Between the Strokes of Night

“By then we knew we were seeing something different from Gossameres and Pipistrelles. The new sources were very faint and distant, and the reconstructed image outlines showed a hint of a spiral structure, nothing like those paneled polyhedra. But we were still too short of information. It seemed a fascinating scientific mystery, but not much more. That was when Otto Kermel proposed a series of missions for a long-term search and study of the objects. “I don’t claim or deserve any credit for what happened next. I thought his idea would go nowhere, and gave him minimal resources and support. He did all the pioneer work on his own. We gave him the use of a one-man ship, and he went away to a quiet location about seven light-years from Sol. He argued that the absence of electromagnetic and gravitational fields was essential to studying the objects. Although his first objective was communication with them, he found that a round-trip message to even the nearest of them took two S-years. That limited him, but during his studies he discovered lots of other things.

“First, he found many Kermel Objects, all around the Galaxy. The signals we intercept are not intended for us. We are eavesdroppers on transmissions between the Kermels, and those signals between them are numerous. Based on the length of those transmissions, Otto concluded that the Kermel Objects are immensely old, with a natural life-rate so slow that S-space is inadequate to study them — in thousands of Earth-years, he was receiving only partial signals. Otto claimed that he could partially decode their messages, and he believed that they have been in existence since the formation of the Universe — since before the Big Bang, according to one of his wilder reports. He also suggested that they propagate not by exchange of genetic material, but by radio exchange of genetic information. We have not been able to verify any of those conjectures, and Otto could not provide enough data for convincing proof. What he needed was the T-state, and a chance for more extended study periods on a time scale appropriate to the Kermel Objects. But by an accident of timing, he departed for a second expedition just before the T-state was discovered. And he has never returned.

“By the time he left, though, we had changed our ideas about the practical importance of studying the Kermel Objects. We decided that it is central to the future of the human species. We have continued his work, but without much of his data base. Take a look at this.”

Judith Niles projected another scene onto the display. “Does it seem familiar?” Sy studied it for a second or two, then shrugged. “It’s a picture of a spiral galaxy, looking down on the disk. I’ve no idea which one.”

“Correct. There’s no way you’d recognize it, but it’s this galaxy, seen from outside. That signal was recorded by Otto Kermel, from one of the Objects sitting way up above the galactic plane. And as part of the same signal, this image came with it.” At her keyed command, another picture overlaid the first one. It was the same galaxy, but now the star patterns were shown in different colors. “Keep watching closely. I’m going to zoom.”

The star fields expanded steadily as the field of view moved in to focus on one of the spiral arms. Soon individual stars could be distinguished on the screen. Judith Niles halted the zoom and moved the image to occupy one quadrant of the display. “Once you look at particular stars, you can see what’s going on. The stars in this image have been color-coded according to spectral type. And by looking at the stars in our own stellar neighborhood, it was easy for us to read the code. For instance, Sol is a G-2 V dwarf, and G-types show in pale green. Red giants are magenta, O-type supergiants are purple, and red dwarf stars are shown as orange-yellow.

“There is another important piece of information in this display. Stars don’t sit in fixed positions, they move relative to each other. So by looking at the configuration of stars in the main stellar clusters, you can determine the date of an image. All the evidence was consistent, and told us that this image represented the situation as it was nine hundred thousand Earth-years ago. When Otto Kermel received another signal of the same type, he thought at first that it was just a copy. But it wasn’t. Here it is.”

She brought another image on the screen, placing it in a second quadrant of the display. “For one thing, you can see that the star positions are different. This shows the stellar distribution at a different date. It is still our local arm of the galaxy, but as it was six hundred thousand Earth-years ago. Now watch closely.”

Yet another image appeared in a third quadrant.