‘D'Aubisson said she was happy for professional reasons,’ Insigna said. ‘Actually, I can believe that, in a way. After all, I'm a scientist, too.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Genarr, his homely face crinkling into a smile. ‘You were willing to leave the Solar System and go on an untried trip across the light-years to gain astronomical knowledge, even though you knew it might mean the death of every person on Rotor.’
‘A very small chance, it seemed to me.’
‘Small enough to risk your one-year-old child. You might have left her with your stay-at-home husband and made sure of her safety, even though it would have meant you would never see her again. Instead, you risked her life, not even for the greater good of Rotor, but for the greater good of yourself.’
Insigna said, ‘Stop it, Siever. That's so cruel.’
‘I'm just trying to show you that almost everything can be looked at from two opposing sets of views, given sufficient ingenuity. Yes, D'Aubisson calls it professional pleasure at being able to study the disease, but Marlene said the doctor was being malevolent, and again I trust Marlene's choice of words.’
‘Then I suppose,’ said Insigna, the corners of her mouth curving downward, ‘that she is anxious to have Marlene go out on Erythro again.’
‘I suspect she does, but she is cautious enough to insist that I give the order and even suggests I put it in writing. She wants to make sure that it is I, not she, who gets the blame if something goes wrong. She's beginning to think like Pitt. Our friend Janus is contagious.’
‘In that case, Siever, you mustn't send Marlene out. Why play into Pitt's hands?’
‘On the contrary, Eugenia. It's not simple at all. We must send her out.’
‘What?’
‘There's no choice, Eugenia. And no danger to her. You see, I now believe you were right when you suggested there was some permeating life-form on the planet that could exert some sort of power over us. You pointed out that I was deleteriously affected, and you were, and the guard was, and always when Marlene was in any way opposed. And I just saw precisely that happen to Ranay. When Ranay tried to force a brain scan on Marlene, she doubled up. When I persuaded Marlene to accept the brain scan, Ranay immediately improved.’
‘Well, there you are, then, Siever. If there's a malevolent life-form on the planet-’
‘Now, wait, Eugenia. I didn't say it was malevolent. Even if this life-form, whatever it might be, caused the Plague as you suggested it did, that stopped. You said it was because we seemed to be content to remain in the Dome, but if the life-form were truly malevolent, it would have wiped us out and it would not have settled for what seems to me to have been a civilized compromise.’
‘I don't think it's safe to try to consider the actions of a totally alien life-form and deduce from that its emotions or intentions. What it thinks might well be totally beyond our understanding.’
‘I agree, Eugenia, but it's not harming Marlene. Everything it has done has served to protect Marlene, to shield her from interference.’
‘If that's so,’ said Insigna, ‘then why was she frightened, why did she begin to run to the Dome, screaming? Not for one moment do I believe her tale that the silence made her nervous and she was just trying to make some noise to break that silence.’
‘That is hard to believe. The point is, though, that the panic subsided quickly. By the time her would-be-rescuers reached her, she seemed perfectly normal. I would guess that something the life-form had done had frightened Marlene - I would imagine it was as unlikely to understand our emotions, as we are to understand its - but, seeing what it had done, it proceeded to soothe her quickly. That would explain what happened and would demonstrate, once again, the humane nature of the life-form.’
Insigna was frowning. ‘The trouble with you, Siever, is that you have this terrible compulsion to think good of everyone - and everything. I can't trust your interpretation.’
‘Trust or not, you will find we can in no way oppose Marlene. Whatever she wants to do, she will do, and the opposition will be left behind, gasping in pain or flat-out unconscious.’
Insigna said, ‘But what is this life-form?’
‘I don't know, Eugenia.’
‘And what frightens me more than anything, now, is: What does it want with Marlene?’
Genarr shook his head. ‘I don't know, Eugenia.’
And they stared at each other helplessly.
32. Lost
Crile Fisher watched the bright star thoughtfully.
At first, it had been too bright to watch in the ordinary sense. He had glanced at it every once in a while and would see a bright after-image. Tessa Wendel, who was in a state of despair over developments, had scolded and spoken of retinal damage, so he had opacified the viewport and had brought the brightness of the star down to just bearable levels. That dimmed the other stars to a downcast, tarnished glitter.
The bright star was the Sun, of course.
It was farther away than any human being had ever seen it (except for the people of Rotor on their journey away from the Solar System). It was twice as far away as one would see it from Pluto at its farthest, so that it showed no orb and shone with the appearance of a star. Nevertheless, it was still a hundred times the brightness of the full Moon as seen from Earth, and that hundredfold brightness was condensed and compacted into one brilliant point. No wonder one still couldn't bear to turn a direct and unflinching gaze upon it through an un-opacified glass.
It made things different. The sun, ordinarily, was nothing to wonder at. It was too bright to look at, too unrivaled in its position. The minor portion of its light that was scattered into blueness by the atmosphere was sufficient to blank out the other stars altogether, and even where the stars were not blanked out (as on the Moon, for instance) they were so overridden by the Sun that there was no thought of comparison.
Here, so far out in space, the Sun had dimmed at least to the point where comparison was possible. Wendel had said that from this vantage point, the Sun was one hundred and sixty thousand times as bright as Sirius, which was the next brightest object in the sky. It was perhaps twenty million times as bright as the dimmest stars he could see by eye. It made the Sun seem more marvelous by comparison than when it shone, uncompared, in Earth's sky.
Nor did he have much more to do than watch the sky, for the Superluminal was merely drifting. It had been doing that for two days - two days of drifting through space at mere rocket velocities.
At this speed it would take thirty-five thousand years to reach the Neighbor Star - if they had been heading in the right direction. And they weren't.
It was this that had turned Wendel, two days earlier, into a picture of white-faced despair.
Until then, there had been no trouble. When they were due to enter hyperspace, Fisher had tensed himself, fearing the possible pain, the piercing flash of agony, the sudden surge of eternal darkness.
None of that had happened. It had all been too fast to experience. They had entered into and emerged from hyperspace in the same instant. The stars had simply blinked into a different pattern with no perceptible moment in which they had lost their first pattern, yet not gained their second.
It was relief in a double sense. Not only was he still alive, but he realized that if something had gone wrong and he had died, then death would have come in such a no-time way that he could not possibly have experienced death. He would simply have been dead.
The relief was so keen that he was scarcely aware that Tessa had let out a gasp of disturbance and pain, and dashed out to the engine room with an outcry.
She came back looking disheveled - not a hair out of place, but looking internally disheveled. Her eyes were wild and she stared at Fisher as though she did not really recognize him.