Nemesis (37 page)

“Or we might find a Settlement that has survived,” said Fisher rebelliously.

“Admitted,” said Wendel. “Or we might ourselves be strained against the odds, be destroyed, and, for that reason, find nothing. I ask you not to be prepared for certainties but for probabilities. And remember that those who think about the matter, without some accurate knowledge of hyperspatial theory, are not likely to come to reasonable conclusions.”

Fisher fell into a profound and clearly depressed silence, while Wendel watched him uneasily.

Tessa Wendel found Station Four a weird environment. It was as though someone had built a small Settlement, but fitted it out to be a combination of nothing more than a laboratory, an observatory, and a launching platform. It had no farms, no homes, none of the appurtenances of a Settlement, however small. It was not even equipped with a spin that would set up an adequate pseudo-gravitational field.

It was, in fact, nothing but a spaceship with acromegaly. It was clear that, although it could be permanently occupied, provided there was a continuous drizzle of food, air, and water supplies (there was some recycling, but it wasn’t efficient), no single individual could remain there for very long.

Crile Fisher made the wry comment that Station Four
was like an old-fashioned space station from the early days of the Space Age that had unaccountably survived into the twenty-third century.

In one respect, though, it was unique. It presented a panoramic view of the Earth-Moon system. From the Settlements that orbited Earth, the two bodies could rarely be seen in their true relationship. From Station Four, however, Earth and Moon were never more than fifteen degrees apart, and as Station Four revolved around the center of gravity of that system (roughly equivalent to revolving about the Earth), the changing pattern of the two worlds, both in position and phase, and the changing size of the Moon (depending on whether it was on the Station’s own side of Earth, or on the opposite side) was a never-ending wonder.

The Sun was blocked out automatically by the Artec device (Wendel had to ask to find out that that stood for “Artificial Eclipse” device) and only when the Sun moved too near either Earth or Moon in the station’s sky was the view spoiled.

Wendel’s Settlement background showed up now, for she enjoyed watching the Earth-Moon interplay, mostly (she explained) because it made it clear she was no longer on Earth.

She said as much to Fisher, who smiled dourly. He had noticed her quick glance to right and left as she said it.

He said, “I see you don’t mind telling
me
that, even though I’m an Earthman and might resent it. But, never fear, I won’t pass it along.”

“I’d trust you with anything, Crile.” She smiled at him happily. He had changed considerably since that crucial conversation when they had first reached Station Four. He was somber, yes, but sooner that than the feverish expectation of what could not be.

He said, “Do you really think they resent your being a Settler at this stage of the game?”

“Of course they do. They never forget. They’re as narrow-minded as I am, and I never forget they’re Earthpeople.”

“You obviously forget I’m an Earthman.”

“That’s because you’re Crile, and fall into no category other than Crile. And I’m Tessa. And that ends it.”

Fisher said thoughtfully, “Does it ever bother you,
Tessa, that you have worked out superluminal flight for Earth, rather than for your own Settlement, Adelia?”

“But I haven’t done it for Earth, and I wouldn’t have done it for Adelia in other circumstances. In both cases, I’m doing it for myself. I had a problem to solve, and I completed the job successfully. Now I’m going down in history as the inventor of superluminal flight and that’s what I’ve done for myself. And it may sound pretentious, but I’m doing it for humanity, too. It doesn’t matter on which world the discovery is made, you know. Some person or persons on Rotor invented hyper-assistance, but we have it now and so do all the Settlements. In the end, the Settlements will all have superluminal flight, too. Wherever an advance takes place, ultimately all humanity is helped.”

“Earth needs it more than the Settlements do, though.”

“You mean because of the approach of the Neighbor Star, which the Settlements can easily evade by leaving, if necessary, but which Earth can’t. Well, I’ll leave that as a problem for Earth’s leaders. I’ve supplied the tool and they can work out methods for using it to their best advantage.”

Crile said, “I understand we’re taking off tomorrow.”

