He should have been in the line. And Tamara. Well, there would be later waves. His passage was already paid for, he had had no difficulty about transferring to another section.
To make conversation, he said through a tightness: уWhere are the bulkheads?ф
уWhich ones?ф asked Maclaren absently.
уSafety bulkheads. A receiver does fail once in a great while, you know. Thatтs why the installations here are spread out so much, why every star has a separate ╬caster. Thereтs a vast amount of energy involved in each transmissionўone reason why a ╬casting is more expensive than transportation by spaceship. Even a small increment, undissipated, can melt a whole chamber.ф
уOh, yes. That.ф Maclaren had let Ryerson get pompous about the obvious because it was plain he needed something to bolster himself. What itched the kid, anyhow? One should
think that when the Authority offered a fledgling a post on an expedition as fundamental as thisўOf course, it had upset Ryersonтs plans of emigration. Rut not importantly. There was no danger he would find all the choice sites on Rama occupied if he came several weeks late: too few people had the fare as it was.
Maclaren said, уI see what you mean. Yes, the bulkheads are there, but recessed into the walls and camouflaged. You donтt want to emphasize possible danger to the cash customers, eh? Some technic might get annoyed and make trouble.ф
уSome day,ф said Ryerson, уtheyтll reduce the energy margin needed; and theyтll figure how to reproduce a Frank tube, rather than manufacture it. Record the pattern and recreate from a matter bank. Then anyone can afford to ride the beams. Interplanetary ships, even air and surface craft, will become obsolete.ф
Maclaren made no answer. He had sometimes thought, more or less idly, about the unrealized potentialities of mattercasting. Hard to say whether personal immortality would be a good thing or not. Not for the masses, surely! Too many of them as it was. But a select few, like Terangi Maclarenўor was it worth the trouble? Even given boats, chess, music, the No Drama, beautiful women and beautiful spectroscopes, life could get heavy.
As for matter transmission, the difficulty and hence the expense lay in the complexity of the signal. Consider an adult human. There are some 1014 cells in him, each an elaborate structure involving many proteins with molecular weights in the millions. You had to scan every one of those moleculesў identify it structurally, ticket its momentary energy levels, and place it in proper spatio-temporal relationship to every other moleculeўas nearly simultaneously as the laws of physics permitted. You couldnтt take a man apart, or reassemble him, in more than a few microseconds; he wouldnтt survive it. You couldnтt even transmit a recognizable beefsteak in much less of a hurry.
So the scanning beam went through and through, like a blade of energy. It touched every atom in its path, was modified thereby, and flashed that modification onto the transmitter matrix. But such fury destroyed. The scanned object was
reduced to gas so quickly that only an oscilloscope could watch the process. The gas was sucked into the destructor chamber and atomically condensed in the matter bank; in time it would become an incoming passenger, or incoming freight. In a sense, the man had died.
If you could record the signal which entered the transmitter matrixўyou could keep such a record indefinitely, recreate the man and his instantaneous memories, thoughts, habits, prejudices, hopes and loves and hates and horrors, a thousand years afterward. You could create a billion identical men. Or, more practically, a single handmade prototype could become a billion indistinguishable copies; nothing would be worth more than any handful of dirt. Or . . . superimpose the neurone trace-patterns, memories, of a lifetime, onto a recorded twenty-year-old body, be born again and live forever!
The signal was too complex, though. An unpromising research program went on. Perhaps in a few centuries they would find some trick which would enable them to record a man, or even a Frank tube. Meanwhile, transmission had to be simultaneous with scanning. The signal went out. Probably it would be relayed a few times. Eventually the desired receiving chamber got it. The receiver matrix, powered by dying atomic nuclei, flung gases together, formed higher elements, formed molecules and cells and dreams according to the signal, in microseconds. It was designed as an energy-consuming process, for obvious reasons: packing fraction energy was dissipated in gravitic and magnetic fields, to help shape the man. (Or the beefsteak, or the spaceship, or the colonial planetтs produce.) He left the receiving chamber and went about his business.
A mono-isotopic element is a simple enough signal to record, Maclaren reminded himself, though even that requires a houseful of transistor elements. So this civilization can afford to be extravagant with metalsўcan use pure mercury as the raw material of a spaceshipтs blast, for instance. But we still eat our bread in the sweat of some commonerтs brow.
Not for the first time, but with no great indignationўlife was too short for anything but amusement at the human race
ўMaclaren wondered if the recording problem really was as difficult as the physicists claimed. No government likes revo
lutions, and molecular duplication would revolutionize society beyond imagining. Just think how they had to guard the stations as it was, and stick them out here on the Moon .
otherwise, even today, some fanatic could steal a tube of radium from a hospital and duplicate enough to sterilize a planet!
уOh, well,ф he said, half aloud.
THEY reached the special exploration section and entered an office. There was red tape to unsnarl. Ryerson let Maclaren handle it, and spent the time trying to understand that soon the pattern which was himself would be embodied in newly-shaped atoms, a hundred light-years from Tamara. It wouldnтt penetrate. It was only words.
Finally the papers were stamped. The transceivers to/from an interstellar spaceship could handle several hundred kilos at a time; Maclaren and Ryerson went together. They had a momentтs wait because of locked safety switches on the Southern Cross: someone else was arriving or departing ahead of them.
уWatch that first step,ф said Maclaren. уItтs a honey.ф
уWhat?ф Ryerson blinked at him, uncomprehending.
The circuit closed. There was no sensation, the process went too fast.
