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“Me?” Danchekker looked suspicious. “What for?”

  “Senator Greeling’s wife has been onto us again. It’s this women’s discussion group that she runs. We’ve as good as promised them a tour of the alien-life-form labs, and she wants the director to look after them personally-mostly to impress her friends, I guess.” Cail shrugged and showed a palm. “I know it’s a drag and all that, Chris, but Greeling did a lot of work for us, getting the college sponsorship program through. We don’t want to upset a friend like him if we can help it. She’d like an afternoon next month, maybe?”

  “God help us,” Danchekker moaned bleakly.

  A call-tone sounded in the outer office. Mitzi answered, and a moment later Ms. Mulling’s voice rang stridently through. “Is Professor Danchekker there, by any chance? He has an imminent appointment, and it is most imperative that I find him.”

  And then Hunt appeared in the doorway on the far side of Mitzi’s desk, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “Hello, what’s going on here? Ahah, Chris! Just the man.”

  “Sol, give us a minute, would you?” Caldwell said, at the same time relieving Cail of any choice in the matter by rising and coming around the desk to steer him back toward the outer office. He waved Hunt in and closed the door behind him, holding up a hand to stay Danchekker before Danchekker could start talking again. “Yes, I’ve been aware of the problem for some time, Chris. But we needed a tactful solution that wouldn’t create more hassles than it cured.”

  Danchekker shook his head and waved a hand impatiently. “I’m being turned into a club treasurer. We’ve got enough tally clerks and ledger keepers who can take care of that kind of thing. I was under the impression that this establishment was supposed to be dedicated to the advancement of the sciences. I’ve seen more-”

  “I know, I know,” Caldwell said, nodding and raising a hand. “But something’s come up that-”

  “Now they want to make me a tour guide for women’s tea-party outings. The whole thing has become farcical. It’s a-”

  “Chris, shut up,” Hunt interrupted calmly. “Delegate the lot. That’s what being a director is all about. You haven’t got time, now, anyway. Gregg’s got an off-planet assignment for the two of us.”

  “And not only-” Danchekker stopped abruptly and sent Hunt a questioning look. “Off-planet? Us?”

  Caldwell grunted and nodded at Hunt to continue.

  “On Jevlen,” Hunt said. “There’s a Thurien ship in orbit that’s due to go back there shortly. Just think of it: a whole planetful of alien biology, literally light-years away. I think that a director of life sciences should be breaking new ground in the field, don’t you?” But it was clear already that Danchekker needed no further convincing. His expression had the rapture of a revivalist seeing light through the parting of the clouds.

  They came out of Caldwell’s office a few minutes later. “I think we’re going to have to come up with some other arrangement,” Caldwell said to Solomon Cail, who was still waiting. “Chris is going to be tied up on a priority project.” He indicated the door of his office with a nod, and Cail disappeared inside.

  Danchekker strode over to the terminal where Mitzi was still holding Ms. Mulling at bay. “Ah, there you are, Professor,” the image on the screen began. “The review meeting-”

  “Find Yamumatsu and get him there,” Danchekker said. His voice rang with the newfound confidence of the reborn. “Also, contact the secretary of the Republican Society and give them my apologies, but I shall be unable to attend. Maybe Yamumatsu would like to stand in for me there, too.”

  For a few seconds Ms. Mulling was too shocked to reply; she stared back at him from the screen, open-mouthed, like a mother superior who had just heard the Pope proclaim his conversion to atheism. She recovered herself falteringly. “I don’t understand… What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Danchekker repeated lightly. “Not at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. Effective immediately, I shall be preoccupied with other matters. Have Brady come to my office, would you? Get out all the plans, charts, budgets, and other wastepaper that holds up the walls over there, and tell him he’ll be deputized as from tomorrow morning. I-” Danchekker spread both hands in a careless throwing-away motion, “-shall have flown.”

  Ms. Mulling looked confused. “What are you talking about, Professor Danchekker? There are urgent things to be attended to.”

