Between the Strokes of Night

“Sorry, sorry.” She slipped into her chair, out of breath. Sy, together with staff members Emil Garville, Alfredo Roewen, and Libby Trask, was already there, as was Judith Niles herself.

Charlene saw Judith’s mouth opening and did her best to forestall the criticism. “I know, punctuality, punctuality, and I’m wasting everyone’s time. But I was in the middle of an experiment when I heard about a signal, and I never for a moment suspected the call might be that signal. I mean, a message so soon — they left only a few weeks ago.”

“From our point of view, but not from theirs.” Judith Niles pointed to the wall of her office, where dual chronometers displayed N-space and S-space passage of time. “It’s been two hundred and forty years in N-space since they left Gulf City. While they were travelling they were in S-space, the same as we are, but for the past fifteen of their years they’ve been in N-space, struggling to set up the colony on Kallen’s World. Even the signal we’re about to see took seventeen of their years to get here. From their point of view, it’s all old history. But this is so important, I decided I had to call this meeting at once. Ready?”

“I’m ready.” Charlene slipped her shoes off. S-space, N-space,

no-matter-what-the-hell-space, she had never found a place to live where her feet felt right in shoes.

The display came alive. A group of a dozen people stared out at Charlene. Peron and Elissa were in the middle, smiling a greeting. Elissa was visibly pregnant and had a three-year-old holding her tightly by the hand. Four strangers stood on each side of them, somber and serious. And then, next to the end — Wolfgang! Charlene felt her heart turn over. It seemed he had been gone only a few weeks — for her, it had been only a few weeks — but he looked older and different. His bare arms were more muscular, he wore a heavy suntan, and there were fine wrinkles about his eyes and on his forehead. As though he had become aware of Charlene’s gaze, he also smiled. Any pleasure that Charlene might have felt was taken away by the sight of the woman standing next to Wolfgang. She was a tall, slender brunette, and although she was not touching him, there was something in the way she stood that proclaimed a more-than-casual interest.

Peron spoke. “I don’t quite know how to say this. We’ve been away for a long time so far as we are concerned, and although we’ve worked as hard as we know how it doesn’t seem we’ve done very much. Most of the first few years went into breaking ground and starting the settlements, which took longer than we expected. On the other hand, we realize that as far as you are concerned we left just a little while ago.”

Judith Niles muttered, “Get on with it! What’s wrong with Peron?” “Give him time.” Sy was nodding to himself. “He’s feeling uneasy. I know Peron, and I know Elissa. If there’s any way they can do a thing for themselves, they will. He’s working himself up to say something that comes hard to him. He’s going to make a request.”

Peron was continuing. “We’ve been picking sites for our new settlements, with good logic for each, and we’re steadily expanding. If you’ve been reading our progress reports — I’m sure you have — then you already know about the karnoos. They have special diet requirements, and they prefer a certain kind of terrain. Until recently we’ve had little interaction with them — or thought we did. But it turned out, without our knowing it, the selection criteria that we use to pick out settlement sites choose exactly the places where the karnoos like to live. Our clearings destroy their main food sources. If the karnoos were smart enough — and maybe they are — they’d decide that we were out to get them, by deliberately destroying their habitats.”

Sy muttered, “Preferred habitats: G-2 V dwarf stars. Preferred habitat for others? Maybe, around red dwarfs?”

“The karnoos are peaceful,” Peron went on, “but we learned the hard way that they can be dangerous when they feel threatened. If they were smarter, they might not just run away from the places where we are clearing the ground. They might try to find out the source of their trouble, the place where all the new land clearing and settlement first began. And then they’d either attack us and try to wipe us out, or they’d come and try to talk to us.