Sundiver

4. VIRTUAL IMAGE

The Bradbury was a new ship. It used a technology far ahead of its predecessors on the commercial line, taking off from sea level under its own power instead of riding to the station at the top of one of the equatorial “Needles,” slung beneath a giant balloon. Bradbury was a huge sphere, titanically massive by earlier standards.

This was Jacob’s first trip aboard a ship powered by the billion-year-old science of the Galactics. He watched from the first-class lounge as the Earth fell away, and Baja California became first a brown rib, separating two seas, then a mere finger along the coast of Mexico. The view was breathtaking, but a bit disappointing. The roar and acceleration of a jetliner, or the slow majesty of a cruise-zep had more romance. And the few times he had left Earth before, rising and returning by balloon, there had been the other ships to watch, bright and busy as they floated up to Power Station or back down the pressurized interior of one of the Needles.

Neither of the great Needles had ever been boring. The thin ceram walls that held the twenty-mile towers at sea-level pressures had been painted with gigantic murals — huge swooping birds and pseudo science-fiction space battles copied from twenty-century magazines. It had never been claustrophobic.

Still, Jacob was glad to be aboard the Bradbury. Someday he might visit the Chocolate Needle, at the summit of Mt. Kenya for nostalgia’s sake. But the other one, the one in Ecuador — Jacob hoped never to see the Vanilla Needle again.

No matter that the great tower was only a stone’s throw from Caracas. No matter that he would be given a hero’s welcome, if ever he came there, as the man who had saved the one engineering marvel on Earth to impress even the Galactics.

Saving the Needle had cost Jacob Demwa his wife and a large portion of his mind. The price had been too high.

Earth had gained a visible disc when Jacob went off to look for the ship’s bar. Suddenly he was in the mood for company. He hadn’t felt that way when he came aboard. He’d had a rough time making excuses to Gloria and the others at the Center. Makakai had raised a fit. Also, many of the research materials on Solar Physics he’d ordered had not arrived and would have to be forwarded to Mercury. Finally, he’d let himself get into a stew wondering how he’d been talked into coming along in the first place.

Now he made his way along the main corridor, at the ship’s equator, until he found the crowded, dimly lit Saloon. Inside he squeezed past lots of talking, drinking passengers to get to the bar.

About forty persons, many of them contract workers bound for skilled labor on Mercury, crowded into the Saloon. More than a few, having drunk too much, spoke loudly to their neighbors or simply stared. For some, departure from Earth came hard.

A few extraterrestrials rested on cushions in the corner set aside for them. One, a Cynthian with shiny fur and thick sunglasses, sat across from Culla, whose great head nodded silently while he sipped daintily with a straw between his huge lips, from what appeared to be a bottle of vodka.

Several humans stood near the aliens, typical of the Xenophiles who hang on every word of an eavesdropped E.T. conversation and who wait eagerly for chances to ask questions.

Jacob considered edging through the crowd to get to the E.T. corners The Cynthian might be someone he knew. But there were too many people at that end of the room. He chose instead to get a drink and see if anyone had started storytelling.

Soon he was part of a group listening to a mining engineer tell an enjoyably exaggerated tale of blow-ins and rescues in the deep Hermetian mines. Though he had to strain to hear over the noise, Jacob still felt he could conveniently ignore the headache that’ was coming on… at least long enough to listen to the end of the story, when a finger jabbed in his ribs made him jump.

“Demwa! It’s you!” Pierre LaRoque cried. “How fortunate! We shall travel together and now I know that there will always be someone with whom I can exchange witticisms!”

LaRoque wore a loose shiny robe. Blue PurSmok drifted into the air from the pipe he puffed with earnest.

Jacob tried to smile but with someone behind him stepping on his heel, it came out more like gritting his teeth.

“Hello, LaRoque. Why are you going to Mercury? Wouldn’t your readers be more interested in stories about the Peruvian excavations or…”

“Or similar dramatic evidence that our primitive ancestors were nurtured by ancient astronauts?” LaRoque interrupted. “Yes, Demwa, such evidence shall soon be so overwhelming that even the Skins and skeptics who sit on the Confederacy Council will see the error of their ways!”

“I see you wear the Shirt yourself.” Jacob pointed to LaRoque’s silvery tunic.

