The result was a set of detailed directions for Jupiter Five to transmit a long sequence of Ganymean communications coding groups not into the UNSA net but outward, toward coordinates that lay beyond the edge of the solar system. The contents of any replies received from that direction were, the directions said, to be disguised as experimental data in the way that had thus been established and communicated to Navcomms via the laser link.
Shannon was weary and red-eyed due to lack of sleep by the time he sat down at the terminal in his stateroom and composed a message for transmission to Earth, addressed to Dr. Victor Hunt at Navcomms Headquarters, Houston. It read:
Vic,
I’ve talked to Vince Carizan, and it’s all a lot clearer now. We’re running some tests on it as you asked, and if anything positive shows up I’ll have the results sent straight through.
Best wishes,
Joe
chapter five
Hunt lounged back in the pilot’s seat and stared absently down at the toytown suburbs of Houston while the airmobile purred along contentedly, guided by intermittent streams of binary being directed up at it from somewhere below. It was interesting, he thought, how the patterns of movement of the groundcars, flowing, merging, slowing, and accelerating in unison on the roadways below seemed to reveal some grand, centrally orchestrated design
-as if they were all parts of an unimaginably complex score composed by a cosmic Bach. But it was all an illusion. Each vehicle was programmed with only the details of its own destination plus a few relatively simple instructions for handling conditions along the way; the complexity emerged as a consequence of large numbers of them interacting freely in their synthetic environment. It was the same with life, he reflected. All the magical, mystical, and supernatural forces invoked through the ages to explain it were inventions that existed in the minds of misled observers, not in the universe they observed. He wondered how much untapped human talent had been wasted in futile pursuit of the creations of wishful thinking. The Ganymeans had entertained no such illusions, but had applied themselves diligently to understanding and mastering the universe as it was, instead of how it seemed to be or how they might have wanted it to be. Maybe that was why the Ganymeans had reached the stars.
In the seat next to him, Lyn looked up from the half-completed crossword in the Interplanetary Journal of a few days earlier. “Got any ideas for this-‘It sounds like a lumberjack’s musical number.’ What do you make of that?”
“How many letters?” Hunt asked after a few moments of thought.
“Nine.”
Hunt frowned at the ifight-systems status summaries being routinely updated on the console display in front of him. “Logarithm,” he said after another pause.
Lyn thought about it, then smiled faintly. “Oh, I see sneaky. It sounds like ‘logger rhythm.'”
“Right.”
“It fits okay.” She wrote the word in on the paper resting on her lap. “I’m glad that Joe Shannon had fewer problems with it than this.”
“You and me both.”
Shannon’s confirmation that the message was understood had arrived two days earlier. The idea had occurred to Hunt and Lyn one evening while they were at Lyn’s apartment, solving a puzzle in one of Hunt’s books of London Times crosswords. Don Maddson, the linguistics expert at Navcomms who had studied the Ganymean language, was one of the regular compilers of the Journal puzzles and also a close friend of Hunt’s. So with Caldwell’s blessing, Hunt had told Maddson as much as was necessary about the Gistar situation, and together they had constructed the message transmitted to Jupiter. Now there was nothing to do but wait and hope that it produced results.
“Let’s hope Murphy takes a day off,” Lyn said.
“Never hope that. Let’s hope somebody remembers Hunt’s extension to the Law.”
“What’s Hunt’s extension?”
“Everything that can go wrong, will . . . unless somebody makes it his business to do something about it.”
The stub wing outside the window dipped as the airmobile banked out of the traffic corridor and turned to commence a shallow descent. A cluster of large white buildings standing to attention on a river bank about a mile away moved slowly around until they were centered in the windshield and lying dead ahead.