it the least significant. From their very first days in S-space, JN had always made a point to cover her bald scalp with a wig. Today, either through oversight or conscious decision, she had omitted to do so. Her scalp, smooth and white and with the faint lines of long-ago surgery tracing across the cranium, was more shocking to Charlene than the possibility of the coming alien contact. Coming, and coming soon. The intangible wisps of the Pipistrelles loomed large in the displays. No one on the Argo could do anything to slow their approach. On the other hand, the Pipistrelles were so insubstantial, so little different from the void itself, any danger from them seemed like a product of overexcited human imagination.
And yet, in the final minutes as those three dark shapes converged on the space-locked Argo, no one in the dim-lit control room could find anything to say. The three Pipistrelles swept on, closer and closer. At microwave wavelengths their winged shapes blocked out half the sky. On their final approach the wings curled around, as though to encompass the helpless ship. “Any second now.” Sy’s calm voice sounded clearly through the hushed chamber. “Closing — closing — contact.”
There was no sound — no movement — no evidence of impact; but the air within the room glowed with pale-blue luminescence. The walls of the chamber blurred, briefly, as though vibrating at a speed too high for the eye to follow. The Pipistrelles vanished from the displays. At the same moment all lights inside the Argo went out.
And then, just as suddenly, the Pipistrelles reappeared on the displays. They were receding from the Argo as silently and as mysteriously as they had approached. Nestled among the three bat shapes shone the bright silver web of the Gossamere.
“That’s it? That’s all we get?” Some crew member muttered the words to herself in the darkness, but she was voicing everyone’s thoughts. They had been tensed for confrontation, for high drama, maybe even for destruction. Now their possible contact retreated, while the ship was once again locked in a featureless void of open space, a few light-days from Urstar but more than two thousand light-years from home.
In the faint glow cast by the displays, Charlene peered around the chamber. She was examining faces. A few seemed openly relieved, most looked worried or disappointed. Sy was inscrutable — naturally. Emil, massive and imperturbable, caught her eye and winked. Maybe he was trying to reassure her. It didn’t work. Charlene turned her attention again to Judith Niles. The Director still sat hunched in her chair, but something had changed. The wide- eyed blankness was gone, replaced by an alertness that Charlene had not seen for months. Her eyes seemed to throw off a light of their own.
As Charlene watched, that bright gaze moved steadily from person to person, focusing intently on each for a few moments and then moving on. When the gimlet stare reached her, Charlene shivered. She felt as though the Director had seen into the secret depths of her mind.
JN was going to speak — Charlene was sure of it; but whatever the Director might have said was lost, because all the lights suddenly came on and as they did so the room filled with an outburst of excited comments.
“Inertial sensors say we’re moving!”
“We’re getting positive Doppler — but it shows a red shift, a big one. That means we’re heading away from Urstar — “
“We’ve had a power drain, a big one. Half our reserves have gone.” “There’s motion relative to the cosmic background radiation.”
“Data bank security has been violated. Extent of penetration unknown. It’s still being violated.”
“Hey, we have engine control!”
Every crew member was busy with a hand-held, checking the ship functions for which they were personally responsible. The noise level suggested that everyone had discovered something significant.
The old Judith Niles, the dynamo at the center of the Sleep Research Institute, would have snapped out a command at once to silence and organize everyone. The Judith Niles of the past few weeks would have looked on apathetically and done nothing.
This Judith Niles did neither one. She sat, quietly waiting, until the excited chatter died away to a murmur.
“Very good,” she said at last, and there a crispness and finality in her tone that made the voices fall silent.
She went on, “Let me begin with information that will probably disturb you. We are not Judith Niles. We are merely making temporary use of her body.” Charlene was shocked — but at the same time felt that she had known what was coming before it was spoken. The inhibition against speech that she always felt in the presence of the Director was gone, and she blurted out, “You killed her!” “No. We saved her. Was it not evident to you that her condition was deteriorating fast, and she could not long survive?”
It had been evident, at least to Charlene, but it was Sy who asked, “So what happened to Judith Niles?”
“She still exists, although not in material form. She left the ship with the Pipistrelles, and is undergoing necessary indoctrination.”
Sy spoke again. “Pipistrelles. You know our words. Who are you, and how are you able to speak to us in our own language?”
“Let us answer your second question first.” One hand of Judith Niles reached forward to the table in front of her, ready to check off points on her fingers. Charlene, who had seen that gesture for seventy millennia, quivered with tension.
“First” — the forefinger tapped on the table — “it should be clear to you that normally we do not exist in material form. We are currently embodied, but that is merely for ease of communication. Second” — a tap of the second finger — “one of you already observed that we have access to the data banks of this ship. We have absorbed those data sources in their entirety. We know how you came to this star, and why. We know your complete history, as individuals and as a species. Therefore, we know not only this language, the one that we are now employing, but all languages in use by your kind. Third” — a finger tap — “and most important: we do not seek to harm you. Your forward progress toward what you know as Urstar was arrested, because had you continued all life on board this ship would have been extinguished.”
“So you claim you’re the good guys,” Dan Korwin said. The shock around the room was being replaced by a swelling anger, and he more than anyone had resented the loss of the Argo’s freedom of motion. “But you haven’t answered Sy’s other question: Who are you? And while you’re thinking about that, I’ve got another one for you: If you mean us no harm, why are you systematically removing the type of stars that our kind need in order to survive? Are you going to tell us you have nothing to do with it, that somebody else is wrecking the galaxy?” “Of course not.” The replacement for Judith Niles enjoyed all the calm controlling ability of the original. “However, you have completely misunderstood the situation. When a species first goes into space — “
Korwin burst out, “You don’t know us. We’ve been a spacefaring species for more than seventy millennia!”
“We do not know you, although indeed your records indicate seventy thousand of your years of experience in space.” The intelligence embodied in Judith Niles regarded Korwin calmly. “However, I repeat, when a species first goes into space, perhaps during their initial million years of off-planet wandering, that species tends to believe it knows all. All about S-space, all about the T-state. All of the advantages, and all the possible dangers. Such, however, is not the case.”
Bright eyes stared steadily around the control room. Seeing them now, Charlene could not believe that she had ever seen them as human.
The JN embodiment continued, “You are already aware of some consequences of S-space living. Sterility is an obvious side effect, which could scarcely be missed. And, in fact, it is a side effect which can, by suitable treatments, be partially remedied. A slight loss of creativity is a more serious problem, although again palliative measures exist. What cannot ever be remedied — or rather, since we lack the hubris to believe that we know all, let us say it can possibly never be remedied — is the long-term deterioration of organic life confined to S-space existence. You ask, who are we? Let us rather say what we were. Once we, like you, were carbon-based organic life forms. In S-space, there is an inevitable decline in the physical condition of such forms. Normally, such a decline occurs only after, at a minimum, half a million years for individuals in a species of your type. That it happened so quickly to Judith Niles puzzled us, but we have concluded that was a consequence of her earlier medical problems. Her entry to S-space appears anomalous. Can any of you confirm that? It predates anything in your ship’s data bases.”
