minutes.”
“Echoes?” Nigel tilted his chair, staring at titles on his bookshelves while he ran the circuit layout of the J-Monitor’s radio gear through his mind. “Two minutes is far too long for any feedback problem—you’re right. Unless the whole program has gone sour and the transmissions are being retaped by Monitor itself. It could get confused and think it was reading an incoming signal.”
Lubkin waved a hand impatiently. “We thought of that.”
“And?”
“The self-diagnostics say no—everything checks.”
“I give up,” Nigel said. “I can tell you’ve got a theory, though.” He spread his hands expansively. “What is it, then?”
“I think J-Monitor is getting an honest incoming signal. It’s telling us the truth.”
Nigel snorted. “How did you muddle through to that idea?”
“Well, I know—”
“Radio takes nearly an
hour
to reach us from Jupiter at this phase of the orbit. How is anyone going to send Monitor’s own messages back to it in two minutes?”
“By putting a transmitter in Jupiter orbit—just like Monitor.”
Nigel blinked. “The Sovs? But they agreed—”
“No Soviets. We checked on the fastwire. They say no, they haven’t shot anything out that way at all in a coon’s age. Our intelligence people are sure they’re leveling.”
“Chinese?”
“They aren’t playing in our league yet.”
“Who, then?”
Lubkin shrugged. The sallow sagging lines in his face told more than his words. “I was kind of thinking you might help me find out.”
There was a faint ring of defeat in the way the man said it—Nigel noted the tone because he had never heard it before. Usually Lubkin had an aspect of brittle hardness, a cool superior air. Now his face was not set in its habitual aloof expression; it seemed open, even vulnerable. Nigel guessed why the man had come in himself at 2
A.M. , rather than delegating the job—to show his people, without having to tell them in so many words, that he could do the work himself, that he hadn’t lost the sure touch, that he understood the twists and subtleties of the machines they guided. But now Lubkin hadn’t unraveled the knot. The graveyard shift had departed into a gray dawn, so now he could safely ask for help without being obvious.
Nigel smiled wryly at himself. Always calculating, weighing the scales.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll help.”
TWO
The solar system is vast. Light requires eleven hours to cross it. Scattered debris—rock, dust, icy conglomerates, planets—circles the ordinary white star, each fragment turning one face to the incandescent center, receiving warmth, while the other faces the interstellar abyss.
The craft approaching the system in 2031 did not know even these simple facts. Swimming in black vastness, it understood only that it was once again nearing a commonplace type of star and that the familiar ritual must begin again.
Though it was carrying out a long and labored exploration of this spiral arm, it had not chosen this particular star at random. Long before, cruising at a sizable fraction of light speed somewhat below the plane of the galaxy, it had filtered through the whispering radio noise a brief signal. The message was blurred and garbled. There were three common referents the craft could piece together, however, and these resembled an ancient code it had been taught to honor. The machine began to turn in a great arc which arrowed toward a grouping of stars; the jittery message had not lasted long enough to get a precise fix.
Much later, during the approach, a stronger radio burst peaked through the sea of hydrogen emission. A distress call. Life system failure. A breach in the hull, violation of the vital integrity indices—
There it ended. The signal’s direction was clearer. But did it come from this system ahead, or from some much more distant source lying behind it? In such circumstances the craft fell back on its habitual patterns.
Its first duty was
“Echoes?” Nigel tilted his chair, staring at titles on his bookshelves while he ran the circuit layout of the J-Monitor’s radio gear through his mind. “Two minutes is far too long for any feedback problem—you’re right. Unless the whole program has gone sour and the transmissions are being retaped by Monitor itself. It could get confused and think it was reading an incoming signal.”
Lubkin waved a hand impatiently. “We thought of that.”
“And?”
“The self-diagnostics say no—everything checks.”
“I give up,” Nigel said. “I can tell you’ve got a theory, though.” He spread his hands expansively. “What is it, then?”
“I think J-Monitor is getting an honest incoming signal. It’s telling us the truth.”
Nigel snorted. “How did you muddle through to that idea?”
“Well, I know—”
“Radio takes nearly an
hour
to reach us from Jupiter at this phase of the orbit. How is anyone going to send Monitor’s own messages back to it in two minutes?”
“By putting a transmitter in Jupiter orbit—just like Monitor.”
Nigel blinked. “The Sovs? But they agreed—”
“No Soviets. We checked on the fastwire. They say no, they haven’t shot anything out that way at all in a coon’s age. Our intelligence people are sure they’re leveling.”
“Chinese?”
“They aren’t playing in our league yet.”
“Who, then?”
Lubkin shrugged. The sallow sagging lines in his face told more than his words. “I was kind of thinking you might help me find out.”
There was a faint ring of defeat in the way the man said it—Nigel noted the tone because he had never heard it before. Usually Lubkin had an aspect of brittle hardness, a cool superior air. Now his face was not set in its habitual aloof expression; it seemed open, even vulnerable. Nigel guessed why the man had come in himself at 2
A.M. , rather than delegating the job—to show his people, without having to tell them in so many words, that he could do the work himself, that he hadn’t lost the sure touch, that he understood the twists and subtleties of the machines they guided. But now Lubkin hadn’t unraveled the knot. The graveyard shift had departed into a gray dawn, so now he could safely ask for help without being obvious.
Nigel smiled wryly at himself. Always calculating, weighing the scales.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll help.”
TWO
The solar system is vast. Light requires eleven hours to cross it. Scattered debris—rock, dust, icy conglomerates, planets—circles the ordinary white star, each fragment turning one face to the incandescent center, receiving warmth, while the other faces the interstellar abyss.
The craft approaching the system in 2031 did not know even these simple facts. Swimming in black vastness, it understood only that it was once again nearing a commonplace type of star and that the familiar ritual must begin again.
Though it was carrying out a long and labored exploration of this spiral arm, it had not chosen this particular star at random. Long before, cruising at a sizable fraction of light speed somewhat below the plane of the galaxy, it had filtered through the whispering radio noise a brief signal. The message was blurred and garbled. There were three common referents the craft could piece together, however, and these resembled an ancient code it had been taught to honor. The machine began to turn in a great arc which arrowed toward a grouping of stars; the jittery message had not lasted long enough to get a precise fix.
Much later, during the approach, a stronger radio burst peaked through the sea of hydrogen emission. A distress call. Life system failure. A breach in the hull, violation of the vital integrity indices—
There it ended. The signal’s direction was clearer. But did it come from this system ahead, or from some much more distant source lying behind it? In such circumstances the craft fell back on its habitual patterns.
Its first duty was
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