Ryerson’s handmade web was not standardized. He could put a known pattern into it, electronically, but the gravitics would emit an unknown one, the call signal of a station not to be built for the next thousand years. He lacked instruments to measure the relationship, so he could not recalculate the appropriate settings. It was cut and try, with a literal infinity of choices and only a few jackleg estimates to rule out some of the possibilities.
Maclaren sighed. A long time had passed while he sat thinking. Or so his watch claimed. He hadn’t noticed it go by, himself.
“You know something, Dave?” he said.
“Hm-m-m?” Ryerson turned a knob, slid a vernier one notch, and punched along a row of buttons.
“We are out on the far edge of no place. I forgot how far to the nearest station, but a devil of a long ways. This haywire rig of ours may not have the power to reach it.”
“I knew that all the time,” said Ryerson. He slapped the main switch. Needles wavered on dials, oscilloscope tracings glowed elthill green, it whined in the air. “I think our apparatus is husky enough, though. Remember, this ship has left Sol farther behind than any other ever did. They knew she would — a straight-line course would just naturally outrun the three-dimensional expansion of our territory — so they built the transceiver with capacity to spare. Even in its present battered state, it might reach Sol directly, if conditions were just right.”
“Think we will? That would be fun.”
Ryerson shrugged. “I doubt it, frankly. Just on a statistical basis. There are so many other stations by now — Hey!”
Maclaren found himself on his feet, shaking. “What is it?” he got out. “What is it? For the love of heaven, Dave, what is it?”
Ryerson’s mouth opened and closed, but no sounds emerged. He pointed with one bony arm. It shook.
Below him — it was meant to be above, like a star — a light glowed red.
“Contact,” said Maclaren.
The word echoed through his skull as if spoken by a creator, across a universe still black and empty.
Ryerson began to weep, silently, his lips working. “Tamara,” he said. “Tamara, I’m coming home.”
Maclaren thought: If Chang and Seiichi had been by me now, what a high and proud moment.
“Go on, Terangi,” chattered Ryerson. His hands shook so he could not touch the controls. “Go on through.”
Maclaren did not really understand it. Not yet. It was too swift a breaking. But the wariness of a race which had evolved among snakes and war spoke for him:
“Wait, Dave. Wait a minute. Just to be certain. Put a signal through. A teletype, I mean; we’ve no voice microphone, have we? You can do it right at that keyboard.”
“What for?” screamed Ryerson. “What for? If you won’t go through, I will!”
“Just wait, is all.” Suddenly Maclaren was begging. All the craziness of months between stars that burned his eyes woke up; he felt in a dim way that man must live under conditions and walk in awe, but this is one of the prides in being a man. He raised powerless hands and cried — it was not much above a whisper — “There could be some distortion, you know. Accidents do happen, once in a great while, and this web was made by hand, half of it from memory — Send a message. Ask for a test transmission back to us. It won’t take long and — My God, Dave, what kind of thing could you send home to Tamara if the signal was wrong?”
Ryerson’s chin quivered in its beard, but he punched the typer keys with hard angry strokes. Maclaren sat back down, breathing quickly and shallowly. So it was to become real after all. So he would again walk beneath the tall summer clouds of Earth.
No, he thought. I never will. Terangi Maclaren died in an orbit around the black sun, and on the steel planet where it is always winter. The I that am may go home, but never the I that was.
Ryerson bent over so he could look into the screen which gave him an image of the receiving chamber.
Maclaren waited. A long while passed.
“Nothing,” said Ryerson. “They haven’t sent a thing.”
Maclaren could still not talk.
“A colonial station, of course,” said Ryerson. “Probably one of the outpost jobs with two men for a staff… or, another spaceship. Yes, that’s likeliest, we’re in touch with an interstellar. Only one man on watch and—”
“And there should be a bell to call him, shouldn’t there?” asked Maclaren, very slowly.
“You know how they get on the long haul,” said Ryerson. He smote his chair arm with a fist that was all knobs. “The man is sleeping too hard to hear a thing. Or—”
“Wait,” said Maclaren. “We’ve waited long enough. We can afford a few more minutes, to make certain.”
Ryerson blazed at him, as if he were an enemy. “Wait? Wait, by jumping hell! No!”
He set the control timer for transmission in five minutes and crept from his seat and down the ladder. Under the soiled tunic, he seemed all spidery arms and legs, and one yellow shock of hair.
Maclaren stood up again and stumbled toward him. “No,” he croaked. “Listen, I realize how you feel, but I realize it’s space lunacy too, and I forbid you, I forbid—”
Ryerson smiled. “How do you propose to stop me?” he asked.
“I… but can’t you wait, wait and see and—”
“Look here,” said Ryerson, “let’s assume there is a freak in the signal. A test transmission comes through. At best, the standard object is merely distorted… at worse, it won’t be recreated at all, and we’ll get an explosion. The second case will destroy us. In the first case, we haven’t time to do much more work. I doubt if I could climb around on the web outside any more. I know you could not, my friend! We’ve no choice but to go through. Now!”
“If it’s a ship at the other end, and you cause an explosion,” whispered Maclaren, “you’ve murdered one more man.”
Drearily, and as if from far away, he recognized the hardness which congealed the other face. Hope had made David Ryerson young again. “It won’t blow up,” said the boy, and was wholly unable to imagine such a happening.
“Well… probably not… but there’s still the chance of molecular distortion or—” Maclaren sighed. Almost experimentally, he pushed at Ryerson’s chest. Nothing happened; he was so much more starved that he could not move the lank body before him.
“All right,” said Maclaren. “You win. I’ll go through.”
Ryerson shook his head. “No, you don’t,” he answered. “I changed my mind.” With a lilt of laughter: “I stand behind my own work, Terangi!”
“No, wait! Let me … I mean … think of your wife, at least … please—”
“I’ll see you there,” cried Ryerson. The blue glance which he threw over his shoulder was warm. He opened the transmitter room door, went through, it clashed shut upon him. Maclaren wrestled weakly with the knob. No use, it had an automatic lock.
Which of us is the fool? I will never be certain, whatever may come of this. The chances are all for him, of course… in human terms, reckoned from what we know… but could he not learn with me how big this universe is, and how full of darkness?
Maclaren stumbled back toward the ladder to the chair. He would gain wrath, but a few more minutes, by climbing up and turning off the controls. And in those minutes, the strangely terrifying negligent operator at the other end might read the teletype message and send a test object. And then Ryerson would know. Both of them would know. Maclaren put his feet on the rungs. He had only two meters to climb. But his hands would not lift him. His legs began to shake. He was halfway to the panel when its main switch clicked down and the transmitting engine skirled.