“Not yet.”
“What are these?” Paula asked. A row of dots ran along the edge of the film under the spectrum.
He was bent over the bright rolling film; he did not take his eyes from it. “Pulses. Rate of emission.” He and the technician talked about ferric salts. She looked down at the strip of defective film beside her hand. Those stripes of color bounded her experience. Lalande’s light fell mostly in the infra red; people there would see a world invisible to her. Perhaps inaccessible to her. The Styth astronomer was writing down a formula on a pad of paper, explaining something to Tanuojin. Tanuojin nodded. His interest in this impressed her. He was curious about everything. Her gaze fell again to the ribbons of color on the bench by her hand. The rho lines made thick breaks in the loom of colors. She counted the pulses between them.
“It’s a message,” she said.
The two men swiveled their heads toward her. “What?”
“The spaces between these rho lines,” she said. “Four, nine, forty-one, thirty-six. The number of pulses between them.” She struggled to keep her voice even; she was filled with excitement. “They’re perfect squares, see?”
“Forty-one?” the technician said. He glanced at Tanuojin. “Is she crazy?”
He shook his head. “Sixteen plus twenty-five.” Pushing her away, he stooped over the film and counted dots.
The technician said, surly, “It’s a dysfunction in the transmitting laser.” He scowled down at Paula, a round-faced, smooth-skinned man, who never fought. “What does she know about spectroscopy?”
“Nothing,” Tanuojin said. “That way she doesn’t get confused by facts.” He rolled up the film and shoved it in under the edge of the bench. “You ought to write illusion serials,” he said to her. “You have a full-round imagination.” He went back to the rolling color band.
Paula retrieved the film and spread it out again. He did not want to believe it, but she did. She counted the pulses between the nine rho lines in the spectra: 4, 9, 41, 36, 13, 16, 25, 36. So there were two rho lines missing, mistakes in the mistake. She looked up through the ceiling at the stars, wondering which was Lalande.
“Akellar, I hate to keep mentioning this, but nobody else in the Chamber takes our work seriously—”
“You need money,” Tanuojin said. They crossed the complex of buildings toward the landing field. David went ahead of them and opened the hatch into Ybicket, standing on her tail.
“We’ve had to give up some very important work because we just haven’t got the equipment.”
“I’ll talk to the Prima.”
Paula stood beside the slender ship, put her hands on the lower edge of the hatch, and hoisted herself up to the opening. In the light gravity it was easy. David helped her across the narrow aisle, now vertical, between the hatch and the middle seat. Inside her helmet she could still hear the technician’s pitch. Tanuojin filled the hatchway, blocking out the faint sunlight.
“I’ll fly back,” he said to David. “You take the kick-seat.”
David wheeled around in the drive seat ahead of her. “But—”
“Do as you’re told.”
“But—Uncle—I can’t navigate in the Planet.”
“Then this is a good time for you to learn.” Tanuojin climbed into the seat with him, and David tumbled out, giving way.
“Paula—”
“Leave me out of it,” she said. She leaned forward and groped for the lifeline to attach it to her suit. David climbed down past her to the kick-seat.
When they got back to the House, Saba was sitting in her favorite chair in the front room of the Prima Suite, writing on a workboard. Paula took her coat off. “How was the Akopra?”
“Terrible.”
David came in, still warm under the friction of Tanuojin’s pedagogical sarcasms, and Tanuojin after him. Saba put the workboard down. “What did you find out?”
“The films are perfect.” Tanuojin unslung his coat. “All twenty-six of them came through, the probe worked perfectly.”
“I’ll see them when the laboratory sends them down. Have they gotten any photographs yet?”
Tanuojin shook his head. He picked up the workboard from the floor and wound back the surface to read what Saba had written. “I told them not to send the stuff down here piecemeal, to wait until everything is together. They need more money.”
“They always need more money.”
Paula stood watching them together. She saw what she should have noticed long before. Saba was gray-headed, but Tanuojin’s hair was still jet black. He looked no older than he had when she first met him, at the Nineveh, sixteen years before. He was not aging.
“Tell him about your little pink men,” Tanuojin said to her. He threw down the workboard. “Wait until you hear this,” he told Saba. “You’ll like this one.”
Melly turned and turned at the far end of the room, dancing. She held out her skirts in her hands, her head to one side. Paula stood in the doorway watching the girl play. Abruptly the Styth girl saw her and stopped.
“Go on,” Paula said. “Dance. I like it.”
Melly watched her enter the room. Paula’s favorite chair had a little step built into the base for her use. She settled herself in the chair, her back to the window. Melly said, “I am not a toy for your amusement, Mendoz’.”
“Then don’t act like a pompous little lady,” Paula said.
The girl’s face tightened up, much older when she scowled. Paula laughed. Melly was allowed to go unveiled in the suite, but not outside; Paula wondered if she had ever been outside. She wondered if Melly were pregnant yet.
“My father says I ought to be friendly with you,” Melly said. “But I don’t see why. You aren’t friendly to me.”
“I could be.”
“You stole my wedding to make into your—coronation.”
“I’m sorry. We were a little pressed.” She was reminding herself of Jefferson. Uneasily she moved around in the oversize chair.
Melly began to speak. Something she saw in the hall stopped her, and she went to the threshold and made her extravagant bow.
“Prima.”
Paula looked out into the hall. Saba was coming into the room. To Paula, he said, “I have a headache—I’m going to lie down on your bed. Make sure nobody bothers me.” Melly stood watching him expectantly. He touched her face. “Not now, baby.” He went down the hall toward Paula’s room.
Paula climbed down from her chair and ran after him. Going ahead of him into the room, she turned the heat lower and pulled the window shade closed. “What about Tanuojin?”
“He’s sick too. Go on, leave me alone.”
She went out to the corridor and shut the door. Melly was watching her from the doorway of Saba’s room. As Paula came into the hall the bride vanished into the room. Paula went back to the sitting room.
She wrote a letter to Newrose, asking for information and giving him suggestions. They wrote back and forth every three or four watches. The situation in the Middle Planets always seemed desperate. She was beginning to think that was a standing condition of life there.
Just before one bell, she went down to her room. Saba lay on her bed with his head turned away. She walked to the side of the bed. His face was smooth, without any sign of pain. She put her hand on his forehead. He was dead. He had been dead for hours.
She sat down beside him. The room was utterly still. She touched his mouth and the inside of his wrist. With her hand on him she sat still, in the quiet. Finally she went to the door to call David.