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Joelle came close to sneering. “You were eager to quest further, weren’t you? Well, Miz Mulryan, what do you think of what we’ve come upon?”

“How can I give you an honest answer when I don’t know what it is? You’ll be telling us in due course, and it will be grand to learn.”

Joelle’s expression softened a trifle. “No secret. Doubtless several people have already realized, while you’ve been too busy to hear them talk. Don’t plan on staying long. The captain will soon insist on a report, then order us back to the T machine for a new jump. Fidelio and I are keeping us going meanwhile, partly on the microscopic chance we’ll find some trace of something that may be helpful, but mainly for… for his sake. Fidelio’s. It
is
fascinating.”

Caitlín reached for her again. “And you barred from it.” She didn’t venture to complete the gesture, but dropped her arm.

“I’ll play the data back later for myself.”

“Not the same, is it?”

Joelle’s look lost itself in the blue star. “No telling where we
are in space,” she said low. “Besides, that’s really a meaningless phrase… under these circumstances. Let’s call it somplace in the embryo galaxy, and date it from ten to twenty billion years before we were born.”

Air whistled in around Caitlín’s teeth. “We’ve come through time?”

“Why not?
Emissary
did. Ships going between Sol and Phoebus do to a lesser, variable extent. For all we know, the Danu that
Chinook
found may be millennia in the past or future of the Wheel that
Chinook
raided—though from a relativistic viewpoint, I’m being very imprecise in my language.

“What theory we have says that a transport field cannot take you any farther back in time than the moment of its own generation. But I hardly imagine that Danu exists yet. Therefore, either the T machine around it is… was… will be extremely old, or else that field meshes somehow with the field of the machine here. The second seems much likelier.

“And in any event, the Others must have originated even earlier than this.” Joelle smiled without humor. “We’re early enough, however, aren’t we?”

“Aye,” Caitlín whispered, “if the stars haven’t yet been made.”

“Few so far. Not many atoms more complex than hydrogen and helium. The gas clouds are still collapsing inward to form the galaxies. The suns will condense from them—”

“—like dewdrops from dawn mist.” Caitlín’s being glowed.

“—and higher nuclei form within those—”

“—air for our breath, iron for our blood, gold for a wedding ring.”

“—but the process has scarcely begun. What you see yonder is a young star. It’s so big that it could take shape with a single companion, out of a Bok globule, rather than as part of a cluster within nebula—a type O supergiant, fifty thousand times as luminous as Sol. If we were much closer, its radiation would kill us. It hasn’t long to live on the main sequence: a few million years at most, till it erupts as a supernova. For a short while it will be as bright as the entire galaxy was—is—in our day… before its remnant sinks down into a neutron globe or a black hole. The heavy elements created in that explosion will be blown into space; they’ll become part of the later generations of suns and planets.

“The star has a smaller companion; have you seen? It will be
affected. What we’ll get, if humans and Betans know any astrophysics, is a recurring nova, nothing like the supernova but casting elements into the universe also.

“I daresay a situation similar to this has already occurred elsewhere, freakishly early in cosmic history, perhaps inside a nebula. There came to be enough local concentration of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the necessary materials, that planets could coalesce on which life could arise, even then, before there was even this hint at a galaxy to come. Perhaps one or more of those life forms evolved into the Others.

“Possibly,” Joelle finished, “a small part of what makes you and me up is being made there, in those stars, right now.”

Caitlín smote her hands together and said, “No wonder the Others would make a gate to come see!”

“Doubtless.” Joelle sighed. “I’d hoped they might have a scientific station. That’s why we continue moving slantwise to the T machine, instead of heading straight back. But I don’t believe any longer that they have. It would be somewhere nearby if it existed, would it not? After all, everything, including materials for the T machine itself, would have to be sent through from the past. That’s a huge enough undertaking for anybody, demigods or no. Surely they have competing claims on their attention. And when the giant blows up, it’ll wipe out whatever is in orbit around it, unless maybe the T machine itself can survive. No, I daresay the Others just come through occasionally in ships, or whatever they use, to take observations. The interval could be thousands of years.”

