transcribed… into you… Why, you could live a thousand separate lives, on as many separate worlds, and afterward gather them all together.”
“Do you know this is true?” Brodersen asked dully.
“Of course not. But I do know it’s possible. I even perceive certain details of how it can be done. If you had such a capability, wouldn’t you take advantage?”
“Yeah, I s’pose. Then they’ll never detect us?”
“I didn’t say that. Perhaps more primitive, material craft go through this point too. Every race in the fellowship may not be on the same technological level, for a number of reasons. Or perhaps the Others come by once in a while. I don’t think those were Others, Dan. They would not have missed our presence.”
Brodersen took a drink. “What do you guesstimate the chances are of any of your cases being true? Somebody happening past who’s not too advanced to pay attention, the way we’re not too advanced to notice a fellow man in the woods.
Or else somebody who’s so very far along that his eye is on the sparrow.”
“I’d call the chances poor.”
“Yeah, me too. We may both be dead wrong, Joelle, deadly wrong, but what’ve we got to go on except our best guesses, you from your brain, me from blind instinct? If we stay here a few more months, pacing back and forth for the sake of weight, we’ll’ve expended our reaction mass and have no choice but to go into spin mode and stay on. I call it better to keep what freedom of action we’re able. I’ll push for weighing anchor, when we discuss and vote on the question.”
Brodersen’s pipe had gone out. He made fire to rekindle it. “We won’t debate for a couple of weeks, though,” he decreed. “Something could turn up meanwhile, just barely could. And Su and Carlos rate a proper honeymoon.”
Nothing did appear again.
XLII
Jump.
In utter blackness, a colossal Catherine’s wheel burned across a quarter of the sky. From where Chinook was it appeared tilted; vision crossed an arm, then the nucleus from which it curved, then an arm beyond that. It shone, it shone: the heart red-gold, the spirals blue-white, clusters scattered throughout like sparks. Elsewhere gleamed a few cloudy forms, attendants upon its majesty, and remotely the light from its kindred.
“Intergalactic space,” Brodersen whispered.
“Some fifty thousand light-years out. More than that from where we were,” Joelle said. Her tone held exaltation. “Judging by the colors, the relative brightnesses of inner and outer portions, there are fewer giant stars than our astronomers estimated, and less dust and gas for new ones to form out of. We must still be in our future, perhaps farther on. A billion years? Let’s stay a while so I can learn!”
Brodersen regarded the cylinder and its glowing markers. “Another T
machine all by itself, and big like the last. A stepping stone to whole other galaxies… and ages – When you reckoned what guidepath would take us the longest ways, you reckoned well.”
“But still no sign of help for us,” came Leino’s weary voice. “How long can we keep hunting? Into what weird places?”
Brodersen grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “I begin to wonder myself. Maybe we’re not wise to plow ahead. Maybe Joelle should lead us in backtracking, if you can figure out how.”
“I believe I can, in a general way,” the holothete told them. “But that requires more information. Which I ought to gather in any event, to improve my computations, no matter what we decide.”
“Okay,” Brodersen said, “we’ll hang around a bit. Might as well.” He knuckled his eyes. “A chance to think. Maybe even to get some rest, after this Side 168
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The latest blow.”
Caitlin asked gently, “Are none of you seeing how beautiful this is?”
She floated alone in the common room and adored. Clocks read twenty-two thirty hours of the day that the crew bore around with them, and what gathering there had been here had broken up early.
Dozsa came in, pushed toward her, checked himself by grasping a chair beside the one she held. The sole illumination was from outside, argent and rose, moonlight-soft. It tinged her against dappled shadows and darknesses more deep that filled the chamber.