He spread his hands. “Granted,” he went on, “the whole reason for the exercise is that nobody can predict what will happen. I make no promises. All I say is, if I were the Susaian in charge, I’d post four live crews at approximately that distance. One each ‘above’ and ‘below’ the point of contact, the other two 180° apart in the impact-orbital plane. I’d put others elsewhere, naturally, but these four should have the best positions, if our theories correspond to any part of reality.
“And if I were that Susaian, I’d join one of those crews.”
Lissa leaned forward. She shivered. “When will the encounter be?” she asked.
“If we jumped now to the vicinity,” Esker told them in carefully academic style, “we would observe it in a little more than eleven standard days.”
“That soon,” Valen murmured into stillness renewed. “We barely made it, didn’t we?”
He shook himself, straightened where he sat, and clipped, “Very well. Thank you, Dr. Harolsson. If you haven’t already, please put your data and conclusions in proper form for transmission. We’ve got to notify headquarters. What we’ve learned thus far mustn’t be lost with us. Besides, I’ll be interested in the exact information, the actual numbers, too.” His smile was crooked. “Personally interested.”
[115] Lissa saw doubt on Elif; Noel swallowed; Tessa laughed aloud. They foreknew. It was Orichalc who said, “Thereafter, do you intend that we shall see the event?”
Valen’s head lifted. “What else? On Asborg, they’d never outfit and scramble another ship in time.”
“Humans won’t get another chance,” Esker agreed, “and I doubt the Susaians will share what they learn.”
Lissa paid him no heed. She caught Valen’s arm. “Yes, certainly,” rang from her. “It’s up to us. That’s how you were bound to think, Gerward.”
The glee drained out of Esker, as if somehow gravity had reached from the lightless masses yonder. Sexual frustration, Lissa thought. We shouldn’t flaunt what we have, that he can’t.
XX
A hyperbeam bypassed light years, carrying the findings made aboard Dagmar. Lissa wished she could talk with her father when they were done, but haste forbade. The instruments gathered information at rates hugely greater than the transmitter could send it. Conveying all they had took several irrecoverable hours. For the same reason, the expedition would dispatch nothing but the new data from each stop along its course henceforward—and nothing whatsoever, once it was close to the black holes, until it was outward bound again.
Esker spent the waiting period in the electronics shop. Lissa supposed he tinkered with something in hopes that it would ease his tension and … unhappiness? Or did the magnificence ahead of him drive out mortal wishes?
Noel monitored the reporting. Valen studied the facts, with Tessa and Elif on hand to answer questions. In the saloon, Lissa and Orichalc played round upon round of Integer until, at length, they fell into conversation. It turned to private hopes, fears, loves. You could confide to a sympathetic alien what you could not to any of your own species. “I look forward to your Freydis colony,” Lissa said finally, sincerely.
The summons resounded. Crew took their posts. Countdown. Jump. A light-year from their destination, they poised.
Words reached Lissa in her globe as if from across an equal gulf. She had instantly established that no other vessel was in the neighborhood. Absurd to imagine that any would be, those few score motes strewn through the abyss. Why, for starters, consider that the light-year is a human unit, a memory of Old Earth like [117] the standard year and day, the meter, the gram, the gee. Nobody else uses them. … The view was, as always, glorious with stars. One outshone all the rest, a dazzling brilliance. Wonderstruck, she asked what that might be. The ship replied that it was a type B giant, about four and a half parsecs off, passing through this vicinity at this time. She dropped it out of sight and mind as she set the console viewscreen to the predicted coordinates of the search object. Her fingers trembled a little. She turned up the optics.
The breath caught in her throat. Magnified, amplified, two comets flamed before her. From their shining brows, flattened blue-white manes streamed toward each other, shading through fierce gold to a red like newly spilled blood. Where they met, they roiled, and she imagined the turbulence within, great waves and tides, lightning-like discharges, atoms ripped into plasma, roaring to their doom.