Afloat in the common room before his crew, the planet splendid at his back, Brodersen said into a hush: “Yeah, I do believe we should go look.”
“The hazard is too great,” Joelle objected. `We’re safe in orbit. We can keep signalling.”
“Till we start starving?” Dozsa snorted. The effort to get a response had been his. “We could, you know.”
“Really?” Caitlin asked. “And why should that be? Have you not been sending on their wavelengths, and a mathematical signal they cannot mistake?”
Dozsa smiled through the weariness on his broad features. “You’ve been too busy to hear the news, no, my dear? Well, the basic problem is the sheer size of that world. And, yes, the natural background at those frequencies, the noise level. Without holothetics, we might never have strained the information-carrying fraction out. It’s a mere by-product of broadcasts. The natives, whoever they are, have no reason to listen for calls from outside, I am Side 116
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The sure. We must use a tight beam, to get a power they cannot miss picking up and identifying. But then we touch just a very small area.” He gestured at the tawny globe. “The whole of it is huge. And the broadcasting sources aren’t fixed, they appear to be constantly moving around.”
“I’d like to know how that’s done,” Brodersen remarked, “or how electronics is possible there.”
“At any rate, I have been making the attempt on the-off chance, do you say?” Dozsa went on. “Although mainly to pass the time while others collected more planetological data. The probability of our striking a receiver which happens to be tuned to the precise right band is-” he released his handgrip for a moment to shrug the more eloquently-“about like the probability of our guessing the path around the T machine which will get us back to the Solar System.”
“Besides,” Rueda pointed out superfluously, “we’re under a time limit.
Exercise will not maintain our health indefinitely in free fall. We must soon have weight. Our reaction mass is limited, and if we go into spin mode, that’s irreversible; we’ll lie in orbit forever.”
“Therefore, either we quit here and jump through a random gate, or we make an effort to contact the natives,” Brodersen summarized. “I vote for sticking with what we’ve got till we know it’s useless.” He could give tactical orders to be obeyed on the spot, but in a loneliness like this, a captain who did not consult the strategic wishes of his followers would not long remain captain. “There is thinking, technologically sophisticated life here. And it’s a life that maybe rates high with the Others, since they didn’t put the T machine in a Lagrange position, but right in satellite orbit before God and everyman.”
He paused. “The dwellers could be Others themselves.”
Silence fell, until Caitlmn whispered, “Marvel on marvel, dear darling, if that be so!” Planetlight shone golden in her eyes.
“The conditions there,” Joelle protested.
“Williwaw should be able to meet them,” Brodersen replied. “She was tested out at Zeus – robotically, of course, because of the radiation, but still, she could take everything that hit her.” The biggest attendant of Phoebus was actually larger than Jupiter by the mass of a few Earths or Demeters. “I figure a crew can stand several hours at a crack. Sure, it’ll be hazardous, but I’ve seen worse hazards and I’m still around to lie about them.”
He got scant argument.
When it was done, Brodersen said, “Okay, next question. Who goes with me?”
Caitlin snapped her head “up,” but it was Rueda who exclaimed, “With you? What are you talking about?”
“Since it will be risky, we’ll send a minimum crew,” Brodersen told them. “Pilot, co-pilot doubling as communications officer, and – well, they’ll both be busier’n a one-armed octopus, so I figure a third as well, to be lookout and whatever else is required.”
“I!” Leino and Frieda practically shouted.
Weisenberg cleared his throat and said louder than he was wont: “Hold on, everybody. Hold on. Let’s talk sense. Which you are not doing skipper, if you really mean it about going down yourself.”
“Huh?” Brodersen grunted. “I’m qualified for co-pilot, at least. Do you suppose I’d send men into danger I don’t go into?”