“Something strange here,” Harold said. “The alignment of that image doesn’t check with the direct view of the cluster. And the scene was typical of a planet within the galaxy. That light band was the Milky Way!”
Afra set the computer for Earth-type planet selection, leaving the azimuth where it was, and waited while it filtered and sorted the crowded macrons. Ivo was anxious to take over again, but held himself back. The situation certainly was strange, and Afra obviously lacked the expertise necessary to solve the contradictions. But it would not be diplomatic to point this out.
A green landscape appeared, Earthlike but not Earth. Afra jumped to manual — and lost it. She swore in unladylike manner.
Abruptly she disengaged. “I’m not doing any good here. Take it back, Ivo.”
And he was in it, oblivious to the others, using the goggles though the main screen remained on. He felt his way into the situation, reacting as though the computer were part of his own brain. There was no image directly from Earth — or from any other point in the galaxy. Except for the programs; they came through splendidly. What was the distinction between the tame macrons and the wild ones, that only the tame should pass?
The programs were artificial, generated by sophisticated Type II technology macronic equipment set up within a powerful gravitic field. He knew that much from the local stations, who discussed their techniques freely. Their signals, in effect, were polarized, stripped of wasteful harmonics and superficial imprints, and radiated out evenly. Natural impulses were weak and unruly, by contrast, and tangled with superimpositions. A wild macron could produce several hundred distinct pictures and a great deal of additional scramble; a cultured macron produced only one, or one integrated complex.
It was like the difference between a random splash and a controlled jet of water. The splash interacted with its environment more copiously, but the jet went farther and accomplished more in a particular manner.
What was the galactic environment?
Light. Gas. Energy.
“Gravity.”
It was Schön whispering in his ear. Communication between them was growing more facile, to Ivo’s distress. He preferred Schön thoroughly buried.
Gravity: cumulative in its gross effect, but divided within its originating body. Outside the massive galaxy—
Macrons: essences born of gravitic ripples, and subject to them. And what happened to those emerging from the galaxy itself, meeting the larger interactions of the universe?
He knew, now. The programs struck through, even as far as other galaxies, if properly focused, for they were beamed and streamlined and syncopated and unencumbered. But the wild impulses could not make it; they were too woolly, prickly, horny, disorganized. They felt the great galactic field, were bent by it (for they were creatures of gravity), hauled around as were the clusters, strained…
But not the light. Galactic gravity was not enough to prevent the light from escaping. And finally the light struck out into deep space, leaving its macrons behind, divorced. Like a cloak shed of its master, the mantle of macrons collapsed, compacted, lost form — but remained as lightspeed impulses, clumping to each other, billions where one had been before. Unable to escape the master field, they remained in orbit about the mighty primary, the galactic nucleus.
Thus, shotgun images at right angles to the disk of the galaxy.
Thus, no direct contemporary — within 30,000 years — news.
Thus — history.
Ivo narrowed the coded specifications to a classification of one: Earth. Earth, any time since life conquered its land masses. He swept the captive stream, searching for animation. He scored.
They were watching the screen, and he heard their joint outcry. Earth, yes—
The creature resembled in a certain fashion a crocodile, but its snout was short and blunt. Its body, with its stout round legs and powerful tail, was about seven feet long. A grotesque bridgework of bone and leather stood upon its back, like a stiff sail.
It was morning, and the animal rested torpidly at right angles to the rays of the sun, its eyes partially closed. Behind it was an edge of water clustered with banded stems, a number of them broken. Tall brush or alienistic trees stood in the background, and the ground seemed bleak because there was no grass.
“That,” said Afra, “is Dimetrodon. The sail-backed lizard of the Permian period of Earth, two hundred and fifty million years ago. The sail was used as a primitive temperature control mechanism before better means were found. Though Dimetrodon looks clumsy, that heat-control was an immense advantage, since reptiles tend to be dull when cold—”
“I don’t see how a sail could make it warm,” Beatryx said.
“Oh, it does, it does, and cool too. Broadside to the sun it soaks up heat; endwise it dissipates it. Reptiles don’t dare get too hot, either, you see. Quite clever, really — and it does make identification easy.”
“Paleontology is not my strong point,” Harold said, “but some such conjecture came to my mind, minus the nomenclature. Wasn’t the sail-back the ancestor to the dinosaurs?”
Ivo, wearing the goggles, could not see the expression on her face, but he could hear it. “What dinosaur practiced temperature control? Dimetrodon was a carnivorous pelycosaur, probably ancestral to the therapsids. Mammal-like reptiles, to you.”
“Oops, wrong family tree,” he said without rancor. “Still, a surprising manifestation, considering that we are only thirty thousand light-years out. I don’t see how it could actually be Earth.”
“It is Earth,” Ivo said, remembering that the others had not been privy to his deliberations. “The macrons are in orbit around the galaxy. They’ve clumped together until they have something like mass in themselves, but we can still read them when we catch them. These must have circled a thousand times. I don’t dare mess with the orientation; reception is largely a matter of chance, since there’s so much to choose from. All space and all time, as it were.”
And as he spoke, the picture faded. The vagaries of macronics had washed out the reception. He reset the sweep and angled back and forth, searching for a steadier pulse.
“Two hundred and fifty million years!” Afra said. “The galaxy should have completed a full revolution in that period.”
“Galactic revolution shouldn’t be relevant,” Harold said. “We’re out from the flat face of it, not the edge. The macron orbiting here must be at right angles to the galactic rotation, and not circular at all. I wonder whether it isn’t more like a magnetic field?”
Ivo had another picture on the screen: an animal resembling a deer, but with doglike paws. It stood about a yard high, and poked its nose through the low brush as though searching for vegetable tidbits.
“Mammalian,” Afra said. “Oligocene, probably. I don’t quite place the—”
Then it happened: one of those breaks that mock probability. There was a concerted gasp.
A monstrous beak stabbed down into the picture, followed by a tiny malignant eye and white headfeathers. It was the head of a bird — almost, in itself, the size of the full torso of the deerlike animal. The cruel beak gaped, stabbed, and closed on the deer’s quivering neck.
Now the rest of the predator came into view. It was indeed a bird: nine feet tall and constructed like a wingless and huge-legged hawk. Three mighty claws pierced turf with every step, each scaly and muscular.
“Phororhacos!” Afra exclaimed, awed. “Miocene, in South America. Twenty million years ago—”
“How horrible!” That was Beatryx.
“Horrible? Phororhacos was a magnificent specimen, one of the pinnacles of avian evolution. Flightless, to be sure — but this bird was supreme on land, in its territory. If diversity of species is considered, aves is more successful than mammalia—”