The World At The End Of Time Part 5

CHAPTER 5.

Wan-To's interest in the Sorricaine-Mtiga objects (which, of course, he never called by that name) was becoming pretty nearly frantic. He saw a lot more of them than Pal Sorricaine did, because he saw them a lot faster. He didn't have to wait for creeping visible light to bring him the information. His Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky pairs relayed the images instantly. The things were popping up all over.

However, he was beginning to have hope. The results from his blue-light studies were beginning to come in.

Blue light was particularly good for looking for starspots. Although the spots seemed relatively dark, they were quite bright enough to be seen by Wan-To's great and sensitive "eyes"-particularly if you looked in the blue. Because the spots were cooler than the areas around them, their gases were ionized in a somewhat different way; and it was the spectral lines of the singly ionized calcium atoms-the ones that had lost just one electron-that stood out in blue.

When Wan-To found blue-light images that were not natural he knew just what to do. He summoned up the necessary graviphotons and graviscalars and hurled them in a carefully designed pattern at that star.

That would have been quite a wonder to human physicists, if they could have known what Wan-To was doing. It would have been a marvel for them if they could even have detected any of those particles, though they had sought them as long, and as unsuccessfully, as any medieval knight had sought the Holy Grail.

It was in the early twentieth century that Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein formulated the human race's first decent model of how gravity worked. It wasn't a wholly successful model. There was still a lot to learn. But it managed to relate electromagnetism and gravity as manifestations of a higher-dimension s.p.a.ce-time in ways that seemed to fit together pretty well-in ways, in fact, that Wan-To had understood for many billion years. His own understanding of gravitation was more or less a Kaluza-Klein model, though with considerable important amendments. He understood that the three basic mediating particles of the gravitational interaction between ma.s.ses were what human scientists of the Kaluza-Klein faith would call the vector bosons-the graviton, the graviphoton, and the graviscalar. His command of them was perfect. With the resources of his star to draw on, he could generate any or all of those particles at will. He often did-in copious amounts. He found them all very useful.

He didn't bother much with the simple graviton. That was the uncomplicated spin-2 particle that seemed to pull ma.s.ses together at even infinite distances-the only one that Isaac Newton, for instance, would have understood. Of course, the graviton was highly important in holding stars together and keeping galaxies rotating around their common center, but you couldn't do do much with it. The others were rarer, and more fun, especially when you wanted to attack a colleague's star. A dose of graviphotons, the spin-l repellers, would churn up the star's insides in a hurry; no organized system of Wan-To's kind could survive inside a star that was tearing itself apart that way. Alternatively, or better still, in addition, he could pull at the star from outside with one of the other particles. The more useful of those was the spin-0 graviscalar, which pulled matter and energy toward it just as the humble graviton did, but only over finite distances. The graviscalar was a very much with it. The others were rarer, and more fun, especially when you wanted to attack a colleague's star. A dose of graviphotons, the spin-l repellers, would churn up the star's insides in a hurry; no organized system of Wan-To's kind could survive inside a star that was tearing itself apart that way. Alternatively, or better still, in addition, he could pull at the star from outside with one of the other particles. The more useful of those was the spin-0 graviscalar, which pulled matter and energy toward it just as the humble graviton did, but only over finite distances. The graviscalar was a very local local kind of particle. kind of particle.

The great virtue of the graviscalar, in other words, was that it couldn't be detected by Wan-To's enemies unless they were right on the spot-and then they wouldn't be in any position to do anything about it.

When Wan-To saw his target star erupt-very satisfyingly-he began to relax.

Nothing could have survived in that utter holocaust, of course. Wan-To was pleased. He wondered which of his compet.i.tors he had killed.

It would, he thought, surely have been one of the dumber ones. The others-the ones he had first made, the ones who were almost as smart as Wan-To himself-would, like Wan-To, have figured out that they shouldn't give their locations away by playing in the convection zones. But at least one was gone-one possible threat, but also, of course, one possible promise of companionship.

Philosophically, Wan-To turned his mind to his next step.

