would still have needed a telescope to see it and telescopes are only six centuries old—less old than that in those places on Earth from which the Neighbor Star would be visible. Some centuries from now, it will be seen clearly again, shining from the other side of the dust cloud. But we don’t have to wait for centuries. The Far Probe did it for us.”

Pitt could feel himself igniting, a distant core of warmth arising within him. He said, “Do you mean that the Far Probe took a picture of that section of the sky containing this Neighbor Star and that the Far Probe was far enough out in space to see around the cloud and detect the Neighbor Star at full brightness?”

“Exactly. We had an eighth-magnitude star where no eighth-magnitude star ought to be, and the spectrum was that of a red dwarf. You can’t see red dwarf stars far away, so it had to be pretty close.”

“Yes, but why closer than Alpha Centauri?”

“Naturally, I studied the same area of the sky as seen from Rotor and the eighth-magnitude star wasn’t there. However, fairly near it was a nineteenth-magnitude star that wasn’t present in the photograph taken by the Far Probe. I assumed that the nineteenth-magnitude star was the eighth-magnitude star, obscured, and the fact that they weren’t
exactly
in the same place had to be the result of parallactic displacement.”

“Yes, I understand about that. A nearby objects appears to be in different places against the distant background as one views it from different spots.”

“That’s right, but the stars are so distant that even if the Far Probe went out a big fraction of a light-year that
change in position wouldn’t produce a noticeable shift in distant stars, but it would in nearby stars. And for this Neighbor Star, it produced a huge shift; I mean, comparatively. I checked the sky for different positions of the Far Probe on its journey outward. There were three photographs taken during those intervals when it was in normal space, and the Neighbor Star was progressively brighter as the Probe viewed it farther and farther toward the edge of the cloud. From the parallactic displacement, the Neighbor Star turns out to be at a distance of just over two light-years. It’s at half the distance of Alpha Centauri.”

Pitt looked at her thoughtfully and, in the long silence that followed, she grew restless and uncertain.

“Secretary Pitt,” she said, “do you want to see the data now?”

“No,” he said. “I’m satisfied with what you’ve told me. Now I must ask you some questions. It seems to me, if I understand you correctly, that the chance that someone would concentrate on a nineteenth-magnitude star, and try to get its parallax and determine its distance, is negligible.”

“Just about zero.”

“Is there any other way of noticing that an obscure star must be very near to us?”

“It may have a large proper motion—for a star. I mean that if you watch it steadily, its own motion would change its place in the sky in a more or less straight line.”

“Would that be noticed in this case?”

“It might be, but not all stars have a large proper motion, even if they are close to us. They are moving in three dimensions and we see the proper motion only in a two-dimensional projection. I can explain—”

“No, I’m continuing to take your word for it. Has this star got a large proper motion?”

“That would take some time to determine. I do have a few older pictures of that part of the sky and I could detect an appreciable proper motion. That would need more work.”

“But do you think it has the kind of proper motion that would force itself on astronomers, if they just happened by accident to note the star?”