Doctor Eileen was back on her rounds, quietly arranging for a physician from the north end of Lake Sheelin to serve as her substitute while she was away. She was also busy with something else that I didn't find out about until later.
She dropped in on us every couple of days, but the only visit of interest was when she gave me what she called a Maze Ephemeris. It contained names of worldlets and sets of numbers called orbital elements, six of them for each place.
Comparing her list and Paddy Enderton's calculator/recorder/display and who-knew-what-else unit, I was able to relate the two sets of numbers to each other. They did not quite match, but Doctor Eileen said that the difference was just that one set was centered on Maveen itself, and the other on what she called "the whole Maveen system center of mass."
I was also able to match most of the names on Doctor Eileen's place list to items on the calculator display, and vice versa. Paddy's Fortune was not on her list, but she said that was not surprising. There were far more worldlets in the Maze than anyone had ever surveyed, and small bodies in particular were liable to be left out. I didn't know at the time what she meant by "small," and I was astonished to learn that anything less than a mile or two across—the full distance from our house to Toltoona, and more—was unlikely to be on anyone's list. For the first time I began to develop a feel for the vast region covered by the Forty Worlds.
One fine, calm day, when there was no breath of wind and the temperature was above freezing, I ventured again to the top of the water tower. In four nerve-tingling trips I brought down the telecon, and demonstrated it to Doctor Eileen on her next visit. She said that it was more evidence of a technology no longer possessed anywhere in the Forty Worlds, but she could see no way to relate it directly to Paddy's Fortune, and she did not even take it away with her.
I put it up in the front bedroom, my bedroom again, and used it to stare every day across the lake at Muldoon Spaceport. The facility was very quiet. I saw only two launches in a week. Most of the rest of the time, when Mother did not have me running around helping her—I think she deliberately kept me busy—I sat upstairs playing with the calculator.
It was soon obvious that it was capable of many more things than I could understand. At the simplest level, I could point to one of the worlds of the Maze and obtain more and more detail simply by calling for "Second Data Level," "Third Data Level," and so on. The trouble was, most of what I was shown seemed useless. There were listings of object composition (that's what I had looked at and not understood the first time I used it); there were things called "delta-vee" lists, that told how easy or hard it was for a ship to get from any world to any other at a chosen time. And finally, at the most detailed level of all, the complete set of data acquired by any visit to or survey of the object was included. For a prospector, or anyone hoping to scavenge the Maze, the whole collection of data could be priceless.
For us, though, it was useless. We were going to Paddy's Fortune and only to Paddy's Fortune. But I did wonder if we had missed the point. Perhaps the men who had broken into our house were interested in data about the known worldlets of the Maze. Or perhaps they wanted something completely different, something we had not thought about.
I had spent a lot more time with Paddy Enderton than had either Mother or Doctor Eileen. He was rough and tough and dirty, but he was also practical. He had never mentioned the stars or the Godspeed Drive to me, not once. No matter what Doctor Eileen might believe, try as I might I could not see him as a person who would care one jot about the existence of Godspeed Base, or the long-term future of human beings on Erin. If he called a place Paddy's Fortune, that's what he would expect to find there: something to make him rich.
Before
She dropped in on us every couple of days, but the only visit of interest was when she gave me what she called a Maze Ephemeris. It contained names of worldlets and sets of numbers called orbital elements, six of them for each place.
Comparing her list and Paddy Enderton's calculator/recorder/display and who-knew-what-else unit, I was able to relate the two sets of numbers to each other. They did not quite match, but Doctor Eileen said that the difference was just that one set was centered on Maveen itself, and the other on what she called "the whole Maveen system center of mass."
I was also able to match most of the names on Doctor Eileen's place list to items on the calculator display, and vice versa. Paddy's Fortune was not on her list, but she said that was not surprising. There were far more worldlets in the Maze than anyone had ever surveyed, and small bodies in particular were liable to be left out. I didn't know at the time what she meant by "small," and I was astonished to learn that anything less than a mile or two across—the full distance from our house to Toltoona, and more—was unlikely to be on anyone's list. For the first time I began to develop a feel for the vast region covered by the Forty Worlds.
One fine, calm day, when there was no breath of wind and the temperature was above freezing, I ventured again to the top of the water tower. In four nerve-tingling trips I brought down the telecon, and demonstrated it to Doctor Eileen on her next visit. She said that it was more evidence of a technology no longer possessed anywhere in the Forty Worlds, but she could see no way to relate it directly to Paddy's Fortune, and she did not even take it away with her.
I put it up in the front bedroom, my bedroom again, and used it to stare every day across the lake at Muldoon Spaceport. The facility was very quiet. I saw only two launches in a week. Most of the rest of the time, when Mother did not have me running around helping her—I think she deliberately kept me busy—I sat upstairs playing with the calculator.
It was soon obvious that it was capable of many more things than I could understand. At the simplest level, I could point to one of the worlds of the Maze and obtain more and more detail simply by calling for "Second Data Level," "Third Data Level," and so on. The trouble was, most of what I was shown seemed useless. There were listings of object composition (that's what I had looked at and not understood the first time I used it); there were things called "delta-vee" lists, that told how easy or hard it was for a ship to get from any world to any other at a chosen time. And finally, at the most detailed level of all, the complete set of data acquired by any visit to or survey of the object was included. For a prospector, or anyone hoping to scavenge the Maze, the whole collection of data could be priceless.
For us, though, it was useless. We were going to Paddy's Fortune and only to Paddy's Fortune. But I did wonder if we had missed the point. Perhaps the men who had broken into our house were interested in data about the known worldlets of the Maze. Or perhaps they wanted something completely different, something we had not thought about.
I had spent a lot more time with Paddy Enderton than had either Mother or Doctor Eileen. He was rough and tough and dirty, but he was also practical. He had never mentioned the stars or the Godspeed Drive to me, not once. No matter what Doctor Eileen might believe, try as I might I could not see him as a person who would care one jot about the existence of Godspeed Base, or the long-term future of human beings on Erin. If he called a place Paddy's Fortune, that's what he would expect to find there: something to make him rich.
Before
Similar Books