“I wear the robe of the Daniken Society on my last day on Earth, in honor of the older ones who gave us the power to go into space.” LaRoque shifted pipe and drink into one hand and with the other straightened the gold medallion and chain that hung from his neck.

Jacob thought the effect was a bit theatrical for a grown man. The robe and jewelry seemed effeminate, in contrast to the Frenchman’s gruff manner. He had to admit, though, that it went well with the outrageous, affected accent.

“Oh come on, LaRoque,” Jacob smiled. “Even you have to admit we got into space by ourselves, and we discovered the extraterrestrials, not they us.”

“I admit nothing!” LaRoque answered hotly. “When we prove ourselves worthy of the Patrons who gave us our intelligence in the dim past, when they acknowledge us, then we’ll know how much they have covertly helped us all these years!”

Jacob shrugged. There was nothing new in the Skin-Shirt controversy. One side insisted that man should be proud of his unique heritage as a self-evolved race, having won intelligence from Nature herself on the savannah and shoreline of East Africa. The other side held that homo sapiens — just as every other known race of sophonts — was part of a chain of genetic and cultural uplifting that stretched back to the fabled early days of the galaxy, the time of the Progenitors.

Many, like Jacob, were studiously neutral in the conflict of views, but humanity, and humanity’s client races, awaited the outcome with interest. Archeology and Paleontology had become the great new hobbies since Contact.

However, LaRoque’s arguments were so stale they could be used for croutons. And the headache was getting worse.

“That’s very interesting, LaRoque,” he said as he began to edge past. “Perhaps we can discuss it some other time…” But LaRoque wasn’t finished yet.

“Space is filled with Neanderthaler sentiment, you know. The men on our ships would prefer to wear animal skins and grunt like apes! They resent the Older Ones, and they actively snub sensible people who practice humility!”

LaRoque made his point while jabbing in Jacob’s direction with the stem of his pipe. Jacob backed away, trying to stay polite but having difficulty.

“Well, now I think that’s going a little too far, LaRoque. I mean you’re talking about astronauts! Emotional and political stability are prime criteria in their selection…”

“Aha! What you do not know about the very things you just mentioned! You joke, no? I know a thing or two about ‘emotional and political stability’ of astronauts!

“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he continued. “Someday the whole story will come out, about the Confederacy’s plan to isolate a large part of humanity away from the elder races, and from their heritage in the stars! All the poor ‘unreliables’! But by then it will be too late to seal the leak!”

LaRoque puffed and exhaled a cloud of blue PurSmok in Jacob’s direction. Jacob felt a wave of dizziness.

“Yeah, LaRoque, whatever you say. You’ve got to tell me about it some time.” He backed away.

LaRoque glowered on for a moment, then grinned and patted Jacob on the back as he edged his way to the door.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it. But meanwhile, better you should lie down. You don’t look so good at all! Bye bye!” He slapped Jacob’s back once more then slipped back into the bar.

Jacob walked to the nearest port and rested his head against the pane. It was cool and it helped to ease the throbbing in his forehead. When he opened his eyes to look out, the Earth was not in sight… only a great field of stars, shining unblinking against blackness. The brighter ones were surrounded by diffraction rays, which he could lengthen or shorten by squinting. Except for the brightness, the effect was no different than looking at the stars on a night in the desert. They didn’t twinkle, but they were the same stars.

Jacob knew he should feel more. The stars when viewed from space should be more mysterious, more… “philosophical.” One of the things he could remember best about his adolescence was the asolopsistic roar of starry nights. It was nothing like the oceanic feeling he now got through hypnosis. It had been like half-remembered dreams of another life.

He found Dr. Kepler, Bubbacub, and Fagin in the main lounge. Kepler invited him to join them.

The group settled around a cluster of cushions near the view ports. Bubbacub carried with him a cup of something that looked and, from a chance whiff, smelled noxious. Fagin ambled slowly, twisting on his root-pods, carrying nothing.

The row of ports that ran along the curved periphery of the ship was broken in the lounge by a large circular disc, like a giant round window, that touched floor and ceiling. The flat side protruded into the room about a foot. Whatever lay within was hidden behind a tightly fixed panel.

