MacRoscope (18 page)

“Well, you can’t have a strictly geometrical proof for the initial theorem, of course. You have to start with one assumption, then build logically from that. So we assume that if one angle between two measured sides is fixed, the entire triangle is fixed. It works perfectly consistently.”

“But what if it’s wrong?”

“It
isn’t
wrong. You can measure triangles full-time for a lifetime, and you’ll never find an exception.”

“Suppose I transfer side-angle-side from a flat surface to a torus?”

She almost spluttered. “You have to match surfaces. You know that.”

It seemed to Ivo that Groton had just scored another point, but for some reason the man didn’t follow it up.

“So experience is your guideline, then,” Groton said.

“Yes.”

“That’s the basis for astrology, too.”

“Experience? That the position of Mars determines man’s fate?”

“That the zodiacal configuration at a person’s birth indicates certain things about his circumstance and personality. Astrologers have been making observations and refining their techniques for many centuries — it
is
one of the most ancient of disciplines — until today the science is as close to accuracy as it has ever been. There is still much to learn, just as there is about geometry, but it is experience and not guesswork that modifies our application. I do not claim that the stars or planets determine your fate; I do suggest that your life is circumscribed by complex factors and influences, in much the same way as the motions of the planets and stars are circumscribed, and that the complex of your life and the complex of the universe may run in a parallel course. Astrology attempts to draw useful parallels between these two admittedly diverse areas, since what is obscure in one realm may be apparent in the other. In this way it may be possible to clarify aspects of your life that may not otherwise be properly understood. The one correspondence we can fix with any degree of certainty is the moment of birth, so we must use that as the starting point for the individual — but that is all it is. A starting point, just as your side-angle-side measurement is a possible starting point for the entire science of geometry. The difference is that astrology does not attempt to determine facts, since these are things you may ascertain for yourself. It reveals nothing that is hidden. Instead it facilitates the measure and judgment of what is actually encountered in experience.”

Ivo remembered the Senator’s distinction between truth and meaning in philosophy.

“That sounds closer to psychology than astronomy,” Afra said.

“It should. The relation between astronomy and astrology is entirely superficial. We depend upon the astronomers for measurements of planetary motions and such, but after that we part company. The metaphysical opinions of astronomers have no bearing on astrology; these gentlemen are simply not competent in that area, however competent they may be in their own field, that I admit they have mastered with a skill they have not even thought of applying to astrology. A good astrologer doesn’t need a telescope; he does need a sound grasp of practical psychology.”

Ivo had been watching Kovonov all this time, but there had been no other sign. It was time to get advice. “I hate to interrupt,” he said, “but I seem to be stalled.”

Afra came over. “I’m sorry. I let fantasy distract me and forgot all about you. What is it?”

Ivo described what had taken place in the torus.

“Obviously he is referring to the statuette,” she said.

It was amazing how stupid she could make him feel, how quickly. He dollied the image through the wall and down the hall to the common room.

The S D P S was gone, of course, but the pedestal remained. Upon it was a sheet of paper. An anonymous message, he realized, that could implicate no one. It was printed in teletype caps:

CRAFT ALERTED. PROCEEDING FROM MOONBASE THIS DATE 1300 TORUS TIME. ARMED. ACCELERATE WHEN ADVISED. URGENT.

“Oh, God, they
are
on our tail!” Afra snapped. “And here I’ve been wasting precious time on—”

“Armed?”

“That means a ship-mounted laser. Supposed to be top secret, but we all knew about it.”

“So there
has
been some poop-scooping.”

“In self-defense. Space is supposed to be free of weapons, and the UN enforces that — but Brad was suspicious of a UN-sponsored industrial complex on the moon. Ruinously inefficient location, with all supplies ferried up from Earth. So we peeked. Presumably it’s for good use — to
keep
the peace — but the UN is building a fleet that is very like an incipient armada. That space-borne laser is dangerous at indefinite range — as we may discover first-hand if we don’t behave.”

“Why don’t they burn us now, then? They must have us spotted.”

