head of the table, head bowed forward and her eyes on the control console built into the table in front of her. Sy Day sat to her immediate right, and Peron next to him, with an empty chair between them. Peron looked a little uncomfortable, while Sy was obviously a million miles away, absorbed by some private concern. Wolfgang Gibbs and Charlene Bloom occupied seats on the opposite side of the table. They were sitting close together, well away from the rest. Wolfgang was scowling and chewing moodily at a finger nail, while Charlene Bloom glanced from one person to another with rapidly blinking eyes. Elissa looked at her closely. Extreme nervousness? It certainly appeared that way, but for no obvious reason. And the whole room was unnaturally quiet, without the normal casual chit-chat that preceded even a serious meeting. The atmosphere was glacial and tense. Elissa paused, still standing. She had a choice. Sit opposite Sy, and thus be between Wolfgang and the Director? Or next to Sy and Peron; or at the other end of the table, facing Judith Niles. She headed to sit next to Sy, then on some obscure impulse changed her mind and went to the end chair directly opposite the Director. Judith Niles raised her head. Elissa underwent a brief scrutiny from those intense eyes, then the Director nodded briefly in greeting. She seemed as remote and preoccupied as Sy.
“To business,” Judith Niles said at last. “I gather that Sy Day briefed both of you on our meeting and conversation?”
Peron and Elissa looked at each other. “In detail,” said Elissa. She waited for Peron, but he did not speak. “However, we still have questions,” she went on. Judith Niles nodded. “I am sure you do. Perhaps it is best if you first listen to what I propose. That may answer many of your questions. If not, we will consider them later.”
Her words were couched as a suggestion, but her tone of voice showed she expected no argument. No one replied. Wolfgang ducked his head and seemed to be studying the granular plastic table top, rendered a soft continuous blur by the oddities of S-space optics. Charlene looked expectantly around the table at the others, then back to the Director.
“It is interesting that the arrival here of the three of you should coincide with a decision point in my own thinking,” went on Judith Niles. “Although I could argue that your presence in Gulf City precipitated that point. By now you know something of our history. For fifteen thousand Earth years, research work has continued here without a break: monitoring messages from the Kermel Objects; developing new techniques for slowing of consciousness, designed to make us better able to match the Kermel transmission rates; and making many attempts at direct communication with them. Failed attempts, I should add. But we have had some successes. We are assured now of the extreme age of the Kermels; we have learned how to present signals received from them reliably, as one, two, or three dimensional arrays; we have confirmed by independent methods that the changes in stellar types in this spiral arm of our galaxy are real; and finally, we are beginning to see hints of methods to slow subjective experience rates even further, beyond those of T-state.
“These are all major advances. Yet you do not need me to point out that they will all be of no value unless we can learn how to inhibit the stellarforming of G type stars. We face the possibility of greatly extended life spans, with no place to live except far from our home stars. If that happens, we will face the extinction of all our planetary colonies. And that is an intolerable thought, even if we forget recruitment needs from normal space to S-space. “Before you arrived, the senior staff of Gulf City, and in particular Wolfgang, Charlene and I, had worried long and hard about the slowness of our progress. I decided some time ago that the pace of our efforts had to be picked up — by whatever methods. This is an absolute necessity. And to accomplish it, I resolved to take an unprecedented step. You, the three of you, are central to that step.”
Elissa and Peron looked at each other in surprise, then both turned to Sy. He was unmoved, his usual cool self.
“Hear me out,” went on Judith Niles. “Why you? Because you have not yet become locked into our existing ways of thinking about the problem. We must find totally new avenues, create new thought patterns, and explore different options; but we cannot do that. We are too wedded to our existing exploration, and too fixed in the pattern of past analyses. Stay here for a few months, and you will have the same problem. That is why I propose a change at once, before you harden into our ways and ideas.
“What I am suggesting is revolutionary. I propose to establish a completely new facility, similar to Gulf City but in a separate location. It will have independent management, and independent research staff. The preferred location is eighteen light-years from here, and almost twelve light-years from Sol. It does not have quite the same degree of isolation from interference as this site, but signals received here from Kermel Objects will naturally be available to the new facility. There will be cooperation, but strictly limited interchange of information. We cannot afford to inhibit each other’s research.
“And now, here is my specific proposal: you three are invited to go to that facility, with the best support that we can offer from anywhere in our network of colonies and stations. You will not merely be participants in the facility’s research; you will direct it, setting priorities and allocating resources.” She smiled. “I am sure you feel suspicious. Why would I, without taking leave of my senses, entrust a huge new undertaking to three near- strangers? I will tell you why. Your performance to date has been highly impressive, but my real reason is far more compelling: we are becoming desperate here. Something must be done, and something new has to be tried.”
She looked along the table. “You are silent. I am not surprised. I would be silent also. But when you have questions, I will do my best to answer all of them.”
Sy did not move. He had been nodding his head a tiny fraction as she spoke, but now he was motionless. Wolfgang and Charlene were looking at Peron and Elissa, and avoiding Judith Niles’ eye. Charlene seemed more tense than ever. “Why us?” said Peron at last. “Why didn’t you do it with the last group of people to find their way to Gulf City?”
“For two reasons. First, I did not feel they could do it — I feel that you can. And second, I had not yet reached my own flashpoint. Now I feel a great need for action. Our present approach is too slow. We must have at least two facilities working in parallel.”
Peron looked at each participant in turn, taking his time. Finally he turned again to Judith Niles. “When do you propose this would begin?”
She smiled with her mouth, but her eyes remained tense. “I am now about to fail one test of a good manipulator. Take it, if you will, as evidence of the depth of my concern on this issue. The process for creating the second facility has already begun. A station from Sol is on the way to form the facility’s nucleus, and other equipment is in shipment from three Sector Headquarters. If you agree, it will be ready for operation as soon as you arrive there. I hope that you will begin your journey at once. You can become familiar with details of equipment on the way there.”
Peron nodded. “And what experiments would we do?”
“You will tell us that — remember, too much direction from here and the second facility becomes useless.” She smiled again, and this time there was humor there. “Talk to Wolfgang and Charlene, if you want to know how much it costs me to remove myself from the direction of the new effort. All my working life I have insisted in hands-on knowledge of any experiments under my control. Now I am promising to turn my back on you.”
Judith Niles touched the controls on the table top, and the room began to darken. Behind her, panels in front of the display slid open, and a flickering pattern showed on the screen.
“You will need time to make a decision. I expect that, but I urge you to minimize that time. The most important job in human civilization is waiting for you. And for that reason, I do not hesitate to use unfair tactics of persuasion. I have one more argument to present to you. If you are the people that I believe you to be, it cannot fail to sway your opinions.
“A few days ago we received at Gulf City a video message from one of our Sector Headquarters, out near the planet of Paradise. It was sent via Earth, and addressed to you. It appears to be in clear form — though I know your penchant for hiding coded messages in with clear ones. The clear message is quite enough. Watch closely.”
The screen behind Judith Niles showed the image of a man. He was a stranger to Elissa, gray-bearded and balding, with a prominent nose, pale gray eyes, and a craggy, lined face. A faint scar ran across his forehead, diagonally from the upper right to his left eyebrow. He grinned, looked directly into the camera, and raised his hand in greeting.
“Hello again. Greetings from Paradise — or near it.”
Elissa heard Peron grunt, at the same moment as she felt her own rush of recognition. There could be no mistaking that strained, husky voice and precise diction.
“It’s Kallen!” said Peron. “My God, Sy, that’s Kallen.”
“Yes, quite right,” said the face on the screen, exactly as though he could somehow hear the comments in
