The Tatja Grimm's World by Vinge Vernor Read Free Book Online Page A

the corpses were carried to the other side of the pit. The prisoners were bright people. They’d had plenty of time to try to figure a way out, and no success in doing so. The arrival of Rey’s group brought new hope, even though the rescue had been a failure. For an hour or two, there was renewed scheming. When it became clear that nothing had really changed, the talk gradually
petered out. Many of the prisoners drifted back to inward-looking silence.
    There were exceptions. One thing Rey loved about scientists was their love for speculation. Take Tredi Bekjer, the little guy who spent the hours coughing his lungs out. Tredi was a sickly fellow who should never have been on the Science expedition in the first place. He was an anthropologist, and the only captive who spoke fluent Hurdic. He might be dying, but between spasms of coughing he argued about the origin and future of their captors. He predicted that—no matter what the prisoners’ fate—the ambush had doomed the Termiter culture. Now, outsiders knew there was petroleum nearby. When that news got to the archipelagates, the Termiter Folk would have lots of visitors. Even if the locals were not booted off their land, they would be forced to make big changes. In thirty years, there would be a real city here.
    There were others like Tredi, folks who could walk through the gates of death, still arguing about ideas. When the planning and the scheming was done, these few still had something to talk about. Rey found himself drawn in.
    Janna Kats was the most interesting. Before specializing in Seraphy, she’d had lots of experience with other branches of astronomy. And U Bergenton had the best astronomers in the world—if you excepted the Doo’d’en fanatics on the other side of the world. Kats was just the sort of person he’d been hoping to talk to, back when he thought they’d find the Science in one piece. For minutes at a time Rey could forget where he was, and what his fate must be. Kats had had great plans for the Seraph observatory. There should be good seeing from the mountains
behind the harbor. Ground resolutions better than one hundred yards would have been possible with the twenty-inch mirror. The issue of intelligent life on Seraph might finally be resolved … . Instead, the project had brought them all to this pit.
    Rey grunted. “Other things are happening in astronomy. Things that aren’t so dangerous. There have been some fantastic discoveries at Krirsarque.” He described “Pride of Iron” and the spectroscopic observations it was based on. “Can you imagine! With spectroscopy, we can know what things are like on planets around other stars.” He sat back, waiting for Janna’s reaction to this news. It was one of the occasional pleasures of his job, to be the first person in an entire archipelagate to report a breakthrough.
    Janna grinned back at him, but there was no surprise in her expression. “Ha! That’s one of the results the U Tsanart people sent west with Science . During the last year, they’ve got good spectra on twenty stars in our sun’s class. Every damn one of’em is metal rich. And we have other results too. We can measure radial motions with this spectro stuff—” She laughed at the expression on his face. “You’ve written a lot of high-flown editorials about ‘Spectroscopy, Key to the Universe.’ Well, you may have understated the case. Combine the spectral shift data with proper motion studies, and it’s obvious our solar system is an interloper, just passing through the local star stream.”
    Outcast Star . The title flashed through Rey’s mind. There were writers who could run with that idea—and surely would, if he got out of this alive. “You know, it’s almost as if someone were picking on the human race,” he mused. “Out of all the solar systems, that we should be on the lowmetal one, the outsider.”
He didn’t like the idea. It smacked of the theistic fantasy Cor Ascuasenya so loved: humanity