“Because they want to preserve the macroscope. You can be sure that if they officially dismantle it, there will be an unofficial remantling. An insidious group has obtained control of the UN space arm, or
will
obtain it; again, we only know because we… scooped. A fleet of ships and the macroscope — that’s about as real as power gets. That could have been what Borland was really investigating. He had the nose for that sort of thing.”

“And they would want to keep their laser secret,” Groton put in. “If they use it, everyone will know, and that will be sticky.”

“
And
because the only equipment precise enough to aim a beam that narrow accurately for that range is right here with us,” Afra said. “They’ll have to get pretty close before they can be sure of us with one burst, particularly if we’re maneuvering.”

Ivo was fazed by such political reality. “Why don’t they just broadcast an ultimatum to us?”

“And admit to the world that somebody has snitched the macroscope from under their nose? They can certainly keep
that
secret if we can. Can you maintain contact with the station under acceleration?”

“You mean, if we take off and… if there’s a computer setting for it,” Ivo said. “Doesn’t it keep track of any changes in our location, and compensate?”

“Naturally. It’s been doing it right along while you practiced. Otherwise every one of the coded locations would be off by the distance we are from the torus. But under actual acceleration there would be drift because of the change in our orientation. Is your hand steady enough to compensate?”

“I can try,” Ivo said.

She strapped him down while he held the focus. “We’ll have to employ intermittent bursts, and change our own orientation erratically,” she said. “That way they won’t ever be quite sure where we’re going.”

“Where
are
we going?” Groton inquired.

“Neptune,” Ivo said, but it wasn’t funny.

“What’s two billion, eight hundred million miles among friends?” Afra said, and that wasn’t funny either. Ivo was sure it would be years before they could get to such a planet on an economy orbit. The 1977 probe of the four gas giants, after all, was still less than halfway out.

“We may be able to fool them for a little while — a few hours, say — but will it change the end?” Ivo asked her.

“No. Unless we undertake sustained acceleration, the advantage is with them. They have to catch up eventually.”

Ivo still had the focus on the printed warning in the station common room. “Oh-oh,” he said. “Somebody is changing the sign.”

A technician, seeming to move carelessly, picked up the first sheet with a gloved hand and deposited another. Ivo read it off:

ROBOT BEING FITTED. ACCELERATE IMMEDIATELY. URGENT.

“I’ll get on it,” Groton said. “One G until we think of something better.” Ivo heard him scrambling through the lock.

“Why can’t we set course for — well, Neptune, since it’s vacant and far out — and keep clear of them that way? It might take a little time, but at least we’d be safe until we could figure out something better.”

“You’re right,” Afra said sourly. “At a million miles per hour, direct route, we could make it within four months. At a steady one-gravity acceleration we could achieve that velocity in, oh, half a day. We have supplies for the five of us for a good year.”

Weight hit them as Groton cut in the drive. They were on their way — somewhere.

Ivo, still on the scope, lost the focus, but was able to bring it back by diligent corrective twists. The computer was on the job, holding to the coded location, but it didn’t care what way up the picture was, and it was evident that the loaded weight of the ship threw the calculations off a trifle. The computer was not using the macroscope; it was judging by thrust and vector to estimate the changes and corroborating by telescopic observations. Trace corrections were necessary.

“What’s wrong with that idea, then?” he asked, trying not to sound plaintive.

“First, that robot can take more acceleration than we can, since it has no fallible human flesh to hinder it. It would catch us enroute if the regular ship didn’t. Second, we might get a little hungry, if we
did
get away, after that year.”

“Oh.” That stupid feeling was threatening to become chronic. “Couldn’t we, er, grow some more food? Refine natural resources or sprout whole grain — I saw bags of—”

“On
Neptune?
”

He didn’t press the point. “We could come back within the year. The situation could change in that time. Politically.”

“I suppose it could, and we could. That leaves only the problem of outrunning the robot ship.”

