would sink beneath its tides, and Earth would swim through its upper atmosphere. The surface simmered serenely at less than 2200 degrees Kelvin. It was an ancient star, far older than Sol. Its blood-colored light spilled across its family of worlds.
Terrestrial planets orbited at either end of the system, separated by four gas giants. The survey team which had visited the system ten years earlier had concluded that there had probably once been other planets, closer to the central luminary, but they had been absorbed as the sun expanded. LCO4418 was now thought to be close to the end of this phase of its cycle. Over the next several million years, it would recede.
Carson watched recordings of its image on the screens. Prominences did not erupt from its interior, nor did sunspots mar its placid surface. It had entered the final stage of its existence, and death would come quickly now. By cosmic standards.
For all that, it would still be here, and still look much the same, when the human race had long since met whatever fate awaited it. Or had evolved into something else.
The flight was somber. The festive mood and the enthusiasm of the days on the Winckelmann had gone. The crew and the passengers spent most of their time together. No one drifted off alone. But there were long silences and uncomfortable glances and things left unspoken. It was perhaps not entirely coincidental that on the evening before their arrival at LCO4418, the conversation had centered on how funerals might be improved to aid future archeologists.
Late in the afternoon of May 7, they jumped back into real space, well south of the planetary plain.
On those occasions when Carson was honest with himself, he knew that he did not expect to find anything. He did not really believe in the wave. It was an intriguing concept, but this was not a phenomenon that he could credit. So he stood on Ashley's bridge, and surveyed the vast wastes, and wondered, not for the first time, why he was here.
The three surviving members of the original team found they could no longer hide their feelings from each other, and Carson was not surprised when Hutch, who had come up behind him, moved right into his mood. 'Sometimes,' she said, 'you just have to take your chance, and let go.'
They started by performing a system-wide survey for artificial objects. It showed negative, which did not mean there might not be something present, but only that any such object would be at considerable range, or quite small, or hidden behind a natural body.
In spite of themselves—they agreed, when pressed, that they were chasing ghosts—they were disappointed.
Angela pored over the records of the original mission to 4418. 'A fairly typical system,' she told Hutch. 'What do we do now?'
The red giant dominated the viewscreens. 'Verticals and perpendiculars,' she said. 'We are going to make some right angles.'
Carson had been looking for a good construction site. He explained his strategy in detail, and Angela produced topographical maps from the survey. They decided to use an oversized moon orbiting the second planet: 4418-IID. Delta.
Drafts put it on the display. In the dim glow of the sun, it was an exotic worldlet, silver and gold by candlelight. Clouds drifted above orange snowfields and nitrogen seas, methane swamps and crooked mountain chains. It lay in the shadow of the big planet's wispy rings.
The atmosphere read out as hydrogen, methane, nitrogen, with substantial amounts of ethane, hydrogen cyanide, ethyl-ene. Distance from the central world was 650,000 kilometers. Period of revolution: 13 days. Diameter: 5300 kilometers. Surface temperature: -165 °C, at the equator. Surface gravity:.37. Orbital period: 11.14 days. Age: estimated 4.7 billion years, with an error factor of ten percent. The system was twelve A.U.s from the sun.
They watched an ice volcano erupt in the southern hemisphere. Snow was falling over one of the oceans, and a nearby coastline was whipped by heavy rain. 'The rainstorm might be two-hundred proof,' said Angela. 'There's a lot of ethanol down there, and the temperature's about right.' She grinned. 'I wouldn't be surprised to find gasoline lakes.'
Carson found what he was looking for in the south, about 20 degrees below the equator: a vast plain cluttered with plateaus. 'Here.' He tapped the screen. 'Here's where we want to set up.'
With Hutch's help, Drafts disconnected three of the ship's external cameras. The Ashley Tee was consequently left with blind spots, but they could get by. They jury-rigged a mount for the laser, and tripods for the cameras.
'Tell me about the communications,' Carson asked as they rounded the gas giant early in the afternoon of their third day. They would go into orbit around Delta at breakfast time.
Hutch set up one of the cameras for his inspection, opened the tripod (which they would anchor into the ice), and attached a sensor cluster. 'We put the cameras on the ground, around the target. We'll launch two comsats. If the cameras see something, they'll transmit pictures to the comsats, which will send a hyperlight alarm to Point Zebra. The satellites are enclosed in convex casings. No right angles.'
'What triggers the cameras?'
'A sudden and substantial increase in electrical activity, or in temperature beyond that normally encountered. Each camera has its own sensor system, and will operate independently. If something does happen, we should be able to get pictures.'
'How about ordinary electrical storms? Won't they set it off?'
'Angela says lightning will be infrequent here, and quoted pretty good odds against normal phenomena triggering the sensors. If they do,' she shrugged, 'too bad. Somebody will come out for no reason.'
'Somebody will come outT' This wasn't exactly the kind of alarm system Carson had in mind. 'Won't they be able to tell when they get the pictures at the Point?'
'They won't get any pictures. The pictures are stored in the satellites. All that'll happen is an alarm will go off.'
'Why not send the pictures?'
'Can't. Hyperspace communication requires a lot of power. We just can't generate enough for complex transmissions unless we plan to hang around ourselves and use Ashley's power plant. So we do the next best thing: we send a beep.'
Fine, Carson thought. Every time there was an electrical storm, they would have to dispatch a ship. 'I can't say I care much for this arrangement,' he grumbled. 'How safe will the cameras be if an event occurs?'
'Hard to say, since we really don't know what the event is. They have to be close to the target area, within a few hundred meters, for the short-range sensors to work. If we back it up farther, and go long-range, they'll pick up too much stray activity, and then we will get a series of false alarms.'
'Okay.'
'One other thing. If the kind of action we're looking for develops, there'll be a lot of electricity in the atmosphere, and the transmissions will get scrambled. In that case, the satellites will not get the pictures.'
'So package in a delayed broadcast, too.'
'I've done that. We will also record everything at ground level. Redundant copies everywhere. So if anything survives, we'll have a record.' She was proud of her work, and had expected Carson to notice. But he still seemed preoccupied. 'I've tried to shield the equipment as best I can,' she continued.
'Okay,' he said. 'Good.'
'You'll want to send someone out in a couple of years to replace this stuff. It's not designed for this kind of mission, so it won't last much beyond that.'
'I know,' he said. They both understood that such a backup flight would be unlikely.
They pinpointed a target area on a broad, snow-covered plain between a mountain range and a swamp filled with nitrogen and hydrocarbon sludge. The plateaus that had drawn Carson's attention were scattered across an otherwise flat landscape. It looked like a piece of the American West, covered with ice, and bathed in the pale red light of the distant sun.
They settled on a group of four mesas which lay within an area approximately sixty kilometers on a side. Each was already roughly rectangular. (The group had been chosen primarily for that reason.) The smallest comprised an area of about six square kilometers, the largest about a hundred. Carson would have given much to find four mesas at the corners of a square, but nature had not provided, not on this world, nor on any other in the
