"Dr. Lacklin," Shelley said quietly, waiting for the laughter at Richard's comment to die down. "Dr. Lacklin, what about toward SETI Anomaly One and the galactic center?"
Ian brightened up at her suggestion.
"Precisely what I was leading to, of course," he said hurriedly. "You see, there was one general trend in the movement. Colonial 237, which was the second unit to depart, was headed straight for the galactic center, and our records show that one hundred thirty-five other units went within ten minutes of arc to either side of that point."
"Well, that narrows the volume tremendously."
"Still a bit of a problem, Ellen," Stasz replied.
Ellen groaned. "It only gives us an area about twenty- one thousand A.U. in diameter to search at a range of fifty light-years out."
Ian chuckled softly and gave Shelley a baleful glance. "I tried to explain this to the Chancellor, but do you think he cared about the mathematics of our search? Oh no. You see, a bright young graduate assistant had convinced a bunch of drone-head bureaucrats that this expedition could work." His normally high voice started to crack into falsetto. "Twenty-one thousand A.U." And shaking his head, he fell silent.
"Why the galactic center?" Richard asked.
"Why not? There were several stars they could orbit into along the path, and somehow it seemed appropriate. Sort of like going to the center of everything, if you will. And if we were to find anything in terms of life, I guess that would be the place to look for it. That, and the SETI contact back in 2018, coming straight out from the galactic center. Even though the contact point was estimated to be four thousand light-years away, it was still something to go for in all that immensity of space."
"Are there any other areas of such promise?" Stasz asked.
"No," Ian said softly, "the other colonies were pretty evenly distributed. A fair number going toward the thirty nearest stars, and, like I already said, the paradox of this is that in the first fifteen checked out so far, not one sighting has been made. If we head toward the galactic center, within a hundred light-years three stars not too far off the trajectory might be worth checking out. Twenty- three units used solar sails as their propulsion, and with our survey-ship telescopies, we can run a computerized scan as we head out. Forty of the units were using the old Orion concept-nuclear-blast pulsing."
"God, how primitive," Stasz muttered.
"Yeah, almost barbaric, but it worked. We might get lucky and detect a detonation or, at least, residual radiation from the pulsers. The ramjets will leave a certain amount of disturbance in their wake, and with luck, we can latch on. We'll have to trust to the nav — detection computer system to pick out anything and hope that there is some semblance of communication between them which we can home in on. Many of the units carried a powerful beacon system and we know the frequencies, so we can track on that, as well.
"So, unless one of my fellow travelers has another suggestion, I guess we should point ourselves into the galactic core and hope."
"We do have fairly precise measurements on colonials 418 and 422," Shelley interjected. "We could try for them first."
"I don't think it really matters," Ian replied despond ently, "so what the hell, enter it into the log as we depart that we're locking onto the tracks of 418 and 422. At least it will make us sound like we're doing something."
"You sound as if you don't expect to find any of those colonies," Ellen responded.
"By the Eye of the Crab," Stasz shouted, and he pointed to Richard and winked. Richard pulled a plastic pouch out of his pocket and tossed it to the pilot, who snatched it out of the air, pulled the straw out, and drained off so much of the contents that Richard's face fell even as Stasz's turned redder and redder.
"As I was about to say, nearly seventy-five percent of these Alpha-3 class survey ships never came back from their surveys. Hell, lady, chances are you'll die before we ever find one of lan's bloody lost friends. Why the hell do you think the government gave this ship to your grant foundation? Two years ago they dumped a pretty penny into overhauling this crate and then the smart boys in Research and Development come up with a safer and faster design. Now if they scrapped this bucket some damn fool antispace senator would scream that we're wasting taxpayers' money. Of course nobody in DSSE wants assignment to this deathtrap, so some bright young fellow comes up with the idea of giving it to you damned stupid educators via the research foundation. Why, that's the perfect plan! This bucket sails off to oblivion, no one at DSSE is to blame, and in fact we get a bigger appro priation to build a replacement."
"So why are you along, my friend?" Richard asked.
'" Cause I had a little run-in with the Governor."
"Oh."
"Did you ever hear of his daughter?"
Richard Croce's and Ellen Redding's howls filled the room. Ian just turned scarlet. Only Shelley was strangely quiet.
"You're all crazy, you are," Stasz shouted. "I'll watch you laugh though when I punch us out of here in three hours. Is it the galactic center, then?"
Ian nodded his head sadly. Why not? Hell, it was as good as any area to search. They'd have to find at least one colony, that was plain. Maybe with a little luck they could score something in a year or so.
With a whispering hiss the Discovery slipped from its docking bay, the faint push from the back of the seat creating a sensation that "down" was at the rear of the command compartment. Ian looked across at Shelley, who was in the couch behind Stasz, and gave a reassuring smile. But she didn't need one. It was her first flight, and for her it was a moment full of wonder.
Ian listened in on the chatter over Stasz's comlink. He never figured out how a pilot could make sense of the nonstop commands as flight control sorted out the dozens of incoming and outbound flights.
" Com Sat Rep 23A, your approach to D-97 on 933 is open. Ah, VCT9 — er, you are cleared for entry into Restrict 9, approach at point-four M per. Discovery 1…"
"That's us," Stasz whispered.
"Out to depart line 8, cleared at your discretion. Good luck."
" Discovery 1 up to point-one G on depart line 8," Stasz replied as his fingers danced across the green-lit board. The quiet hissing was suddenly punched out by a dull rumbling throb that pushed them back into their seats, then the booster flared to life as Stasz punched up an outside view astern on the main monitor so his passengers could watch departure.
The nexus point of the station was already a mile eastern, silhouetted by the backlighting of a half-phase Earth. The skyhook beyond the nexus shone like a diamond, the sharp, straightedged line descended toward Earth until it finally disappeared from view. Jutting out from the cable in all directions a host of spidery weblines curved away into the infinity of space, a halo over 45,000 miles in diameter, hanging above the Earth-the growing hub of civilization's outward reach.
The passengers of Discovery 1 were strangely quiet as each one dealt with his inner fears. Stasz's taunting words had a ring of truth to all of them. The odds were stacked against the voyage, and all because a Chancellor wanted to rid himself of some staff to open up positions for a couple of new cronies.
"Take a good look at old mother Earth." Stasz laughed softly. "You ain't gonna see no blue for a long time to come. Jesus, it got so on my last trip, out that I would think more about blue skies and oceans than I even thought about sex. Funny how the body misses some things more than others out here."
"You're really not helping things," Richard replied.
"Not paid to help things." Stasz laughed. "Paid to fly this crate and point out the realities to you folks. Hang on, I'm bringing her up to three G."
He punched up the control buttons and the rumbling roar increased in pitch as they were pushed deeper into their seats. Ian rolled his head toward Shelley and saw that she was absolutely enthralled with the whole thing.