  “I have no time for anything urgent. There are too many important things to be done, instead.”

  “But-where are you going?”

  “To Jevlen. Where else can a science of alien life be practiced?” Danchekker lifted a leg to dangle a sneaker-shod foot in view of the screen and waggled it provocatively. “Far, far away, Ms. Mulling. Beyond the horizons of imagination of the entire Republican Society, the verbal compass of a gaggle of senators’ wives, and even, if you are capable of comprehending such a thing, beyond the reaches of the sacred UNSA Corporate Procedure Manual.”

  “Jevlen? Why? What are you going to do there?”

  But Danchekker wasn’t listening. Hunt and Mitzi could hear him singing tunelessly to himself as he ambled away down the corridor beyond the open door.

  “Far, far away. Far, far away…

  CHAPTER TEN

  Earth’s physicists were having to do a lot of rethinking to accommodate the new facts brought by the Ganymeans. Some of the most far-reaching revelations had to do with the fundamental nature of matter itself.

  As some Terran scientists had suspected and been investigating without conclusive result since the late twentieth century, the permanency of matter turned out to be just another illusion to be thrown overboard with such notions as classical predictability and absolute, universal time. For all forms of matter were continually decaying away to nothing, although at a rate immeasurably small by the techniques so far available on Earth-it would take ten billion years for a gram of water to vanish completely.

  The fundamental particles of which matter was composed annihilated spontaneously, returning to a hyperrealm governed by laws different from those that operated in the familiar universe. It was the tiny proportion that was disappearing at any instant that gave rise to the gravitational effect of mass. Every annihilation event produced a minute gravity pulse, and the additive effect of large numbers of these pulses occurring every second gave the apparently steady field that was perceived macroscopically.

  Hence, gravity ceased being a thing apart in physics, a static effect, passively associated with a mass, and fell instead into line along with other field phenomena as a vector quantity generated by the rate of change of something-in this case, the rate of change of mass. This principle, together with means of artificially inducing and controlling the process, formed the basis of early Ganymean gravitic engineering-the drive system used by the Shapieron was an example of its application.

  Small though it sounded, such a rate of disappearance was not trivial on a cosmic time scale. The reason there was much of the universe left at all was that, throughout the entire volume of space, particles were constantly being created spontaneously, too. And in a converse way to that in which particle-annihilations induced gravity, particle-creations induced “negative gravity.” Since a particle could only disappear from where it already existed, extinctions predominated inside masses and induced an attractive curvature into the local vicinity of space-time; but in the vast regions of empty space between galaxies, creations far outnumbered extinctions, and the resultant effect was a cosmic repulsion. It all made a rather tidy and symmetric, satisfying kind of sense.

  A fundamental particle, therefore, appeared, lived out its allotted span in the observable dimensions of the known universe, and then vanished. Where it came from and where it returned to were questions that the scientists of Earth had never had to face, and which even the Ganymeans on Minerva at the time of the Shapieron’s departure had only begun delving into. It was their subsequent work in this direction that had given
the Thuriens the technologies that made possible their interstellar civilization.

  The hyperrealm that particles temporarily emerged from was the same domain that matter-energy entered when it disappeared into a black hole. That an object no longer continued to exist where it had when it entered a black hole, Terran physicists had known theoretically for some time. Therefore, it had to be either somewhere else in the known universe; or in another universe; or, conceivably, in some other time. Logic admitted no other alternatives. Remarkably, it turned out, all three were possible. The Thuriens had realized and applied the first two; they were still looking into and puzzling over the third.

  An electrically charged, rapidly spinning black hole flattened into a disk and eventually became a toroid with the mass concentrated at the rim. In this situation, the singularity existed not as an impenetrably screened point, but as the central aperture itself, which could be approached axially without catastrophic tidal effects. Through a symmetric effect, creating such an “entry port” also gave rise to a coupled projection elsewhere in normal space, at which an object entering the aperture would appear instantaneously by traversing what had come to be known as “i-space.” The location of the “exit port” depended on the dimensions, spin, orientation, and certain other parameters of the initial toroid and could be controlled up to distances of several tens of light-years. That was how the Thuriens moved their craft between stars.

