Dark as Day

20 …AND TIME WITH THE BASTARD

In little more than eight days, an acceleration of one Earth gravity had gone from feeling oddly wrong and perhaps unendurable to oddly right. You could live your whole life in the outer reaches of the solar system, but something deep inside you remembered where humans had begun, Milly gazed ahead at the nearing bulk of the Odin Station and felt half-regretful that she was once again in a micro-gee setting.

Jack was drifting around the cabin, pausing now and again to stare out at their destination. He seemed more relaxed than during their first dinner together. Maybe Milly had been able to persuade him that there was no way his brother Philip could achieve an advantage, or maybe he simply accepted that he was close to a confrontation. For whatever reason, the rest of the trip had been a lot easier than the first days.

Milly kept her eyes on the nearing station. It was remarkably similar in appearance to the station that they had left at Jovian L-4. There were the same distributed antenna arrays, the same skeletal lattices to detect the ghostly passage of high-energy neutrinos, and the same central bulk of the main habitat. Halfway across the System, and here she was facing a facsimile of the station that they had left. Who had copied from whom? If Jack were to be believed, the Bastard had stolen every idea from his younger brother.

Unlike Jack, Milly felt a huge desire to meet Philip. She had never seen a picture of Jack’s brother. She had one sister who was very like her, and one with no apparent resemblance at all — though other family members claimed to see one. What would Philip look like? More important, what would he be like inside? She felt that she was slowly beginning to understand Jack. He was an odd mixture of total self-confidence and total insecurity. The combination was intriguing and highly attractive. It was easy to see the reason for his supposedly-numerous affairs on Argus Station. Milly was no longer sure that Jack had always been the instigator.

“We are ready to begin docking. If you wouldn’t mind preparing for arrival…” The pilot Fax waited until Milly was seated and Jack, reluctantly, stopped his wandering and strapped in. The bulk of Odin Station hung enormous beyond the port, eclipsing half the star field. They eased their way in toward a set of gantries on the side.

The docking was performed with inhuman precision. Milly felt barely a tremor of contact, and then the illuminated signs to remain seated went out. Moments later, a green flashing light indicated that the umbilical had been connected and pressures equalized.

“Here we are.” Jack was already unstrapped, and he sounded breathless. “Let’s do it.”

He sounded jittery. Milly, on the other hand, felt enormously excited and filled with anticipation. Her hopes had been on hold for more than a week, but within the next few hours there was a chance that the signal she had discovered — the Wu-Beston anomaly — would be confirmed as extra-solar, a real signal from interstellar distances.

She followed close behind as he headed for the hatch. When it opened she found herself at the beginning of a long umbilical, exactly like the one through which she had left Argus Station. Thirty meters away, at the other end of the tube, a figure was moving their way which at first glance could easily be mistaken for Jack Beston.

Philip the Bastard.

Jack advanced, Milly close behind, until the two brothers faced each other no more than half a meter apart. Neither one reached out a hand.

“Jack.” Philip Beston nodded his head. Now that she was close, Milly could see differences. Philip was almost the same height, but more heavily-built. He had the same red hair, but in place of Jack’s lidded green glint, his eyes were blue and wide and innocent. And, unlike Jack, the smile on his face seemed easy and genuine.

“And this” — Philip stepped past his brother — “must be the famous Milly Wu, discover of the Wu-Beston anomaly.” He paused and frowned. “Are you really Milly Wu?”

“I am. Is something wrong?”

“Not at all.” He reached out, took her hand in his, and shook it firmly. “My apologies. I was merely surprised to find someone so young — and, if I may be a little gauche, so very attractive — making so important a discovery. I am delighted to welcome you to Odin Station, and I look forward to the opportunity of working with you.”

His brother’s air of bonhomie made Jack sound sour and nervous as he said, “On verification. Only on verification.”

“Jack, my dear young sibling, would I ever suggest anything else?” Philip turned again to Milly. “As you can see, my brother remains regrettably suspicious of me and my intentions.”

“Damn right I do,” Jack growled, and moved on along the umbilical toward the interior of Odin Station. “With plenty of reasons. How soon can we talk verification?”

Philip shrugged at Milly, as though to say “What can you do with him?” and ushered her forward. “As soon as you like, Jack,” he said. “My staff has been eagerly awaiting your arrival. As have I.”

