"So what's the plan?" asked Janet. "What do we do when we get there?"
Carson was all business. "We're homing on the signal. We're going to make the jump back into standard space as close to the source as we can. It's hard to formulate a strategy beyond that. We've been directed not to make contact, if they're there. And not to allow ourselves to be seen. But we want to find out who's home. And bring back whatever details we can. To that end, by the way, we will make no transmissions while we are in the Beta Pac system."
Maggie leaned forward attentively. They were gathered around a table. "Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. We may be talking about a civilization with twenty thousand years of development. Possibly a lot more. Does anyone really believe we can sneak in, take a look, and leave undetected?"
"We don't know they've had twenty thousand years of development," said Janet. "They could be frozen in place. Or in a dark age."
Carson agreed. "We can imagine all kinds of possibilities. Let's just take normal precautions. And play the rest by ear."
Maggie looked annoyed. "Why would an advanced race care whether we wandered in or not? That seems a trifle arrogant to me. I suggest we sail right up to the front door, and show the flag. No pussyfooting around. That might get their respect right off the bat."
"You could be right, but that's a direct violation of my instructions. We won't do it that way."
Hutch was not officially a member of the expedition, and consequently not entitled to express an opinion. Still, she was responsible for the safety of the ship. "I think," she said, "we should take the possibility of hostile response seriously."
"They won't be a threat," insisted Maggie.
Janet peered at her over the top of a teacup. "Why not?"
"If they're advanced, they're rational. Unprovoked hostility is //rational. And if they're not advanced, we don't have to worry about their hostility." Her tone was that of a harried instructor.
George listened quietly through most of the discussion. Eventually, he asked about the Academy's view. "Who does Horner expect us to find? Is there a real chance these are the Monument-Makers?"
"Ed doesn't know any more than we do," Carson said.
"I'll give you a straight answer," Maggie told George. "If there's anyone at Beta Pac, it won't be the Monument-Makers."
Hutch was surprised and irritated by the conviction in her voice. "How can you be so sure?" she asked.
"It might be the same race" Maggie explained. "But the Monument-Makers are gone. Just as the classical Greeks are gone. I mean, no one seems to be running around making Monuments anymore. Haven't for thousands of years. But the Monuments do imply that a long-lived, stable civilization once existed. Anybody want to speculate what happens to a culture that survives for twenty thousand years? Does it become highly advanced? Or moribund? Does it develop in some oblique way?"
"Check out China," said Janet. "Or Egypt. Or India. Our experience is that durability is not necessarily good."
Later, Hutch took Carson aside. "Let's talk worst-case scenario for a moment. What happens if we arrive and are promptly attacked?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Give me an answer first."
"We clear out."
"Okay. But you should be aware, for planning purposes, that after we jump into Beta Pac space, we will need a minimum of fourteen hours to recharge the engines. We are not going to be able to clear out on a moment's notice. No matter what."
He nodded. "Okay. Let's hope we don't have a problem."
Hutch had not forgotten Maggie's willingness to sacrifice her comrades. She didn't like harboring grudges, and her professional responsibilities militated against allowing her feelings to show. She made a pact with herself, to accept Maggie Tufu, with the reservation that, in a crisis, she would not trust the woman's judgment.
Of her four passengers, Maggie was the only one who still qualified as a stranger. Hutch had not had an opportunity to spend any time with her at the Temple, or on the flight from Quraqua.
She was polite enough. But the woman saw everything as simplistic or ironic, and seemed to take nothing seriously other than the professional issues raised by her work.
Despite her presence, this group, unlike others Hutch had carried, showed no tendency to fragment. No one hung back, no one spent inordinate amounts of time in a compartment, no one got buried in the cybernet to the exclusion of all else. Even Maggie came around after a few days, shedding much of her arrogance. She took time to engage in occasional small talk, although it was clear she found it not particularly stimulating. She also revealed an uncommon skill at poker. Gradually, Carson discovered that she had an interest in military affairs. George commented that she was much more sociable here than she had ever been on Quraqua, and Hutch wondered whether they were being driven together by the approach of the unknown.
They gathered every evening after dinner, and the conversations ranged over a world of topics. Somehow, out here, terrestrial problems seemed more clinical, more amenable to solution. Plans were brought forward to combat starvation and reduce population, to stop wars and perhaps end international rivalry once and for all, to deal with teenage sexuality, and improve the public schools. They agreed that all the plans, however, had something of a fascist ring. There was a tendency, between the stars, to lose patience with disorder.
They debated whether it was really possible for a social structure to survive intact for tens of thousands of years. Janet argued that that kind of stability would necessarily imply "damn near absolute rigidity. The place would be a literal hell."
They talked about the Monument-Makers, and about the discontinuities. And eventually they began to talk about the things that really mattered to them. Hutch learned that the woman in Carson's photo had run off with a securities dealer, that Maggie was morbidly afraid of death, that Janet had trouble attracting reasonable men. "I don't know why," she confessed, and Hutch suspected it was true. Most men she had known would have felt threatened by Janet Allegri, would never have felt comfortable in her presence.
George, she decided, wanted to excel so that a young woman who had walked off years ago would regret her choice.
And Hutch? She wasn't sure what she gave away. She was careful not to mention Cal, and she didn't talk about Richard. But Janet told her years later that she had first come to understand Hutch when she described her fear and humiliation while Janet took on the strider. "I promised myself I would never stand by again," Janet quoted her as saying. And she added, herself: "I liked that."
As for the mission, one series of questions was centraclass="underline" if these were, indeed, the Monument-Makers, would they remember their visit to the solar system? Would they remember their own great days?
"Oz," said George, when asked to produce a question for the aliens. "I want to know why they built Oz."
The evening gatherings quickly took on a ceremonial aspect. They toasted one another and the commissioner and Beta Pac. Mission symbols and patches, worn on Academy blue, became de rigueur. Whatever reserve was left drained away, and they relaxed in each other's company. They joked, and laughed, and required everyone to produce entertainments. There were magic tricks and monologues and sing-alongs. Maggie, reluctant at first to join in, demonstrated an ability to impersonate the voices and mannerisms of everyone on board. She'd captured Carson's military demeanor and George's back-country accent; she caught Hutch's trick of tilting her head when puzzled, and Janet's slightly voluptuous stance.
They staged a dance (ties for gentlemen, skirts for ladies), and they began running an improvisational comedy, Great Excavations, in which a group of misfits at a mythical dig took turns tryine to fleece and bed one another.