Poul Anderson - Explorations

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NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen

property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor

the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious,

and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

EXPLORATIONS

Acknowledgments: The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

Publications, Inc.

Inc.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24th Street

New York, N.Y. 10010

Cover art by Vincent Di Fate

ISBN: 0-812-51536-6

First printing: November 1981

Printed in the United States of America

098765432

TABLE OF CONTENTS

/. The Saturn Game.................. 12

ii. The Bitter Bread.................. 82

Hi, The Ways of Love................. 117

iv. The Voortrekkers................. 148

v. Epilogue......................... 176

vi. Starfog.......................... 241

Introduction to

EXPLORATIONS

by Poul Anderson

When Jim Baen and I were first discussing this book, what should go into it, he suggested that the

motif and title be "The Ways of Love." I felt this was too limited a theme, and we settled on

"Explorations." Each story deals with some aspect of humanity's future movement into the cosmos,

which we both hope so much will come to pass. Then Jim noticed, to our mutual surprise, that each

is also a love story anyway.

On second thought, perhaps this is no coincidence. The Greeks distinguished three emotions which

English lumps together as "love." Yet are the three kinds really unrelated? Might not sexual love

(eros), love for God (agape), and every other sort of affection (phile, from which we get such

words as ' 'philosophy'' and * 'philanthropy") spring from a common source, or even be different

faces of the same mystery?

How shall we think of that emotion which drives human beings to explore?

Romanticists to the contrary, it is not universal in our species. At least, in many people it is

subordinate to other desires. They are apt to resent public attention given to anything except the

objects of their own yearnings. Explorers, including scientists of every description, are usually

more tolerant, though this may be a matter of necessity rather than temperament.

8 EXPLORATIONS

After all, they are forever a minority, striving to get a small share of society's resources in

support of their undertakings; they must compromise. Demagogues, whose claims can be unlimited,

are always free to denounce them.

A case very much in point is that of the American space program. We have been told it is useless,

an extravagance we can no longer afford—at any rate, until that day when the politicians have

collected enough taxes, enacted enough laws, and established enough bureaucracies to abolish

poverty, disease, inequality, war, crime, pollution, inflation, urban sprawl, and wrong thinking.

We have also been told that the public no longer cares, that space no longer has a constituency.

Both these assertions are false.

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If we put rhetoric aside for a moment and look at a few facts, it is evident that, though the

space program has had it share of human inefficiencies and absurdities, it has never been a losing

proposition. It has, rather, already repaid the modest investment in it, and returned a huge

profit as well.

Modest? Of course. The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—for all of its

varied activities—peaked at about the time of Apollo 11. Yet even in those palmy days it got less

than 8 percent of the amount that the federal government spent on health, education, and welfare

(a figure which takes no account of state and municipal undertakings or of private charities). It

would be unkind to compare the actual accomplishments, but at least we can deny that NASA has ever

taken bread out of the mouths of the poor.

INTRODUCTION 9

Profit? Certainly. The revolution in meteorology alone, brought about by weather satellites,

proves that claim. The lives saved because hurricanes can be accurately predicted offer a

spectacular example. However, precise forecasts as a routine matter, year after year, are the open-

ended payoff, especially for agriculture and transportation, and thus for mankind. Or think of

communications. Never mind if many television shows strike you as inane; never mind, even,

educational uses in primitive areas which could not otherwise be reached—the fact is that

transmission over great distances was bound to come and that relaying through space is cheaper

than relaying across the surface. Cash economies are mere shorthand for labor set free and natural

resources conserved. -

Landsats and seasats give us information by which we can make better use of those resources: for

example, by identifying plant disease in remote areas, while it is still readily treatable. By

examining the cosmic environment of our planet and comparing it with its neighbors, we have come

to a better understanding of it: for example, studies of the chemistry of the atmosphere of Venus

gave us our first clue to the menace that fluorocarbons were posing to our own ozone layer. Not

much further off is a real comprehension of geophysics. The practical, humane applications of such

knowledge are obvious: for example, earthquake predictions, perhaps eventual earthquake

prevention. Meanwhile, astrophysics has long been a key to the full description and hence control

of matter and energy; and the best place for that research is above the air. We can also expect

deeper insights into how life works. Early biological experiments

EXPLORATIONS

in space have indicated how little we know today, how badly we need to carry on studies under

conditions found nowhere else. A golden age of medicine and food production may well be a

result.

, But, some say, can't we save money by doing this with unmanned probes, vehicles, robots,

devices?

