Between the Strokes of Night

by Charles Sheffield

  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.

  “Here’s one which we date at a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Take a good look at all three — they are the most important pictures in human history.” Sy stared at the screen in silence for a couple of minutes. “Can you display the color key for spectral type again?” he said at last.

  Without speaking, Judith Niles flashed a color code onto the screen header. Sy was silent for an even longer period.

  “Where’s Sol?” he finally asked.

  Judith Niles smiled grimly, and moved the screen cursor to indicate a green star in the field. “That’s Sol, as it was a hundred and fifty thousand years ago; just as it has been for the past few billion years, and as it is today, and as it ought to be a billion years from now.”

  Sy nodded. “It hasn’t changed. But you can see there have been changes in the spectral types of other stars. Far too many of them, and far too fast. Stellar evolution is a very slow process.”

  “Exactly. And all the changes have been taking place in one direction. I only showed you the situation for three different times, but we have others. We can use them to extrapolate forward. Here” — a new image occupied the final quadrant of the display — “is the local spiral arm, as our projection says it will be a million years from now.”

  She moved the cursor to a point of orange-yellow. “And that is Sol.” “But the color code is for a red dwarf star!”

  “That’s right. And that’s why we — and you — are here in Gulf City.”

  Sy was studying the images. “Red dwarfs. The whole spiral arm is full of red dwarf stars — far too high a proportion of them.” He looked at each image in turn. “This is impossible. There’s no way that stellar types could change so much, and in such a short time. You must be misinterpreting the data.”

  “That’s what we thought — at first. Then we began to compare recent star catalogs with ones made in the earliest days of stellar astronomy. There’s no mistake. The main sequence stars in our spiral have been changing. Randomly, with no pattern that we can see, but what used to be spectral classes G and K are becoming class M. We can’t tell when a particular star is likely to change — that’s a guess we made about the future of Sol — but in general — “ “No way!” Sy shook his head vigorously. “Not unless all the astrophysics I learned back on Pentecost is nonsense. It takes hundreds of millions of years at least for a stable star to move from one spectral class to another.” “You know the same astrophysics as we do. And we can only think of one mechanism for change. Class G and class K stars have surface temperatures between about four and six thousand degrees. Class M are more like two to three thousand. You could get those changes in stellar type for dwarf stars, if somehow you could damp the fusion reaction inside them. Lower the internal energy production, and you would lower the overall temperature.”

  Sy looked frustrated. “Maybe. But can you suggest any process that could possibly do that? I know of none.”

  “Nor do we. No natural process. That keeps leading us to one unpleasant conclusion. The information we’ve received from the Kermel Objects is true — we’ve done other checks on changes in stellar types. And there’s no natural way for these changes to happen. So: some other entity, living in our spiral arm of the galaxy, prefers stars of lower temperature and luminosity.”

  “You mean something or someone is inducing reduced fusion reactions through the spiral arm — intentionally.”

  “I mean exactly that.” Judith Niles’ forehead filled with frown lines, and she looked a dozen years older. “It’s a frightening conclusion, but it’s the only one. I don’t think the Kermel Objects are doing this, even though they seem to know a lot about it. We have some evidence that suggests they understand the whole process, and they certainly seem able to predict the rate of change in the spiral arm. But I believe the action doesn’t originate with them. What we’re seeing is the work of another species, one more like ourselves — one that has no use for the deep space preferred by Gossameres or Kermel Objects. These other creatures want to live near a star. A red, low luminosity star.”

  She cleared the display, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “A long time ago humans talked of terraforming Mars and Venus, but we never did it. Just too busy blowing ourselves up, I guess, ever to get round to it. Now maybe we’ve met someone more rational and more ambitious than we were. What we are seeing is stellarforming. If it goes on, and if we don’t understand it and find out how to stop it, in another million years this whole spiral arm will have few G-type stars. That will mean the end of human planetary colonies. Eventually, that will be the end of humans. Finis.”

  Judith Niles paused. She switched off all the displays.

  “We think the Kermel Objects hold the key,” she said softly. “Now do you see why we’re living out here in the middle of nowhere, and why S-space and T-state are so important? In normal space, a million years used to seem like forever. But I expect to be alive, ten thousand Earth-centuries from now.”

  Sy wore an expression that Peron and Elissa would have found unfamiliar. He seemed uneasy, and lacking in confidence. “I read it wrong. I thought the reason for being here in Gulf City was safety from outside interference, and control of S-space. The whole advantage of being an ‘Immortal’ was presented to us as increased subjective life span — but now I wonder about that.”

  “You are right to do so. We have life-extension methods available, ones that came out of S-space research and allow increased life span in normal space. And probably they will let the subject enjoy life more keenly, too. But you can’t solve the problem thrown at us by the Kermel Objects unless you can work on it for a long time. That means Gulf City, and it means S-space.” She stood up. “Will you work on this? And will you help me to persuade your friends to do the same?”

