Macroscope

CHAPTER 1

Ivo did not realize at first that he was being followed. A little experimentation verified it, however: where Ivo went, so did this stranger.

He had seen the man, pale, fleshy and sweaty, in a snack shop, and thought nothing of it until repetition brought the matter to consciousness. Now it alarmed him.

Ivo was a slim young man of twenty-five with short black hair, brown eyes and bronzed skin. He could have merged without particular notice into the populace of almost any large city of the world. At the moment he was trying valiantly to do so — but the pursuer did not relent.

There was less of this type of thing today than there had been, but Ivo knew that people like himself still disappeared mysteriously in certain areas of the nation. So far he had personally experienced nothing worse than unexplained price increases at particular restaurants and sudden paucities of accommodations at motels. There had been disapproving frowns, of course, and loud remarks, but those hardly counted. He had learned to control his fury and even, after a time, to dismiss it.

But actually to be followed — that prompted more than mere annoyance. It brought an unpleasant sensation to his stomach. Ivo did not regard himself as a brave man, and even one experience of this nature made him long for the comparatively secure days of the project. That was a decade gone, though, and there could be no return.

His imagination pictured the stout Caucasian approaching, laying a clammy hand upon his arm, and saying: “Mister Archer? Please come with me,” and showing momentarily the illegal firearm that translated the feigned politeness into flat command. Then a helpless trip to a secluded spot — perhaps a rat-infested cellar — where…

Better to challenge the man immediately, here in the street where citizens congregated. To say to him: “Are you following me, sir?” with a significant emphasis on the “sir.” And when the man denied it, to walk away, temporarily free from molestation. Around the corner, a short hop in a rental car, somewhere, anywhere, so long as he lost himself quickly.

Ivo entered a drugstore and ducked behind the towering displays of trivia, temporizing while he covertly watched the man. Would a direct challenge work — or would the bystanders merely stand by, afraid to get involved or just plain out of sympathy? Outside the glass he saw a harried white woman with two rambunctious little boys, and after her a Negro teenager in tattered tennis shoes, and after him the follower dawdling beside the entrance and mopping the sweat from his pallid complexion. A plainclothes policeman? Unlikely; there would have been none of this furtiveness.

The dark suspicion flowered into certainty as his mind dwelt upon it: once this man laid hands upon him, his life would never be the same. Life? Worse; within hours Ivo Archer would vanish from the face of the earth, never to be—

He had to face down this enemy.

“Yes?”

He looked up, startled. A clerk had approached him, no doubt having observed his aimlessness and become alert for shoplifting. Her query was impatient.

Ivo glanced around guiltily and fixed on the handiest pretext He was beside a rack of sunglasses. “These.”

“Those are feminine glasses,” she pointed out.

“Oh. Well, the — you know.”

She guided him to the masculine rack and he picked out a pair he didn’t need and didn’t want. He paid a price he didn’t like and put them on. Now he had no excuse to remain in the store.

He stepped out — and knew as he did so that he lacked the valor to make his stand. Stubborn he was, in depth; courageous, no.

The surprisingly solid hand extended to touch his arm. Coarse black hairs sprouted from the center links of three fingers. “Mr. Archer?” the man inquired. His voice, too, was somewhat coarse, as though there were chronic phlegm coating the larynx.

Ivo stopped, nervously touching the right earpiece of the sunglasses. He was furious at himself but not, now, frightened. He did know the difference between reality and his fantasies. He looked at the man, still mildly repelled by the facial pallor and the faint odor of perspiration. Fortyish; clothing informal but of good cut, the footwear expensive and too new. This man was not a professional shadow — those stiff shoes must be chafing.

“Yes.” He tried to affect the tone of a busy person who was bothered by being accosted in such fashion, but knew he hadn’t brought it off. This was plainly no panhandler.

“Please come with me.”

It was not in Ivo to be discourteous, even in such a situation; it was a weakness of his. But he had no intention of accompanying this stranger anywhere. “Who are you?”

Now the man became nervous. “I can’t tell you that here.” But just as Ivo thought he had the advantage, those hairy fingers closed upon his forearm. They were cold but not at all flabby. “It’s important.”

Ivo’s nervousness increased. He touched the useless glasses again, looking away. The long street offered no pretext for distraction: merely twin rows of ordinary Georgia houses, indistinguishable from Carolina houses or Florida houses, fronted by deteriorating sidewalks and slanted parking spaces. The meters suggested monstrous matchsticks stood on end, heads up. Would they explode into fire if the unmitigated glare of the sun continued, or did it require the touch of metal, as of a coin? His fingers touched a warm disk in his pocket: a penny. Thou shalt not park in the noonday sun…?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Good day.” He drew his arm free and took a step forward. He had done it! He had made the break.

“Swinehood hath no remedy,” the stranger whispered.

Ivo turned about and waited, eyes focused on nothing.

“My car — this way,” the man said, taking his arm again. This time Ivo accompanied him without protest.

The car was a rental electric floater, no downtown runabout. The hood was as long and wide as that of any combustion vehicle: room enough for a ponderous massing of cells. The pressure-curtains were sleekly angled. This thing, Ivo judged, could probably do a hundred and fifty miles per hour in the open. His host was definitely not local.

They settled into the front compartment and let the upholstery clamp over chests, abdomens and thighs. The cab bubble sealed itself and cold air drafted from the floor vents as the man started the compressor. The vehicle lifted on its cushion of air so smoothly that only the fringe turbulence visible outside testified to its elevation. It drifted out into traffic, stirring up the dry dust by its propulsion.

There were angry and envious stares from the pedestrians trapped in the wash. Inches above the pavement and impervious to cracks and pebbles, the car eased into the center lane reserved for wheelless traffic.

“Where are you taking me?” Ivo inquired as the car threaded through the occasional congestion, selecting its own route.

“Kennedy.”

“Brad’s there?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“Harold Groton. Engineer, Space Construction.”

“At Kennedy?”

“No.”

Irritated, Ivo let it drop. The key phrase Groton had spoken told Ivo all he really needed to know for the present, and it was not his style to extract meaningful answers piecemeal.

The last leg of the journey was routine. The car moved down the interstate under self-control at almost a hundred miles an hour, and the flat expanse of marsh and scrub was monotonous.

Ivo studied his companion discreetly. Groton no longer seemed quite so fleshy or pallid. Somehow it made a difference that the man had been sent by Brad. Actually, there had been no reason for his initial aversion.

Well, yes, there had been — but not a valid reason. Once Ivo had been free of prejudice; he had allowed some to creep into his attitudes. That was not good. He, of all people, should know better.

“That’s what you might call coasting on ninety-five,” Ivo remarked, glancing at the speedometer after an hour’s silence.

Groton’s heavy head rotated slowly, brow furrowing. “Interstate 95, yes,” he said. “But we’re not exactly coasting.”

“What I meant was, we’re doing ninety-five miles per hour down the Florida coast,” Ivo explained, chiding himself for a puerile attempt at wit. Groton wasn’t stupid; it was the pun that was at fault. He had tried to make a friendly overture, perhaps in apology for his initial suspicion, and had bungled it.

Coasting on ninety-five, he thought, and winced inwardly. About time he learned that that kind of complicated punning was not amusing to most people — people past twenty-five or so, anyway. Brad, of course, would have picked it up and shot it back redoubled — but Brad was scarcely typical, even in their age group. Ivo suddenly felt extremely young.

“Oh,” Groton was saying. “Yes, of course.”

Ivo turned away in the awkward silence and brooded upon the landscape again. They were well below Jacksonville, and the slender palmettos were increasingly evident, though still outmassed by the southern pine. A sign promoted ST. AUGUSTINE — OLDEST TOWN IN AMERICA — NEXT EXIT EAST. He wished it were possible to travel for any distance anywhere without constant commercial importunings, but he knew that industrial and other pressures had forced an increasingly liberal interpretation of permissible billboard advertising along the interstate system. Motels, gasoline, batteries, restaurants, points of public interest (as defined, mainly, by private enterprise) — these had seemed justified originally. But once the precedent had been set, erosion had been continuous until public interest was assumed to include even hard liquor, soft hallucinogens and intimate feminine hygiene.

Ahead he spied one of the old-fashioned series signs, clumps of words printed upon each square. He read it sleepily:

WHAT THE CLOUD DOETH

THE LORD KNOWETH

THE CLOUD KNOWETH NOT

Ivo smiled, wondering how this was going to relate to the public service of smoother shaving.

WHAT THE ARTIST DOETH

THE LORD KNOWETH

KNOWETH THE ARTIST NOT?

He snapped awake. Groton sat stolidly beside him, reading a newspaper. Nothing but brush and gravel and occasional plastic containers lined the highway here. That had been no series sign, even in his imagination; it was an excerpt from a poem he knew well, by a poet he had studied well.

Yes, man possessed free-will, unlike the cloud. The artist was responsible for his creation. Predestination did not apply to the sentient individual.

Yet Ivo Archer was traveling to a place he had never seen, obedient to the subtly relayed directive of another person. Free-will?

THIS TOO SHALL PASS, a sign said, a real one this time. He sighed, closed his eyes, and gave in to sleep.

He woke over water: Groton had assumed manual control and was driving across the bridge toward, presumably, the cape. Though Ivo was not enchanted by the mystery surrounding his summons to this place, he could not repress a feeling of excitement. If the end of this journey were not the cape, it had to be—

One of the orbiting space stations?

