Between the Strokes of Night

“The same one as you got from the navigation system solution,” said Peron. “That’s wild. But damn it, how does it help? You have the same mystery.” “Not quite.” Sy looked unusually pleased with himself. For the first time, Peron realized that even Sy liked to have an appreciative audience for his deductions. “You’re right in one way,” Sy went on. “I got the same answer as from the navigation system solution. I had a vector that pointed to nothing. But there’s one other thing about the antennae. The computer points them all very accurately, but of course they’re scattered all over the solar system, from inside the orbit of Mercury to out past Saturn. So if you want to beam a message to a precise point in space, rather than merely in a specified direction, each antenna would be aimed along a slightly different vector. In other words, the computer pointing must allow for parallax of the target. So I took the next step. I asked if there was parallax on the previous solution, for the most common antennae pointings, and if so, what was the convergence point? I got a surprising answer. There is parallax — it’s small, only a total of a second of arc — and the convergence point is twenty-eight light-years from Sol, in just the direction I’d determined before. But when you check the star charts and the positions of kernels and hot collapsed bodies, there’s nothing there. Nothing. The antennae are aimed at the middle of nothing. I called that place Convergence Point, just for lack of a better name. But just what place is it? That was the question. And that’s where I stuck again, for a long time. Know what finally gave me the answer?”

Elissa was sitting on the bed, her expression dreamy. “Olivia Ferranti. Remember what she told us — ‘You can’t learn all about the Universe crouching in close by a star.’ And you, Sy, you said maybe you should be looking at nothing to find new mysteries, rather than at the center of the galaxy. Convergence Point is a nothing point.”

Sy was looking at her in amazement. “Elissa, I was asking a rhetorical question. You’re not supposed to give me the right answer. How the devil did you work it out?”

Elissa smiled. “I didn’t. You gave it away yourself. You’ll never be a good liar, Sy, even though your face doesn’t give you away. It was your choice of words. Even before you knew the distance, the twenty-eight light-years, you said several times that the antennae were pointing ‘at nothing.’ But you couldn’t know there was no dark object there, if you went out far enough. And from your voice, it was the ‘nothing’ that was important, not the coordinates of the target point.”

Sy looked at Peron. “She’s a witch. If she reads you like that, you’ll never keep any secrets from her. All right, Elissa, take it one step farther. Can you tell me what’s so special about that particular nothing?”

Elissa thought for a few moments, then shook her head. “No data.” “That’s what I thought, too. How can nothing be special? But then I remembered what else Olivia Ferranti said: ‘You have to know what’s going on out in deep space.’ So I asked myself, what is deep space? I went back to the star charts and the kernel coordinates, and I asked the computer another question: Give me the coordinates of the point of open space within one hundred light-years of Sol that is farthest from every known material body. Uncertainties in our knowledge of distances make the answer slightly ambiguous, but the computer gave back only two candidates. One is ninety-one light-years away; half a year’s trip, even in S-space. The other is — no prizes for guessing — just twenty-eight light-years from Sol, in the right direction. Convergence Point is a real nothing point. Communication time: five S-days.”

Sy called a holographic starscape display on to the space in front of them. He moved the 3-D pointer to an empty location within the star field. “Would you like to visit the real power center of the Immortals? Then I say that’s where you want to be. Nowhere Station. S-space travel time: less than two months.” Elissa looked puzzled. “But Sy, why would anyone build a Headquarters out there, in the middle of nowhere?”

Sy shook his head. “I can’t answer that.”

Peron was still staring at the display. “We may have to go there to find out. And it won’t be easy. You can be sure that the Immortals don’t want us there — they don’t even want us to know the place exists. You’ve solved the ‘where’ puzzle, Sy, I feel sure of it. But that just leaves a bigger problem: how can we find a way to make the trip, when the whole system is set up to prevent it?”