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The men made long bounds, keeping them shallow for speed, and moved rapidly through ¼-G toward the module. Through they had been waiting almost idly for weeks, Ivo felt now as though a single wasted minute could make them too late. He reached the module first, ascended the ladder by bounds, and entered the airlock. It seemed so clumsy, after the sophistication of the force-field! They had been benefiting from the gimmicks of Type II technologies, and now were thrown back to their own Type I.
He pressured the lock and went on into the interior, clearing the chamber for Groton’s entry. He activated the internal heating mechanism, not for the occupants’ sake but to insure proper functioning of the equipment. This machinery was suppose to operate at “comfortable” temperatures — say, within fifty degrees of freezing.
Ivo now knew how to use the module, though he was not a sure pilot. The controls were deliberately simple, and the frequent trips to the Schön base had educated him rapidly in the subject of Type I space jockeying. Takeoff was routine.
Finally they floated into the macroscope housing. This was maintained at a constant temperature and pressure because of the intricate sensory apparatus and the co
Groton had also tried to use the scope himself, in order to facilitate early construction, but had found that the same limit that protected him from mind-ravaging prevented him from assimilating the alien signals beyond. The typical mind was receptive to both or to neither. Ivo was a fluke — perhaps because he was not a complete person.
It had been a long time since he practiced at such close range, though he knew that theoretically the macroscope could pick up anything, even its own functioning apparatus, if the proper adjustments were made. Definition in such cases was poor, however; too strong a signal was worse than too weak. He set the range for minimal and concentrated on the moon below.
A section of the interior of Triton appeared: blank rock. Then, as he found his level, the surface showed, slightly fuzzy but readable. He shot across craters and clefts and oceans, guiding the pickup toward the dome while Groton watched. This type of exploration Groton could have handled, since it was of the basic nonintellectual level. But practice had given Ivo far greater skill, and they were in a hurry.
“Coasting on ninety-five,” Groton remarked. Ivo realized that the man had never had occasion to watch this particular maneuver before.
“We’re not exactly coasting. Faster this way than computing the exact coordinates of the camp. I wouldn’t try it on a distant target, though.” Something nagged him about Groton’s remark, but he was too preoccupied to place it.
Then they were in the dome. He slowed, feeling his way into the pyramid, and on toward the laboratory. There was a flash of Beatryx sitting nervously in the kitchen, and Groton grunted. He does love her, Ivo thought, finding that a revelation though he knew it had always been obvious.
At last he closed on Afra’s laboratory and brought the entire room into reasonably clear perspective. She was there, lying on a bunk; she had not yet started her… project. “We’re in time,” he said. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
“Good I can appreciate. Why bad?”
“Because we’re too far away to do anything if there’s trouble — and I guess there will be. All we can do from here is watch.”
Groton nodded thoughtfully. “You’re in love with her.”
The observation did not seem impertinent or out of place, now. “Since I saw her first. Brad introduced her — ‘Afra Gly
“Why would Brad do that?”
“Do what? It was our first meeting.”
“Make up a name. Didn’t you know?”
“You mean her name isn’t Afra? Or Summerfield? I don’t understand.”
“Isn’t Gly
Ivo sat stricken. “Brad! He did it on purpose!”
“Did what?”
“The name, don’t you see? He set it up for me.”
“You’ve lost me, Ivo. You didn’t fall in love with a name, did you?”
Ivo’s gaze was anchored to Afra where she lay. He remembered the time she had lain in his hammock, tormented and lovely, so soon after the destroyer disaster. “You didn’t hear about me and Sidney Lanier? I told Beatryx, and you made that horoscope—”
“My wife is circumspect about personal information. She must have felt that the details were confidential. All she mentioned was that you admired Lanier’s poetry. Unfortunately I’m not familiar with his actual writings.”
“Oh. Well, I have this thing about the poet. I’ve studied his life and works, and anything that relates to him, and I react automatically to any reference—”
“Oh-oh. That key sentence I fed you, back at the dawn of time. That was—”
“A quotation from Lanier’s The Symphony — perhaps his greatest piece. The moment I heard that, I knew Brad wanted me, and that he was serious. There’s a special kind of — uh, brotherhood, between members of the project — peer-group compulsion, it’s called. It’s extremely strong, irresistible, maybe. I couldn’t question such a call.”
“Oh, yes — the children of the kibbutzim have that, too. And that name, what was it — ?”
“Gly
Groton strained to remember. “Didn’t we drive by — ?”
“The marshes of Gly
“Like that, eh?”
“Like that, yes. And Brad understood that perfectly.”
“So he wasn’t just playing a game with names. He wanted you to fix on Afra. She’s even Georgian, like your marshes.”
“Lanier was Georgian. He fought in the War of the Rebellion — civil war, to you — Confederate.”
“I don’t understand Brad’s motivation. Afra says she and Brad were engaged to be married. Why would he want to stir up trouble like that?”
“Maybe because he wanted Schön that bad. He knew I wouldn’t walk out while Afra was around, and she wouldn’t walk out while he was around. He even — he even threw us together, just to make sure the virus took hold. Having her show me around the station… It doesn’t take much, with a girl like her. And I never caught on!”
“Love is blind.”
“Good and blind. It was all so obvious! Insurance, in case he lost out to the destroyer. Ivo pi
“You can call up Schön? When you decide?”
“I can. But I can’t put him down again, once I do.”
“And Schön wouldn’t give a damn about Afra?”
“Not a damn. Schön might be intrigued by someone on his own level, but Afra—”
“A moron. I can see why he got bored at the age of five. No one in the world he could — say! ‘My pawn is pi
Ivo thought about it. “It could. But I think that’s incidental. Love is nothing to Schön.”
“And not much to Brad, methinks. That’s as sinister a piece of handiwork as I’ve come across. Using his own fiancé—”
“That wasn’t the way he described their relation,” Ivo said dryly. “Still, that’s another reason I hesitate to uncork Schön. He’s totally unscrupulous. He could probably solve our problem with the alien signal, but—”