“We are glad that you made it,” Bubbacub barked through his Vodor. He had sprawled on one of the cushions and, after saying this, dipped his snout into the cup he carried and ignored Jacob and the others. Jacob wondered if the Pil was trying to be sociable, or if he came by his charm naturally.

Jacob thought of Bubbacub as “he” because he had no idea at all about Bubbacub’s true gender. Though Bubbacub wore no clothes, other than the Vodor and a small pouch, what Jacob could see of the alien’s anatomy only confused matters. He had learned, for instance, that the Pila were oviparous and did not suckle their young. But a row of what appeared to be teats lay like shirt buttons from throat to crotch. He couldn’t even guess at their purpose. The Datanet did not mention them. Jacob had ordered a more complete summary from the Library.

Fagin and Kepler were talking about the history of Sunships. Fagin’s voice was muffled because his upper foliage and blowhole brushed against the soundproofing panels on the ceiling. (Jacob hoped that Kanten were not prone to claustrophobia. But then, what were talking vegetables afraid of anyway? Being nibbled on, he supposed. He wondered about the sexual mores of a race whose lovemaking required the intermediary of a sort of domesticated bumblebee.)

“Then these magnificent improvisations,” Fagin said, “without benefit of the slightest help from outside, enabled you to convey packages of instruments into the very Photosphere! This is most impressive and I wonder that, in my years here, I never knew of this adventure of your period before Contact!”

Kepler beamed. “You must understand that the bathysphere project was only… the beginning, long before my time. When laser propulsion for pre-Contact interstellar craft was developed, they were able to drop robot ships that could hover and, by the thermodynamics of using a high temperature laser, they could dump excess heat and cool the probe’s interior.”

“Then you were only a short time away from sending men!”

Kepler smiled ruefully. “Well, perhaps. Plans were made. But sending living beings to the Sun and back involved more than just heat and gravity. The worst obstacle was the turbulence!

“It would have been great to see if we could have solved the problem, though.” Kepler’s eyes shone for a moment. “There were plans.”

“But then the Vesarius found Tymbrimi ships in Cygnus,” Jacob said.

“Yes. So we’ll never find out. The plans were drawn up when I was just a boy. Now they’re hopelessly obsolete. And it’s probably just as well… There would have been inescapable losses, even deaths, if we’d done it without stasis… Control of timeflow is the key to Sundiver now, and I certainly wouldn’t complain about the results.”

The scientist’s expression suddenly darkened. “That is, until now.”

Kepler fell silent and stared at the carpet. Jacob watched him for a moment, then covered his mouth and coughed.

“While we’re on the subject, I’ve noticed that there isn’t any mention of Sun Ghosts on the Datanet, or even in a special request from the Library… and I have a 1-AB permit. I was wondering if you could spare some of your reports on the subject, to study during the trip?”

Kepler looked away from Jacob nervously.

“We weren’t quite ready to let the data off Mercury yet, Mr. Demwa. There… are political considerations to this discovery that, uh, will delay your briefing until we get to the base. I’m sure that all of your questions will be answered there.” He looked so genuinely ashamed that Jacob decided to drop the matter for the moment. But this was not a good sign.

“I might take a liberty in adding one piece of information,” Fagin said. “There has been another dive since our meeting, Jacob, and on that dive, we are told, only the first and more prosaic species of Solarian was observed. Not the second variety which has caused Dr. Kepler so much concern.”

Jacob was still confused by the hurried explanations Kepler had given of the two types of Sun-creatures so far observed.

“Now I take it that type was your herbivore?”

“Not herbivore!” Kepler interjected. “A magnetovore. It feeds on magnetic field energy. That type is actually becoming rather well understood, however…”

“I interrupt! In the most unctuous wish that I be forgiven for the intrusion, I urge discretion. A stranger approaches.” Fagin’s upper branches rustled against the ceiling.

Jacob turned to look at the doorway, a bit shocked that anything would bring Fagin to interrupt another’s sentence. Dismally he realized that this was still another sign that he had stepped into a politically tense situation, and he still knew none of the rules.

I don’t hear anything, he thought. Then Pierre LaRoque stood at the door, a drink in his hand and his always florid face further flushed. The man’s initial smile broadened when he saw Fagin and Bubbacub. He entered and gave Jacob a jovial slap on the back, insisting that he be introduced right away.