  The energy to create the toroids was directed through i-space by colossal generating systems located in space, consuming matter from the cores of burnt-out stars. However, to avoid causing orbital perturbations and all the attendant disruptions, the ports were never projected into planetary systems, but well away in the surrounding voids. To travel between planetary surfaces and the i-space ports, the Thurien ships used an advanced form of the more conventional gravitic drive pioneered by their ancestors on Minerva. Even so, a complete interstellar journey was typically measured in days.

  Since the Thurien starships also drew power from the same i-space distribution grid that supplied the energy to create the transfer ports, they could be quite modest in size. Others were huge. The roughly globoid Vishnu, twenty miles across, was of intermediate size.

  Three days after Hunt and Danchekker talked with Caldwell, they were part of a mixed group that boarded one of the Vishnu’s daughter craft at Andrews AFB, Maryland. Hunt’s deputy, Duncan Watt, had joined the group as hoped, and so had Sandy Holmes from Danchekker’s lab at Goddard.

  It was all as simple and informal an affair as Hunt had expected. The Thurien crew offered them soft drinks or coffee and invited them to take a seat. Each of the arrivals was also issued with a communications device in the form of a small, flexible disk, about the size of a dime and looking like a Band-Aid, that self-attached behind the ear. It was a connection to VISAR, operating via relay from the mother ship orbiting twenty thousand miles overhead. By coupling directly into the wearer’s sensory neural areas, the communicator could, upon command, convey to VISAR what was seen, heard, or spoken; in the reverse direction it could inject information from VISAR, which the wearer would experience as hearing and vision. It thus afforded not only instant access to the ship’s system, but also person-to-person communications with other Terrans, as well as to Ganymeans through VISAR acting as interpreter.

  “Welcome back,” the computer’s familiar voice said, seemingly speaking in Hunt’s ear. “I’ take it you’re getting restless again.”

  “Hello, VISAR. Well, you seem to be offering a more stylish service these days.” The first vessel that the Thuriens had sent to make initial contact had landed at a disused Air Force base in Alaska and, to evade the Jevlenese-managed surveillance operation, had been built to resemble a conventional Terran aircraft.

  “We like to keep the customers happy,” VISAR said.

  The ferry craft took off shortly afterward. Barely ten minutes later, it entered the immense composition of soaring hull structures and sweeping metallic surfaces curving away for miles on every side that made up the outer vista of the Vishnu. It entered a brightly lit cavern of projecting docking structures that looked like the Manhattan skyline stood on its side, and berthed alongside another of a fleet of daughter vessels of every size, shape, and description.

  Some of the Thurien crew conducted the party through the access ramps and antechambers into a high space with wide corridors leading away on either side and overlooked by several levels of railed walkways. More Thuriens were waiting, scattered about. It seemed to be a terminal area for transportation links to other parts of the vessel, but exactly what one was supposed to do to get there was far from immediately obvious.

  The starship manufactured its own internal gravity, creating “up,” “down,” and transitions between in whatever direction suited the purpose from place to place. The result was an Escherian confusion of corridors, shafts, intersecting planes and spaces, and surfaces that served as walls here, floors there, and elsewhere curved to transform from one into another. What had previously been below could unexpectedly appear overhead without one’s experiencing any sense of having rotated, and through it all, streams of Ganymeans were being carried along in open conveyor shafts on directed g-field currents-rather like invisible elevators traversing the ship in all directions. Hunt and Danchekker had seen this kind of thing before, but the others around them were stopping and staring in bewilderment.

  “Well, Chris, here we go again,” Hunt said, looking around. “But this will be a darn sight quicker than last time.”

