Americans had been conducting top-secret research into paranormal phenomena for
many years, protested to the U. S. and European ambassadors that if the Orion
was being sent to make first contact with an alien intelligence, none of Earth’s
major powers could be excluded. He demanded that the ship be recalled. The
allegation was denied, and in their reply the representatives of the Western
states suggested that perhaps the Soviet government was allowing itself to be
unduly influenced by rumor and overreacting to sensationalism and unscientific
speculation.
That same day aboard the Orion, Daniel Leaherney broadcast to the ship’s
occupants to inform them that, as had been generally concluded already, the
ship’s destination was indeed Saturn’s moon, Titan. Pictures were replayed of
the last views transmitted from the European probes that had landed on Titan two
years previously, which showed strange machines approaching, and then
nothing—the landers having presumably been destroyed. Nothing had been seen of
whoever or whatever had built the machines. The orbiter that had launched the
landers was still over Titan, but little more had been learned of the surface
because of the moon’s thick, brownish red clouds of nitrogen compounds and
hydrocarbons.
The departments of the U.S. and European governments responsible for initiating
the mission had never intended forcing anyone to face such unknowns against
their will. Since the first reaction of many people to such a prospect would
naturally be fear and nervousness, the original plan had been to announce the
true story when the Orion was a few weeks out from Earth, which would have given
everyone more than a month to discuss the situation and reflect upon its
implications. Arrangements had been made for a NASO transporter from Mars to
rendezvous with the Orion to take off anyone choosing not to stay on after that
time. Expectations had been that after due consideration the majority of
personnel would elect to continue the voyage and place their services at the
disposal of the mission, and Leaherney expressed the hope that this would still
be the case. The secrecy had been regrettable but necessary to “. . . safeguard
the interests and security of the North American democracies and their European
allies,” he said.
Seven weeks later only a few faint souls dropped out when the NASO transporter
rendezvoused with the mission ship. The Orion then accelerated away once more,
its course now set for the outer regions of the Solar System.
11
THIRG, ASKER-OF-FORBIDDEN-QUESTIONS, LIVED IN THE HIGHER reaches of the forests
south of the city of Pergassos in the land of the Kroaxians, where the foothills
rose toward the mountains bounding the Great Meracasine Wilderness.
He lived in something that was more than a hut but less than a house, in keeping
with the not quite hermitic but certainly less than sociable life that he
preferred to lead. His home was situated in a small clearing amid pleasant
forest groves of copper and aluminum wire-drawing machines, injection molders,
transfer presses, and stately pylons bearing their canopy of power lines and
data cables, among which scurrying sheet riveters, gracefully moving spot
welders, and occasional slow-plodding pipe benders supplied a soothing
background of chattering, hissing, whirring, and clunking to insulate him from
the world of mortals and their mundane affairs and leave him alone and in peace
with his thoughts. A low ice cliff stood at the back of the clearing to prop up
the hillside rising away toward the mountains beyond, its line broken on one
side by the valley of a liquid methane stream which tumbled cheerfully down over
cataracts and ice boulders between clear pools where zinc-separating
electrolyzers and potassium-precipitating evaporators came to wallow and wade
and dip their slender intake nozzles and funnel-shaped scoops at the height of
the bright period.
Thirg had grown the actual dwelling himself, having learned the craft from an
old friend who was a builder in Pergassos. After laboring to clear the area of
dead steel latticeworks and structural frames, the carcass of a transformer that
had clung obstinately to its concrete base, and assorted scrap-metal
undergrowth, he had prepared an area of the hydrocarbon soil below the cliff
with nitrogenous loams collected from the stream bed, and planted the seed