“And therefore that you’re a little more deeply committed to escapist fantasies than might be altogether healthy,” he said.
“Well, I feel the same way, okay?” Elszabet told him. “If you’re worried about me, that makes two of us. But it’s such a damned attractive notion, isn’t it, Dan? These beautiful other worlds beckoning to us?”
“Dangerous. Seductive.”
“Seductive, yes. But sometimes it’s necessary to let yourself get seduced. We’ve got such a shitty deal, Dan, this poor broken-down civilization of ours, living like this in the ruins and remnants of the prewar world. All these shabby little countries that used to be pieces of the United States, and the anarchy that’s going on outside California and even inside a lot of it, and the sense that everybody has that things are just going to go on getting worse and worse, uglier and uglier, shabbier and shabbier, that progress has absolutely come to an end and that we’re simply going to keep slipping farther back into barbarism—is it any wonder that if I start dreaming that I’m living on a beautiful green world where everything is graceful and civilized and elegant I’m going to want to find out that it really exists? And that we’re soon going to be able to go to that green world and live there? It’s such an irresistible fantasy, Dan. Surely we need some fantasies like that to sustain us.”
“Go there?” he said, looking startled. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell you Tom’s whole notion. When I play you his capsule, you’ll hear it. It’s an apocalyptic concept: the Last Days are at hand, and we’re going to drop our bodies—that’s his phrase, drop our bodies—and be translated to the worlds of the space dreams and live there forever and ever, amen.”
Robinson whistled. “Is that what he’s peddling?”
“The Time of Crossing, he calls it. Yes.”
“The opposite of what this other bunch, these Brazilian voodoo people, are saying. The way they have it, the space gods are coming to us, isn’t that what Leo Kresh told us? Whereas Tom—”
Elszabet’s telephone made a little bleeping sound. “Excuse me,” she said, and glanced behind her at the data wall to see who was calling. Dr. Kresh, the wall screen said, calling from San Diego.
They exchanged looks of surprise. “Speak of the devil,” Elszabet murmured, and thumbed the phone. Kresh’s face blossomed on the screen. He had gone back to Southern California late the previous week, and right now he seemed as though he had been through some changes since his visit to Nepenthe: he was uncharacteristically rumpled-looking, flushed, plainly excited.
“Dr. Lewis,” he blurted, “I’m glad I was able to reach you. Quite an astonishing development—”
“Dr. Robinson is with me here,” Elszabet said.
“Yes, that’s fine. He’ll want to hear this too, I know.”
“What’s happened, Dr. Kresh?”
“It’s the most amazing thing. Especially in view of some of the ideas I heard Dr. Robinson propose while I was up there. In relation to Project Starprobe, I mean. Are you aware, Dr. Robinson, Dr. Lewis, that there’s a ground station in Pasadena that has been tuned all these years to receive signals from the Starprobe vehicle? It’s operated by Cal Tech, and somehow they’ve kept it maintained, just in case—”
“And there’s been a signal?” Robinson said.
“It began coming in late last night. As you know, Dr. Robinson, the Starprobe hypothesis had occurred to me independently, and in the course of my investigation I learned about the Cal Tech facility and established contact with it. So when the signal began arriving—it’s a tight-beam radio transmission at 1390 megacycles per second, coming to us from Proxima Centauri via a series of relay stations previously established at intervals of—”
“For Christ’s sake,” Robinson broke in, “are you going to tell us what it was that came in or aren’t you?”
Kresh looked flustered. “Sorry. You understand, this has been a very confusing experience for me, for everyone—” He caught his breath. “I’ll put the images on the screen. You’re aware, I think, that the probe was programmed to enter the Proxima Centauri system, scan for planets that might be habitable, take up orbit around any that it found and drop down into the atmosphere of any planet that showed clear indication of life-forms. The nine hours of transmission that have come in so far actually cover a real-time period of about two months. This is Proxima Centauri, viewed at a distance of point-five astronomical units.”
Kresh disappeared from the screen. In his place appeared the image of a small, pallid-looking red star. Two other stars, much brighter, were visible in a corner of the screen.
“The red dwarf is Proxima,” Kresh said. “Those are its companion stars, Alpha Centauri A and B, which are similar in spectral type to our sun. The Cal Tech people tell me that all three stars appear to have planetary systems. However, the Starprobe vehicle found the planets of Proxima to be of the greatest interest, and so—”
On the screen now appeared a featureless green ball.
“My God,” Robinson muttered.
Kresh said, “This is the second planet of the Proxima Centauri system, located point-eighty-seven astronomical units from the star. Proxima Centauri is a flare star, I’m told, subject to fluctuations of brightness that would be dangerous to life-forms at any closer range. But the Starprobe vehicle detected signs of life on Proxima Two, and reconformed itself for a planetary approach—”
On the screen, thick swirling mists, heavy, impenetrable-looking. Green.
Green.
“Oh, my God,” Robinson said again. Elszabet sat tensely, hands balled into fists, teeth digging against her lower lip.
Another shot. Below the cloud cover.
“You will see,” said Kresh, “that even though Proxima Centauri is a red star, the cloud cover is so dense that from the surface of the second planet it appears green. The cloud cover also, the Cal Tech people tell me, sets up a sort of greenhouse effect to keep the temperature of the planet within a range suitable for the metabolism of living creatures, despite the low energy output of the primary star Proxima Centauri—”
Another shot. Low orbit now, virtually skimming the clouds. High-resolution cameras coming into play. A focus shift; then new images, fantastically detailed. A gentle landscape, lush green hills, shining green lakes. Buildings down below, mysterious structures of disturbingly alien design, unexpected angles, baffling architectural convolutions. Another increment of camera capacity. Figures moving about on a lawn: long, tapering, frail-looking, with crystalline bodies bright as mirrors, rows of faceted eyes set on each of the four sides of their diamond-shaped heads. “My God,” Dan Robinson said over and over again. Elszabet did not move, scarcely even breathed, would not let herself so much as blink. That is the Misilyne Triad, she thought. Those must be the Suminoors, and those, the Gaarinar. Oh. Oh. Oh. She was numb with awe and wonder. She wanted to cry; she wanted to drop to her knees and pray; she wanted to run outside and cry hallelujah. But she was unable to move. She remained perfectly still, frozen with astonishment, as image succeeded green image on the screen. Everything unbearably strange. Everything bizarrely alien.
Everything also completely and utterly and entirely familiar, as though she were looking at photographs of the town where she had lived when she was a child.
Seven