Hal Clement - The Foundling Stars.pdf - Hal Clement - margozap

THE FOUNDLING STARS

"All right—perfect. You're the most nearly motionless thing in the universe."

Hoey's words were figurative, of course; whether they were accurate or not depended entirely on

point of view. Rocco Luisi and his Ymyrgar were indeed at rest with respect to Hoey and the

Anfforddus, after more than four hours of maddening effort, but neither machine was motionless with

respect to much else. Both were travelling at about four kilometers a second, roughly galactic northward,

with respect to their home port on Rhyddid, seventy-five parsecs away. They were moving at a much

greater velocity with respect to the far more distant Solar System. With respect to each other, however,

velocity had been whittled down to somewhat less than five centimeters a year.

How long this would last was problematical. An automatic tracker was now on duty in Hoey's ship,

trying to hold steady the fringe pattern produced by combining two ultraviolet laser beams, one

originating in his own vessel and the other in Luisi's, in one of the most precise interferometers ever made.

Since the crafts were about a light-hour apart, however, corrections tended to be late in time and, in spite

of a computer's best efforts, erratic in amount and direction.

"Nineteen decimals" had been a proverbial standard of accuracy for well over a century; but

achieving it on any but the atomic size and time scale was not yet standard art.

"That seems to be it," Hoey repeated. "That means that you and I stay strapped in our seats, with no

more motion than we can help, for the next four hours or so. If either of the instrument platforms on our

ships moves more than half a micron with respect to the other, a lot of time and money go down the

drain."

"I know—I've had it hammered into me as often and as hard as you have." Luisi's voice was

undistorted, and the responses instant, on the medium communicator.

"Sure you have," retorted Hoey, "only a lot of people wonder whether you really believe it."

"Well, it depends on what you mean by believe. I can figure as well as anyone where the center of

mass of my ship would go if I stood up; I—"

"I know you can. Your trouble is that you can't believe it would make as much trouble as they say.

Just remember that they were even concerned about tidal forces from Cinder over there"—he gestured,

rather uselessly, at the grossly misnamed o6e star glaring at them from half a parsec away—"and even

went to the trouble of finding a part of this neighborhood where the wind was steady—

"Right there I break connection. Space is space. You only worry about wind when you're close to a

sun, and then it's only a hard-radiation problem."

"True enough, as a rule. The trouble is that the usual run of stellar winds involves a mass density of

around ten atoms to the cubic centimeter; here it's a couple of thousand. It turned out that even that much

mass wouldn't accelerate the ships seriously unless the relative velocity were very high indeed, but it was

something the planners had to check on. You see what I mean; so stay put. Let's cut the chatter. The

sooner the folks in 'Big Boy' can get to work, the sooner we can breathe comfortably. I'll call 'em."

Hoey's finger tensed on a button, replacing the microscopic crystal in the activity field of his

communicator with another, whose twin was aboard. "Big Boy"—more formally, the Holiad. He spoke

without preamble, knowing that someone would be listening.

'We're in position, and my tracker says we're holding. Get the job going while the going's good."

"Right." The answer was terse, but not casual. The speaker, a heavy-set, middle-aged man with an

almost fanatically intense stare in his blue eyes, leaned forward over the console in front of him and began

punching buttons in an intricate sequence. He paused every second or two to interpret the patterns of

light which winked at him from the board. After half a minute or so the pattern became fixed, and he

leaned back, more relaxed.

"Program A is running." A younger man, seated at a similar console a few yards away, nodded at the

words. At first he did not answer aloud; then he decided to speak, though for several seconds he was

obviously trying to make up his mind what to say. It was easy to make the wrong remark to Elvin Toner.

"D'you think we'll get full time out of it?" he ventured at last. "Those pilots are good, but I still wish it

had been possible to use robotships for the key stations. A man can't hold still forever."

"So do I." Toner answered without obvious irritation, and his eyes remained fixed on his console, to

the younger man's relief. "I also wish," the director went on, "that it were possible to use the medium

communicator system directly for automatic control of such things as distance, so as to get away from

light-lag. But until some genius in your generation works out a way to measure the frequency, wavelength,

and propagation velocity of medium waves—or at least, furnishes some evidence that a wave

phenomenon is involved—we'll have to stick with electromagnetic radiation and, at times, with human

beings. You may not like it, but by the time you reach my age you'll have learned to put up with it."

"I hope not," Ledermann couldn't help replying.

