“The Builders?”
“They are certainly capable of it. Yet this does not fit with my perceptions of Builder activities.”
“Kallik? Do you think the Builders might have done this? Atvar H’sial says no.”
“With respect, Master Nenda, I must agree with Atvar H’sial. This does not have the feel of a Builder artifact.”
“So where do we go from here? At, do you think we’re safe in this system?”
“I believe that we are safe for the moment. The continued existence of the Pride of Orion supports that idea. Its crew must be as puzzled as we are, since this is clearly not the system of the Marglotta.”
“We should have known that all along. We told ’em that no Polypheme ever tells the truth unless it has to.”
“Congratulations to us on our own perspicacity. However, self-praise does us little good. This is not the place where we thought to arrive. I repeat, it is not the system of the Marglotta.”
“Damn right. It’s colder than a witch’s cul-de-sac.”
“And I am at a loss to suggest what we should do next.”
“Ten heads might be better than five. Let’s go an’ see if Graves and his bunch have any bright ideas.”
“In order to do that, Louis, we must either travel or send signals to them.”
“Then that’s what I guess we gotta do.”
“Either signals or motion will reveal our existence and our position.”
“But according to you, At, for the moment we don’t need to worry too much about that.” Nenda turned on the Have-It-All’s signal beacon. “There. Now everybody knows we’re here.” He activated the intercom to the pilot’s cabin. “Hit them buttons, J’merlia, an’ take us to rendezvous. It’s time to compare notes. Let’s give the others a chance to show off how smart they are.”
The Have-It-All was Louis Nenda’s pride and joy and his most treasured possession. Allowing J’merlia to serve as its pilot represented a triumph of reason over emotion.
Nenda’s homeworld, Karelia , wasn’t the sort of place that went in for formal education. Survival was the limit of most people’s ambition. Maybe because of that, Louis despised anything that might be labeled as philosophical thought. But he had learned a thing or two in the school of hard knocks, and one of them was that if somebody or something did a job better than you ever would or could, it made sense to let them. J’merlia had instincts and eyesight and reflexes that Nenda could not match. So, J’merlia would fly the ship.
In the same way, Kallik had superior analytical ability, while Atvar H’sial possessed a great knowledge of Builder history. Nenda suspected that Darya Lang knew even more, but he wasn’t about to head into that territory. Atvar H’sial’s satisfaction when Darya was left behind on the other ship had sent a pheromonal message you could read at a hundred meters.
And amid all this talent, what did Louis Nenda himself do? He knew the answer to that. He did anything left over that had to be done, and he examined anything that made his guts rumble uneasily for no defined reason. While the Have-It-All and the Pride of Orion closed in on each other, he took a closer look at the planets orbiting their frozen primary.
Ignoring the usual space rubble of minor planetoids and comets, the count was unusually high. The tracking equipment on the Have-It-All reported forty-seven sizeable bodies, eighteen of them massive enough to maintain some kind of atmosphere. Few of them did—most were simply too cold—but one oddity would have caught the eye of a space traveller far less seasoned than Louis Nenda. Of the five worlds orbiting within the life-zone region of a normal star of equivalent mass, one planet was a monster larger than all the others combined. It was also the coldest one, almost as big as the star around which it orbited. Based on diameter alone that should make it a gas-giant with a gravitational field strong enough to sweep clear a broad swath of space. That had not happened. The deep ranging system on the Have-It-All revealed the existence of celestial debris, including objects no bigger than orbiting mountains, crisscrossing the orbit of the monster world.
You could not expect to see much from eighty million kilometers, but Nenda focused the Have-It-All’s best scope on the planet.
The instrument’s smart sensor complained at once. This target provides no emitted radiation at any wavelength useful for imaging. The body is close to absolute zero.
“I know. Do the best you can.”
That may still prove unsatisfactory. There is nothing to work with but a meager supply of photons provided by the reflected light of distant stars. Image dwell time may be unacceptably long.
“I’ll be the judge of that. Show us what you’re gettin’ as you go, and stop moanin’.”
The image built slowly. At first it was no more than the faintest speckling of points of light, providing the ghostly outline of a disk that might well be no more than a man’s wishful thinking. Louis Nenda waited. He had the patience of a man who had once spent two days and nights immersed in the oozy swamps of Doradus Nine, ears and nostrils stopped while he breathed through a narrow straw and troops of Doradan Colubrids sought to exact revenge for the death of their ancestral leader. No chance. If necessary, he would have waited a week.
Photon by unpredictable photon, the picture on the screen strengthened and solidified. Nenda was not seeing the banded cloud patterns of a typical gas-giant. He did not expect it. At such low temperatures, all gases must change state to become liquids or solids. Rather, he thought to see the typical fractal cracking of a methane or nitrogen iceworld surface. But that too was incorrect.
Just what was the pattern, slowly building on the display? He saw linear features, straight as though ruled on the distant ball. Or did he imagine them? He was well aware of the tendency of human eyes to “connect the dots,” making from random patterns of light and dark a structured mental picture.
He said to the sensor, “Hey, I need an independent check. Am I really seein’ straight lines on the image you’re producin’, or am I making ’em all up?”
They are real. Would you like an enhancement of linear features?
“Not yet. Wait another ten minutes, then you can—”
The blast of a siren through the interior of the Have-It-All cut off his instructions. It was followed at once by J’merlia’s soft voice. “We are about to make our rendezvous with the Pride of Orion. Be prepared for possible anomalous accelerations.”
With J’merlia at the controls, the chances of a rough ride were close to zero. But either you did what your pilot told you, or you looked for a different pilot. Nenda said to the imager, “Any problem with building the picture while we rendezvous?”
Yes and no. The ship’s movements experienced during rendezvous can readily be corrected using image motion compensation algorithms. However, the planet is turning on its axis. Even if we continue imaging, our final result will be of variable definition, since the dwell time for the whole surface will not be uniform.
“Times are hard all over. Do the best you can, an’ keep addin’ photons to give us a good picture.” Nenda took a final look at the image on the display. Numerous dark dots were coupled by narrow lines to form a fine web over the whole planetary surface. It was exactly the kind of pattern that the mind liked to conjure up—except that in this case, the sensor assured him that what he saw was not just the result of human imagination.