"Just what are you trying to do?"
"Nothing a computer couldn't do if correctly programmed. Basically, by a process of elimination, I'm saving you money. You want to find a certain star, right? But stars are not all the same. There are blue-violets, red giants, white dwarfs, variables, binaries, stars rich in radio waves, others verging on neutronic collapse."
"So?"
"I have determined that your spectrogram belongs to a G-type star, one of medium size, fairly stable, past the first flush of its creation but far from age-collapse. This alone, as you can see, is a great saving. A hired computer can be programmed to make comparisons only with stars of a similar type."
Dumarest said, grimly, "Did the woman lie to me? She said-"
"What, in her position, she had to say. The company does not exist to teach its customers how to save money. If you asked for a complete comparison check then that is what you would have been given." Armand shrugged. "Come, Earl, did you expect them to be charitable?"
On Harald nothing could be charitable. Dumarest said, "So you've isolated the spectral type. Good. What remains? A simple check?"
"Not so simple." Armand sipped at his drink and shrugged at Dumarest's expression. "You think that all we need to do is to expand the spectrum, isolate and determine the thickness and density of the Fraunhofer lines and then, as soon as we have found a match, there is the answer. Is that so?"
"What else?"
"The red shift." Armand lifted his glass, saw Dumarest's eyes and hastily placed it down. "Stars are at varying distances," he explained. "Any spectogram taken from one point will serve to identify all stars as seen from that point. Good enough-but what happens if we take a spectrogram of the same star but from different distances? They would have to be great, naturally, but only relatively so. And the direction too, that can have a bearing."
"The Doppler Effect," said Dumarest. "If the light comes from a source moving towards you it moved towards the blue end of the spectrum. If from a source moving away then it shifts towards the red."
"Exactly, and so we get the name for the phenomena." Armand frowned, thoughtful. "But why call it that? Why not the blue shift or the red-blue shift? You called it what- the Doppler Effect?"
"A name given to it by an old scientist I once knew. He learned it from an old book." Dumarest dismissed the matter of terminology with an impatient gesture. "Never mind what we call it, what effect does it have as far as I'm concerned?"
"It introduces a variable. If your spectrogram was taken from a point close to the primary it will be minutely different from those taken at great distances and they, in turn, will differ from each other depending on which position relative to the source they were taken. You see the difficulty?"
Find Earth and he would be able to identify Earth's sun- but his only interest in the primary was as a guide to the planet itself. A vicious circle-or was it?
"No." Boldly Armand took another drink. "I mentioned it to illustrate the difficulties but the real answer lies in the Fraunhofer lines. What I am doing is to isolate them, determine their position and density, correlate them with the elements which gave them birth and so build up a pattern stripped of all unessentials. Once I have done that a computer-comparison will be relatively cheap." He anticipated Dumarest's question. "At a rough guess I'd say in the region of a fifth to a tenth. It would depend, of course, on the company."
"Of course," said Dumarest, and clamped his hand on the other's wrist as he again made to lift his glass. "You'd better get back to work, yes?"
"And you?"
"I'm going to look around town."
The night had come with a thin scatter of rain and it puddled the streets, gleaming on the sidewalks, rising in pluming fountains from beneath the wheels of passing traffic. It was close to midnight, the area around the house dark with shuttered windows, sparse overhead lights throwing patches of brightness interspersed with pools of shadow.
A quiet, safe place by the look of it, but if it were it would be the first Dumarest had seen. Already he knew that the old vices ruled beneath the surface but here was not the place to look for what he wanted to find. Closer to the field he found it.
"Mister!" The voice whispered from a shadowed doorway. "You lost?"
"No, just looking."
"For a little fun?" His clothing had told the woman he was a stranger. The tunic with its high collar and long sleeves held tight at the wrists together with pants of matching grey plastic tucked into knee-high boots were the mark of a traveler. Such a man could be lonely.
"I could help out, maybe." She stepped into the light, tilting her head so as to look into his face. Her body sagged beneath the faded clothing she wore and her face was lost beneath a mask of paint. Only the eyes were alive, hard, questing. "I've a place nearby. Music, wine, some food if you want. I'm a good cook."
"No thanks."
"Not hungry?" She wasn't talking about food. "I've a spice which will take care of that. Something to get you in the mood and keep you in it for as long as you want. And I won't skin you, mister. We'll make a fair deal." Her eyes searched his face. "No? Something else then?"
Dumarest handed her coins. "If I wanted to watch some fights where would I go?"
"Fights?" Her tone sharpened. "You mean with knives?"
"Yes."
"You fooled me, mister. You don't look like a degenerate. Is that the way you get your kicks? Watching kids slash each other to ribbons? Betting, maybe? God, at times you men make me sick." Then, as he stood waiting, she added, "Try Benny at the Novator. It's down the road to the right of the gate as you come out."
The place was as Dumarest expected and similar to others he had known. A room with girls serving drinks. Food on a counter. Music from concealed speakers and the lights turned low so as to shield the faces of those who sat huddled in cubicles. But the whole thing was a facade. Behind lay the ring, the tiered seats, the lights, the stench of sweat and oil and blood.
The arena!
Always they were to be found, the places where men and women vented their primitive lust for blood, taking a vicarious pleasure from another's victories, gloating at another's pain. An escape some called it, a release from accumulated pressures. A few spoke of it as a therapy, a means to cool the aggressive instincts, to govern the beast which lurked always beneath the skin. Others called it butchery.
To Benny it was a business.
"You're lucky," he said to Dumarest. "We've started but there are still a couple of seats going. The first tier-the best."
And the highest priced, but Dumarest handed over the tariff without argument. To him, too, the arena was a business and he had come, not to gloat, but to study.
"Kill!" screamed a woman as he took his seat. "Kill, the bastard! Kill!"
She was a middle-aged matron, normally poised, normally horrified at the prospect of violence, but now the madness of the place had gripped her and she looked barely human.
As the others around her had changed, screaming for one man to kill another, to cut him open, to spill his blood, to act the butcher for their entertainment.
Their favorite did his best to oblige.
He was a tall, thin man with a scarred face and a torso thick with scars. A dancer who stood poised on the balls of his feet, always moving, never still, the ten-inch blade in his hand catching and reflecting the light in a constant shimmer of splintered brightness. A swift, hard, dangerous man. One who had learned his trade the hard way and bore the stigmata of previous failures in the cicatrices which patterned his body. A man who intended to earn his fee and the bonus of coins which would shower from the crowd if he pleased them.