"Eh? Why not?" Toner's eyes almost flicked away from his instruments for a moment, but didn't

quite.

"I mean that if I learn to put up with inconveniences, it'll be because I haven't been able to figure out

anything else to do about them. Who wants to admit that?"

Toner grinned. "Nobody wants to, I suppose, but the honest people do anyway. Hold up; here

comes the end of the first minute; any irregularities on your board?"

"Not so far. I don't know what that proves, though; all we are measuring is what's going into the

generators. We can't touch what's coming out without changing it—"

"Of course." The older man made a gesture of impatience. It's some relief, though, to know that

things are going in right. I don't know about you, Dick, but Program A is going to be the second longest

couple of hours in my life."

"I know," replied Ledermann. It was the first time Toner had ever been so frank about his

feelings—even though they were usually quite obvious from other evidence—and certainly the first time

the assistant had felt much real sympathy for the director. Since the younger man was not a fast thinker,

the remark left him once more unsure of what to say.

As a matter of fact, there was probably nothing to say which would have been just right. Toner, like

most middle-aged men, had developed a pretty firm personal philosophy and a rather rigid set of

fundamental beliefs. The present experiment involved very heavily one of those beliefs—one which

Ledermann did not share.

Although, the assistant thought as he glanced through one of the Holiad's great view ports, this was a

place where it was hard to feel sure and right about anything fundamental.

Space was not dark, though the nebular material which abounds in the Orion spur of the Milky Way

system is never very bright even when no planetary atmosphere dims it. Getting closer to an extended

light source, of course, doesn't make each square degree look any brighter; it merely increases the

number of square degrees. From the Holiad's position, most of the sky is nebula-bright; and to a

spaceman, anything resembling a cloud looks wrong in space. In some directions the stars blaze steadily,

as they do from Earth's moon; other directions are blacked out by light-years of dust. Some of the dust

itself is bright, for 41 Orionis, named "Cinder" by some humorist who had explored the region earlier, is

only half a parsec away. Not only does its fierce ultraviolet radiation keep the nebular gases fluorescing,

but its visible is quite enough to light up the dust for immense distances. Not counting its emission

envelope, Cinder is only about five times the diameter of Sol, which means that it looks like a point from

half a parsec away; but that point illuminated the Holiad almost as effectively as the full moon illuminates

the earth. Several other O and B stars flame in the neighborhood; some look brighter than Venus as seen

from Earth, some reveal themselves only by illuminating the surrounding dust clouds, some are invisible in

the nebulosity. The Orion Spur is one of the cradles of the galaxy.

Unfortunately, the occupants of the cradle are foundlings. The general circumstances surrounding a

star's birth are now fairly clear; ships prowling the cloudier regions of the spiral arms have found them in

all stages of gestation, from gas and dust clouds half a light-year across and little denser than the

interstellar background, through T Tauri variables hot enough to radiate visibly, to the vast population of

main-sequence suns whose hydrogen fires are safely alight. Like foundlings, while an entire birth has

never been observed in any one case, we know enough to picture the circumstances with some

confidence.

Also like foundlings, however, the precise details of a star's conception are somewhat obscure. It has

been widely supposed for several decades that random variations in the density of the interstellar medium

are the key factor—that the law of chance is the father. Dick Ledermann, young and conservative, had

no trouble accepting this view. To him, it was obvious that the random "winds" of space must at times

produce a gas concentration so dense that its gravity would override the disruptive tidal force of the rest

of the galaxy—override it enough to produce a local potential well able to trap at least the lower energy

particles of the cloud.

Elvin Toner, nearly twenty years older, had strong reservations about the potency of unaided

statistics. Like anyone with even a modest grounding in physical science, he realized the basically

statistical nature of many of the universe's laws; he admitted that a star could come into existence by the

concatenations of chance which most people took for granted; but he doubted seriously that the random

motions of interstellar gas could set up the appropriate conditions often enough to account for the number

of observed stars, even allowing for the fairly impressive lifetime of a star. He felt sure—it was as much

an article of faith as the normal scientific belief that there is a natural reason for everything—that some

specific, widespread, underlying process was operating to improve the chance of protostar formation.

He was able to prove that some such process was needed to account for the observed star density.

Ledermann was able to prove that it was not. Both "proofs" were statistical, using the same "laws" of

chance. They differed, of course, in the basic conditions which were assumed. Both sets of conditions

were reasonable; the two hypotheses continued to survive because neither could be checked adequately.