There was no help for it. It would be matter. He was going to have to work with nasty matter. matter.

Wan-To had made copies of himself before. That was why he was having his current problems, in fact-if he hadn't wanted company he would have been alone and, therefore, safe. There was no particular problem in preparing a pattern of himself for occupying another star. He knew exactly how to organize inanimate plasma into a living, reasoning being like himself, because he had himself always at hand as a model.

Working with cold, dead, tangible matter matter-that was another problem entirely. He had done that, too-well, there wasn't much Wan-To hadn't hadn't tried, in the ten or so billion years he had been alive. Once he had made a nonplasmoid copy of himself to live in a cold, diffuse cloud of interstellar gas, once even out of solid matter, on an asteroidal body orbiting the star he had occupied at the time. Both were disgusting failures. The gas-cloud doppel was terminally tried, in the ten or so billion years he had been alive. Once he had made a nonplasmoid copy of himself to live in a cold, diffuse cloud of interstellar gas, once even out of solid matter, on an asteroidal body orbiting the star he had occupied at the time. Both were disgusting failures. The gas-cloud doppel was terminally slow slow-it simply had too little energy to work with to be any kind of real company. The one made of matter was just matter, and thus repellent to Wan-To; he had obliterated it after a mere century or two. simply had too little energy to work with to be any kind of real company. The one made of matter was just matter, and thus repellent to Wan-To; he had obliterated it after a mere century or two.

But at least he knew how to do the job.

The distance of the star system he was working on didn't present any problem. He had long ago planted an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky set in each of the places where he now wanted them to be. (Wan-To always planned ahead.) The problem was that matter was no fun to manipulate. In Wan-To's opinion it was slow, it was unfamiliar, and it was pretty nasty stuff all around. What made the work even harder was that he wasn't there, so he had to perform all the complicated operations involved through the limited signals that could be carried through an ERP pair. In human terms, it was like a paraplegic trying to play a s.p.a.ce Invaders video game with the kind of controller that responded to puffs of his breath, or like a cardiac surgeon trying to snip and st.i.tch and ream a dammed-up ventricle into shape with a flexible probe that snaked up through the blood vessels from the femoral artery in the patient's crotch.

The limitations of the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky pair made it all harder, of course. The ERP effect was a probabilistic, quantumlike event.

That meant that there was no guarantee that the message received at one end would be identical to the one that had been transmitted at the other. In fact, it almost certainly wouldn't be.

Naturally Wan-To and his brethren knew how to deal with that problem. Parity checks and redundancy: If the parity check showed nothing wrong, then the message was possibly possibly intact. Then it was compared with the same message transmitted three times. Majority ruled. intact. Then it was compared with the same message transmitted three times. Majority ruled.

All that meant in the long run was that it took longer than it should to carry on a conversation-not because of travel time, but because of processing.

But Wan-To didn't have an alternative.

He didn't want to construct another plasma intelligence. That could well attract attention. Matter would not; beings like Wan-To didn't pay much attention to matter, and there was little chance that any of his feuding relatives would see what was going on on this little satellite of the stellar system he had chosen. He had plans for that system and its neighbors. To make the plans work, he needed some very potent particle-generators.

It would have been possible to create the particle-generators directly, but Wan-To was cleverer than that. What he was constructing wasn't the generators, it was a sort of little Wan-To, a matter a.n.a.logue of himself, which when completed would do the job of constructing the generators and running them as long as necessary, in just the ways that Wan-To desired.

That little matter Wan-To wasn't anything like an exact copy of himself, of course, and it certainly didn't have all of his powers. What Wan-To was building was only a kind of servomechanism. It had exactly as much intelligence as it needed to do what Wan-To wanted it to do, and no more. It would do what Wan-To himself would have done-up to the limits of its powers, anyway. But by human standards those powers were vast.

Working with solid-phase matter was even a kind of intellectual challenge. So he was pleasantly occupied at his task, like a human terrorist whistling as he puts together his time bomb, and happily contemplating the success of his plans, when a signal reached him.

