Nemesis (45 page)

“So do you really want to go back? The discovery of the gravitational correction will, I assure you, be remembered by a few as a small side effect of superluminal travel. But the crew of the next expedition that will actually reach the Neighbor Star, will be hailed as the first to reach a star by superluminal flight. You three, even you, Wu, will scarcely be worth a footnote.

“You might think that, as a reward for this great discovery that Wu has made, it will be you that will be sent out on a second expedition, but I’m afraid not. You see, Igor Koropatsky, who is the Director of the Terrestrial Board of Inquiry and who is waiting for us back on Earth, is
particularly interested in information on the Neighbor Star and its planetary system. He will explode like Krakatoa when he finds out that we were within reach of it and turned back. And of course, Captain Wendel will be forced to explain that you three had mutinied, which is an extremely serious offense, even if we are not an eighteenth-century sailing vessel. Far from going out on the next expedition, you will never see the inside of a laboratory again. Count on it. What you may see, despite your scientific eminence, is the inside of a jail. Don’t underestimate Koropatsky’s fury.

“So think about it, you three. On to the Neighbor Star? Or back home?”

There was a silence. For a while, no one said anything.

“Well,” said Wendel harshly, “I think that Fisher has explained the situation very clearly. Doesn’t any one have anything to say?”

Blankowitz said in a low voice, “Actually, I never thought it through. I think we ought to go on.”

Jarlow grunted. “I think so, too.”

Wendel said, “What about you, Chao-Li Wu?”

Wu shrugged. “I wouldn’t stand against the rest.”

“I’m glad to hear that. This incident is forgotten as far as the Earth authorities will be concerned, but there had better be no repetition, no further action of any kind that could be considered mutinous.”

Back in their own quarters, Fisher said, “You don’t mind, I hope, that I interfered. I was afraid you would explode to no effect.”

“No, it was good. I wouldn’t have thought of the Columbus analogy, which was perfect. Thank you, Crile.” She took his hand and squeezed it.

He smiled briefly. “I had to justify my presence on board ship somehow.”

“You more than justified it. And you have no idea how disgusted I was, to have Wu act as he did when I had just finished telling you how happy I was over his findings, and over the credit he would get. I was feeling noble over my willingness to share credit, over the ethics of
scientific research that gives to each his fair due, and then he puts his private pride ahead of the project.”

“We’re all human, Tessa.”

“I know. And seeing that the man’s interior has its ethical dark spots doesn’t alter the fact that he has a scientific mind that is fearfully sharp.”

“I’m afraid I’d have to admit that my own arguments were based on private desires rather than the public good, so to speak. I want to go to the Neighbor Star for reasons that have nothing to do with the project.”

“I understand that. I am still grateful.” It embarrassed Fisher that there were tears in her eyes and that she had to blink them away.

He kissed her.

It was just a star, too faint yet to stand out in any way. In fact, Crile Fisher would have lost it were it not for the fact that he had punched in the network that zeroed in on it in concentric circles and radii.

“It looks disappointingly like a star, doesn’t it?” said Fisher, his face taking on the moroseness it seemed to have when he let it fall into its natural lines.

Merry Blankowitz, who was the only one with him at the observation panel, said, “That’s all it is, Crile. A star.”

“I mean it
looks
like a faint star—and we’re so close.”

“Close in a manner of speaking. We’re still a tenth of a light-year away, which is not
really
close. It’s just that the Captain’s cautious. I’d have dragged the
Superluminal
in a lot closer. I wish we were a lot closer right now. I can hardly wait.”

“Before this last transition, you were set to go home, Merry.”

“Not really. They just talked me into it. Once you made your little speech, I felt like a complete jackass. I took it for granted that if we returned, we’d all go back a second time, but, of course, you really clarified the situation. Oh, but I want to use the ND so badly.”

Fisher knew what the ND was. It was the neuronic detector. He felt the stirring himself. To detect intelligence would be to know they had come upon something
that was infinitely more important than all metals, rocks, ices, and vapors they could otherwise discover.

He said hesitantly, “Can you tell at this distance?”