Elvin Toner had spent thirty years acquiring a professional reputation impressive enough to interest a

sufficiently wealthy foundation in doing the checking. And now he had the chance.

It had taken wealth—or its equivalent—and a vast amount of human effort.

The basic check required detailed measurements of the positions, velocities and accelerations of all

the particles, as exactly as Heisenberg allowed and as nearly simultaneously as possible, along a range of

more than five astronomical units. Since electromagnetic energy had to be used, this meant that the best

part of two hours would be needed merely to set up the web of standing waves which was to serve as

the "framework" of the battery of measuring instruments, which were themselves force fields.

The basic design, of the experiment was standard—even unimaginative. After setting up the wave

pattern, a period would be spent measuring the initial vector quantities of the particles along the range.

Fundamentally, the measuring process would be practically instantaneous, but scanning and recording

would use up an hour as the chain of reading impulses travelled from the Ymyrgar along the wave web to

the Anfforddus, from which the readings would be transferred by medium crystal to the mother ship.

This was "Program A" which was now in progress. Electromagnetic waves of almost five hundred

different frequencies, ranging from the blue part of the visible spectrum to the output of a huge

electromagnet fed by an alternating current source with a three-hundred-second period, were

propagating away from the Ymyrgar, groping their way through the not-quite-empty billion kilometers or

so which separated the little tender from her sister. Some of the frequencies had been selected for their

ability to interact with the atoms and ions known to occupy the space, some for the fact that they would

not. Some would be absorbed and analyzed by the apparatus aboard the Anfforddus, some would be

reflected back toward their source to create the standing-wave patterns needed for Program B. All

would represent a waste of energy if the two tiny ships changed their relative positions by one part in ten

billion billion.

Lights on the control consoles aboard the Holiad recorded the behavior, microsecond by

microsecond, of each separate frequency generator; but the one which Toner never let out of his sight

was that which kept track of the interferometer on the Anfforddus. This 'light shone yellow as long as the

original pattern of fringes remained unchanged; a one-fringe shift one way would carry it into the red; a

similar change in the other would turn it violet. So far, while there had been at times a suspicion of green

or orange in its tint, it had held within the English language limits of yellow.

"I think you can relax a little," remarked Ledermann. "All the general run of disturbances should have

had their licks by now; A has been cooking for over half an hour. Unless Hoey or Luisi has a fit, their

ships can hardly move enough to make trouble."

"They both had EEG checks before they were hired." Toner was not joining in any levity, yet. "I'm

not worried about that possibility."

"Then why not take it easy? Surely you're not worrying about a meteor."

"Well—comet nuclei are found pretty far from suns, but I really wasn't thinking of anything specific.

It's just that so little need go wrong to wreck the whole works. Program A isn't so bad, in spite of the

precision we need; but when B gets going it will really mean something. I can't keep my mind off that."

Ledermann nodded. Program B was the experiment itself—the check on the Toner hypothesis. In

assuming that non-statistical forces existed which tended to start interstellar matter drawing together into

protostars, the astronomer had not fallen back on mysticism. He had computed many combinations of

electric and magnetic fields which should have such an effect, and which might reasonably—or at least

conceivably—exist along the arms of the Milky Way. The wave patterns of Program B had been

designed from these computations. Naturally, phenomena as complex as, say, the human nervous system

or even the circuitry of a television set or the measuring patterns of Program A would be no improvement

on pure chance as an explanation for star formation; such things were too improbable by any standards.

Toner's fields were simple enough so that, in his opinion, they were more probable than random gas and

dust concentrations. They were also complex and extensive enough so that looking around for examples

of them already in existence seemed impractical—so far. Of course, if Program B showed that such fields

would, or could, produce the results Toner expected, he would have little trouble financing such a

search.

If the program failed to give the results Toner hoped for, Ledermann was both unsure and uneasy

about what to expect. Few men can abandon a favorite hypothesis abruptly and completely, and the

need to do so can have painful effects.

Actually, Toner would not be forced to such an extreme at first; many more variations on the original

theme would have to fail before the whole idea would have to be abandoned. What bothered Ledermann

was the doubt that the foundation would go along with any such extension of the project and how Toner

would react if it refused.

Actually he needn't have worried. The director was philosophical enough to take such a problem in

his stride. Since the younger man had no way of knowing this, he watched his console with even more

anxiety than his director—in spite of what they had both been saying.

