“Which crater?”
“The one on the rim of that large gulf at the southern end of the landmass we took off from. See it? It’s about a hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter…” I wasn’t that good at estimating distances from this high up, but I knew how big it had to be.
“Oh, that crater,” said the voice, each word a distinct, separate sound. “It formed about ninety of our years ago—two hundred or so of yours.”
“You’re sure?” asked Klicks’s voice.
“We had tracked the asteroid that made that crater. For a brief time we thought it might pass near Mars; as you may know, our two moons were once asteroids, captured by our gravity. But it did not come particularly close to us; instead, it struck your planet. The explosion was visually spectacular.”
“But … but…” Klicks was trying to make sense of it. “But the impact that made that crater is what we’d thought had killed off the dinosaurs.”
“An incorrect assumption,” said the Martian, simply. “After all, the dinosaurs live on.”
The best resolution in the geologic record this far back was maybe ten thousand years, and that only under extraordinary circumstances; a hundred thousand was much more common. Events that had occurred centuries or even millennia apart could easily seem simultaneous.
“The impact must have had a big effect on the biosphere, though,” said Klicks, a note of desperation in his voice. I felt myself grinning from ear to ear.
“Not really,” said the Het. “Those plants and animals at the crater site were destroyed, of course, but the worldwide effect was negligible.” It paused. “Your people and mine inhabit the same messy solar system. Impacts happen—surely you know that. But life goes on.”
I wished I could see the look on Klicks’s face—but all I could see was the glorious planet below. We were whisking back toward the night, the terminator hurrying toward us. Our view swung back up to look at the stars. There were so many that discerning any pattern, anything that one might call a constellation, seemed impossible. I enjoyed the spectacle; Klicks had been in line to possibly go to Mars, but I’d never dreamed that I would see the stars from space. The sight was magnificent, breathtaking, truly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and—
“What’s that?” Klicks’s voice intruded again from the outside world.
I scanned the heavens, trying to find whatever had caught his eye. There, far down in the southern sky: a tight rosette of brilliant blue points. I watched it as we swung around. The points didn’t shift at all in relation to the background stars as we continued in our orbit, meaning they weren’t nearby.
“What is that?” Klicks said again.
“What is ‘what’?” The reedy voice of the brachiator.
“That cluster of lights,” said Klicks. “What is it?”
“We do not speak of it.”
“You must know what it is.”
“We do not.”
“Is it in this solar system?”
“No. It is some three-to-the-fifth light-years away. Clarification: Martian light-years, and two hundred forty- three of them in your counting. About double that in Earth light-years.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a beacon, isn’t it?” I said, surprising myself. “A visual signal to the rest of the galaxy that there’s intelligent life there.” The rosette was beautiful, with mathematically precise construction. “Look at it: the points are arranged in a geodesic. It’d look like a sphere from any angle. It has to be artificial.”
I’d read about a similar idea years before, but on a much smaller scale. Some astronomer had suggested planting crops in giant geometric patterns across the face of Africa in hopes of signaling the presence of intelligence to anyone looking at Earth through a telescope. But this was so much more! A civilization that could arrange suns into patterns—it was mind-boggling. The rosette of lights would have been clearly visible from anywhere in Earth’s southern hemisphere, or Mars’s for that matter.
“It must have been wonderful having your society grow up with that in the sky,” I said to the brachiator. “Incontrovertible proof that you weren’t alone, that there are other, more advanced civilizations out there.” I shook my head, the jelly connection with the wall making a squishy sound as I did so. “God, when I think of all the soul- searching that humans go through wondering if we’re alone in the universe, if there’s anyone else out there, if it’s possible to survive technological adolescence. It must give you great comfort.”
“But—”
Everything went black again. The Het oozed out of my neck. We returned to the ground in silence. I thought about the rosette of lights; about the Hets; about troodons, dinosaurs that might be on the way to developing intelligence of their own. It seemed that humanity had missed the heyday of sapient life in the galaxy by 60 or so million years. It was only because the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions wiped out the great reptiles that the second-string team, the mammals, had an opportunity to rise to the level of conscious thought, but by the time we did, the Milky Way was a much less crowded place. How could the Hets not be thrilled by the mere knowledge of the rosette-makers being out there somewhere?
I guess I’d offended them. Without a further word, they dumped us back at our campsite, now almost completely dark, our campfire having decayed to a few glowing coals. We watched from the ground as their pulsing sphere silently made its way off to the west, then we clambered in the darkness up the crater wall and went back into the
The sky was completely covered with clouds. Probably just as well. Now that we’d seen the heavens from above the obscuring cloak of Earth’s atmosphere, the view from the ground—breathtaking though it had seemed last night—would pale in comparison. My only regret, though, was that the rosette would never be visible in this hemisphere. I’d love to have gotten a picture of it.
“Brandy,” said Klicks, unbuttoning his shirt, “what do you know about how the Huang Effect works?”
I was gathering up my pajamas; I’d wanted to gloat a bit about the discovery that the Chicxulub crater predated the end of the dinosaurs, and wasn’t surprised that Klicks was avoiding the topic, but, now that he mentioned it…
“So you’ve been thinking about that, too?” I said. “Christ, it’s like a stupid commercial jingle. I can’t get it out of my mind either. I keep running over what little I comprehend.”
“Which is?”
“Diddly, really. I’m no physicist. Something to do with the tunnel-diode effect and, uh, tachyons. I think.”
“Hmm,” said Klicks. “That’s more than I knew. Why do you suppose—?”
“Oh, good Christ! I knew those Martians weren’t just being friendly neighbors. Klicks, they took us up, showed us some views of space to keep us preoccupied, then went sorting through our minds, looking for the secret of time travel.”
“I bet they were disappointed when they didn’t find it.”
“I’m not sure anyone besides Ching-Mei understands it completely.”
“Well,” said Klicks, “you can’t blame them, really. Besides, they’ll have plenty of chances to ask her face-to- face once we bring them forward.”
I looked at him, standing there across the room, arms folded across his chest. “Bring them forward?” I said, disbelief in my tone. “Klicks, they tried to steal the secret of time travel from us. And you still want to bring them forward?”
“Well, you seem incapable of making a decision one way or the other. Yes, I still want to bring them forward. Hell, we’ve got to bring them forward. It’s the only reasonable thing to do.”
“But they just tried to steal time travel from us! How can you trust them?”
“They also voluntarily exited our bodies. In fact, they’ve done that twice now. If they really were evil, they would have stayed in us tonight, and simply forced us to take them back to the future.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. They know the Huang Effect won’t reverse states for'—I glanced at my watch—'another, ah, sixty-three hours. Maybe they couldn’t stay that long inside us even if they wanted to.”
“You don’t know that that’s true,” said Klicks.
“You don’t know that that’s not true.” He harrumphed.