Jacob internalized a shrug.

He performed the introductions slowly. LaRoque was impressed, and he bowed deeply to Bubbacub.

“Ab-Kisa-ab-Soro-ab-Hul-ab-Puber! And two clients, what were they, Demwa? Jello and something? I’m honored to meet a sophont of the Soro line in person! I have studied the language of your ancestrals, whom we may someday show to be ours as well! The Soro tongue is so similar to Proto-Semitic, and Proto-Bantu also!”

Bubbacub’s cilia bristled above his eyes. The Pil, through his Vodor, began to make voice with a complicated, alliterative, incomprehensible speech. Then the alien’s jaws made short, sharp snaps and a high pitched growling could be heard, half amplified by the Vodor. From behind Jacob, Fagin answered in a clicking and rumbling tongue. Bubbacub turned to face him, black eyes hot as he answered with a throaty growl, waving a stubby arm in a slash in LaRoque’s direction. The Kanten’s trilling reply sent a chill down Jacob’s back.

Bubbacub swiveled and stamped out of the room without a further word to the humans.

For a dumbfounded instant, LaRoque said nothing. Then, he looked at Jacob plaintively. “What is it I did, please?”

Jacob sighed, “Maybe he doesn’t like being called a cousin of yours, LaRoque.” He turned to Kepler to change the subject. The scientist was staring at the door through which Bubbacub left.

“Dr. Kepler, if you haven’t any specific data on board, perhaps you could lend me some basic solar physics texts and some background histories on Sun-diver itself?”

“I’d be delighted to, Mr. Demwa.” Kepler nodded. “I’ll send them to you by dinner time.” His mind appeared to be elsewhere.

“I too!” LaRoque cried. “I am an accredited journalist and I demand the background upon your infamous endeavor, Mr. Director!”

After a moment’s startlement, Jacob shrugged. Have to hand it to LaRoque. Chutzhpa can be easily mistaken for resiliency.

Kepler smiled, as if he had not heard. “I beg your pardon?”

“The great conceit! This ‘Sundiver Project’ of yours, which takes money that could go to the deserts of Earth for reclamation, or to a greater Library for our world!

“The vanity of this project, to study what our betters understood perfectly before we were apes!”

“Now see here, sir. The Confederacy bar funded this research…” Kepler reddened.

“Research! Ree-search it is. You re-search for that which is already in the Libraries of the Galaxy, and shame us all by making humans out to be fools!”

“LaRoque…” Jacob began, but the man wouldn’t shut up.

“And what of your Confederacy! They stuff the Elders into reservations, like the old-time Indians of America! They keep access to the Branch Library out of the hands of the people! They allow continuation of this absurdity that all laugh at us for, this claim of spontaneous intelligence!”

Kepler backed away from LaRoque’s vehemence. The color drained out of his face and he stammered.

“I… I don’t think…”

“LaRoque! Come on, cut it out!”

Jacob grabbed his shoulder and pulled him over to whisper urgently in his ear.

“Come on man, you don’t want to shame us in front of the venerable Kanten Fagin, do you?”

LaRoque’s eyes widened. Over Jacob’s shoulder Fagin’s upper foliage rustled audibly in agitation. Finally, LaRoque’s gaze dropped.

The second embarrassment must have been enough for him. He mumbled an apology to the alien, and with a parting glare at Kepler, took his leave.

“Thanks for the special effects, Fagin,” Jacob said after LaRoque was gone.

He was answered by a whistle, short and low.

5. REFRACTION

At 40 million kilometers, the Sun was a chained hell. It boiled in black space, no longer the brilliant dot that the children of Earth took for granted and easily, unconsciously, avoided with their eyes. Across millions of miles it pulled. Compulsively, one felt a need to look, but the. need was dangerous.

From the Bradbury, it had the apparent size of a nickel held a foot away from the eye. The specter was too bright to be endured undiminished. To “catch a glimpse” of this orb, as one sometimes did on Earth, would invite blindness. The Captain ordered the ship’s stasis screens polarized and the regular viewing ports sealed.

The Lyot window was unshuttered in the lounge, so that passengers could examine the Lifegiver without injury.