But the green lights stared unwinkingly back at them, as the waves spread across space. No news,

with the proverbial implication. The clock was the only instrument which showed change; the clock, that

is, and two human nervous systems.

"Stuff coming in from Hoey's receivers," Ledermann reported abruptly. Toner nodded.

"On time," was his only answer. Neither bothered to ask, or to say, what sort of stuff was coming in;

the data was no more meaningful to human senses than were the photons which carried the first Mariner

pictures from Mars. The main thing was that news was coming in; it was being recorded; it could, in due

time, be decoded; and—Program B was due to start.

Both men sat up a little straighter and stared more tensely at their consoles as the light patterns began

to change.

Simultaneously—the word was as nearly truthful as it had ever been in human history—sets of

electromagnetic fields began to grow around both the Ymyrgar and the Anffordclus.

Neither set was complete by itself, but this interference would produce something which Ledermann

thought of as a huge lens . The analogy was a poor one geometrically, but has some excuse from a

functional viewpoint. Drifting slowly with respect to the surrounding gases, many of whose atoms were

ionized, it should —if Toner was right—tend to deflect their relative motions toward its own "optical

axis." To that extent, Toner's idea was a. simple one. The precise pattern of fields which should have the

desired effect was somewhat less so, as any engineer who has been involved with an electron

microscope would expect.

Each lens" of the series making up the program was to be followed by a set of reading patterns

similar to those of Program A, so that its individual effect on the motion of the nebular particles could be

measured. In principle, the whole thing was easy ...

"Intervals seem to be right." Ledermann dredged a little good news out of his light pattern. "Four

seconds, plus or minus ten to the minus tenth. Interlens distances are within tolerance, I'd say."

"If we haven't been too grossly off in computing the refractive index of the nebula—"

"Which is handled automatically by the original A measures, as I understood the plan. Calm down,

boss."

"All right. You're talking a little louder than usual yourself. I still wish you'd invent a method for using

the communicator medium for direct viewing; we could see whether these things are building right, instead

of having to infer from generator behavior—"

"Maybe we could. I'm a conservative; I still buy the Uncertainty Principle. Even if we could do

anything with the medium which would make it react to something besides a communicator crystal, I bet

it would affect the thing we were trying to measure."

"It doesn't affect the crystals—just the space around them."

"Not measurably. Has anyone tried to check on them, to within fifteen figures of what we're doing

now?"

"Not as far as I know. I—Dick! What happened then?"

Ledermann didn't know either. At least, he didn't know in the sense that Toner wanted to. Like the

director, he had seen every light on his console except the one indicating tender separation turn a solemn

red for a full second, and then switch back to green. If they had been looking away for that second, the

men would not have known that anything had ever been wrong; after the event, the lights stared back at

them, apparently unchanged.

The first thought to occur to both men was that something had happened to the console circuits; the

second, that something had happened to their own nervous systems. Three seconds of checking with test

switches seemed to dispose of the first possibility; and since they had both seen the same thing, the

second was very low on the probability list.

Toner frowned, and spoke very slowly.

"If that is to be taken at face value, everything in both tenders which was putting out program

radiation stopped for about a second and then started up again—all together. That would cause a gap of

about three hundred thousand kilometers in the wave pattern—at each end—with the gaps due to meet

in half an hour; let's see—what would that do to the lenses?"

"If you can work that out in your head, especially with only estimated time data, you didn't need to

set up this experiment at all. You must have put the universe together in the first place," retorted

Ledermann. "There's no more chance of telling that than of telling which of my next half million coin tosses

is going to be heads."

"True." For a man whose work was taking such a blow, Toner seemed remarkably detached. "That

would suggest that we should cut off our generators, let the present set of patterns radiate out of the area,

and start over."

"We'd have to do more than that. The gas in the area has probably been affected by the part of B

which has already gone out. We'd have to move the tenders to a different area altogether and set up the

whole works again. Wouldn't it be better to let this program run itself through? We don't really know that

the generators did stop; test circuits or no test circuits, I find it easier to believe that something messed up

the indicators than that the whole set of generators went out and came back on again at once. If we let

things run, the worst that can happen will be the loss of a couple of hours—and we might not have to

start over, if this run is really all right."

"You're partly right. Letting it run won't cost us much time. But we will have to do it over anyway; we

won't be able to tell if the first run was really okay until we get the data reduced, which we can't do here.

We'll just have to do the whole thing twice."

Hal Clement - The Foundling Stars.pdf

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