Giant's Star

If that was it, the only people likely to know anything about unusual files of test data coming in from Earth would be the engineers down at Pithead who had worked on the beacon after it was brought up from beneath the ice. Sha

Sha

"Excuse me, sir, but you are scheduled to attend the Operations Controller’s briefing in O-327 in five minutes. Since nobody’s seen you this morning, I thought maybe a reminder might be called for."

"Oh . . . thanks, Bob," Sha

"Will do, sir."

"Oh, and Bob . . ." Sha

The adjutant looked up just as he had been about to cut the call. "Sir?"

"Get here as soon as you’ve done that. I’ve got a message that I want couriered down to the surface."

"Couriered?" The adjutant appeared surprised and puzzled.

"Yes. It’s to go to one of the engineers at Pithead. I can’t explain now, but the matter is urgent. If you don’t waste any time, you should be able to make the nine o’clock shuttle down to Main. I’ll have it sealed and waiting by the time you get here. Treat this as grade X-ray."

The adjutant’s face at once became serious. "I’ll be there right away," he said, and the screen went blank.

Sha

As Sha

The result was a set of detailed directions for Jupiter Five to transmit a long sequence of Ganymean communications coding groups not into the UNSA net but outward, toward coordinates that lay beyond the edge of the solar system. The contents of any replies received from that direction were, the directions said, to be disguised as experimental data in the way that had thus been established and communicated to Navcomms via the laser link.

Sha

Vic,

I’ve talked to Vince Carizan, and it’s all a lot clearer now. We’re ru

Best wishes,

Joe

Chapter Five

Hunt lounged back in the pilot’s seat and stared absently down at the toytown suburbs of Houston while the airmobile purred along contentedly, guided by intermittent streams of binary being directed up at it from somewhere below. It was interesting, he thought, how the patterns of movement of the groundcars, flowing, merging, slowing, and accelerating in unison on the roadways below seemed to reveal some grand, centrally orchestrated design-as if they were all parts of an unimaginably complex score composed by a cosmic Bach. But it was all an illusion. Each vehicle was programmed with only the details of its own destination plus a few relatively simple instructions for handling conditions along the way; the complexity emerged as a consequence of large numbers of them interacting freely in their synthetic environment. It was the same with life, he reflected. All the magical, mystical, and supernatural forces invoked through the ages to explain it were inventions that existed in the minds of misled observers, not in the universe they observed. He wondered how much untapped human talent had been wasted in futile pursuit of the creations of wishful thinking. The Ganymeans had entertained no such illusions, but had applied themselves diligently to understanding and mastering the universe as it was, instead of how it seemed to be or how they might have wanted it to be. Maybe that was why the Ganymeans had reached the stars.

In the seat next to him, Lyn looked up from the half-completed crossword in the Interplanetary Journal of a few days earlier. "Got any ideas for this-‘It sounds like a lumberjack’s musical number.’ What do you make of that?"

"How many letters?" Hunt asked after a few moments of thought.

"Nine."

Hunt frowned at the flight-systems status summaries being routinely updated on the console display in front of him. "Logarithm," he said after another pause.

Lyn thought about it, then smiled faintly. "Oh, I see sneaky. It sounds like ‘logger rhythm.’"

"Right."

"It fits okay." She wrote the word in on the paper resting on her lap. "I’m glad that Joe Sha

"You and me both."

Sha