“Yes, finally. They’ll be taking holographic recordings and give us the full treatment. There’s no way of telling, though, when they’ll be able to release them to the general public and the Settlements.”

“It can’t be till after our return,” said Fisher. “There’d be no sense in putting them on display if they can’t be certain we’ll ever come back. It’s going to be an agonizing wait for them, too, since they’ll have no contact with us at all. When the astronauts first landed on the Moon, they were in touch with the Earth all the way.”

“True,” said Wendel, “but when Columbus sailed off into the Atlantic, the Spanish monarchs never heard from him again till he returned seven months later.”

Fisher said, “Earth, now, has far more at stake than Spain had seven and a half centuries ago. It is really a great pity we can’t have superluminal communication, since we have superluminal flight.”

“I think so, too. As does Koropatsky, who has been hammering at me to work out telecommunication. But,
as I told him, I am not a marvelous supernatural force who can crank out everything anyone needs. It is one thing to push mass through hyperspace and quite another to push some sort of radiation through hyperspace. They follow different rules even in ordinary space so that Maxwell didn’t work out his electromagnetic equations until two centuries after Newton worked out his gravitational equation. Well, mass and radiation follow different rules in hyperspace, too, and the rules for radiation still defeat us. Someday we’ll work out superluminal communication, but we haven’t yet.”

“It’s too bad,” said Fisher thoughtfully. “It’s possible that without superluminal communication, superluminal flight won’t be practical.”

“Why not?”

“The lack of superluminal communication cuts the umbilical cord. Could Settlements live far from Earth—far from the rest of humanity—and survive?”

Wendel frowned. “What’s this new line of philosophy you’ve begun to track down?”

“Just a thought. Being a Settler, Tessa, and being accustomed to it, it may not occur to you that living on a Settlement is not truly natural to human beings.”

“Really? It never seemed unnatural to me.”

“That’s because you weren’t really living on one. You were living in a whole system of Settlements among which one was a large planet with billions of people on it. Might not the Rotorians, once they reach the Neighbor Star, find that living on an isolated Settlement was unsatisfactory? In that case, they would surely return to Earth, but they haven’t. Might that not be because they have found a planet to live on?”

“A habitable planet circling a red dwarf star? Most unlikely.”

“Nature has a way of fooling us and upsetting supposed certainties. Suppose there
is
a habitable planet there. Shouldn’t it be carefully studied?”

Wendel said, “Ah, I’m beginning to get what you’re driving at. You feel that the ship may come to the Neighbor Star, and find that there is some sort of planet there. We would then make a note of it, decide from a distance that it is uninhabited, and go on about our task of further exploration. You would want us to land and make a much
more thorough search, so that we can at least try to find your daughter. But what if our neuronic detector finds no trace of intelligence anywhere within any planetary system the Neighbor Star may have? Must we still search the individual planets?”

Fisher hesitated. “Yes. If they show any signs of being habitable, we must study them, it seems to me. We must know all we can about any such planet. We may have to begin evacuating Earth soon, and we must know where to take our people. It’s all very well for you to overlook that, since Settlements can just drift off without the necessity of evacua—”

“Crile! Don’t start treating me as the enemy! Don’t start suddenly thinking of me as a Settler. I’m
Tessa
. If there is a planet, we’ll investigate it as much as we can, I promise you. But if there is and if the Rotorians are occupying it, then— Well, you spent some years on Rotor, Crile. You must know Janus Pitt.”

“I know
of
him. I never met him, but my wi—my ex-wife worked with him. According to her, he was a very capable man, very intelligent, very forceful.”

“
Very
forceful. We knew of him on other Settlements, too. And we were not generally fond of him. If it was his plan to find a place for Rotor that was hidden from the rest of humanity, he could do no better than to go to the Neighbor Star, since it was so close and since its existence was not known by anyone outside Rotor at the time. And if, for any reason, he wanted a system all to himself, he would, being Janus Pitt, fear the possibility of being followed and having his monopoly upset. If he happened to find a useful planet that could be used by Rotor, he would be even more resentful of intrusion.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Fisher, who looked perturbed, as though he knew what she was getting at.