“That, I do believe.” Jack, at the end of the tube, had to wait for his brother to come up to him and point out the way they should go. The outside of Odin Station resembled Argus Station, but within there would surely be big differences. Milly didn’t propose to find out what they were. It had taken weeks to learn the chambers and crisscrossing corridors of Argus Station, and she would not be here long enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Even assuming, that is, that she would be given the freedom to do so. Philip Beston took them only a few more meters, then led them into a suite of rooms.

“This is where you will be staying. As Jack will no doubt explain to you, we do not feel free to offer the full run of Odin Station. If you do leave these quarters, I request that you be accompanied by one of my staff members.”

“In other words, he doesn’t want us to see too much.” Jack stepped forward and moved across to sit at the long table. “Let’s not mess around here. You know what we came here for and what we want, and we know exactly what you want.”

Philip Beston raised an eyebrow at Milly. “I had intended to proceed with the usual civilities, and offer you refreshments after your long journey. However, if you feel the urge to get down to business at once…”

“We do.” Jack seemed as nervous as Philip was relaxed. “Are you set up already for verification?”

“As ready as we can be, given the absence of critical information. The arrays are all in position, we merely have to set them to their correct phases.”

Even Philip showed a trace of tension with those words. Milly felt the atmosphere in the room slowly tightening. The problem from Jack Beston’s point of view was quite simple. Odin Station had receiving equipment as good as that at Argus Station. There would be little to choose between them when it came to sensitivity. The big question was, to which direction in space should the array of receivers be tuned? Without that information, Philip Beston would be hunting blind.

On the other hand, as soon as Jack provided the signal direction to his brother, the two of them would be on an equal footing. Odin Station would presumably skip the detection analysis that Milly and the team at L-4 had performed; if the signal were verified, they would be equally well-equipped to tackle the all-important problem of signal interpretation.

There was a long silence. Jack Beston, having hurried so far and so fast, appeared to be having second thoughts. At last his brother prompted him: “I assume that the signal is still there? That it didn’t show up for awhile, and then go away?”

Jack merely gave him a cynical glance. Milly could see Jack’s point. If the signal had vanished, the array of sensors in Odin Station had not previously been tuned to the right direction. Therefore, there could be no verification. The signal needed to be observed simultaneously from both the L-4 and L-5 locations.

“Look,” Philip Beston said at last. “I know exactly how you feel about this. I’d feel the same way myself if our positions were reversed. But I’ve had my top team in position and awaiting your arrival for hours. If you want to change your mind, get back into your ship, and return to Argus Station…”

“No, I’m suspicious — just like you — but I’m not dumb. The signal is still there, of course it’s still there. Or at least, it was an hour ago when I checked back to base from our ship.”

“Regular light speed signals?” Philip Beston shook his head. “You know, if we wanted to do this as accurately as possible, we should arrange for entanglement between your computers and mine. That way, we would not have to compensate all the time for signal delays.”

“Sure. I’d be willing — if you would.” Jack locked glances with his brother, and after a few moments both shook their heads. Milly realized she had just witnessed a significant interaction. Entanglement of the computers would zero out communication delays; but it would also vastly increase the risk that the secret information of one station would become accessible to the other. Neither brother was willing to permit that. Clearly, each felt that he had some sort of competitive edge, even though Jack had won the first round by detecting an anomaly.

Jack was drumming his fingers on the tabletop staring at nothing. Finally he glanced up to Milly. “All right. Go ahead.”

“Provide coordinates?”

“You’ve got it.” Jack turned to Philip. “I assume it’s necessary for us to say this only once? Everything in this room is being recorded?”

“Just imagine that the positions were reversed, think how you would proceed, and assume that the same applies here.” Philip Beston had lost any trace of his original relaxed air. He was tenser than his brother as he turned to Milly. “The coordinates of the signal source, if you would be so kind.”

Milly didn’t need to consult notes. “As of 5:82:34 hours on 97/09/04, the source coordinates in the ecliptic standard reference frame of 2050 were as follows: declination, 38 degrees 22 minutes 17.3 seconds south, azimuth 231 degrees 54 minutes 52.6 seconds. The signal fall-off from the observed direction of signal maximum followed a circular normal distribution, with a one-sigma value of 1.3 arc seconds. No motion of the signal source was detected over a five week period of observation. However, for the first three weeks the array tuning was not exact, so a movement in position of less than twenty seconds of arc would have been undetectable.”