The scanner put its signal into the matrix. The matrix modulated the carrier wave. But such terminology is mere slang, borrowed from electronics. You cannot have a уwaveф when you have no velocity, and gravitational forces do not. (This is a more accurate rendition of the common statement that уgravitation propagates at an infinite speed.ф) Inconceivable energies surged within a thermonuclear fire chamber; nothing controlled them, nothing could control them, but the force fields they themselves generated. Matter pulsed in and out of existence qua matter, from particle to gamma ray quantum and back. Since quanta have no rest mass, the pulsations disturbed the geometry of space according to the laws of Einsteinian mechanics. Not much: gravitation is feebler than magnetism or electricity. Were it not for the resonance effect, the signal would have been smothered in уnoiseф a few kilometers away. Even as it was, there were many relayings across
the parsecs until the matrix on the Cross reacted. And yet in one sense no time at all had passed; and no self-respecting mathematician would have called the уbeamф by such a name. It was, however, a signal, the only signal which relativity physics allowed to go faster than lightўand, after all, it did not really go, it simply was.
Despite the pill inside him, Ryerson felt as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. He grabbed for a handhold. The after-image of the transmitter chamber yielded to the coils and banks of the receiver room on a spaceship. He hung weightless, a thousand billion billion kilometers from Earth.
VI.
1~!~ ORWARD of the ╬casting chambers, уaboveф them during .Lт acceleration, were fuel deck, gyros, and air renewal plant. Then you passed through the observation deck, where instruments and laboratory equipment crowded together. A flimsy wall around the shaftway marked off the living quarters: folding bunks, galley, bath, table, benches, shelves, and lockers, all crammed into a six-meter circle.
Seiichi Nakamura wrapped one leg casually around a stanchion, to keep himself from drifting in air currents, and made a ceremony out of leafing through the log-book in his hands. It gave the others a chance to calm down, and the yellow-haired boy, David Ryerson, seemed to need it. The astrophysicist, Maclaren, achieved the unusual feat of lounging in free fall; he puffed an expensive Earth-side cigarette and wrinkled his patrician nose at the pervading smell of an old ship, two hundred years of cooking and sweat and machine oil. The big, ugly young engineer, Sverdlov, merely looked sullen. Nakamura had never met any of them before.
уWell, gentlemen,ф he said at last. уPardon me, I had to check the data recorded by the last pilot. Now I know approximately where we are at.ф He laughed with polite self-deprecation. уOf course you are all familiar with the articles. The pilot is captain. His duty is to guide the ship where the chief scientistўDr. Maclaren-san in this caseўwishes, within the limits of safety as determined by his own judgment. In case of my death or disability, command devolves upon the engineer, ah, Sverdlov-san, and you are to return home as soon as practica
ble. Yes-s-s. But I am sure we will all have a most pleasant and instructive expedition together.ф
He felt the banality of his words. It was the law, and a wise one, that authority be defined at once if there were non-Guild personnel aboard. Some pilots contented themselves with reading the regulations aloud, but it had always seemed an unnecessarily cold procedure to Nakamura. Only . . . he saw a sick bewilderment in Ryersonтs eyes, supercilious humor in Maclarenтs, angry impatience in Sverdlovтs . . . his attempt at friendliness had gone flat.
уWe do not operate so formally,ф he went on in a lame fashion. уWe shall post a schedule of housekeeping duties and help each other, yes? Well. That is for later. Now as to the star, we have some approximate data and estimates taken by previous watches. It appears to have about four times the mass of Sol; its radius is hardly more than twice Earthтs, possibly less; it emits detectably only in the lower radio frequencies, and even that is feeble. I have here a quick reading of the spectrum which may interest you, Dr. Maclaren.ф
THE big dark man reached out for it. His brows went up. уNow this,ф he said, уis the weirdest collection of wave lengths I ever saw.ф He flickered experienced eyes along the column of numbers. уSeems to be a lot of triplets, but the lines appear so broad, judging from the probable errors given, that I canтt be sure without more careful . . . hm-m-m.ф Glancing back at Nakamura: уJust where are we with relation to the star?ф
уApproximately two million kilometers from the center of its mass. We are being drawn toward it, of course, since an orbit has not yet been established, but have enough radial velocity of our own toўф
уNever mind.ф The sophistication dropped from Maclaren like a tunic. He said with a boyтs eagerness, уI would like to get as near the star as possible. How close do you think you can put us?ф
Nakamura smiled. He had a feeling Maclaren could prove likable. уToo close isnтt prudent. There would be meteors.ф
уNot around this one!ф exclaimed Maclaren. уIf physical theory is anything but mescaline dreams, a dead star is the
clinker of a supernova. Any matter orbiting in its neighborhood became incandescent gas long ago.ф
уAtmosphere?ф asked Nakamura dubiously. уSince we have nothing to see by, except starlight, we could hit its air.ф
уHm-m-m. Yes. I suppose it would have some. But not very deep: too compressed to be deep. In fact, the radio photosphere, from which the previous watches estimated the starтs diameter, must be nearly identical with the fringes of atmosphere.ф
уIt would also take a great deal of reaction mass to pull us back out of its attraction, if we got too close,ф said Nakamura. He unclipped the specialized slide rule at his belt and made a few quick computations. уIn fact, this vessel cannot escape from a distance much less than three-quarters million kilometers, if there is to be reasonable amount of mass left for maneuvering around afterward. And I am sure you wish to explore regions farther from the star, yes-s-s? However, I am willing to go that close.ф
Maclaren smiled. уGood enough. How long to arrive?ф
уI estimate three hours, including time to establish an orbit.ф Nakamura looked around their faces. уIf everyone is prepared to go on duty, it is best we get into the desired path at once.ф
уNot even a cup of tea first?ф grumbled Sverdlov.
