Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The am too.”
Long afterward, she bade him goodnight. They had snuggled somewhat but otherwise talked, only talked, he as much as she, though now and then her words came through tears. “Sleep well, Phil,” she said, “and thank you, thank you.”
“If any thanks are due,” he answered, “I owe them.”
Garbed in air whose clouds gleamed white, laved by oceans in hues of sapphire and lapis lazuli, continents green with growth, the planet shone. Its nearby moon burned, sun-brilliant.
Chinook swung around the world and around while instruments yearned.
“Earthlike,” Susanne whispered.
“I fear not quite,” Rueda told her. “We’ve obtained spectra. That isn’t chlorophyl you see, and indications are that the biochemistry differs from ours in more fundamental ways still. There isn’t anything that might nourish us. But it lives.”
Joelle reported on the intercom: “The satellite is a gigantic nuclear reactor, consuming its own mass, apparently with an almost total conversion to energy. That violates the laws of physics we have formulated, but clearly those laws express a special case. I suspect that here we see a forced interaction directly between quarks. Probably the apparatus that brings it about is in a hollow space at the center, protected by the very fields that drive the process.
Doubtless this artifical sun was originally a natural moon with the right properties – it should be good for five or six billion years – and that is why the Others chose this planet to resurrect.”
“The Others?” Frieda asked shakenly.
“Who else?” Brodersen said. “I wonder, did they seed it with life, or let chemical evolution work?”
“Either way,” Caitlin said in a radiant tone, “here is life again. Maybe
– we’ve seen no signs, but they might be woodsrunners yet – maybe beings that think. Even though they’ll never see stars, what might they become and do and love?” After a moment, softer: “Could the Others have done this because they hoped to see that question answered once more?”
The ship drove back toward the transport engine.
Gathered in the common room, her crew heard Brodersen declare: “We’ve got to decide. Joelle can’t navigate us to any predictable exact point in space-time, though she can give us a general direction. Sooner or later, if we keep traveling, we’ll pass through a gate with no T machine at the far end.
That’ll be where we end up, for good. It could at least be in our proper time, give or take some megayears, when the universe is bright and sort of familiar.
Of course, that means dropping any hopes of finding the Others, and likely of surviving longer than our rations last. However, the plan we’ve been operating under has taken us to places
more and more strange. The next might kill us- ” he snapped his fingers- “like that. Or slowly.”
He tamped the tobacco in his pipe, struck fire, drank smoke. “Okay,” he said, “let’s hear what each of you wants.”
Seated near him, pallid and expressionless, Joelle said, “I prefer to continue. But, to be honest, that is because we may indeed encounter the Others.
The idea of homecoming in itself leaves me indifferent. Whichever way we bear, once we come to rest I can search into Reality.”
Leino: “Turn back. What’s in the future except a universe completely burnt out? If it’s cyclical, its collapse will destroy everything. If it isn’t, it’ll hold nothing but darkness, for eternity. Why should the Others want to be there?”
Weisenberg:
“No, we can’t quit.”
Rueda: “Is it necessarily quitting? We do have a chance, microscopic, yes, but finite, a chance of getting help in the young galaxy.”
Susanne: “If we tried two or t’ree more forward leaps before we reverse-”
Dozsa: “No. The likelihood of being trapped in this flying coffin is too great. I want to die in action, exploring a planet, anything, but in action!”
Frieda: “I was about to vote we continue, but what you say, Stef, makes me think twice.”
Caitlin trod forth. “Do none of you understand?” rang from her. “Oh, for a while I lost heart myself, but Phil upbore me in a long talk we had, and then when I saw yonder world- Do you not understand? The Others live for life. They are death’s great adversaries. Where else are we quite sure to find an outpost of theirs but at his very gates, on the very day of doom? And how else dare we Side 172