The gate swung open.
The birds exploded outward, screeching. Feathers, dust and dung enveloped the passing people. There was a grand melee, and consternation, as everyone tried to get out of the way of the dirty birds. An albatross, taking off clumsily, crashed into Schön’s hat and knocked it from his head. Perhaps Afra had done it herself. And the lecture room was back.
The podium had been shoved askew, and Schön stood disheveled beside it. There had indeed been contact, and not of his choosing. He had dissolved the vision, this time.
She held on to the initiative. She sat down on the nearest bench, sure that this would trigger — the presentation.
It did. The illumination dimmed, and in the air of the front of the room a picture appeared. It was the Shape — the same subtle, tortuous, flexing color she had seen back near Earth when she glimpsed the destroyer-sequence. The same red mass, the same blue dot, as though a blue-white dwarf star were orbiting a red giant. The same symbolic agglutination of concepts, building, building—
She could not withdraw from it; the thing had hold upon her brain. She suspected that Schön was similarly transfixed. The destroyer had pounced at last.
But the emphasis shifted, and suddenly she realized that this was not the mind-ravager. It was the same technique, but not the same message — and the message, despite what certain fringe-interests claimed, was far more vital than the medium. Instead of oblivion, it brought information. It expanded her horizons. In another moment her mind had assimilated its universal language, the galactic gift of tongues, and she saw and heard — the lecture.
Formal galactic history commences with the formation of the first interstellar communication network. Only scattered authentic prior evidences exist…
She absorbed it, entranced. She had not been offered the full history before. This lecture went on to cover the expansion of the macroscopic network, spheres of cultural influence, and the onset of the First Siege.
An illustration, it said. Then the partial concepts became complete, and her full apperceptive mass responded. She was on a civilized planet, responding to its gravity, temperature and odors as well as its sights and sounds.
“I can tell you how it comes out,” Schön said. His voice interfered with her concentration, and she observed the shifting color-shapes that were telling the story, now three-dimensional and almost physical in substance.
Then her mind became attuned again, and the planet returned. She passed among the ghastly yet ordinary (by galactic standards) creatures of this world, conversed with them, and learned about the desperate struggle they were engaged in. It was planetary, interplanetary war, and this species was in danger of enslavement or destruction.
She came to understand the reason: the Traveler impulse permitted wars of conquest by immature cultures. It was like giving motorboats to hostile islanders previously separated from each other by miles of shark-infested shallows and reefs. Transportation without maturity spelled intercultural war — and mutual disaster.
Physical contacts between the stellar cultures of the galaxy in fact meant chaos, the lecture said, and now she agreed emphatically, having seen it in action. More information came, describing the termination of the siege. There was another animate, full-perception episode, showing the manner in which linked species had rejoined, sharing a planet, but not harmoniously. The creatures, like the last, were completely unhuman, yet she felt sympathy for their plight. She felt that she was there as a group of shoreline vigilantes killed an envoy from the undersea culture; and she reacted with dismay as she followed an enlightened land-dweller making a return quest into the ocean, only to be similarly slain by the border patrol of the other side. War broke out again, decimating both species and setting back the civilization of the planet disastrously; but still the mutual hate did not abate. Removal of the Traveler had not solved galactic problems; it had only suppressed them painfully. Better that it had never come.
But she learned also the positive side of it: the resurgence of civilization in the absence of the Traveler. She followed the positive preparations to alleviate the foreseen Second Siege. The destroyer was put into perspective: it was like a hurricane, that prevented the savages from using their modern boats. Many died trying — but this was better than what had happened before.
She saw the other phase of the destroyer project: the quest into the origin and nature of the Traveler signal.
It had to be assumed that the Traveler was beamed to the other galaxies of the local cluster. Had they gone through similar ravages? The macroscope did not provide the answer.
Yet, the conjecture continued, if the Traveler touched other galaxies, it had the aspect of a universal conspiracy to destroy civilization wherever it occurred. If so, it was essential that it be stopped at its source.
Still, journeys to these near galaxies had failed. Six expeditions to Andromeda had never returned. If there were a traveler there, a round trip should be possible. If there were not, then high-level macroscopic technology should have been developed and retained, and at least a few programs should have been beamed for intergalactic communication. Ordinary spherical broadcasts dissipated in the vast intergalactic reaches, but beams did not, as the Traveler itself had demonstrated.
Could it be that the Travelers encountered the other galaxies at different times? The local program appeared to originate about three million light-years distant, at a point source, and to expand to saturate the entire galaxy and its environs: the globular clusters, the Magellanic clouds, but not Fornax or Sculptor. About thirty thousand light-years beyond the rim (arbitrarily assigned; there was no physical discontinuity marking the edge of the galaxy) the beam stopped; its total cross section at this stage was about 150,000 light-years. By the time the beam might, in its onward travel, intercept another galaxy beyond the Milky Way, it would have spread into a tremendous cone-segment far too diffuse for proper effect. It had obviously been tailored to this particular locale.
If other beams were similarly tailored, and if they originated from the same spot in space, it might be that they had to take turns. A million years of traveler could be directed at one galaxy; then, while it was on its way, the projector could be reoriented to cover another galaxy. Thus direction and distance and schedule would determine the status of any particular galaxy.
After the Second Siege the confirmations began to come in. Civilized planets that had jumped to other galaxies and had been stranded there had broadcast back portions of the truth. They had made the transit, but had been unable to come out of organic stasis because of the absence of the traveler signal necessary for the reconstitution. Thus millions of years had had to pass before a Traveler intercepted the new location of an exploring world. At that point reconstitution had occurred, but with losses, since even the gaseous state did not have indefinite shelf-life. Then no return was feasible, unless another delay of tens of millions of years was undertaken while waiting for the local Third Siege.
This was the substance of the first report from Horv, stranded in a globular cluster orbiting Andromeda. It was almost as though the Travelers had been arranged to prevent intergalactic commerce. But Horven research continued, for the same signal that revived the sadly decimated populace now allowed the planet to travel freely around Andromeda. In due course the second, more remarkable report was broadcast.