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Bill didn't seem to notice. He had already set up for his opening teaser and Denys was playing his quaint
old auto-cameras for him. As they panned around the entrance chamber and settled on his face, wearing
its friendliest and most intelligent expression, he began to speak to the masses:
"Wilhelm Tartch hereagain, where PhoenixCorp is getting ready to bring a lost race of intelligent beings
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back to life, and here to help me " one of the cameras swung around as Denys cued it toward
me "once again I have the good luck to have my beautiful fiancée, Gelle-Klara Moynlin, with me."
I gave him a look, because, whatever I was to Wilhelm Tartch, I definitely wasn't someone who was
planning to marry him. He tipped me a cheeky wink and went right on:
"As you all remember, before the Heechee ran away to hide in the Core, they surveyed most of the
Galaxy, looking for other intelligent races. They didn't find any. When they visited Earth they found the
australopithecines, but they were a long way from being modern humans. They hadn't even developed
language yet. And here, on this planet " That view of the Crabber planet, pre-supernova, appeared
behind him." they found another primitive race that they thought, someday, might become both
intelligent and civilized. Well, perhaps these Crabbers, as the PhoenixCorp people call them, did. But the
Heechee weren't around to see it, and neither are we, because they had some bad luck.
"There were two stars in their planet's system, a red dwarf and a bright type-A giant. Over the millennia,
as these lost people were struggling toward civilization, the big star was losing mass, sucked into the
smaller one. Then, without warning, the small one reached critical mass. It exploded. And the Crabber
people, along with their planet and all their works, were instantly obliterated in the supernova blast."
He stopped there, gazing toward Denys until she called, "Got it." Then he kicked himself toward me,
arms outstretched for a hug, big grin on his face; and when we connected he buried his face in my neck,
whispering things like, "Oh, Klaretta, we've been away from each other too long!"
Bill Tartch is a good hugger. His arms felt fine around me, and his big, male body felt good against mine
... as I looked over his shoulder at Denys. Who was regarding us with an affectionate and wholly
unjealous smile.
So, I thought, that part might not be much of a problem. I decided not to worry about it. Anyway the
resolution of the Crabber planet was getting better and better, and that was what we were here for, after
all.
What the Crabber planet had a lot of was water. As it turned on its axis the continental shore had
disappeared into the nighttime side of the world, and what we were looking at was mostly ocean.
Bill Tartch wasn't pleased. "Is that all we're going to see?" he demanded of the room at large."I thought
there wasat least some kind of a city."
Terple answered. "A small city probably. Anyway, that's what it looked like before the planet turned
and we lost it. I can show you that much if you like. Hans? Go back to when that object was still in
sight."
The maybe-city didn't look any more exciting the second time I saw it, and it didn't impress Bill. He
made a little tongue-click of annoyance. "You, shipmind! Can't you enhance the image for me?"
"It is enhanced, Mr. Tartch," Hans told him pleasantly. "However, we have somewhat better resolution
now, and I've been tracking it in the infrared. There's a little more detail " the continental margin
appeared for us, hazily delineated because of the differences in temperature between water and
land "but, as you see, there are hot spots that I have not yet identified."
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There were.Big ones, and very bright. What was encouraging, considering what we were looking for,
was that some of them seemed to be fairly geometrical in shape, triangles and rectangles. But what were
they?
"Christmas decorations?" Bill guessed. "You know, I mean not really Christmas, but with the houses all
lit up for some holiday or other?"
"I don't think so, Mr. Tartch," Hans said judiciously. "There's not much optical light; what you're seeing
is heat."
"Keeping themselves warm in the winter?"
"I don't know if it's their winter, Mr. Tartch, and that isn't probable in any case. Those sources read out
at up to around three hundred degrees Celsius. That's almost forest-fire temperature."
Bill looked puzzled. "Slash-and-burn agriculture? Or maybe some kind of industry?"
"We can't say yet, Mr. Tartch. If it were anything like that there should be more visible light; there's very
little. We'll simply have to wait for better data. Meanwhile, however, there's something else you might like
to see." The scene we were viewing skittered across the face of the planet huge cloud banks, a couple [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]