Jacob looked up from his work when the herd came into view again. The sight had less effect on him than it had the first time around. To experience the emotions he’d felt during that first dive he’d have to see something else for the very first time. And to see anything anywhere near as impressive, he’d have to Jump.
It was one of the drawbacks of having monkeys for ancestors.
Still, Jacob could spend hours looking at the lovely patterns the toroids made. And for a few moments at a time, when he remembered the significance of what he was seeing, he was awe-struck once again.
The computer board on Jacob’s lap bore a shifting pattern of curving, connected lines, isophotes of the Ghost they’d seen an hour before.
It hadn’t been much of a contact. One isolated Solarian had been caught by surprise as the ship came out from behind a thick wisp of filament near the edge of the herd.
It darted away from them, then hovered suspiciously at a few kilometers distance. Commandant deSilva had ordered the ship turned so that Donaldson’s Parametric Laser could bear on the fluttering creature.
At first the Ghost had backed away. Donaldson muttered and cursed as he adjusted the laser, to carry the various modulations of Jacob’s contact tape.
Then the creature reacted. It’s (tentacles? wings?) shot out from the center as if snapped taut. It began to ripple colorfully.
Then, in a flash of brilliant green, it was gone.
Jacob examined computer readouts from that reaction. The Solarian had presented the rim cameras with a good view. The earliest recordings showed that part of its rippling was in phase with the bass rhythm of the whale melody. Jacob was now trying to find out if the complicated display it emitted just before jetting away had a pattern that might be interpretable as a reply.
He finished drawing the analysis program he wanted the computer to pursue. It was to look for variations on the whale-song theme and rhythm in three regimes, color, time, and brightness across the surface of the Ghost. If it found anything definite he’d be able to set up a computer linkup in realtime during the next encounter.
That is, if there was a next encounter. The whale song had only been an introduction to the sequence of scales and mathematical series Jacob had planned to send. But the Ghost hadn’t stuck around to “listen” to the rest.
He put the computer board aside and lowered his couch so that he could look at the nearest toroids without moving his head. A pair of them swung slowly by at forty-five degrees from the angle of the deck.
Apparently the “spinning” of the torus creatures was more complicated than had been previously thought. The intricate, swiftly changing patterns that swept rapidly around the rim of each represented something in their internal makeup.
When two of the toroids touched each other, nudging for better positions in the magnetic fields, there was no change in the rotating figures. They interacted with each other as if they weren’t spinning at all.
The pushing and shoving became more pronounced with time as they -transited the herd. Helene deSilva suggested that it was because the active region they were above was dying out. The magnetic fields were getting more and more diffuse.
Culla dropped into the couch next to him, bringing his mashies together in a clack. Jacob was starting to recognize some of the rhythms Culla’s dental work made in various situations. It had taken a long time to realize that they were part of a Pring’s fundamental repertoire like facial expressions for a human being.
“May I shit here, Jacob?” Culla asked. “This ish my firsht opportunity to thank you for your cooperation back on Mercury.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Culla. A two-year secrecy oath is pretty much de rigueur for an incident like this. Anyway, once Commandant deSilva got orders from Earth it was pretty clear that no one would be going home until they signed.”
“Shtill, you had every right to tell the world, the galaxy. The Library Inshtitute hash been shamed by Bubbacub’sh actionsh. It ish admirable of you, the dish-coverer of hish… mishtake, to show reshtraint and let them make ammendsh.”
“What will the Institute do… besides punishing Bubbacub?”
Culla took a sip from his ubiquitous liquitube. His eyes shone.
“They will probably cancel Earth’sh debt and donate Branch shervices free for shome time. A longer time if the Confederacy agreesh to a period of silence. I cannot overshtate their eagernesh to avoid a shcandal.
“In addition, you will probably be rewarded.”
“Me?” Jacob felt numb. To a “primitive” Earthman, almost any reward the Galactics chose to give would be like a magic lamp. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“Yesh, although there will probably be shome bit-ternesh that you did not keep your dishcoveriesh more private. The magnitude of their generoshity will probably be invershe to the notoriety Bubbacub’sh case getsh.”
“Oh, I see.” The bubble was burst. It was one thing to get a token of gratitude from powers-that-be, and quite another to be offered a bribe. Not that the value of the reward would be any less. In fact, the prize would probably be even more valuable.
Or would it? No alien thought exactly the way a human would. The directors of the Institute of the Libraries were an enigma to him. All he knew for certain was that they wouldn’t like to get a bad press. He wondered if Culla was speaking now in his official capacity, or simply predicting what he thought would happen next.
Culla suddenly turned and looked up at the passing herd. His eyes glowed and a short buzzing came from behind the thick, prehensile lips. The Pring pulled the microphone from the slot next to his couch.
“Excushe me, Jacob. But I think I shee shomething. I musht report to the Commandant.”
Culla spoke briefly into the microphone, not moving his gaze from a position about thirty degrees to their right and twenty-five degrees high. Jacob looked but saw nothing. He could hear a distant murmuring of Helene’s voice filling the region of the head of Culla’s couch. Then the ship began to turn.
Jacob checked the computer board. The results were in. The previous encounter had elicited nothing recognizable as a reply. They’d just have to keep on doing as they had before.
“Sophonts,” Helene’s voice rang out over the intercom, “Pring Culla has made another sighting. Please return to your stations.”
Culla’s mashies clacked. Jacob looked up.
At about forty-five degrees, a tiny flickering point of light began to grow just beyond the bulk of the nearest toroid. The blue dot grew as it approached until they could make out five uneven appendages, bilaterally symmetric. It loomed up swiftly, then stopped.
Sun Ghost manifestation, type two, leered down at them in its gross mockery of the shape of a man. The chromosphere glowed red through the jagged holes of its eyes and mouth.
No attempt was made to bring the apparition in line with the flip-side cameras. It would probably have been futile and besides, this time the P-laser took precedence.
He told Donaldson to continue playing the primary contact tape, from the point where the last contact broke off.
The engineer raised his microphone.
“Everyone please put on your goggles. We’re going to turn on the laser now.” He put on his own, then looked around to make sure everyone in sight had complied (Culla was exempted; they took his word for it that he was in no danger). Then he threw the switch.
Even through the goggles, Jacob could see a dim glow against the inner surface of the shield wall as the beam punched through toward the Ghost. He wondered if the anthropomorphic figure would be more cooperative than the earlier, “natural-shaped” manifestation had been. For all he knew, this was the same creature. Maybe it left, earlier, to “put on its makeup” for this present appearance.