  “And a bit more comfortable when we get there, too,” Sandy Holmes murmured in a slightly dazed voice as she struggled to take it all in. She had been with them on the UNSA Jupiter Five mission. When they had joined that ship, before its lift out from lunar orbit, the voyage ahead of them had been six months, and the accommodation waiting at the other end of it had been cramped quarters in the subsurface part of a scientific base situated on Ganymede’s ice sheets, with the constant vibration of machinery and an ever-present odor of hot oil.

  “Yes,” Danchekker agreed. “And I recollect being adamant at the termination of that escapade that I would never set foot inside one of these contraptions again.” He sighed. “However, the designers responsible for this accomplishment would appear to have been from a different school from their terrestrial counterparts, whose imaginative limits one must suppose to have been set by experiences with submarines and tanks.”

  “And it will get you far, far away a lot faster,” Hunt reminded him.

  “Hmm, there is that.”

  Duncan Watt did a quick mental calculation. “Something like seventy million times faster, in fact,” he said. He was thirty-two, with a ruddy, vigorous complexion and thick, jet black hair. He had the rugged kind of looks that made Hunt think of him as belonging more on a football field or in a boxing ring than in a mathematical physics lab.

  Near Duncan were a man and a woman accompanying a group of teenagers, who at that moment were standing motionless in awe. “This is a unique moment in the history of the universe,” the man muttered, moving a step closer and nodding his head to indicate his charges. “It’s the first time ever that this bunch have all been quiet at the same time.”

  Duncan grinned. “Who are they?” he asked.

  “A class of tenth-graders going on vacation. I’m still not really sure how it happened. Somebody at the school came up with the idea as a joke, and the Ganymeans said sure, no problem. Goddamnedest thing I ever heard of.”

  Then VISAR said to Hunt, “You have a reception committee waiting for you.” From the change of expression on Danchekker’s face, Hunt knew that VISAR was talking to him, too.

  “Where?” Hunt asked.

  “The two officers standing a bit to your left.”

  Hunt looked around and saw the Thuriens whom VISAR had indicated already moving forward. The millions of years that separated the Ganymeans of Minerva, as typified by the Shapieron’s complement, from the Thuriens had produced visible
differences. Although of the same general pattern, the Thuriens were darker, almost black, more slender, and on average slightly shorter. The two who had been waiting were clad in loose-fitting green tunics, each with a halterlike embellishment of elaborately woven metallic threads hanging on either side from the neck to the waist.

  “Dr. Hunt? Professor Danchekker?” one of them inquired.

  “That’s us,” Hunt confirmed.

  “My name is Kalor, and this is Merglis. We are here on behalf of Captain Fytom to welcome you aboard the Vishnu.”

  “It seemed fitting that you should be given a personal greeting,” the other explained.

  They shook hands-the Terran custom had come to be generally accepted. Hunt introduced Sandy and Duncan.

  “The captain sends his compliments,” Kalor informed them. “He is aware that your visit to Jevlen is to study Ganymean science. If any of the Vishnu’s specialists can be of assistance during our brief voyage, consider them at your disposal.”

  “Very considerate of him,” Danchekker replied. “Convey our thanks. We will certainly bear his offer in mind.”

  “You are also invited to view the command center once we are under way,” Kalor said. “But just at the moment things there are a bit hectic, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”

  “Whenever is convenient. Yes, we’d like that very much,” Hunt answered.

  “Are we invited, too?” Sandy asked hopefully.

  “But naturally,” Kalor told her.

  “I think we pick the right people to go traveling with,” Duncan said.

  “For now, we’ll take you to the section that has been reserved for Terran accommodation,” Kalor said. “Since it looks as if Terrans are going to become regular passengers on these trips, we’re making it a permanent feature of the ship.”

  He led them over to a platform jutting out into a broad, elongated space, lower than the area they had just crossed, arched at intervals by sections of bulkhead that glowed with an internal amber light, and dividing to left, right, above, and below into smaller tunnels and shafts radiating away in all directions.