20

As it happened, Crile Fisher, having given Earth its first hint that there was something peculiar about Rotor's destination, gave it its second hint as well.

He had been back on Earth two years now, with Rotor growing dimmer in his mind. Eugenia Insigna was a rather perplexing memory (what had he felt for her?), but Marlene remained a bitterness. He found he could not separate her from Roseanne in his mind. The one-year-old daughter he remembered and the seventeen-year-old sister he also remembered fused into one personality.

Life was not hard. He drew a generous pension. They had even found work for him to do, an easy administrative position in which he was required to make decisions on occasion that were guaranteed to affect nothing of importance. They had forgiven him, at least in part, he thought, because he had remembered that one remark of Eugenia's, 'If you knew where we were going-'

Yet he had the impression that he was kept under watch, anyway, and he had grown to resent it.

Garand Wyler appeared now and then, always friendly, always inquisitive, always returning the subject to Rotor in one way or another. He had, in fact, made his appearance now, and the subject of Rotor came up, as Fisher expected it would.

Fisher scowled, and said, 'It's been nearly two years. What do you people want of me?'

Wyler shook his head. 'I can't say I know, Crile. All we have is that remark of your wife's. It's obviously not enough. She must have said something else in the years you spent with her. Consider the conversations you have had; the talk that bounced back and forth between the two of you. Is there nothing there?'

'This is the fifth time you've asked that, Garand. I have been questioned. I have been hypnotized. I have been mind-probed. I have been squeezed dry, and there is nothing in me. Let me go and find something else to tackle. Or put me back to work. There are a hundred Settlements out there, with friends confiding in each other and enemies spying on each other. Who knows what one of them may know - and may not even know that he knows.'

Wyler said, 'To be truthful, old man, we've been moving in that direction, and we've also been concentrating on the Far Probe. It stands to reason that Rotor must have found something the rest of us don't know. We've never sent out a Far Probe. Neither has any other Settlement. Only Rotor had the capacity for it. Whatever Rotor found must be in the Far Probe data.'

'Good. Look through that data. There must be enough there to keep you busy for years. As for me, leave me alone. All of you.'

Wyler said, 'As a matter of fact, there is enough there to keep us busy for years. Rotor supplied a great deal of data in line with the Open Science Agreement. In particular, we have their stellar photography at every range of wavelength. The Far Probe cameras were able to reach almost every part of the sky, and we've been studying it in detail and have found nothing in it of interest.'

'Nothing?'

'So far, nothing, but, as you say, we can continue to study it for years. Of course, we already have any number of items the astronomy people are delighted with. It keeps them happy and busy, but not a single item, not the sniff of one seems to help us decide where they went. Not so far. I gather that there is absolutely nothing, for instance, to lead us to think that there are planets orbiting either large star of the Alpha Centauri system. Nor are there any unexpected Sun-like stars we don't know about in our neighborhood. Personally, I wouldn't expect to find much anyway. What could the Far Probe see that we couldn't see from the Solar System? It was only a couple of light-months away. It should make no difference. Yet some of us feel that Rotor must have seen something and rather quickly, too. Which brings us back to you.'

'Why me?'

'Because your ex-wife was the head of the Far Probe project.'

'Not really. She became Chief Astronomer after the data had been collected.'

'She was the head afterward and certainly an important part during. Did she never say anything to you about what they had found in the Far Probe?'

'Not a word. Wait, did you say that the Far Probe cameras were able to reach almost every part of the sky?'

'Yes.'

'How much is "almost every part"? '

'I'm not in their confidence to the point where I can give you exact figures. I gather it's at least 90 per cent.'

'Or more?'

'Maybe more.'

'I wonder-'

'What do you wonder?'

'On Rotor, we had a fellow named Pitt running things.'

'We know that.'

'But I think I know how he would do things. He would hand out the Far Probe data a little at a time, living up to the Open Science Agreement, but just barely. And somehow, by the time Rotor left, there would have been some of the data - 10 per cent or less - that he would not have had time to get to you. And that would be the important 10 per cent or less.'

'You mean the part that tells us where Rotor went.'

'Maybe.'

'Only we haven't got it.'

'Sure, you have it.'

'How do you make that out?'

'Just a little while ago you wondered why you should expect to see anything in the Far Probe photographs that you couldn't see in the Solar System records. So why are you wasting your time on what they gave you? Map out the part of the sky they didn't give you and study that part on your own maps. Ask yourself if there's anything there that might look different on a Far Probe map - and why. That's what I would do.' His voice suddenly rose to a formidable shout. 'You go back there. Tell them to look at the part of the sky they don't have.'

Wyler said thoughtfully, 'Topsy-turvy.'

'No, it isn't. Perfectly straightforward. Just find someone in the Office who does more with his brain than sit on it, and you may get somewhere.'

