Hanno at her side, she waited. The unrolling dance of curves and surfaces flowed together. A picture grew into being. It was of stars.
21
THE six around the saloon table looked sharply around when the two entered. Coffee and remnants of food bespoke what hours had passed; more so did haggardness and tension. “Well,” Patulcius snapped, “about time!”
“Hush,” Macandal murmured. “They’ve come as soon as they could.” Her glance added: An immortal ought to have more patience. But it has been hard, waiting.
Hanno and Svoboda benched themselves oppositely at the doorward end. “You’re right,” the Phoenician said. “Getting a clear, complete message and deciding what it means took this long.”
“We do apologize, however,” Svoboda added. “We should have given you … progress reports. We didn’t think to, didn’t realize how time was passing. There was never any, oh, revelation, any exact moment when we knew.” Weariness weighted her smile. “I’m ravenous. What’s available immediately?”
“You sit still, honey,” Macandal said, rising. “I’ve got sandwiches already made. Figured this would be a long session.”
Aliyat’s look followed her eut, as if to ask: Has she, in our snared bewilderment, gone back to her Old South, or simply to her old caring?
“She’d better bring me some too, or you’ll have a fight on your hands and halfway up your arms,” Hanno said to Svoboda. The jape rattled from nerves drawn wire-thin.
“All right,” Wanderer demanded, “what is the news?”
“Corinne’s entitled to hear from the start,” Svoboda replied.
His fingers clutched the table edge. The nails whitened. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
She reached to stroke a hand. “You merely forgot. We’re beyond dqrselves, every one of us.”
“Well, Corinne isn’t fond of technical details,” Hanno said. “I can start with those. And, uh, with apologies to those of you who aren’t either. I’m no scientist myself, you know, so this will be short.”
Macandal returned while he was sketching the theory of the communication. Besides food on a tray, she bore a fresh pot of coffee and a bottle of brandy. “Celebration,” she laughed. “I hope!”
The fragrances were like blossoms in spring. “Yes, yes,” Svoboda exulted. “The discovery of the ages.”
“Theirs more than ours,” Hanno said. “The aliens’, I mean. But we have to decide what to do about it.”
Tu Shan leaned forward, elbows on table, heavy shoulders hunched. “Well, what is the situation?” he asked lev-elly enough.
“We’re receiving the same message, repeated and repeated,” Hanno told them while he ate and gulped. “It’s from two sources, one closer to our path than the other. Quite likely there are more that we haven’t come in range of. If we continue on our present track, we may pick them up. The nearest is a couple of light-years from us. It appears to be on station relative to a line drawn between Sol and Phaeacia’s sun, roughly the path we’re following. Pytheas says that’s easy to do; just keep yourself from orbiting away. As I was saying while you were out, Corinne, everything suggests that the aliens sent robots to sit broadcasting continuously. A little antimatter would provide ample power for centuries.”
“The message is pictorial,” Wanderer interjected.
“Well, graphic,” Hanno proceeded. “You’ll all see it later. Often, no doubt, trying to squeeze extra meaning out of it. I suspect you’ll fail. No real images, just several … diagrams, maps, representations. Transmission to a ship traveling at Einsteinian speed, a changing speed at that, must be a tough problem, especially when the aliens can’t know what our capabilities are for receiving and decoding— or how we think, or much of anything about us. Detailed pictures might be impossible for us to untangle. Evidently they composed the simplest, least ambiguous message that might serve. I would, in their place.”
“But what is their place?” Yukiko wondered.
Hanno chose to take her literally. “I’m coming to that. What we got, first, was a lot of light-points in three-dimensional space. Then little bars appeared next to three of them. Then we got those three points in succession—it must be same ones—each by itself with the bar enlarged so we could see vertical lines on it. Then the view returned to the light-points in general, with a red line between two of those that are marked. Finally another line appeared, from about two-thirds along the first one, offside to the third marked tight-point.