He would be glad when Victoria got home. It seemed like
22 vonda N. Mdntyre
forever since they had talked. Before she left they had all agreed to communicate via the web, which was relatively cheap, rather than by voice link from Starfarer to earth, which was expensive. What with the eagle eye being kept on campus expenses, everyone was on their best behavior about keeping personal calls on their own accounts.
She'll be back soon, Satoshi reminded himself. She'll'even be back in time for the solar sail's first full test.
Stephen Thomas returned from the kitchen nook carrying a bowl of white rice with a raw egg on top, a plate of pickles, and a cup of milky tea. He knew better than to offer any of it to Satoshi.
"I miss her, too," he said.
"Yeah," Satoshi said, then, "Dammit, I wish you wouldn't do that. h bothers me, and it drives Victoria crazy."
Stephen Thomas laughed. "You guys act like I was reading your minds. I don't read minds—"
"Of course not, but you do answer questions before people ask them, and you comment on things people haven't even said yet."
"—I read auras."
Satoshi groaned. He wished Stephen Thomas would stop this silly joke, even if he believed it, because it did nothing either for his credibility or for that of the alien contact team. Stephen Thomas was unusually sensitive to other people's moods and feelings—when he wanted to be. That, Satoshi believed. But he did not believe Stephen Thomas could see something nonexistent.
"Let's splurge and call her." Stephen Thomas said.
Satoshi sipped his coffee, tempted.
"Come on," Stephen Thomas said. "She's on the transport, it won't cost that much."
"Okay."
They connected with Arachne.
Because the hypertext link was on, as usual, the web boxed recent references to Victoria Fraser MacKenzie. The screen refreshed, adding a new article about the banquet that British Columbia's premier had hosted in Victoria's honor. Curious, Satoshi brought it up to read.
"Oh, my god," he said.
"What?"
STARFARERS 2 3
"Look."
"Dr. Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, when asked whether she could describe the scientific advances we may expect to achieve from the voyage of the Starfarer, replied with a single word: 'No.'
"Last night, British Columbia's premier hosted Dr. Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, the Canadian physicist-astronaut who heads the deep space expedition's alien contact team, at a formal dinner. This is Fraser MacKenzie 's last trip to earth before Starfarer departs for an alien star system, overcoming relativity's limits on speed and achieving superluminal transition energy via the 'cosmic string' that has moved within range of our solar system during the past decades.''
"Cosmic string" and "superluminal transition energy"
were highlighted, indicating that the reader could obtain fuller
explanations of the terms through the hyper. Satoshi and Stephen Thomas continued reading the main body of the article.
"After dinner, Fraser MacKenzie conversed informally with the premier and others about the expedition. The first question put to her concerned the U. S. proposal that Starfarer be converted into a mini-0 'Neilt colony, to help relieve earth's population pressure. Eraser MacKenzie acquitted the starship 's cause well, pointing out that the 0 'Neill colonies were constructed not as population valves, but as bases which would create and supply the necessities: food, water, air, and shelter from the vacuum, in order to permit human beings to live in space without draining earth's resources.
" 'Starfarer,' Fraser MacKenzie stated, 'is much smaller than the existing O'Neills, neither of which have made any difference whatever in the population of earth, nor were ever intended to.' She also explained cogently why the starship had to be large enough to sustain its own ecosystem. 'Sending the expedition out in a traditional ship would be extremely costly,' she explained. "The starship was created out of leftover lunar material from the 0 'Neills. By living within a functional ecosystem, we can plan to be self-sufficient. Madame Premier, we hope to return within a year or two, but the truth is that we have no idea how long we might be gone.
We don't know what we 're going to find or how far we 're going to have to go to find it. If we set out with nothing but processed stores, we run the risk of running out of every-
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thing: food, water, and air. Mechanical recycling, as on a traditional ship, isn't efficient enough.'
"It was at that juncture that the premier asked Fraser MacKenzie for a description of the benefits to be gained from the expedition, and Fraser MacKenzie declined to offer one.
"The premier, reacting with surprise, pressed her for a more complete reply to her concerns about what the country might expect to gain from our enormous investment.
" 'Madame Premier,' Fraser MacKenzie said, 'f cannot tell you what scientific advances will result from the deep space expedition. If I could, there would be no need for us to go on the voyage at all. I could speculate,' Fraser MacKenzie continued. 'So could anyone with a minimal level of scientific literacy. But speculation is a game. The history of humanity is a record of explorations intended for one purpose that have completely different effects. People didn 'I walk east across the Bering land bridge, or sail west across the Atlantic, because they expected to find North America. We didn't go to Mars expecting to break through to superconducting bio-electronics.'
"The premier pointed out that we did go to Mars with a purpose in mind. Fraser MacKenzie agreed, and suggested that anyone who wished could access a library database and inspect half a thousand gigabytes of information on the experiments already planned for Starfarer- However. Fraser MacKenzie would not describe any benefits that would surely accrue to society on account of these experiments.
"The head of Starfarer's alien contact team offered two reasons for her refusal. The first was the pure science mode of many of the proposals. 'Science,' she insisted, 'is not meant to create useful applications of scientific knowledge.' Her second reason was more esoteric. 'A proven hypothesis may have useful applications,' Dr. Eraser MacKenzie stated. 'However, a scientist does not do an experiment to prove a hypothesis.
A scientist does an experiment to test a hypothesis. You may guess about the answer that nature might give back to you.
You may even hope for nature to give you a particular answer. But you can't know what answer you 'II get until you 've performed the experiment. If you did, or if you thought you did. you 'd be back two thousand years when experimentation was looked upon as unnecessary and vulgar, or, worse, back
STARFARERS 2 5
a thousand years when belief was more important than knowledge, and people who challenged beliefs with knowledge were burned at the stake.'
' 'The premier observed that the new president of the United Slates, Mr. Distler, occasionally behaved as if he would like to consign research scientists in general and scientists attached to Starfarer in particular to precisely that fate. Eraser MacKenzie admitted that she had, on occasion, felt singed by some of his comments. 'Science involves risks,' she explained. 'One of the risks involved is that of failure. President Distler, unfortunately, chooses not to acknowledge the possibility of risks, or of failure.' Fraser MacKenzie added that she did not expect the expedition to fail—after all, her life will be at risk if it does fail. But the risk of failure is a possibility.
"The premier then asked Dr. Fraser MacKenzie if one risk could be that Canada's investment in the starship might result in no benefits at all.
"Victoria Eraser MacKenzie replied with a single word:
'Yes.' "
Satoshi read the article, frowning, but Stephen Thomas laughed with delight.