Nigel wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. Still, something tugged at him. “What kind of plasma?”
“There aren’t any heavy ions, no protons to speak of. It’s all electrons and their antiparticles.”
“Positrons,” Nigel said.
“Right, positrons. The electrons interact with the positrons in some fashion and make the radio emission. We—”
“And at galactic center?” Nigel persisted.
The astronomer blinked. “Well, yeah … There was report a while back. … A detection of positrons at the galactic center.” His voice caught and then a wondering enthusiasm crept into it. Nigel watched the man’s face fill with a wan yet growing delight. “Positrons. If they slow down, meet electrons, the two annihilate. Give off gamma rays. A gamma-ray telescope Earthside, Jacobson’s group I think it was, saw the annihilation line.”
Nigel felt a slow, gathering certainty. “Those blue dots …”
Nikka said softly, “The Watcher keeps track of where positrons appeared naturally in the galaxy.”
The fact sank into them. The Watcher’s main job was to stamp out organic life, that was clear. But something had told the ancient craft to notice pulsars and the positron plasmas they spewed out into the galaxy. A phenomenon that occurred also at galactic center—but on a hugely larger scale, apparently, judging by the large blue zone at the very hub of the rotating swirl.
The astronomer said, puzzled, “But there can’t be so many pulsars at the center of the galaxy …”
“Still, there is that blue globe,” Nigel said.
Something was happening at galactic center. Something important.
And the machine civilization thought it was vital, perhaps as important as the obliteration of the organic yeast they so hated.
Nigel said softly, with a gathering certainty, “If we are ever to deal with these things, with their Watchers and Snarks and the whole damn mechanical zoo of them … we’ve got to confront them.”
Nikka saw what he meant. “But—Earth! We can return now. There is so much to be done.”
He shook his head. Looking around the room, with its myriad sliding sheets of alien thought and strange design, he watched the luminescence play upon the haggard faces.
Faces pursued by a voracious and unyielding intelligence. Faces lined and worn by the silent anxiety they all felt, just being here.
The Watcher would give them no rest. They had to get out. Move on.
But not simply run back home. Earth was no haven. There was no blithe sanctuary now. Not anywhere in the whole swarming galaxy.
“No. We’ve got the means. That little ship we found. It must be a fast craft. I’ll bet it came here and supervised the building of this Watcher.”
“Nigel …” Nikka began a protest, then stopped.
“That ship still works. It could go back. Back where it came from. Where we must go.”
They began to murmur and protest.
A small band of humans, their incessant crosstalk rebounding from the alien surfaces. Nigel smiled.
Their dreams lay Earthward. They would have to be convinced.
le’s all slide out of here one of these nights
But he knew he could convince them. The rest of humanity was reeling under war and a vast, brute yoke. If this small knot did not seize this opportunity, humanity would dwell forever in the dimness of ignorance. Victims. Prey.
and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns
There was no turning back now. Maybe there never had been any possibility of turning away from what lay out here. He had felt it for a long time, since the first vague pricklings of understanding at the sunny, long lost Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Odd, he felt almost nostalgic for the place now.
Now that he knew he would certainly never see it again.
For there was always the opening-out, and it would always win.
over in the territory
He pointed at the somber, revolving disk of countless fevered stars. Unfathomable messages glided across quilted surfaces.
and I says all right, that suits me
“Let’s go,” he said, and pointed at the galactic center.
Timeline of Galactic Series
2019 A.D Nigel Walmsley encounters the Snark, a mechanical scout.
2024 Ancient alien starship found wrecked in Marginis crater, on Earth’s moon.
2041 First signal received at Earth from Ra.
2049 First near-light-speed interstellar probes.