Jacob paused in front of the round window in a late night pilgrimage to the coffee machine, half awake from a fitful sleep in his tiny stateroom. For minutes he stared, blank faced, still only half conscious, until a lisping voice roused him.

“Dish ish the way your shun looksh from the Aphelion of the orbit of Mercury, Jacob.”

Culla sat at one of the card tables in the dimly lit lounge. Just behind the alien, above a row of vending machines, a wall clock read “04:30” in glowing numbers.

Jacob’s sleepy voice was thick in his throat. “Have… um,… are we that close already?”

Culla nodded. “Yeah.”

The alien’s lip grinders were tucked away. His big folded lips pursed and let out a whistle each time he tried to pronounce an English long “s.” In the dim light his eyes reflected a red glow from the viewing window.

“We have only two more days until we arrive,” the alien said. His arms were crossed on the table in front of him. The loose folds of his silver gown covered half of the surface.

Jacob, swaying slightly, turned to glance back at the port. The solar orb wavered before his eyes.

“Are you all right?” the Pring asked anxiously. He started to rise.

“No. No, please.” Jacob held up his hand. “I’m just groggy. Not ’nuff sleep. Need coffee.”

He shambled toward the vending machines, but halfway there he stopped, turned, and peered again at the image of the furnace-sun.

“It’s red!” he grunted in surprise.

“Shall I tell you why while you get your coffee?” Culla asked.

“Yes. Please.” Jacob turned back to the dark row of food and beverage dispensers, looking for a coffee spout.

“The Lyot window only allowsh in light in mono-chromatic form,” Culla said. “It ish made of many round platesh; some polarizersh and some light retardersh. They are rotated with reshpect to one another to finely tune which wavelength ish allowed through.

“Itsh a most delicate and ingenioush device, although quite obsholete by Galactic standarsh… like one of the ‘Shwiss’ watchesh some humansh shtill wear in an age of electronicsh. When your people become adept with the Library such… Rube Goldbersh?… will be archaic.”

Jacob bent forward to peer at the nearest machine..

It looked like a coffee machine. There was a transparent panel door, and behind that a little platform with a metal grill drain at the bottom. Now, if he pushed the right button, a disposable cup should drop onto the platform and then, from some mechanical artery would pour a stream of the bitter black beverage he wanted.

As Culla’s voice droned on in his ears, Jacob made polite sounds. “Uh, huh… yes, I see.”

At the far left, one of the buttons was lit with a green light. On impulse, he pressed it.

He watched the machine blearily. Now! That was a buzz and a click! There’s the cup! Now… what the hell?

A large yellow and green pill fell into the cup.

Jacob lifted the panel arid took out the cup. A second later a stream of hot liquid spilled through the empty space where the cup had been, disappearing in the drain below.

Dubiously, he glowered down at the pill. Whatever it was, it wasn’t coffee. He rubbed his eyes with his left wrist, one at a time. Then he sent an accusing glance at the button he’d pressed.

That button had a label, he now saw. It read “E.T. Nutrient Synthesis.” Below the label a computer card stuck out from a data slot. The words “Pring: Dietary Supplement — Coumarin Protein Complex” were printed along the protruding end.

Jacob looked quickly at Culla. The alien continued his explanation while he faced the Lyot window. Culla waved one arm toward the Sun’s Dantean brilliance to emphasize a point.

“Thish ish now the red alpha line of Hydrogen,” he said. “A very useful shpectral line. Inshtead of being overwhelmed by huge amountsh of random light from all levelsh of the Shun, we can now look at only those regions where elemental Hydrogen absorbsh or emitsh more than normal…”

Culla pointed to the Sun’s mottled surface. It was covered with dark reddish speckles and feathery arches.

Jacob had read about them. The feathery arches were “filaments.” Viewed against space, at the solar limb, they were the prominences that had been seen since the first time a telescope was used during an eclipse. Culla apparently was explaining the way these objects were viewed head-on.

Jacob considered. Throughout the voyage from Earth, Culla had refrained from eating his meals with the others. All he would do is sip an occasional vodka or beer with a straw. Although he had given no reasons, Jacob could only assume that the being had some cultural inhibition against eating in public.

Come to think of it, he thought, with those mashies for teeth it could get a little messy. Apparently I’ve barged in while he’s having breakfast and he’s too polite to mention it.

