“We will show you all that is known about Object Lambda. First we will locate it, as it would be seen from Earth if visible at that distance.”
Behind him another stereo-stage tank glowed, shimmered and filled with a universe of stars. Two of the brighter ones pulsed to call attention to themselves as the man spoke.
“Those stars are Benetnasch, in Ursa Major, and Cor Caroli, in Canes Venatici. Those faint stars over there—” as he spoke a faint line of light ran around an area of the tank, enclosing it in a square - “are in Coma Berenices, near the north galactic pole. Now we’ll take a closer look.”
Benetnasch and Cor Caroli swam aside. The faint stars of Coma Berenices grew brighter, spreading apart, as the whole field of stars seemed to move. To Ben James Pertin it felt as if he were plunging head-on into a sea of stars. The bright points fled out of the sides of the stage, and the few remaining ones became brighter, until only a few were left, and beyond them ghostly faint blurs that were no longer part of the Milky Way but galaxies in their own right.
Then the illusion of motion stopped.
Another square of light formed around a patch of blackness in the centre of the stage, indistinguishable from the emptiness around it.
The man said, “Now we’ve reached the limits of Sol-orbiting instruments. Object Lambda is at the centre of that square, but it is invisible. It is slightly better in the far infra-red.”
The pattern of stars shimmered; some became brighter, some dimmer, and in the centre of the square there was what might have been a faint and shapeless glow.
“This is not instantaneous,” explained the lecturer. “It’s long exposure and image-intensified. It. would never have been detected in routine sweeps from Sol-based instruments. Even the T’Worlie scouts first detected it only because of the chance occultation of some stars in the Milky Way itself, seen from beyond. What we will show you next is not an actual observation but an artifact as it would look from Earth, as deduced from all available observations.”
The object brightened half a dozen magnitudes as he spoke.
“As you see, it has a sort of tipped-disc shape, like certain classifications of external galaxies. However, that’s not what it is. First of all, it is far too small, perhaps only two or three AU. Second, its spectrum is wrong.
“At its apparent distance, as determined by its angular diameter - as if it were indeed a galaxy - it should be receding at a major fraction of the speed of light. Of course, we know from triangulation from the T’Worlie ships that that distance is wrong by a good many orders of magnitude. But according to its spectrum displacement, it is actually approaching the Milky Way at nearly relativistic speeds."
The image blurred and disappeared, and the plump human was standing there by himself. He said with satisfaction, “The T’Worlie scout has confirmed the speed as accurate, in the range of fifty thousand kps. Its position, relative to Earth, is some thirty thousand light-years from Sol, in the direction of a point near the northern fringe of Coma Berenices. It is not an object from our galaxy. There are no spiral arms in that direction, nor many isolated stars or clusters much nearer than Sol itself.
"The T’Worlies back-plotted its position from all observations of their drones, as recorded over the past several thousand years. Most of the data is ambiguous, but they did establish a probable line of flight. Their hope was to find a galaxy from which the object might have been ejected, and then to try to discover the reason for its high velocity. The T’Worlies were only partly successful - I should say, only possibly successful. No such galaxy was detected. They did, however, find scattered star swarms which they believe to be the fragments of a galaxy that collapsed and then exploded more than half a billion years ago. It is the present working hypothesis that Object Lambda was ejected from that galaxy - by what means we cannot say.”
The man’s expression became enthusiastic. “Because of the anomalous nature of Object Lambda,” he said, “the all-race conference on Sun One determined to transmit a full-size scout ship through the drone equipment, and to staff it with a crew of volunteers of all races.” Volunteersl thought Pertin, grimacing. “And after considerable effort in negotiating, it was agreed to include Earth humans as part of the crew. The political implications of this step are of enormous consequence and reflect the true coming of age of Earth humanity in the Galaxy-wide confraternity of civilized peoples. Thank you,” he said, bowed, smiled and disappeared as the fiche came to an end.
Not a minute too soon, thought Pertin. A little more of that and he would have been ill. The cocoon had a fine built-in waste handling system, but there was no sense in overloading it.
He began to see what Zara had been talking about when she accused him of an “Earthman’s Burden” complex. It sounded pompous, stupid and faintly threatening, he realized, at least as expressed by the man in the briefing fiche. Pertin tried to get his mind off that track - because he didn’t want to question the cause for which he was eventually going to die, and because above all he didn’t want to think about Zara Doy. He was in the middle of trying to get The Belle of Bellatrix back on the stage when he became aware that something was scratching angrily at his cocoon.
For a moment he thought he was dreaming. He glanced back at the fading nude on the screen, then outside at the nude girl who stood there.
But Pertin was a pretty superior type, and he oriented himself quickly. It was no girl. It was not even human. It was a female young Earth person in shape, but the stuff of which the shape was constructed was not flesh and blood. It was silvery and bright, with a metallic hue. The eyes were orange and glowing. The hair was not separate tendrils; it was a single solid piece, sculptured slightly for cosmetic effect. The creature was, he realized, an “edited” version of some methane-breather or one of even more exotic chemistry, some being who was structurally nonviable in oxygen-bearing air and had had itself transmitted in an altered form to take up its duties on Aurora. And it was holding a scrap of what looked like paper.
It was not right-side up. Pertin gestured, and finally the girl understood and rotated what she held until he could read its message. Then he signalled her to stop. It said:
Sorry, Ben James, but you’ve got to get out of there. Things are worse than we thought. Aphrodite here will carry you to me. They guarantee she won’t drop you and squash you; and, actually, Ben James, it seems to be a matter of life and death.
Doc.
The girl did not speak, but the orange eyes blazed imperatively, and the hands beckoned.
Pertin sighed, and opened the lid of his cocoon. “Okay, Aphrodite,” he said. “Carry me off.”
Astonishingly, being carried by the pseudogirl was actually worse than being toted by the robot; but this trip was slower, and Pertin had a chance to see something of the Aurora. It was roughly cone-shaped. At the nose and through the midsection were living quarters for the several score individuals who manned the ship. Since the crew varied widely, they needed a good deal of room. Space had been provided for methane-dwellers, space-flyers and cold creatures as well as for the more common forms based on carbon, oxygen and water. However, most of the non-viables either stayed home or sent proxies or edited copies, so these spaces were mostly empty. “Below” the living quarters and the space for the exotics were the hardware - instrument sections. Below them still - in the sense of being sternward, towards the thrusters - was a layer of dense liquid for a radiation shield. It wasn’t very effective; but of course, Pertin thought, the shield didn’t have to be effective enough to keep them alive forever since there was neither hope for nor point in that. Below the shield was the tachyon transmission deck, where Pertin and the chimp had arrived. And beyond that deck, the shock-absorbing gear and thrusters. Since the Aurora was decelerating, it happened that the ‘stern” of the ship came first in line of flight; but that made little difference to anyone aboard. It was “down”. And down was the direction they were going. The pseudogirl had wrapped Pertin in a thick blanket of something like heavy-duty plastic foam. It was not as good as his cocoon by a long shot, but it kept him from dying of the ceaseless grinding changes in gravity as the thrusters shoved and the “girl” levered herself down a ladder-like series of projecting rods. She did not speak, nor acknowledge Pertin’s efforts to speak to her. Either there was something wrong with his Pmal translator, or she simply was not a conversationalist. But she was considerate enough, and when they reached the instrument deck Pertin was bruised and sick, but alive.