He flushed. “Not on my account, please. I don’t want pity.”
“No, but you deserve more consideration than you’ve gotten.”
“Sex isn’t that big a thing, after all.”
“A sound philosophy,” Macandal said, “but not too easy to put in practice when you aren’t a saint and your body never grows older. How well I know. We can’t have you racking yourself apart, Gnaeus. If I—“ She drew breath, then smiled. “We had some pretty good times in the past, you and I, didn’t we? It was long ago, but I’ve not forgotten.”
He stared. A minute passed before he could stammer, “You, you don’t really in-mean that. It is sweet of you, but no, really, not necessary.”
Calm had come upon her. “Don’t think ‘mercy hump.’ I like you. Well, no hurry. Best we take our time and see how things develop. Lord knows we have plenty of time, and if we haven’t learned a little patience by now, we might.as well open the airlocks. I mean all of us aboard.”
After a moment: “Too bad, isn’t it, that this tremendous quest of ours hasn’t made us worthy of itself. We’re the same limited, foolish, mixed-up, ridiculous primitives we always were. Today’s Earth people wouldn’t have our problems. But it is we, not they, who’ve gone out here.”
Pytheas flew onward. Another three and a half years passed inside the hull before the universe broke through, like a storm wave crashing over the rail of a Grecian ship.
20
IT CAME as suddenly, through the musical robotic voice: “Attention! Attention! Instruments detect anomalous neutrino input. It appears to be coded.”
Hanno cried aloud, a seafaring oath not heard these past three millennia, and sprang from his bunk. “Light,” he ordered. Illumination filled the room. It glowed amber in Svoboda’s hair, the warmest color between the walls.
“From Earth?” she gasped, sitting straight. “Did they build a transmitter?”
He shivered. “I should think Pytheas would recognize—”
The answer interrupted him: “The direction of origin is becoming clear, somewhat forward of us, broadcast rather than beamcast. Modulation is of pulse, amplitude, and spin. I am still engaged in observation and analysis, to determine the velocity of the source and compensate for Doppler shift and time dilation. At present the pattern appears mathematically simple.”
“Yeah, start by making us aware it’s artificial.” Hanno’s finger stabbed the intercom touchdisc. “Has everybody heard? Meet in the saloon. I’ll report to you there as soon as possible.” Needlessly—or was it?—he reached for his clothes. “Want to come, Svoboda?”
Her grin was a hunter’s. “Try and stop me.”
Perhaps it was equally superfluous to seek the command room. It might even be unwise, to wait there amidst the terrible glory in the viewscreens. Too easily could that daunt the spirit and numb the mind. But sitting hand in hand, watching the numbers and graphic displays the ship generated for them, was like keeping a grip on a reality that otherwise would blow away into emptiness.
“Have you learned more?” Svoboda must ask.
“Give the computer a chance,” Hanno tried to laugh. “It’s only had a few minutes.”
“Every minute for us is—how much outside? An hour? How many millions of kilometers laid behind us?”
“I detect a similar source, much weaker but strengthening,” the ship told them. “It is on the opposite side of our projected course.”
Hanno stared a while into distorted heaven before he said slowly, “Yes, I think I understand. They know how we’re headed, more or less, and have sent … messengers … to intercept us. However, of course they can’t tell exactly— several different destinations may have looked possible to them, nor could they foresee factors like the boost we’d use—so they sent a number of messengers, pretty widely distributed, to lie radiating in the zone, or zones, we’d probably pass through.”
“They?” Svoboda asked.
“The Others. The aliens. Whoever and whatever they are. We’ve found a starfaring civilization at last. Or it’s found us.”
Her own gaze went outward, gone rapt. “They will rendezvous with us?”
He shook his head. “Not quite, I think. Given all the uncertainties, and the distances, and the long, unpredictable time out here till we might arrive—they’d not dispatch living crews. Those must be low-mass, high-thrust robot craft, maybe made for this one purpose.”