He glanced at the tablet which still lay in the cup in his hand. He dropped the pill into his jacket pocket and crumpled the cup into a nearby trash bin.

Now he could see the button which was labeled “Coffee-Black.” He smiled ruefully. Maybe it would be best to skip the coffee and not run the risk of offending Culla. Although the E.T. had made no objections, he had kept his back turned while Jacob visited the food and beverage machines.

Culla looked up as Jacob approached. He opened his mouth slightly and for an instant the human caught a glimpse of white porcelain.

“Are you lesh… groggy, now?” the alien asked solicitously.

“Yesh, uh yes, thanks… thanks also for the explanation. I always thought of the Sun as a pretty smooth place… except for Sunspots and prominences. But I guess it’s actually pretty complicated.”

Culla nodded. “Doctor Kepler ish the expert. You will get a better explanation from him when you go on a dive wid ush.”

Jacob smiled politely. How carefully these Galactic Emissaries were trained! When Culla nodded, was the gesture personally meaningful? Or was it something he had been taught to do at certain times and places around humans? Dive with us!?

He decided not to ask Culla to repeat the remark. Better not to press my luck, he thought. He started to yawn. Just in time he remembered to stifle it behind his hand. No telling what a similar gesture would mean on the Pring home planet! “Well, Culla, I think I’m going to go back to my room and try for a little more sleep. Thanks for the talk.”

“You are mosht entirely welcome, Jacob. Good night.”

He shuffled down the hall and barely made it to bed before he was fast asleep.

6. RETARDATION AND DIFFRACTION

A soft, pearly light suffused through the ports, illuminating the faces of those who watched Mercury glide beneath the descending ship.

Almost everyone who did not have a duty to perform was in the lounge, held to the row of viewing windows by the planet’s terrible beauty. Voices were hushed, and conversations settled into small groups gathered around each port. For the most part the only sound was a faint crackling which Jacob couldn’t identify.

The surface of the planet was gouged and scratched with craters and long rills. The shadows cast by the mountains of Mercury were vacuum sharp in their blackness, set against bright silvers and browns. In many ways the place resembled the Earth’s moon.

There were differences. In one area a whole piece had been torn off in some ancient cataclysm. The scar made a deep series of grooves on the side that faced the Sun. The terminator ran starkly along the edge of the indention, a sharp borderline of day and night.

Down there, in places where shadow did not fall, a rain of seven different types of fire fell. Protons, x-rays spun off from the planet’s magnetosphere and the simple blinding sunshine itself mixed with other deadly things to make the surface of Mercury as unlike the moon as anyplace could be.

It seemed like a place where one could find ghosts. A purgatory.

He remembered a line from an ancient pre-Haiku Japanese poem that he had read only a month before:

More sad thoughts crowd into my mind When evening comes; for then, Appears your phantom shape — Speaking as I have known you speak.

“Did you say something?”

Jacob started from the mild: trance and saw Dwayne Kepler standing next to him.

“No, nothing much. Here’s your jacket.” He handed the folded garment to Kepler, who took it with a grin.

“Sorry, but biology strikes at the most unromantic times. In real life space travelers have to go to the bathroom too. Bubbacub seems to find this velour fabric irresistible. Every time I put my jacket down to do something I come back to find that he’s gone to sleep on it. I’m going to have to purchase some for him when we get back to Earth. Now what were we talking about before I left?”

Jacob pointed down at the surface below. “I was just thinking… now I understand why astronauts call the moon “The Playpen.’ You certainly have to be more cautious here.”

Kepler nodded. “Yes, but it’s a whole lot better than working on some stupid ‘make-work’ project at home!” Kepler paused for a moment, as if he were about to go on to say something scathing. But the passion leaked away before he could continue. He turned to the port and gestured at the view below. “The early observers, Antoniodi and Schiaparelli, called this area Charit Regio. That huge ancient crater over there is Goethe.” He pointed to a jumble of darker material in a bright plain. “It’s very close to the North Pole, and underneath it is the network of caves that makes Hermes Base possible.”

Kepler was the perfect picture, now, of the dignified scholarly gentleman, except for the times when one end or the other of his long sandy-colored moustache was in his mouth. His nervousness appeared to ease as they approached Mercury and the Sundiver Base where he was boss.

