Encourage him. “Leave politics to the patrons, Esker. Look to your personal future. Why would the Dominance be so interested in this thing ahead of us, if they didn’t believe it may lead them to something really new? Something maybe as revolutionary as, oh, quantum mechanics or nuclear fission and fusion or the unifying equation.”
She saw the pallor come and go in the blue cheeks, the hair stir on the backs of his hands. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that’s possible, isn’t it? Thank you, milady.”
The upward blazing wish to discover, to know, briefly transfigured the ugly face.
XV
“
“
“—
And the viewscreens that englobed Lissa showed a sky gone strange.
Inexperienced, she lost a second or two before she saw the differences. Stars in space were so many, unwinking diamond-bright; constellations became hard to trace. Moreover, the distances she had hitherto traveled, to suns near hers, changed them but little. Now she had skipped over—how many light years had Orichalc said? Seven hundred and some.
Acceleration had terminated shortly before transit through hyperspace. The ship fell free, at whatever velocity her kinetic and potential energies determined. It couldn’t be high, for an instrument revealed that she had not generated an exterior force-field to screen off interstellar atoms. Nor did there seem to be any other radiation hazard. Weightless, Lissa revolved her chair three-dimensionally and studied her new heavens.
Odd, she thought, how familiar the Milky Way looks. Some differences, this bend, that bay, yonder silhouette of the Sagittarian dust clouds; but I expected it to be quite altered. And Orichalc didn’t mention red stars. How many? A score at least, strewn all around us—“Damn! I clean forgot.” Sweat prickled her skin. “Any trace of Susaians?”
“None,” replied the ship.
Her muscles eased. “Well,” she said redundantly, “our navigation data aren’t what you’d call precise. We’ll have to cast around a sizeable region till we find what we’re after, close enough to identify it.”
Valen’s command over the intercom was otherwise. “Captain to science team. Start your studies.”
“What?” responded Esker. “We can’t be anywhere near our goal. Commence your search pattern.”
“I’ll give the orders, if you please. We’re not going to hyperjump about at random till we have some idea of what this part of space is like. I want at least a preliminary report within an hour. Get busy.”
Captain Caution, Lissa thought. But it does make sense, I guess. She touched her own intercom switchplate. “Fire control,” she said. “I’m obviously no use here. May I be relieved? I could give a hand elsewhere.”
“Perhaps.” Valen sounded skeptical, as well he might. “Stay aft of the command sector.”
Why, what will you be doing that nobody else should interrupt? “Aye, aye.” Lissa unsecured, shoved with a foot, and arrowed toward the exit. A dim circle of light marked it, for it was part of the simulacrum system. When it retracted for her, she passed as if through the galactic band into a prosaic companionway.
Motion in zero gravity was fun, but now she sped on business—to find Orichalc and put certain questions to him. The Susaian occupied one of the crew cubicles. It was unlocked. Entering, she found it empty, save for the few curious objects that were personal possessions.
Hm. Would the wight scuttle around idly under these conditions? No, he was a cosmonaut and knew better. Just the same, Lissa searched everywhere she was permitted to go. It took a while to establish that the Susaian must be forward with Valen.
Why? Well, he did go reticent after that private talk of theirs. What are they hatching? Let’s try the physics lab, she decided. I barely glanced in earlier.
There Lissa found confusion, Esker’s three assistants struggling with apparatus that wandered perversely from them. The chief was shouting at the intercom: “—weight! These people can’t work in free fall!”
“Then they’d better learn,” Valen’s voice snapped.
“Destruction curse it, do you want a quick report or don’t you? Nobody else is here to detect us, unless you’ve brought along some phantoms of your own.”
After a moment during which the whirr of the ventilators seemed loud: “Very well. One-half gee in five minutes.”
Esker switched off. “Treats us like offal. What’s he think he is, a patron?” He noticed Lissa. “Oh. Milady.”
“I’ll help you get your stuff together before the boost,” she said. “Not to let it crash down helter-skelter.” Skillfully, she moved about, plucking things from the air. “I didn’t know you three lack this training,” she told them angrily. “I took for granted you had it. What possessed you to choose them, Esker?”
The man’s tone went sullen. “I made sure they aren’t subject to spacesickness. That’d have been adequate, if our dear captain showed some common sense. Why should we conduct these studies? Elementary, routine procedures. The ship can perfectly well do them. Bring up one or two robot bodies from the hold, if necessary.”
“This tests how well you’ll perform when we need procedures that are not routine,” Lissa replied. “Well, I’ll give you three some basic drill as soon as may be, and hope for the best. But Esker, I’m very disappointed in you.”
She wondered how much rage he must suppress in order to mumble, “I’m sorry, milady.” The wondering was brief. A thought came to the fore, instead. Test—
Countdown gave warning, power coursed silent through the engine, the deck was once more downward and feet pressed lightly against it. Having nothing better to do, Lissa sat in a corner and watched the physicists work. She confessed to herself that Esker got things organized fast and thereafter efficiency prevailed. Spectroscopes, radio receivers, mass detectors she recognized; others she did not, but they spoke to those who understood.
Excitement waxed. “Yes, got to be masered— Three hundred twenty kiloherz— This’n’s nearly twice that— And another— Minute by minute, suspicion gathered in her.
Valen: “You’ve had your hour. What can you tell me?”
Esker muttered an oath and raised his shock head from the instrument over which he had stood crouched. “We don’t need interruptions!” he called.
“I didn’t say you must stop work. I only want to know what you’ve found out so far. You can keep on as long as needful.”
Esker straightened. “That may be some while.” His tone gentled, with a tinge of awe. This is certainly… a very peculiar region. Radio emissions from—a number of sources, we haven’t established how many but they’re in every direction. Mostly coherent waves. Frequencies and intensities vary by several orders of magnitude. We’ve only checked two Doppler shifts as yet, but they show motions of kilometers per second, which I suspect are orbital. Many graviton sources are also present. I can’t state positively that they are invisible accelerated masses.… Oh, we’ll be busy here. Is this a natural phenomenon, or could there be artifacts of the Forerunners, still operating after how many millions of years—?”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Keep studying of course. Examine everything. We haven’t even begun to search for matter particles, for instance. Neutrino spectra, perhaps? Captain, I don’t want to make any hypotheses before we know a muckload