After a minute she added, “If they do have an installation, in spite of my guess, it’s elsewhere. We haven’t a prayer of finding it, in a system laid out on this vast a scale. No, we’ll hang around for a day or two, probing, peering, broadcasting a forlorn hope if ever there was one—and finally try another jump.”

Because of how she stared at the star, Caitlín asked her, “You’d be happy here yourself, learning, is that not so?”

“Not feasible.” Joelle smiled lopsidedly. “We’d run out of mass and have to change over to spin mode, which would terribly hamper any studies. Worse, we’d always wonder what opportunities we’d missed. We must go on.” Again she hesitated. “That’s frightening.” As if to get it out before she could strangle the impulse: “Hearten us, Caitlín, will you?”

The quartermaster flushed, her lashes fluttered, her voice lost steadiness; never before had the holothete seen her that shy.
“Can I? Me, I, I’m nothing but a bard of sorts. You’re a doer—Dr. Ky—an understander, a Druid. Our lives rest on you.”

“No. On Fidelio, the way things are… at present. And you understand what I cannot—Excuse me.” Joelle swung about. “I remember something I’d better do.” She left with hasty strides. Seen from behind, her shoulders trembled.

J
UMP.

Again heaven was full of stars. For a heart-stopping instant Brodersen could find no T machine among them. After he did spy it, made tiny by distance, he became able to look around him and wonder.

A sun disc hung out there. About the same size as that which Earth saw, it was distinctly greenish—an oath of amazement exploded from him—and heavily spotted. According to a meter, the luminosity per unit area exceeded Sol’s by some thirty percent. The corona was immense around it, and ruddy; without magnification, he saw flares and prominences like fire geysers; but no zodiacal light appeared, though he spotted down brightness and amplified weak sources to the limit of his screens.

Having taken reports, he ordered
Chinook
to accelerate in the orbital plane of the transport engine and research to commence. Then he scratched his head and plaintively addressed the intercom: “Hey, what’s going on? I didn’t know the main sequence included green stars.”

The holothetes didn’t reply. They were too immersed. After a minute, Su Granville’s diffident tones reached him: “I t’ink I can guess. Green is not an impossible color, but the range of surface temperature for it is so narrow that we seldom ’ave observed it.”

“Is that why the Others are interested in this one?”

“No, I suspect it is simply leaving the main sequence and ’appens to be going through a brief green phase.”

Hydrogen burned away at the core, the nuclear reactions moving outward
—“Wait. Doesn’t it become a red giant?”

“Yes, in due course. But at first it shrinks and grows very much ’otter. That shortens the peak wavelength. Expansion ’as now begun, but needs time yet for to cool the surface, redden the light, while the total output increases more—” She went into
dismay. “Oh, you know the elementary astronomy! I am sorry.”

“Don’t be, Su. I should’ve figured this out for myself.”

Once assured that nobody had detected anything dangerous, Brodersen left the command center. He couldn’t resist peeking in at the various investigators and asking questions, but left before he turned into a nuisance and sought Caitlín. She stood in the common room, surrounded by the views it offered, marveling. As he entered, she sped to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him with cyclone force.

He responded. When they came up for air, she crooned, “Oh, Dan, Dan, what we’re seeing! What we’ll learn, aye, and do!”

“I sure would like to do something,” he grumbled. “This being useless gets on my nerves.”

She cocked her head. Her grin grew mischievous. “Well, Captain, you could be dealing justice to a poor deprived quartermaster. Yonder sight makes me horny.”

“Good Lord! Does any sight
not
do that, ever?”

She disengaged herself and took him by the elbow. “Later, you can help me cook.”

Reports came in through the hours.

The ship was thousands of light-years from Earth, to gauge by the altered outlines of the Milky Way and bearings of neighbor galaxies. Identifiable astronomical objects were not noticeably changed, including monstrous S Doradus. Hence the date, reckoned from the hypothetical beginning of the universe, was the same as at home, give or take a few million years.
Chinook
had returned from the distant past.