They were on State route 50. A sign at the far end of the bridge identified Merritt Island; then, shortly, the Kennedy Space Center Industrial Area. This was a neat layout of city blocks with parklike landscaping and elegant buildings, the whole reminding him somewhat of a modern university campus.

“Newest town in America — next exit up,” he murmured.

“Close enough,” Groton agreed, again mistaking the reference. “There’s a post office here, and a telephone exchange, bank, hospital, sewage conversion plant, power station, railroad yard, cafeterias, warehouses, office buildings—”

“Any room for the spacecraft?”

“No,” Groton said seriously. The man seemed impervious to irony. “Fifty thousand people work here daily. The vehicles are constructed and assembled elsewhere, and of course the launch pads are safely removed. We’re just stopping here for the normal red tape — security clearance, physical examination, briefing and so on. Necessary evils.”

“I’m healthy, and I can’t be much of a security risk because I was born in Philadelphia, raised hydroponically, and have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“Want to gamble that you’re in condition to withstand ten gravities acceleration? That your system can sustain intermittent free-fall without adverse reaction, such as violent nausea? That you’re not allergic to—”

“I never gamble,” Ivo said with sudden certainty.

“As for the security clearance: it isn’t what you know now that counts, but how you’ll react to what you learn. Good intentions and partial information can lead to the most extraordinary—”

“I get the point. When’s liftoff?”

“Just about six hours from now. The shuttle is already being assembled.”

“Assembled! What happened to the regular one?”

Groton ignored the question, this time evidently taking sincere uneasiness for humor.

Four hours and a multitude of tests later they were conducted to the Vehicle Assembly Building, a structure of appalling volume. “Largest single building in the world, at the time it was built,” Groton said, and Ivo could believe it. “We have two of them now. The Saturn launch vehicles are put together here—”

“Saturn? I thought the Saturn shot took off three years ago.”

Groton paused to look at him, then smiled. “You’re thinking of the planet Saturn. You’re right; that was an instrumented economy mission set up in ’77. A one-shot bypass of all four gas giants. It’s adjacent to the planet Saturn right now, and will terminate at Neptune in six years. The same goes for the concurrent Soviet shot, of course.”

“So what’s with Saturn here?”

“The Saturn VI is the name of our vehicle. Its major components are assembled here in an upright position, then carried on its mobile launcher to the pad. That enables us to use our facilities efficiently.”

“I see,” Ivo said, not seeing, but hesitating to blare out his ignorance again. Why was Groton giving him this little lecture-tour, instead of taking him directly to the shuttle?

Away from the giant gray and black Assembly Building he saw a peculiar structure with caterpillar treads. It stood about twenty feet tall and was approximately the size and shape of half a football field. “What’s that?”

“Crawler-transporter. Weighs around six million pounds, travels loaded at a good mile an hour.”

“I like that space-age speed.” Then, before the man had another chance to miss the humorous intent: “Where does it crawl? What does it transport?”

“It crawls over the Crawlerway. It transports the Mobile Launcher.”

Ivo refused to give up. “Where does the crawlerway expire? What does the mobilauncher launch?”

“The pad. Us.”

“Oh.”

A short drive beside the pebbled Crawlerway — a handsome dual track resembling the interstate highway, except that its surface was loose — brought them to the Pad: an irregular octagon over half a mile across. In its center was an elevated pedestal of steel and concrete with a deep trench running through it. Perched upon it, squatting over the trench like a man about a private call, was a platform and tower of metal beams, steadying a rocket three hundred fifty feet tall.

“The Mobile Launcher,” Groton said. “With a standard Saturn VI workhorse booster. Rather old design, but reliable.”

“And that booster is—”

“Our shuttle.”

Somehow Ivo had visualized a pint-sized rocket, a space-dinghy built for two. He should have known better.

The launch vehicle was thirty-three feet in diameter at the base and not much smaller at the top. From a distance the clustered thrust-engines — six of them — appeared diminutive, under the bulk of the vehicle. They were like bowl-shaped buttons sewn on — but up close he’d discovered that each was the size of an igloo. Saturn VI was a monster; Ivo had some inkling of the terrible power leashed within it, since it had to be enough to hurl the entire mass into space.

“This one’s a one-stage booster. Nine million pounds of thrust, and it’s the most versatile vehicle in the program,” Groton said as they ascended in the elevator within the launcher-structure. “Used to take three stages to achieve orbit, but now it’s mostly payload. These freighters are usually unmanned, so we’ll be the only passengers aboard this time. Nothing to do but relax and enjoy the ride.”

“Who touches the match to it?”

“Ignition is automatic.”

“Suppose it fizzles?”

Groton did not reply. The lift stopped, and they traversed the high catwalk leading to the minuscule entrance-port near the top of the rocket.

Ivo looked down. The concrete launch-pad looked precariously small from this elevation, and the abutting structures were like so many white dominoes. The great torso of Saturn VI seemed to narrow at the base, with a tiny skirt at the ground.

Ivo found himself gripping the rail, afraid of the narrow height. Groton did not seem to notice.

“Where are you taking me?” Ivo inquired again as the automatic countdown commenced for takeoff. “Is Brad doing research at an orbiting station?”

“No.”

“The moon?”

“No.”

“Then where — ?”

“The macroscope.”

Of course! That was where Bradley Carpenter would be!

But the realization triggered another surge of nervousness. Brad would never have summoned him to such a place unless—

Ignition.

Ivo thought the rocket would shake itself apart. He thought his eardrums would implode. He thought he was a dry bean rattling loose in a tin can… in a tornado.

Gradually, through the blast of sound and vertigo, he became aware of the meaning and practice of multiple-gravity acceleration. Now his vision was of a medieval torture chamber: tremendous weights slowly crushing breath and life from the fettered victim. Had he undertaken such stress voluntarily?

Free-will, where is now thy—

But he knew that it only hit this level for a few seconds. He hoped he never had occasion to endure the same for minutes. His chest was aching as the load upon it reluctantly decreased; his fight for air had not been figurative.

Eventually there was free-fall. Then a bone-bruising jar as the lower segment of the rocket was jettisoned, and a resumption of acceleration, this time of bearable force.

“Hey!” Ivo gasped. “Didn’t you say this was a one-stage item? What are we — ?”

“I said a one-stage booster. Not the most economical arrangement to achieve escape-velocity, but reliable. Government wanted to standardize on one model, and this was it. Actually, those discarded shells orbit for a considerable period; quite a few have become useful workshops in space, and eventually we’ll run them all down and use the metal for another station. That should make a favorable impression on the taxpayer.” Groton seemed to have no trouble talking against the acceleration.

How long would the journey take? He decided not to inquire. The macroscope station was known to be five or six light seconds away from Earth — say about a million miles.

Eventually the second drive terminated and permanent free-fall set in. Groton remained strapped to his couch and fell asleep. Ivo took this as a hint that the remainder of the flight would be long and tedious, since they had nothing to do but ride. He could not even appreciate the view; the single port overlooked nothing but emptiness. He tried to think of it as an evocative withdrawal from Earth, the Ancestral Home, but his imagination failed him this time. He dozed.

He dreamed of childhood: ten years old in the great city of Macon, population three thousand, three hundred and twenty-three by the latest census, plus a couple thousand blacks. His brother Clifford was eight and baby Gertrude barely two, that summer of ’52; he liked them both, but mostly he played Cotton Merchant with his friend Charley. They would set up as dealers, buying and selling, tunneling their warehouses from the rich red clay sides of the deep gully beside the highway. When the big slow wagons bound for the city passed, he and Charley would jump out and grab away handfuls of the cotton to store in the warehouses. If the slaves tending the wagons noticed, they never said anything, so long as the piracy was minimal.

Or picking up hickory nuts for pretend-money or jewelry; or searching for arrowheads, or simply fishing. It was fun out of doors. Nature was beautiful even in the winter, but this was summer.

Sometimes he would wander through the forest, playing his flute, and the neighbors would hear him and just shake their heads and smile, and the slaves would nod with the beat.

Ivo woke as they docked at the macroscope station. Actually, there had been several sleeps and two meals from tubes, but the unstructured time left nothing worth remembering. The free-fall state, too, had disoriented his perception of the passing hours. His life on Earth seemed at once hours and years distant, another plane of reality or memory.

Still there was no excitement. He knew that a complex chain of maneuvers had been accomplished, and that control had been duly shifted from Ground Control to Station Control, possibly with intermediate Controls between, as though the rocket were the baton in a relay race. But none of that had been evident to the passengers. Even the docking was tame; for all that was visible, they might have been stepping from the subway onto the platform back on Earth. Ivo was disappointed; like any tourist, he thought wryly.

A space officer wearing UN insignia was on hand to check them in and to supervise the unloading of supplies. The lightness of Ivo’s body attested to his off-planet location; the station’s rotation provided “gravity” via centrifugal force, and this would be the inner ring, with the smallest actual velocity.

There was no physical inspection or other clearance; the over-thorough processes at Kennedy sufficed, apparently, as well they might. But where was he supposed to go now?

“Mr. Archer — report to compartment nineteen, starboard, G-norm shell,” the officer said abruptly, making him feel as though he were being inducted into the navy.

