By the time we left, the habitat was working smoothly. There were a few problems with shielding, and a small fire in one of the hotel rooms gave us a scare on my birthday. The town lights had been a sprinkle of starlight on the lake that night, when a meteor had knocked out the external optics, throwing the hollow into darkness—but the towns simply kept their lights going until the Sun winked on again. Extra shielding on the outside rig was all that had been needed.
But the most important thing happened just as we were leaving. The big robots arrived and were sent down to Mercury. They would do
all
the heavy mining, refining, repairs, and launching of slugs. These were the most advanced machines, a thousand times better than the previous ones. Working through computer links, the miners would program these titans to go anywhere on the planet; human eyes would look over their shoulders, going where no human flesh, or previous robots, could survive. Fewer miners would be needed on the surface as time went on; fewer lives would be risked. I thought of the empty underground towns where we had almost lost our lives. Old Merk would finally get its way, and one day the warrens would be destroyed.
Bob Svoboda became a programmer-operator, working with the robot titans and the Brain-Core intelligences. He married Helen Wodka a year after we left.
We ran into quite a few people from the Mercury project around Saturn, Jake and Linda among them. Both are interested in the same project Ro and I have applied for—as hands on the expedition to Titan’s north pole. A large amphibious crawler-submarine will be placed on the surface, if possible, and it will try to reach the pole, by submerging if necessary. The training will be invaluable, and the experience might help us get on one of the big habitat starships now under construction around Titan.
It’s awesome here in the Rings. The big planet’s beauty creeps up on you, no matter how long you’ve been here. The planet seems nearby, floating casually, except something that big can’t really be casual. In my sleep I sink through its mysterious ocean of gas and liquid, feeling with my feet for a bottom which may or may not be there, thousands of miles below …
A dozen habitats are nearing completion around Titan alone. Ro and I learned today that the Centauri Starship’s crew will be chosen from those of us who go on the polar jaunt. It’s the only way of having a chance at the starship.
Where is home?
All of Sunspace is home. Those of us who work outside Earth’s planetary womb are the eyes, ears, and hands of humanity, reaching out to the stars. Our Sun is only a common star, but the starlight sings eternal across the Milky Way, which is only one of the countless galaxies fleeing toward the edge of space-time. To go out among them, you have to keep changing; you have to burn inside, to hold back the dark; you have to want the vastness that is so full of possibilities, and know that it is a place of infinite beauty in which to test human courage and intelligence; you must feel deep space opening up in your heart, drink the strange light that flows into your eyes from far stars, and love the singing silence in your ears.
You have to care a lot.
The Stars will Speak
Lissa liked to listen.
Not only when people spoke to her, but when they talked to each other. She overheard conversations and tried to figure out who the people were, what they did, and what they were like from what they said. People didn’t really know how much they showed about themselves when they spoke. Smiling, seemingly friendly people sometimes hid mean streaks in their words. Glum people, who appeared uncaring and thoughtless, were caring and thoughtful underneath. Lissa was always looking to catch people at being their true selves, but only her father seemed to be completely himself inside as well as outside.
“It only seems that way to you,” he had often told her, “because you don’t know the individuals. So when you hear them, you’re really only imagining what they’re like inside. If you heard them at different times, you’d get different impressions. It all depends on where you start.”
“But that’s just not true,” she had insisted. “Some people are the same no matter how often you listen to them. You’re always the same. Inside, I mean.”
“Some people is not everyone,” he had said, smiling.
At the age of ten she had found out that scientists were listening to signals from an alien civilization somewhere among the stars—and she knew immediately that she wanted to help decode the messages. She had been only a year old when the signals had started coming in; by the time she was halfway through high school, she knew that she had to learn what they were saying.
It had seemed to her, at first, that it would be similar to what she had done when she had learned to read. Put the letters together into words, then make sentences out of the words—sentences stating things, describing, or commanding.