“Oh.” He kept forgetting that. “Wait a minute! I thought Joseph was a special vehicle. An atomic heat-shield, or something. Brad told me—”

“We are traveling in verbal circles,” she said. “Joseph can probably deliver enough thrust to fire us off, even burdened with the weight of the macroscope housing, at a sustained ten gravities. No problem there. The robot would run out of chemical fuel in a hurry trying to match that.”

“How long would it take to reach Neptune at ten G’s?”

She was silent a moment, and he knew she was working it out with a slide rule. This, at least, was one problem she couldn’t do quickly in her head or answer from memory, and he refrained from reminding her that
he
could.

“Assuming turnover at mid-point for deceleration, with constant impetus, top velocity of thirteen thousand, two hundred miles per second — ouch! That’s one fourteenth light-speed! — we could make the trip in just five days.”

“Why not?” he asked, satisfied.

“No reason worthy of mention. Of course, we’d all be dead long before we arrived, if that’s any disadvantage.”

“Dead?”

“Did you fancy surviving at a sustained ten G’s?”

Ivo thought about weighing over three quarters of a ton for five days without letup. Power, he decided, was not everything. And of course he should have known that; she had already stated that problem, though it hadn’t sunk in before. He’d been thinking minutes, not days, for that acceleration.

“You have too many nays for my yeas,” he told her. “Suppose we take off at a steady one G in the general direction of Neptune. How long will it take that UN cruiser to catch us?”

“That depends. The manned one is our immediate problem. If it orients immediately and projects for interception, it could rendezvous within two days. If it takes a more conservative approach, to economize on fuel and allow for our possible maneuvering, it would take longer. Since they’ll know fuel is not a problem for us, the latter course is more likely. They wouldn’t want to damage the macroscope. They would try to keep us occupied until the robot was functional, which might be several more days.”

“How would they know about our drive? I thought that was Brad’s private project.”

“Nothing is
that
private — not from the organization footing the bill. But spectroscopic analysis of our drive emission would remove any doubts they might harbor. That would make them more cautious about closing with us, but it wouldn’t stall them very long. They’d be even more determined to capture us intact, for the sake of that heat-shield.” She paused. “We might bluff them a while, though. We’ll be heading into the sun, and if we threatened to lock suicidally on that—”

“But Neptune is farther out than we are. We’d be headed
away
from the sun.”

“Not when Neptune’s in conjunction.”

“Conjunction?”

“The opposite side of the sun from Earth.”

“I thought that was opposition.”

“Brother!” she said in exasperation. Then: “Exactly what, if anything, were you thinking of using those two or more days of freedom for?”

He refrained from making a cute answer. “The macroscope.”

“I had the distinct impression you were already occupied in some such capacity. One does live and learn.”

“I meant the programmed aspect”

“Oh.” It was her turn to feel stupid. It set her back only momentarily. “It seems to me that our problem is fairly well defined. We can’t expect to outmaneuver or outrun the UN pair of ships, nor are we in a position to build any fancy equipment to discommode them. Surely you don’t expect to adapt the mind-destroyer impulse as a personal weapon?”

“No. But I’m convinced there is galactic information on that channel, if only we could get past the barrier. No one has ever looked
beyond
that opening sequence.” Was there anything beyond, he wondered abruptly, or did it merely repeat endlessly?

“No,” she said, her voice subdued. He knew she was thinking of Brad again. “Ivo — do you really think you should — touch
that
?”

It was the first genuinely personal concern she had shown for him, and he valued it immensely, “It doesn’t hurt me. We already know that.”

“It
hasn’t
hurt you — yet. What possible thing could you learn worth the risk?”

“I don’t know.” That was the irony of it. He had no evidence there was anything to find. “But if there
is
any help for us, that’s where it has to be. They — the galactics, whatever they are — must be hiding something. Otherwise why have such a program at all? They can’t really be trying to destroy us, because this is a self-damping thing. I mean, a little of it warns you off, just as it did for the probs. But the discouragement would really be more effective if there were no signal at all. The signal itself is proof there is something to look for. It is tantalizing. It’s as though — well, interference.” He hoped.