“Thank you.” Philip sounded breathless. “What is the source direction relative to an L-4 to L-5 baseline?”

“A little more than thirty-two degrees. The angle is not optimal.”

“But it’s pretty good. We lose only a factor of two in angular resolution. It will take my staff approximately ten minutes to tune our most sensitive arrays to that direction, but after that they have to make preliminary observations and perform an optimizing scan. We have maybe an hour to wait for results. During that time, I would be very happy to offer a tour of Odin Station.” Philip glanced at Jack. “There will of course be a few places that I do not feel free to show you.”

Jack shook his head. “Not for me. Milly, you go if you feel interested.”

Milly nodded.

Philip took her by the arm. “If I may make so bold… I consider this a reasonable decision on both your parts. I suspect that my brother knows the inside of Odin Station as well as anyone here, despite the fact that this is his first visit.”

That comment, Milly felt sure, was intended for Jack more than her. Both brothers had been spying on each other in every way possible for years. Milly wondered if she would see the “insider” whom Zetter had indirectly referred to in Milly’s first staff meeting with the Ogre. One thing for sure: if she did see that insider, there would be not a hint to suggest a relationship with Jack Beston and Odin Station.

Milly allowed Philip Beston to lead her through the interior. She saw the detection analysis teams, although only through glass partitions, and she was not invited to go in and meet them; she saw the door marked interpretation team only, and speculated on the activity that might be going on within; she looked out of ports, through which she could view the big distributed antenna arrays, now turning, little by little, to optimize for the acceptance of a signal from a particular direction in space.

Not just any particular direction, either. Her direction, the direction of the Wu-Beston anomaly.

Philip Beston was obviously proud of his equipment and his work team, but Milly was taking in what she saw only with some peripheral area of her brain. The central part of her attention was focused on the verification procedure which was now beginning, and on the question that would be answered in the next few hours: How far away is the detected signal?

The massive arrays of detectors, at Argus Station and Odin Station could pinpoint the direction of a distant source to half an arc second or better. The two stations were separated by about 1.3 billion kilometers, one ahead of and the other trailing Jupiter by sixty degrees in the planet’s revolution around the sun. Because of that long baseline, Odin Station, Argus Station, and the distant signal source formed the vertices of a very tall and narrow triangle. Observing the directions of the source as seen from the two observing stations provided the tiny angle at the apex of that extended triangle. Angle information, together with the length of the baseline between the stations, was enough to determine the distance of the signal source.

In practice, the observations provided only a lower limit for distance. If a source was too far away, no angular difference would be observed as seen from Jovian L-4 and Jovian L-5 points, which left the actual distance undefined. However, that result would be quite satisfactory to Milly. It would establish that the signal source, wherever it was, was far out among the stars and not in the immediate neighborhood of the solar system.

Milly knew the numbers by heart. The angle of the source direction relative to the baseline joining Jovian L-4 and Jovian L-5 was 32 degrees. If the parallax — the difference in direction of the source as seen from Odin Station and from Argus Station — was one second of arc, then the source must be at a distance of fifteen light years. A measured parallax of half a second of arc would mean the source was twice as far away, at least thirty light-years. One-tenth of a second of arc was beyond the resolving power of the arrays at the two observing stations. All you could say then was that the signal emanated from somewhere at least fifty light-years distant.

Philip Beston must have noticed Milly’s incomplete attention. He glanced at his watch. “You’ve probably seen as much of this as you want to, and I’m sure you have other things on your mind. We won’t have results for another half hour or so. Would you like to go back to your rooms? Or could I interest you in a light snack and perhaps a cup of tea?”

Milly did feel that she ought to get back to Jack. On the other hand, what would they do then? Sit around, stare at each other, and wait? That was not the most thrilling way of spending time until the results came through.

“I think that a cup of tea would be very acceptable.”

Her hesitation must have showed, because Philip smiled. “It’s a tough choice, isn’t it? Do you enjoy the company of the Ogre, or do you spend even more time with the Bastard? But that’s not a fair question. I suspect it’s the lure of refreshment that sounds interesting, not the pleasure of my company.”

He was fishing. Milly didn’t mind that, but she didn’t feel like encouraging him. No one had said anything to her about Philip Beston’s attitudes toward young women, but heredity was a powerful force. She smiled back, said “A cup of tea and something to eat with either you or Jack would be very pleasant,” and left the next move up to him.

