When he had heard Laure out, though, he scowled, tugged his beard, and said without trying to hide distress: «Thus we have no chance of finding Kirkasant by ourselves.»
«Evidently not,» Laure said. «I’d hoped that one of my modern locator systems would work in this cluster. If so, we could have zigzagged rapidly between the stars, mapping them, and had a fair likelihood of finding the group you know within months. But as matters stand, we can’t establish an accurate enough grid, and we have nothing to tie any such grid to. Once a given star disappears in the fog, we can’t find it again. Not even by straight-line backtracking, because we don’t have the navigational feedback to keep on a truly straight line.»
«Lost.» Demring stared down at his hands, clenched on the desk before him. When he looked up again, the bronze face was rigid with pain. «I was afraid of this,» he said. «It is why I was reluctant to come back at all. I feared the effect of disappointment on my crew. By now you must know one major respect in which we differ from you. To us, home, kinfolk, ancestral graves are not mere pleasures. They are an important part of our identities. We are prepared to explore and colonize, but not to be totally cut off.» He straightened in his seat and turned the confession into a strategic datum by finishing dry-voiced: «Therefore, the sooner we leave this degree of familiarity behind us and accept with physical renunciation the truth of what has happened to us—the sooner we get out of this cluster—the better for us.»
«No,» Laure said. «I’ve given a lot of thought to your situation. There are ways to navigate here.»
Demring did not show surprise. He, too, must have dwelt on contingencies and possibilities. Laure sketched them nevertheless:
«Starting from outside the cluster, we can establish a grid of artificial beacons. I’d guess fifty thousand, in orbit around selected stars, would do. If each has its distinctive identifying signal, a spaceship can locate herself and lay a course. I can imagine several ways to make them. You want them to emit something that isn’t swamped by natural noise. Hyperdrive drones, shuttling automatically back and forth, would be detectable in a light-year’s radius. Coherent radio broadcasters on the right bands should be detectable at the same distance or better. Since the stars hereabouts are only light-weeks or light-months apart, an electromagnetic network wouldn’t take long to complete its linkups. No doubt a real engineer, turned loose on the problem, would find better answers than these.»
«I know,» Demring said. «We on Makt have discussed the matter and reached similar conclusions. The basic obstacle is the work involved first in producing that number of beacons, then—more significantly—in planting them. Many man-years, much shipping, must go to that task, if it is to be accomplished in a reasonable time.»
«Yes.»
«I like to think,» said Demring, «that the clans of Hobrok would not haggle over who was to pay the cost. But I have talked with men on Serieve. I have taken heed of what Graydal does and does not relay of her conversations with you. Yours is a mercantile civilization.»
«Not exactly,» Laure said. «I’ve tried to explain—»
«Don’t bother. We shall have the rest of our lives to learn about your Commonalty. Shall we turn about, now, and end this expedition?»
Laure winced at the scorn but shook his head. «No, best we continue. We can make extraordinary findings here. Things that’ll attract scientists. And with a lot of ships buzzing around—»
Demring’s smile had no humor. «Spare me, Ranger. There will never be that many scientists come avisiting. And they will never plant beacons throughout the cluster. Why should they? The chance of one of their vessels stumbling on Kirkasant is negligible. They will be after unusual stars and planets, information on magnetic fields and plasmas and whatever else is readily studied. Not even the anthropologists will have any strong impetus to search out our world. They have many others to work on, equally strange to them, far more accessible.»
«I have my own obligations,» Laure said. «It was a long trip here. Having made it, I should recoup some of the cost to my organization by gathering as much data as I can before turning home.»
«No matter the cost to my people?» Demring said slowly. «That they see their own sky around them, but nonetheless are exiles—for weeks longer?»
Laure lost his patience. «Withdraw if you like, Captain,» he snapped. «I’ve no authority to stop you. But I’m going on. To the middle of the cluster, in fact.»
Demring retorted in a cold flare: «Do you hope to find something that will make you personally rich, or only personally famous?» He reined himself in at once. «This is no place for impulsive acts. Your vessel is undoubtedly superior to mine. I am not certain, either, that Makt’s navigational equipment is equal to finding that advanced base where we must refuel her. If you continue, I am bound in simple prudence to accompany you, unless the risks you take become gross. But I urge that we confer again.»
«Any time, Captain.» Laure cut his circuit.
He sat then, for a while, fuming. The culture barrier couldn’t be that high. Could it? Surely the Kirkasanters were neither so stupid—nor so perverse as not to see what he was trying to do for them. Or were they? Or was it his fault? He’d concentrated more on learning about them than on teaching them about him. Still, Graydal, at least, should know him by now.
The ship sensed an incoming call and turned Laure’s screen back on. And there she was. Gladness lifted in him until he saw her expression.
She said without greeting, winter in the golden gaze: «We officers have just been given a playback of your conversation with my father. What is your» (out-phasing occurred, making the image into turbulence, filling the voice with static-like ugliness, but he thought he recognized) «intention?» The screen blanked.
«Maintain contact,» Laure told Jaccavrie.
«Not easy, in these gravitic fields,» the ship said.
Laure jumped to his feet, cracked fist in palm, and shouted, «Is everything trying to brew trouble for me? Bung her back or so help me, I’ll scrap you!»
He got a picture again, though it was blurred and wavery and the voice was streaked with buzzes and whines as if he called to Graydal across light-years of swallowing starfog. She said—was it a little more kindly?—«We’re puzzled. I was deputed to inquire further, since I am most… familiar… with you. If our two craft can’t find Kirkasant by themselves, why are we going on?»
Laure understood her so well, after the watches when they talked, dined, drank, played music, laughed together, that he saw the misery behind her armor. For her people—for herself—this journey among mists was crueler than it would have been for him had he originated here. He belonged to a civilization of travelers; to him, no one planet could be the land of lost content. But in them would always stand a certain ridge purple against sunset, marsh at dawn, ice cloud walking over wind-gnawed desert crags, ancient castle, wingbeat in heaven… and always, always, the dear bright nights that no other place in man’s universe knew.
They were a warrior folk. They would not settle down to be pitied; they would forge something powerful for themselves in their exile. But he was not helping them forget their uprootedness.
Thus he almost gave her his true reason. He halted in time and, instead, explained in more detail what he had told Captain Demring. His ship represented a considerable investment, to be amortized over her service life. Likewise, with his training, did he. The time he had spent coming hither was, therefore, equivalent to a large sum of money. And to date, he had nothing to show for that expense except confirmation of a fairly obvious guess about the nature of Kirkasant’s surroundings.