It was wholly unexpected, and it came through one of his ERP complexes. It wasn't an alarm, this time. He experienced it as a sound-in fact, as the sound of a name-Haigh-tik.

That was Wan-To's "eldest son"-which was to say, the copy of himself he had made first and most completely. As a natural consequence, that was the relative who gave Wan-To the most concern; if any of the eight intelligences he had produced was capable of doing their creator in, Haigh-tik was the one.

So Wan-To paused in the labor of creating his matter a.n.a.logue and thought for a moment. He knew Haigh-tik very well. He didn't want to talk to him at that moment. It was tempting to start a conversation, in the hope that Haigh-tik would inadvertently say something that would give away his location. The trouble with having a little chat was that Haigh-tik was as likely as Wan-To himself to learn something. But there was a better possibility, Wan-To reflected. He knew quite a lot about Haigh-tik's habits-including what sort of star he preferred to inhabit.

So Wan-To took time to study some of the fairly nearby stars.

Of course, he had done that before-many times, over all the billions of years he had existed, because looking at the outside universe was one of his princ.i.p.al recreations. He saw them quite clearly. In fact, he saw everything everything quite clearly for, though Wan-To's eyes were no more than patches of sensitive gas, they worked extremely well. What they looked at, they quite clearly for, though Wan-To's eyes were no more than patches of sensitive gas, they worked extremely well. What they looked at, they saw. saw. They could trap a single photon, and remember it, and add it to the next photon that came in from that source. And it didn't matter how long the next photon took to arrive. They could trap a single photon, and remember it, and add it to the next photon that came in from that source. And it didn't matter how long the next photon took to arrive.

A human astronomer on, say, Mount Palomar would have been wild with jealousy. A Palomar astronomer might take an interest in a particular star, or a particular remote galaxy, and turn his 200-inch mirror on it for a whole night's observation. If the night sky were really cloudless-and if the cars and filling stations down the hill and the streetlights of San Diego didn't pollute the seeing with too much extraneous light-he might get twelve whole hours on a single charge-coupled plate. He wouldn't do that very often, of course, because there were too many other astronomers clamoring for time to gaze at their own precious objects.

Twelve hours!

But Wan-To's eyes could soak up photons from the faintest object for a thousand years. years. And if a thousand years wasn't long enough, why, then those eyes would stay unwinking on that single object for a million. And if a thousand years wasn't long enough, why, then those eyes would stay unwinking on that single object for a million.

Nor were they limited to the so-called visible frequencies. All the frequencies were visible to Wan-To. He could "hear" a lot at radio frequencies, particularly when studying the great gas clouds, some of them a thousand light-years across, up to hundreds of thousands of solar ma.s.ses. In the clouds, atomic hydrogen shouts at 1.4 gigahertz; molecular hydrogen is mute. But there are other compounds in the molecular clouds that speak right up: Carbon monoxide is noisy; so is formaldehyde; so is ammonia. He could easily pick out, in the clouds, the things that dirtied them with single molecules and clumps of silicates (rock) and carbon (graphite, charcoal, diamonds) all frozen over with water ice. If radio and optical studies weren't good enough, he had high-energy X rays and gammas that went right through dust.

He saw everything. everything.

On Earth, the early stargazers named the bright points of light they saw overhead at night. The Arabs of the Dark Ages did it best. They had dry air and thus clear night skies, and no power plants or oil refineries to dirty the air, or illuminated highways or shopping malls to fill it with unwanted glow. Before Galileo invented the telescope they could see as many as three thousand stars, and they gave most of them names.

Wan-To could see many more stars than that. One way or another, he could see just about every star in his own galaxy (which at that time was also Earth's)-roughly two hundred and thirty-eight billion of them, depending on which giants had just gone supernova and collapsed into black holes and which new ones were just beginning to shine. He didn't bother to give them names. Type, distance, and direction were good enough for him-but he knew knew them all, and most of those in the Magellanic Clouds and quite a few in M-31 in Andromeda as well. And he also "knew" just about all the external galaxies this side of the optical limit, too, right down to the "blue fuzzies." He was himself a catalogue far better than Harvard or Draper or the Palomar Sky Survey. them all, and most of those in the Magellanic Clouds and quite a few in M-31 in Andromeda as well. And he also "knew" just about all the external galaxies this side of the optical limit, too, right down to the "blue fuzzies." He was himself a catalogue far better than Harvard or Draper or the Palomar Sky Survey.