They had passed some kind of dining room on the brief tour of Odin Station. Philip nodded and led her not in that direction, but to a different, smaller, and more private room. He closed the door carefully as they entered. Food and drink were already laid out on a credenza, which made Milly wonder how much his offer had been planned in advance. She took her lead from Philip, helped herself to a sugary cake and a glass of hot green tea, and sat opposite him at a low glass-topped table that kept their separation to a comfortable meter.

Philip ate in silence for half a minute or so. He was a slow and neat eater, like Milly herself. At last he said, “You must have done a spectacular job. I mean, the Wu-Beston anomaly. It’s not like the Ogre to share credit unless he realized that anyone looking at the work would deduce that the discovery was yours, and yours alone.”

Milly sipped tea and said in a neutral voice, “Jack has always been more than fair with me.”

“Are you sure of that? Jack has always had a bit of a reputation for stinginess. You might say it’s none of my business, but how much financial reward did he give you for the discovery?”

Milly stared. It was not a subject that had ever come up for discussion.

“The terms set out in the bequest for use of inherited money are quite specific,” Philip went on. “There are ample funds to reward the discoverer of a genuine SETI signal, and there would be no difficulty in justifying such use. And, of course, even more substantial rewards are available for the fortunate individuals who can interpret a received signal. I assume that Jack told you about all this?”

Milly’s continued silence was its own answer.

“Hmm.” Philip Beston rubbed his forefinger around the rim of his empty glass. “Pardon me if I say so, but one way or another I suspect that you are being royally screwed over by brother Jack. I want to make a suggestion — it is just a suggestion, but I’d like you to think about it over the next few hours, and tell me how you feel. All right?”

Milly felt she had to do more than sit, stare, and nod. “What sort of suggestion?”

“You’ve made a major discovery. It is officially known as the Wu-Beston anomaly. Now, to the average person in the solar system, one Beston is as good as another. They don’t know if it’s Wu-Jack or Wu-Philip Beston, and they don’t care. And to that same average person in the solar system, there is little to choose between Argus Station and Odin Station — both are at the outer edge of nowhere. You did not, I assume, sign a long-term contract to work with Jack?”

Milly shook her head.

“Which means you are free to leave at any time. Now, if you were to come here and work for me, I can assure you of three things. First, you will be given full and continuing credit for your discovery. Second, I will arrange for you to receive the maximum permissible financial reward for that discovery, including a quadrupling of your present salary. And third — which will in the long run be far more important than either of the first two — you would occupy a senior position on the interpretation team at Odin Station.” Philip placed his glass on the table in front of him. “Never forget this, Milly. Detection is important, verification is no less so; but full fame and public recognition will go to the person or team who can interpret the signal from the stars. Don’t you want to be the one who can say what it means, and point out its value to the human race? Think about it.”

Milly thought. She decided that Philip Beston must be a moron, if he imagined that she was doing this work for money. Fame, maybe — she still thrilled when she heard Wu-Beston anomaly. But money, no way. Second, Philip Beston was a scoundrel. All that talk about no one caring who the Beston was in “Wu-Beston” translated clearly to one fact: he wanted people to think that he, Philip Beston, was the Beston referred to. A safe way to do that was to switch Milly to his project on Odin Station before interpretation had begun and even before verification was completed.

He was looking at her expectantly.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “In fact, I have thought about it, as much as I need to.”

“Well.”

“I’ve concluded that Jack’s name for you is exactly right. You are Philip the Bastard. The sort of bastard who will do his best to steal from his own brother. Jack can be an Ogre when it comes to work, but he’s worth ten of you.”

There was a term for what she had just done: burning your bridges. But astonishingly, Philip Beston seemed not at all put out.

“That brother of mine,” he said, “I just don’t know how he does it. Works his people to death, insults them every chance he gets — and he still has you eating out of his hand. What’s his trick, Milly? Did he do the little-lost-boy act, making you feel that he’s all nervous and vulnerable and insecure? That worked for him very well with me when we were little, until I realized it was all a total sham. Brother Jack knows exactly how to manipulate people, always has.”

Nervous and vulnerable and insecure. The words described uncannily well the impressions that Milly had formed of Jack Beston during the trip out from Argus Station.

Either Philip Beston was totally confident of his assessment, or he was uninterested in Milly’s response. Before she could answer he had turned and was heading for the door.