“That’s it,” Groton said. “I’ll drop you off — or would you rather find your own way?”

“I would rather find my own way.”

Groton looked at him, surprised, but let him go. “G-norm is level eight,” he said.

“Section eight. Right.” But of course Groton didn’t get it.

Ivo dutifully made the traverse, stepping into the lift for the descent to the specified level. The numbers indicating the shells blinked to life as he passed them, very much in the manner of the floors of an apartment building. He fancied that he could feel his weight increase, and that his feet were heavier than his head, specific gravity considered. Did the pull vary that sharply?

Level Eight ignited its bulb, and he hit the “Stasis” button. The panel slid aside to reveal a compartment even more like a subway stop. Two sets of tracks passed the central shaft, and beside them stood several four-wheeled carts. He determined from the placement of the sidings that the track on his right was for travel forward, in relation to his random orientation, and the one on his left was for motion in the opposite direction. Which was Compartment 19?

He didn’t let it worry him. He climbed into a cart and secured himself in the sturdy seat, looking for the motor controls. There were none; it was an empty husk, as though it had been jettisoned in orbit. There was a simple mechanical brake set against one wheel.

Ivo shrugged and released the brake. The cart began to move, angling in to intercept the main track, and he realized that it was gravity-powered. Evidently the track tilted down, or outward, allowing the carts to roll until braked. Beautiful; what better mode of transportation, in a torus where power was probably expensive?

He saw the numbers now: 96, 95, 94, each no doubt representing an apartment or office. Those on the right were marked P, those on his left S. Port and Starboard, presumably. Starboard being right, he must be heading for the stern.

Of a torus? Exactly where were bow and stern in a hollow doughnut spinning in space? He must be halfway around it by now, but headed in the proper direction, since the numbers were decreasing.

Except that the levels were level, while the track was tilted. More precisely, the shells were curved to match the onionlike circumference of the station, while the track had a larger arc. An obtuse arc? Thus he was headed for the right number — but on the wrong level. Already he was halfway down to the ninth.

Well, one problem at a time. He had declined Groton’s assistance, and now would muddle through in his own fashion, as was usually the case. One had to live with the liabilities of one’s independence.

There was a vertical shaft between numbers seventeen and sixteen, and he guided the cart onto the siding by judicious manipulation of the brake. The track became elevated here, neatly slowing the vehicle so that only minimal braking was necessary.

He was on the eleventh shell. It occurred to him that what he had actually done was to drift from a tight orbit to a looser one, except that he had gained velocity instead of losing it. Or had he? At any rate, he now weighed a little more than normal, if his estimate could be relied upon.

The shaft was bipart: one side up, the other down. Probably the capsules were looped together, counterbalancing each other, in the interest of further economy of power. He ascended to the eighth level, then walked along the interior mall to apartment Nineteen Starboard.

The name on the door-panel was BRADLEY CARPENTER, as he had expected. No one else could have prepared the particular summons entrusted to Groton. He slid the section aside and stepped in.

A young man turned at the sound: tall, brown of hair and eye, muscularly handsome. Sharp intelligence animated his features. “Ivo!”

“Brad!” They leaped to embrace each other, punching arms and tousling hair in a fury of reacquaintance, two subtly similar adolescents roughhousing companionably. Then both sobered into young adults.

“God, I’m glad you could make it,” Brad said, hooking up a hammock and flopping into it. He indicated another for the guest. “Just seeing you brings back my boyhood.”

“How could I help it? You sent your boar oinking after me,” Ivo complained cheerfully. It was good to postpone the serious ramifications for a while. He set up the hammock and got the swing of it.

“All part of the trade, swine.” Both laughed.

“But I have one crucially important question—”

“To wit: which way is Stern?”

Ivo nodded. “That is the question.”

“I’m surprised at you, den brother. Haven’t you learned yet that your stern is behind your stem?”

“My mind is insufficiently pornographic to make that association.”

“Take your bow. It’s inevitable.”

Ivo smiled amiably, realizing that it was his turn to miss a pun of some sort. He would catch on in due course.

Brad bounced to his feet. “Come on — have to show you the femme. Business before pleasure.”

“Femme?” Ivo followed him into the hall, somewhat bewildered still.

Brad halted him momentarily outside the girl’s room. “She has a certified IQ of one fifty-five. I told her I was one sixty, okay?”

“Is that the proper mentality for liaison?”

“I’m infatuated with her. What do you expect me to do, humble clay that I am?”

Ivo shrugged. “Clay with the feet of a god.”

Brad smiled knowingly and touched the bell. In a moment the panel slid aside, inviting entry.

Here the furnishings were distinctively feminine. Frilly curtains decorated the air-conditioning vents, and the walls were pastel pink. Brushes and creams lined the surface of the standard desk, and a mirror hung behind it to convert the whole into something like a vanity.

Here, Ivo thought, was the residence of someone who wanted the entire station to know there was a Lady present. Someone who wasn’t certain of herself, otherwise?

How many women were here aboard the macroscope station? What was their status, whatever their official capacity? There was something ambivalent about Brad’s attitude toward this one.

She appeared from the adjoining compartment She stood a trifle above medium height, slender of neck, waist, ankle; statuesque of hip and bosom. A starlet type, Ivo thought, embarrassed for Brad’s superficiality. Her hair was shoulder-length and quite red, and her eyes as she looked up were contrastingly blue.

“Afra, this is Ivo Archer, my old friend from the neighboring project.”

Ivo grinned, feeling awkward for no reason he could say. What was this piece, to him?

“Ivo, this is Afra Glynn Summerfield.”

She smiled. Sunrise over the marsh.

Brad went on talking, but Ivo did not hear the words. In a single photographic flash the whole of her had been imprinted upon his ambition.

Afra Glynn Summerfield: prior impressions, prior liaisons — these were nothing. She wore a dress of slightly archaic flavor, with silvery highlights, and her shoes were white slippers.

The lines of her:

Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl.

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.

Afra: inward and outward, firm sweet limbs, hair the color of the Georgia sunset. Glynn: silver-wrought friend of his friend. Summerfield: his fancy lingered and curled.

Afra Glynn Summerfield: at this glance, beloved of Ivo.

He had thought himself practical about romance, with disciplined dreams. He had accepted the fact that love was not feasible for a person in his unique situation.

Feasibility had been preempted by reality.

“Hey, moonstruck — wake up!” Brad exclaimed cheerfully. “She hits everyone like that, the first time. Must be that polished-copper hair she flaunts.” He turned to Afra. “I’d better get him out of here till he recovers. He gets tongue-tied around beautiful girls. See you in an hour, okay?”

She nodded and breathed him a kiss.

Ivo trailed him back into the hall, hardly aware. He was shy with girls, but this was of a different magnitude. Never before had he been so utterly devastated.

“Come on. The ’scope will settle your stomach.”

Somehow they were already on the first level. They donned light pressure-suits and entered what Ivo took to be an airlock. It was a tall cylinder less than four feet in diameter set pointing toward the center of the doughnut, but at an angle, and it terminated in a bubblelike ceiling.

Brad touched buttons, and the air about them was drawn off and replaced by a yellowish fog. “Now stand firm and clench your gloves together, like this,” Brad said, demonstrating. “Make sure your balance is good, and hold your elbows out, but tense, as though you expect to be hanging from them. Let out half your breath and hold it, and don’t panic. Okay?” His voice was distorted by the sealed helmets.

Ivo obeyed, knowing that his friend never gave irrelevant instructions. Brad drew out a transparent tube with a filter on one end and poked a tiny sphere into it. He screwed a springy bulb to the filter-end.

“Pea-shooter,” he explained. “I am young at heart.” He aimed the tube directly up and squeezed the bulb sharply.

Ivo saw the streak as the shot went up. Then he was launched into space, somersaulting uncontrollably. The giant torus of the station careened about him, a faceless mouth, the monster bands of its segment-junctures reminding him of the vertical cracks in parched, pursed lips.

A hand caught his foot and steadied him. “You didn’t listen,” Brad said reprovingly, straight-faced within the bubble-helmet. “I told you to watch your balance.” His voice seemed to come from the depths, now conducted only via the physical contact between them.

“I didn’t listen,” Ivo agreed ruefully. He looked about and found that they were flying toward the center of the station: the fifty-foot metallic ball guyed by nylon wires extending to the inner rim of the torus. He and Brad were still rotating slowly, some of his motion having been imparted to his friend, but in free-fall this was inconvenient rather than distressing. He had to keep adjusting in order to keep his gaze on the destination.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Ivo said when it was clear that Brad was not going to explain. “You popped a — a bubble, and the atmospheric pressure squirted us out. Since your airgun-spacelock is aimed at the center—”

“I see you have recovered a wit or two. Actually, I was showing off a little; that isn’t exactly the approved technique. Wastes gas and is dangerous for the inexperienced, to name a couple of objections. We’re supposed to wait for the catapult. Nobody does, of course. Even so, you’re wrong about the aim. The tube is tilted to compensate for angular momentum; otherwise we’d miss the target every time because of the spin of the torus. Apart from all that, your guess was fair.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now watch your footing as we land.” Brad removed his hand, nudging the foot just enough to counter the remaining spin and send Ivo slightly ahead, and he fell upright toward the dark surface of the artificial planetoid.