It wasn’t that simple, of course. She knew that long before she sent her application to the Interstellar Institute, but she still felt that she could find out what was in the signals. She imagined herself making the breakthrough that no one, not even the best Artificial Intelligences, had been able to make.
“But what is it that makes you believe you can do better?” her father asked her, in as serious a tone as possible. He had learned long ago not to make fun of her ambition. “Besides, it’s such specialized training. Don’t you think you should have some normal college first, so your education won’t be one-sided?”
He was one of the best physicists on Bernal One, as well as her father, so it seemed that he deserved to be answered carefully. “I feel sure that if I went through the training and could see the data, I’d have an idea about what the aliens are trying to tell us.”
“You can’t know that, Lissa,” he replied gently.
“I
feel
it, and I’m willing to put it to the test.”
He smiled. “I can almost believe you, but I guess you’ve got to learn for yourself if you’re wrong.”
“Right,” she said proudly.
He looked worried. “And that may be all you’ll find out—that you’re wrong.”
“But what if I’m right? Don’t others my age apply for the schooling? Are they smarter than I am?”
He shook his head. “That’s not the point. Look—that research hasn’t gotten anywhere in nearly two decades.”
“Why should that mean anything?” Lissa demanded. “Have you figured out all the physics you want?”
“No, of course not, but I have results.”
“Some things are naturally harder. You admit this is a hard field.”
“Yes, but this one may be beyond all humanity, including the computer minds. It may be centuries before results are even possible.”
“I just don’t believe it,” she said, afraid that he might be right. “Why should that be?”
She watched him get ready for a bigger answer. He closed his eyes halfway, leaned forward in his chair, and rubbed his chin. “Because the origins of the alien race that sent the signals are probably very different from ours. Their biology and psychology are probably incomprehensible.”
She smiled at him. “Come on, Dad, you’re not playing fair. That’s not the only view there is of the problem. Besides, don’t you think they might have tried to make the message understandable to a dumber species like us? Or maybe they’re even like us. Maybe whole sectors of the galaxy are shot through with similar life-forms, all having a common type of origin. The really alien races probably wouldn’t be sending us signals that we could make out as even being signals.”
“That would all be nice, if it were true.”
“Well, we won’t settle this just by talking about it, Dad. I’ll have to go and try to find out!”
He sighed. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to stop you.” He looked at her sadly with his steel-blue eyes. “I’ll miss you. I guess I always thought you’d go to school here on Bernal One, but Earth is a big and very different place, and you should get to see it sooner or later. Getting your professional schooling there is as good as any way to do it.”
“I know, Dad. I’m apprehensive about going away, but I’m not scared.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh, I’m sure you’re not scared of anything.”
“Do you have any ideas about why the signals won’t decode?”
He leaned back. “Maybe they don’t want us to catch on too quickly, so we can get used to the idea of their being out there.…”
“That’s not a new idea, either.”
“Maybe they want us to travel halfway up the sky before we meet them.”
“We’ve got a starship on the way to Alpha Centauri,” she said.
“Maybe their signals are all that’s left of them.”
“That would be sad. But I have a feeling that this radio signal isn’t their main communication. It’s only a way of getting our attention.”
“Now that sounds interesting!” Her father smiled and shifted in his recliner. “But why should you think that? There’s no evidence for it at all.”
“People can think of what’s possible even if there’s no evidence, can’t they?”
“Sure—but it’ll remain only a stab in the dark unless you come up with experimental evidence.”
“I know that, Dad. But it’s good to play with possibilities.” She got up from her deck chair and went to the railing of their backyard terrace. As she looked out into the great hollow ball that was Bernal One, she noticed her mother motoring up the road from the medical center. “Here comes Mom, late as usual.”
“Well, we had a chance to talk,” her father said.
As she watched her mother’s scooter make the turn near the house, Lissa wondered if she could ever match Dr. Sharon Quintana’s dedication to work. Dad worked as hard, but it didn’t seem to show. Maybe that was why Dr. Morey Green-Wolfe hadn’t won the Nobel Prize for physics yet. Lissa turned away from the view of her world and gazed at her father. He was leaning back with his eyes closed, enjoying the sunlight from the rings that circled the north and south poles of the sphere.
