Resurgence

“The latter question is easily answered. The Pride of Orion’s central data bank contains a complete occupation directory for every chamber at all times.”

“So you know where the survival team is housed?” For whatever reason, Julian Graves had kept his team of survival specialists in seclusion.

“Of course.”

“Do you know how many of them there are?”

“There are five, all of human form. None, alas, appears to be an embodied computer. As to what you were seeking as you scanned the sky, I assume that it is what all others seem to be seeking: a first look at the Marglot system.”

“Are we close enough for that?”

“No. Nor will we be, until the final Bose transition is accomplished. However, logic is not at work here. Every being on board, in spite of known facts, stares impatiently at the screens. It is curious, but even I, who according to my designers lack circuits for the emotion known as excitement, feel a sense of impending fulfillment.”

“But you’re not staring at screens.”

“No. Logic still plays a significant part in my actions. Our final Bose transition to the vicinity of what we hope will be the Marglot system lies an hour in the future, and I have calculated that the whole system subtends less than a second of arc from our present distance. It is therefore invisible to the naked eye. I sought you out in order to ask for your assistance on something else, something for which the data banks provide no guidance.”

“Then it’s not likely that I can help.”

“Councilor Graves suggests otherwise. The subject calls for opinion, rather than fact. May I speak?”

Had Julian Graves sent Tally to her just to get rid of the embodied computer, with his endless what-why-how? Darya gave up on screen-watching. The chances of finding evidence of Builder presence in the first five minutes in the Sag Arm was as low as that of seeing the Marglot system itself. She resigned herself to an E.C. Tally lecture. “What’s your problem?”

“The nature of the Builders.”

“You’re out of luck. Nobody knows that.”

“My question is specific, and concerns the generality of their distribution. Were you present during the dissection of the Marglotta corpses?”

“No, I was not.” And Ugh! as well. From what Darya had heard and the pictures she had seen, the bodies had been shrunken mummies by the time they were discovered in their sealed chamber on the Polypheme’s ship. She wondered just when they had died.

“Nor, regrettably, was I present. However, I understand that the Marglotta are very different in external body structure and internal organs from any creatures in our local arm.”

“That’s not surprising, E.C. The Sag Arm is so far away, you’d expect the development of life to have occurred there independently. Their beings should look and act utterly differently.”

“So Councilor Graves suggested. Yet tests of the Marglotta living quarters on the Polypheme ship suggest that they were not segregated because they breathed different air from the Polypheme. In fact, they could have breathed the same air with no difficulty. And the Chism Polyphemes—who also developed in the Sag Arm—can breathe the same air as humans and Cecropians. Analysis of material in the Marglotta digestive tracts shows that they were also able to eat the same kinds of food as humans. Now, you are of course familiar with the ancient theory of panspermia?”

Darya groaned mentally. One problem in dealing with E. Crimson Tally was the embodied computer’s built-in urge to acquire as much information as possible—no matter how old, no matter how useless. She shook her head.

“Really? Then I will explain.” E.C. Tally casually fitted a neural cable from the room’s terminal to the socket on his chest, and went on without missing a beat. “Panspermia posits that life on many worlds was seeded there from outside. This leads at once to a question: Could such seeding take place not merely among the neighboring stars of a galactic arm, but clear across the Gulf?”

“I have no idea.”

“But I do. I performed the necessary calculation of Gulf crossing-time for spores of living matter when propelled by light pressure. I made plausible assumptions as to the mass/area ratio of such spores. And the result I obtained was a survival probability so close to zero that it can for all practical purposes be ignored.”

“And?”

“I decided that interstellar seeding can indeed take place, but not across so great a span as the Gulf. From which one would conclude that any living beings who inhabit the Sagittarius Arm must have arisen as and be descended from independent life. And yet we can breathe the same kind of air as the Marglotta and Polyphemes.”