Macroscope

Schön, like Triton, was locked to its primary. They had landed upon the “downward” face, and this accentuated the wrongness. Triton was too big, too close; when they looked at it they seemed to be above it, and when they drifted too high it was like falling, except that they fell, instead, up toward Schön. Was it the stuff of dreams — or of nightmares?

Ivo approached the horizon, and it did not recede from him. He drifted over the edge and had to correct as the “ground” dropped away from him, a new horizon a mile ahead. This really was a flat world; it was possible to fall off the edge, though the fall would be away rather than down. He navigated the intervening mile and found a third horizon, half a mile distant. One more, he thought; one more, then quiet. This experience was tiring.

But, fascinated, he traversed two more — and there was Neptune.

He knew that the ruling planet was no larger than it had appeared from the ship. He reminded himself of that. But then he had been closed in, protected; here he was exposed, and seemingly ready to plunge directly into it. The gaping face of it appalled him, so close, so fierce — the aspect of a physical destroyer. God of the sea — terror of man.

Ivo fired his jet and retreated hastily.

They had to take the ship into space again — a mile or so — to effect the separation of the module; then Afra piloted the chemical craft while Groton brought Joseph back to Schön. Ivo and Beatryx watched the entire maneuver from the landed macroscope housing, and he was not certain which of them was more nervous. An accident, even a slight mishap — and they could be stranded where they were for the duration. Until death did them part — shortly.

There was no accident. They loaded minimum supplies into the module and set off as a group for Triton. Not until the rough landing was over did Ivo allow his mind to function normally again. The experience had frankly terrified him, and he knew that Beatryx had reacted similarly.

Here at last there was gravity. Suited again, they stepped upon their new moon-planet home and looked about.

They were in a valley formed by the curving walls of adjacent craters that were now great mountain ranges jutting to either side. Other ranges were visible in the distance. Not far from their landing spot was an immense crevasse: a geologic fault ru

“Well, we have our world,” Beatryx said dubiously, after they had returned to the module. “Now what do we do with it?”

“We’ll have to camp in the module until we can construct permanent quarters here,” said Groton thoughtfully. “But before we do that, we’d better survey the area for good locations.”

Afra had stripped off her suit in the pressurized cabin and was wiping the perspiration from her body with an absorbent cloth. Ivo realized that she was nude from the waist up — and further realized that their situation had intensified group interaction to such an extent that he hadn’t even noticed her action until this moment. He suspected that it would be a long time before there was room again for modesty, when cubic yards were all the space available for the four, here. The macroscope had been roomy, compared to the module.

“I’d like first to know how long we’re going to stay,” she said. “Is Schön-person somehow going to find us here, and if so, how soon? No sense building anything fancy if it’s only for a few days.” She had not interrupted her clean-up.

Ivo remembered the breastless carcass he had watched melting, and was tempted to reach out and verify again that what he saw here was real. He refrained.

“Ivo?” Beatryx prompted.

He jumped. “I don’t think Schön is coming. Anything we do, we’ll have to do on our own.”

“Can you find him or can’t you?” Afra demanded, peeling down the nether portion of her suit. “Or contact him. You’ve been more and more mysterious, and there’s still that business about that poet—”

Beatryx interrupted what was threatening to become a tirade. “Afra!”

“But he’s refusing to cooperate! We can’t put up with—”

It was Harold’s turn to interrupt. “If the rest of you will leave off, I will address myself to the problem of Schön. I’ll make a report when I have something to report. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to stop us from setting things up. We’ll need a base of operations regardless of the company. Let’s just do things in an orderly ma

Afra did not seem fully satisfied, but she shrugged into shorts and a fresh blouse. She didn’t bother with a brassiere in quarter-gravity. “Assuming that we find a suitable location, exactly how do you propose to construct ‘permanent quarters’? The only abundant building materials we have are plain rock and cold dust, and those have certain limitations.”

“I am aware of the limitations. But I figure Ivo can take another peek through the scope and come up with some galactic blueprints for us. This must be a fairly common situation, galactically speaking, and there must be survivors’ handbooks. Why not use them?”

“I can try. Tell me what kind of information you seek, and I’ll look for it. I can’t use the computer’s automatic search pattern, since this is intellectual, but—”

“Fine. I’ll work out a schedule and talk to you again, and we’ll ferry you up to the scope in a few days. I suppose we’d better set a limit on free-fall time, though — say, no more than one day in three. That sound reasonable?”

Afra and Ivo nodded. Whatever leadership existed here seemed to be gravitating steadily to Groton, perhaps because their immediate problems had become ones of engineering — or perhaps, Ivo thought, just because of his level-headed calm.

“Should he be alone?” Beatryx inquired.

“Um, that too,” Groton agreed. “Maybe we’d better make another rule that nobody be alone. That macroscope is dangerous, as we know — but so is Triton. We’ll have to watch each other all the time, because we may not be able to survive as a group if even one of us goes.”

“Should we make sure each of us can do each task?” Afra asked next. “Right now, Ivo’s the only one competent on the scope. Harold and I can pilot—”

“If we can’t get along without all of us,” Ivo pointed out, “it doesn’t really matter what any one of us knows. We function as a group or not at all.”

“There is macabre sense in that,” Groton agreed, “if we ignore the possibility of someone’s temporary incapacity. Let’s assign tasks, then, and let people train for others as circumstance dictates. Ivo, you’re the scoper, of course; Afra, you’re the pilot, because I’ll be the construction engineer. Beatryx—”

“Cooking and laundry,” she said, and they laughed.

It was Beatryx who stood watch with him his first day on scope duty. Afra had piloted them off Triton and ensconced them safely in the macroscope, then dropped back to keep Groton company and help him survey for his construction. He had remained below in his suit, no one thinking to invoke the never-alone rule against him this time. Ivo had a carefully rehearsed headful of specifications, and his job now was to locate some galactic station that had the products required. He hardly comprehended the electronic terms, but he hoped that he could at least match bid to asked.

The first assignment was rough: a survey of galactic physical technology. But Beatryx was there when he emerged from the awesome visions of the cosmos, and she was cheerful and unassuming, encouraging and sympathetic. Ivo could appreciate the reason Groton, no intellectual slouch himself, had passed over the female engineers he might have had and chosen a woman like this. It was the feeling of familiarity, of home, that he needed most when the revelations of the ages shook his fundamental assumptions, and she carried about her a pleasing aura of homebody Earth.