Read Online Transvergence by Charles Sheffield - Free Book Online Page B

reasons."

    "I will not ask them. I will continue. It seems reasonable to assume that the Zardalu, too, were returned close to the point of their origin, which would place them in the territories of the Zardalu Communion, rather than within the Alliance, Cecropia Federation, or Phemus Circle regions. Let us accept that they arrived close to an artifact in Communion territory. As Professor Lang and others have pointed out, we all arrived close to artifacts. It seems unlikely, however, that the Zardalu would have arrived exactly where they wished to be. So let us also accept the validity of Captain Rebka and Louis Nenda's logic, that the Zardalu would have found it necessary to acquire a ship , and destroy all evidence of such acquisition.

    "Let us agree with Professor Lang, that if such a ship were required to make more than one or two jumps through the Bose Network, that would have been noticed.

    "Finally, let us agree that Genizee, wherever it is, cannot be in a location that is fully explored, and settled, and familiar. Preferably, the location ought to be difficult to reach, or even dangerous. Otherwise, the Zardalu homeworld would have been discovered long ago.

    "Put all this information together, and we are left with a well-defined problem. We want a place satisfying these criteria:

    "One: it should be a planet within the territories of the Zardalu Communion.

    "Two: it should occupy a blank spot on the galactic map, little-explored and preferably hard to reach.

    "Three: it should be within one or two Bose Transitions of a Builder artifact.

    "Four: the only Builder artifacts that need to be considered are ones where an unexplained ship disappearance has taken place since the return of the Zardalu to the spiral arm.

    "That leaves a substantial computational problem, but each of you already performed part of the work. And fortunately, I was designed to tackle just such combinatorial and search problems. Look."

    The lights in the chamber dimmed, and as they did so the figures of the Zardalu simulation vanished from the central display region. In their place was total darkness. Gradually, a faint orange glow filled an irregular three-dimensional volume. Within it twinkled a thousand blue points of light.

    "The region of the Zardalu Communion," E.C. Tally said, "and the Builder artifacts that lie within it. And now, the Bose access nodes."

    A set of yellow lights appeared, scattered among the blue points.

    "Eliminating the artifacts where there were no unexplained ship disappearances"—two-thirds of the blue lights vanished—"and considering only little-explored regions within two Bose Transitions, we find this."

    The single orange region began to shrink and divide, finally leaving a score of isolated glowing islands.

    "These remain as candidate regions for consideration. There are too many. However, the display does not show what I could also compute: the probability associated with each of the remaining regions. When that is included, only one serious contender remains. Here it is. It satisfies all our requirements, at the ninety-eight-percent probability level."

    All but one of the lights blinked out, leaving a shape like a twisted orange hand glowing off to one side of the display.

    "Reference stars!" It was Julian Graves's voice. "Give us reference stars—we need the location."

    A dozen supergiants, the standard beacon stars for the Zardalu Communion portion of the spiral arm, blinked on within the display volume. Darya, trying to orient herself in an unfamiliar stellar region, heard the surprised grunt of Louis Nenda and the hiss of Kallik. They must have been three steps ahead of her.

    "I have the location." E.C. Tally's voice was quiet. "That was no problem. But what the ship's data banks do not contain, surprisingly, is navigational information. I have also not yet found image data of this region. However, it has a name. It is known as—"

    "It's the Torvil Anfract." That was Nenda's flat growl in