was always present even in the engineered solitude of the skipper’s rooms.
“It makes sense,” Napier said finally, “but you don’t want to go there. Right?”
“Well, maybe it makes too much sense. Admincom could predict that we’d head for 803 and send a hundred ships into the region. A thousand ships.”
“Think they could catch us?”
“There’s always that chance,” Garamond said. “It’s been proved that four flickerwings getting just ahead of another and matching velocities can control it better than its own skipper just by deciding how much reaction mass to let slip by.”
There was another silence, then Napier gave a heavy sigh. “All right, Vance — where’s your map?”
“Which map?”
“The one showing Pengelly’s Star. That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?”
Garamond felt a surge of anger at having his innermost thoughts divined so accurately by the other man. “My father actually met Rufus Pengelly once,” he said defensively. “He told me he’d never known a man less capable of trickery — and if there was one thing my father could do it was judge character just by…” He broke off as Napier began to laugh.
“Vance, you don’t need to sell the idea to me. We’re not going to find the third world, so it doesn’t matter where we go, does it?”
Garamond’s anger was replaced by a growing sense of relief. He went to his desk, opened a drawer and took out four large photoprints which appeared to be of greyish metallic or stone surfaces on which were arranged a number of darker spots in a manner suggestive of star maps. The fuzziness of the markings and the blotchy texture of the background were due to the fact that the prints were computer reconstructions of star charts which had been destroyed by fire.
Sagania had been discovered early in the exploratory phase. It was less than a hundred light-years from Sol, only a quarter of the separation the best statisticians had computed as the average for technical civilizations throughout the galaxy. Even more remarkable was the coincidence of timescales. In the geological lifespans of Sagania and Earth the period in which intelligent life developed and flourished represented less than a second in the life of a man, yet the fantastic gamble had come off. Saganians and Men had coexisted, against all the odds, within interstellar hailing distance, each able to look into the night sky and see the other’s parent sun without optical aid. Both had taken the machine-using philosophy as far as the tapping of nuclear energy. Both had shared the outward urge, planned the building of starships, and — with their sub-beacons trembling in the blackness like candles in far-off windows — it was inevitable that there would have been a union.
Except that one day on Sagania — at a time when the first civilizations were being formed in the Valley of the Two Rivers on Earth — somebody had made a mistake. It may have been a politician who overplayed his hand, or a scientist who dealt the wrong cards, but the result was that Sagania lost its atmosphere, and its life, in an uncontrolled nuclear reaction which surged around the planet like a tidal wave of white fire.
Archaeologists from Earth, arriving seven thousand years later, had been able to discover very little about the final phase of Saganian civilization. Ironically or justly, according to one’s point of view, the beings who had represented the peak of the planet’s culture were the ones who removed virtually all trace of their existence. It was the older, humbler Saganian culture which, protected by the crust of centuries, had been uncovered by the electronic probes. Among the artifacts turned up were fragments of star maps which excited little comment, even though a few researchers had noticed that some of them showed a star which did not exist.
“This is the earliest fragment,” Garamond said, setting the photoprint on a table beside Napier. He pointed at a blurry speck. “And that’s the sun we’ve christened Pengelly’s Star. Here’s another map tentatively dated five hundred years later, and as you see — no Pengelly’s Star. One explanation is that at some time between when these two maps were drawn the star vanished.”
“Maybe it got left out by mistake,” Napier prompted, aware that Garamond wanted to go over all the familiar arguments once more.
“That can’t be — because we have two later maps, covering the same region but drawn several centuries apart, and they don’t record the star either. And a visual check right now shows nothing in that region.”
“Which proves it died.”
“That’s the obvious explanation. A quick but unspectacular flare-up — then extinction. Now here’s the fourth map, the one found by Doctor Pengelly. As you can see, this map shows our star.”
“Which proves it’s older than maps two and three.”
“Pengelly claims he excavated it at the highest level of all, that it’s the youngest.”
“Which proves he was a liar. This sort of thing has happened before, Vance.” Napier flicked the glossy prints with blunt fingers. “What about that affair in Crete a few hundred years ago? Archaeologists are always…”
“Trying to win acclaim for themselves. Pengelly had nothing to gain by lying about where he found the fragment. I personally believe it was drawn only a matter of decades before the Big Burn, well into the Saganians space-going era.” Garamond spoke with the flatness of utter conviction. “You’ll notice that on the fourth map the star isn’t represented by a simple dot. There are traces of a circle around it.”
Napier shrugged and took the first sip of his whisky. “It was a map showing the positions of extinct suns.”
“That’s a possibility. Possibly even a probability, but I’m betting that Saganian space technology was more advanced than we suspect. I’m betting that Pengelly’s Star was important to them in some way we don’t understand. They might have found a habitable world there.”
“It wouldn’t be habitable now. Not after its sun dying.”
“No — but there might be other maps, underground installations, anything.” Garamond suddenly heard his own words as though they were being spoken by a stranger, and he was appalled at the flimsiness of the logical structure which supported his family’s hopes for a future. He glanced instinctively at the door leading to the bedroom where Aileen and Chris were asleep. Napier, perceptive as ever, did not reply and for a while they drank in silence. Blocks of coloured light, created for decorative purposes by the same process which produced solid- image weather maps, drifted through the air of the room in random patterns, mingling and merging. Their changing reflections seemed to animate the gold snail on Garamond’s desk.
“We never found any Saganian starships,” Napier said.
“It doesn’t mean they didn’t have them. You’d find their ships anywhere
Napier finished his drink and got up to refill his glass. “You’re almost making some kind of a case, but why did the Exploratory Arm never follow it up?”
“Let’s level with each other,” Garamond said. “How many years is it since you really believed that Starflight wants to find other worlds?”
“I…”
“They’ve got Terranova, which they sell off in hectare lots as if it was a Long Island development property in the old days. They’ve got all the ships, too. Man’s destiny is in the stars — just so long as he is prepared to sign half his life away to Starflight for the ride, and the other half for a plot of land. It’s a smooth-running system, Cliff, and a few cheap new worlds showing up would spoil it. That’s why there are so few ships, comparatively speaking, in the S.E.A.”
“But…”
“They’re more subtle than the railroad and mining companies in the States were when they set up their private towns, but the technique’s the same. What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to agree with you.” Napier punched his fist through a cube of lime-green radiance which floated away unaffected. “It doesn’t matter a damn where we go in this year, so let’s hunt down Pengelly’s Star. Have you any idea where it ought to be?”
“Some. Have a look at this chart.” As they walked over to the universal machine in the corner Garamond felt a sense of relief that Napier had been so easy to convince — to his own mind it gave the project a semblance of sanity. When he was within voice-acceptance range of the machine he called up the map it had prepared for him. A three-dimensional star chart appeared in the air above the console. One star trailed a curving wake of glowing
