“What’s this?” Reinhart opened it.
Fleming watched him with amusement, like a small boy playing a trick on a grown-up. The paper bore several lines of typed figures.
“When did it print this?” Reinhart asked.
“Last night, after you’d all gone. Judy and I were here.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Bridger edged in reproachfully.
“You’d gone off.”
Reinhart frowned at the figures. “It means something to you?”
“Don’t you recognise it?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Isn’t it the relative spacings of the energy levels in the hydrogen atom?”
“Is it?” Reinhart handed the paper to Dawnay.
“You mean,” Bridger asked, “it suddenly came out with that?”
“Yes. It could be.” Dawnay read slowly through the figures. “They look like the relative frequencies. What an extraordinary thing.”
“The whole business is a little out of the ordinary,” said Fleming.
Dawnay read through the figures again, and nodded.
“I don’t see the point.” Judy wondered if she was being unusually obtuse.
“It looks as if someone out there,” Dawnay pointed up to the sky, “has gone to a lot of trouble to tell us what we already know about hydrogen.”
“If that’s really all.” Judy looked at Fleming, who said nothing.
Madeleine Dawnay turned to Reinhart. “Bit of a disappointment.”
“I’m not disappointed,” Fleming said quietly. “It’s a starting point. The thing is, do we want to go on?”
“How can you go on?” Dawnay asked.
“Well, hydrogen is the common element of the universe. Yes? So this is a piece of very simple universal information. If we don’t recognise it, there’s no point in the machine continuing. If we do, then he can proceed to the next question.”
“What next question?”
“We don’t know yet. But this, I bet you, is the first move in a long, long game of questions and answers.” He took the paper from her and handed it to Christine. “Push this into the intake.”
“Really?” Christine looked from him to Reinhart.
“Really.”
Reinhart remained silent, but something had happened to him; he was no longer dejected and his eyes twinkled and were alert. The rest of them stood in a silent thoughtful group while Christine sat down to the input teletype and Bridger adjusted settings on the control desk.
“Now,” he said. He was even quieter than Fleming, and Judy could not decide whether he was jealous or apprehensive or merely trying, like the others, to work it out.
Christine tapped rapidly at the keyboard and the computer hummed steadily behind its metal panelling. It really did seem to be all around them—massive, impassive and waiting.
Dawnay looked at the rows of blue cabinets, the rhythmically oscillating lights with less awe then Judy felt, but with interest. “Questions and answers—do you believe that?”
“If you were sitting up among the stars, you couldn’t ask us directly what we know. But this chap could.” Fleming indicated the computer control racks. “If it’s designed and programmed to do it for them.”
Dawnay turned to Reinhart again.
“If Dr. Fleming’s on the right line, you really have something tremendous.”
“Fleming has an instinct for it,” said Reinhart, watching Christine.
When she had finished typing, nothing happened. Bridger fiddled with the control desk knobs while the others waited. Fleming looked puzzled.
“What’s up, Dennis?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could be wrong,” said Judy.
“We haven’t been yet.”
As Fleming spoke the lamps on the display panel started to flicker, and a moment later the output printer went into action with a clatter. They gathered round it watching the wide white streamer of paper inching up over its roller, covered in lines of figures.
One of the long low cupboards in Geers’s office was a cocktail cabinet. The Director stood four glasses on top and produced a bottle of gin from the lower shelf.
“What Reinhart and his people are doing is terribly exciting.” He was wearing his second-best suit but his best manner for Dawnay’s benefit. “A little set-back yesterday, but I gather it’s all right now.”
Dawnay, submerged in one of the armchairs, looked up and caught Reinhart’s eye. Geers went on talking as he sprinkled bitters into one of the glasses.
“We’ve nothing but ironmongery here, really, out in this wilderness. We do a good deal of the country’s rocketry, of course, and there’s a lot of complex stuff goes into that, but I wouldn’t mind changing into some old clothes and getting back to lab work. Is that pink enough?”
He placed the filled glass on his desk on a level with Dawnay’s ear. Its base was tucked into a little paper mat to prevent it from marking the polish.
“Fine, thanks.” Dawnay could just see it and reach it without getting up. Geers reached into the cabinet for another bottle.
“And sherry for you, Reinhart?” Sherry was poured. “One gets so stuck behind an executive desk. Cheers.... Nice to see you again, Madeleine. What have you been up to?”
“D.N.A., chromosomes, the origin of life caper.” Dawnay spoke gruffly. She put her glass back on the desk and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke down her nose like a man. “I’ve got into a bit of a cul-de-sac. I was just going away to think when I met Ernest.”
“Stay and think here.” Geers gave her a nice smile and then switched it off. “Where’s Fleming got to?”
“He’ll be over in a minute,” said Reinhart.
“You’ve a bright boy, though an awkward one.” Geers informed him. “In fact you’ve a bit of an awkward squad altogether, haven’t you?”
“We’ve also got results.” Reinhart was unruffled. “It’s started printing out.”
Geers raised his eyebrows.
“Has it indeed? What’s it printing?”
They told him.
“Very odd. Very odd indeed. And what happened when you fed it back?”
“A whole mass of figures came out.”
“What are they?”
“No idea. We’ve been going over them, but so far...” Reinhart shrugged.
Fleming walked in with a perfunctory sort of knock.
“This the right party?”
“Come in, come in,” said Geers, as if to a promising but gauche student. “Thirsty?”
“When am I not?”
Fleming was carrying the print-out sheets. He threw them down on the desk to take his drink.
“Any joy?” Reinhart asked.
“Not a crumb. There’s something wrong with him, or wrong with us.”
“Is that the latest?” asked Geers, straightening the papers and bending over them to look. “You’ll have to do a lot of analysis on this, won’t you? If we can help in any way—”
“It ought to be simple.” Fleming was subdued and preoccupied as though he was trying to see something just beyond him. “I’m sure there ought to be something quite easy. Something we’d recognise.”
“There was a section here—” Reinhart took the sheets and shuffled through them. “Seems vaguely familiar. Have another look at that lot, Madeleine.”
Madeleine looked.
“What sort of thing do you expect?” Geers asked Fleming, as he poured a drink.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the game is yet.”
“You wouldn’t be interested in the carbon atom, would you?” Dawnay looked up out of her chair with a faint smile.
“The carbon atom!”
“It’s not expressed the way we’d put it; but, yes, it could be a description of the structure of carbon.” She blew smoke out of her nose. “Is that what you meant, Ernest?”
Reinhart and Geers bent over the sheets again.
“I’m a bit rusty, of course,” said Geers.