“Patience,” Alicia counseled. “You’ve got to be patient.”
Gomez tried to grin at her, failed.
Raven said, “They’ve just started, after all.”
Gripping his salad fork hard enough to bend it, Gomez said, “I wish I could go down there myself and dig through the rubble.”
“Rubble?” asked Raven.
With a shrug of his shoulders, Gomez replied, “The seabed’s covered with rocks, all shapes and sizes. And a lot of sand. Like somebody’s pounded everything into wreckage.”
Alicia’s brows knit. “There’s a word for that… for when you see what you expect to see, instead of what’s really there.”
Raven suggested, “Hope?”
“No, it’s something else,” Alicia said. “I remember reading it somewhere.”
“Anticipation,” said Gomez.
“Yes, that’s it,” Raven said. Then she cautioned, “But you mustn’t let your anticipation blind you to what you’re actually seeing.”
Alicia giggled. “Like the two of us are doing with this shop we’re going to open.”
Raven glared at her.
“Well, look at us,” Alicia explained. “We’re working night and day to set up our boutique. But suppose once we open it, nobody comes to buy? What if the women in this habitat don’t care about what we offer them?”
Gomez gave her a lopsided grin. “The Japanese have a word for that.”
“They do?”
“Sure. Hara-kiri.”
The three of them walked slowly along the passageway that led to their living quarters.
Still thinking of Tómas’s “hara-kiri” joke, Raven wondered what he would actually do if the search of the sea bottom turned up nothing of interest. How will he react? she asked herself. What will he do?
They reached Alicia’s quarters and bade her goodnight, then Raven and Gomez walked slowly onward. His unit was next, then hers, several doors farther along the passageway.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he said as they strolled along.
“I’ve got a lot to think about,” Raven replied. “A lot of things to do.”
Gomez studied the flooring as they walked. “I’ve got nothing to do. Nothing but waiting.”
“They’ll find something, Tómas. I know they will.”
He made a tiny smile. “As my Jewish friends say, ‘From your mouth to God’s ear.’”
“You’ll see,” Raven insisted.
They reached the door to his apartment.
“Would you like to come in?” he asked. “For a nightcap?”
“Tómas, I shouldn’t,” said Raven. “I can’t.”
“You could if you wanted to.”
“I do want to. But I shouldn’t. Please try to understand.”
He shook his head. “I’ll never understand women.”
Raven pecked at his cheek. “Patience, Tómas. Please.”
“And anticipation,” he added softly. Reaching for her arm, he said, “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
SCANNING
Tómas Gomez sat in the stuffy observation center between Zworkyn and Abbott, staring at the viewscreen that covered one entire wall of the crowded room.
The observation center was built like a miniature theater. All four of Zworkyn’s assistants were sitting tensely at the bottom level, eyes focused on the viewscreens they were monitoring. Gomez, Zworkyn and Abbott sat at the next higher level, then a half-dozen of Abbott’s astronomers sat in the next tier, above them.
The submersible that Gomez had originally used—now packed with deep-scanning sensors—was slowly coasting a few meters above the sea floor. A pencil-thin beam of blue-green laser light angled upward, toward the ocean’s surface, a precariously slim pencil beam of communication.
The observation center’s wall screen showed a full-color view of the seabed, nothing but rocks and sand. No fish, no fronds of vegetation, no sign of life whatsoever.
“Good imagery,” Abbott said.
“We’re lucky,” replied Zworkyn. “The sea’s very calm today, very clear. Yesterday the verdammt laser beam was so scattered by turbulence that we had to get the sub to send up message drones.”
“Today is better,” Gomez half whispered, as if fearful of breaking their good luck.
“Much,” Abbott agreed.
Zworkyn muttered, “Scan twenty meters deeper.”
One of his assistants replied, “That would be nearly at the equipment’s limit. We can’t scan much deeper.”
“Do it,” Zworkyn said.
The image on the wall screen changed minimally. Rocks and sand. Sand and rocks.
“No steel,” muttered Abbott.
“No metals of any kind,” Zworkyn agreed. Somehow, Gomez thought, the man sounded just as disappointed as he himself felt.
A curved line slid into their view. Zworkyn’s brows hiked up. “What’s that?” he asked.
The one woman among his assistants looked down at an auxiliary screen set into her desktop. “Strontium eighty-seven,” she said.
“Follow it.”
The man beside her spoke into the microphone perched just above his lip. The big wall screen followed the curved line.
Zworkyn glanced at Gomez, the beginnings of a smile slightly bending his lips. Before Tómas could ask a question, he explained:
“Strontium eighty-seven is formed when rubidium eighty-seven decays radioactively. Its half life is some fifty billion years, within an error of roughly thirty to fifty million years.”
“But that’s on Earth,” Gomez objected. “We’re looking at Uranus.”
Zworkyn’s smile broadened. “The atoms don’t know that. They behave the same way no matter where they are.”
“Oh.” Pointing at the big screen, Gomez said, “So we’re following a curve that originally contained a fair amount of rubidium.”
“Precisely,” said Zworkyn. “Clever lad.”
“But it might be natural.”
“There was a trace amount of rubidium—and strontium—in the sample you picked up.”
“And your sensors are picking up a trace of strontium!”
Nodding, Zworkyn replied, “Indeed they are. And smooth, precise curves like this one could hardly be natural. Not at all.”
The observation center fell silent. For several minutes all the people in the cramped room stared at the wall screen. The curve went on and on.
“It’s huge,” Gomez breathed.
The woman at her screen called out, “Diameter, seven hundred meters, plus.”
“Keep following it,” Zworkyn commanded.
For long breathless minutes the screen kept tracking the curve. Until a straight line angled off from it.
“A-hah!” shouted Zworkyn.
Gomez felt his heart thump.
Grinning fiercely, Zworkyn exclaimed, “Curves exist in nature. But straight lines don’t. They are made by intelligent creatures.”
Intelligent creatures! Gomez echoed silently. Straight lines are made by intelligent creatures! He expected the crowded little room to erupt in cheers, celebration. But it was deathly, inhumanly silent. Every eye was focused intently on the straight line that angled away from the mammoth circle.
“Follow that line!” Zworkyn snapped.
Straight as an arrow’s flight, the line extended through a maze of stones and sand. Until it connected with another broad circle.
“Diameter seven hundred meters, plus!”
“Identical,” Zworkyn muttered.
Gomez sagged back in his chair. Two identical circles, connected by a straight line.
“That’s not a natural formation,” said one of the astronomers sitting behind Gomez, his voice hushed with awe.
“Can’t be,” agreed the woman at her console, below them.