Another major fragment angled across an inner orbit and interacted there, too large for capture, too small to escape. The two bodies formed the binary planet known as Earth and Luna.
Then a close shot at almost normal time. The landscape of Earth, seven hundred million years ago: strange continents, strange life on both land and sea. The moon came then, sweeping terribly close, a tenth of the distance it was to have at the time of Man. No romantic approach, this, but the awful threat of another application of the Limit. The tides of Earth swelled into calamity, gaping chasms split the surface of Luna. Mounds of water passed entirely over the continents, obliterating every feature upon them and leaving nothing but bare and level land. No land-based life survived, even in fossil, and much of the higher sea-life also perished in that violence. The progression of animate existence on Earth had been set back by a billion years: the greatest calamity it was ever to know.
“And now we make love by the light of Luna,” Afra said, “and plot it into our horoscopes as ‘feeling.’ ”
It was Harold’s turn not to comment.
All this, stemming from the single trans-Mars wreckage — yet the bulk of the refuse dispersed as powder or spiraled into the sun, to have no tangible impact. Debris remained to form a crude ring around the sun in the form of the asteroid belt, and a number of chunks eventually became retrograde moonlets. It would be long before the disorder wrought by this accident was smoothed over.
A third nova, more distant, provided another cloud of dust and particles, adding several tiny moons. Some of the swirls become comets, but the complexion of the system did not alter in any important way. Sol had its family, collected from all over the galaxy, portions of which were older and portions newer than itself. Life recovered from its setback on Earth and individual species crawled back upon the reemerging land and drifting continents in the wake of a receding moon.
One thing more: a solitary traveler came from the more thickly-settled center-section of the galaxy. It was a planetary body moving rather slowly, as though its kinetic energies had been spent by encounters with other systems. It looped about Sol in an extraordinarily wide pass, hesitated, and settled down to stay, averaging seven billion miles out.
“What is that?” Afra inquired.
“That thing must be twice the size of Jupiter!” Harold said. “How could it be there, in our system, and we not know it?” But no one answered.
Ivo half-suspected Schön of joking.
The motion stopped. The picture remained: the contemporary situation, updated to within a million years. They had witnessed in summary the astonishing formation and history of the Solar System.
“Beautiful, Ivo!” Harold exclaimed. “If you can do that, you can do anything. Congratulations.”
Ivo removed the macroscope paraphernalia. They all were smiling at him, and Afra was getting ready to speak. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
“How can you say that!” Beatryx protested. “Everything was so clear.”
But Afra and Harold had sobered immediately. “Schön?” Harold asked with sympathy.
Ivo nodded. “He said it would take me two weeks, and he was right. He said he could do it in an hour. So I dared him to, I guess.”
“Wasn’t that — dangerous?” Afra asked.
“Yes. But I retained possession.”
Harold was not satisfied. “My chart indicates that a person like Schön would be unlikely to put that amount of effort into a project unless he expected to gain personally. What was his motive?”
“So it was Schön who called me ‘stupid,’ ” Afra murmured.
“I think he has found a way to get around the destroyer,” Ivo said carefully. “The memory trace in my mind, I mean, and maybe the rest too. I think he can take over, now — and I guess he wants to.”
“Are you willing to let him?” Harold asked, not looking at him.
“Well, that is in the contract, you might say. If the rest of you feel I should.” He said it as though it were a routine decision, but it was only with considerable effort that he kept his voice from shaking. It was extinction he contemplated, and it terrified him.
When Afra had feared loss of identity she had fallen back on physical resources and demanded the handling. Irrational, perhaps, but at least it had satisfied her. What did he have to bolster his courage?
“So Schön was merely making a demonstration for us,” Harold said. “An impressive one, I admit. Proving that he can make good on his claims. That he can get us to the destroyer, and with the advance information we need. All we have to do is ask him.”
Afra’s eyes were on Harold now, but she remained silent. Ivo wondered in what spheres her thoughts were coursing, and was afraid to guess. She was intent and exquisite.
“Is it necessary to take a vote?” Harold asked, casually. Thus readily did they accept the prospect of a companion’s departure.
“Yes,” Afra said.
“Secret ballot?”
She nodded agreement.
How badly did she want that destroyer?
Harold leaned over and filched the note-pad from Afra’s purse. Ivo wondered idly why he didn’t use his own pad for the dirty work. Harold tore out a sheet, folded it, creased it between his fingernails, tore and retore it. He handed out the ballots.
“I — don’t think I’d better vote,” Ivo said, refusing his ballot. “Three can’t tie.” Did they realize — ?
Harold shrugged and marked his paper. “The question is, do we ask for Schön, yes or no,” he said.
The two women marked theirs and folded them deliberately. Harold picked up the ballots, shuffled them without looking and handed the three to Ivo. “Read the verdict.”
“But I’ll recognize the script. It won’t be secret.”
The truth was that he was afraid to look. This was another nightmare, where everybody took things casually except himself, he being the only one to properly appreciate the nature of the chasm over which he leaned.
“Have the computer read them, then,” Harold said. How could he be so indifferent?
Ivo dumped the slips into the analyzer hopper and punched SUMMARIZE. There was a scramble inside the machine as it assimilated the evidence.
The printout emerged. Ivo tore it off, forcing himself to read:
NO
NO
NO
IVO
LOVE
The relief was so great he felt ill. It took him a moment to realize that somebody had voted more than once, and another to discern the other oddities about the listing. Someone had written “NO” carelessly so that the first stroke of the “N” was unconnected, and the machine had picked it up as “I” and “V” and added the “O.” Thus the word became his name.
He was unable to explain how the last word had come about.
Harold stood up. “Was there any doubt?” he asked. “I don’t think we’ll need to do this again. Let’s get back on the job. We have a lot to do and none of us are geniuses.”
Only after they were gone did he realize that he still held the printout — that he had not read aloud or shown to any of them.
Reentry into the galaxy — was anticlimactic. Group confidence was on the ascendant. They had been unable to pinpoint the destroyer’s moment of origin; there had been nothing, then everything, and there was no emanation from the area except those terrible “tame” macrons. Apparently the destroyer broadcaster had been set up rapidly by a task force that jumped into location and away again in a few hours, and whose technicians could somehow interfere with wild macronic emission. Unless the observer happened to land at the very fringe of the broadcast, its inception could not be caught. But still they had confidence, sure somehow that the worst was over.