Columbia.
He had to write up his report on the Lobon explorations. Would it bepossible for him to take a six-month leave of absence for the purpose?
It would.
The following Saturday, Dr. Dave F. Turnbull was on the interstellarliner _Oriona_, bound for Sirius.
* * * * *
If ever there was a Gold Mine In The Sky, it was Centaurus City. To thecultural xenologists who worked on its mysterious riches, it seemed topresent an almost inexhaustible supply of new data. The formerinhabitants had left everything behind, as though it were no longer ofany value whatever. No other trace of them had as yet been foundanywhere in the known galaxy, but they had left enough material inCentaurus City to satisfy the curiosity of Mankind for years to come,and enough mystery and complexity to whet that curiosity to an evensharper degree.
It's difficult for the average person to grasp just how much informationcan be packed into a city covering ten thousand square miles with apopulation density equal to that of Manhattan. How long would it takethe hypothetical Man From Mars to investigate New York or London if hehad only the City to work with, if he found them just as they standexcept that the inhabitants had vanished?
The technological level of the aliens could not be said to be either"above" or "below" that of Man: it could only be said to be "different."It was as if the two cultures complemented each other; the areas ofknowledge which the aliens had explored seemed to be those which Mankindhad not yet touched, while, at the same time, there appeared to be manylevels of common human knowledge which the aliens had never approached.
From the combination of the two, whole new fields of human thought andendeavor had been opened.
No trace of the alien spaceships had been uncovered, but theanti-gravitational devices in their aircraft, plus the basic principlesof Man's own near-light-velocity drive had given Man the ultralightdrive.
Their knowledge of social organization and function far exceeded that ofMan, and the hints taken from the deciphered writings of the aliens hadradically changed Man's notions of government. Now humanity could builda Galactic Civilization--a unity that was neither a pure democracy noran absolute dictatorship, but resulted in optimum governmental controlcombined with optimum individual freedom. It was _e pluribus unum_ plus.Their technological writings were few, insofar as physics and chemistrywere concerned. What there were turned out to be elementary texts ratherthan advanced studies--which was fortunate, because it had been throughthese that the cultural xenologists had been able to decipher thelanguage of the aliens, a language that was no more alien to the modernmind than, say, ancient Egyptian or Cretan.
But without any advanced texts, deciphering the workings of thethousands of devices that the aliens had left behind was a tedious job.The elementary textbooks seemed to deal with the same sort of sciencethat human beings were used to, but, at some point beyond, the alienshad taken a slightly different course, and, at first, only the verysimplest of their mechanisms could be analyzed. But the investigatorslearned from the simpler mechanisms, and found themselves able to takethe next step forward to more complex ones. However, it still remained afact that the majority of the devices were as incomprehensible to theinvestigators as would the function of a transistor have been to JamesClerk Maxwell.
In the areas of the social sciences, data was deciphered at a fairlyrapid rate; the aliens seemed to have concentrated all their efforts onthat. Psionics, on the other hand, seemed never to have occurred tothem, much less to have been investigated. And yet, there were devicesin Centaurus City that bore queer generic resemblances to commonTerrestrial psionic machines. But there was no hint of such things inthe alien literature.
And the physical sciences were deciphered only slowly, by a process ofcut-and-try and cut-and-try again.
The investigations would take time. There were only a relatively smallhandful of men working on the problems that the City posed. Not becausethere weren't plenty of men who would have sacrificed their time andefforts to further the work, but because the planet, being hostile toMan, simply would not support very many investigators. It was noteconomically feasible to pour more men and material into the projectafter the point of diminishing returns had been reached. Theoretically,it would have been possible to re-seal the City's dome and pump in anatmosphere that human beings could live with, but, aside from everyother consideration, it was likely that such an atmosphere would ruinmany of the artifacts within the City.
Besides, the work in the City was heady stuff. Investigation of the Citytook a particular type of high-level mind, and that kind of mind did notoccur in vast numbers.
