Of all that had happened since the discovery of Nemesis, it was this orbiting of Erythro that Pitt considered Rotor's greatest mistake. It should not have happened. And yet - and yet - could even he have forced it on Rotor? Might he have tried harder? And would that merely have led to a new election and his displacement?
It was nostalgia that was the great problem. People tended to look back and Pitt could not always make them turn their head and look forward. Consider Brossen-
He had died seven years ago and Pitt had been at his deathbed. Pitt alone had happened to catch the old man's dying words. Brossen had beckoned to Pitt, who had leaned close to him. Brossen had reached out a feeble hand, the skin dry as paper. Clutching feebly at Pitt, he had whispered, ‘How bright the Sun of Earth was,’ and had died.
So because Rotorians could not forget how bright the Sun had once been, and how green the Earth had once been, they cried out in exasperation against Pitt's logic and demanded that Rotor orbit a world that was not green, and that circled a sun that was not bright.
It meant the loss of ten years in the rate of progress. They would have been ten years farther ahead had they been located in the asteroid belt from the start. Pitt was convinced of that.
That alone was enough to poison Pitt's feelings toward Erythro, but there was, in connection with it, matters that were worse - much worse.
12. Anger
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.