  “I’ll try.” Sy hesitated. “But I still need to think. I’ve not had the thinking time that I wanted when I headed for the tanks.”

  Judith Niles nodded. “I know. But I wanted you to do your thinking with a full knowledge of what’s going on here. You have that. I’ll head back now. This chamber is self-locking when you leave. And as soon as you’re ready to do it, let’s meet again with your friends.” Now she hesitated, and her expression matched Sy’s for uneasiness. “There’s something else to be discussed, but it’s on another subject. And I want to do it when all of you are together.” She gave him a worried smile and headed for the door. For the first time, Sy could see her as a lonely and vulnerable figure. The power and intensity of personality were still there, unmistakable, but they were muted, o
verlain with an awareness of a monstrous unsolved problem. He thought of the splendid confidence with which the Planetfest winners had lifted off from Pentecost. They had the shining conviction that any problem in the galaxy would fall to their combined attack. And now? Sy felt older, and a great need for time to think. Judith Niles had been carrying a killing load of responsibility for a long time. She needed help, but could he provide it? Could anyone? He wanted to try. For the first time in his life, he had met someone whose intellect walked the same paths as his own, someone in whose presence he felt totally at ease. Sy leaned back in his chair. It would be ironic if that satisfaction of mind-meeting came at the same time as a problem too big for both of them. * * *

  An hour later Sy was still sitting in the same position. In spite of every effort, his mind had driven back relentlessly to a single focus: the Kermel Objects. He began to see the Universe as they must see it, from that unique vantage point of the longest perspective of evolutionary time. With the T-state available, humans had a chance to experience that other world-view. Here was a cosmos which exploded from an initial singular point of incomprehensible heat and light, in which great galaxies formed, tightened into spirals, and whirled about their central axes like giant pinwheels. They clustered together in loose galactic families, threw off supercharged jets of gas and radiation, collided and passed through each other, and spawned within themselves vast gaseous nebulae.

  Suns coalesced quickly from dark clouds of dust and gas, blooming from faintest red to fiery blue-white. As he watched in his mind’s eye, they brightened, expanded, exploded, dimmed, threw off trains of planets, or spun dizzily around each other. A myriad planetary fragments cooled, cracked, and breathed off their protective sheaths of gases. They caught the spark of life within their oceans of water and air, fanned it, nurtured it, and finally hurled it aloft into surrounding space. Then there was a seething jitter of life around the stars, a Brownian dance of ceaseless human activity against the changing stellar background. The space close to the stars filled with the humming-bird beat and shimmer of intelligent organic life. The whole universe lay open before it. And now the T-state became essential. Planet-based humans, less than mayflies, flickered through their brief existence in a tiny fraction of a cosmic day. The whole of human history had run its course in a single T-week, while mankind moved out from the dervish whirl of the planets into the space surrounding Sol. Then S-space had given the nearer stars; but the whole galaxy and the open vastness of intergalactic space still beckoned. And in that space, in T-state, humans could be free to thrive forever.

  Sy sat back in the chair, drunk with his new vision. He could see a bright path that led from mankind’s earliest beginnings, stretching out unbroken into the farthest future.

  It was the road to forever. It was a road that he wanted to take, whatever the consequences. But first, humanity had to find a way to survive the stellarforming catastrophe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Elissa was the last to arrive at the meeting. As she hurried into the long conference room to take her seat she glanced around the table, and was struck at once by the odd seating arrangement. Judith Niles sat alone at the head of the table, head bowed forward and her eyes on the control console built into the table in front of her. Sy Day sat to her immediate right, and Peron next to him, with an empty chair between them. Peron looked a little uncomfortable, while Sy was obviously a million miles away, absorbed by some private concern. Wolfgang Gibbs and Charlene Bloom occupied seats on the opposite side of the table. They were sitting close together, well away from the rest. Wolfgang was scowling and chewing moodily at a finger nail, while Charlene Bloom glanced from one person to another with rapidly blinking eyes. Elissa looked at her closely. Extreme nervousness? It certainly appeared that way, but for no obvious reason. And the whole room was unnaturally quiet, without the normal casual chit-chat that preceded even a serious meeting. The atmosphere was glacial and tense. Elissa paused, still standing. She had a choice. Sit opposite Sy, and thus be between Wolfgang and the Director? Or next to Sy and Peron; or at the other end of the table, facing Judith Niles. She headed to sit next to Sy, then on some obscure impulse changed her mind and went to the end chair directly opposite the Director. Judith Niles raised her head. Elissa underwent a brief scrutiny from those intense eyes, then the Director nodded briefly in greeting. She seemed as remote and preoccupied as Sy.