Machines are invaluable aids. Still, could they have had and shared the direct experiences of a

Cook, Stanley, Lyell, Darwin, Boas, or, more recently, Cousteau, Leakey, Goodall? A human being is

the only computer that continuously reprograms itself, the only sensor system that records data it

is not planned to detect, the only thing that gives a damn.

Six fleeting visits to a single barren globe scarcely constitute exploration. If we stop now, it

will be as if European mariners had stopped when Columbus reported his failure to reach

India—which he never actually did, because he never knew how much more grand his discovery was.

What he found brought legions overseas. What the astronauts have found in the tiny time granted

them is astonishingly great: not material wealth, but the stuff of knowledge, whence all else

arises. Shall we end the enterprise at its very

beginning?

I have emphasized knowledge, that being the one absolutely certain gain. However, a permanent

human presence in space should also yield nearly unlimited economic returns. As solar collectors

achieve their full potential out yonder, we should have all the energy we can ever use, free,

clean, inexhaustible. We should have abundant raw materials, no longer taken out of

INTRODUCTION

the hide of Mother Earth. We should have industries moving to locations where they cannot harm

her, and entire new industries coming into existence. We should become able to abolish poverty, if

not the other ills that our race keeps visiting upon itself, and abolish poverty not only in

America but throughout the world. What this would mean to the spirit is incalculable.

As for the falsehood that the public has lost interest, the popularity of science fiction suffices

to disprove that. We have, besides, the many thousands who undergo expense and discomfort to watch

space events in person, the many millions who breathlessly follow every one on television and in

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the newspapers. We have a large and growing volume of mail to Washington, urging a revitalized

program. (It would help mightily if you would send such letters, brief and respectful, to your

national legislators and the President.) Oh, yes, the people care.

And so we return to the theme with which we began, love and its indivisibility. Maybe the reason

why some cannot imagine what we have to gain beyond Earth is that they have not let heaven touch

their hearts.

I say to them, "Go out, the next clear night. Look up."

THE SATURN GAME

If we would understand what happened, which is vital if we would avoid repeated and worse

tragedies in the future, we must begin by dismissing all accusations. Nobody was

negligent; no action was foolish. For who could have predicted the eventuality,

or recognized its nature, until too late? Rather should we appreciate the spirit

with which those people struggled against disaster, inward and outward, after they knew. The fact

is that thresholds exist throughout reality, and that things on their far sides are altogether

different from things on their hither sides. The Chronos crossed more than an abyss, it crossed a

threshold of human experience. —Francis L. Minamoto, Death Under Saturn: A Dissenting View (Apollo

University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057)

"The City of Ice is now on my horizon," Kendrick says. Its towers gleam blue. "My griffin spreads

his wings to glide." Wind whistles among those great, rainbow-shimmering pinions. His cloak blows

back from his shoulders; the air strikes through his ring-mail and sheathes him in cold. "I lean

over and peer after you." The spear in his left hand counterbalances him. Its head flickers palely

with the moonlight that Wayland Smith

THE SATURN GAME

hammered into the steel.

"Yes, I see the griffin," Ricia tells him, "high and far, like a comet above the courtyard walls.

I run out from under the portico for a better look. A guard tries to stop me, grabs my sleeve, but

I tear the spider-silk apart and dash forth into the open." The elven castle wavers as if its

sculptured ice were turning to smoke. Passionately, she cries, "Is it in truth you, my darling?"

"Hold, there!" warns Alvarlan from his cave of arcana ten thousand leagues away. "I send your mind

the message that if the King suspects this is Sir Kendrick of the Isles, he will raise a dragon

against him, or spirit you off beyond-any chance of rescue. Go back. Princess of Maranoa. Pretend

you decide that it is only an eagle. I will cast a belief-spell on your words."

"I stay far aloft," Kendrick says. "Save he use a scrying stone, the Elf King will not be aware

this beast has a rider. From here I'll spy out city and castle." And then—? He knows not. He knows

simply that he must set her free or die in the quest. How long will it take him, how many more

nights will she lie in the King's embrace?

"I thought you were supposed to spy out lapetus," Mark Danzig interrupted.

His dry tone startled the three others into alertness. Jean Broberg flushed with embarrassment,

Col in Scobie with irritation; Luis Garcilaso shrugged, grinned, and turned his gaze to the pilot

console before which he sat harnessed. For a moment silence filled the cabin, and shadows, and

radiance from the universe.

