THE LONG TRAIL BACK

   "I think I'll be all right now. I'm sorry for that outburst, but thinking too seriously about Martin... Grieving is supposed to do you a lot of good."
   "Grieving?"
   "Yes, Ecnelav, grieving for his loss."
   "His loss? Do you mean that he intends to die on Unias?"
   "Yes. He'll be dead before we reach the wormhole."
   "How do you know? Do Earth people have such predictable ends? Can you all tell with precision how long you'll live? I can see how that can be disconcerting when you reach your allotted time."
   "Not all humans, just we ELBers can tell. We're frozen at our age until the end; when we die, we age by about a year every three days until death comes. Martin became an ELBer at the age of 30; he had lived his 200 or so years of extended life and almost all of his natural life, which is in the 125-150 year range for us. He tried to hide from most people what was happening, but I knew: I'd seen the process begin with a great many people. He told me that he has no family at all on Earth (none of us does, for that matter. We're all orphans, but he doesn't even have distant relatives that he could find a trace of); and he also said that he'd like to spend his last months doing something constructive for our two cultures. The people who have joined him, all ELBers, are all the family he has, along with us here on board and a few back in our part of the galaxy. They will help him finish his life with dignity, and in conformity to his wishes, they will scatter his ashes on Unias."
   "Oh, Christina, how sad you must be!"
   "When I was very young, I used to think that heroism consisted of bold and brave actions and decisions. I still think that. But I have added so many other characteristics to it, from doing your job well every day to accepting courageously the blows that life sends. Martin's life fits every part of my definition."
 
 

   "Ecnelav, I've often wondered why the state of astrophysics is so far behind the other branches of science on Damos."
   "What do you mean, Kwali?"
   "Your medical expertise is almost at the level we've attained. In some ways your knowledge of biology, especially marine biology, beats us out flat. You have done wonders in chemistry, biochemistry, high-energy and particulate physics, a whole parade of advances far beyond your knowledge of the galaxy and the universe. I don't get it."
   "Yes," added Christina, "and your Stratoskipper uses the same basic technology we still use for long-distance transportation on Earth and the other planets."
   "Gosh, how can I answer these questions, or really, that question, in a few words, Christina?"
   "Will a nice tall and cool drink help?" queried Kwali.
   "It would make it refreshingly possible. I especially like that green concoction I had the other day."
   "Ah, the little green drink. One for you, too, Christina?"
   "Yes. And hurry!"
   "Don't let her start without me. I'm all ears."
   "By Oarnn! That's a funny expression for us. Without ears, we don't really have a way of expressing that image. Hmm. This lounge is nice. I've noticed that it's not limited to people of a certain rank. Is that the usual way you humans operate?"
   "I wish it was! In some ways, especially in the military, we remain very class conscious. I've received permission to have mixed lounges for these long trips, just as centuries ago I received permission to experiment with small self-contained units to combat the Militia, units in which we all had a say. Of course, there's a chain of command, a hierarchy, but I wanted to make sure that everyone could take over in an emergency, even at the lowest ranks. And I've always thought that the best way to do that was for everyone to be able to talk to everyone else, without the rigmarole of rank and order. It still works for us, and the idea has finally taken hold in Space Fleet. Only took 300 years; but what's 300 years compared to eternity?"
   "Ha, what an idea. But really, we've been moving in that direction, too. It started, of course, in the civilian sector, such as my lab. We work together as teams rather than as units with a rigid hierarchy. And it's been a success! We wouldn't have discovered Unias otherwise: one of the lab assistants came up with an algorithm that made our computer calculations possible, a bright young woman with a great future."
   Kwali sauntered up and asked, "Ah, have I missed anything?"
   "No, I was just filling Ecnelav in on your background, letting her know how to push your buttons."
   "Push his buttons? I don't know what his buttons are, but I don't want to push them!"
   "Aha! The Commodore caught in a web of her own making. So, you weren't talking about me, and probably weren't getting into the subject of our interest, either."
   "Now, the short answer to your question is, the Schadites. For the long answer, if you want it, I'll have to tell a story."
   "It won't take more that two or three years, will it?"
   "No, Kwali, just an hour or so."
   "Let's go! We're all ears!"

