CYCLOPS had been built in a region which might see no rains for five years at a time. At Al Hadidah, there were meteorites that had lain un rusting in the sand since the days of the Prophet. All this had been changed by reforestation and climate control; for the first time since the Ice Ages, the deserts were in re treat. More rain now fell on the Empty Quarter in days than had once fallen in years.
The makers of CYCLOPS had never anticipated this.
They had, reasonably enough, based all their designs on a hot, and environment. Now the maintenance staff was engaged in a continual battle against corrosion humidity in coaxial cables, fungus-induced breakdowns in high-tension circuits, and all the other ills that afflict electronic equipment if given the slightest chance. Some of the hundred-meter antennas had even rusted up solidly, so that they
could no longer be moved and had to be taken out of service. For almost twenty years, the system had been working at slowly decreasing efficiency, while the engineers, administrators, and scientists carried out a triangular argument, no one party being able to convince either of the others. Was it worth investing billions of so lars to refurbish the system—or would the money be better spent on the other side of the Moon? It was impossible to arrive at any clear-cut decision, for no one had ever been able to put a value on pure scientific research.
Whatever its present problems, CYCLOPs had been a spectacular success, helping reshape man’s views of the universe not once, but many times. It had pushed back the frontiers of knowledge to the very microsecond after the Big Bang itself, and had trapped radio waves that had circumnavigated the entire span of creation. It had probed the surfaces of distant stars, detected their hidden planets, and discovered such strange entities as neutrino suns, anti tachyons gravitational lenses, space quakes and revealed the mind-wrenching realms of negative-probability “Ghost” states and inverted matter.
But there was one thing that it had not done. Despite scores of false alarms, it had never succeeded in detecting signals from intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe.
Either Man was alone, or nobody else was using radio transmitters. The
two explanations seemed equally improbable.
MEETING AT CYCLOPS
He had known what to expect, or so he had believed, but the reality was still overwhelming. Duncan felt like a child in a forest of giant metal trees, extending in every direction to the limit of vision. Each of the identical “trees” had a slightly tapering trunk fifty meters high, with a stairway spiraling round it up to the platform supporting the drive mechanism. Looming above this was the huge yet surprisingly delicate hundred-meter-wide bowl of the antenna itself, tilted toward the sky as it listened for signals from the deeps of space.
Antenna 005, as its number indicated, was near the center of the array, but it was impossible to tell this by visual inspection. Whichever way Duncan looked, the ranks and columns of steel towers dwindled into the distance until eventually they formed a solid wall of metal.
The whole vast array was a miracle of precision engineering, on a scale matched nowhere else on Earth. It was altogether appropriate that many key components had been manufactured in space; the foamed metals and crystal fibers which gave the parabolic reflectors strength with lightness could be produced only by the zero-gravity orbiting factories. In more ways than one, CYCLOPS was a child of space.
Duncan turned to the guide who had driven him through the labyrinth of access tunnels on. the small, chemically powered scooter. “I don’t see anyone,” he complained. “Are you sure he’s here?”
“This is where we left him, an hour ago. He’ll be in the preamplifier
assembly, up there on the platform. 242 You’ll have to shout-no radios allowed here, of course.”
Duncan could not help smiling at this further example of the CYCLOPS management’s almost fanatical precautions against interference. He had even been asked to surrender his watch, lest its feeble electronic pulses be mistaken for signals from an alien civilization a few hundred light-years away. His guide was actually wearing a spring-driven timepiece-the first that Duncan had ever seen.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, Duncan tilted his head toward the metal tower looming above him and shouted “Karl!” A fraction of a second later, the K echoed back from the next antenna, then reverberated feebly from the ones beyond. After that the silence seemed more profound than before. Duncan did not feel like disturbing it again.
Nor was there any need. Fifty meters above, a figure had moved to the railing around the platform; and it brought with it the familiar glint of gold.
“V~Io’s there?”
Who do you think? Duncan asked himself. Of course, it was hard to recognize a person from vertically overhead, and voices were distorted in this inhumanly scaled place.
“It’s Duncan.”
There was a pause that seemed to last for the better part of a minute, but could only have been a few seconds in actuality. Karl was obviously surprised, though by this time he must surely have guessed that Duncan knew of his presence on Earth. Then he answered: “I’m in the middle of a job.
Come up, if you want to.”
That was hardly a welcome, but the voice did not seem hostile. The only emotion that Duncan could identify at this distance was a kind of tired resignation; and perhaps he was imagining even this.
Karl had vanished again, doubtless to continue whatever task he had come here to perform. Duncan looked very thoughtfully at the spiral stairway winding up the cylindrical trunk of the antenna tower.
Fifty meters was a trifling distance-but not in terms of Earth’s gravity It was the equivalent of two him243 dred and fifty on Titan; he had never had to climb a quarter of a kilometer on his own world.
Karl, of course, would have had little difficulty, since he had spent his early years on Earth, and his muscles would have recovered much of their original strength. Duncan wondered if this was a deliberate challenge. That would be typical of Karl, and if so he had no choice in the matter.
As he stepped onto the first of the perforated metal stairs, his CYCLOPS guide remarked hopefully: “There’s not much room up there on the platform.
Unless you want me, I’ll stay here.”
Duncan could recognize a lazy man when he met one, but he was glad to accept the excuse. He did not wish any strangers to be present when he came face to face with Karl. The confrontation was one that he would have avoided if it had been at all possible, but this was not a job that could be delegated to anyone else-even if those instructions from Colin and
Malcolm had allowed it.
The climb was easy enough, though the safety rail was not as substantial as
Duncan would have wished. Moreover, sections had been badly rusted, and now that he was close enough to touch the metal he could see that the mounting was in even worse condition than he had been led to expect. Unless emergency repairs were carried out very soon, CYCLOPS would never see the dawn of the twenty-fourth century.
When Duncan had completed his first circuit, the guide called up to him: “I forgot to tell you-we’re selecting a new target in about five minutes.
You’ll find it rather dramatic.”
Duncan stared up at the huge bowl now completely blocking the sky above him. The thought of all those tons of metal swinging around just overhead was quite disturbing, and he was glad that he had been warned in time.
The other saw his action and interpreted it correctly.
“It won’t bother you. This antenna’s been frozen for at least ten years.
The drive’s seized up, and not worth repairing.” So that confirmed a suspicion of Duncan’s, which he had dismissed as an optical illusion. The great parabola above him was indeed at a slight angle to all the others; it was no longer an active part of the CYCLOPs array, but was now pointing blindly at the sky. The loss of one-or even a dozen–elements would cause only a slight degradation of the system.” but it was typical of the general air of neglect. One more circuit, and he would be at the platform. Duncan paused for breath. He had been climbing very slowly, but already his legs were beginning to ache with the wholly unaccustomed effort. There had been no further * sound from Karl. What was he doing, in this fantastic place of old triumphs and lost dreams?