that they might have been the creation of some satirist, except that the satire lacked any significance. Biochemical destiny, it seemed, had neither a sense of humor nor a didactic purpose.
It wasn’t far to Schumann’s office—Admin was right next to Residential, in the other direction from the lab complexes. Organizers don’t like to have to walk too far to work. His assistant gestured us through with hardly a glance in our direction, but it seemed that she wasn’t really on duty. She’d just been called in for some particular task, and was obviously keen to get away again.
“See,” I murmured to Zeno, “we humans long since ceased to take holidays seriously. That’s why we’re the galaxy’s master race. I bet your lot still take Sundays off.”
He didn’t have time for a reply. We were already in the great man’s presence.
Schumann was going bald, and his beard had long since turned white. It was probably the worry that did it. He didn’t look as if he desperately wanted to be in his office either.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
I gritted my teeth, and waited for the bad news.
“A signal from FTL Earth Spirit came in forty minutes ago,” he went on. “They have clearance from Earth to pick up supplies here. They’re requisitioning food, equipment—and you.”
I just couldn’t take it in. Whatever I’d been ready for, it wasn’t news like this.
Zeno must have been taken by surprise, too. At least, he said nothing. We both waited for Schumann to go on.
“If it’s any consolation to you,” he said, “we’ll be sorry to lose you.”
“Hang on,” I said, finding my voice. “Since when did Sule become a refueling station for starships? And when did we become available for the draft? I don’t really want to be a crewman on the Earth Spirit or any other stardiver.”
The director shrugged his shoulders. “Sit down,” he said. He was never one to dispense with the formalities—he just took a little time to get around to them, on occasion.
We sat down. So did Schumann.
“Earth Spirit checked in with Marsbase the moment she came out of hyperspace,” he said. “She also got on the priority beam to Earth. Jason Harmall—he’s a space agency exec at Marsbase—will be jetting up here to meet her. He’s bringing a woman named Angelina Hesse—does that mean anything to you?”
I glanced at Zeno. “She’s a biologist,” I said. “Physiology—linked to our field. She’s very good.”
“Apparently,” Schumann went on, “she thinks highly of you, too. She named the pair of you as essential personnel. Harmail requested your secondment. A request from Harmall is the closest thing to a royal command I ever face.”
The whole thing had been ticking over in my mind for several minutes by now, and it fell into place at last.
“Jesus Christ!” I said. “They’ve found it! Earth Three!”
“I think,” murmured Zeno, “my friend means Calicos Three.”
Either way, it stacked up the same. We had twelve worlds on the books that boasted so-called Earthlike biology, but only two of them were worlds where human beings—or Calicoi—could walk around in comfort. The rest had no life more complicated than protista, and not enough oxygen to allow a man to breathe. For fifty years we’d been looking for the third world. It looked very much as if I’d hit the jackpot by being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Politically speaking, Earth Three might belong to Jason Harmall (whoever he might be), but biologically, it was going to be mine. And Zeno’s, of course. Not to mention Angelina Hesse...but I was sure there’d be enough to go around.
“I’m not sure that I understand,” said Zeno, in the meantime. “Everyone seems to be acting as though there were some urgency about this matter. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to have the Earth Spirit return to Earth orbit in order to be re-equipped?”
“Earth orbit is a long way away,” said Schumann. “Star Station is on the other side of the sun just now. Earth Spirit has to get back with the minimum possible delay. You aren’t going on any pleasure trip. There’s trouble.”
“How much?” I said. “And what kind?”
The director shook his head. “No information,” he said. “We’ve just been told what to do. She’ll be docking in thirty-six hours. Can you two get your affairs in order by then? Do you have someone who can take over necessary work in progress?”
I shrugged, having virtually lost interest in work in progress. “You must know something,” I said.
“Not about the kind of problems they’ve run into out there,” he said. “All I know is that the HSB that the Earth Spirit homed in on was lit by another ship—the Ariadne.”
“I never heard of an FTL ship called the Ariadne,” I said.
“That,” he said, “is the point. The Ariadne, so the reference tapes assure me, left Earth orbit three hundred and fifty years ago. She went the long way around.”
I’d already had my fill of surprises. My mind could no longer boggle. “Well, well,” I said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “So one of the flying freezers finally thawed out. Plan B worked out after all.”
“I’m sorry,” put in Zeno. “I don’t quite understand.” I looked at Schumann, but he just raised his eyebrows and let me tell it.
“It was long before the golden moment when our two species made the marvelous discovery that they were not alone,” I said. “When we first realized that hyperspace gave us a gateway to the universe but that we couldn’t navigate in it. We lost a number of ships which couldn’t find their way home before hoisting HSB-One. That solved half the problem—but the probes we sent out, jumping at random, kept coming out in the middle of nowhere. We realized for the first time how big space is and how little solar systems are. People got depressed about having the means to dodge the problems of relativity without having any obvious way to make it pay off. Without other HSBs to use as targets, hyperspace was just one big sea of nothing. It dawned on people pretty quickly that the only immediately obvious way to establish a hyperspace route to Alpha Centauri—or even to Pluto—was to transport an HSB on an orthodox ship at sub-light speed. It made the business of opening up the universe a pretty slow and painful one, but it was all we had—and all we have.
“Nowadays, of course, we use robot ships, which we dispatch with clinical regularity from Earth orbit, targeting them at all the G-type stars in the neighborhood. In those days, it wasn’t so obvious that that was the way to play it. We didn’t know then how very few of those stars would have planets with usable habitats—though we might have guessed that the neighborhood wasn’t exactly overpopulated by virtue of the fact that no one else had any HSBs already hoisted. The wise guys of the day decided that if hyperspace was a bust as far as quick access to the universe was concerned, they might as well put some eggs in another basket. The flying freezers were ships carrying a crew, mostly in suspended animation, and passengers—mostly conveniently packaged as fertilized eggs ready to be incubated in artificial wombs. The idea was that they were to travel from star to star, planting beacons but not hanging around. Eventually, it was thought, they’d find a new Earth, and could set about the business