To help observation, all tights were out except a few dim glows at instruments. The sunward ports

were lidded. Elsewhere thronged stars, so many and so brilliant that they well-nigh drowned the

blackness which held them. The Milky Way was a torrent of silver. One port framed Saturn at half

EXPLORATIONS

phase, dayside pale gold and rich bands amidst the jewelry of its rings, nightside wanly ashimmer

with starlight and moonlight upon clouds, as big to the sight as Earth over Luna.

Forward was lapetus. The spacecraft rotated while orbiting the moon, to maintain a steady optical

field. It had crossed the dawn line, presently at the middle of the inward-facing hemisphere. Thus

it had left bare, crater-pocked land behind it in the dark, and was passing above sunlit glacier

country. Whiteness dazzled, glittered in sparks and shards of color, reached fantastic shapes

heavenward; cirques, crevasses, caverns brimmed with blue.

"I'm sorry," Jean Broberg whispered._"It's too beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and... almost

like the place where our game had brought us— Took us by surprise—"

"Huh!" Mark Danzig said. "You had a pretty good idea of what to expect, therefore you made your

play go in the direction of something that resembled it. Don't tell me any different. I've watched

these acts for eight years."

Colin Scobie made a savage gesture. Spin and gravity were too slight to give noticeable weight.

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His movement sent him through the air, across the crowded cabin, until he checked himself by a

handhold just short of the chemist. "Are you calling Jean a liar?" he growled.

Most times he was cheerful, in a bluff fashion. Perhaps because of that, he suddenly appeared

menacing. He was a big, sandy-haired man in his mid-thirties; a coverall did not disguise the

muscles beneath, and the scowl on his face brought forth its ruggedness, "Please!" Broberg

exclaimed. "Not a quarrel,

Colin."

The geologist glanced back at her. She was slender and fine-featured. At her age of forty-two,

THE SATURN CAME

despite longevity treatment, the reddish-brown hair that fell to her shoulders was becoming

streaked with white, and lines were engraved around large gray eyes. "Mark is right," she sighed.

"We're here to do science, not daydream." She reached forth to touch Scobie's arm, smiled shyly.

"You're still full of your Kendrick persona, aren't you? Gallant, protective—" She stopped. Her

voice had quickened with more than a hint of Ricia. She covered her lips and flushed again. A tear

broke free and sparkled off on air currents. She forced a laugh. "But I'm just physicist Broberg,

wife of astronomer Tom, mother of Johnnie and Billy."

Her glance went Saturnward, as if seeking the ship where her family waited. She might have spied

it, too, as a star that moved among stars, by the solar sail. However, that was now furled, and

naked vision could not find even such huge hulls as Chronos possessed, across millions of

kilometers.

Luis Garcilaso asked from his pilot's chair: "What harm if we carry on our little commedia dell'

arte?" His Arizona drawl soothed the ear. "We won't be landin' for a while yet, and everything's

on automatic till then." He was small, swart, deft, still in his twenties.

Danzig twisted the leather of his countenance into a frown. At sixty, thanks to his habits as well

as to longevity, he kept springiness in a lank frame; he could joke about wrinkles and encroaching

baldness. In this hour, he set humor aside.

"Do you mean you don't know what's the matter?" His beak of a nose pecked at a scanner screen

which magnified the moonscope. "Almighty God! That's a new world we're about to touch down

on—tiny, but a world, and strange in ways we can't guess. Nothing's been here before us except one

unmanned flyby and one unmanned

EXPLORATIONS

lander that soon quit sending. We can't rely on meters and cameras alone. We've got to use our

eyes and brains." He addressed Scobie. "You should realize that in your bones, Colin, if nobody

else aboard does. You've worked on Luna as well as Earth. In spite of all the settlements, in

spite of all the study that's been done, did you never hit any nasty surprises?"

The burly man had recovered his temper. Into his own voice came a softness that recalled the

serenity of the Idaho mountains whence he hailed. "True," he admitted. "There's no such thing as

having too much information when you're off Earth, or enough information, for that matter," He

paused. "Nevertheless, timidity can be as dangerous as rashness—not that you're timid, Mark," he

added in haste. "Why, you and Rachel could've been in a nice O'Neill on a nice pension—"

Danzig relaxed and smiled. "This was a challenge, if I may sound pompous. Just the same, we want

to get home when we're finished here. We should be in time for the Bar Mitzvah of a great-grandson

or two. Which requires staying alive."

"My point is, if you let yourself get buffaloed, you may end up in a worse bind than—Oh, never

mind. You're probably right, and we should not have begun fantasizing. The spectacle sort of

grabbed us. It won't happen again."

