Between the Strokes of Night

“Twenty-six days.” Sy grinned. “You know what’s wrong with S-space? You can’t get anything done there in a hurry. I had things I wanted to do, and things I wanted to know — fast — and I wasn’t sure that our Immortal friends would give permission. So I came here. I’ve been here for only nineteen minutes of S-time. By the time they register the fact that I’ve gone, I’ll be all finished.” “I had the same feeling,” said Peron. “We’re too slow in S-space. We have a lot less control over what happens to us there. But finished doing what?” “Several things. First, I’ve been testing Kallen’s Law — my name for it, not his. Remember what he said? ‘Anything that can be put into a data bank by one person can be taken out of it by another, if you’re smart enough and have enough time.’ That’s one problem with a computer-based society, and one reason why computers were so tightly controlled on Pentecost: it’s almost impossible to prevent access to computer-stored information. I decided that if there were another headquarters for the Immortals, and one that they preferred not to talk about, there must be clues to its location somewhere in the data banks. Well-hidden, sure, but they should be there. Is there a secret installation, and if so, where is it? Those were two questions I set out to answer. And I had another thing that worried me. When we met the Gossameres and Pipistrelles, Ferranti said that the Immortals couldn’t really communicate with them. But she did communicate with them, even if they didn’t send a message back. And I couldn’t be sure that was true, either. Suppose they did send a message? — we don’t know what the ship was receiving. I’m afraid I don’t have an answer yet to that one. I’ve been working here flat out, but it takes time.”

“Do you mean you have answered the other questions?”

“Think so.” Sy cradled his left elbow thoughtfully in his right hand. “Wasn’t easy. There’s a pretty strong cover-up going on. None of the data that’s available for the usual starship libraries will tell you a thing. I had to get there by internal consistency checks. What do you make of these data base facts? First, the official flight manifests show one hundred and sixty-two outbound trips initiated from Sol in the past S-month. The maximum fuel capacity of any single ship is 4.4 billion tons. And the fuel taken out of supplies in the Sol system in the past S-month is 871 billion tons. See the problem? I’ll save you the trouble of doing the arithmetic. There is too much fuel being used — enough for a minimum of twenty-six outbound flights that don’t show on the manifests.” “Did you check other periods?” asked Peron.

Sy looked at him scornfully. “What do you think? Let’s go on. This one is suggestive, but not conclusive. The navigation network around the Sol system is all computer controlled, and it’s continuously self-adapting to changing requirements. Generally speaking, the most-travelled approach routes to Sol are the ones with the most monitoring radars and navigation controls. The information on the placement of radars is available from the data banks, so you can use it to set up an inverse problem: Given the disposition of the equipment, what direction in space is the most-travelled approach route to and from Sol? I set up the problem, and let the computers grind out an answer. When I had it I was puzzled for days. The solution indicated a vector outward from Sol that seemed to lead nowhere at all — not to any star, or toward any significant object. It pointed at nothing. I was stuck.

“I put that to one side and chased another thought. Suppose there were a hidden Headquarters somewhere in space. It would communicate with the Sol system, not just with the ships — they only travel at a tenth of light-speed — but with radio signals, too. There are thousands of big antennae and phased arrays scattered all around the Sol system, and the computers keep track of their instantaneous pointings. So I accessed that pointing data base, and I asked the computer a question: Of all the places that the antennae and arrays point to, what direction was pointed to most often? Want to guess the answer?”