“I think if we relay ourselves from machine to machine according to a scheme I can work out as we travel and gather more data if we always try to jump as far as possible, in a plausible direction… I think eventually this will lead us to whatever frontier they are on. They themselves.”
Joelle felt faint. Her head felt full of sand. Every cell of her seemed to ache. She free-fall slumped and longed for sleep.
Dimly she heard Brodersen: “Does everybody understand we’d be gambling?
The lady does not guarantee we’ll find transportation onward at any given hop.
The odds may favor us; but every time we repeat, those odds go down.”
“We could stay here, in spin mode and a wide orbit,” Weisenberg suggested. “Apparently we’ve a reasonable chance that a ship will come in before we starve. I daresay her civilization can synthesize food for us and won’t mind doing that. Her crew won’t be able to guide us home, but doubtless we could live out quite interesting lives on her planet of origin.”
“Are you serious, Phil?” Caitlin asked.
“No. I have a family. I did think one of us ought to state the case for remaining.”
“And leaving humankind to the likes of Ira Quick?” Dozsa snarled.
“Whoa, there,” Brodersen said. “We’ve time to think this over. Meanwhile
– Joelle, let’s get you under treatment, starting with about twenty-four hours of sleep.”
She hardly noticed his embrace while he took her down the corridor to her cabin, nor did she much heed how Caitlin sponged the dried sweat from her, nor how they together harnessed her in bed and waited till she slept. As she skidded into darkness, her thoughts were entirely of the Oracle and of those who had shaped it.
XXXVII
Jump.
Visible stars were lessened in number, as on a hazy night of Earth. The brightest were mostly red, which suggested they were near; a few giants glared steely blue.
A sun hung large among them. Its dull blood-orange hue required no dimming by optics. The zodiacal lens was immense, though wanly lit, but the disc was featureless – no spots, flares, prominences, corona – and had no sharp photospheric edge, fading instead blurrily away into space.
Closer, broader still to the eye, was a planet which the T machine evidently orbited, in a Trojan position with respect to a big moon. Both those bodies glowed too, embers. Magnifying, Brodersen saw the primary globe molten beneath a thick, sootyclouded atmosphere. As he stared, an asteroid drifted across the field of view, dark, pitted, tumbling end over end.
Joelle spoke: “This is a new system coalescing. The sun’s energy is from contraction; it isn’t yet compressed enough at the core to start thermonuclear reactions. Space remains dusty, rocks of every size plentiful. Falling in on nascent planets, they heat these to incandescence while adding to their mass. I think this one before us will come to resemble Earth rather closely.”
Or could it be Earth? shivered through Brodersen. No, that’s too unlikely. Makes no practical difference anyway. I don’t want to believe it. I Side 158
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The won’t. “How long’ll that take?” he asked aloud, pointlessly aside from a stunned curiosity.
“Perhaps five million years until the sun is settled into the main sequence. On the planet, formation of a solid crust may be slower. I’d need more data to give you a proper estimate.”
“Sorry. We won’t linger. Nothing for us here.”
Except, my God, getting a fresh glimpse of the range the Others move in, live in. To watch a system of worlds get born – surely then to watch them evolve and flourish and finally die – for that, they opened this gateway.
XXXIX
Jump.
“O-o-oh!” Caitlin’s voice rang over the intercom. “Oh, glory, glory!” It broke in a sob.
Space blazed, stars and stars crowded together until there was hardly a glimpse of the Milky Way and hardly seemed to be any blackness left between them. The brilliance of many was like that of Venus or Jupiter seen at their brightest, ashine upon Earth. Most were of ruby color, but some ranged through rich orange to deep golden.