Equipping themselves with notepads and pencils, the trio moved into the observation room and sat down amid a plenum of stars. The distribution of suns around the Sarafand was so uniform, and their brightness so intense, that the three men appeared to be perched on a dangerous gallery spanning an abyss.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” Gillespie commented. “There must be a thousand or more suns within a radius of ten light-years. You could almost find planetary systems with a pair of field glasses.”
“Slight exaggeration,” Targett said, “but I see what you mean. It’s about time we had some luck.”
“Luck?” Surgenor cleared his throat. “Hear these words, Aesop. Did you have any control over our point of emergence in this galaxy?”
“Yes, David. This globular cluster was a conspicuous object, even in beta-space. I had enough residual control to ensure that the ship emerged near its centre.” Aesop’s pervasive voice seemed to emanate from space itself.
“You knew we’d be looking for a planet to settle on?”
“That was the logical assumption.”
“I see.” Surgenor glanced significantly at his two companions. “Aesop, we now require from you a complete survey of the cluster with the object of locating the suns most likely to have Earth-type planets. Results in print-out form. Four copies. How long will that take?”
“Approximately five hours.”
“That is satisfactory.” It suddenly came to Surgenor that he was exhausted, that there was nothing he could usefully do in the next five hours, and that he could no longer put off the first moment when he would find himself alone in his room, isolated, thirty million light-years from Earth. The alternative was to have another drink, but he had no wish to start using alcohol as a crutch—especially as the supply would run out in a few weeks.
“I suppose we’d better get some rest,” he said to Gillespie and Targett, glancing at his watch. “We can meet here at…’
“I have carried out a preliminary spectroscopic survey of the cluster,” Aesop cut in unexpectedly. “The emission lines prove that the stellar matter has the same composition as is found in the home galaxy, but in every case the lines are shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum.”
Without knowing why, Surgenor felt a spasm of alarm. “That doesn’t reduce the possibility of finding suitable planets, does it?”
“No.” Aesop’s reply was comforting, but made his intervention more puzzling.
Surgenor frowned at Targett, who was known to have some formal grounding in astronomy. “What made Aesop tell us that?”
“Blue shift?” Targett looked as puzzled as Surgenor felt. “I guess it means that all the stars in this cluster are moving towards us. Not towards us—towards a common centre which we happen to be near.”
“So what?”
Targett raised his shoulders, looking blank. “It’s unusual, that’s all. You usually find that everything is expanding.”
“Aesop, we note what you say about the shifting of spectral lines,” Surgenor said. “It means that this cluster is imploding, right?”
“That is correct. The velocity of the stars near the central region is upwards of one hundred and fifty kilometres a second, and it gets higher towards the edge of the cluster. I informed you about the phenomenon because it has no known parallel in the Milky Way system.”
Surgenor developed an uneasy feeling that something important was being left unsaid, and yet he knew that—regardless of how many subtleties had been built into Aesop’s ‘personality’—his designers had never intended him to exhibit coyness.
“All right,” he said, “so we’re in an imploding cluster, and that’s a new kind of phenomenon in our experience—but if our previous experience is limited to the Milky Way system aren’t we bound to get a few surprises in other parts of the universe?”
“The viewpoint you express is philosophically valid,” Aesop replied. “However, the truly surprising thing about this star cluster is not its configuration in space, but in time.”
“Aesop, I don’t understand that. Make it simpler.”
The stars in the cluster have a mean separation of one-point-two light-years. They are moving towards the centre at a rate of about one hundred and fifty kilometres a second. We are already at or near the centre of the cluster, but we can detect no stellar collisions or central mass. The implication is that we have reached our present position less than one hundred and fifty Earth years before the first collision—but astronomical timescales are such that this implication should be rejected.”
“You mean it’s impossible?”
“It is not impossible,” Aesop replied blandly. “But on an astronomical timescale the period of one hundred and fifty years is vanishingly small. I have insufficient data about local conditions to be able to calculate the probabilities, but it is extremely unlikely that we should have arrived here at this stage in the cluster’s evolution. Either the cluster should be very much larger and more diffuse, or there should be a central mass.”