Doppler readings on the T machine, combined with radar ranging of the sun, gave the latter a mass above Sol’s. On that basis, theory gave it an age on the order of ten billion years. More precise measurements would be needed to refine that figure. Clearly, however, it must belong to an early generation. This was confirmed by a paucity of dust around it and by the weak metallic lines in its spectrum. However, it contained more heavy elements than might have been expected. Perhaps it had formed in the vicinity of a recent supernova burst. (Could that have been the detonation of the blue giant the humans lately beheld? They speculated mightily and futilely.)

It had planets. One moved at more or less the same distance as the T machine, a little over an a.u., a little less than ninety
degrees ahead. The globe was Earth size and bore oxygen in the atmosphere.

There was no telling where the Others had originally placed their device, except that presumably it was not in a sixty-degree position. Maybe it had once been straight across from the living world, like the ones at Sol and Centrum and stars elsewhere known to the Betans. If so, it must have exhausted its station-keeping capability at last: for now it orbited as subject to perturbation as any natural heavenly body.

Brodersen shook his head and clicked his tongue. Anything he could utter was inadequate anyway. “Well,” he said, “I guess whatever interest the Others had here died out long ago. Unless they care to watch the system itself die.”

Soon Dozsa’s receivers cast a dazzling doubt on his conclusion. A source at the terrestroid planet was emitting a radio pattern which, though simple and repetitive, must be of artificial origin. A beacon, a message? For
Chinook,
absolutely a summons.

It was a three-day flight.

Those who could do astronomy were kept busy supplying Fidelio with data which he integrated into an ever more complete picture. They were much too slow for him. He spent most of his hours in holothesis nevertheless, probing his stellar environment through direct instrumental input, considering it, or perhaps oftenest contemplating the Ultimate in that way of his which gave him a sense of those he loved being real within a space-time which unified him with them.

Meanwhile the engineers checked
Williwaw
out after the stresses of the Danu trip, treated her to a thorough overhaul, adjusted her as best they could for predicted conditions, and replenished her mass tanks from the ship’s supply. Brodersen lent a hand whenever he was able. They had no room for a larger work party.

Rueda and Su were left with more leisure than they wanted. Joelle was almost completely at loose ends.

Waking very early in the second mornwatch, unable to get back to sleep, finding no solace in books or music, she rose, threw on a coverall, and left the barrenness of her cabin. She’d go borrow the galley to brew herself some tea, which she had neglected to draw as private rations, and thereafter, while the Betan rested, get into her own linkage. It was awkward to do
unassisted, but she’d be damned if she asked for help. That would be downright humiliating when she was unprepared to accomplish anything of value and merely intended to submerge her being for a while in the hearts of atoms and stars—in what was well-known about them, nothing else. It wasn’t even as if that state were an addiction which must be satisfied. After all, she’d experienced it in fullness quite recently.

Fullness
….
Everything has gone empty
.

The corridor underscored her feeling when she emerged into it, a hollow length of metal curving away on either side, lined with shut doors, air chill and rustling. When one of the doors, Frieda von Moltke’s, slid back, Joelle started, nearly frightened.

Martti Leino stepped out, waved before he closed it, and as he turned around saw the holothete. Likewise surprised, he blurted, “Good morning, Dr. Ky. How are you?” His hair was tangled and his clothes carelessly redonned.

“Insomniac,” Joelle said, because it must be obvious. “And you?”

Leino looked smug. “Well, I haven’t slept much either. Was going for coffee in the galley, I’ve run out in my quarters. Would you care to join me?”

Joelle changed her mind about tea. Why should her face grow hot? “No, thanks, I want to walk about.” She left him.

Is that floozy servicing every man aboard?
she thought.
If so, why should I gave a damn? What’s it to me? At least she seems to have wiped the hangdog misery out of Leino he’s been carrying around these past days
.

What caused it? I had the impression he paired off with Mulryan the night watch after the party, but no, he seems to have been avoiding her since. Did he think he was going to get laid, and instead get refused? A quarrel
—
But she’s been speaking kindly to him at mealtimes, though she rarely hears better than monosyllables in reply
.