his phone number next,” Strem remarked. “He’s an alien, Cleo. How do you know he doesn’t drink blood for lunch?”
Jeanie laughed. “I think Strem’s jealous.”
“What are we watching?” Eric asked. He had swallowed piercing the web, getting fried by a nova, and even his possible death. But aliens were going to take some time, maybe the rest of his life. On the other hand, after all they’d gone through, the discovery seemed somehow appropriate.
He decided he was in mild shock.
“Television,” Sammy said. “I think it’s the news. They’re broadcasting over a hundred channels. I can switch––”
“Wait!” Eric said.
The man disappeared, being replaced by a brown crescent world, flecked with metallic dots, floating in space beside a huge sun. The planet rotated noticeably as they watched, the patterns of what must have been dust storms shifting constantly, and Eric realized they were seeing time-lapse photography, taken from a point in high orbit above the world. Then the sun began to swell and a hard lump tightened his throat. He told himself that it was ridiculous, that he didn’t even know these people, that they weren’t even really people, but it didn’t help. A raging geyser of fusion-fueled whips slapped the brown surface and set it aglow in red rivers of hell. The planet’s atmosphere elongated and stretched, as if it were at the mercy of a mad god’s fanning, before being blown into space.
The view suddenly changed. They were now inside a dying city, probably underground, hoping from point to point along lengthy silver corridors, toppling into ruin, beside green courtyards blackening and smoking. And everywhere there were people, running without a chance of escape, and falling into kicking balls of fire…
“Turn it off!” Jeanie cried.
Sammy did so. The holograph went blank. Eric wished he could empty his mind as easily. His half-digested meal turned in his stomach. He looked at the nova and now saw the sharp edge of its beauty. It was a killer.
Eric had read in history tapes about natural calamities that had taken hundreds of thousands of lives: the outbreaks of the plagues in Europe in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries; the typhoons that had hit Bangladesh in the late twentieth century; the massive meteor that had vaporized the Titan community a hundred years ago. But the destruction of an entire civilization went beyond a tragedy. Eric was not given to religious references, but it seemed to him like some kind of galactic sin. And he couldn’t help feeling guilty about it, though he did not know why.
“All those people are dead?” Cleo asked, stunned.
“All those on the planet must have died a few days ago,” Strem said. “But from where are we receiving these transmissions?”
“Some must have escaped,” Eric whispered.
Sammy nodded. “Yes. The stream of ions is the exhaust of a huge fleet heading away from the nova. Look at this.”
The cube was suddenly jammed with a black circular plate of space pinpointed with countless minute craft trailing fine purple flares. Scale was impossible to judge. The ships appeared dangerously close together. Sammy addressed his unspoken concerns.
“Each of those ships is half a mile in diameter, separated from each other by a minimum of ten miles. What appears to be the flagship at the center – it is actually at the tip of a cone-shaped formation pointed at a neighboring star – is almost two miles in diameter. There are three hundred and eighty-two ships in the fleet.”
“How far out are they?” Eric asked, his heartbeat in high gear.
“Approximately twice our distance from the nova. About five billion miles into deep space.”
Eric frowned. “That can’t be. They’re using a primitive drive... What’s their speed?”
“You’re really asking how long they’ve been under way,” Sammy said. “Based on their present velocity and rate of acceleration, assuming the Earth-size planet was their home world,
Jeanie laughed. “I think Strem’s jealous.”
“What are we watching?” Eric asked. He had swallowed piercing the web, getting fried by a nova, and even his possible death. But aliens were going to take some time, maybe the rest of his life. On the other hand, after all they’d gone through, the discovery seemed somehow appropriate.
He decided he was in mild shock.
“Television,” Sammy said. “I think it’s the news. They’re broadcasting over a hundred channels. I can switch––”
“Wait!” Eric said.
The man disappeared, being replaced by a brown crescent world, flecked with metallic dots, floating in space beside a huge sun. The planet rotated noticeably as they watched, the patterns of what must have been dust storms shifting constantly, and Eric realized they were seeing time-lapse photography, taken from a point in high orbit above the world. Then the sun began to swell and a hard lump tightened his throat. He told himself that it was ridiculous, that he didn’t even know these people, that they weren’t even really people, but it didn’t help. A raging geyser of fusion-fueled whips slapped the brown surface and set it aglow in red rivers of hell. The planet’s atmosphere elongated and stretched, as if it were at the mercy of a mad god’s fanning, before being blown into space.
The view suddenly changed. They were now inside a dying city, probably underground, hoping from point to point along lengthy silver corridors, toppling into ruin, beside green courtyards blackening and smoking. And everywhere there were people, running without a chance of escape, and falling into kicking balls of fire…
“Turn it off!” Jeanie cried.
Sammy did so. The holograph went blank. Eric wished he could empty his mind as easily. His half-digested meal turned in his stomach. He looked at the nova and now saw the sharp edge of its beauty. It was a killer.
Eric had read in history tapes about natural calamities that had taken hundreds of thousands of lives: the outbreaks of the plagues in Europe in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries; the typhoons that had hit Bangladesh in the late twentieth century; the massive meteor that had vaporized the Titan community a hundred years ago. But the destruction of an entire civilization went beyond a tragedy. Eric was not given to religious references, but it seemed to him like some kind of galactic sin. And he couldn’t help feeling guilty about it, though he did not know why.
“All those people are dead?” Cleo asked, stunned.
“All those on the planet must have died a few days ago,” Strem said. “But from where are we receiving these transmissions?”
“Some must have escaped,” Eric whispered.
Sammy nodded. “Yes. The stream of ions is the exhaust of a huge fleet heading away from the nova. Look at this.”
The cube was suddenly jammed with a black circular plate of space pinpointed with countless minute craft trailing fine purple flares. Scale was impossible to judge. The ships appeared dangerously close together. Sammy addressed his unspoken concerns.
“Each of those ships is half a mile in diameter, separated from each other by a minimum of ten miles. What appears to be the flagship at the center – it is actually at the tip of a cone-shaped formation pointed at a neighboring star – is almost two miles in diameter. There are three hundred and eighty-two ships in the fleet.”
“How far out are they?” Eric asked, his heartbeat in high gear.
“Approximately twice our distance from the nova. About five billion miles into deep space.”
Eric frowned. “That can’t be. They’re using a primitive drive... What’s their speed?”
“You’re really asking how long they’ve been under way,” Sammy said. “Based on their present velocity and rate of acceleration, assuming the Earth-size planet was their home world,
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