   Clu Catta, after whom our Space Center was named, was an astronomer and mathematician who lived some 400 years ago. Along with a friend, the lensmaker Elleroc Gninroc, Catta had developed pretty powerful telescopes, when you consider the state of the art of that time. Basically, Catta and Gninroc rapidly moved from single lens telescopes to the much more complicated type utilizing mirrors. Of course they worked out details, and they developed a glass so pure, that they reached a magnification level of 100x. Eventually, they found a way to enhance the light, so that it was brighter leaving the telescope than entering it. Gninroc even discovered that they could fix an image on silver-treated paper, which effectively led to a primitive photography.
   With Gninroc's lenses (already responsible for long-distance viewing that made traveling on the oceans less hazardous), Catta began to survey the stars and the constellations that are part of our folklore. He began to realize, in comparing their then-current shapes and positions with the shapes and positions of the old tales, that over time the constellations no longer looked exactly as the ancient Kolok had depicted them, and occurred at different times of the year than the old tales indicated. He suspected that they were not all fixed in place, as traditional teachings would have it. He suspected that maybe the stars that seem to be on the same plane might be separated by unimaginable distances.
   Catta developed several new forms of mathematics, in particular calculus, which he applied to his research. He soon taught that the stars were held in place by what he called the "attractive force"–an idea that revolutionized astronomy.
   He then looked at the star we call Oarnn, and another star called Sehtah. For many decades some astronomers considered these heavenly bodies to be not stars at all, but planets of Chromos, our sun; thanks to new calculations made possible by his discovery of calculus, Catta proved them right. He also perceived several satellites orbiting Oarnn, and soon discovered that Sehtah was actually two planets revolving around each other while revolving around the sun, and noticed that they exercised a small but measurable–and calculable–influence on our tides. He also noted that one of the planets was a little smaller than the other. He kept these discoveries to himself for several years while working out a map of our solar system and while trying to explain the gravitational forces that kept the planets in motion.
   All his calculations, no matter where he started, led to just one conclusion: Chromos had a hidden planet, a counterpart to Damos! This led him to realize that Sehtah, although occupying the second orbit around the sun, was actually the third planet, or rather the third and fourth. He renamed this pair, in his notes, making use of the ancient language of the Kolok, the Larger Third and the Smaller Third, or in your terms, Tertia Major and Tertia Minor.
   Meanwhile, fearful of losing his records in a conflagration, he had taken to copying his journals and calculations, sometimes by hand, sometimes using the photographic system Gninroc had developed. Indeed, he always made a second copy of the telescopic views (that is, he always took a second picture). These copies he put in a dry cave that he visited weekly, near the site of the present Space Center. The originals he kept in his study.
   Catta had become well-known as a teacher and researcher, and was sought after by countless people curious to learn more about our world, and by those looking for some economic advantage to be gathered from his knowledge. Gninroc, thanks to his fabled lenses (and to this day they are marvels of perfection), had become quite rich. Traders in particular were interested in them. Naturalists were able to see animals in their natural habitat from a distance. And the biologist Eiruc had him turn a small but powerful telescope upside down, and invented the microscope, which opened up another world. What an epoch to live in! What a sense of adventure! What an explosion of knowledge!
   Once his calculations proved to be accurate, Catta decided to publish them, albeit privately, in a treatise known as The Universal Attractive Force. It was a sensation! It was soon published by a respected academic press. The greatest doubters found the arguments irresistible. All that was needed to seal the point was to spot the missing planet, which Catta named, again in the ancient language of the Kolok, Unias, meaning the First. He speculated that the universe was immeasurably large, and that beyond our star, beyond the stars we could see, there must be other stars. Many of these stars would have worlds comparable to ours, and perhaps people like us. Naturally, he put a copy of the manuscript of this book, and two printed copies of it, in his secret cave.
   One day, returning home from his weekly trip, he was arrested as he entered the city. His friend Gninroc was already in prison.
   You must know that in those days the religion of Schad was the state religion. Some literal interpreters of the Book of Oarnn saw in Catta's work, abetted by the technical skills of Gnigroc, a blasphemous cosmology that denied the truth of the word of the great prophet. You have heard these words before: Ogatrac made use of the same charges against those who befriended you that the Church Elders of Catta's time used against him in his trial, and cited the same texts. Because Catta had thought of finding beauty beyond our little world, and goodness there, they cited this passage against him:

From beyond the sun come the forces of Evil, from beyond the sun come they. Evil dwells beyond the moon, in the dark firmament dwells she.

By what sign will the Kolok know Oarnn? And he said unto me, "You will know me by the Truth, for I am Truth." And I said, "But I know not Truth, I know but my truth and my neighbor's truth, and her truth is not mine." And he answered, in his voice of thunder, "I am Truth, there is no Truth but me, no Truth but mine! Those who wish to know me must seek Truth in the writings I have inspired in you. I am Truth and Truth is me. Those who know not me know not Truth; those who know not Truth know not me." I saw that we must seek Truth not in the ways and the words of the Kolok but in the ways and the words of Oarnn.

And Oarnn spake unto me, and he said: "I have made you from the reeds of the fields, with reason to think. I have made you a world over which you are to extend your dominion. I have made you a sun to give its warmth to you. I have made you a firmament, so that you might enjoy its beauty. Behold all that surrounds you, all the creatures of the sea, all beings that soar in the heavens above you, all the things you see about you that walk or crawl on the face of Damos; I have made all this for you. From all eternity have I created them, and for you have I created them, that you might know my glory."