Surgenor stared at the crowded, fiercely glowing sky. “Then…what’s your explanation?”
“I have no explanation, David. I am merely advising you of the facts.”
“In that case we have to assume that we arrived here at an interesting time,” Surgenor said. “The improbable is bound to happen every now and…’
“Aesop,” Targett said urgently, “we’re not on the edge of a black hole, are we?”
“No. A black hole is easily detectable, both in normal-space and in beta-space, and I would have made certain to avoid it. In fact, I am unable to detect even a moderate gravity generator in the region—which makes the condensation of the cluster harder to explain.”
“Mmm You said the stars nearer the outside of the cluster are moving faster, Aesop. Is their speed proportionate to the distance from the centre?”
“A random sample indicates that is the case.”
“That’s strange,” Targett said thoughtfully. “It’s almost as if…’ His voice faded away as he examined the surrounding star fields with renewed interest.
“What were you going to say?” Gillespie prompted.
“Nothing. I get crazy ideas sometimes.”
“We’re not getting anywhere with this discussion.” Surgenor looked at his watch, which had been adjusted to ship time. “I suggest we break it up for a while and meet here again at seven. We might have our heads cleared by that time, and there’ll be Aesop’s report to work on.”
The others nodded their assent and they moved back into the brightly lit normality of the mess room, away from the psychological pressures of the alien sky. Surgenor went up the main companionway to the next deck and entered the bow-shaped corridor of the sleeping quarters. For the sake of administrative convenience, the crew were assigned rooms in accordance with the numbers of their survey modules, and, as the occupant of the left-hand seat in Module Five, Surgenor lived in the ninth.
He was passing the first room, where for the past five years he had been accustomed to stop for jawing sessions with Marc Lamereux, when it occurred to him that he owed Christine Holmes an apology. The door was closed, but its do-not-disturb bezel was dark, making it impossible to tell if she was inside at that moment. He hesitated, then tapped the plastic panel and heard an indistinct reply which sounded like an invitation to enter. Surgenor turned the handle, opened the door and was greeted by a flurry of movement and startled swearing. Christine, naked to the waist, was sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms crossed over her breasts.
“Sorry!” Surgenor closed the door and waited in the corridor, beginning to wish he had gone straight to his room.
“What’s the idea?” Christine had pulled on her uniform blouse when she opened the door. “What do you want?”
Surgenor tried to smile. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“What do you want?” she repeated impatiently, ignoring his suggestion.
“Well…I was going to apologize.”
“What for?”
“For what happened at the meeting. And I guess I haven’t helped much, either.”
“I don’t need any help. Turkeys like Narvik and Schilling don’t bother me.”
“I dare say they don’t, but that’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?” She sighed and he caught the tang of tobacco smoke on her breath. “All right—you’ve apologized, and that makes everybody feel better. Now, do you mind if I get some rest?” She closed the door and there came the sound of the lock being operated more firmly than was necessary. The do-not-disturb bezel began to glow.
Surgenor thoughtfully stroked his jaw as he continued along the corridor to his own room. When Christine Holmes was angry, as she undoubtedly still was, she could be as tough and abrasive as any man, but in the moment of being taken unawares she had reacted in a classically feminine manner. The ancient defensive gesture, the screening of the breasts from strange eyes, seemed to indicate sexuality, to show that in spite of everything she regarded herself as essentially female. Surgenor tried to imagine the Christine he knew—big-boned, sallow-complexioned, hard-handed, smoking, ready to take on a male world on its own terms—as the person she might once have been before life had started wielding the big stick, but he was unable to come up with a different picture. Recognizing the futility of the exercise, he put her out of his mind as he entered his own room. Kicking off his boots, he lay down on the bed and allowed himself to think about being stranded thirty million light-years from home. Was it any worse than being stranded one light-year from home? Rationally—no; but there was more to life than rationality. He did not exist as a pure intellect, and the coldness of the intergalactic gulf had seeped into his bones, into his guts, and he could feel it laying waste to his spirit, and he was unable to see how he would ever again be able to laugh, or sleep easily, or renew himself at the fountains of human friendship.