“She was working on something in far space?” he breathed.
“It must have been,” Lilisaire said. “A weapon or—I know not what.”
“Then how should I?”
She drained her glass and beckoned him to pour another. First he finished his own. The leopard got up and padded about the room, black and gold among the light-shards.
“Hear me,” Lilisaire said. “The tradition I spoke of goes further back still, to the time of Dagny Beynac. A son of hers made an expedition into the deeps from which he did not return. Naught of real explanation was ever given. The family held to itself whatever knowledge had been gained.”
In hopes of eventual profit? That would have been quite Lunarian. But so, too, would have been keeping the secret for a memorial, an enduring sacrifice to sorrow.
“Searching what records remain, for t)ie conquerors did not find everything, I have come to feel sure that this discovery was what Niolente had intent to make use of,” Lilisaire continued. “Could we acquire it, we might achieve a part of her hope. But time is short, and even before the Habitat makes everything too late for us, the enemy’s suspicions may lead him to take forestalling action. Thus, as soon as I had this clue, I sent for you, who will be able to look further.”
“I, uh, I’ve no idea where to begin,” he demurred.
Again her look pierced him. “On Earth.”
“What?” He realized he was gaping, and snapped his jaw shut. “How?”
“Well do you know that the first Rydberg was the first child of Dagny Beynac, and came to be in her close confidence. And … to this day, the Fireball lodgemaster guards some arcanum, which appears to go back to that time of upheaval.”
“You mean—”
She sighed. “A thin possibility, yes; but I see scant others.”
“A weapon—“ Chill tingled through Kenmuir. It was bad enough when Fireball turned spacecraft against the Avantists. Justified though the action might have been, the outrage it globally provoked brought on the end of Fireball and of sovereign Luna. A teratonne nuclear warhead, an asteroid made dirigible—“No!”
“It may not be that,” she said quickly. “Or if it is, the menace alone should win us our freedom. In any case, why, since the powers on Earth are so anxious to keep it secret, the simple threat of disclosure would be a weapon for us, nay?” :
He tossed off a long drink. The wine deserved closer attention, but he had to brace himself. As the glow spread through his blood, he became able to say, almost thoughtfully, “Y-yes, if the information’s been buried that deep, there must be a strong reason … It could be a good reason, though.”
“1 ask no betrayal of you,” she said with a flick of scorn. “Find what you can and choose what you can.”
It hurt worse than he would have expected. “I scarcely believe the Rydberg will confide in me just for the asking,” he said.
Warmth returned, and with it a smile. “If you explain, maychance he will. If not, or if what he tells is of no avail, then—“ She let the sentence trail off like music.
“Yes?” he prompted out of his pulsebeat.
“I have other agents on Earth. Would you be willing to join forces with one of them? Your ken of space may greatly help.”
This was demented, he thought. He was no spy, no rebel, nothing but a middle-aged, law-abiding technician whose audacity was all in the head, interplay withimpersonal forces, out among stars which the contentions and griefs of humankind would never touch. Yet she flung him a challenge, and—she wanted it, she needed it, this might be her life that he could save.
“I will try,” he heard himself mumble.
She shouted, cast her goblet shattering against the diamond, and was in his arms.
The living couch received them and responded to them.
In his heart he could only praise the terrible necessity that had brought her race into being.
Night on Lunar Farside is a glory of stars. With neither sun nor Earth to override them, you need only walk away from human lights and your sky will brim with brilliance, six thousand or moi’ stars revealed to an eye that has nothing between it and them but a clear plate and a few centimeters of breath. They gleam unblinking where they crowd the crystal dark, and the brightest are not all white; many burn steel-blue, gold, amber, bronze-red. The constellations are no longer geometrical diagrams so much as they are prodigally marshalling hosts, planets ablaze among them. Nebulae rear thunderhead-black or float softly aglow. From horizon to horizon arches the galactic belt, not milky to sight but icy, a winter river banked and islanded with night. Beyond it you may spy its nearer sisters, the clotted Magellanics, Andromeda vague and huge, perhaps one or two more glimpsed across yet greater deeps. Turn off your receiver and you are wholly of this vision, in a silence as vast as its reaches; far, far beneath it, the murmurs of your body declare that you are alive, you are what is beholding. Sometimes a spark hastens aloft, a satellite. It is quickly lost in the Moon’s shadow. DagnyBeynac sighed and turned back toward camp. She couldn’t stand long agaze, she had work to do.