“Is it?” Garamond turned away from the window, mollified by his wife’s evident happiness. “Maybe so, but you don’t hear them complaining much about the birth rate.”
“Talking about birth rates — our own has been pretty static for a long time.” Aileen caught his hand and held it against her cheek. “Wouldn’t you like to be the father of the first child born on Orbitsville?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s impossible anyway. The first shiploads of settlers are on their way, and — from what I’ve heard about the Terranova run — a lot of the women always arrive pregnant. It’s something to do with the lack of recreational facilities on the journey.”
“How about the first one conceived on Orbitsville then?”
“That’s more like it.” Garamond knelt beside his wife’s chair, took her in his arms and they kissed.
Aileen drew back from him after a few seconds. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’m sorry. I keep thinking about the people, beings or gods — whatever you want to call them — who built Orbitsville.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“I don’t understand them.”
“Who does?”
“You know, there’s enough living space in Orbitsville to support every intelligent being in the galaxy. For all we know, that’s why it was created, and yet…”
Garamond allowed his voice to die away. He suspected Aileen would accuse him of paranoia if he speculated aloud about why the sphere-builders had created a hostel for an entire galaxy’s homeless — and then played into Elizabeth Lindstrom’s hands by providing only one entrance.
Chick Truman was one of a breed of human beings who had come into existence with the development of interstellar travel. He was a frontiersman-technician. His father and grandfather had helped with the opening up of Terranova and with the initial surveying of a dozen other planets which, although unsuitable for colonization, had some commercial or scientific potential. He had received little in the way of formal technical training but, like all other members of the fraternity of gypsy-engineers, seemed to have an inborn knowledge of the entire range of mechanical skills. It was as though the accumulated experience of generations had begun to produce men for whom the analysis of an electrical circuit or the tuning of an engine was a matter of instinct. One attribute which distinguished Truman from most of his fellows was a strong, if undisciplined, interest in philosophy. And it was this which had fired his mind as he set up camp on the lower slopes of the hills which ringed Orbitsville’s single aperture at a distance of about sixty kilometres. He was half of a two-man team which had been sent out to erect a bank of laser reflectors as part of an experimental communications system. They had reached their target minutes before the wall of darkness had come rushing from the east, and now Truman’s partner, Peter Krogt, was busy preparing food and laying out their sleeping bags. Truman himself was concerned with less prosaic matters. He had lit a pipe of tobacco, was comfortably seated with his back to the transporter and was staring into the incredible ribbed archways of the sky at night.
“The Assumption of Mediocrity is a useful philosophical weapon,” he was saying, “but it can backfire on the guy who uses it. I know that some of the greatest advances in human thought were achieved by assuming there’s nothing odd or freakish about our own little patch — that’s what set Albert Einstein off.”
“Help me open these containers,” Krogt said.
Without moving, Truman released a cloud of aromatic smoke. “But consider the case of, say, two beetles living at the bottom of a hole on a golf course. These bugs have never been out of that hole, but if they have a philosophical turn of mind they can describe the rest of the universe just by using available evidence. What would their universe be like, Pete?”
“Who cares?”
“Nice attitude, Pete. Their projected universe would be an infinite series of round holes with big white balls dropping into them during daylight hours.”
Krogt had opened the food containers unaided and he handed one to Truman. “What are you talking about, Chick?”
“I’m telling you what’s wrong with the management back at base. Listen… We’ve been on Orbitsville for months, right?”
“Right.”
“Now take this little jaunt you and I are on right now. These hills are three hundred metres high. Our orders are to set up the reflectors at an elevation of two hundred and fifty metres. We’ve been told where to set them, where to aim them, what deviation will be acceptable, how long to take with the assignment — but there’s one thing we haven’t been told to do. And I find it a pretty astonishing omission, Pete.”
“Your yeasteak’s getting cold.”
“Why did nobody tell us to climb the extra fifty metres to the top of the hill and have a look at the other side?”
“Because there’s no need,” Krogt said heavily. “There’s nothing there but grass and scrub. The whole inside of this ball is nothing but prairie.”
“There you go! The Assumption of Mediocrity.”
“It isn’t an assumption.” Krogt gestured with his fork towards the shimmering watered-silk canopy of the sky. “They’ve had a look around with telescopes.” “Telescopes!” Truman sneered to cover up the fact that he had forgotten about telescopic examination of the far side of Orbitsville, then his talent for rapid mental calculation came to his aid. “We’re talking about a distance of more than two astronomical units, sonny. If you were standing on Earth, what would one of those spyglasses tell you about life on Mars?”
“More’n I want to know. Are you going to eat this yeasteak or will I?”
“You eat it.”
Truman got to his feet, slightly dismayed at the way in which a discussion on philosophy had led him to renounce his meal, and marched away up the slope. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the rounded summit and paused to re-light his pipe. The yellow flame from the lighter dazzled his eyes and almost a minute had passed before Truman appreciated that, spread out on the plain below him, dim and peaceful, were the lights of an alien civilization.
ten
The arrival of the first wave of ships had surprised Garamond in two ways — by its timing, which could have been achieved only if it had set out within days of Elizabeth’s own arrival on Orbitsville; and by its size. There were eighty Type G2 vessels, each of which carried more than four thousand people. A third of a million settlers, who originally must have been destined for the relatively well-prepared territories of Terranova, had been diverted to a new destination where there was not even a shed to give them shelter for their first night.
“It beats me,” Cliff Napier said, sipping his first coffee of the day. He was off duty and had spent the night in Garamond’s house. “All right, so Terranova has only one usable continent and it’s filling up fast, but the situation isn’t that urgent. No matter how you look at it, these people are going to have a rough time at first. They haven’t even got proper transportation.” “You’re wondering why they agreed to come?” Garamond asked, finishing his own coffee.
Napier nodded. “The average colonist is a family man who doesn’t want to expose his wife and kids to more unknown risks than necessary. How did Starflight get them to come here?”
“I’ll tell you.” Aileen came into the room with a pot of fresh coffee and began refilling the cups. “Chris and I were down at the store this morning while you two were still in your beds, and I talked to people who saw the first families disembarking before dawn. You know, you don’t learn much by lying around snoring.”
“All right, Aileen, we both think you’re wonderful. Now, what are you talking about?”