“But I thought we were talking about something else, uh, the ratio of females to males on starships, wasn’t that it?”
She was looking at her feet. “We are on the same topic, Jacob,” she said quietly.
“We are?”
“Sure. You remember I said there was a way to make a largely female crew more cautious in dealing with aliens… a way to guarantee that they’ll run rather than fight?”
“Yes, but…”
“And you know that humanity has been able to plant three colonies so far, but transportation costs are too great to carry many passengers, so increasing the gene pool at an isolated colony is a real problem?” She spoke rapidly, as if embarrassed.
“When we got back the first time and found that the Constitution stood again, the Confederacy made it voluntary for the women on the next jump instead of compulsory. Still, most of us volunteered.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
She looked up at him as she smiled.
“Well, maybe now isn’t the time. But you should realize that I’m shipping out on Calypso in a few months and there are certain preparations I have to make beforehand.
“And I can be as selective as I want.”
She looked straight into his eyes.
Jacob felt his jaw drop.
“Well!” Helene rubbed her hands on her lap and prepared to stand up. “I guess we’d better be heading back. We’re pretty near the Active Region, now, and I should be at my station to supervise.”
Jacob hurried to his feet and offered her his hand. Neither of them saw anything funny in the archaism.
On their way to the command station, Jacob and Helene stopped to examine the Parametric Laser. Chief Donaldson looked up from the machine as they approached.
“Hi! I think she’s all tuned and ready to go. Want a tour?”
“Sure.” Jacob hunkered down next to the laser. Its chassis was bolted to the deck. Its long, slender, multi-barreled body swung on a gymballed swivel.
Jacob felt the soft fabric covering Helene’s right leg brush lightly against his arm as she stepped over beside him. It didn’t help him keep his thoughts straight.
“This here Parametric Laser,” Donaldson began, “is my contribution to the attempt to contact the Sun Ghosts. I figured that psi was getting us nowhere, so why not try to communicate with them the way they communicate with us — visually?
“Well now, as you probably know already, most lasers operate on just one or two very narrow spectral bands, particular atomic and molecular transitions, mostly. But this baby will punch out any wavelength you want, just by dialing it in with this control.” He pointed to the central of three controls on the face of the chassis.
“Yes,” Jacob said. “I know about Parametric Lasers, though I’ve never seen one. I imagine it has to be pretty powerful to penetrate through our screens and still look bright to the Ghosts.”
“In my other life…” deSilva drawled ironically (she often referred to her past, before jumping with the Calypso, with defensive sardonicism) “…we were able to make multicolored, tunable lasers with optical dyes. They put out a fair amount of power, they were efficient, and incredibly simple.”
She smiled. “That is, until you spilled the dye. Then, what a mess! Nothing makes me appreciate Galactic science more than knowing I’ll never have to clean a puddle of Rhodamine 6-G off the floor again!”
“Could you really tune through the whole optical spectrum with a single molecule?” Donaldson was incredulous. “How did you power a… ‘dye laser,’ anyway?”
“Oh, with flashlamps sometimes. Usually with an internal chemical reaction using organic energy molecules, like sugars.
“You had to use several dyes to cover the whole visible spectrum. Poly-methyl coumarin was used a lot for the blue and green end of the band. Rhodamine and a few others were dyes for tuning in red colors.
“Anyway, that’s ancient history. I want to know what devilish plan you and Jacob have cooked up this time!” She dropped down next to Jacob on the deck. Instead of looking at Donaldson, she fixed Jacob with that disconcerting, appraising look.
“Well,” he swallowed. “It’s really quite simple. I took along a library of whale songs and dolphin-ditties when I boarded Bradbury, in case the Ghosts turned out to he poets along with everything else. When Chief Donaldson mentioned his idea of aiming a beam at them to communicate, I volunteered the tapes.”
“Well be adding a modified version of an old math contact code. He rigged that one up too.” Donaldson grinned. “I wouldn’t know a Fibonacci series if one came up and bit me! But Jacob says it’s one of the old standards.”
“It was,” deSilva said. “We never used any of the math routines, though, after the Vesarius. The library makes sure everyone understands each other in space, so there was no use for the old pre-Contact codes.”
She pushed lightly on the slim barrel. It rotated smoothly on its swivel. “You aren’t going to let this thing swing freely when the laser is on, are you?”
“No, of course we’ll be bolting it firmly, so the laser beam fires along a radius from the center of the ship. That should prevent those internal reflections you’re probably worryin’ about.
“As it is, we’ll all want to be wearing these goggles when it’s on.” Donaldson pulled a pair of thick, dark, wraparound glasses from a sack next to the laser. “Even if there were no danger to the retina, Dr. Mar-tine would insist on it. She’s a positive bug on the effects of glare on perception and personality. She turned the whole base upside down, finding bright lights no one even knew were there. Blamed them for the ‘mass hallucination’ when she arrived. Boy did she change her tune when she saw the beasties!”
“Well, it’s time for me to get back to work,” Helene announced. “I shouldn’t have stayed so long. We must be getting close. I’ll keep you men posted.” Both men rose as she smiled and departed.
Donaldson watched her walk away.
“You know, Demwa, first I thought you were crazy, then I knew you had it all together. Now I’m starting to change my mind again.”
Jacob sat down. “How’s that?”
“Any mel I know would grow a tail and wag it if that fem so much as whistled. I just can’t believe your self-control, is all. None of my business, of course’
“You’re right. It isn’t.” Jacob was disturbed that the situation was so obvious. He was beginning to wish this mission was over so he could give the problem his undivided attention.
Jacob shrugged. It was a mannerism he’d made a lot of use of since leaving Earth. “To change the subject, I’d been wondering about this internal reflection business. Has it occurred to you that somebody might be pulling a big hoax?”
“A hoax?”
“With the Sun Ghosts. All someone would have to do is smuggle aboard some sort of holographic projector…”
“Forget it,” Donaldson shook his head. “That was the first thing we checked. Besides, who’d be able to fake anything as intricate and beautiful as that herd of toruses? Anyway, a projection like that, filling our whole view, would be given away by the columnated rim cameras on flip-side!”
“Well, maybe not the herd, but what about the ‘humanoid’ Ghosts? They’re rather simple and small, and the way they avoid the rim cameras, spinning faster than we can to stay overhead, is pretty uncanny.”
“What can I say, Jake? Every piece of equipment carried aboard is carefully inspected, along with everyone’s personal items as well, for that very reason. No projector’s ever been found, and where could anyone hide one on an open ship like this? I’ll admit I’ve wondered about it myself at times. But I don’t see any way anyone could be pulling a hoax.”