Tau Zero

Chapter 22

Boudreau and Nilsson nodded at each other. They grinned. “Yes, indeed,” the astronomer said.

Reymont looked restlessly around the observatory. “Yes, what?” he demanded. He jerked one thumb at a visual screen. Space swarmed with little dancing incandescences. “I can see for myself. The galactic groups are still close together. Most of them are still nothing but hydrogen nebulae. And hydrogen atoms are still thick between them, comparatively speaking. What of it?”

“Computation on the basis of data,” Boudreau said. “I have been consulting with the team leaders here. We felt you deserved as well as needed to hear in confidence what we have learned, so that you might make the decision.”

Reymont stiffened. “Lars Telander is the captain.”

“Yes, yes. Nobody wants to go behind his back, especially when he is once more doing a superb job with the ship. The folk within the ship, though, they are another matter. Be realistic, Charles. You know what you are to them.”

Reymont folded his arms. “Well, proceed, then.”

Nilsson went into lecture gear. “Never mind details,” he said. “This result came out of the problem you set us, to find in which directions the matter was headed, and which the antimatter. You recall, we were able to do this by tracing the paths of plasma masses through the magnetic fields of the universe as a whole while its radius was small. And thereby the officers were enabled to bring this vessel safely into the matter half of the plenum.

“Now in the course of making those studies, we collected and processed an astonishing amount of data. And here is what else we have come up with. The cosmos is new and in some respects disordered. Things have not yet sorted themselves out. Within a short range of us, compared to distances we have already traversed, are material complexes — galaxies and protogalaxies — with every possible velocity.

“We can use that fact to our advantage. That is, we can pick the clan, family, cluster, and individual galaxy we want to make our destination — pick one at which we can arrive with zero relative speed at any point of its evolution that we choose. Within fairly wide limits, anyhow. We couldn’t get to a galaxy which is more than about fifteen billion years old by the time we reach it: not unless we wanted to approach it circuitously. Nor can we overtake any before it is about one billion years old. But otherwise we can choose what we like.

“And … whatever we elect, the maximum shipboard time required to come there, braked, will be no longer than weeks!”

Reymont said an amazed obscenity.

“You see,” Nilsson explained, “we can select a target whose velocity will be almost identical with ours when we fetch it.”

“Oh yes,” Reymont mumbled. “I can see that. I’m just not used to having luck in our favor.”

“Not luck,” Nilsson said. “Given an oscillating universe, this development was inevitable. Or so we perceive by hindsight. We need merely use the fact.”

“Best you decide on our goal,” Boudreau urged. “Now. Those other idiots, they would wrangle for hours, if you put it to a vote. And every hour means untold cosmic time lost, which reduces our options. If you will tell us what you want, I’ll plot an appropriate course and the ship can start off on it very shortly. The captain will take your recommendation. The rest of our people will accept any fait accompli you hand them, and thank you for it. You know that.”

Reymont paced for some turns. His boots clacked on the deck. He rubbed his brow, where the wrinkles lay deep. Finally he confronted his interlocutors. “We want more than a galaxy,” he said. “We want a planet to live on.”

“Understood,” Nilsson agreed. “May I speak for a planet — a system — of the same approximate age as Earth had? Say, five billion years? It seems to take about that long for a fair probability of the kind of biosphere we like having evolved. We could live in a Mesozoic type of environment, I imagine, but we would rather not.”

“Seems reasonable,” Reymont nodded. “How about metals, though?”

“Ah, yes. We want a planet as rich in heavy elements as Earth was. Not too much less, or an industrial civilization will be hard to establish. Not too much more, or we could find numerous areas where the soil is poisonous. Since higher elements are formed in the earlier generations of stars, we should look for a galaxy that will be as old, at rendezvous, as ours was.”

“No,” Reymont said. “Younger.”

“Hein?” Boudreau blinked.

“We can probably find a planet like Earth, also with respect to metals, in a young galaxy,” Reymont said. “A globular cluster ought to have plenty of supemovae in its early stages, which ought to enrich the interstellar medium locally, giving second-generation G-type suns about the same composition as Sol. As we enter our target galaxy, let’s scout for that kind.”

“We may not detect any that we can reach in less than years,” Nilsson warned.

“Well, then we don’t,” Reymont answered. “We can settle for a planet less well-endowed with iron and uranium than Earth was. That’s not crucial. We have the technology to make do with light alloys and organics. We have hydrogen fusion for power.

“The important thing is that we be about the first intelligent race alive in those parts.”

They stared at him.

He smiled in a way they had not seen before. “I’d like us to have our pick of worlds, when our descendants get around to interstellar colonization,” he said. “And I’d like us to become — oh, the elders. Not imperialists; that’s ridiculous; but the people who were there from the beginning, and know their way around, and are worth learning from. Never mind what physical shape the younger races have. Who cares? But let’s make this, as nearly as possible, a human galaxy, in the widest sense of the word ‘human.’ Maybe even a human universe.

“I think we’ve earned that right.”

Leonora Christine took only three months of her people’s lives from the moment of creation to the moment when she found her home.

That was partly good fortune but also due to forethought. The newborn atoms had burst outward with a random distribution of velocities. Thus, in the course of ages, they formed hydrogen clouds which attained distinct individualities. While they drifted apart, these clouds condensed into sub-clouds — which, under the slow action of many forces, differentiated themselves into separate families, then single galaxies, then individual suns.

But inevitably, in the early stages, exceptional situations occurred. Galaxies were as yet near to each other. They still contained anomalous groups. Thus they exchanged matter. A large star cluster might form within one galaxy, but having more than escape velocity, might cross to another (with stars coalescing in it meanwhile) that could capture it. In this way, the variety of stellar types belonging to a particular galaxy was not limited to those that it could have evolved at its own age.

Zeroing in on her destination, Leonora Christine kept watch for a well-developed cluster whose speed she could easily match. And as she entered its domain, she looked for a star of the right characteristics, spectral and velocital. To nobody’s surprise, the nearest of that sort had planets. She decelerated toward it.

The procedure differed from the original scheme, which had been to go by at high speed, making observations while she passed through the system. Reymont was responsible for it. This once, he said, let a chance be taken. The odds weren’t too bad. Measurements made across light-years with the instruments and techniques developed aboard ship gave reason to expect that a certain attendant of that yellow sun might offer a haven to man.

If not — a year would have been lost, the year required to reapproach c with respect to the entire galaxy. But if there actually was a planet such as lived in memory, no further deceleration would be called for. Two years would have been gained.

The gamble seemed worthwhile. Given twenty-five fertile couples, an extra two years meant an extra half hundred ancestors for the future race.

Leonora Christine found her world, the very first time.