So to survey just the nearest stars didn't take Wan-To long at all. After all, there were only about twenty thousand of them.

The important thing was that he had a piece of useful information about Haigh-tik. Haigh-tik was known to prefer young stars, probably of the kind Earthly astronomers called T-Tauri objects. Therefore Wan-To sought ordinary-looking stars with a strong lithium emission at 660.7 nanometers.

He found three that were close enough to be possible residences for his undutiful son.

Giving his equivalent of a humorous shrug, Wan-To zapped them all. In one sense, he thought, that was a waste of two stars, at least. Still, there were plenty of stars, and anyway, in just a little while-no more than a million years or so-they would have settled down from being wrung out and so be habitable again if wanted.

After he had sent the instructions on their way he went back to his other project, feeling more cheerful. A dozen other stars had flared up and died while he was working. If Haigh-tik had been the one directing that probing fire, maybe he was now out of the game.

But whoever it was, Wan-To did not want him to know he had missed.

CHAPTER 6.

On Viktor Sorricaine's forty-first birthday- Well, it probably wasn't exactly exactly his birthday, although it was the 38th of Spring, and Viktor, carefully calculating back in Newmanhome years, had long before chosen that date as a base point for his age-Anyway, when he reached that birthday he was the equivalent of twenty, in Earth years. A man grown. Old enough to vote. On Newmanhome he was also definitely a man grown and old enough for any adult activity at all. He had fathered two small babies to prove it. his birthday, although it was the 38th of Spring, and Viktor, carefully calculating back in Newmanhome years, had long before chosen that date as a base point for his age-Anyway, when he reached that birthday he was the equivalent of twenty, in Earth years. A man grown. Old enough to vote. On Newmanhome he was also definitely a man grown and old enough for any adult activity at all. He had fathered two small babies to prove it.

He didn't have a wife to go along with the two children, but that wasn't anything special on Newmanhome. Almost everybody past p.u.b.erty was producing kids for the colony, whether they were married or not. Even his own father had helped the baby boom along again. By the time little Edwina Sorricaine was fourteen (Newmanhome years; Earth equivalent, about seven) she had two younger brothers and was beginning to learn how to change a diaper on her own. The human population of Newmanhome stood at more than six thousand. Two thirds of them were younger than Viktor, which was probably why Viktor had seniority enough to have risen to be the pilot of an oceangoing cargo ship. Where he really wanted to be was in s.p.a.ce, of course, but there weren't any of those jobs open. Nor was he quite senior enough to be an airman. But ship's pilot was still pretty good.

He was certainly grown up enough to be married, if he had been inclined that way. His mother frequently reminded him of that fact. "Reesa's a nice girl," she would say, sometime during the days he spent at home, between his voyages to the farms on South Continent or the new tree plantations on the islands in Archipelago West. Or in her letters she would tell him how young Billy Stockbridge-now, would you believe it, twenty-six (Newmanhome) years old and pretty nearly grown up himself-had begun playing his guitar to accompany Reesa McGann's flute in duets and, although there was that great difference in their ages, people didn't take those things as seriously in the new world, and wasn't it about time that he, Viktor, made up his mind? made up his mind?

He had made it up, long ago.

Viktor had never stopped dreaming of Marie-Claude Stockbridge. In spite of the fact that she laughed at him when, once, he tried to kiss her. In spite of the fact that he was despondently aware that she had become pregnant four times in thirteen Newmanhome years, by three different men. In spite of the fact that, although all that was bad enough, she had just made it worse still by marrying the father of her latest two.

The name of the cur she married was Alex Petkin. It infuriated Viktor that Petkin was at least eight Newmanhome years younger than his bride-or, as Viktor saw it, not all that much older than himself, for G.o.d's sake, and if Marie-Claude had wanted to rob the cradle why the h.e.l.l couldn't she have robbed his? his?