She shook her head. “No. We’d have to be a lot closer. And we can’t just coast in from this distance. It would take us about a year. Once the Captain is satisfied with what we can find out about the Neighbor Star from here, we’ll make another transition. What I expect is that in two days at the most, we’ll be within a couple of astronomic units of the Neighbor Star, and then I can start making observations and be useful. It’s a drag feeling like a deadweight.”

“Yes,” said Fisher dryly, “I know.”

A look of concern crossed Blankowitz’s face. “I’m sorry, Crile. I wasn’t referring to you.”

“You might as well have been. I might not be of any use no matter how close we come to the Neighbor Star.”

“You will be useful if we detect intelligence. You’ll be able to talk to them. You’re a Rotorian, and we’ll need that.”

Fisher smiled grimly. “A Rotorian for just a few years.”

“That’s enough isn’t it?”

“We’ll see.” He changed the subject deliberately. “Are you sure the neuronic detector will work?”

“Absolutely sure. We could follow any Settlement in orbit just by its radiation of plexons.”

“What are plexons, Merry?”

“Just a name I made up, for the photon-complex characteristic of mammalian brains. We could detect horses, you know, if we’re not too far away, but we can detect human brains in masses at astronomic distances.”

“Why plexons?”

“From ‘complexity.’ Someday—you’ll see—someday they’re going to be working on plexons not just to detect life but to study the intimate functioning of the brain. I’ve made up a name for that, too—‘plexophysiology.’ Or maybe ‘plexoneuronics.’ ”

Fisher said, “Do you consider names important?”

“Yes, indeed. It gives you a way of speaking concisely. You don’t have to say, ‘that field of science that involves the relationship of this and that.’ You just say ‘plexoneuronics’—yes, that sounds better. It’s a shortcut. It
saves your thinking time for more important subjects. Besides—” She hesitated.

“Besides? Yes?”

The words came in a rush. “If I make up a name and it sticks, that alone would get me a footnote in the history of science. You know, ‘The word “plexon” was first introduced by Merrilee Augina Blankowitz in 2237 on the occasion of the pioneer faster-than-light flight of the
Superluminal.’
I’m not likely to be mentioned anywhere else, or for any other reason, and I’ll settle for that.”

Fisher said, “What if you detect your plexons, Merry, and there are no human beings present?”

“You mean alien life? That would be even more exciting than detecting people. But there’s not much chance, really. We’ve been disappointed over and over again. We thought there might be at least primitive forms of life on the Moon, on Mars, on Callisto, on Titan. It never came to anything. People have speculated on all kinds of weird life—living galaxies, living dust clouds, life on the surface of a neutron star, all sorts of things. There’s no evidence for any of it. No,
if
I detect anything, it will be human life. I’m convinced of that.”

“Wouldn’t you be detecting the plexons emitted by the five people on the ship? Wouldn’t we drown out anything we can spot at millions of kilometers of distance?”

“That
is
a complication, Crile. We have to balance the ND so that we five are canceled out and it has to be delicately done. Even a little leakage would wipe out anything we could detect elsewhere. Someday, Crile, automated NDs will be sent through hyperspace to all sorts of places to detect plexons. There’ll be no human beings in their vicinity and that alone would make them at least a couple of orders of magnitude more sensitive than anything we can do now, with ourselves hanging around and having to be allowed for. We’ll find out where intelligence exists long before we approach anyplace ourselves.”

Chao-Li Wu made his appearance. He looked at Fisher with a touch of distaste and said indifferently, “How’s the Neighbor Star?”

Blankowitz said, “Nothing much at this distance.”

“Well, we’ll probably be making another transition tomorrow or the next day, and then we’ll see.”

Blankowitz said, “It will be exciting, won’t it?”

Wu said, “It will be—if we find the Rotorians.” He glanced at Fisher. “But will we?”

If that were a question directed to Fisher, he did not respond to it. He merely stared at Wu expressionlessly.

Will we? Fisher thought.

The long wait would be over soon.

