He shook his head solemnly. “I can’t, Val.”
“Even if it means my sanity? My life? I can’t stand by and see the two of you tear each other apart.”
“There’s nothing else…”
“Suppose,” she said shakily, tears in her voice, “suppose I tell Larry that I’ve changed my mind… that I want to marry you. Will you stop then?”
He felt suddenly as if he were in the zero gravity hub of the ship, in free fall, dropping, dropping endlessly, spinning over and over again, dizzyingly--He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it.
Looking at her again, so intent, so beautiful, so afraid and lonely, he said, “Val… I don’t want you as a bribe. It wouldn’t work that way. We’d end up hating each other. I… no, it’s got to be Larry or me. We’ve got to settle this between ourselves.”
“You’ll kill each other,” she said, all the energy drained from her voice.
“Maybe.”
“You’ll destroy the ship.”
“That’s what I want to prevent.”
“You—the two of you—you’re going to destroy me.”
And she abruptly got up from the table and ran out of the cafeteria, leaving him sitting there alone.
9
For more than a month, the four gleaming torpedo shapes of the ship’s automated probes had coasted silently through space, toward the major planet of the Alpha Centauri system. The only link between the probes and the ship was a continuous radio signal, of the lowest possible power, in order to conserve the energy of their batteries.
Then, as they neared the two main stars of Alpha Centauri, the solar cells along their outer skins began to convert sunlight into electricity. The radio signals gained in strength. Like sleeping servants, one by one the instruments aboard the probes awakened with the new flow of electrical power and began reporting back to the ship. But now the reports—full and complex—were carried by laser beams.
Some of the instruments took precise measurements of the probes’ positions in space, and their courses as they approached the major planet. This information was studied by men and computer aboard the ship, and minor course corrections were transmitted back to the probes. The probes responded with the correct changes in course, and the men and women aboard the ship congratulated themselves. The computer accepted no congratulations, but took in all data impassively.
The probes successfully skirted past the steep gravity pull of Alpha Centauri B, the smaller orange member of the two main stars, and let the pull of Alpha Centauri A—the yellow, sunlike star—bring them close to the major planet. Then, more course corrections, more microscopic puffs of gas from the tiny attitude jets aboard the probes’ bodies, and they fell into orbit around the planet.
Back on the ship, people celebrated.
Now streams of data began pouring across the near-emptiness of space between the probes and the approaching ship. The data were coded, of course, in the languages that the engineers and computers could translate into meaningful information. Pictures were sent, too, directly over the laser beams that linked the probes with the ship.
Two of the probes released landing capsules. One never made it to the surface, or at least never sent any information back after entering the planet’s high atmosphere. The other touched down on solid ground and began sending pictures and data from the surface of the new world.
Larry was hurrying down a corridor on level two, where most of the labs and workshops were. Dr. Polanyi had been excited when he called: the first pictures from the planet were ready to view.
He saw someone heading toward him, from the opposite direction. The door to the data lab was halfway between them. Larry recognized the blazing orange coverall before he could make out Dan’s face.
They had kept apart since Dan’s release from the infirmary. Now they met at Polanyi’s door.
“Hello Dan,” Larry said automatically, as soon as they got close enough so that he didn’t have to shout.
Dan nodded, his face serious. “Hello.”
Larry reached for the finger grip on the lab door, but found Dan’s hand was already there and sliding the door back.
“Polanyi called you, too?” Larry asked.
“He called all the Council members,” Dan replied. “Any objections?”
Larry knew he was glaring at Dan. “No objections—as long as you can spare the time from your regular job.”
Dan gestured for Larry to go through the doorway first. He followed, saying, “The job’s getting done. We finally got all the bugs out of the rebuilt main generator. It’ll go back into service today.”
“That’s fine. Glad to hear it.” But Larry wasn’t smiling.
“Ah, the first two here,” Dr. Polanyi called to them.
He was sitting at a workbench halfway across the big, cluttered room. The data lab was really a makeshift collection of instruments, viewscreens, workbenches, desk, computer terminals, and odd sorts of equipment that Larry couldn’t begin to identify. Half a dozen white-coated technicians were tinkering around one of the bulky, refrigerator-sized computer consoles. A wall-sized viewscreen was set up next to it, on legs that looked much too fragile to support it.
Polanyi fussed around the viewscreen and verbally prodded the technicians. Larry saw that there were a few chairs set up, so he sat on one. Dan joined the technicians, watching what they were doing from over their shoulders. In about ten minutes, most of the other Council members showed up. The older men and women among them took the available chairs. Larry got up and joined the loose semicircle of younger men that formed behind the seats.
The technicians finally scattered to various control desks around the big room, and Polanyi turned to face his audience.
“You recognize, of course, that what we’re going to see will not be holograms,” he said. “There is holographic information in the transmitted data, but we have not deciphered it completely as yet. I thought it would be much more desirable to see what there is to see as quickly as possible, even if it is only a flat, two-dimensional picture.”
Larry nodded and asked, “Are any of the views we’re going to see from the surface?”
“Only the last three,” Polanyi answered. “Data transmission from the surface has been very difficult, for reasons that we have not yet determined. The orbital data is quite good, however.”
Larry suddenly realized that he had lost track of Dan. Turning and looking through the crowd, he spotted him, standing off to one side of the group.
The overhead lights dimmed out, and Larry turned his attention back to the screen. It began to glow. Colors appeared, forms took shape.
It was a still photo, taken from far enough away from the planet to show its entire sphere.
“This is the first photo the probes took,” Polanyi’s voice floated through the darkness. “Probe number one took this one, as you can tell from the numerals down in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.”
The planet was yellowish. Broad expanses of golden yellow, dappled here and there by greenish stretches. Larry found that he couldn’t tell which was land and which was sea. The entire planet was streaked with white clouds, which obscured much of the underlying terrain. But there seemed to be no major cloud formations, such as the huge storm systems he had seen on tapes of Earth.
“Next,” Polanyi’s voice called.
This view was much closer. Mountains showed as wrinkles, like a bedsheet that had been rumpled. The land was yellow, Larry saw. The green stretches weren’t vegetation, they Were water.
For more than an hour they studied the orbital photos. The planet had no major oceans, only a scattering of large seas. There were no ice caps at the poles.