The screen lit up and showed glaring bare white with a sprinkling of black dots, like ink spatters on a blotter. A large one appeared in the exact center of the screen, with a few lesser ones sprinkled around it. Knefhausen picked up a flash pointer and aimed its little red arrowhead of light at the central dot.
"This is a photographic negative," he said, "which is to say that it is black, where the actual scene is white and vice versa. Those objects are astronomical. The picture was taken from our Briareus Twelve satellite near the orbit of Jupiter, on its way out to Neptune four months ago. The central object is the star Alpha Centauri. It was photographed with a special instrument which filters out most of the light from the star; the instrument is electronic in nature and performs somewhat like the well-known corona-scope which is used for photographing prominences on our own Sun. We hoped that by this means we might be able actually to photograph the planet Alpha-Aleph. We were successful, as you can see." The flash pointer laid its little arrow next to the nearest small dot to the star. "That, gentlemen and ladies, is Alpha-Aleph. It is precisely where we predicted it to be from radio-telescope data."
There was another buzz from the table. In the dark it was louder than before. The Secretary of State cried sharply, "Mr. President! Can't we release this photograph?"
"We will release it immediately after this meeting," said the President.
Roobarooba. Knefhausen pressed his advantage. "If I may just add," he said, "there arises the question the President has touched on, lies or mistakes? One hesitates to say 'lies,' but we are realists here, is that not true? And one can see a motivation. The Russians read our newspapers. They know what the polls say. They are aware that this project of ours, this Alpha-Aleph—this New Earth that we have and they do not—it is the single most significant source of pride for all we Americans. If they can tarnish it, how excellent for them! We live in gravely troubled times—"
"We are all aware of the Sacramento riots and the Toledo bombing, Dr. Knefhausen—and of the public-opinion polls, too," the President interrupted. "Perhaps we should stick to this one simple subject. Are there any further questions?"
Pause. These politicians were sensitive to unspoken strains and they could perceive that there was one here, even if they did not understand it. Then the committee chairman again, looking back and forth from Knefhausen to the President, but addressing his question to the head of the table: "Mr. President, I'm sure if you say that's the planet we want, then it's the planet. Bot others outside this room may wonder, for indeed all those dots look about alike to me. I wonder if Knefhausen could satisfy a layman's curiosity. How do we know that that thing is Alpha-Aleph?"
Knefhausen kept his face impassive, although his heart was filled with glee. "Slide number four, please—and keep number three in the carriage." The same scene, subtly different. "Note that in this picture, gentlemen, that one object, there, is in a different position. It has moved. You know that the stars show no discernible motion, of course. The object has moved because this picture was taken several months later —just a few days ago, in fact—also from our Briareus Twelve spacecraft; the computer-processing has just been completed, and we see that the planet Alpha-Aleph has revolved in its orbit. This is not theory, this is evidence, and I add that the original tapes from which the photoprint was made are stored in Goldstone, so there is no question that arises of foolishness." Roobarooba, but in a higher and excited key. Gratified, Knefhausen nailed down his point. "So, Major, if you will now return to slide three, yes— And if you will flip back and forth, between three and four, as fast as you can— Thank you." The little black dot called Alpha-Aleph bounced back and forth like a tennis ball, while all the other star points remained motionless. "This is what is called the blink comparator process, you see. I point out that if what you are looking at is not a planet, it is, excuse me, Mr. President, the damnedest funniest star you ever saw. Also it is exactly at the distance and with exactly the orbit velocity we specified based on the RT data. Now, are there any more questions?"
"No, sir!" "That's great, Kneffie!" "Clear as a cow's ass to the stud bull!" "I think that wraps it up." "That'll show the Commies where to get off!"
The President's voice overrode them all.
"I think we can have the lights on now, Major Merton," he said. "Dr. Knefhausen, thank you. I'd appreciate it if you would remain nearby for a few minutes, so you can join me in the study to check over the text of our announcement before we release these pictures." He nodded sober dismissal to his Chief Science Advisor and then, confronted by the happy faces of his cabinet, remembered to bare his overbite in a smile of pleasure.
4
Message received from Sheffield Jackman, Starship Constitution, y 95.
ACCORDING TO LETSKI WE ARE NOW TRAVELING AT JUST ABOUT 15 percent of the speed of light, almost 30,000 miles per second. Of course, we don't feel that, and there aren't any telephone poles going by outside the window; as far as we can tell, we're pretty much standing still. The fusion thrust is operating smoothly d well. We've got ourselves a new operating engineer, because Becklund has taken quite an interest in plasma physics and to Letski to teach him the drill. So the two of them spend a lot of time back at the shield. Fuel, power, and life-support indices are right on the curve. There's no sweat of any kind with the ship, or, really, with anything else. Dot Letski calculated the other day that we've accumulated more an 35,000 mph in delta-Vs now (of course, it doesn't all show up relative speed), so that we've passed escape velocity from then.
Up until then if we'd just cut the motors we'd have fallen back—sooner or later. Now we'd just go on forever. Interesting ought. What we do see out the ports is interesting, too. Relativistic effects have begun to show up as predicted. Jim Barstow's spectral studies show the stars in front of us are showing shift to the blue end, and the Sun and the other stars behind us are shifting to the red. Without the spectroscope you can't see much, though. Beta Centauri looks a little funny, maybe. As for the Sun, it's still very bright—Jim logged it as minus-six magnitude the other y—and as I've never seen it quite that way before, I can't tell ether the color looks right or not. It certainly isn't the golden flow I associate with type GO, but neither is Alpha Centauri ahead of us, and I don't really see a difference between them. I think the reason is simply that they are so bright that the color impressions are secondary to the brightness impressions, although the spectroscope, as I say, does show the differences. It doesn't look a whole lot like the "starbow" Dr. Knefhausen promised us, but maybe it's early yet. We've all taken turns at looking back. Naturally enough, I guess. We can still make out the Earth and even the Moon in the telescope, but it's chancy. Ski almost got an eyeful of the Sun at full light-gathering aperture yesterday because the visual separation is only about twelve seconds of arc now. In a few more days they'll be too close to separate.
Let's see, what else?
We've been having a fine time with the recreational math program. Ann has taken to binary arithmetic like a duck to water. She's been involved in what I take to be some sort of statistical experimentation (we don't pry too much into what the others are doing until they're ready to talk about it—since we don't really have privacy, we have to make some), and, of all things, she demanded that we produce coins for her to flip. Well, naturally none of us had taken any money with us! Except that it turns out two of us did. Ski had a Russian silver ruble that his mother's uncle had given him for luck, and I found an old Philadelphia transit token in my pocket. Ann rejected my token as too light to be reliable, but she now spends happy hours flipping the ruble, heads or tails, and writing down the results as a series of six-place binary numbers, heads for 1 and tails for 0. After about a week my curiosity got too much for me so I began hinting to find out what she was doing. When I ask she says things like, "By means of the easy and the simple we grasp the laws of the whole world." When I say that's nice but what laws does she hope to grasp by flipping the coin? she says, "When the laws of the whole world are grasped, therein lies perfection." So, as I say, we don't press each other, and anyway it keeps her off the streets. I leave it there. It probably has something to do with her books. We all brought some, of course, in our personal allowances, and mostly we made them common property right away, but Ann kept a couple out. That's all right, though. The common ones have got pretty familiar to all of us already. When she's ready to share the others they'll be like Christmas presents, and we can all use a little surprise now and then.