As noted before, Janus Pitt did not often allow himself the luxury of self-pity. In anyone else, he would consider such a thing a despicable sign of weakness and self-indulgence. There were, however, times when he sadly rebelled at the fact that the people of Rotor were only too willing to leave all of the unpleasant decisions to him.

There was a Council, yes—duly elected, and meticulously involved in passing laws and in making decisions—all but the important ones, the ones that dealt with the future of Rotor.

That
was left to him.

It was not even consciously left to him. The matters of importance were simply ignored, simply rendered nonexistent by mutual unspoken agreement.

Here they were in an empty system, leisurely building new Settlements, absently convinced that time stretched infinitely before them. Everywhere was the calm assumption that once they had filled this new asteroid belt (generations from now, and a matter of no immediate concern to anyone presently alive) the hyper-assistance technique would have improved to the point where it would be comparatively easy to seek out and occupy new planets.

Time existed in plenty. Time blended into eternity.

Only to Pitt himself was it left to consider the fact that time was short, that at any given moment, without warning, time might come to an end.

When would Nemesis be discovered back in the Solar System? When would some Settlement decide to follow Rotor’s lead?

It had to come someday. With Nemesis inexorably
moving in the direction of the Sun, it would eventually reach that point—still far distant, of course, but close enough—at which the people of the Solar System would have to be blind not to see it.

Pitt’s computer, with the aid of a programmer who was convinced he was working out a problem of academic interest only, had estimated that by the end of a thousand years, the discovery of Nemesis would be inevitable, and that the Settlements would begin to disperse.

Pitt had then put the question: Would the Settlements come to Nemesis?

The answer was no. By that time, hyper-assistance would be far more efficient, far cheaper. The Settlements would know more about the nearer stars—which of them had planets, and what kind. They would not bother with a red dwarf star, but would head out for the Sun-like stars.

And that would leave Earth itself, which would be desperate. Afraid of space, clearly degenerate already, and sinking farther into slime and misery as a thousand years passed and the doom of Nemesis became apparent, what would they do? They could not undertake long trips. They were Earthpeople. Surfacebound. They would have to wait for Nemesis to get reasonably close. They could not hope to go anywhere else.

Pitt had the vision of a ramshackle world trying to find security in the more tightly held system of Nemesis, trying to find refuge in a star with a system built tightly enough together to hold in place while it was destroying that of the Sun it passed.

It was a terrible scenario, and yet inevitable.

Why could not Nemesis have been receding from the Sun? How everything would be changed. The discovery of Nemesis would have become somewhat less likely with time and, if the discovery came to pass, Nemesis would become ever less desirable—and less possible—as a place of refuge. If it were receding, Earth would not even need a refuge.

But that was not the way it was. The Earthmen would come; ragtag degenerating Earthmen of every variety of makeshift and abnormal culture, flooding in. What could the Rotorians do but destroy them while they were still in space? But would they have a Janus Pitt to show them
that there was no choice but that? Would they have Janus Pitts, between now and then, to make sure that Rotor had the weapons and the resolution to prepare for this and to
do
it when the time came?

But the computer’s analysis was, after all, a deceitfully optimistic one. The discovery of Nemesis by the Solar System
must
come about within a thousand years, said the computer. But how much within? What if the discovery came tomorrow? What if it had come three years ago? Might some Settlement, groping for the nearest star, knowing nothing useful about farther ones, be following in Rotor’s trail
now?

Each day, Pitt woke up wondering: Is this the day?

Why was this misery reserved for him? Why did everyone else sleep quietly in the lap of eternity, while only he himself was left to deal each day with the possibility of a kind of doom?

He had done something about it, of course. He had set up a Scanning Service throughout the asteroid belt, a body whose function it was to supervise the automated receptors that constantly swept the sky, and to detect at as great a distance as possible the copious waste-energy disposal of an approaching Settlement.

It had taken some time to set it all up properly, but for a dozen years now, every scrap of dubious information had been followed up, and, every once in a while, something seemed sufficiently questionable to be referred to Pitt. And every time it happened, it set off the clanging of an alarm bell in Pitt’s head.