The reaction motors could not bring it to ramming speed.
The booster for its return journey was to be brought out on the first manned ship which would have come to Saenger.
The manned ship was not coming.
All this was implied in Doctor Maxell's words.
"Would I be of more use if I were to remain functioning throughout the event?"
"Certainly," she said. "But that's not possible. Check with Plato on the figures for the shock wave and your stress capabilities."
Slight pause.
"I see. But, it would be even better for scientific research if I survived the explosion of the star?"
"Of course. But there is nothing you can do. Please stand by for new programming."
There was another short silence, then:
"You will be checking on my progress, won't you?"
"Yes Saenger, we will."
"Then I shall do the best possible job of information-gathering for which I am equipped."
"You do that, Saenger. Please do that for us."
In Saenger's first messages, it told them what it saw. The spectroscopy, X-ray scans, ir, uv and neutrino grids told the same thing: the star was going to explode.
Saenger reached an optimum figure of one year, two months and some days. The research ship checked with Plato. The crystal intelligence on the Moon told him to knock a few months off that.
Plato printed a scenario of the last stages of the 18-solar-mass star. He sent it to Doctor Maxell. It looked like this:
— CORE COLLAPSE DUR. 5 h 24 min 18 sec SUPERNOVA no durational msmnt possible
The same information was sent to. Saenger. With the message from Plato that the first step of the scenario was less then eleven months away.
Saenger prepared himself for the coming explosion. It sent out small automatic probes to ring the star at various distances. One of them it sent on an outward orbit. It was to witness the destruction of Saenger before it, too, was vaporized by the unloosed energies of the star.
One of the problems they had working with Plato was that he was not human. So, then, neither were any of the other SSIs budded off Plato. Of which Saenger was one. Humans had made Plato, had guided it while it evolved its own brand of sentience.
They had done all they could to guide it along human thought patterns. But if it went off on some detour which brought results, no matter how alien the process, they left it to its own means.
It had once asked for some laboratory animals to test to destruction, and they had said no. Otherwise, they let Plato do as it pleased.
They gave a little, they took a little while the intelligence grew within its deep tunnels in the Moon. What they eventually got was the best mind man could ever hope to use, to harness for his own means.
And as Plato had been budded off the earlier, smaller Socrates, they were preparing a section of Plato for excision. It would be used for even grander schemes, larger things. Aristotle's pit was being excavated near Tycho.
That part of Plato concerned with such things was quizzical. It already knew it was developing larger capacities, and could tackle a few of the problems for which they would groom Aristotle. In a few years, it knew it might answer them all, long before the new mass had gained its full capacity.
But nobody asked it, so it didn't mention it.
Not maliciously, though. It had been raised that way.
Thousands of small buds had already been taken off Plato, put in stations throughout the solar system, used in colonization, formed into the Snapshot system, used for the brains of exploratory ships.
Saenger was one of those.
"Plato." ?
"I have a problem."
" ":- amp; amp;(')*
"What can I do? Besides that?"
— - - - - - - - - amp; (:) (:) x @ ј. 7v SQR(X3)
"Then what?"
— - - - - D = RT. x, x, «= - 1
"Do go on."
— - - - - C2; C2 -1/10 r SQR(t)
"Saenger is talking to Plato a lot, Sondra."
"A lot? How much is a lot?"
"I saw some discards yesterday, had Saenger's code on it. Thought they were from the regular run. But I came across the same thing this morning, before the Snapshot encoding. So it couldn't have been on regular transmission."
"And…?" asked Sondra.
"And I ran a capacity trace on it. Saenger used four ten-billionths of Plato's time this morning. And yesterday, a little less."
She drummed her fingers on the desk. "That's more than ten probes should have used, even on maintenance schedules. Maybe Plato is as interested as we are in supernovae?"
"What Saenger gave us was pretty complete. There's not much he could tell Plato he didn't tell us."
"Want to run it on playback?" asked Sondra.
"I'd rather you asked Saenger yourself," said the man. "Maybe they just exchanged information and went over capacity."
Sondra Maxell took off her earphones. "Uchi, do you think Saenger knows it's going to die?"
"Well, it knows what 'ceasing to function' is. Or has a general idea, anyway. I don't think it has the capacity to understand death. It has nothing to go by."
"But it's a reasoning being, like Plato. I…" She thought a moment. "How many of Plato's buds have ceased to function?"
"Just the one, on the Centauri rig."
"And that was quick, sudden, totally unexpected?"
"The crew and the ship wiped out in a couple of nanoseconds. What…?"
"I think, Uchi, that this is the first time one of Plato's children knows it's going to die. And so does Plato."
"You mean it might be giving Saenger special attention, because of that?"
"Or Saenger might be demanding it."
Uchi was silent.
"This is going to be something to see," he said, finally.
"Saenger, what have you been talking to Plato about?"
"The mechanics of the shock wave and the flux within the star's loosened envelope. If you would like, I could printout everything we've discussed."
"That would take months, Saenger."
"No matter then, Dr. Maxwell. I have a question."
"Yes?"
"Could I move further away from this star? The resolution of my instruments won't be affected up to point 10.7 AU. I could station a probe in this orbit. I thought you might get a better view and data if I were further out."
Sondra was quiet. "Saenger," she said, "you know you can't possibly get away from the shock, no matter how far you move on your ion engines?"
"Yes, Doctor."
"And that you can't get to ramming speed, either?"
"Yes," said Saenger.
"Then why are you trying to move further away?"
"To give you a better view," said the ship. "Plato and I figured the further away the more chance of getting valuable information I would have. I could telemeter much more coordinated data through Snapshot. The new programming is not specific about the distance of the ship, only of the probes."