“And now . . . conditions at the black hole,” Sundaram breathed.
Dayan nodded. “Yes. Not that even that allows any of what I mentioned. As nearly as I can tell, the holonts can’t personally travel backward through time.” Low, not quite evenly: “As nearly as I can tell.”
She drew breath. “What they can do is something suggested back in Hawking’s era by Forward. They can operate on that sea of particles and energy they exist in. They can form gigantic nuclei, atomic weights vastly greater than anything we’ve ever achieved, and keep them stable. Electromagnetic forces deform such a nucleus and set it spinning — speed, density, field strengths as required. I’m not sure yet whether what they get corresponds to the Kerr smoke ring or a short, wasp-waisted Tipler cylinder, or maybe something else. Anyhow, it causes a warp in space-time, a tiny ‘hole’ through which particles of sufficiently small wavelength can pass. That means highly energetic gamma-ray photons. Well, photons can be modulated, and modulation can convey information, and if you can send a message, in principle you can do anything.
“The holonts know how to communicate with us because the holonts in the future have already done it. They sent the knowledge back.”
Yu looked at a bulkhead as if to see through it, out to star-strewn immensity. “That brings home to us how little we know, how little we are, does it not?” she whispered.
Dayan’s voice clanged. “I would say we need to keep a sense of proportion and not get above ourselves, but we’d do wrong to feel humble. The holonts want discourse with us. I don’t think that’s purely from curiosity. I think that, somehow, we’re important to more than ourselves.”
At Hansen’s call, his cabin door opened and Yu came in. He rose from his desk. Her glance flitted briefly about. She had not been here for weeks; hardly anyone had but him. The room was again neat, almost compulsively so. Kilbirnie had tended to get things into mild disarray. Her image filled a screen, not animated, a single instant of her smile. A few pet objects of hers stood on table and shelf. Air still bore the coolness and heathery tang she liked. But the background music was Baroque, and his attention had been on a sculpture. He stood as erect, immaculately clad, and reserved as always.
“Sit down, Wenji,” he invited. “What can I do for you?”
They took chairs. She went straight to the painful point. “I thought you would rather I gave you this news in private.”
He raised his brows. “Yes?”
“I have reviewed the plans you and Emil have worked out for that crewed, probe-controlling capsule.”
He attempted humor. “We didn’t ask you to review anything else.” Tautly: “Have you found a mistake? We thought we were ready to start the robots on construction.”
She sighed. “You can if you wish. You have run a perfectly good design program. But it didn’t take account of some factors, such as cramped work space. I find that to build this thing to those specifications will take weeks.”
“Oh.” He sat motionless.
“My impression is that you two want it as soon as can be.”
“Yes. Not that the astrophysics itself can’t wait. Emil, though, Emil is so happy again, now that en will have something real to do. And it seems to have helped the morale of the other Tahirians also.”
“And you yourself —” She chopped the sentence off. “The basic problem here is that a vessel suitable for beings of the two races — safe, adequately life-supported, controls and communicators easy to use — it becomes elaborate. That includes being rather large. If it were meant for just a human or a Tahirian, it would be much, much simpler.”
He stared at her out of a face become a mask. “Are you certain?” And then: “My apologies. Of course you are.”
“I have run a modification of your program,” Yu said. “A vessel for one person of a single species could be ready in ten daycycles or less.”
Nansen was silent about half a minute.
“Very well,” he replied. “Let it be for Emil.”
Her careful impersonality dissolved. “Do you truly mean that, Rico? This must be a bitter disappointment.”