“Mom won’t like my going, will she?” Lissa asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” her father replied without opening his eyes.
“You came here from Earth just to study physics, and you stayed,” she said, knowing it was a useless comparison.
“Have you discussed it with Sharon?” Morey asked. Lissa swallowed and looked toward the equatorial lake that spilled a river around the world. “A little. Only when we’ve all been together. I don’t really know what she thinks. She’s never around long enough. You at least sit around here working in your head, and I can come talk to you.”
The lake glistened beyond the outer circle of the University. She saw a pedal-glider come down into the water.
“Surgery is a demanding field, Lissa,” her father said in a serious tone. “Surgeons need a lot of sleep to stay fresh. And remember that your mother also has to teach.”
“She does too much.”
“She started late, when you were five.”
A boat picked up the pedal-glider pilot. “Well, it’s not as if she’s going to run out of time, Dad. She can practice well into her nineties.”
He opened his eyes and sat up. “Not with all the youngsters coming up. They’ll want their chance, and they’re eager to compete for it. Your mother wants to do something that she can be proud of, and if that means working harder to beat out the up-and-coming competition, then so be it.”
“Don’t you want that too, Dad?”
He nodded. “I thought so a long time ago, and maybe I’ll still get it. But it’s getting harder. A thousand people have the very same bright ideas every year, and the Network informs them of the fact almost as soon as it happens. I’ve done a lot of work. My papers are often cited in the work of others. I can’t really complain. Maybe somewhere in my work there’s a breakthrough waiting for me.”
“Do you really think there is?” Lissa asked, intrigued by the possibility. “Like what? What kind of thing would it be?”
Morey shrugged. “What would you like?”
“An interstellar space drive! Something that would take us across the galaxy in a month! We could go to Centauri and meet our own starship when it arrived.”
He brushed back his short brown hair and looked at her carefully. “It’s gotta be there, somewhere.” He looked very boyish, she thought, admiring him. “Why don’t you stay here, study physics at O’Neill College, and find out where I’ve hidden it?” He sat back again, smiling. “Here’s Sharon.”
“So what have you two been gabbing about?” her mother demanded as she came out on the terrace and sat down in a recliner. “Lissa, can you get me a drink?” She closed her eyes and leaned back, brushing her red hair out of her eyes. Lissa noticed that her beige coverall suit needed cleaning.
“The usual, Mom?” she asked softly, knowing that her mother was already asleep. She looked at her face for a moment, watching the tension drain away from around her mouth, to be replaced by a childlike pout. The fierce Dr. Quintana was gone, leaving only a mom named Sharon.
“Let’s go fix dinner,” Lissa whispered to her father.
They rolled dinner out onto the terrace. Dr. Quintana came back to life as the sun rings were fading into twilight.
“Ummmm,” she said, sniffing. “Sweet and sour pork.”
“It’s on the table,” Lissa said.
Her mother nodded and found her place. She sat down, sipped a drink, and started eating immediately, using chopsticks. “Ummm, this is great. You two are always so good to me. I’ll have to do something special for you one day.”
“Sharon, Lissa wants to study at the Interstellar Institute in the Himalayas,” Morey said as he sat down. “I think we should talk about it.”
“On Earth?” Sharon asked as Lissa sat down next to her. “I thought they were on Lunar Backside.”
“They are, Mother, but the school is on Earth. There are branches and listening posts on the Moon and Mars.”
Dr. Quintana looked at her carefully, chewing her food. “And this is what you really want to do?”
Lissa looked into her mother’s green eyes and nodded solemnly. “I’ve been wanting to all my life.”
Sharon smiled and took another bite of food. “And I thought you wanted to be a cook.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Lissa replied.
“Well, that’s it then, daughter. You’d better study up on goats and get ready for hard weather. They don’t turn it on and off like here, you know.”