He saw now that the guys were actually light chains. They merely anchored the mass in place, so that arrivals and departures such as theirs did not jog it out of alignment. Each hooked to a traveling roller magnetically attached, so that the rotation of the doughnut imparted no spin to the ball.

“This is the macroscope proper?” he inquired before remembering that his voice would not carry through the vacuum, now that contact was gone. Obviously it was the ’scope, painstakingly isolated from unwanted motions and intrusions. He had no doubt that their approach was being observed, or that it had been cleared well in advance.

The macroscope was the most expensive, important device ever put into space by man. The project had been financed and staffed internationally as research in the public interest: meaning that while no single government had cared to expend such considerable resources on such a farfetched speculation, none could afford to leave the potential benefits entirely to others.

Compromise had accomplished mighty things. The macroscope was functioning, and each participant was entitled to a share of its use proportionate to the investment, and a similar weighted share of all information obtained. That was most of what Ivo knew about it; exactly what hours fell to whom was classified information. Much of the result was general: details of astronomic research that had the astronomers gaping. The scope, it seemed, ground out exceeding fine pictures. Much was concealed from the common man, but the awe this instrument nevertheless inspired was universal.

He thought of it as basically nothing more than a gigantic nose, sniffing out the secrets of the galaxy. It still daunted him.

He landed at last, almost afraid his momentum would jar the machine out of line. Brad came down behind him, controlling his spin to land neatly on his feet. Ivo decided he would have to master that technique; his own touchdown had been awkward.

Brad took his hand so that they could communicate readily. “We’ll have to wait for admittance. Could be several minutes if he’s in a taping sequence. Just relax and admire the scenery.”

Ivo did. He peeked cautiously toward the sunside, knowing that Sol was much fiercer here in space than to an observer sheathed in Earth’s atmosphere.

A monster rocket floated there, similar to one he remembered.

“What’s a Saturn VI doing here? A complete one, I mean. I thought the booster-stage never got out of orbit.”

“Correct. This one’s in orbit.”

“Earth orbit, mister innocent. This is sun orbit, if I’m not totally confused.”

“Oh, it can travel far — if refueled. That’s Joseph, our emergency vehicle. Enough power there to blast us all to safety in a hurry — if ever necessary. Personally, I’d call space safer than tempestuous, seam-splitting Earth. Joseph is actually the tug that nudged the scope into this orbit. Now he’s semiretired; no point in sending the old gent home empty.”

“Must be quite a lot of oomph when you click your flint under his tail. No gravity—” The thrust, he knew, would not change; but here none of it would he counteracted by planetary drag, so the net effect had to be a much larger payload or higher velocity.

“To be sure. We’ve been tinkering with him on the QT. He still uses hydrogen as the working fluid, but stores it solid. But no ignition — combustion in a chemical engine is only a means, not an end. It is the velocity of the expelled propellant that counts, you know, rather than the per se heat of the engine, although—”

“Sorry, Brad. I don’t know. If you must get technical—”

“I can make it simple for you, Ivo. I just can’t resist bragging a little, because I was the lucky lad who happened to pick the key out of the scope.”

“You’re actually getting technology from—”

Brad moved a finger in their old-time code for caution. That implied that the question had awkward aspects that could only be cleared up more privately, which in turn implied that their present conversation might be overheard somehow. Perhaps through a pickup in the macroscope housing. And the implications of that—

Ivo shut up. Cloak and dagger did not thrill him; it brought back the restlessness in his stomach. Too much had happened in the past few hours.

“We’ve had the basic theory to adapt a gaseous-core atomic reaction to propulsion for years, but the thing is fraught with peril. We can mix the working fluid — that’s the hydrogen we belch from the tail of the rocket to make it go — directly with the fissioning uranium in the chamber. That raises the gas to a temperature that makes possible a specific impulse ten times the best we can do with chemical combustion. But it’s too hot. It melts any containing material we know of. What I discovered was a heat-shielding technique that — well, Joseph may look ordinary to you, but he’s a Saturn VI in outline only. His engine produces a thrust you’d call over ten gravities — and he can keep it up for almost a week before he runs out of hydrogen. He never runs out of heat, of course. If you could only appreciate by what factor that outperforms the best Earth has known before—”

“Brad, I am appreciating with fervent fervor. But I’m still a layman. I never had technical training. I’ll be happy to take your word it can do the job, whatever the job is.”

Speech lapsed. Ivo knew that Brad’s feelings were not hurt. They had merely taken the dialogue beyond the danger point — its relevance to the macroscope? — so that it was safe to drop it.

His attention had been on immediate things hitherto, but now he stared beyond the rim of the station, away from the uncomfortably brilliant sun, and saw the stars. He found to his surprise that they were familiar.

Ursa Major — the Big Dipper — was evident, with its dip pointing to Ursa Minor. And just who was Ursa? he always asked himself. That was no lady, that was the wife of a bear! he always replied. Draco the Dragon curled around the Little Dipper. Following the line the Big Dipper pointed on past the Pole star, he could travel at multiple-lightspeed all the way to Aquarius, perpetually chasing Capricornus. The runner was so close, but fated never to catch up. Somehow that saddened Ivo; there seemed to be a special, personal tragedy in it, though he could not determine why he felt that way.

The light he perceived at this instant had been generated by many of those stars over a century ago, or even much longer. Perhaps one of those brilliancies dated from the time he, as a lad of fourteen, had organized a company of some fifty youths like himself, to train with bows and arrows. Thus “Archer” — so fiercely patriotic, as the clouds of national dissension gathered, signifying the end of life as he had known it. Yet he might as readily have been named for the flute with which he used to serenade the young ladies. “Tutor,” when he later taught at college, had indeed been corrupted to “tooter” by the students. Or “Plowman,” because of the passages he liked to quote from Piers Plowman…

He had been cultured then, polite, affable, dignified, replete with moral refinement. Not quite fifteen, he had entered Oglethorpe University at Midway, Georgia, parting his fair hair to the side and brushing it behind the ears. He wore good, but not ostentatious, apparel. Already a hint of a stoop to the shoulders, but brisk of gait. He had no taste for athletics.

There were fifty students at the college.

Music and books were his dearest companions — but those fair young ladies were never quite forgotten.

Once a student misunderstood him and denounced him as a liar. He struck that person immediately, though he was not himself strong. The student drew a knife and stabbed an inch deep into his left side, but he did not capitulate. Never was he known as a coward, then.

“What do you think of Afra?” Brad asked him.

That name brought him instantly back. What availed past courage, when the present battle was lost? “You’re serious about her?”

“Who wouldn’t be? You saw her.”

“Brad, she’s a hundred and two per cent cauc in the shade!”

“I’ll say! Her DAR pedigree goes back to the Saxon conquest.”

Ivo smiled dutifully. “The project—”

“The project’s over. You know that. We’re free citizens now.”

“You can’t erase the past. If she knew—”

Brad looked at him oddly. “I told her there were several projects, related but discrete. That I was a washout from the IQ set.”

“A washout!”

“What would you call an intelligence quotient of one hundred and sixty, when the target was two hundred?”

“I see. And where did you tell her I was from?”

“Nothing but the truth, Ivo. That a private foundation gathered together selected stock from every corner of the sphere and—”

“And bred back to the multiracial ancestor they presumed mankind started from. So I’m Paleolithic.”

“Not exactly, Ivo. You see—”

They were interrupted by the lifting of a panel. Admittance was at hand.

The interior was a cramped mass of panels, but there was room for several people if they watched their elbows. A short tunnel beyond the airlock opened into a roughly spherical compartment. Ivo’s first impression was of machinery; there were dials and levers everywhere, projecting from every side. He found it hard to orient because there was no gravity here and no visual “up.” Wherever he planted his feet was ground; the slight magnetism that had held him to the outer hull remained effective.

The technician in charge was already getting into his suit. Brad spoke to him in a foreign language, received a curt reply, and said: “Ivo Archer — American.” The man nodded politely.

“You see, it is all very carefully arranged,” Brad said as they waited for the man to complete his suit-checkout. “Thirty nations have put up the cash for this project, and each is allotted — but you must know that. We send in precise reports every day.”

“This is the American Hour?”

“No. Personnel here don’t bother with the official foolishness. This gentleman is not a gentleman — that is, not a Gentile. He’s an Israeli geologist doing work for Indonesia. Their own geologist is busy on a private project.”

“So somebody is paying off a favor?”

“Right. Indonesia will get the results, and the home state will never know the difference.”

“How is it we can horn in, then?”

“I preempted the slot for more important work. He understands.”

“Just to show me the macroscope? Brad, you can’t—”

The Israeli held up his glove. “It is quite all right, Mr. Archer,” he said. “We do not question Dr. Carpenter.” He put on the helmet, pressured his suit, and mounted to the airlock. Ivo detected no shock of air puffing out; there were no games of that kind here. Probably the man was hauling himself along one of the guy-chains, not trusting himself to any drift through the vacuum. That was the kind of sensible procedure Ivo preferred.

Brad settled into a control seat of some kind and began making adjustments with sundry instruments. Ivo tried to make some sense out of the battery of dials and lights, but failed; it was far too complicated.

“Okay, friend, we’re alone. No bugs here. I’m in a position to know.”

Once more the nervousness came upon him. This was it. “Why did you summon me?”

“We need Schön.”

Ivo met this with silence. He had known it.

