M
ACLAREN considered the problem for a while. Lately his mind seemed to have lost as much ability to hold things as his fingers. Painfully, he reconstructed the theory and practice of gravitic mattercasting. Everything followed with simple logic from the fact that it was possible at all.
The signals necessarily used a pulse code, with amplitude and duration as the variables; there were tricky ways to include a little more information through the number of pulses per millisecond, if you set an upper limit to the duration of each. It all took place so rapidly that engineers could speak in wave terms without too gross an approximation. Each transceiver identified itself by a “carrier” pattern, of which the actual mattercasting signal was a modulation. The process only took place if contact had been established, that is, if the transmitter was emitting the carrier pattern of a functioning receiver: the “resonance” or “awareness” effect which beat the inverse-square law, a development of Einstein’s great truth that the entire cosmos is shaped by what momentarily happens to each of its material parts.
The ‘caster itself, by the very act of scanning, generated the signals which recreated the object transmitted. But first the ‘caster must be tuned in on the desired receiving station. The manual aboard ship gave the call pattern of every established transceiver: but, naturally, gave it in terms of the standardized and tested web originally built into the ship. Thus, to reach Sol, the book said, blend its pattern with that of Rashid’s Star, the initial relay station in this particular case. Your signal will be automatically bucked on, through several worlds, till it reaches Earth’s Moon. Here are the respective voltages, dscillator frequencies, et cetera, involved; add them up and use the resultant.
Ryerson’s handmade web was not standardized. He could put a known pattern into it, electronically, but the gravitics would emit an unknown one, the call signal of a station not to be built for the next thousand years. He lacked instruments to measure the relationship, so he could not recalculate the appropriate settings. It was cut and try, with a literal infinity of
choices and only a few jackleg estimates to rule out some of the possibilities.
Maclaren sighed. A long time had passed while he sat thinking. Or so his watch claimed. He hadn’t noticed it go by, himself.
“You know something, Dave?” he said.
“Hm-m-m?” Ryerson turned a knob, slid a vernier one notch, and punched along a row of buttons.
“We are out on the far edge of no place. I forgot how far to the nearest station, but a devil of a long ways. This haywire rig of ours may not have the power to reach it.”
“I knew that all the time,” said Ryerson. He slapped the main switch. Needles wavered on dials, oscilloscope tracings glowed elthill green, it whined in the air. “I think our apparatus is husky enough, though. Remember, this ship has left Sol farther behind than any other ever did. They knew she would
—a straight-line course would just naturally outrun the three-dimensional expansion of our territory—so they built the transceiver with capacity to spare. Even in its present battered state, it might reach Sol directly, if conditions were just right.”
“Think we will? That would be fun.”
Ryerson shrugged. “I doubt it, frankly. Just on a statistical basis. There are so many other stations by now—Hey!”
Maclaren found himself on his feet, shaking. “What is it?” he got out. “What is it? For the love of heaven, Dave, what is it?”
Ryerson’s mouth opened and closed, but no sounds emerged. He pointed with one bony arm. It shook.
Below him—it was meant to be above, like a star—a light glowed red.
“Contact,” said Maclaren.
The word echoed through his skull as if spoken by a creator, across a universe still black and empty.
Ryerson began to weep, silently, his lips working. “Tamara,” he said. “Tamara, I’m coming home.”
Maclaren thought: If Chang and Seiichi had been by me now, what a high and proud moment.
“Go on, Terangi,” chattered Ryerson. His hands shook so he could not touch the controls. “Go on through.”
Maclaren did not really understand it. Not yet. It was too