They waited. "What better way could there be to learn more about it?" Duncan asked.
Eesyan had been caught unprepared. He had taken it for granted that differences would generate disagreement and disagreement implied strife, which Thuriens strove to avoid. But Terrans thrived on it. To them it was a challenge. They saw the situation not as a source of disunity to be feared and avoided, but as an enticing and amusing curiosity to be studied. Eesyan deferred making a commitment and went away to consult with Calazar.
"I've found there are times when an old race like ours could use some reminding of the spirit that drove it when it was younger," was Calazar's response. "Our ancestors were able to deal with the universe as they found it, without defensiveness projected out of their own inner fears. When the occasion demanded, they were able to rise to conceiving schemes on scales of audacity that in comparison make the most celebrated of the Terrans' heroics seem pale. I think we should keep that tradition in mind now."
The upshot was that there would be two facilities investigating trans-Multiverse propagation. The original pilot system at the Quelsang Institute would continue running micro-scale experiments to explore the physics, and in particular to delve further into the strange phenomenon that Hunt had dubbed "timeline lensing." In parallel, construction would go ahead of the larger and more powerful MP2 project remotely in space to handle objects that a nearby other universe might not appreciate having materialize under the floor of one of its laboratories. The two complemented each other. Choosing to live with the peculiarities of converging time lines was probably the quickest route toward learning more about the effect, while the larger-scale project offered the most effective means of devising some method of countering it. With Calazar already involved and now personally intrigued by the latest developments, completion of MP2 was accorded highest priority. Although the Terrans were not in a position to contribute much to the actual construction, Hunt was curious to see some Thurien space engineering in progress. He had a feeling that it would be very different from the UNSA projects that he had found himself involved in from time to time.
The original reason for locating the higher-power system remotely in space had been to safeguard against the hazard of objects materializing from corresponding experiments being performed in other parallel realities. The risk of such an occurrence was eliminated by taking advantage of a fact long-familiar to Terran physicists: that no two quantum systems could exist in precisely identical states-where a system's "state" was defined by an appropriate set of "quantum numbers." On an ordinary map, no two points can have identical coordinates. If they did, they would be the same point. In a similar way, for two quantum systems to exist as unique entities in the universe, they have to differ in at least one of the numbers ("quantum coordinates") specifying them.
MP2 was located a few hundred thousand miles from Thurien. Although that was admittedly still in their own back yard on the typical Thurien scale of going about things, statistical calculations indicated it to be sufficient for the purpose. The position had been randomly chosen from the stupendous number of possibilities that existed throughout the volume contained within an even larger radius. The intervals between permissible coordinates being such that the available possibilities would be safely far apart. Yes, it was possible that other parallel systems might use a different method. But the near-infinity of possible sending universes was balanced by the near-infinity of possible universes that an object sent could arrive in, and some arcane statistical calculations performed by VISAR gave the probability of collision at the end of it all as about the same as that of two positions randomly chosen within the entire prescribed volume of space happening to coincide.
There was no real need for Hunt to travel there physically, since VISAR could produce an indistinguishable simulation, but it seemed that Terrans either just didn't share the Thuriens' attitude regarding the equality of surrogates or else they hadn't developed it yet. After experiencing some virtual previews of the work going on at MP2, and since it wasn't taking place in some distant part of the Galaxy, Hunt decided he wanted to go out there. He couldn't exactly pinpoint why; it seemed that coming all this way from Earth only to remain confined on the same planet was missing out somehow. Duncan, Josef, and Chien felt the same way. When they mentioned it to Eesyan, such being the Thurien disposition, he put arrangements in hand to accommodate their wish. A craft appeared the next day at the space base along the coast from Thurios to transport them to the site of MP2.
If the Terrans' desire was to experience the reality of "being there," the Thurien response came as close as was alienly possible to granting them just that. The vantage point they were provided with suffered from none of the distancing effect that would have been induced by viewing the operation through windows or on a screen inside some kind of enclosed structure. Hunt had told Eesyan they wanted to be "out there," and that was exactly what they got.
When the ship arrived at the project, they were conveyed through a connecting g-field "tunnel" to a room-size platform equipped with seats and containing an assortment of housings, compartments, and pieces of strange equipment, all surrounded by a low parapet rail but otherwise open visually to the surrounding vastness of space. From VISAR's description the vehicle-for want of a better term-created a local gravity comparable in strength to that of a planet but with an abrupt cutoff distance, limiting its range. It thus imbued the occupants with normal bodyweight, while a force and filtering shell retained a breathable atmosphere and shielded out radiation and particle hazards. Thus, warm, comfortable, yet wearing only everyday clothing, they looked around, speechless, at the wonders of stars of every hue in the stellar spectrum, ghostly nebulas, and radiant filaments of color all around on every side, above and below, seemingly near enough to touch or infinitely distant. The perspective shifted spontaneously like the optical interpretation of a wire cube. There was no standard that they were familiar with to set a scale of size or distance. Despite his years of experiences from the Moon out to Jupiter, and the previous Ganymean and Thurien ventures that he had been involved with, Hunt had never before known such an overwhelming feeling of experiencing the immediacy of space. It was intoxicating, a sensation of total immersion-like someone who had seen the ocean all their life from the inside of a submarine, swimming for the first time. The children and younger Ganymeans who had been borne during the Shapieron's strange exile and known no other existence than life within the ship had tried to describe similar impressions after emerging onto a planetary surface when they arrived, finally, on Earth.
"You… certainly never let up on the surprises, VISAR." Duncan was the first to speak.
"We try to please." The phrase was by now familiar.
"You didn't make this exotic celestial tour bus just for us?" Sonnebrandt queried.
Eesyan, who was not actually present but coupled in via avco from Thurios, replied. "Actually, it's a pretty mundane, regular maintenance platform that we use for external work on vessels and structures. The shell can be molded to the surrounding contours, leaving the crew free and unencumbered. We thought it would be just right for the job. What do you think?"
"Impressive," Sonnebrandt said.
"Good. Well, I'm signing off now," Eesyan said. "Enjoy your visit. We'll see you back here at Thurien in due course."
While they were taking in the spectacle and speaking, the platform had been moving closer to the MP2 construction they had come to see, which had now grown to dominate the view on one side. Chien was studying it silently. About the size of a city block in Hunt's estimation, it had the form of a roughly spherical core with external lines flowing to blend into shapes of perhaps a score of symmetrically arranged protuberances-no doubt the ends of a converging system of projectors comparable to the ones on the smaller-scale prototype at Quelsang. Two larger, pear-shaped lobes extended from opposite sides of the sphere, again consisting of curviforms blending into the general body, instead of the cylinders and boxy modules that made up a typical piece of Terran space engineering. Even with a purely scientific experimental endeavor, it seemed that the Thuriens were incapable of refraining from imparting some art and aesthetics into their creations. The region of the sphere forming its "equator" between the lobes was still incomplete, as were the extremes of the lobes themselves and some of the projectors.