“I don’t like to do this to you, believe me,” Brad said with genuine apology. “But this is crucial. We’re in bad trouble here, Ivo.”

“Naturally it wasn’t my amiable half-witted companionship you missed. Not just to show off your fancy technology and your fancy girl.”

Brad looked far more mature when serious, and he was far more serious now than the literal content of his speech indicated. “You know I like you, Ivo. You’re a damned Puritan at heart, and you’re afraid of anything that smacks too much of pleasure and what you’re doing here in the space age instead of the nineteenth-century Confederacy is beyond me to grasp. I still enjoy your company, more than that of Schön, and I wouldn’t change one jot of your archaic and poetic fancies. But this is — well, it sounds cliché, but it is a matter of world security. It’s frankly over my head. If your freak abilities were enough—”

“So playing a simple flute has become ‘freak,’ and—” But he knew what Brad meant, much as he didn’t want to. “And who is an ignorant lad straining at one twenty-five to proffer advice to model one sixty? Particularly when he knows that’s a lie for the only one in the project to be adjudged two hundred and—”

“Come off it, Ivo. You know better than anyone that those figures are meaningless. I tell you with all sincerity that the situation is desperate, and Schön is the only one I know with the potential to handle it. I have the privilege of calling him when I really need him. Well, it’s been twenty years, and I do need him. Earth needs him. You have to do it.”

“I’m not just thinking of myself. Brad, once you let the genie out of the bottle — you know what Schön is. Your work, your girl—”

“I may be giving up everything. I know that. I have no choice.”

“Well, I have a choice. You’ll darn well have to prove to me that the cure is not worse than the problem.”

“That’s why we’re here. I’ll have to acquaint you with the nature and function of the macroscope first, though, before I can make my point. Then—”

“Keep it simple, now. I can’t even read your dials.”

“Right. Basically the macroscope is a monstrous chunk of unique crystal that responds to an aspect of radiation unrelated to any man has been able to study before. This amounts to an extremely weak but phenomenally clear spatial signal. The built-in computer sifts out the noise and translates the essence into a coordinated image. The process is complex, but we wind up with better pictorial definition than is possible through any other medium, bar none. That was a major handicap at first.”

“Superior definition is a problem?”

“I’ll demonstrate.” Brad applied himself to the ponderous apparatus, donned a helmetlike affair with opaque goggles, and cocked his head as though listening. Ivo felt another pang of nervousness, and realized that this stemmed from the superficial similarity between the goggles and the sunglasses he had bought when trying to avoid Harold Groton. That entire past episode embarrassed him in retrospect; he had acted foolishly. He threw off the memory and concentrated on Brad’s motions.

The left hand hovered over a keyboard of buttons resembling those of a computer input. It probably was the computer input, Ivo reminded himself. There was a strap over the wrist to prevent the hand from drifting away in the absence of gravity; buttons could be awkward to depress without the anchorage of bodily weight. The right hand held a kind of ball mounted on a thin rod, rather like an old-fashioned automobile gearshift. As the left fingers moved, a large concave surface glowed over Brad’s head.

“I’ll cut in the main screen for you,” Brad said. “Notice that my fingers control the computer settings; that covers direction, range and focus, none of it simple enough for human reflexes to handle. The vagaries of planetary motion alone, when that planet is not our own, are complicated to account for, particularly when we want to hold a specific focus on its surface.”

“I’m aware of planetary motion.” He remembered one of his old pet peeves. “I had to work it out when I wanted to criticize the concept of time travel. If a man were granted the miraculous ability to jump forward or backward in time, with no other travel, he’d arrive in mid-space or deep underground; because the Earth is always moving. It would be like trying to jump off a moving rocket and jump on again.”

“Nevertheless, we do travel in time, with the macroscope,” Brad said, smiling.

“Oh, so you’re going back to supervise your grandfather’s conception?”

“Delicacy forbids.” Brad’s hands flexed. “I’ll center on a precoded location: the planet Earth. The computer uses the ephemeris to spot all the planets and moons of the solar system exactly, and a good many of the asteroids and comets as well. The right-hand knob provides our personal tuning; once the difficult compensations have been made, we use this control to jog over several feet at a time, or to gain different angles of view. Right now we’re orbiting the sun about nine hundred thousand miles from Earth — right next door, as interplanetary distances go. Just out far enough to reduce the perturbations of the moon. There.”

The screen was a mass of dull red. “If that’s Earth, the political situation has deteriorated since I left,” Ivo observed.

“That is Earth — dead center. Per the coordinates.”

“Center? Literally?”

“Definition, problem of, remember. Our corrected coordinates nail the heart of the body. The image is on a one-to-one ratio.”

“Life size? It can—”

“The macroscope can penetrate matter, yes. As I told you, this isn’t exactly light we’re dealing with, though the time delay is similar. That’s a representation of the incandescent core of our planet as it was five seconds ago, muted by automatic visual safeguards and filters, of course. We’ll have to drift about four thousand miles off that point to hit the surface, which is what most people seem to assume is all the scope looks at. Right there, you can appreciate the implications for geology, mining, paleontology—”

“Paleontology?”

“Fossils, to you. We’ve already made some spectacular finds in the course of routine roving. Lifetime’s work there, for somebody.”

“Hold on! I ain’t that ignorant, perfessor. I thought the bones were widely spaced, even in good fossiliferous sediments. How can you tell one, when you’re in the middle of it, not looking down at it in a display case? You certainly couldn’t see it as such.”

“Trust me, junior. We do a high-speed canvass at a given level and record it on tape. The machine runs a continuous spectroscopic analysis and trips a signal when there’s anything we might want. And that’s only the beginning.”

“A spectroscopic analysis? You said the macroscope didn’t use light.”

“It doesn’t, exactly, but we do. We keyed it in on samples: every element on the periodic table. Thus we are able to translate the incoming impulse into a visual representation, much as any television receiver does. The truth is, the macrons are far more specific than light, because they don’t diffuse readily or suffer such embarrassments as red shift. Spectroscopy is really a superfluous step, but we do it because we’re geared to record and analyze light, here. Once we retool to orient on the original impulse, our accuracy will multiply a hundredfold.”

“It grinds that fine?”

“That fine, Ivo. We’re just beginning to glimpse the potential of this technique. The macroscope is a larger step toward universal knowledge than ever atomics were toward universal power.”

“So I have heard. But I’m sort of stupid, as you know. You were about to tell me what makes superior definition so difficult to adapt to, even with the computer guidance.”

“So I were. Here is the surface of Earth, fifty feet above sea-level, looking down. Another keyed-in location.”

The screen became a shifting band of color.

“Let me guess again. Your snoop is stationary, right? And the globe is turning at the equivalent of a thousand miles an hour. It’s like flying a jet at low altitude near the equator and peering out through the bombsight.”

“For a pacifist, you have violent imagery. But yes, just about. Sometimes over ocean, sometimes land, sometimes under mountains that rise above the pickup level. And if we move higher—” He adjusted the controls, and the scene jumped into focus.

“About a mile up,” Ivo said. “Makes the scene clear, but too far for intimate inspection. Yes.” He watched the land sliding by. “Why don’t we just see a panel of air? What we have now is a light image, perspective and everything.”

“What we see is the retranslation of the macronic image sponsored by visible radiation passing through that point in space. Maybe I’d better give you the technical data after all.”

“Uh-uh. Just answer me this: if it’s that sharp on planet Earth from five light-seconds, can it also handle other planets? Can it look at Jupiter from one mile up, or even Pluto? If it can—”

The headgear tilted as Brad nodded somberly. “You begin to comprehend what a magnificent tool we have here. Yes, we can explore the other planets of our solar system, from one mile above ground level — those that have ground — or one inch or anywhere inside. We can also explore similarly the planets of other systems, with so little loss of definition that distance can be ignored.”

“Other systems…” This was distinctly more than he had anticipated. “How far — ?”

“Almost anywhere in the galaxy. There is interference from overlapping images near the galactic center that complicates things tremendously, I admit, but the evidence is that there is more than enough of interest elsewhere to hold us for a few centuries of research.”

Ivo shook his head. “I must be misunderstanding you. As I make it, our Milky Way galaxy is over a hundred and ten thousand light-years across, and we’re about thirty-five thousand light-years from the center. Are you claiming that you can get a life-sized image from ground level of a planet orbiting a star, oh, fifty thousand light-years away?”

“Yes, theoretically.”

“Then that’s the key to interstellar exploration — without the need for physical travel. Why drive to the show when you can see it on TV?”

“Precisely. But we are hampered by those mundane practicalities just discussed. We can compensate to a considerable extent for rotary and orbital and stellar motions — but not every planet is the sitting duck Earth is.” He twitched a finger and the fifty-foot elevation resumed, this time motionless. “Properly programmed, the computer can direct a traveling focus and follow the dizzy loops of a particular planetary locale, as it is doing now, and provide a steady image. It’s a pretty fine adjustment, but that’s what the machinery is for. At least we know the necessary compensations.”

“And you don’t know the motions of planets the regular telescopes can’t pick up. But you should be able to figure them out soon enough from the—”

“We can’t even find those planets, Ivo. It’s the old needle-in-haystack problem. Do you have any proper idea how many stars and how much dust there is in the galaxy? We can’t begin to use our vaunted definition until we know exactly where to focus it. It would take us years of educated searching to spot any significant proportion of the planets beyond our own system, and there’s such a demand for time on this instrument that we can’t afford to waste it that way.”