“My instincts tell me that we are close to array alignment.” He seemed to be talking to himself more than to Milly. “Let’s find a place where we can see what’s going on.”

Milly doubted that it was instinct — far more likely he was wearing an intra-aural receiver — but his words made her tingle all over. She hurried after him. When your whole life hung on the next few minutes, what Jack and Philip Beston thought of each other or did to each other was down in the noise level.

The room that he led her to was empty, but well-provided with virtuals. Milly saw three display volumes. The first was an open space view of the antenna array, now fixed in position or hunting so imperceptibly that the human eye could not tell the difference. The second virtual was obviously of the control room, with half a dozen staff members eyeing output tables or talking excitedly to each other. The third virtual showed Jack Beston, sitting where Milly and Philip had left him, and intently studying what she assumed were miniature versions of the other virtuals.

Philip Beston said quietly, “Where do we stand, Laszlo?”

One of the control room figures looked up from his monitor. “We have lock on, and it’s quite tight. Our rms signal maximum lies 0.6 arc seconds away from the coordinates reported by the Argus Station. We find exactly the same pattern for signal fall-off with angle — a circular normal distribution with sigma of 1.3 arc seconds.” His voice had remained flat and factual when quoting statistics, but his final words took on a different and more animated character. “It’s there, Philip, absolutely no doubt about it. It’s there, it’s definite, it’s clear, and it is at interstellar distance. Our estimate has a most probable value of 25.8 light years, and at the very least the distance is 19 light years.”

“Target star?”

“None. It looks as though the signal is being generated in open space. That’s no particular surprise, we’ve always thought that a system of interstellar relays would make sense.”

He was saying things that Milly, and certainly Philip Beston, knew already. Given the excitement that he — and everyone else in all the virtuals — must be feeling, it was not surprising if Laszlo did a little babbling.

“You listening, Jack?” Philip Beston said. And at Jack’s slow thoughtful nod, he added, “Congratulations, brother. You already had detection, now it looks like you have a shot at strong verification. That would mean there’s just one left.”

Jack nodded again. “Yep. Just one. The big one.”

“Do you want to send the announcement, if this holds up?”

“It will. Let’s send this one together. It’s the third one that I’m going to send solo.”

“Let’s just say that one of us will be sending it solo. Race you to the corner, eh, brother?” Philip flipped a switch, and the virtual of Jack vanished. “Some things change, but I guess that some things never do. For twelve years, Jack has been telling anyone who would listen that the idea of a big SETI project was his and his alone. It wasn’t, but I’ve given up arguing. Jack seems determined to spend his life trying to prove he’s better than I am.”

Milly said, “Maybe he is.”

“And maybe he just has you wrapped around his little finger. When you see through him, or when things at Argus Station start to go bad, you give me a call.” The wide, innocent blue eyes fixed on Milly. “I will still be here. And maybe you’ll give me a chance to prove I’m not the bastard that Jack makes me out to be.”

Verification. Milly had assumed after the first meeting with Philip Beston’s staff that the whole job was as good as over. She should have known better.

Three more days of hard-slog checking were needed, of everything from measures of proper motion of the source to an attempted interferometric analysis of its spatial extent, before both brothers agreed: the parallax as observed from Jovian L-4 and Jovian L-5 was real. The origin was so far away that it acted as a point source. The signal came from somewhere well outside the solar system.

In those three days, Philip Beston said nothing to follow up on his suggestion that Milly ought to change sides and work on Odin Station. Only at the final farewell did he hold her hand for a moment longer than necessary, and say softly, “When you decide you’d like to be on the winning side, you know who to call.”

Jack Beston could not possibly have heard, but he was in a foul mood as The Witch of Agnesi pulled away from Odin Station for the return trip. Milly couldn’t see why. They had confirmation of a signal, and a significant time advantage over Philip Beston when it came to interpretation.

But when she said that to Jack, he merely gave her a slit-eyed green glare. “He knows we have a lead, and he knows that we found the signal and he didn’t. Given all that, he’s far too cheerful.”

“Maybe he’s putting on a show for the staff of Odin Station. They must be feeling pretty crushed.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “You didn’t grow up with the Bastard, the way I did. He doesn’t put on shows. He’s got something up his sleeve. Something to do with signal interpretation.”

“Do you have any idea what it might be?”

“Not a clue.” Jack stared intently out of the forward port, as though willing the ship to fly faster to Argus Station. “We’ll find out when he hits us with it.”