In Viktor's view, his own two children were beside the point. He was only doing what everybody else was. On Newmanhome, kids were supposed to experiment before they settled down. Naturally, such kids' experiments frequently produced more kids.

Getting laid now and then was one thing. Getting married was another matter entirely. To marry, in Viktor's lexicon, necessarily meant to love. love. He did not feel he had been in love with either of the mothers of his children. Certainly he was quite fond of Alice Begstine, the mother of his four-year-old. Alice was a ship's navigator who was also frequently not only his bedmate but his shipmate on the long voyages across the Great Ocean. Undoubtedly, he was very used to Reesa McGann, who had borne him his newest one, still an infant. But he had never a.s.sociated either Alice or Reesa with the word "love." He did not feel he had been in love with either of the mothers of his children. Certainly he was quite fond of Alice Begstine, the mother of his four-year-old. Alice was a ship's navigator who was also frequently not only his bedmate but his shipmate on the long voyages across the Great Ocean. Undoubtedly, he was very used to Reesa McGann, who had borne him his newest one, still an infant. But he had never a.s.sociated either Alice or Reesa with the word "love."

That word was reserved for Marie-Claude-ah-Petkin. In spite of the fact that she had gone and married a stripling still in his fifties, who was quite unlikely to become enfeebled with age in time to do Viktor Sorricaine any good.

Since Viktor was not an idiot, he no longer really expected that was ever going to happen. His own father, crippled as he was, much older than the cur, Petkin, was a permanent testimonial to middle-aged male vigor. At least, the toddler Jonas and little Tomas, sucking his knuckles in his crib, surely were.

None of that mattered to Viktor. Marie-Claude was still the woman Viktor made love to, tenderly and copiously, in every night's drowsy imagining just before he drifted off to sleep in his bed-no matter whom he happened to be sharing the bed with.

Crossing Great Ocean took four or five weeks each way, depending on the winds, plus a week or two loading and unloading at each end. It came to more than a quarter of a Newmanhome year for each round trip. Things happened fast on Newmanhome, and every time Viktor came back to the growing city they called Homeport everything was changed.

As Viktor's ship sailed into Homeport on the morning of that 38th of Spring the broad bay glistened in the sunlight. Fleecy clouds drifted overhead. The breeze was warm, and Viktor saw lots of progress in the colony. The new grain elevator for the docks had been completed since he had sailed away, and up on the hill the two microwave rectennae loomed behind the new geothermal power plant, the second antenna already half covered with its wire net. That was good; the colony was getting plenty of electrical power at last.

It was Alice Begstine's turn to supervise the unloading of the ship. So as soon as they were docked Viktor leaped off, waved farewell to Alice and headed toward the new houses on the edge of town. He was looking forward to spending his birthday with his youngest child, Yan-and maybe with Reesa, the little boy's mother, if she seemed to be in a friendly mood.

She wasn't home. Freddy Stockbridge was sitting in her front room, reading his prayer book, while Reesa's two children napped.

Viktor looked at him with suspicion, but all he said was, "h.e.l.lo, Freddy." Viktor wasn't sure how to take Freddy Stockbridge, who had decided, of all things, that what he wanted to be was a priest. "What are you doing here?"

The question was really "Why aren't you working?" and Freddy answered it that way. "They made today a secular holiday," he said, sounding aggrieved. "They call it First Power Day. They're having some kind of an anniversary celebration up at the power plant."

"Another d.a.m.n holiday," Viktor said, trying to make friendly conversation. Landing Day, Mayflower Mayflower Day-every major event in the colony's history had to be commemorated, it seemed, though Viktor rather liked the thought of his own birthday being a planetwide day off. Day-every major event in the colony's history had to be commemorated, it seemed, though Viktor rather liked the thought of his own birthday being a planetwide day off.