Wyler said, 'We'll see.' He held out his hand to Fisher. Fisher scowled and wouldn't take it.

It was months before Wyler made an appearance again, and Fisher didn't welcome him. He had been in a quiet mood on this off-day from work, and had even been reading a book.

Fisher was not one of those people who felt that a book was a twentieth-century abomination, that only viewing was civilized. There was something, he thought, about holding a book, about the physical turning of pages, about the ability to lose one's self in thought over what one has read, or even to drowse off, without coming to, and finding the film a hundred pages beyond, or flickering at its close. Fisher was rather of the opinion that the book was the more civilized of the two modes.

He was all the more annoyed at being roused out of his pleasant lethargy.

'Now, what, Garand?' he said ungraciously.

Wyler did not lose his urbane smile. He said, between his teeth, 'We've found it, just exactly as you said we would.'

'Found what?' said Fisher, not remembering. Then, realizing what this must refer to, he said hastily, 'Don't tell me anything I'm not supposed to know. I won't be tangled with the Office any more.'

'Too late, Crile. You're wanted. Tanayama himself wants you in front of him.'

'When?'

'As soon as I can get you there.'

'In that case, tell me what's going on. I don't want to face him cold.'

'That's what I intend to do. We studied every portion of the sky that the Far Probe did not report on. Apparently those who did so asked themselves, as you advised, what it was that a Far Probe camera could see that a Solar System camera could not. The obvious answer was a displacement of the nearer stars, and once that was in their heads, the astronomers found an astonishing thing, something they couldn't have predicted.'

'Well?'

'They found a very dim star with a parallax of well over one second of arc.'

'I'm not an astronomer. Is that unusual?'

'It means that the star is at only half the distance of Alpha Centauri.'

'You said "very dim".'

'It's behind a small dust cloud, they tell me. Listen, if you're not an astronomer, your wife on Rotor was. Perhaps she discovered it. Did she ever say anything to you about it?'

Fisher shook his head. 'Not a word. Of course-'

'Yes?'

'In the last few months, there was an excitement about her. A kind of brimming over.'

'You didn't ask why?'

'I assumed it was the imminent departure of Rotor. She was excited about going and that drove me mad.'

'On account of your daughter?'

Fisher nodded.

'The excitement may have been over the new star, too. It all fits. Naturally, they'd go to this new star. And if your wife had discovered it, they would be going to her star. That would account for some of her eagerness to go. Doesn't it make sense?'

'Maybe. I can't say it doesn't.'

'All right, then. That's what Tanayama wants to see you about. And he's angry. Not at you, apparently, but he's angry.'

21

It was later that same day, for there was no delay on this occasion, that Crile Fisher found himself in the office of the Terrestrial Board of Inquiry, or, as it was far better known to its employees, simply the Office.

Kattimoro Tanayama, who had directed the Office for over thirty years, was getting quite elderly. The holographs shown of him (there weren't many) had been recorded years before, when his hair was still smooth and black, his body straight, his expression vigorous.

Now his hair was gray, his body (never tall) was slightly bent, and possessed an air of frailty. He might, thought Fisher, be reaching the point where he was considering retiring, if it were conceivable that he intended to do anything but die in harness. His eyes, Fisher noted, were, between their narrowed lids, as keen and as sharp as ever.

Fisher had a little trouble understanding him. English was as nearly universal a language on Earth as it was possible for a language to be, but it had its varieties, and Tanayama's was not the North American variety Fisher was accustomed to.

Tanayama said coldly, 'Well, Fisher, you failed us on Rotor.'

Fisher saw no point in arguing the matter; and no point in arguing with Tanayama, in any case. 'Yes, Director,' he said tonelessly.

'Yet you may still have information for us.'

Fisher sighed silently, then said, 'I have been debriefed over and over.'

'So I have been told, and so I know. You have not been asked everything, however, and I have a question to which I - I - want an answer.'

'Yes, Director?'

'In your stay on Rotor, have you been aware of anything that would lead you to believe that the Rotorian leadership hated Earth?'

Fisher's eyebrows climbed. 'Hate? It was clear to me that the people on Rotor, as on all Settlements, I think, looked down on Earth, despised it as decadent, brutal and violent. But hatred? I don't think they thought enough of us, frankly, to feel hatred.'

'I talk of the leadership, not of the multitude.'

'So do I, Director. No hatred.'

'There's no other way of accounting for it.'

'Accounting for what, Director? If that is a question I may ask?'

Tanayama looked up at him sharply (the force of his personality made one rarely aware of just how short he was). 'Do you know that this new star is moving in our direction? Quite in our direction?'

Fisher, startled, looked quickly toward Wyler, but Wyler sat in comparative shadow, well out of range of the sunlight from the window, and was not, in appearance, looking at anything.

