Macroscope

CHAPTER 5

Gentle hands steadied his head and wiped his face with a wonderfully cool sponge. A woman’s touch, and it was good; he could imagine nothing so sure, so comforting.

For a moment he savored the attention, dreaming of recovery from devastation, of marriage. Then he opened his eyes.

It was Beatryx. “He’s awake,” she murmured.

The others seemed to materialize as she spoke. He saw Harold Groton’s anxious, homely face, and Afra’s careful glance of assessment.

“No, I’m not brain-burned,” he said.

“Thank God!” Afra said.

“What happened?” Groton asked at the same time.

“Now don’t go jumping on him like that,” Beatryx chided them. “He needs a chance to rest. His forehead is hot.” And she brushed his face expertly with the sponge again.

Her analysis might be simplistic, he thought, but his forehead was hot, and he was tired with a fatigue that extended deep into the psyche. Gratefully, he fell asleep.

Hours later he was ready to talk to them. “How close is the UN ship?”

“The optic spots the ma

Ivo remembered. The laser itself could reach them anywhere in near-space, but could not be properly aimed unless coordinated by an instrument as precise as the macroscope. So it became essentially a short-range weapon, against a maneuvering target, good only for a few thousand miles. “Good. I mean, I think that gives us enough time.”

“You — you have the solution?” The dawning of hope on Afra’s face was a blessed thing to watch.

“Solution?” he repeated, finding it unreasonably fu

“Ivo, I don’t want to rush you,” Groton said, “but if we don’t get away from that UN ship soon—”

“I’m sorry, but I do have to explain first. There is some danger, and if I — well, one of you would have to take over the scope.”

“Suddenly I get your message,” Groton said. “What did happen? Afra came screaming to us about the mind-destroyer, and we were afraid — anyway, I’m certainly glad it wasn’t so. But you certainly were out of it for a while.”

“No — I was in it. I was fighting to protect myself against the destroyer by — well, no need to go into that just now. I almost had it, but I — slipped, mentally, and got drawn in too close. I thought that was the end, and I couldn’t even resist, but I was lucky. I still had orbital velocity, and it spun me through the corona and out the other side.”

“I don’t see—”

“I do, Harold,” Afra said. “Think of it as an analogy. A planetoid plunging into the sun. The important thing is that he skirted the destroyer and only got stu

“Yes, physically. Not mentally, if that makes sense. And beyond it — I guess you’d call it the galactic society.”

“You saw who sent the killer signal?” Groton.

“No. That’s a separate cha

“Other concepts?” Afra.

“Other programs. They’re like radio stations, only all on the same band, and all using similar symbolic languages. You have to fasten on a particular trademark, otherwise only the strongest comes through, and that’s the destroyer.”

“I follow.” Groton. “It’s like five people all talking at once, and it’s all a jumble except for the loudest voice, unless you pay attention to just one. Then the others seem to tune out, though you can still hear them.”

“That’s it. Only there are more than five, and you really have to concentrate. But you can pick up any one you want, once you get the feel for it.”

“How many are there?” Afra.

“I don’t know. I think it’s several thousand. It’s hard to judge.”

They looked at him.

“One for each civilized species, you see.”

“Several thousand stations?” Afra, still hardly crediting it. “Whatever do they broadcast?”

“Information. Science, philosophy, economics, art — anything they can put into the universal symbology. Everything anybody knows — it’s all there for the taking. An educational library.”

“But why?” Afra. “What do they get out of it, when nobody can pick it up?”

“I’m not clear yet on the dating system, but my impression is that most of these predate the destroyer. At least, they don’t mention it, and they’re from very far away. The other side of the galaxy. So if it took fifteen thousand years for the destroyer to reach us, these others are taking twenty thousand, or fifty thousand. Maybe the local ones shut down when the destroyer started up, but we won’t know for thousands of years.”

“That bothers me too.” Afra. “Thousands of years before any other species receives their broadcasts, even if the destroyer is not considered. Far too long for any meaningful exchange between cultures.”

“Even millions of years.” Ivo. He was still organizing the enormous amount of information he had acquired. “They’re all carefully identified. As I said, I don’t follow the time/place coordinates exactly, though I think I’ll nail that down next time; but the framework is such that some have to be that far. One, anyway; I discovered it because it was different from the others. Smoother — I don’t know how to put it, but there was something impressive about it. Like caviar in the middle of fish eggs—”

“Millions of years!” Afra, still balking at the notion. “That would have to be an extragalactic source, and the macroscope doesn’t reach—”

Ivo shrugged. “Maybe the rules are different, for broadcasts. As I make it, that’s one of the most important stations, for our purposes anyway, and it is about three million light-years away. That’s the main one I listened to. It — but I guess I said that.”

“I removed the helmet and goggles the moment you passed out,” Afra said as though debating with him. “How much did you have time for?”

“Time isn’t a factor. Not in reception, anyway. Not for survey. It’s — relative. Like light, only—”

“Ah,” Groton said, not appalled at the concepts as Afra seemed to be. “The analogy I used earlier. Light approaches the observer at the same velocity by his observation, no matter how fast or in what direction he is moving relative to the light source. Michelson-Morely—”

“Something like that. I absorbed a lot in one jolt, then had to sort it out afterwards. I’ll have to go in again to get the details, but at least I know what I’m looking for.”

“What are you looking for?” Afra asked. “Is there something that will help us right now?”

“Yes. Apparently it’s a common problem. Surviving strong acceleration, I mean. This extragalactic station has it all spelled out, but it’s pretty complicated.”

“I still don’t see why,” Afra said petulantly. She was less impressive when frustrated, becoming almost childlike. “It doesn’t make sense to send out a program when you know you’ll be dead long before it can be answered. Three million years! The entire culture, even the memory of the species must be gone by now!”

“That’s why,” Ivo said. “The memory isn’t gone, because everyone who picks up the program will know immediately how great that species was. It’s like publishing a book — even paying for it yourself, vanity publishing. If it’s a good book, if the author really has something to say, people will read it and like it and remember him for years after he is dead.”

“Or making a popular record,” Groton agreed. “When it is recorded is much less important than how much it moves the listener.”

“But there’ll never be any feedback!” Afra protested.