"Another darned secular secular holiday," Freddy corrected him. "It isn't really fair, you know. Would you believe they won't let us have Good Friday off? Or even All Saints' Day, although they close the schools the day before for Dress-Up Night?" holiday," Freddy corrected him. "It isn't really fair, you know. Would you believe they won't let us have Good Friday off? Or even All Saints' Day, although they close the schools the day before for Dress-Up Night?"

"I'll sign your pet.i.tion," Viktor promised, lying. "Is Reesa up there?"

Freddy shrugged, already back in his prayer book. "I guess so," he said, not looking up.

"Thank you very much," Viktor said, snapping the words off because Freddy was irritating him. Viktor thought of looking in on his parents, who at least would remember that it was his birthday, but he was curious about what Reesa was doing, and why she had left his child to a baby-sitter-Freddy Stockbridge, at that!

The only way to settle that was to ask her, so, still irritated, he trudged up the hill.

There was a crowd there, all right, five or six hundred people at least. Captain Bu Wengzha was up on a flag-bedecked platform, making a speech, though most of the people were picnicking on the gra.s.s and hardly listening to the captain at all. What the speech seemed to be about was electrical power, and Reesa was nowhere in sight.

". . . this wonderful geothermal power plant," Captain Bu was saying, "has delivered energy for us for one year now without interruption and, G.o.d willing, will go on doing it for a thousand years to come. That is G.o.d's gift to us, my friends, limitless energy from the geothermal heat under our feet. Let us praise His name! And let us thank, too, the skills and painstaking labor of our comrades who have given so unstintingly of themselves to create this wholly automatic technological marvel, which supplements the flood of energy being beamed down to us by that st.u.r.dy ship, New Mayflower . . . New Mayflower . . ."

Viktor listened for only a second-not very interested, though a little surprised to hear the old ship's captain sounding so G.o.dly-then turned off his ears. He spotted a young woman holding a baby, listening patiently to the captain. He nudged her. "Valerie? Have you seen Reesa?"

The young woman glanced at him. "Oh, hi, Vik. No, not lately. Is she helping them get ready for the dancing over there?"

She was looking toward a group setting up a plank dance floor on the gra.s.s. Viktor nodded thanks. "I'll go look."

Captain Bu's amplified voice followed him as he stepped among the picnickers to the dance committee. ". . . and by this time next year, they promise, all of our cryonic facilities will be complete on this very spot, along with liquid-gas generators to refuel our shuttles so that our heroic friends in orbit above us can have the regular relief they rightfully . . ."

She wasn't hammering down the flat boards for the dancing, either. Viktor b.u.t.tonholed the nearest worker he recognized. "Wen, have you seen Reesa?"

The young man blinked at him. "Oh, she's not here," he a.s.sured Viktor. "I think she's up at the observatory."

"The observatory," observatory," Viktor said, not meaning to sound disparaging. He had always thought of the "observatory" as a rather pointless hobby of his father's. "What does she think she can see in broad daylight?" Viktor said, not meaning to sound disparaging. He had always thought of the "observatory" as a rather pointless hobby of his father's. "What does she think she can see in broad daylight?"

"No, they're not looking through the telescope. It's the s.p.a.ce course. You know, the astrophysics course they're having for s.p.a.ce pilots-it was on the bulletin boards weeks ago."

"For s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce pilots?" Viktor was suddenly alert. "I wasn't here weeks ago!" pilots?" Viktor was suddenly alert. "I wasn't here weeks ago!"

"Oh, have you been away?" Wen asked. "I thought you'd know. After all, it's your father that's giving it."

A course for s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce pilots! And given by his own father! Viktor was more irritated than ever as he climbed swiftly toward the little plastic dome on the peak of the hill. If there was any hope of anybody getting into s.p.a.ce again, why hadn't he been pilots! And given by his own father! Viktor was more irritated than ever as he climbed swiftly toward the little plastic dome on the peak of the hill. If there was any hope of anybody getting into s.p.a.ce again, why hadn't he been told? told?

