Read Online Transvergence by Charles Sheffield - Free Book Online

it. Nenda and I took a look at recent shipping records for spiral arm travel, close to Builder artifacts, to see how many interstellar ships just vanished and never showed up again. We found two hundred and forty of them, all in the past year. Forty-three of them look like real mysteries—no unusual space conditions at time of disappearance, no debris, no distress messages. Here they are."

    He pulled a listing from his pocket and handed it to E.C. Tally, who said at once, "Not much correlation with the earlier tabulations. And scattered all over the spiral arm."

    "Sure. Given a ship, the Zardalu could have gone to a world a long way from the artifact where they first arrived."

    "Except that if they went through many Bose Transitions, they would have been observed." Darya stood up, heard her voice rising, and knew she was doing what she insisted that a scientist should never do: allowing passion and the defense of personal theories to interfere with logical analysis. She sat down sharply. "Perhaps you're right, Hans. But don't you think they have to be within one or two transitions of where they first arrived in the spiral arm?"

    "I'd like to think so. But I still favor our analysis over yours. What you said was reasonable, in a reasonable world, but violence plays a bigger part in the universe than reason—especially when it comes to the Zardalu."

    "And psychology and fixed behavior patterns play a larger part than either." It was Julian Graves, who had so far remained a silent observer. "They are factors which have so far been omitted from consideration, but I am convinced they are central to the solution of our problem."

    "Psychology!" Nenda spat out the word like an oath. "Don't gimme any of that stuff. If you're gonna question our search logic, you better have something a lot better than psychology to support it."

    "Psychology and behavior patterns. What do you think it is that decides what you, or a Zardalu, or any other intelligent being, will do, if it is not psychology? J'merlia and I discussed this problem, after you and Captain Rebka left, and we were able to take our ideas quite a long way. On one point, we agree with you completely: the Zardalu would not be content to stay near an artifact, although they probably arrived there. They would leave quickly, if for no other reason than their own safety. There is too much activity around the artifacts. They would seek a planet, preferably a planet where they would be safe from discovery and able to hide away and breed freely. So where do you think that they would go?"

    Nenda glowered. "Hell, don't ask me. There could be a thousand places—a million."

    "If you ignore psychology, there could be. But put yourself in their position. The Zardalu will do just what you would do. If you wanted to hide away, where would you go?"

    "Me? I'd go to Karelia, or someplace near it. But I'm damned sure the Zardalu wouldn't go there."

    "Of course not. Because they are not Karelians . But the analogy still holds. The Zardalu will do just what you would do—they would try to go home . That means they would head for Genizee, the homeworld of the Zardalu clade."

    "But the location of Genizee has never been determined," Darya protested. "It has been lost since the time of the Great Rising."

    "It has." Graves sighed. "Lost to us . But assuredly not lost to the Zardalu. And although they do not know it, it is the safest of all possible places for them—a world that, in eleven thousand years of searching, none of the vengeful subject races enslaved by the Zardalu has ever succeeded in finding. The ultimate, perfect hiding place."

    "Perfect, except for one little detail," Rebka said. "It's ideal for them , but it's sure as hell not perfect for us . We have to find them! I don't agree with the approach that Darya Lang and Atvar H'sial and Kallik propose, but even if it's wrong it at least tells us what places to look . So does the approach that Louis Nenda and I favor, and I'm