Nenda shook his head. He seemed to be waiting for Atvar H’sial to provide an answer, but a survival team member—one of the women, Lara Quistner—got in first. “Big diameter, small mass. Are you suggesting that your Iceworld is hollow?”
“I am. And that has other implications, ones that you don’t know because you weren’t with us on our earlier explorations. First, a hollow object that size can’t be created by any natural processes that we understand. Second, we were led once before to a system and a giant planet, Gargantua, that seemed totally dead. But one of its moons, Glister, was hollow, and the evidence of Builder activity was inside it—including a transport vortex that could take you to other places. I bet that’s happening here. If we want to reach our true destination, we have to go down to the big planet and explore below the surface.”
Julian Graves said gently, “Professor Lang, even if you are right you didn’t answer Atvar H’sial’s question. Did the Builders destroy this whole stellar system, in order to make a single artifact on Iceworld?”
“I don’t know. But Atvar H’sial is correct, in no other case have we found evidence that the Builders did such a thing.”
“Not the Builders, Professor Lang. Then who?”
“Others. Destroyers, Voiders, Dead-Zoners, call them what you like. Whoever or whatever it is that the Marglotta believe is at work destroying the Sag Arm. Councilor, I have spent my life studying the Builders and their actions. What we find here does not match my instincts.”
“But you may be wrong.”
“Of course I may be wrong. It’s only a theory. So let me go to the planet—and find out if I’m right! Something inside Iceworld should lead to our real destination, Marglot.”
It was not Hans Rebka’s job to tell Darya to stay away from inexplicable and probably dangerous worlds. He would have interrupted anyway, but Julian Graves saved him the trouble.
The councilor shaded his misty blue eyes with his hand and said, “Destroyers, Voiders, Zoners. Professor Lang, you desire to resolve a mystery by the somewhat risky procedure of introducing a greater one. Rather than one kind of super-being, the Builders, you now propose that we consider two. The avoidance of unnecessary complications has been a known working principle since the dawn of human history. Also, as you point out, what you have is no more than a theory. Others may have different ideas and suggestions.”
As though on cue, E.C. Tally jumped in. “May I speak?”
The embodied computer was sitting well away from the others. A gleaming fiber-optic cable connected the socket on his chest with the computer system of the Pride of Orion.
Julian Graves glared at him. Tally was apparently not on the list of candidates likely to offer useful theories. “Is this relevant?”
“It is indeed most relevant. When we made the final Bose transition, I happened to be in the observation chamber with Professor Lang. However, after the transition she appeared uninterested in further conversation with me.”
Hans Rebka saw Darya looking in his direction, and raised an eyebrow. You threw him out?
She smiled and shrugged, as E.C. Tally went on, “I then decided that I could perhaps employ my own extensive data bases to good effect. I made observations of my own. First I examined not the dark star system to which we have recently come, but our general stellar environment. I found an unexpected asymmetry in incident radiation. More starlight is coming to us from one region of the celestial globe than from its antipodes. It did not take long to discover why. The distance of the nearest visible stars varies from less than a lightyear in one direction, to more than twenty lightyears in the opposite direction. I asked myself, why should there be such a difference? But I found no obvious explanation. I therefore set out to make more observations, looking not at our local environment, but back toward the Orion Arm. Even across the distance of the Gulf, it is possible to identify certain of the supergiant marker stars employed in celestial navigation within the Orion Arm. And from their apparent locations, I could by triangulation compute an accurate position for us in the Sag Arm.”
The embodied computer paused. E.C. Tally sensed that for the first time ever, others might be hanging on his words. “Before we started on this journey,” the computer went on at last, “I had made my own estimates of the place in the Sag Arm where the Marglot system might be located. I was, unfortunately, wrong.”
Graves said, “You trusted the Chism Polypheme’s navigation files?”
“Regrettably, I did. However, my earlier error is not the point I wish to make. I believe from my observations and calculations that I know where we are now. If I might employ the displays?”
“You’re hooked in? Then go ahead.”
The lights dimmed. E.C. Tally said into the darkness, “This is a presentation of the Sag Arm as we observed it before we left Upside Miranda Port. Do you see the spherical region which, as Councilor Graves remarked at the time, is utterly lacking in light and life? Good. Now I am going to shift the origin of coordinates of the display, to one centered on a particular position at the extreme edge of that dark region.”
The display seemed to zoom through space at an impossible speed, crossing the Gulf in seconds and plunging into the depths of the Sag Arm. When it slowed, a new and strange starscape revealed itself.
“You will probably not recognize this,” Tally went on. “Nor might you expect to, since you could presume that no one from our spiral arm has ever been at such a location in the Sag Arm. This is, in fact, merely a portion of the Sag Arm as seen from the place that I computed by triangulation as our location. You would, however, be wrong in your assumption. I will now display the sky as it actually appears to sensors on the Pride of Orion at this very moment.”
The image flickered. Tally continued, “If you fail to observe any difference, that is because there is no difference. We are where my computations suggested that we would be: at the very edge of the zone of darkness.”
The lights in the chamber brightened. E.C. Tally, who had been standing, sat down to a baffled silence. It was finally broken by Julian Graves.
“Very good. So we know where we are. I do not see how that is of much help to our present situation.”
“May I speak?”
“I rather wish you would.”
“We are at the extreme edge of the region where the stars have ceased to shine. The Marglotta, who came to us and sought our assistance, may be presumed to be just beyond that edge since their home system is currently in danger. And since we were directed here, it is logical to assume that the Marglotta home world is at no great distance from us. I therefore propose that we travel to and explore the nearest stellar system. It will be, with high probability, the Marglot system.”