“Goats are naturally inquisitive,” Afra said.
Goat = Capricorn, her astrological sign, Ivo thought. Groton must have showed her her chart, during one of their… private discussions. And did Beatryx know that she was Pisces — a poor fish?
They dressed and climbed out. Ivo assisted Beatryx, but not with any palm on the bottom.
Groton stood on a platform resembling that of a train station. Massive cables reached from the rounded ceiling to Joseph on either side.
“Just swing over on the spare,” Groton recommended. “The gravity increases near the lock. You could jump, but why take chances?”
Ivo wondered again whether the humor were conscious. How much difference could one more chance make, now?
They swung over. This was his first physical contact with an alien artifact, since he had not visited the satellite, and he was vaguely disappointed both at its ordinary substance and at the continuing casualness with which the others adjusted to the situation. This was supposed to be the moment of climax — Alien Contact! — and nobody noticed.
Or was he merely put out because he had become a minor figure in a major adventure? After this, if they survived, Afra would be able to handle the travel signal (at least until they reencountered the existent destroyer field, which would take thousands of years to dissipate even at light speed;) and so she would have no further need of Ivo.
“Okay, I’ll go through and you follow in turn,” Groton said. “No problem with these controls—” He went on to demonstrate.
“Hurry up!” Afra said from the inside. “I’m itching to look about in here.”
Had this degenerated into a child’s game of “Spaceman”? Girl astronaut wanted them to hurry because she was impatient to explore!
He thought he heard Schön laughing. Little Ivo had thought to manage this adventure himself, and only succeeded in making himself unimportant. Ivo was no Lanier, he was not likely to achieve fame on his own. Schön, on the other hand—
They don’t need you, either, he thought furiously at the lurking personality. Schön did not reply.
The interior was, as Afra had claimed, pressurized. He and Beatryx joined the other two in summer clothing, depositing their suits in binnacles provided for them adjacent to the lock. Regular tourist facilities!
The changes in the two women were quite noticeable now, as they stood side by side during that inevitable hesitation before proceeding further into the station. Both were well proportioned, Afra a little taller and more dynamic. Afra was modern — and it looked less well on her, in contrast to the more conservative motions of the other. Where Afra jumped, Beatryx stepped. The difference in their ages showed less in appearance than in attitude and posture and facial expression.
Finally he pinned down the elusive but essential distinction: what Afra had was sex appeal; what Beatryx had was femininity.
Ivo wondered whether he and Groton had changed similarly.
They were in a long quiet hall lighted from the ceiling, a hall that slanted gently downward. “Down” was toward the center of the sphere, not the rim; nothing so simple as centripetal pseudo-gravity here. The materials of the hall’s construction were conventional, as these things went; no scintillating shields, no compacted matter. If this were typical, the two-mile sphere could not possibly have the mass of a star, or even a planet. Somehow it generated gravity without mass.
The situation was not, on second thought, surprising. A potent gravitic field was no doubt necessary to power the destroyer impulse, and it should be a simple matter to allow some of it to overlap around the unit, providing for visitors. It was handy for holding down satellites too, even at distances similar to those prevailing in the Solar System itself. Earth was only eight light-minutes from Sol…
A hundred yards or so along, the hall widened into a level chamber. Here there were alcoves set in the walls, and objects resting within them.
Afra trotted to the nearest on the left side. “Do you think the exhibit is safe to touch?” she inquired, now hesitant.
“Do you see any DO NOT HANDLE signs, stupid?”
“Harold, one of these minutes I’m going to whisper nasty things about you into your wife’s docile ear.”
“She’s known them for fifteen years.” Groton put his arm around Beatryx, who smiled complacently.
Afra reached into the alcove and lifted out its artifact. It was a sphere about four inches in diameter, rigid and light, made of some plastic material. It was transparent; as she held it up to the light they all could see its emptiness.
“A container?” Groton conjectured.
“A toy?” Beatryx said.
Groton looked at her. “I wonder. An educational toy. A model of the destroyer?”
“Not without docking vents,” Afra said. She put it back and went on to the next. This was a cone six inches high with a flat base four inches across. It was made of the same transparent material, and was similarly empty.
“Dunce cap,” Ivo suggested.
She ignored him and went on. The third figure was a cylindrical segment on the same scale as the cone, closed off by a flat disk at each end. It was solid but light, the silver-white surface opaque but reflective. Afra turned it about. “Metallic, but very light,” she said. “Probably—”
Suddenly she dropped it back in the alcove and brushed her hands against her shorts as though they were burning.
The others watched her. “What happened?” Groton asked.
“That’s lithium!”
Groton looked. “I believe you are right. But there’s a polish on it — a coating of wax, perhaps. It shouldn’t be dangerous to handle.”
What was so touchy about lithium? Ivo wondered, but he decided not to inquire. Probably it burned skin, like an acid, or was poisonous.
Afra looked foolish. “I must be more nervous than I let on. I just never expected—” She paused, glancing down the wall. “Something occurs to me. Is the next one a silvery-gray pyramid?”
Groton checked. “Close. Actually it’s a tetrahedron, similar to the one we built originally on Triton. Your true pyramid has five sides, counting the bottom.”
“Beryllium.”
“How do you know?”
“This is an elemental arrangement. Look at—”
“Elementary arrangement,” Groton corrected her.
“Elemental. You do know what an element is? Look at these objects. The first is a sphere, which means it has only one side: outside. The second is a closed cone: two sides, one curved, one flat. The third, the cylinder, has three. Yours has four, and so on. The first two aren’t empty — they’re gases! Hydrogen and helium, first and second elements on the periodic table—”
“Could be,” Groton said, impressed.
“And likely to be so for any technologically advanced species. Lithium, the metal that’s half the weight of water, third. Beryllium, fourth. Boron—”
She broke off again and lurched for the sixth alcove — and froze before it.
The others followed. There lay a four-inch cube — six sides — of a bright clear substance.
Groton picked it up. “What’s number six on the table? Six protons, six electrons… isn’t that supposed to be carbon?” Then he too froze, eyes fixed on the cube. The light refracted through it strongly.
Then Ivo made the connection. “Carbon in crystalline form — that’s diamond!”
They gazed upon it: sixty-four cubic inches of diamond, that had to have been cut from a much larger crystal.
A single exhibit — of scores in the hall.
Then Afra was moving down the length of the room, calling off the samples. “Nitrogen — oxygen — fluorine — neon…”
Groton shook his head. “What a fortune! And they’re only samples, shape-coded for ready reference. They—”
Words failed him. Reverently, he replaced the diamond block.
“Scandium — titanium — vanadium — chromium—” Afra chanted as she rushed on. “They’re all here! All of them!”