wife was involved—as an astronomer.”
“She was, but she never discussed it either, and I was careful not to do so. My mission would have been aborted, and perhaps I might have been imprisoned—or executed, for all I know—if I displayed an unhealthy curiosity too openly.”
“But as an astronomer, she would know the destination. She as much as said so. ‘If
you
knew—’ You see? She knew and if you knew, too—”
Fisher didn’t seem interested. “Since she didn’t tell me what she knew, I can’t tell you.”
“Are you sure? No casual remarks whose significance you didn’t note at the time? After all, you’re
not
an astronomer and she might have said something you didn’t quite get. Do you remember anything at all she said that set you to puzzling?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Think! Is it possible that the Far Probe located a planetary system around one or both of the Sun-like stars of Alpha Centauri?”
“I can’t say.”
“Or planets about any star?”
Fisher shrugged.
“Think!” said Wyler urgently. “Is there any reason for you to think that she meant, ‘You think we’re going to Alpha Centauri, but there are planets circling it and we’re heading for those.’ Or could she have meant, ‘You think we’re going to Alpha Centauri, but we’re going to another star where we’re sure there will be a useful planet.’ Something like that?”
“I couldn’t possibly guess.”
Garand Wyler’s generous lips compressed themselves tightly for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what, Crile, my old friend. There are three things that are going to happen now. First, you’re going to have to undergo another debriefing. Second, I suspect we’re going to have to persuade the Ceres Settlement to allow us the use of their asteroid telescope, and use it to inspect, very closely, every star within a hundred light-years of the Solar System. And, third, we’ll have to whip our hyper-spatialists into jumping a little higher and farther. You watch and see if that’s not what happens.”
NINE
ERYTHRO
16.
There were times, once in a while, once in an ever longer while as the years passed (or so it seemed to him), when Janus Pitt found time to sit back in his chair, alone and silent, and just allow his mind to relax. Those were moments when there were no orders to give, no information to absorb, no immediate decisions to make, no farms to visit, no factories to inspect, no regions in space to penetrate, no one to see, no one to listen to, no one to foil, no one to encourage—
And always when such times came, Pitt allowed himself the final and least exhaustible luxury—that of self-pity.
It was not that he would have anything different than what it was. He had planned for all his adult life to be Commissioner because he thought that no one could run Rotor as he could; and now that he was Commissioner, he still thought so.
But why, among all the fools of Rotor, could he find no one who could see long-range as he could? It was fourteen years since the Leaving, and still no one could really see the inevitable; not even after he had explained it carefully.
Someday, back in the Solar System, sooner rather than later, someone would develop hyper-assistance as the hyperspatialists on Rotor had—perhaps even in a better form. Someday humanity would set out in its hundreds and thousands of Settlements, in its millions and billions of people, to colonize the Galaxy, and that would be a brutal time.
Yes, the Galaxy was enormous. How often had he heard that? And beyond it were other galaxies. But humanitywould not spread out evenly. Always, always, there would be some star systems that, for one reason or another, were better than other star systems, and they would be the ones snarled and fought over. If there were ten star systems and ten colonizing groups, all ten would zero in on one of the star systems, and one only.
And sooner or later, they would discover Nemesis and the
“She was, but she never discussed it either, and I was careful not to do so. My mission would have been aborted, and perhaps I might have been imprisoned—or executed, for all I know—if I displayed an unhealthy curiosity too openly.”
“But as an astronomer, she would know the destination. She as much as said so. ‘If
you
knew—’ You see? She knew and if you knew, too—”
Fisher didn’t seem interested. “Since she didn’t tell me what she knew, I can’t tell you.”
“Are you sure? No casual remarks whose significance you didn’t note at the time? After all, you’re
not
an astronomer and she might have said something you didn’t quite get. Do you remember anything at all she said that set you to puzzling?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Think! Is it possible that the Far Probe located a planetary system around one or both of the Sun-like stars of Alpha Centauri?”
“I can’t say.”
“Or planets about any star?”
Fisher shrugged.
“Think!” said Wyler urgently. “Is there any reason for you to think that she meant, ‘You think we’re going to Alpha Centauri, but there are planets circling it and we’re heading for those.’ Or could she have meant, ‘You think we’re going to Alpha Centauri, but we’re going to another star where we’re sure there will be a useful planet.’ Something like that?”
“I couldn’t possibly guess.”
Garand Wyler’s generous lips compressed themselves tightly for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what, Crile, my old friend. There are three things that are going to happen now. First, you’re going to have to undergo another debriefing. Second, I suspect we’re going to have to persuade the Ceres Settlement to allow us the use of their asteroid telescope, and use it to inspect, very closely, every star within a hundred light-years of the Solar System. And, third, we’ll have to whip our hyper-spatialists into jumping a little higher and farther. You watch and see if that’s not what happens.”
NINE
ERYTHRO
16.
There were times, once in a while, once in an ever longer while as the years passed (or so it seemed to him), when Janus Pitt found time to sit back in his chair, alone and silent, and just allow his mind to relax. Those were moments when there were no orders to give, no information to absorb, no immediate decisions to make, no farms to visit, no factories to inspect, no regions in space to penetrate, no one to see, no one to listen to, no one to foil, no one to encourage—
And always when such times came, Pitt allowed himself the final and least exhaustible luxury—that of self-pity.
It was not that he would have anything different than what it was. He had planned for all his adult life to be Commissioner because he thought that no one could run Rotor as he could; and now that he was Commissioner, he still thought so.
But why, among all the fools of Rotor, could he find no one who could see long-range as he could? It was fourteen years since the Leaving, and still no one could really see the inevitable; not even after he had explained it carefully.
Someday, back in the Solar System, sooner rather than later, someone would develop hyper-assistance as the hyperspatialists on Rotor had—perhaps even in a better form. Someday humanity would set out in its hundreds and thousands of Settlements, in its millions and billions of people, to colonize the Galaxy, and that would be a brutal time.
Yes, the Galaxy was enormous. How often had he heard that? And beyond it were other galaxies. But humanitywould not spread out evenly. Always, always, there would be some star systems that, for one reason or another, were better than other star systems, and they would be the ones snarled and fought over. If there were ten star systems and ten colonizing groups, all ten would zero in on one of the star systems, and one only.
And sooner or later, they would discover Nemesis and the
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