“Um. I remember when I dropped a penny in an overgrown lot. I knew where it was, within ten feet, but I had to catch a bus in five minutes. Don’t think I’ve ever been so mad and frustrated since!” His fingers felt the coin in his pocket again: he had missed the bus but found the penny, and he still had it.

“Make that penny a bee-bee shot, and that lot the Sahara desert, and instead of a bus, a jet-plane strafing you, and you have a suggestion of the picture.”

“Now who’s using violent imagery? I’ll buy the bee-bee and the desert — but the jet fighter?”

“I’ll get to that pretty soon. That’s why we need Schön. Anyway, we’d need thousands of macroscopes to afford that type of exploration, and even this one is precariously funded. There’s more important research afoot.”

“More important than geology, when the Earth’s resources are terminal? Than the secrets of the universe? Than questing into space in the hope that somewhere there is intelligent life; than the possible verification that we are not unique in the universe, not alone?” He paused, abruptly making a quite different connection. “Brad, you don’t mean there’s political interference?”

“There is, and it’s serious, but I wasn’t thinking of that. Sure, we can snoop out military secrets and get the dirt on public figures — but we don’t. I admit I picked up a dandy shot of a starlet taking a shower once, and you’d be surprised what goes on in the average suburban family situation at the right hour. But aside from the ethics of it, this is picayune stuff. It would be ridiculous to try to spy on the antics of three billion people with this thing, for the same reason we can’t try to map the planets of the galaxy. Be like using the H-bomb to drive out bedbugs. No, we’re thinking big: interstellar communication.”

Ivo felt a cold thrill. “You have made alien contact! How far away are they? What about the time delay? Do they — ?”

Brad’s smile was bright under the goggles. “Ease off, lad. I didn’t say we’d made contact, I said we were thinking of it, and we haven’t forgotten the time-delay problem for a moment.” His hands began to play upon the controls. “I have hinted at some of the problems of routine exploration and charting, but we do have techniques that are nonroutine. Time delay or no, we have a pretty good notion of the criteria of life as we know it, and — well, look.”

The screen became a frame around an alien landscape. In the foreground rose a gnarled treelike trunk of yellow hue and grotesque convolution. Behind it were reddish shrubs whose stems resembled twisted noodles dipped in glue. The sky was light blue, with several fluffy white clouds, but Ivo was certain this was not Earth. There was an alienness about it that both fascinated him and grated upon his sensibilities, though he could not honestly identify anything extraordinary apart from the vegetation.

“All right,” he said at last. “What is it?”

“Planet Johnson, ten light-minutes out from an F8 star about two thousand light-years from us.”

“I mean, what is it that bothers me about it? I know it’s alien, but I don’t know how I know.”

“Your eye is reacting to the proportions of the vegetation. This is a slightly larger world than ours, and the atmosphere is thicker, so the trunk and stems are braced against greater weight and heftier wind-pressure, and react differently than would an Earth-plant in a similar situation.”

“So that’s how I knew!” he laughed.

Brad manipulated the controls again and the scene switched. This was a higher view of a grassy plain, though it was odd grass, with stalagmites rising randomly from it Low mountains showed in the hazy distance.

“Earth or alien?” Brad inquired, teasing him.

“Alien — but I can’t tell a thing about the air or gravity, even unconsciously. What is it this time?”

“Those projections have two shadows.”

Ivo made a gesture of knocking sawdust from his ear.

“This is Planet Holt. There are some fine specimens of pseudo-mammalian herbivores here, but I’d have to search for them and it isn’t worth the effort right now. I’d probably lose the image entirely if I took it off automatic. This one circles a G3 star five thousand light-years away.”

“So this picture is five thousand years old?”

“This scene is, yes, since it takes that long for the macronic impulse to reach us. I told you we traveled in time, here.”

Brad returned to the controls, but Ivo stopped him. “Hold it, glibtongue! If this planet circles one, count it, one star — where does that second shadow come from?”

“Thought you’d never ask. There is a reflective cliff behind our pickup spot — another typical outcropping of Holt’s crust.”

“So my subconscious reasoning was spurious after all. How many of these things have you found?”

“Earthlike planets? Almost a thousand so far.”

“You told me you couldn’t locate planets—”

“Particular planets we can’t. But with luck and sound analysis, we get a few. These are only a minuscule fraction of those available, and we’ve probably missed most of the closest ones, but chance plays a dictatorial part in such discoveries. Our thousand planets are merely a random selection of the billions we know are there.”

“And they all have trees and animals?”

“Hardly. We only name the important ones. Less than two hundred have any life at all we can recognize, and only forty-one of those have land-based animals. Chief specialization seems to be size. I can show you monsters—”

“Maybe next time. I like monsters; I feel a personal affinity for them because they always get the negative characterizations in the science fiction reruns. I could romp with them for hours. But to the point: have you found intelligence?”

“Yes. Watch.” Brad shifted scenes.

A tremendous hive appeared. Walls and tunnels were built upon themselves in a mountain, and fluid filled many wholly or in part. Strange squidlike creatures splashed and swam and climbed through the maze, disappearing and reappearing so thickly that Ivo could not tell whether he ever saw the same individual twice.

“This is Planet Sung, about ten thousand light-years distant. We have studied it with ferocious intensity the past few months, and we don’t much like the implications. They are quite alarming, in fact.”

The image was traveling over the planet, showing open water and desert land, with frequent warren-mountains inhabited tightly by the semi-aquatic creatures. Ivo was reminded of pictures he had seen of the beaches where walruses congregated; no vegetation showed at all. He wondered what the Sung denizens ate.

“This is intelligence? I haven’t seen anything very alarming or even impressive, yet. Just a termite-society with very little pasture. Surely they aren’t planning to loft a bomb at Earth?” But his scoffing covered what was beginning to be a discomforting degree of awe. This was a genuine extraterrestrial planetary species, and the very realization of its existence was nearly overwhelming.

“They hardly care about Earth. Remember, we were in our tedious prehistory at the time we see them now. I have no doubt that they are extinct at present.”

The picture framed an individual burrow. Close up, the occupants seemed a lot less like seals or squids. Their bodies were fishlike but seemingly clumsy, with heavy fins or flippers at the sides and a trunklike tube behind. Two great frog-eyes were mounted on top, pointing mainly backward. The tube appeared to be prehensile, like the proboscis of an elephant.

“This is the closest you have found to civilization? Creatures who live in multiple-story beaver houses and splash in puddles?”

“Don’t underestimate them, Ivo. They are technologically advanced. Ahead of us, actually. They’ve had the macroscope for a century.”

Ivo looked harder, but saw only a small domicile with several fat fishlike creatures lolling listlessly in what he was sure was tepid water. Now and then one squirted a jet of liquid from its trunk and slid backward — or perhaps forward — from the reaction. “Maybe you’d better give me some more background. I’m missing something.”

“I’ll give you their edited paleontology. We’ve been into their libraries and museums as well as their bedrooms — yes, they have all three, though not like ours — and we have copied some of their animated texts. We haven’t dubbed in any sound yet — this is still in progress — but I’ll provide the running commentary.” He switched from the live scene to film. “Behold: the species history of the proboscoids — ‘probs’ for short — of Sung.”

And Ivo was immersed in it, absorbing picture and commentary as one. He witnessed Sung as it had been millions of years in the past: mighty forests of ferns upon the land, and of sponges under the ocean. From that rich water came the lungfish types, gulping the moist dense atmosphere, and soon their soft egg-capsules hatched on land. Predators broke them open before the sun did, until survival dictated hatching within the body: live birth. Even then the tiny newborn were vulnerable, and natural selection brought forth at last the successful compromise: the placentile amphibian. This was the stem stock for the class of animal that was to dominate the planet. From its fifty-million-year radiation emerged its successor.

The primitive proboscoid was not an imposing order. Its families swam the shallow oceans by jetting water through their snouts, and climbed clumsily upon the shores with their flipper-fins. They were timid; their eyes were fixed upon the predators from whom they retreated, not upon their destinations. When they died, they died in flight, sometimes in panic, smashing into obstacles and killing themselves needlessly. Yet they were adept in motion; the funneled water could be aimed in any direction by a twist of the snout, and in some families it was impregnated with a foul-tasting substance that discouraged the pursuer. Their sense of smell sharpened; they were always alert to danger.

One genus retreated to the rocks of the treacherous surf, the area no other mobile creature desired for a habitat. The seas varied with the tide, and that tide of two near moons seemed to have a malignant passion. The great rounded rocks rolled about, crushing whatever lay beneath and wearing channels into the beach and ocean floor, then jumping into new territory as alternate currents converged and clashed. There was safety for neither land nor sea creature.

These probs became complete amphibians, their original breathing apparatus adaptable to either air or water and thriving on the combination. They developed the wit to read the shifting currents, to anticipate the tides, and to crawl from channel to channel when danger came. When large sea-predators ventured too far within the shoals, the probs arranged to divert certain currents and to isolate and perhaps strand the enemy. When land-dwellers set foot in the water, they too could be tempted into the traps of nature. Still timorous, the probs developed the taste for flesh.