“Why, tomorrow we take off, and in not too long a time, we’ll be at the Neighbor Star. And if it does have a planet, as you seem to think it might, and if we find the Rotorians are occupying it, it’s not going to be a matter of just going down to the surface and saying, ‘Hello! Surprise!’ I’m afraid that at the first sight of us, he would give us his version of a ‘Hello’ and blast us into oblivion.”

Ranay D’Aubisson, like all the inhabitants of the Erythro Dome during their period of habitation, visited Rotor periodically. It was necessary—a touch of home, a return to the roots, a gathering of renewed strength.

This time, however, D’Aubisson, had “moved upward” (the usual phrase for passing from Erythro to Rotor) a bit earlier than her schedule had called for. She had, indeed, been summoned by Commissioner Pitt.

She sat in Janus Pitt’s office, noting with her skilled eyes the small signs of aging that had accumulated since she had last seen him several years before. She did not, in the ordinary course of her work, have frequent occasions to see him, of course.

His voice, however, was as strong as ever, his eyes as sharp, and she noted no decline in mental vigor.

Pitt said, “I have received your report on the incident outside the Dome, and I recognize the caution with which you approached your diagnosis of the situation. But now, off the record and unofficially, exactly what happened to Genarr? This room is shielded and you can talk freely.”

D’Aubisson said dryly, “I’m afraid that my report, cautious as it was, happens to be truthful and complete. We don’t really know what happened to Commander Genarr. The brain scan showed changes, but these were extraordinarily small and did not correspond to anything in our past experience. And they were reversible, since they did, in fact, quickly reverse.”

“But something
did
happen to him?”

“Oh yes, but that’s the point. We can’t say anything more than ‘something.’ ”

“Some form of the Plague, perhaps?”

“None of the symptoms that have been detected in the past were found in this case.”

“But in the old days of the Plague, brain scanning was still comparatively primitive. You would not have detected the symptoms you have detected now in the past, so it might still be a mild form of the Plague, might it not?”

“We could say so, but we could not present real evidence to that effect, and, in any case, Genarr is now normal.”

“He
seems
normal, I suppose, but we don’t really know if there might not be a relapse.”

“Neither is there any reason to suppose there might be.”

A fleeting look of impatience crossed the Commissioner’s face. “You’re sparring with me, D’Aubisson. You know perfectly well that Genarr’s position is one of considerable importance. The situation in the Dome is always precarious, since we never know if and when the Plague will strike again. Genarr’s value was that he seemed immune to it, but we can scarcely consider him immune now. Something happened, and we must be prepared to replace him.”

“That is your decision to make, Commissioner. I am not suggesting replacement as a medical necessity.”

“But you’ll keep him under close observation, and you’ll keep the possibility of such a necessity in mind, I hope.”

“I would consider that part of my medical duties.”

“Good. Especially since if there is to be a replacement, I have been considering you.”

“Considering
me?
” A small flash of excitement crossed her face before she could suppress it.

“Yes, why not? It’s well known that I’ve never been enthusiastic about the project of colonizing Erythro. I have always felt it necessary to retain the mobility of humanity and not to allow ourselves to be trapped into slavery to a large planet again. Nevertheless, it would be wise if we could colonize the planet not as a place intended primarily for population but as a vast resource—rather as we treated the Moon in the old Solar System.
But we can’t do that if the Plague hangs over our heads, can we?”

“No, we can’t, Commissioner.”

“So our real task, to begin with, is to solve that problem. We never have. The Plague just died down and we have accepted that—but this latest incident shows us that the danger is not yet gone. Whether Genarr suffered a touch of the Plague or not, he certainly suffered something, and I want the matter now given top priority. You would be the natural person to head that project.”

“I’d be glad to accept the responsibility. It would mean doing what I am, in any case, trying to do, but with greater authority. I hesitate at supposing that I ought to be the Erythro Dome Commander.”