  “To business,” Judith Niles said at last. “I gather that Sy Day briefed both of you on our meeting and conversation?”

  Peron and Elissa looked at each other. “In detail,” said Elissa. She waited for Peron, but he did not speak. “However, we still have questions,” she went on. Judith Niles nodded. “I am sure you do. Perhaps it is best if you first listen to what I propose. That may answer many of your questions. If not, we will consider them later.”

  Her words were couched as a suggestion, but her tone of voice showed she expected no argument. No one replied. Wolfgang ducked his head and seemed to be studying the granular plastic table top, rendered a soft continuous blur by the oddities of S-space optics. Charlene looked expectantly around the table at the others, then back to the Director.

  “It is interesting that the arrival here of the three of you should coincide with a decision point in my own thinking,” went on Judith Niles. “Although I could argue that your presence in Gulf City precipitated that point. By now you know something of our history. For fifteen thousand Earth years, research work has continued here without a break: monitoring messages from the Kermel Objects; developing new techniques for slowing of consciousness, designed to make us better able to match the Kermel transmission rates; and making many attempts at direct communication with them. Failed attempts, I should add. But we have had some successes. We are assured now of the extreme age of the Kermels; we have learned how to present signals received from them reliably, as one, two, or three dimensional arrays; we have confirmed by independent methods that the changes in stellar types in this spiral arm of our galaxy are real; and finally, we are beginning to see hints of methods to slow subjective experience rates even further, beyond those of T-state.

  “These are all major advances. Yet you do not need me to point out that they will all be of no value unless we can learn how to inhibit the stellarforming of G type stars. We face the possibility of greatly extended life spans, with no place to live except far from our home stars. If that happens, we will face the extinction of all our planetary colonies. And that is an intolerable thought, even if we forget recruitment needs from normal space to S-space. “Before you arrived, the senior staff of Gulf City, and in particular Wolfgang, Charlene and I, had worried long and hard about the slowness of our progress. I decided some time ago that the pace of our efforts had to be picked up — by whatever methods. This is an absolute necessity. And to accomplish it, I resolved to take an unprecedented step. You, the three of you, are central to that step.”

  Elissa and Peron looked at each other in surprise, then both turned to Sy. He was unmoved, his usual cool self.

  “Hear me out,” went on Judith Niles. “Why you? Because you have not yet become locked into our existing ways of thinking about the problem. We must find totally new avenues, create new thought patterns, and explore different options; but we cannot do that. We are too wedded to our existing exploration, and too fixed in the pattern of past analyses. Stay here for a few months, and you will have the same problem. That is why I propose a change at once, before you harden into our ways and ideas.

  “What I am suggesting is revolutionary. I propose to establish a completely new facility, similar to Gulf City but in a separate location. It will have independent management, and independent research staff. The preferred location is eighteen light-years from here, and almost twelve light-years from Sol. It does not have quite the same degree of isolation from interference as this site, but signals received here from Kermel Objects will naturally be available to the new facility. There will be cooperation, but strictly limited interchang
e of information. We cannot afford to inhibit each other’s research.

  “And now, here is my specific proposal: you three are invited to go to that facility, with the best support that we can offer from anywhere in our network of colonies and stations. You will not merely be participants in the facility’s research; you will direct it, setting priorities and allocating resources.” She smiled. “I am sure you feel suspicious. Why would I, without taking leave of my senses, entrust a huge new undertaking to three near-strangers? I will tell you why. Your performance to date has been highly impressive, but my real reason is far more compelling: we are becoming desperate here. Something must be done, and something new has to be tried.”

  She looked along the table. “You are silent. I am not surprised. I would be silent also. But when you have questions, I will do my best to answer all of them.”

  Sy did not move. He had been nodding his head a tiny fraction as she spoke, but now he was motionless. Wolfgang and Charlene were looking at Peron and Elissa, and avoiding Judith Niles’ eye. Charlene seemed more tense than ever. “Why us?” said Peron at last. “Why didn’t you do it with the last group of people to find their way to Gulf City?”

  “For two reasons. First, I did not feel they could do it — I feel that you can. And second, I had not yet reached my own flashpoint. Now I feel a great need for action. Our present approach is too slow. We must have at least two facilities working in parallel.”

  Peron looked at each participant in turn, taking his time. Finally he turned again to Judith Niles. “When do you propose this would begin?”

  She smiled with her mouth, but her eyes remained tense. “I am now about to fail one test of a good manipulator. Take it, if you will, as evidence of the depth of my concern on this issue. The process for creating the second facility has already begun. A station from Sol is on the way to form the facility’s nucleus, and other equipment is in shipment from three Sector Headquarters. If you agree, it will be ready for operation as soon as you arrive there. I hope that you will begin your journey at once. You can become familiar with details of equipment on the way there.”