Then the land uplifted and the shoals passed. It was the time of desperation for the probs, and few survived, for they could not compete with the established land and sea creatures in either complete habitat. One species, the cleverest, learned to make a home where nature provided none. Unable to run fleetly or swim swiftly or take to the air, it employed its still-generalized limbs to excavate trenches at the shoreline and to bring the water in. Labyrinths were formed, confusing to predators. Those who did enter found dead ends or narrow channels that inhibited progress, while stones were dumped upon them or shafts poked through cross-trenches.

Later those stones and shafts were adapted to construction, and the age of tools and weapons had come. The trunklike appendage, no longer required fully for locomotion, became refined for manipulation; the flippers lost what swimming facility they had had and became strong excavators. The brains increased in size. Communication of high order became essential. Air, vibrated through the snout, developed into a hornlike dialogue.

The labyrinth, in the course of a hundred thousand years, developed into something like a city.

Nature heaved again and the city was destroyed — but so were the habitats of many other creatures. The probs rebuilt; the less intelligent or adaptable animals perished. The probs lost much of their timidity, and their appetite for flesh increased.

Success brought population pressure, and the attendant demand for more food and more living space. In this manner the first colony was organized, instead of the prior lemminglike exoduses to relieve the situation. Perhaps the first successful colony was merely the last of the blind departures. It was not clear how individuals were selected to go or to stay, but a complete spectrum of builders, hunters and breeders were to be found in each party. The first colony settled several hundred miles away from the home grounds, upon another shoreline. The second went farther.

At last the shores of all the continents of the planet were riddled with maze-cities.

Now there was nothing shy about the probs. Large and sleek, they encroached upon the territories of ancient enemies. Organized and clever, they conquered. They brought their habitat with them inland, developing methods of pumping and aerating and holding water above the level of the sea. Technology had come upon them.

Greater and greater ingenuity was required as the terrain became less habitable. Rain fell less frequently, and better pumps were developed; edible animal life diminished, and better breeds had to be fostered. The prob snout could now be reversed, to grip objects by its suction and move them about, but it was weak; it became easier to use this slight strength and great dexterity to build machines, and to let the machines accomplish the heavy labors.

With the conquest of the continents and the continued decimation of the vegetation, animals and minerals there, the probs next turned their technology toward really efficient food production. Sea-farms provided meat; hydroponics replaced the rest. Their science expanded to meet the new challenges, and reached into the very sky and on into space. Yet this required enormous power, and their world was already depleted by the wasteful ravagement of centuries past. They sought to colonize another world, just as they had the shores and continents of Sung, but could not afford the time and equipment for prolonged and inefficient interstellar travel.

Yet technology continued, though their world was starving. They developed the macroscope — and shied away from its revelations. Their land surface was a mass of watery warrens, their ocean a thoroughly parceled plantation. Those who could not afford to pay their debts were butchered; those who could not achieve sufficient success in life gained a few years of rich living by selling their bodies in advance for meat. It was a fashionable and comfortable mode of suicide, and at present some fifty percent of the individuals sublimated their lemming-instinct in this fashion. Yet the birthrate, fostered by competent medicine and the basic boredom of life, was such, and the average span of life before termination so long, that the population still nudged upward. The irreplaceable resources of the planet plummeted.

“Why don’t they control their population?” Ivo demanded. “They’re breeding their way into extinction! Surely they can bring their birthrate down readily. They have the equipment for it.”

“Why don’t we human beings bring ours down?”

Ivo thought about that a moment and elected not to answer.

“I had a dream the other night,” Brad said, still wearing the helmet and goggles though he obviously did not need to supervise the continuing image. It made him resemble some futuristic visitor from space, in contrast to his words. “I was standing on the top of a mountain, admiring the miracles my people had wrought upon the face of the Earth and on the structure of neighboring space, and I saw a live prob. It was a male proboscoid, very old and large and ugly, and it stood there upon a tremendous mountain of garbage and slag and bones and looked at me. Then it flopped down into the sludge of refuse and splashed it in my direction so that I flinched, and lifted its trunk and laughed. It laughed through its nose with the sound of a mellow horn, multiphonically, so that the melody seemed to come at me from all directions.

“At first I thought it was amused at my upright, stout-legged stance that we have always assumed was necessary for any truly competent creature. Then it seemed that the mirth was directed at my entire species, my world itself. The peals of it went on and on, and I realized that it was saying to me, in effect, ‘We’ve been this route and now we’re gone. It is your turn — and you are too foolish even to learn by our example, that we spread out so plainly for you!’ And I tried to answer it, to refute it, to stand up for my people, but its humor overwhelmed me and I saw that it was already too late.”

“Too late?”

“Look at the statistics, Ivo. There may have been a quarter of a billion people in the world at the time of the birth of Christ. Today there are that many in the United States alone, and it is sparsely populated compared to some. The population of the world is increasing at a record rate, and so are its concurrent ills: hunger, frustration, crime. If our projections are accurate — and they are probably conservative — we have barely one more generation to go before it starts. That means that you and I will be on hand for it — and at a vulnerable age.”

“Before what starts? What will we be on hand for, apart from the affluence of the twenty-first century?”

“The inevitable. You saw it with the probs. And a few glimpses at the ghettos of the world — and some entire nations are ghettos — through the macroscope… I tell you, Ivo, things are going on right now that are horrifying. Remember Swift’s A Modest Proposal?”

“Look. Brad, I’m not a professor. I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Ivo, I’m not trying to tease you with my erudition. Some statements just aren’t comfortable to make too baldly. Jonathan Swift wrote, facetiously, of a plan to use the surplus babies of Ireland for food. The irony was, he made a pretty good case for it — if you took him literally, as a certain type of person might. He suggested that ‘a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled…’ He attributed the information to an American, incidentally, and perhaps his tongue wasn’t so firmly in his cheek as he would have us believe. He commented that such consumption would lessen the population — Ireland being severely crowded at the time — and give the poor tenants something of value to sell while lessening the expense of maintaining their families.”

Ivo developed that unpleasantly familiar tingle in limbs and stomach. “Exactly what have you seen?”

“There is already a going business in the ghettos of certain populous countries. A bounty is paid on each head, depending on the size and health of the item. Certain organs are sold black market to hospitals — heart, kidneys, lungs and so on — who don’t dare inquire too closely into the source. The blood is drained entirely and preserved for competitive bidding by institutions in need. The flesh is ground up as hamburger to conceal its origin, along with much of the—”

“Babies?”

“Human babies. Older bodies are more dangerous to procure, and suffer from too many deficiencies, though there is some limited traffic in merchandise of all ages. Most are stolen, but some actually are sold by desperate parents. It is cheaper than abortion. The going rate varies from a hundred to a thousand dollars, depending on the area. It really does seem to be a better thing for some families than trying to feed another mouth; their lives are such that existence is no blessing. But of course they get nothing when their children are stolen.”

“I can’t believe that, Brad. Not cannibalism.”

“I have seen it, Ivo. On the macroscope. There was nothing I could do, since no government on Earth will admit the problem, and an accusation of this nature would backlash to suppress the use of the scope itself. People demand their right for self-delusion, particularly when the truth is ugly. But as I was saying, in another generation it will become a legal institution, as it did with the probs. A proposal no longer so modest.”

Ivo kept his eyes on the screen. “I don’t see that what happened to the probs has to happen to us. The danger exists, sure, okay, but inevitable? Just because they came to it?”

Brad’s fingers moved over the controls. Ivo saw that the section for the macroscope-picture was comparatively simple; most of the massed equipment was probably for unrelated adjustments. The scene shifted.

“You’re being subjective,” Brad said. “Compare these.”

And the screen showed an angelic humanoid face, feminine and altogether lovely. The eyes were great and golden, the mouth small and sweet. Above the still features flowed a coiffure of down, neither hair nor feathers, greenish but softly harmonious. Below the face a silken robe covered a slender body, but Ivo could tell from its configuration that the gentle curves of the torso were not precisely mammalian. It was as though a human woman had evolved into a more sublime personage, freed from the less esthetic biological functions.

It was a painting; as Brad decreased the magnification the frame came into view, then the columns and arches of an elegant setting. A museum, clean and somber, styled by a master architect.

“Intelligent, civilized, beautiful,” Ivo murmured. “But where are the living ones?”

“There are no living creatures on Planet Mbsleuti. This is a royal tomb, as nearly as we can ascertain — one of the few to be buried deeply enough to endure.”

“Endure what?”

Suddenly the scene was a heaving sea of sludge, breaking against a barren beach. Ivo could almost smell the contamination of the smoky atmosphere.

“Total pollution,” Brad said. “Earth, air, water. We have analyzed the content and determined that all of it is artificial. They became dependent on their machines for their existence, and could not control the chemical and atomic waste products. Want to bet where they got their fresh meat, just before the end? But it only hastened their extinction as a species.”

The picture of the royal woman was back, mercifully, but Ivo still saw her devastated world. “Because they overextended their resources?” he asked, requiring no answer. “Would not limit themselves until Nature had to do it for them?” He shook his head. “How long ago?”

“Fifteen thousand years.”

“All right,” Ivo said defensively. “That’s two. Any other technological species on tap?”

“One more.” Brad adjusted again, and a landscape of ruins came into view. After a time a grotesque four-legged creature shambled along a pathway between two overgrown mounds of rubble. Matted hair concealed its sensory organs, and it walked with its toes curled under — like a gorilla, Ivo thought. It looked sick and hungry.