But at times during the trip, particularly when a conversation turned to uplift or the Library, Kepler’s face took on the expression of a man with a great deal to say and no way to say it. It was a nervous, embarrassed look, as if he were afraid of expressing his opinions out of fear of rebuke.

After some pondering, Jacob thought he knew part of the reason. Although the Sundiver chief had said nothing explicit to give himself away, Jacob was convinced that Dwayne Kepler was religious.

In the midst of the Shirt-Skin controversy and Contact with extraterrestrials, organized religion had been torn apart.

The Danikenites proselytized their faith in some great (but not omnipotent) race of beings that had intervened in man’s development and might do so again. The followers of the Neolithic Ethic preached the palpable presence of the “spirit of man.”

And the mere existence of thousands of space-traveling races, few professing anything similar to the tenets of the old faiths of earth, did grievous harm to concepts of an all-powerful, anthropomorphic God.

Most of the formal creeds had either co-opted one side or another in the Shirt-Skin conflict or devolved into philosophical theism. The armies of the faithful had mostly flocked to other banners, and those who remained were quiet amid all of the uproar.

Jacob had often wondered if they were waiting for a Sign.

If Kepler were a Believer, it would explain some of his caution. There was enough unemployment among scientists these days. Kepler wouldn’t want to risk adding his own name to the rolls by getting a reputation as a fanatic.

Jacob thought it a shame that the man felt that way. It would have been interesting to hear his views. But he respected Kepler’s obvious wish for privacy in that area.

What attracted Jacob’s professional interest was the way in which the, isolation might have contributed to Kepler’s mental problems. Something more than just a philosophical quandary was at work in the man’s mind, something that now and then impaired his effectiveness as a leader and his self-confidence as a scientist.

Martine, the psychologist, was often with Kepler, reminding him regularly to take his medication from the vials of diverse, multicolored pills that he carried’ in his pockets.

Jacob felt old habits coming back, undulled by recent quiet months at the Center for Uplift. He wanted to know what those pills were, almost as much as he wished to know what Mildred Martine’s real job was on Sundiver.

Martine was still an enigma to Jacob. In all of their conversations aboard ship he failed to penetrate the woman’s damnable friendly detachment Her amused condescension toward him was just as pronounced as Dr. Kepler’s exaggerated confidence in him. The dark woman’s thoughts were elsewhere.

Martine and LaRoque hardly glanced out their port. Instead, Martine was talking about her research into the effects of color and glare on psychotic behavior. Jacob had heard about this at the Ensenada meeting. One of the first things Martine had done on joining Sundiver was to have environmental psychogenic effects brought to a minimum, in case the “phenomena” turned out to be a stress-illusion.

Her friendship with LaRoque had grown over the trip out as she listened, rapt, to story after contradicting story about lost civilizations and ancient visitors to Earth. LaRoque responded to the attention by calling up the eloquence for which he was famous. Several times their private conversations in the lounge had gathered crowds. Jacob listened in a couple of times, himself. LaRoque could evoke a great deal of sensitivity when he tried.

Still Jacob felt less comfortable around the man than he did with any of the other passengers. He preferred the company of more straightforward beings, such as Culla. Jacob had come to like the alien. Notwithstanding the huge complex eyes and incredible dental work, the Pring had tastes akin to his on a wide range of subjects.

Culla had been full of ingenuous questions about Earth and humans, most of all regarding the way humans treated their client races. When he learned that Jacob had actually participated in the project to raise chimpanzees, dolphins and, recently, dogs and gorillas, to full sapiency, he began to treat Jacob with even more respect.

Culla never once referred to Earth’s technology as archaic or obsolete, although everyone knew that it was unique in the galaxy for its quaintness. No other race in living memory had, after all, had to invent everything itself from ground zero. The Library saw to that. Culla was enthusiastic about the benefits the Library would bring to his human and chimpanzee friends.

Once, the E.T. followed Jacob into the ship’s gymnasium and watched, rapt, with those huge red oculars, as Jacob went into one of his marathon conditioning sessions, one of several during the trip out from Earth. During rests Jacob found that the Pring had already learned the art of telling off-color jokes. The Pring race must have similar sexual mores to those of contemporary humanity, for the punchline “…now we’re only haggling over the price,” seemed to have the same meaning for both.