Tanayama, who was standing, said, 'Well, sit down, Fisher, if it will help you think. I will sit down, too.' He sat down on the edge of his desk, his short legs dangling.

'Did you know about the motion of the star?'

'No, Director. I didn't know of the existence of the star at all till Agent Wyler told me.'

'You didn't? Surely it was known on Rotor.'

'If so, no-one told me.'

'Your wife was excited and happy in the last period before Rotor left. So you told Agent Wyler. What was the reason?'

'Agent Wyler had thought it might be because she had discovered the star.'

'And perhaps she knew of the star's motion and was pleased at the thought of what would happen to us.'

'I can't see why that thought should make her happy, Director. I must tell you that I do not actually know that she knew of the star's motion or even that it existed. I do not, of my own knowledge, know that anyone on Rotor knew that the star existed.'

Tanayama looked at him thoughtfully, rubbing one side of his chin lightly, as though relieving a slight itch.

He said, 'The people on Rotor were all Euros, I believe, weren't they?'

Fisher's eyes widened. He hadn't heard that vulgarism in a long time - never from a government functionary. He remembered Wyler's comment soon after he had returned to Earth about Rotor being 'Snow White'. He had dismissed it as a piece of lighthearted sarcasm, and had given no heed to it.

He said resentfully, 'I don't know, Director. I didn't study them all. I don't know what their ancestries may be.'

'Come, Fisher. You don't have to study them. Judge by their appearances. In all your stay on Rotor, did you encounter one face that was Afro, or Mongo, or Hindo? Did you encounter a dark complexion? An epicanthic fold?'

Fisher exploded. 'Director, you're being twentieth-century.' (If he had known a stronger way of putting it, he would have.) 'I don't give these things thought, and no-one on Earth should. I'm surprised you do, and I don't think it would help your position if it were known that you do.'

'Don't indulge in fairy tales, Agent Fisher,' said the Director, moving one gnarled finger from side to side in admonition. 'I am talking about what is. I know that on Earth we ignore all variation among ourselves, at least outwardly.'

'Just outwardly?' said Fisher in indignation.

'Just outwardly,' said Tanayama coldly. 'When Earth's people go out to the Settlements, they sort themselves out by variation. Why should they do that, if they ignored all variation? On any Settlement, all are alike, or, if there is some admixture to begin with, those who are well outnumbered feel ill-at-ease, or are made to feel ill-at-ease, and shift to another Settlement where they are not outnumbered. Isn't that so?'

Fisher found he could not deny this. It was so, and he had somehow taken it for granted without questioning it. He said, 'Human nature. Like clings to like. It set up a - neighborhood.'

'Human nature, of course. Like clings to like, because like hates and despises unlike.'

'There are M - Mongo Settlements, too.' Fisher stumbled over the word, and realized full well that he might be mortally offending the Director - an easy and dangerous man to offend.

Tanayama did not blink. 'I know that well, but it's the Euros who most recently dominated the planet, and they cannot forget it, can they?'

'The others, perhaps, cannot forget that either, and they have more cause to hate.'

'But it's Rotor that went flying off to escape from the Solar System.'

'It happened to be they who had discovered hyper-assistance.'

'And they went to a nearby star that only they knew of, one which is heading toward our Solar System and may pass closely enough to disrupt it.'

'We don't know they know that, or that they even know the star.'

'Of course they know it,' said Tanayama with what was almost a snarl. 'And they left without warning us.'

'Director - with respect - this is illogical. If they are going to establish themselves on a star that will, on its approach, disrupt our Solar System, the star's own system will also be disrupted.'

'They can easily escape, even if they build more Settlements. We have an entire world of eight billion people to evacuate - a much more difficult task.'

'How much time do we have?'

Tanayama shrugged. 'Several thousand years, they tell me.'

'That's a great deal of time. It might not have occurred to them, just conceivably, that it was necessary to warn us. As the star approaches, it will surely be discovered without warning.'

'And by that time, we will have less time to evacuate. Their discovery of the star was accidental. We should not have discovered it for a long time, but for your wife's indiscreet remark to you, and but for your suggestion - a good one - that we look closely at the part of the sky that had been omitted. Rotor was counting on our discovery being as belated as possible.'

'But, Director, why should they want such a thing? Sheer motiveless hate?'

'Not motiveless. So that the Solar System, with its heavy load of non-Euros, might be destroyed. So that humanity can make a new start on a homogeneous basis of Euros only. Eh? What do you think of that?'

Fisher shook his head helplessly. 'Impossible. Unthinkable.'

'Why else should they have failed to warn us?'

'Might it not be that they did not themselves know of the star's motion?'

'Impossible,' said Tanayama ironically. 'Unthinkable. There is no other reason for what they have done but their willingness to see us destroyed. But we will discover hyperspatial travel for ourselves, and we will move out to this new star and find them. And we will even the score.'