It was not, Turnbull thought, his particular dish of tea. The physicalsciences were not his realm, and the work of translating the alienwritings could be done on Earth, from 'stat copies, if he'd cared to dothat kind of work.
* * * * *
Sirius VI was a busy planet--a planet that was as Earthlike as a planetcould be without being Earth itself. It had a single moon, smaller thanEarth's and somewhat nearer to the planet itself. The _Oriona_ landedthere, and Dave Turnbull took a shuttle ship to Sirius VI, dropping downat the spaceport near Noiberlin, the capital.
It took less than an hour to find that Scholar Duckworth had gone nofarther on his journey to Mendez than Sirius VI. He hadn't cashed in histicket; if he had, they'd have known about it on Earth. But he certainlyhadn't taken a ship toward the Central Stars, either.
Turnbull got himself a hotel room and began checking through theNoiberlin city directory. There it was, big as life and fifteen times assignificant. Rawlings Scientific Corporation.
Turnbull decided he might as well tackle them right off the bat; therewas nothing to be gained by pussyfooting around.
He used the phone, and, after browbeating several of the employees andpulling his position on a couple of executives, he managed to get anappointment with the Assistant Director, Lawrence Drawford. TheDirector, Scholar Jason Rawlings, was not on Sirius VI at the time.
The appointment was scheduled for oh nine hundred the following morning,and Turnbull showed up promptly. He entered through the big main doorand walked to the reception desk.
"Yes?" said the girl at the desk.
"How do you do," Turnbull said. "My name is Turnbull; I think I'mexpected."
"Just a moment." She checked with the information panel on her desk,then said: "Go right on up, Dr. Turnbull. Take Number Four Lift Chute tothe eighteenth floor and turn left. Dr. Drawford's office is at the endof the hall."
Turnbull followed directions.
Drawford was a heavy-set, florid-faced man with an easy smile and arather too hearty voice.
"Come in, Dr. Turnbull; it's a pleasure to meet you. What can I do foryou?" He waved Turnbull to a chair and sat down behind his desk.
Turnbull said carefully: "I'd just like to get a little information, Dr.Drawford."
Drawford selected a cigar from the humidor on his desk and offered oneto Turnbull. "Cigar? No? Well, if I can be of any help to you, I'llcertainly do the best I can." But there was a puzzled look on his faceas he lit his cigar.
"First," said Turnbull, "am I correct in saying that Rawlings Scientificis in charge of the research program at Centaurus City?"
Drawford exhaled a cloud of blue-gray smoke. "Not precisely. We work asa liaison between the Advanced Study Board and the Centaurus group, andwe supply the equipment that's needed for the work there. We buildinstruments to order--that sort of thing. Scholar Rawlings is a memberof the Board, of course, which admits of a somewhat closer liaison thanmight otherwise be possible.
"But I'd hardly say we were in charge of the research. That's handledentirely by the Group leaders at the City itself."
Turnbull lit a cigarette. "What happened to Scholar Duckworth?" he saidsuddenly.
Drawford blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Again Turnbull's intuitive reasoning leaped far ahead of logic; he knewthat Drawford was honestly innocent of any knowle
dge of the whereaboutsof Scholar James Duckworth.
"I was under the impression," Turnbull said easily, "that ScholarDuckworth was engaged in some sort of work with Scholar Rawlings."
Drawford smiled and spread his hands. "Well, now, that may be. Dr.Turnbull. If so, then they're engaged in something that's above mylevel."
"Oh?"
Drawford pursed his lips for a moment, frowning. Then he said: "I mustadmit that I'm not a good intuitive thinker, Dr. Turnbull. I have notthe capacity for it, I suppose. That's why I'm an engineer instead of abasic research man; that's why I'll never get a Scholar's degree." Againhe paused before continuing. "For that reason, Scholar Rawlings leavesthe logic to me and doesn't burden me with his own business. Nominally,he is the head of the Corporation; actually, we
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