Viktor knew, of course, that his father still had a few people interested in astronomy hanging around him. Not very many. There wasn't any reason for anyone to be very interested, for the most exciting things in the Newmanhome sky, the flare stars, had stopped coming. There had been eight of them over a dozen Newmanhome years, then the flares had stopped.

That had left Pal Sorricaine high and dry, because the whole team of investigators into the "Sorricaine-Mtiga objects" had been disbanded. There was no longer anything for them to do. Jahanjur Singh had been co-opted by the power teams to help design transmission facilities to the new colonies on Christmas Island and the South Continent, and f.a.n.n.y Mtiga had emigrated to South, with her family, to start a new career in farming. "Don't go!" Pal had pleaded. "You're wasting your skills! Stay here, help me."

"Help you do what, Pal?" she asked, patiently enough. "If there's another flare I'll see it on South, won't I? And I'll get the same reading from the Mayflower Mayflower instruments. And anyway, they've all been about the same-" instruments. And anyway, they've all been about the same-"

"We owe it to our profession! Back on Earth-"

"Pal," she said gently, "back on Earth they're seeing it all for themselves now, aren't they? Some of those flares were closer to them than to us, and they've got a lot better instruments."

"But we were the first to report!"

She shook her head. "If they elect us to the Royal Society we'll hear. Meanwhile what the colony really needs is food. Give me a call if anything comes up-to the South Continent."

So she had gone; and Pal Sorricaine had stayed and driven the half-dozen people who const.i.tuted his group of disciples to help him with such projects as cataloguing the nearby stars so they could have better names than they had ever been given on Earth.

Then Pal had an inspiration. He wheedled the council into letting them divert a little effort into casting some low-expansion gla.s.s blanks, then set his acolytes to grinding a mirror. It took forever to finish, but when it was done and silvered and mounted in a tube Pal Sorricaine and his cla.s.s had a real telescope, right there on the surface, with which to look at their new neighbors in s.p.a.ce: the six other planets, their dozens of moons, and the largest of the asteroids.

Of course, it was all pretty pointless in any serious serious astronomical sense. Any real astronomy would be done by the optics on the orbiting hulks, which still worked perfectly. The few crew members still up there, desultorily running the microwave generators and going slowly ape from loneliness, didn't bother to tend the sensors, but they didn't need tending. Even back on Earth, astronomers in Herstmonceux, England, had routinely operated instruments in the Canary Islands or Hawaii by remote radio control; telescopes didn't need a human hand on the controls. But Pal was determined to force his students to astronomical sense. Any real astronomy would be done by the optics on the orbiting hulks, which still worked perfectly. The few crew members still up there, desultorily running the microwave generators and going slowly ape from loneliness, didn't bother to tend the sensors, but they didn't need tending. Even back on Earth, astronomers in Herstmonceux, England, had routinely operated instruments in the Canary Islands or Hawaii by remote radio control; telescopes didn't need a human hand on the controls. But Pal was determined to force his students to look look at the skies. Though the 30-centimeter was far from perfectly curved, and the sky over the hill it was mounted on was frequently obscured by clouds, at least his students could step out of the little dome and, with their naked eyes, see the stars and planets they had just seen huger or brighter inside. at the skies. Though the 30-centimeter was far from perfectly curved, and the sky over the hill it was mounted on was frequently obscured by clouds, at least his students could step out of the little dome and, with their naked eyes, see the stars and planets they had just seen huger or brighter inside.

And there were some pretty things to see. Sullen, red Nergal was always fascinating: it leered at you in the sky and awed you in the telescope. Three of the asteroids were naked-eye objects, once you knew where to look for them-if you had good eyes. The corpses of the former flare stars were always worth looking at, just to remind you to ponder about their mysteries. There were double stars, a fair number of comets, a gas nebula lighted from within by newborn stars-Pal Sorricaine loved to look at all of them and communicated his feeling to his students.

n.o.body was using the little mirror when Viktor came puffing up to the observatory-not in broad daylight. The cla.s.s wasn't even inside the little dome. There was a teaching machine, its screen hooded against the sunlight, and a dozen or so people were gathered around it, looking at the rainbow colors of a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stellar types.