The ground shook. Another tremor.
They walked on. The door continued to open and close, the only disruption in the general stillness.
They climbed a ramp into a compartmented section. Eight or nine rooms, several with low ceilings. There were signs at belt level and small benches and knee-high rails around the bulkheads. A cricket-sized staircase went to an upper deck.
Several rooms were fitted with lines of chairs. Very much like the hovercraft cabin. In one the gauge abruptly shifted to their own comfort level.
The complex had no egress save the way they'd come in, down the ramp and back into the concourse.
"I think we just got onto the skyhook," said Hutch.
If so, whatever machinery might have made it work was safely concealed. "You might be right." He looked at the tiny handrails.
"It wasn't an advanced culture," she said. "How do you think the hawks were received when they arrived and told everybody they needed to get out?"
XXXI
It's customary to argue that intelligence grants an evolutionary advantage. But where is the evidence? We are surrounded by believers in psychic healing, astrology, dreams and drugs. Are we to accept the premise that these hordes of unfortunates descended from intelligent forebears?
I'm prepared to concede that stupidity does not help survival. One must after all understand not to poke a tiger with a stick. But intelligence leads to curiosity, and curiosity has never been a quality that helps one pour his or her genes into the pool. The truth must lie somewhere between. Whatever the reason, it is clearly mediocrity, at best, that lives and breeds.
— Gregory MacAllister, Reflections of a Barefoot journalist
Hours to breakup (est): 29
Several hundred people were gathered in the Star's theater, where it was possible to follow the rescue effort on a dozen screens and at the same time down a few drinks with friends. Marcel had been wandering through the giant ship, trying to occupy his mind while events played out, and had stepped into the theater when Beekman called to ask where he was. Moments later they met in a small booth off the observation deck. The project director looked pale.
"What's wrong, Gunther?" he asked.
They were standing near a display exhibiting the construction of the Evening Star. Here was the beginning, Ordway Conover talking to engineers, explaining that he wanted the most spectacular superlu-minal ever built. There was the Star in Earth orbit when it was only a keel. Here were the electronics installations, and there the Delta deck swimming pool. And the celebrities who had come to see it off on its maiden cruise. And its first captain, Bartlett Hollinger, bearded, gray-eyed, silver-haired, looking impossibly competent, and very much like the uncle everybody remembered fondly. "You know," said Beekman, "some of the people on Wendy think we're doing the wrong thing."
The statement initially startled Marcel. He understood Beekman to be suggesting that the rescue effort might be going wrong somewhere, that they'd missed something fundamental, something now irreparable. "In what way?" he asked, his voice little more than a whisper. "What do they think we should be doing?"
"They think we're neglecting the mission."
Marcel felt a surge of relief, and then, as Beekman's meaning became clear, of incredulity. And finally he had to choke down a rising tide of anger. "Is that how you feel?"
Beekman needed a long time to answer. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "We're never going to see anything like this again. Not in the lifetime of anybody here. We stand to learn more about gravity functions and planetary structure than we could pick up in a century of theo-rizing.-Marcel, it is true that we're letting a priceless opportunity get away from us."
"You want to abandon Kellie?"
"Of course not."
"You can't have it both ways, Gunny."
"You asked if I wanted to abandon her. I don't. You know that. But you and I both know that the big stick is probably not going to work. There are too many things that can go wrong. Maybe we'd do better to face that and get back to concentrating on what we came here for."
Marcel took a deep breath. "Gunther, let's turn this around for a minute. Make it your call. What do you want to do?"
"You'd abide by my decision?"
Marcel glanced up at a large framed picture of a young couple eating dinner off the promenade. Through a window, the Crab Nebula was visible. "Yes," he said. "I'll abide by your decision. What do we do? Do we write Kellie off? And the others?"
Beekman looked back at Marcel, followed his gaze to the portrait, stared at it a long time. That's unreasonable," he said at last.
"What is?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Sure. Making the call, as opposed to criticizing."
He made a rumbling sound in his throat. "All right," he said. "Do it your way. But somewhere down the road, we're going to pay a price."
The command crew on the bridge of the Star ooohed and aaahed as images of alien inscriptions and crumbling corridors and regally garbed hawks played across their screens. Lori systematically removed the fog and enhanced the pictures. Here was a series of empty cubicles along a broad concourse, there a gently curving passageway lined by doors engraved with symbols from alien alphabets. Marcel wondered whether they designated the kind of activity carried on behind the door, or whether they were the names of individuals.
Individual hawks. What had their lives been like? Did they sit around in the evening and play some sort of poker-equivalent? Did they enjoy conversation over meals? Did they have music?
He would have liked very much to be able to listen in when the decision had been taken to go to the rescue of the medieval world that was entering a dust cloud. It must have required a gigantic engineering effort on the part of a species that apparently didn't even have spike technology. How many had they saved? Where had they gone?
He heard the power levels rise, felt the ship adjusting course once more.
The hexagon was vast. A schematic was taking shape on the main wallscreen. Human-sized cubicles in the east wing, long concourses, sections that might have been waiting or storage areas, upper levels they hadn't even gotten to. Marcel thought he saw objects on a row of shelves on the north side, but he hadn't been present when they'd passed by, had seen only the record. Hutch and Nightingale had either missed the figures or thought too little of them to waste time. He'd avoided bringing the matter up later.
"The place is a treasure trove," said Drummond, watching from his shuttle. "It's a pity there isn't time to get a decent look at it."
They were lucky, Marcel reflected, that they'd seen anything. Scholars, he suspected, would be poring over the visual record for years.
Beekman appeared unexpectedly at his side. He'd been avoiding eye contact with Marcel since their conversation. "You know," he said, trying to pretend nothing had happened between them, "there'll be
some major changes at the top when all this gets back. Gomez will go-"
"You think so?" asked Marcel. Irene Gomez had been the Academy's director for more than ten years.
"She was part of the crowd that made the decision to pull out after the Nightingale fiasco. Now we're looking at this. And it's all going to be lost. This stuff's been going out from that character at Universal, what's his name?"
"Canyon."
"Canyon. Right. They'll get it back home day after tomorrow. The board of governors will call an emergency meeting. I'll bet Gomez is gone by the end of next week. And her department heads with her."
He looked pleased at the prospect. Marcel had no connection with the director and had never even seen her in person. But he knew she did not command the respect or the loyalty of Academy people. Of course, he thought, neither would Beekman if it ever got out he'd wanted to abandon the ground party.