“As we make it, civilization collapsed here less than five hundred years before this picture,” Brad said. “Population reduced from about ten billion individuals to no more than a million, and is declining. There still isn’t enough to eat, you see, and naturally no medicine. Most surviving plants are diseased themselves…”

Ivo did not bother to inquire whether the hunched creature was a descendant of the dominant species. Obviously it had once been bipedal.

Of course three samples did not make a conclusive case. They could be three freaks. But, unwillingly, he was coming to accept the notion that Man might well be a fourth such freak. Overpopulation, pollution of environment, savagery — he refused to believe that it had to proceed to species extinction, but certainly it could.

Yet the sample was atypical, for there were no neolithic-era cultures. Chance would place many more species in this stage.

“It was from the probs I got the heat-shielding technique,” Brad said, allowing the subject to shift. He had brought the picture back to Sung, their planet. “We’re still working on their books and equipment, and we’re learning a great deal. And if we’re lucky, one day we’ll discover a really advanced civilization, one that has licked this problem of overbreed, and learn how to undo the damage we have done to our own planet. The macroscope has the potential to jump our science ahead more in days than it has progressed in centuries hitherto.”

“I yield the point. This is major. But—”

“But why am I wasting time on you, instead of researching for the solutions to the problems of mankind? Because something has come up.”

“I gathered as much,” Ivo replied with gentle irony. “What has come up?”

“We’re receiving what amounts to commercial broadcasts.”

Ivo choked over the letdown. “You can’t even tune out local interference? I thought you operated on a different wavelength, or whatever.”

“Alien broadcasts. Artificial signals in the prime macroscopic band.”

Ivo digested this. “So you have made real contact.”

“A one-way contact. We can’t send, we can only receive. We know of no way to tame a macron, but obviously some species does.”

“So some stellar civilization is sending out free entertainment?” His words sounded ridiculous as he said them, but he could think of no better immediate remark.

“It isn’t entertainment. Instructional series. Coded information.”

“And you can’t decode it? That’s why you need Schön?”

“We comprehend it. It is designed for ready assimilation, though not in quite the manner we anticipated.”

“You mean, not a dit-dot building up from 2 ÷ 2 or forming a picture of their stellar system? No, don’t go into the specifics; it was rhetorical. Is it from a nearby planet? A surrender ultimatum?”

“It originates about fifteen thousand light-years away, from the direction of the constellation Scorpio. No invasion, no ultimatum.”

“But we weren’t civilized fifteen thousand years ago. How could they send us a message?”

“It is spherical radiation. That’s another surprise. We assumed that any long-reaching artificial signal would be focused, for economy of power. This has to be a Type II technology.”

“I don’t—”

“Type I would be equivalent to ours, or to the probs’ level of power control. Type II means they can harness the entire radiation output of their star. Type III would match the luminous energy of an entire galaxy. The designations have been theoretical — until recently. Presumably this message is intended for all macroscope-developing cultures within its range.”

“But — that’s deliberate contact between intelligent species! A magnificent breakthrough! Isn’t it?”

“Yes it is,” Brad agreed morosely. On the screen, the hulking mound of indolent probs continued its futile activity. “Right when we stand most in need of advice from a higher civilization. You can see why all the other functions of the macroscope have become incidental. Why should we make a tedious search of space, when we have been presented with a programmed text from a culture centuries ahead of us?”

Ivo kept his eyes on the screen. “The probs had the macroscope, and this program should have been around for at least five thousand years then. Why didn’t they use it? Or were they in the opposite direction, so it hadn’t reached them yet?”

“They received the program. So did the humanoids, we believe. That was part of the trouble.”

“You told me that they stopped using their macroscope, though. That strikes me as learning to read, then burning all your books. They should have used the alien instruction and benefited from it, as we should. The alternative — or are you saying that we’ll wash out if we have to take advice from an elder civilization?”

“No, we’re agreed here at the station that the benefits of a free education are worth the risks. Mankind isn’t likely to get flabby that way. For one thing, we’d be pursuing all other avenues of knowledge at the same time, on our own.”

“What’s stopping you then?”

“The Greek element.”

“The — ?”

“Bearing gifts; beware of.”

“You said the knowledge would not hurt us by itself — and what kind of payment could they demand, after fifteen thousand years?”

“The ultimate. They can destroy us.”

“Brad, I may be a hick, but—”

“Specifically, our best brains. We have already suffered casualties. That’s the crisis.”

Ivo finally turned away from the prob scene. “Same thing happen to them?”

“Yes. They never solved the problem.”

“What is it — a death-beam that still has punch after ten or fifteen thousand years? Talk about comic books—”

“Yes and no. Our safeguards prevent the relay of any physically dangerous transmission — the computer is interposed, remember — but they can’t protect our minds from dangerous information.”

“I should hope not! The day we have thought control—”

“Forget the straw men, Ivo. We do have drug-induced thought control, and have for years. But this — five of the true geniuses of Earth are imbeciles, because of the macroscope. Something came through — some type of information — that destroyed their minds.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t something internal? Overwork, nervous breakdown…?”

“We are sure. The EEG’s — I’d better explain that—”

“You simplified things for me with that pepped-up rocket you call Joseph. You simplified them again describing the macroscope. It’s like income-tax forms: I don’t think I can take another explanation.”

“All right, Ivo. I’ll leave the EEG’s out of it. Just take my word that though we haven’t performed any surgery, we know that this alien signal caused a mental degeneration involving physical damage to the brain. All this through concept alone. We know the hard way: there are certain thoughts an intelligent mind must not think.”

“But you don’t know the actual mechanism? Just that the beamed program — I mean, the radiated program — delivers stupefaction?”

“Roughly, yes. It is a progressive thing. You have to follow it step by step, like a lesson in calculus. Counting on fingers, arithmetic, general math, algebra, higher math, symbolic logic, and so on, in order. Otherwise you lose the thread. You have to assimilate the early portion of the series before you can attempt the rest, which makes it resemble an intelligence test. But it’s geared so that you can’t skip the opening; it always hits you in the proper sequence, no matter when you look. It’s a stiff examination; it seems to be beyond the range of anyone below what we term IQ one fifty, though we don’t know yet how much could be accomplished by intensive review. A group of workmen viewed it and said they didn’t go for such modernistic stuff. Our top men, on the other hand, were fascinated by it, and breezed through the entire sequence at a single sitting. Right up until the moment they — dropped off.”

“They can’t be cured?”

“We just don’t know. The brain of an intelligent man does not necessarily have more cells than that of a moron, any more than the muscle of a circus strongman has more than the ninety-seven pound specimen. It all depends on the competence of the cells that are there. The cells of the genius have many more synapses — more connections between cells. This concept from space seems to have introduced a disruptive factor that acts on those extra synapses. That puts it beyond stereotaxic surgery—” Anticipating Ivo’s renewed objection to the technical language, he broke off and came at it again. “Anyway, it is the expensive watch that gets hurt most by being dropped on concrete.”

“Ah, this cheap watch begins to tick. I might look at it and yawn, but if you—”

“I don’t think you’d better view it, Ivo.”

“Anyway, I admit it’s a pretty neat roadblock. If you’re dumb, you lose; if you’re smart, you become dumb.”

“Yes. The question is, what is it hiding? We have to know. Now that we’ve felt its effect, we can’t simply ignore it. If an elementary progression visually presented after being filtered through our own computer can do this, what other nasty surprises are in store? We can’t be certain the danger is confined to the programmed broadcast. There may be worse traps lurking elsewhere. That may be why the probs lost their nerve.”

“Worse than imposed idiocy?”

“Suppose someone came through it, but subtly warped — so that he felt the need to destroy the world. There are those at this station who very well might do it, given the proper imperative. Someone like Kovonov — he just may be more intelligent than I am, and he’s a lot more experienced. The scope could provide him with exact information on military secrets, key personnel — or perhaps he could derive some incomprehensible weapon…”

“I finally begin to see your need for Schön.”

Brad removed the headpiece, blinked at Ivo, and nodded. “Will you — ?”

“Sorry, no.”

“You aren’t convinced? I can document everything I’ve told you. We have to have access to the information available from space, from this Type II source. We fear that mankind will not bring down its birthrate or reduce its population in any other disciplined fashion, or even make sane use of the world’s expiring resources. The problem is sociological, not physical, and no dictated solution we can presently conceive will overcome that barrier. We must go to the material and technology of the stars, before we begin — literally — eating ourselves. There is no salvation on Earth. The macroscope evidence — you’ve seen just some of it — is inarguable.”

Ivo remained recalcitrant. “All right — all right! I accept that, for the moment. I’m just not sure yet that the situation requires this measure.”

“I don’t see how else I can put it, Ivo. Schön is the only one I believe has a chance to handle it. We don’t dare tune in that band on the macroscope until we clear this up, and if any of it extends into the peripheral—”

“I didn’t say no-final. I said no-presently. I don’t have enough information, yet. I’d like to take a look at those casualties, for one thing. And the mind-blasting series. Then I’ll think about it.”

“The casualties, sure. The sequence, no.”

“I have a notion, Brad. How about letting me work it out my own way?”

Brad sighed, covering his frustration with banter. “You always did, junior. Stubbornest mortal I know. If you weren’t my only key to Schön—”

It was no insult. They both knew the reason for that stubbornness.