“How long,” Krug asked, “would it take this ship to reach a star 300-light years away?”
“Including the time needed for building up maximum velocity, and the time required for deceleration,” replied Romulus Fusion, “I’d estimate roughly 620 years. Allowing for the expected relativistic time-dilation effects, apparent elapsed time aboard ship should be no more than 20 or 25 years, which means the entire voyage could be accomplished within the span of a single deepsleep period for the crew.”
Krug grunted. That was fine for the crew; but if he sent the starship off to NGC 7293 next spring, it would return to Earth in the thirty-fifth century. He would not be here to greet it. Yet he saw no alternative.
He said, “It’ll fly by February?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Start picking a crew: two alphas, two betas, four gammas. They’ll blast off for a system of my choosing early in ’19.”
“As you instruct, sir.”
They left the ship. Krug ran his hands over its pebbled hull. His infatuation with the tachyon-beam tower had kept him from following the progress of the work here; he regretted that now. They had done a magnificent job. And, he saw, his assault on the stars would have to be a two-pronged effort. When the tower was complete, he could attempt to open realtime communication with the beings whom Vargas insisted lived in NGC 7293; meanwhile, his android-staffed starship would be embarked on its slow journey outward. What would he send aboard it? The full record of man’s accomplishments — yes, cubes galore, whole libraries, the entire musical repertoire, a hundred high-redundancy information systems. Make that crew four alphas, four betas; they’d need to be masters of communications techniques. While they slept, he would beam tachyon-borne messages to them from Earth, detailing the knowledge that he expected to gain from the tower’s contacts with the star-folk; perhaps, by the time the starship reached its destination in the year 2850 or so, it would have become possible to give its crew access to dictionaries of the language of the race it was to visit. Whole encyclopedias, even. Annals of six centuries of tachyon-beam contact between Earthmen and the inhabitants of NGC 7293!
Krug clapped Romulus Fusion’s shoulder. “Good work. You’ll hear from me. Where’s the transmat?”
“This way, sir.”
Pleep. Pleep. Pleep.
Krug jumped back to the tower site.
Thor Watchman was no longer jacked into the master control center’s computer. Krug found him inside the tower, on the fourth level up, overseeing the installation of a row of devices that looked like globes of butter mounted on a beaded glass string.
“What are these?” Krug demanded.
Watchman looked surprised to see his master appear so abruptly. “Circuitbreakers,” he said, making a quick recovery. “In case of excessive positron flow—”
“All right. You know where I’ve been, Thor? Denver. Denver. I’ve seen the starship. I didn’t realize it: they’ve got it practically finished. Effective right now we’re going to tie it into our project sequence.”
“Sir?”
“Alpha Romulus Fusion is in charge out there. He’s going to pick a crew, four alphas, four betas. We’ll send them off next spring under life-suspension, coldsleep. Right after we send our first signals to NGC 7293. Get in touch with him, coordinate the timing, yes? Oh — and another thing. Even though we’re ahead of schedule here, it still isn’t going fast enough to please me.”Boom. Boom. The planetary nebula NGC 7293 sizzled and flared behind Krug’s forehead. The heat of his skin evaporated his sweat as fast as it could burst from his pores. Getting too excited, he told himself. “When you finish work tonight, Thor, draw up a personnel requisition increasing the work crews by 50%. Send it to Spaulding. You need more alphas, don’t hesitate. Ask. Hire. Spend. Whatever.”Boom. “I want the entire construction scheme reprogrammed. Completion date three months tighter than the one we have now. Got it?”
Watchman seemed a little dazed. “Yes, Mr. Krug,” he said faintly.
“Good. Yes. Good. Keep up the good work, Thor. Can’t tell you how proud. How happy.”Boom. Boom. Boom. Pleep. Boom. “We’ll get you every skilled beta in the Western Hemisphere, if necessary. Eastern. Everywhere. Tower’s got to be finished!”Boom. “Time! Time! Never enough time!”
Krug rushed away. Outside, in the cold night air, some of the frenzy left him. He stood quietly for a moment, savoring the sleek glimmering beauty of the tower, aglow against the black backdrop of the unlit tundra. He looked up. He saw the stars. He clenched his fist and shook it.
Krug! Krug! Krug! Krug!
Boom.
Into the transmat. Coordinates: Uganda. By the lake. Quenelle, waiting. Soft body, big breasts, thighs parted, belly heaving. Yes. Yes. Yes. 2-5-1, 2-3-1, 2-1. Krug leaped across the world.
21
In the glare of the crisp white winter sunlight a dozen alphas paraded solemnly across the broad plaza that fell, like a giant terraced apron, from the lap of the World Congress building in Geneva. Each of the alphas carried a demonstration-spool; each wore the emblem of the Android Equality Party. Security robots were stationed in the corners of the plaza; the snubheaded black machines would roll instantly forward, spewing immobilizing stasis-tape, if the demonstrators deviated in any way from the agitation program they had filed with the Congressional doorkeeper. But the AEP people were not likely to do anything unexpected. They simply crossed the plaza again and again, marching neither too rigidly nor too slackly, keeping their eyes on the holovision hovercameras above them. Periodically, at a signal from their leader, Siegfried Fileclerk, one of the demonstrators would activate the circuitry of his demonstration-spool. From the nozzle of the spool a cloud of dense blue vapor would spurt upward to a height of perhaps twenty meters and remain there, tightly coalesced by kinesis-linkage into a spherical cloud, while a message imprinted in large and vivid golden letters emerged and moved slowly along its circumference. When the words had traveled the full 360 degrees, the cloud would dissipate, and only after the last strands of it had vanished from the air would Fileclerk signal for the next demonstrator to send up a statement.
Though Congress had been in session for some weeks now, it was improbable that any of the delegates inside the handsome building were paying attention to the demonstration. They had seen such demonstrations before. The purpose of the AEP group was merely to have the holovision people pick up and relay to viewers all over the world, in the name of news coverage, such slogans as these:
22
Thor Watchman knelt beside Lilith Meson in the Valhallavдgen chapel. It was the day of the Ceremony of the Opening of the Vat; nine alphas were present, with Mazda Constructor, who belonged to the Transcender caste, officiating. A couple of betas had been persuaded to attend, since Yielders were needed. This was not a ceremony that required the participation of a Preserver, and so Watchman played no part in it; he merely repeated to himself the invocations of the celebrants.