Anderson, Poul Explorations

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and thunderheads. They piled in cliffs, they eddied and streamed, their color was a sheen of all colors
overlying white- mother-of-pearl-but here and there they darkened with shadows and grottoes; here and
there they glowed dull red as they reflected a nearby sun. For the stars were scattered about in their
myriads, dominantly ruby and ember, some yellow or candent, green or blue. The nearest were clear to
the eye, a few showing tiny disks, but the majority were fuzzy glows rather than lightpoints. Such
shimmers grew dim with distance until the mist engulfed them entirely and nothing remained but mist.
A crackling noise beat out of that roiling formlessness, like flames. Energies pulsed through his marrow.
He remembered the old, old myth of the Yawning Gap, where fire and ice arose and out of them the
Nine Worlds, which were doomed in the end to return to fire and ice; and he shivered.
"Illusion," said Jaccavrie's voice out of immensity.
"What?" Laure started. It was as if a mother goddess had spoken.
She chuckled. Whether deity or machine, she had the great strength of ordinariness in her. "You're rather
transparent to an observer who knows you well," she said. "I could practically read your mind."
Laure swallowed. "The sight, well, a big, marvelous, dangerous thing, maybe unique in the galaxy. Yes, I
admit I'm impressed."
"We have much to learn here."
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"Have you been doing so?"
"At a near-capacity rate, since we entered the denser part of the cluster." Jaccavrie shifted to primness.
"If you'd been less immersed in discussions with the Kifkasanter navigation officer, you might have got
running reports from me."
"Destruction!" Laure swore. "I was studying her notes from their trip outbound, trying to get some idea
of what configuration to look for, once we've learned how to make allowances for what this material
does to starlight- Never mind. We'll have our conference right now, just as you requested. What'd you
mean by 'an illusion'?"
"The view outside," answered the computer. "The concentration of mass is not really as many atoms per
cubic centimeter as would be found in a vaporous planetary atmosphere. It is only that, across
light-years, their absorption and reflection effects are cumulative. The gas and dust do, indeed, swirl, but
not with anything like the velocity we think we perceive. That is due to our being under hyperdrive. Even
at the very low pseudospeed at which we are feeling our way, we pass swiftly through varying densities.
Space itself is not actually shining; excited atoms are fluorescing. Nor does space roar at you. What you
hear is the sound of radiation counters and other instruments which I've activated. There are no real,
tangible currents working on our hull, making it quiver. But when we make quantum microjumps across
strong interstellar magnetic fields, and those fields vary according to an extraordinarily complex pattern,
we're bound to interact noticeably with them.
"Admittedly the stars are far thicker than appears. My instruments can detect none beyond a few
parsecs. But what data I've gathered of late leads me to suspect the estimate of a quarter million total is
conservative. To be sure, most are dwarfs-"
"Come off that!" Laure barked. "I don't need you to explain what I knew the minute I saw this place."
"You need to be drawn out of your fantasizing," Jaccavrie said. "Though you recognize your daydreams
for what they are, you can't afford them. Not now."
Laure tensed. He wanted to order the view turned off, but checked himself, wondered if the robot
followed that chain of his impulses too, and said in a harshened voice: "When you go academic on me
like that, it means you're postponing news you don't want to give me. We have troubles."
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"We can soon have them, at any rate," Jaccavrie said. "My advice is to turn back at once."
"We can't navigate," Laure deduced. Though it was not unexpected, he nonetheless felt smitten.
"No. That is, I'm having difficulties already, and conditions ahead of us are demonstrably worse."
"What's the matter?"
"Optical methods are quite unsuitable. We knew that from the experience of the Kirkasanters. But
nothing else works, either. You recall, you and I discussed the possibility of identifying supergiant stars
through the clouds and using them for beacons. Though their light be diffused and absorbed, they should
produce other effects-they should be powerful neutrino sources, for instance -that we could use."
"Don't they?"
"Oh, yes. But the effects are soon smothered. Too much else is going on. Too many neutrinos from too
many different sources, to name one thing. Too many magnetic effects. The stars are so close together,
you see; and so many of them are double, triple, quadruple, hence revolving rapidly and twisting the force
lines; and irradiation keeps a goodly fraction of the interstellar medium in the plasma state. Thus we get
electromagnetic action of every sort, plus synchrotron and betatron radiation, plus nuclear collision, plus-"
"Spare me the complete list," Laure broke in. "Just say the noise level is too high for your instruments."
"And for any instruments that I can extrapolate as buildable," Jaccavrie replied. "The precision their
filters would require seems greater than the laws of atomistics would allow."
"What about your inertial system? Bollixed up, too?"
"It's beginning to be. That's why I asked you to come take a good look at what's around us and what
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we're headed into, while you listen to my report." The robot was not built to know fear, but Laure [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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