Yet when Scobie's eyes looked anew on the glacier, they had not quite the dispassion of a

scientist . in them. Nor did Broberg's or Garcilaso's. Danzig slammed fist into palm. "The game,

the damned childish game," he muttered, too low for his companions to hear. "Was nothing saner

possible for them?"

THE SATURN GAME

Was nothing saner possible for them? Perhaps not.

If we are to answer the question, we should first review some history. When early industrial

operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin, then greater

knowledge of sister planets, prior to their development, became a clear necessity. The effort must

start with Mars, the least hostile. No natural law forbade sending small manned spacecraft yonder.

What did was the absurdity of as much fuel, time, and effort as were required, in order that three

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or four persons might spend a few days in a single locality.

Construction of the J. Peter Vajk took longer and cost more, but paid off when it, virtually a

colony, spread its immense solar sail and took a thousand people to their goal in half a year and

in comparative comfort. The payoff grew overwhelming when they, from orbit, launched Earthward the

bene-ficiated minerals of Phobos that they did not need for their own purposes. Those purposes, of

course, turned on the truly thorough, long-term study of Mars, and included landings of auxiliary

craft, for ever lengthier stays, all over the surface.

Sufficient to remind you of this much; no need to detail the triumphs of the same basic concept

throughout the inner Solar System, as far as Jupiter. The tragedy of the Vladimir became a reason

to try again for Mercury . .. and, in a left-handed, political way, pushed the Britannic-American

consortium into its Chronos project.

They named the ship better than they knew. Sailing time to Saturn was eight years.

Not only the scientists must be healthy, lively-

EXPLORAT/ONS

minded people. Crewfolk, technicians, medics, constables, teachers, clergy, entertainers, every

element of an entire community must be. Each must command more than a single skill, for emergency

backup, and keep those skills alive by regular, tedious rehearsal. The environment was limited and

austere; communication with home was soon a matter of beamcasts; cosmopolitans found themselves in

what amounted to an isolated village. What were they to do?

Assigned tasks. Civic projects, especially work on improving the interior of the vessel. Research,

or writing a book, or the study of a subject, or sports, or hobby clubs, or service and handicraft

enterprises, or more private interactions, or— There was a wide choice of television tapes, but

Central Control made sets usable for only three hours in twenty-four. You dared not get into the

habit of passivity.

Individuals grumbled, squabbled, formed and dissolved cliques, formed and dissolved marriages or

less explicit relationships, begot and raised occasional children, worshipped, mocked, learned,

yearned, and for the most part found reasonable satisfaction in life. But for some, including a

large proportion of the gifted, what made the difference between this and misery was

their psychodramas.

— Minamoto

Dawn crept past the ice, out onto the rock. It was a light both dim and harsh, yet sufficient to

give Garcilaso the last data he wanted for descent.

The hiss of the motor died away, a thump shivered through the hull, landing jacks leveled it,

stillness fell. The crew did not speak for a while. They were staring out at lapetus.

Immediately around them was desolation like that which reigns in much of the Solar System. A

THE SATURN GAME

darkling plain curved visibly away to a horizon that, at man-height, was a bare three kilometers

distant; higher up in the cabin, you saw farther, but that only sharpened the sense of being on a

minute ball awhirl among the stars. The ground was thinly covered with cosmic dust and gravel;

here and there a minor crater or an upthrust mass lifted out of the regolith to cast long, knife-

edged, utterly black shadows. Light reflections lessened the number of visible stars, turning

heaven into a bowlful of night. Halfway between the zenith and the south, half-Saturn and its

rings made the vista beautiful.

Likewise did the glacier—or the glaciers? Nobody was sure. The sole knowledge was that, seen from

afar, lapetus gleamed bright at the western end of its orbit and grew dull at the eastern end,

because one side was covered with whitish material while the other side was not; the dividing line

passed nearly beneath the planet which it eternally faced. The probes from Chronos had reported

the layer was thick, with puzzling spectra that varied from place to place, and little more about

it.

In this hour, four humans gazed across pitted emptiness and saw wonder rear over the world-rim.

From north to south went ramparts, battlements, spires, depths, peaks, cliffs, their shapes and

shadings an infinity of fantasies. On the right Saturn cast soft amber, but that was nearly lost

in the glare from the east, where a sun dwarfed almost to stellar size nonetheless blazed too

fierce to look at, just above the summit. There the silvery sheen exploded in brilliance, diamond-

glitter of shattered light, chill blues and greens; dazzled to tears, eyes saw the vision glimmer

and waver, as if it bordered on dreamland, or on Faerie. But despite all delicate intricacies,

underneath was a sense of chill and of brutal mass; here dwelt also

EXPLORATIONS

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