“It’s possible,” Clifford nodded. “The only way we’d know for sure, though, would be with Mark II. This system was never meant for that kind of thing.”
“Incredible,” Zimmermann said again. “I gathered that you were making progress here, but this . . .” He gestured toward the screen and shook his head, as if still having difficulty believing what he had just seen. “It will change everything.”
“Those images you just saw weren’t being processed in real time, of course,” Morelli explained. “You’re not seeing something that’s actually being picked up at the detector right this instant. They were simply playbacks of images that had already been computed. That’s the main problem with the system so far—the amount of computer power needed to generate those outputs is phenomenal. These two guys have just about monopolized the machines in this place for the past few weeks. We’ve had to offload nearly all of our normal work on to the net.”
“Extracting the spacelike information that you need out of the k-functions is a tedious business,” Clifford explained. “The equations involved have an infinite number of solutions. Obviously we don’t try to solve for all of them, otherwise we’d never finish, but it’s still a hell of a job just to calculate the sets of limits needed to generate whatever spatial projection you want. Planar cross sections is only one possible category of solutions, yet imagine the number of different sections of, say, Earth that could be specified . . . taking into account all the possible angles and viewpoints. It blows your mind.”
“I think mine has already been blown sufficiently for one day,” Zimmermann replied, smiling. “May I relax now, or do you three gentlemen have still more surprises up your sleeves?”
Morelli went on to describe the difficulties that they were experiencing in obtaining the components needed for Mark II. He mentioned the questions that were being asked, the snooping, the general harassment they were being subjected to, and gave his guesses as to the reasons behind it all. Zimmermann already knew much of the earlier part of the story, of course, and the rest quickly fell into place. As he listened, his face grew dark and angry.
“The damn fools!” he exclaimed when Morelli had finished. “There is more future in what you are doing here than will ever come out of all their budgets put together. God knows, I’m no militarist, but if that’s what they want, this is where they should be putting their backing. Have they any idea what this could lead to? Have you tried to tell them?”
Morelli shook his head slowly.
“We wouldn’t want them muscling in,” he said.
“They would,” Clifford said, suddenly in a sober voice. “You see, we know what it could lead to.”
“And we’re outa their line of business,” Aub completed.
* * *
Later on that evening, accompanied by Sarah, they all went for dinner to Morelli’s home on the shore of Lake Boone at Stow. Nancy Morelli, Al’s cheerful, homely wife already well known to all the guests, produced a delicious German meal of veal in wine sauce followed by Black Forest cake, with plenty of Moselle Golden Oktober and a selection of liqueurs to finish. Throughout the meal they talked about life at Lunar Farside, Sarah’s work at Marlboro, Nancy’s memories of childhood in New York, and Clifford’s rock-climbing experiences at Yosemite. Zimmermann and Morelli swapped stories of the times they had spent in Europe, Sarah talked about England, and Aub raised roars of laughter with accounts of his escapades at Berkeley and before. Not once did the men deviate from observance of the unwritten rule that declared the earlier events of the day—if the truth were known, still the most pressing topic in the mind of each of them—strictly taboo for this kind of occasion.
After the dishes had been cleared away and everybody had spent another half-hour chatting and joking over drinks, Nancy took Sarah outside to show her the lake and the surrounding pine woods by sunset. As soon as the back door to the kitchen clicked into place, an entirely different atmosphere descended upon the room before anybody had said anything. Nobody had to broach the subject; they all felt it. Zimmermann was the first to speak.