“Male and female, of course,” Afra said. “But Neptune is unmistakable.”
Groton did not push the matter, but Ivo was sure he had been driving at something else.
“Even Earth?” Beatryx inquired, catching up to an earlier comment.
“That’s an upside-down Venus symbol. I don’t remember them all, but I am sure of Neptune.”
Groton was still entertained. “I agree. It is Neptune. But I repeat: is this to be taken as an indication of location, or is it something more subtle?”
“Isn’t Neptune very far away?” Beatryx asked.
“Ridiculous!” Afra said hotly, ignoring the other woman. “No ship has gone there yet.”
“Not to mention the problem of delivering the letter here,” Groton added.
“Something is wrong. We have misread the signal.”
“I wonder,” Groton said. “What was that earlier contact you mentioned that you had with Schön? Was it like this?”
“No. It—” She turned abruptly to Ivo. “What poem? Which poet?”
Thus, in delayed fashion, she had come at it. He had foolishly told her that the earlier message represented a line of poetry with which he was familiar, and she had not forgotten. Could he stave off her assault?
“American. It was just Schön’s way of telling me that he knew what was up. Of telling you actually, since I couldn’t read it.”
“That much was obvious. Name the poet and piece.”
“I don’t see that that is relevant to—”
“An American poet, you said. Prominent?”
“Yes, but—”
“Born what century? Seventeenth?”
“No. Why do you—”
“Eighteenth?”
“No.” She would not be denied.
“Nineteenth?”
“Yes, but—”
“Whitman?”
“No.”
“Frost? Sandburg?”
“No.”
“But male?”
“Yes.”
“Eliot? Pound? Archibald MacLeish?”
“No.” He remained helpless before her intensity.
“Ransom? Wallace Stevens? Cummings? Hart Crane?”
“I hate to break in,” Groton said, “but we do have more pressing—”
She pointed her manicured finger at Ivo. “Vachel Lindsay!”
“The UN may be on our tail,” Groton said. “If we don’t make our decision soon, we could lose it by default.”
“All right!” she snapped, returning to him. “First, reconnaissance. We have to know whether there is pursuit yet, and of what type, so we can take evasive action. Once we’re safe, we can start running down Schön. I’m convinced our sprout-winner here is hiding something important. Once we get that, we’ll have a better notion what Schön is doing, and where.”
“I appreciate your ruthlessness,” Groton said dryly. “Where do we go from here?”
Ivo was immensely relieved to have the subject change. Afra was correct: he was hiding something important. “How will we know where the UN is? Don’t we have to keep radio silence, or something?”
She only glanced disparagingly at him. How else, he realized then, but with the macroscope itself?
“Trying to run down a single ship with this equipment is like aiming the atomic cannon at no-see-em gnats,” Groton observed.
“The torus will know,” Afra said. “We’ll have to watch it — the teletype, maybe, to monitor incoming messages. Or we can simply blast off now in any direction and outrun whatever pursuit forms.”
“Not,” Groton said succinctly, “a robot.”
She straightened, startled. “All right. I’ll get on the scope. We’d better know the worst.”
“Can you stay off the haunted frequency?”
“Calculated risk. With practice—”
“With practice like that, we’ll have two casualties aboard to clean up.”
Ivo recalled the loss of intestinal control of the victims and realized how hard such a notion would strike a finicky girl like Afra. “I seem to be immune,” he said. “At least, I can avoid it successfully. And I did win the privilege. If you will show me how to operate the controls—”
This time Afra seemed relieved. “I’ll instruct you. I’ll have to operate blind, but it should work. Here, I’ll turn off the main screen; you use the helmet.”
And she set him up in the control chair and fastened the equipment upon him, placing the heavy goggles over his eyes. Ivo wished there were more than sheer practicality in the operation, but knew there was not; it was more efficient for her to do these things for him than to direct him through it, this first time.
“Your left hand controls the computer directives. Here, I’ll put you on the ten-key complex.” Her hand took his and carried it to a buttoned surface like that of an adding machine. This was not the same control he had seen Brad employ, he was sure. Alternate inputs? A junior set for the novice? The goggles cut off all outside vision, so he, not she, was “blind.”
“We have a number of important locations precoded,” she continued. “You should memorize them, if you’re going to do this regularly, but right now I’ll give them to you. These will place you on Earth, the Luna bases, any of the artificial satellites or the macroscope station — the torus.” She spieled off numbers, and he obediently pressed the buttons. Twice he miskeyed and had to start over; the third time she placed her hand over his and depressed his fingers for him in the proper order and places. Her digits were soft and cool and firm — as he imagined the rest of her body to be.
Light flared into his eyes. He was a hundred yards from the torus, looking down at it from sunside, blinded by the reflection from its metal plates.
“The next coding is for semimanual control,” she said. “You can’t possibly keep the celestial motions aligned, but you can override portions of the computer’s automatic correction and drift a little.” She directed him through the necessary numeric instruction. “Now you can apply your right hand. Drive it as you would a car — but remember it is three-dimensional.” He felt the mounted ball, its surface actually sandpaper-rough for perfect traction. “Tilt for direction of motion, twist for orientation. Be careful — this is where the destroyer sometimes intrudes. You have to stick to fringe reception — which is more than adequate, at this range. Now set your drift toward the torus; don’t worry, you’ll pass right through the walls. You’ll have to practice a bit to get it down…”
Ivo tilted and twisted — and was rewarded by a dizzying tailspin in which the intolerable blaze of Sol scorched across his eyeballs every three seconds.
“Not so much!” she cautioned after the fact. It was a lesson that would not have to be repeated.
He reduced his efforts and began to slide toward the station, twitching the direction of his gaze to cover it properly. The computer, he thought, must perform a tremendous task, for surely a completely different flow of macrons would be required for each change in direction — yet the transition was smooth. Probably at distances of many light-years such versatility diminished, until a view from the far side of the galaxy would be one direction only, take it or leave it.
It was beginning to work for him, and it gave him a feeling of power.
There was an odor.
“No, that’s my job,” Afra said, calling out to someone else. “You keep practicing, Ivo; I think you have the general idea. Try to work your way inside. I’ll be back in a moment.”
The smell and the sound told him: nature had summoned Brad, and Afra had a job of cleaning up and changing to do. He had to admit she had grit.
He thought of the right-hand control as a flute, and though there was no particular resemblance, control was suddenly easier. Now he could draw on his other talent, that peculiar digital dexterity and sense of tone musicians possessed. He shot through the wall of the torus, schooling himself not to wince, and stopped within the first hall. He reoriented, and was sure he was maintaining spatial stability, but the hall was tilting over steadily. He corrected — and lost it again.