It was the jokes more than anything else that made Jacob realize how very far away from home the slender Pring diplomat was. He wondered if Culla was as lonely as he would be in that situation.

In their subsequent discussion of whether Tuborg or L-5 was the best brand of beer, Jacob had to struggle to remember that this was an alien, not a lisping, overly polite human being. But the lesson had been brought home when, in the course of a conversation, they found themselves separated by a sudden, unbridgeable gap-Jacob had told a story about Earth’s old class struggles that Culla failed to understand. He tried to illustrate the point of it with a Chinese proverb: “A peasant always hangs himself in his landlord’s doorway.”

The alien’s eyes suddenly became bright and Jacob for the first time heard an agitated clacking coming from Culla’s mouth. Jacob had stared for a moment, then moved quickly to change the subject.

All things considered, however, Culla had the closest thing to a human sense of humor of any extraterrestrial he had met. Fagin excepted, of course.

Now, as they approached the landing, the Pring stood silently near his Patron — his expression, and Bubbacub’s, once again unreadable.

Kepler tapped him gently on the arm. The scientist pointed at the port. “Pretty soon, now, the Captain will tighten up the Stasis Screens and begin to cut down the rate at which she lets space-time leak in. You’ll find the effects interesting.”

“I thought the ship sort of let the fabric of space slip past it, like riding a surfboard into a beach.”

Kepler smiled.

“No, Mr. Demwa. That’s a common fallacy. Space-surfing is just a phrase used by popularizers. When I speak of space-time I’m not talking about a ‘fabric.’ Space is not a material.

“Actually, as we approach a planetary singularity — a distortion in space caused by a planet — we must adopt a constantly changing metric, or set of parameters by which we measure space and time. It’s as if nature wants us to gradually change the length of our meter sticks and the pace of our clocks whenever we get close to a mass.”

“I take it the Captain is controlling our approach by allowing this change to take place slowly?”

“Exactly right! In the old days, of course, the adaptation was more violent. One adapted one’s metric either by braking continuously with rockets until touchdown, or by crashing into the planet. Now we just roll up excess metric like a bolt of cloth in stasis. Ah! There goes that ‘material’ analogy again!”

Kepler grinned.

“One of the useful by-products of this is commercial grade neutronium, but the main purpose is to get us down safely.”

“So when we finally start stuffing space into a bag, what will we see?”

Kepler pointed to the port.

“You can see it happening now.”

Outside, the stars were going out. The tremendous spray of bright pinpoints which even the darkened screens had let through slowly faded as they watched. Soon only a few were left, weak and ochre colored against the blackness.

The planet below changed as well.

The light reflected from Mercury’s surface was no longer hot and brittle. It took on an orange tint. The surface was quite dark now.

And it was getting closer, too. Slowly, but visibly, the horizon flattened. Surface objects only barely discerned earlier came into focus as the Bradbury settled lower.

Large craters opened up to show smaller craters within. As the ship descended past the ragged edge of one of these, Jacob saw it too was covered with still smaller pits, each similar in shape to the larger ones.

The tiny planet’s horizon disappeared behind a range of mountains, and Jacob lost all perspective. With every minute of descent the ground below looked the same. How could you tell how high up you were? Is that thing just below us a mountain, or a boulder, or are we going to touch down in just a second or two and is it just a rock?

He sensed nearness. The gray shadows and orange outcrops seemed close enough to touch.

Expecting the ship to come to rest at any moment, he was surprised when a hole in the ground rushed up to engulf them.

As they prepared to disembark, Jacob remembered with a shock what he had been doing when he slipped into a light trance earlier, holding Kepler’s jacket during the descent.

Surreptitiously, and with great skill, he had picked Kepler’s pockets, taking a sample of every medication and removing a small pencil stub without smudging the fingerprints. They made a neat lump in Jacob’s side pocket now, too small to stand out against the taper of his jacket.

So it’s started already, he groaned.

Jacob’s jaw tightened.

This time, he thought, I’m going to solve it myself!

I don’t need help from my alter ego. I’m not going to go around breaking and entering!

He struck his balled fist against his thigh to drive out the itchy, satisfied feeling in his fingers.