I hunted up Dr. Schein during my morning break.
“Sir,” I said, adopting my humble-apprentice tone of voice, “I’ve got a hypothetical question. What if we get to the asteroid and find the robot and it’s still in working order, and all? How will we communicate with it? How will we tell it who we are and how much time has passed?”
“It won’t be possible, Tom.”
“But it could be possible! We have a credential. A letter of introduction. Only we’ve decided not to take it with us.”
“You’ve lost me, Tom.”
“I mean the globe, sir!”
Dr. Schein frowned. Pursed his lips. Considered. Brightened.
“Of course! Of course, the globe, the globe!”
And rushed off to confer with Dr. Horkkk and Pilazinool.
The conference lasted an hour. Then they summoned us all to the lab for a general meeting in the middle of the day. Dr. Horkkk presided. Dr. Schein, sitting to one side, gave me a warm, fond smile. I was teacher’s pet again.
Dr. Horkkk interlaced his arms, opened and closed his three bulging eyes in rapid sequence, stuck a few long, many-jointed fingers into his eating mouth, and otherwise went through the patterns that are the Thhhian equivalents of preliminary throat-clearing. Then he said, in his fussy, explosive little voice, “I wish to propose a change of plan. It will require unanimous consent, since the consequences may be serious. As you know, we have agreed to Galaxy Central’s request that the globe be shipped there at once for study and preservation. However, a suggestion was made today that we keep the globe with us as a means of communication should we find the High Ones’ robot. It could serve, so to speak, as a letter of introduction, establishing our credentials as archaeologists of an era much later than its own.”
I admired the deft adoption of my own terms.
“That is,” Dr. Horkkk went on, “we could demonstrate to the robot that we had found the globe and followed it to the robot, and that a great length of time had passed since its arrival on the asteroid. I can visualize other ways in which communication will be possible using the globe as intermediary. However, if we take it with us, we will be in direct defiance of our understanding with Galaxy Central. Therefore—”
He called for a vote.
All in favor of telling Galaxy Central to go sposh itself? Eleven hands in the air.
Opposed? Zero.
Carried unanimously. Dr. Schein now said, “Of course, there’s no reason now for any of us to go to Galaxy Central. The recent order is cancelled. We will travel as a unit to the asteroid.”
Damn. I thought for a while that I was rid of Leroy Chang.
TEN
November 16? 17? 18? 2375
Somewhere in Ultraspace
A month has passed, I know, since I last fingered a message cube. Something about voyages in ultraspace discourages my impulse to communicate. I’m not even sure what day it is. There’s an Earthstyle calendar somewhere aboard, but I can’t bother to look for it.
We closed up shop on Higby V right on schedule, leaving the site sealed so that the next archaeologists to work it — hopefully, a less flighty bunch than we turned out to be — will find it intact. The cruiser arrived and picked us up on the twenty-first. We did not inform Galaxy Central that we’ve taken the globe with us. That makes us renegades of sort, but it’ll be months before the bureaucrats back home find that out, and by then, maybe, we’ll have some gaudy new find to calm them. As Mirrik learned after his boozy prance through the lab, any sinner can find redemption if the yield of his sin is spectacular enough.
Our ship is a standard interstellar cruiser, making an upper quadrant run between Rigel and Aldebaran. The stop at GGC 1145591 is slightly out of the way, but not too much, and wasn’t hard to arrange. All it took was stash. Old Earthside proverb: Stash buys. We will have a rented planetship at our disposal so that we can search the GGC 1145591 system for our asteroid. It’s already on its way there from Aldebaran to await us. That took stash too. Dr. Schein overdrew our thumb account long ago, but he has a glib way with computers and is running on credit now; we’ll manage so long as Galaxy Central doesn’t find out. May the Almighty Proton protect us if we draw a blank on this expedition — if we have, to use the fine medieval expression, gone off to chase the wild duck.
Our quarters are comfortable, as before. Spacious cabins, good library, recreation facilities, decent food. The crewmen keep to themselves, we to ourselves. Time blurs strangely aboard an ultradrive trip, and I find myself doing without sleep for what may possibly be two or three days in a row, and then sleeping for days. Or so it seems.
Everybody is much keyed up, especially Drs. Schein and Horkkk. They walk around perpetually surprised that they ever found the slice to abandon Higby V for the present quest. Dr. Horkkk, you know, is hardly a charming romantic liberated adventurous type, and as near as I can read his expression, he seems to be saying, “How can this be me?” Dr. Schein looks equally baffled. Pilazinool, on the other hand, is quietly confident, rarely unlaces his limbs any more, seems to feel that we have been blessed by destiny. We’ll see.
My chief social accomplishment on the trip so far has been to push Jan back to her obsession with Saul Shahmoon.
I’m not sure how I managed that. I thought Jan and I were working on the same wavelength.
I don’t mean that anything very passionate had happened between us, or that we were about to apply even for temporary marriage status, or anything remotely like that. Our contacts have been surprisingly chaste. We’ve done a little quiet biologizing, yes, but nothing has occurred between us that would have been amiss even in a fairly puritanical era. Maybe I’m a spinless feeb for having been so restrained. We are adults. It says right here.
However, despite all this chastity, Jan and I did seem to be blending into a sort of team, and I don’t think anyone really minded it, Leroy Chang excepted. As the youngest and (let’s face it) most attractive Earthfolk in the group, Jan and I were drawing a kind of paternal approval from the others. They beamed at us a lot. I always feel put down when I’m beamed at, don’t you?
They don’t beam at us lately, because Jan’s been spending her time with Saul again. When I see her I get the freeze, right down to absolute zero.
I don’t know what I did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say that made her chill off on me. Maybe I started to bore her. I can be so terribly clean-cut and bright-eyed, sometimes — my worst fault, you’d agree.
Maybe she’s suddenly developed a terrific interest in philately.
Maybe she never was in tune with me at all, but just was using me to heat up some jealousy in Saul.
Who knows? Not I. Not a clue.
It’s been going on for ten, twelve days now. Not to sponge syllables about it, I’m upset. I don’t have any right to feel possessive toward Jan, considering that all that went on with us was a kind of glorified hand-holding, more or less. But I don’t enjoy seeing her disappear into Saul’s cabin for two and three hours at a stretch. With the door locked, too.
Having an imagination can be an awful burden sometimes.
One marginal benefit of this leg of the trip is that I’ve had a chance to get to know Kelly Watchman better. As you know, androids don’t turn me on a lot, and until a couple of weeks ago I hadn’t said anything to Kelly, aside from shoptalk as we dug, but “Lousy weather, isn’t it?” and “Please pass the tingle tablets” and “Do you have the time?” and like that.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever really talked with an android before. I knew a few at college, but they stuck together and didn’t go out of their way to solicit the company of flesh-and-blooders, and I never tried to impose myself on them. And of course Dad has some androids working for him in fairly high-level jobs, but it didn’t occur to me to make friends with them, either. I’ve always been a bit edgy and withdrawn around minority people; it’s the well-known guilt feelings of the overprivileged classes that hold me back.