Esker sneered. “Alas, the fair Lissa Davysdaughter wasn’t here to greet you.”
He’s heard about us on Jonna, Hebo thought. His feelings on the subject sound pretty strong. I wish there were more grounds for it. “I’ll admit I was disappointed,” he gave back. “What man with his glands working right wouldn’t be?”
That must have hit a nerve. Esker glared.
And did Romon wince ever so slightly? He made haste to interpose a smile and a chuckle. “Well, of course, a very natural reason to come. But the only one? The black hole material has been sent to a number of institutions elsewhere. Scientists communicate to and fro.”
“Why is a layman like you downloading it?” demanded Esker. “What use to you?”
“Sir, I don’t appreciate your tone of voice,” Hebo said, truthfully enough. “Is this a reunion dinner or an interrogation?”
“I’m sorry,” Romon responded fast. “We both are,” which Hebo doubted. “We seem to have expressed ourselves poorly. Of course we don’t expect anything … untoward. I repeat, I’m simply curious, and it occurred to me that Dr. Esker might be of some help to you. Or I might be.”
He drew breath. “Yes, I checked further,” he went on. “You’re collecting information on Freydis as well, the planet and the proposed Susaian colony. That suggests to me your main reason for coming to Sunniva has to do with it. You’re an entrepreneur. House Seafell is business-oriented, you know. If you care to discuss your ideas, we might perhaps find we can cooperate.”
Hebo took cover behind his beer mug while he reassembled his thoughts. Be wary, he decided, but not too standoffish to learn whatever may be here to learn. “I see. Well, I’m not broadcasting it yet, when nothing may come of it. But if the colony does get [175] started, there’ll be a lot of work to do, a lot of inventions needed, and, if the project succeeds, a lot of money to make.”
Romon laughed. “Ah-hah! That’s what I thought.”
“But why your preoccupation with the black holes?” his companion persisted. “You must be spending hours per week sifting through the information in search of bits and pieces you can halfway understand.”
“Esker,” Romon clipped, “if you don’t keep a civil tongue, I’ll regret inviting you along.”
“I’m entitled to be curious too,” said the physicist. “Or am I merely another machine of yours, to be switched off when you aren’t using it?”
Hey, better lighten the atmosphere, or I’ll have wasted an evening that looked promising yesterday, Hebo thought. He constructed amiability. “It’s no riddle, Dr. Harolsson, and I do appreciate your taking the trouble to join us. If you’ve looked closely at my queries, and I’ll bet you have, you know I’m not only asking about astrophysics, or even mainly, but about the whole little-known stellar neighborhood. The event’s bound to have effects across parsecs. Radiation effects on biospheres are just the most obvious.”
“Slight, and in the course of correspondingly many years,” Esker retorted. “Those studies can wait.”
“I gather they are in fact waiting. Sure, the new hole is the urgent case, and has a lot more to teach us. However, later on, exploration may turn up things farther off.”
Romon raised his eyes and his drink. “Profitable things?” he murmured as mildly.
“What else, for me? I’m keeping an eye open, while I carry on my current fishing expedition.”
“Excuse me, but doesn’t that flood of … abstruse data and calculations … almost blind you?”
Hebo spread his hands. “At this stage, who can tell what’s going to give a new opportunity? Besides, it’s kind of a challenge.”
“Why?” muttered Esker. “You’ll never be a scientist.”
[176] “I see,” Romon put in. “You want to keep expanding your mental horizons. And your physical ones.” His voice dropped to a murmur:
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life!”
Esker scowled, puzzled by the archaic language and resentful.
Hebo blinked. “Hey, Tennyson’s Ulysses,” he exclaimed.