“That the point of the destroyer may be merely to suppress the alien beam,” Harold finished for her. “Since myriad local stations come through nicely, they cannot have incited the destroyer.”
“Talk of xenophobia!” she exclaimed. “Just because it proved that there was superior technology elsewhere — !”
Harold cocked his head at her. “Is that the way you see it? I might have reasoned along another line.”
“I am aware of your—”
“Soup’s on!” Beatryx called, once more abridging the discussion appropriately.
Because there was no destroyer here, they turned on the main screen to watch Ivo work. Afra could have used the macroscope herself, but there was now a certain group recognition that this was Ivo’s prerogative, and that practice had brought him to a level of proficiency no other person could match without a similar apprenticeship. It was his show.
He had stage fright.
He avoided the routine programs, now offered in such splendor and multiplicity that it would require years to Index them by hand. Their several language coding families were of course unfamiliar to the others; Ivo had mastered the basics only after intense concentration, though all were to some extent similar to the technique of the destroyer itself. He also avoided the traveler signal (when had that term come into use?); that would come in its own time. Instead he concentrated on the nonbroadcast band and searched for Earth: the world of Man as it was thirty thousand years ago.
And couldn’t pick it up.
He rechecked the coordinates derived from their telescopic sightings of the Andromeda Galaxy and selected Population II Cepheids of the Milky Way, and made due allowance for galactic rotation and the separate motions of the stars in the course of 30,000 years. Everything checked; he knew where to find Earth.
Except that it wasn’t there.
“Either I’ve lost my touch, or Earth didn’t exist thirty thousand years ago,” he said ruefully.
“Nonsense,” Afra said. “Let me try it.” She seemed eager.
Ivo gave place to her, feeling as though he had been sent to the showers.
Afra played with the controls for twenty minutes, focusing first on the Earth-locale, then elsewhere. The screen remained a mélange of color; no clear image appeared. At last she swung around to focus on one of the globular clusters outside the galaxy — and got an image.
She had set the computer to fix on any planetary surface encountered in a routine sweep of the views available, and it had done that. The picture was of a dark barren moon far from its primary. In the night sky above the horizon individual stars could be made out, and even the light band of massed distant stars.
“That’s no cluster!” Groton exclaimed. “You wouldn’t find a band like that in a spherical mass of stars.”
Afra fussed with the controls, adjusting the scene clumsily and finally losing it. She returned to the computer sweep, while Ivo chafed internally at the loss of the only picture they had landed, and such a mysterious one. The picture would not come in again. She began to show her temper.
“Something strange here,” Harold said. “The alignment of that image doesn’t check with the direct view of the cluster. And the scene was typical of a planet within the galaxy. That light band was the Milky Way!”
Afra set the computer for Earth-type planet selection, leaving the azimuth where it was, and waited while it filtered and sorted the crowded macrons. Ivo was anxious to take over again, but held himself back. The situation certainly was strange, and Afra obviously lacked the expertise necessary to solve the contradictions. But it would not be diplomatic to point this out.
A green landscape appeared, Earthlike but not Earth. Afra jumped to manual — and lost it. She swore in unladylike manner.
Abruptly she disengaged. “I’m not doing any good here. Take it back, Ivo.”
And he was in it, oblivious to the others, using the goggles though the main screen remained on. He felt his way into the situation, reacting as though the computer were part of his own brain. There was no image directly from Earth — or from any other point in the galaxy. Except for the programs; they came through splendidly. What was the distinction between the tame macrons and the wild ones, that only the tame should pass?
The programs were artificial, generated by sophisticated Type II technology macronic equipment set up within a powerful gravitic field. He knew that much from the local stations, who discussed their techniques freely. Their signals, in effect, were polarized, stripped of wasteful harmonics and superficial imprints, and radiated out evenly. Natural impulses were weak and unruly, by contrast, and tangled with superimpositions. A wild macron could produce several hundred distinct pictures and a great deal of additional scramble; a cultured macron produced only one, or one integrated complex.
It was like the difference between a random splash and a controlled jet of water. The splash interacted with its environment more copiously, but the jet went farther and accomplished more in a particular manner.
What was the galactic environment?
Light. Gas. Energy.
“Gravity.”
It was Schön whispering in his ear. Communication between them was growing more facile, to Ivo’s distress. He preferred Schön thoroughly buried.
Gravity: cumulative in its gross effect, but divided within its originating body. Outside the massive galaxy—
Macrons: essences born of gravitic ripples, and subject to them. And what happened to those emerging from the galaxy itself, meeting the larger interactions of the universe?
He knew, now. The programs struck through, even as far as other galaxies, if properly focused, for they were beamed and streamlined and syncopated and unencumbered. But the wild impulses could not make it; they were too woolly, prickly, horny, disorganized. They felt the great galactic field, were bent by it (for they were creatures of gravity), hauled around as were the clusters, strained…
But not the light. Galactic gravity was not enough to prevent the light from escaping. And finally the light struck out into deep space, leaving its macrons behind, divorced. Like a cloak shed of its master, the mantle of macrons collapsed, compacted, lost form — but remained as lightspeed impulses, clumping to each other, billions where one had been before. Unable to escape the master field, they remained in orbit about the mighty primary, the galactic nucleus.
Thus, shotgun images at right angles to the disk of the galaxy.
Thus, no direct contemporary — within 30,000 years — news.
Thus — history.
Ivo narrowed the coded specifications to a classification of one: Earth. Earth, any time since life conquered its land masses. He swept the captive stream, searching for animation. He scored.
They were watching the screen, and he heard their joint outcry. Earth, yes—
The creature resembled in a certain fashion a crocodile, but its snout was short and blunt. Its body, with its stout round legs and powerful tail, was about seven feet long. A grotesque bridgework of bone and leather stood upon its back, like a stiff sail.
It was morning, and the animal rested torpidly at right angles to the rays of the sun, its eyes partially closed. Behind it was an edge of water clustered with banded stems, a number of them broken. Tall brush or alienistic trees stood in the background, and the ground seemed bleak because there was no grass.
“That,” said Afra, “is Dimetrodon. The sail-backed lizard of the Permian period of Earth, two hundred and fifty million years ago. The sail was used as a primitive temperature control mechanism before better means were found. Though Dimetrodon looks clumsy, that heat-control was an immense advantage, since reptiles tend to be dull when cold—”