“Sure.” He followed her.
“I bet you must be looking forward to school,” she said as they walked. “You and Iimmi might turn up in some of the same classes, now that you know each other.”
“Maybe,” said Geo.
“My, are you glum!” She pulled a long face under short shocks of red hair.
“I hope Iimmi and I do get into some classes together,” Geo said.
“That’s more like it.” Suddenly she looked serious. “Your arm is worrying you. Why?”
Geo shrugged again. “I don’t feel like a whole person. I guess I’m not really a whole person.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Argo. “Besides, maybe Snake will let you have one of his. How are the medical facilities in Leptar?”
“I don’t think they’re up to anything like that.”
“We did grafting of limbs back on Aptor,” Argo said. “A most interesting way we got around the antibody problem too. You see — ”
“But that was back in Aptor,” Geo said. “This is the real world we’re going into now.”
“Maybe I can get a doctor from the Temple to come over.” She shrugged. “And then, maybe I won’t be able to.”
“It’s a pleasant thought,” Geo said.
When they reached the back of the ship, Argo took out the contraption from the paper bag. “I salvaged this in my tunic. Hope I dried it off well enough last night.”
“It’s your motor,” Geo said.
“Uh-huh.” She set it on a low set of lockers by the cabin back wall.
“How are you going to work it?” he asked. “It’s got to have that stuff, electricity.”
“There is more than one way to shoe a centipede,” Argo assured him. She reached behind the locker and pulled up a strange gizmo of glass and wire. “I got the lens from Mom,” she explained. “She’s awfully nice, really. She says I can have my own laboratory all to myself. And I said she could have all the politics, which I think was wise of me, considering. Don’t you?” She bent over the contraption. “Now, this lens here focuses the sunlight — isn’t it a beautiful day? — focuses it on these here thermocouples. I got the extra metal from the ship’s smith. He’s sweet. Hey, we’re going to have to compare poems from now on. I mean I’m sure you’re going to write a whole handful about all of this. I certainly am. Anyway, you connect it up here.”
She fastened two wires to two other wires, adjusted the lens; the tips of the thermocouple glowed beneath the glass. The armature tugged about its pivot.
Geo looked up to see Snake and Iimmi leaning over the rail on the cabin roof.
“Hey,” Argo called. “Move out of the light!”
Grinning, they moved aside.
Brushes hissed on the turning rings. The coil whirled to copper haze. “Look at that thing go!” She stepped back, fists proudly on her hips. “Just look at that thing go!”
The Ballad of Beta-2
Chapter One
“Quite simply, the answer is: because they are there!”
White light from the helical fixtures struck down at the professor’s bony face.
“But — ” began Joneny.
“But no,” the professor interrupted. They were alone in the office. “It isn’t that simple, is it? The reason is that many of them were once there, and they did something that had never been done before — that will never be done again — and because remnants of them are still there now. That is why you will study them.”
“But, sir,” Joneny persisted, “that’s not what I asked. I’m requesting a personal dispensation that will exempt me from research work on this unit. I expect to be held accountable for all examination questions on the Star Folk; but I’m already an honors student, and on the strength of that, I’m asking to skip the detail work on them. I’m perfectly willing to put in the time on my thesis topic, the Nukton Civilization of Creton III, or anything else that’s reasonable, sir.” Then, as an afterthought: “I realize it would be a privileged exemption that only you can grant.”
“That’s quite correct,” the professor said coolly; he leaned forward. “On the strength of your ‘honors,’ Joneny — and you’re more than a good student, you’re an amazing one — I’ll listen to your objections. But I have to admit that there’s something about your request that annoys me.”
Joneny took a breath. “I just don’t want to waste my time on them, sir. There’s so much needed research in a field like Galactic Anthropology; and, as far as I can see, the Star Folk are a dead end, with no significance at all. They were a very minor transition factor that was eliminated from the cosmic equation even before the terms were fully written out. Their ‘contributions to the arts’ are entirely derivative — and they produced nothing else. All that remains of them is a barbaric little settlement, if you can call it that, which the Federation sentimentally allows to exist out near Leffer VI. There are too many cultures and civilizations crying to be researched for me to waste time poking through dozens of chrome-plated eggshells, documenting the history of a…a bunch of chauvinistic, degenerate morons. And I don’t care what anyone says, sir. That’s all they are!”
“Well,” the professor said. “Well. You are vehement on the subject.” He glanced at the screen on his desk, flicked a few notes across it, then looked sternly at Joneny. “I am not going to grant your request. But I’ll tell you why. In fact, I’ll even argue with you — because of your ‘honors’ status. You say that the culture of the Star Folk was an insignificant transitional factor, superseded before its purpose was achieved. Why?”
“Because, sir…” — Joneny was prepared for that question — “they left Earth for the stars in their ships early in 2242, expecting to cruise through space for twelve generations before reaching an uncertain destination. They’d been gone only sixty years when the hyperspace drive became a large-scale reality. By the time the ten remaining generation-ships arrived in the Leffer system, Earth had already established a going-business of trade and cultural exchange, already a hundred or so years old, with scores of planetary systems. And it was just as well too, because the level of civilization on the starships was at a primitive-barbaric stage; and the descendants of the Star Folk who had left Earth with such exalted goals would never have been able to survive on alien planets, much less make friendly contact with any of their cultures. So the ten ships were herded into orbit around Leffer and, with the imbecilic remnants of their population, allowed to dodder toward extinction. From all reports, they are as contented as such creatures can be; I say leave them there. But I personally am not interested in knowing much more about them.” Certain that he had made his point, he waited for the professor’s — perhaps reluctant — acquiescence to his request; but the silence lengthened.
When the professor spoke, it was in a tone more distant than before. “You assert that they produced no significant contribution to the arts. Are you completely familiar with all the records?”
Joneny’s face reddened. “I’m hardly an expert, sir. But again, you’d think that in twelve generations there would be one poem, one painting, something — other than those insipid, maudlin, derivative exercises in nostalgia.”