There was an awkward silence. Lee got up from his seat and walked
around the desk. He pulled up another chair and sat beside Elaine.
"Now, what's the trouble?"
"I've been thinking," she said slowly. "I ... I've decided to transfer
off Titan."
"Leave? But why?"
"For us, Sid. For both of us. Before we get so wrapped up in each other
that we won't be able to break it up without really getting hurt...."
"I don't understand," he said.
She spoke calmly and softly, no tears, no hysterics. She had thought it
all out very carefully. "Sid, take a look around you. We're like two
castaways on a desert world. We love each other--here and now. But we
won't always be here. What happens when we leave Titan? What happens
when we're not faced with the loneliness and that ... that _thing_ out
there? Suppose we find that we don't really need each other? What then?"
"But I do need you, Elaine. I love you."
"You do now," she answered. "But how long will it last? Sid, I have to
get away, at least for a little while. I need a sense of perspective."
"I see," he said, shifting his gaze away from her. "That doesn't leave
me much to say, does it? All right, Elaine. Make out a transfer request
and I'll sign it."
"Thanks. I ... I hope you understand." She got up and started slowly
toward the door.
"I'm not so sure that you understand this yourself," he replied. "But I
know this--I don't want to lose you, Elaine. If you haven't worked this
out within a month or so after you leave Titan, I'll come looking for
you."
She turned and, without a word, went over and kissed him. Then she
quickly left the office.
Lee returned to his desk. He sat down and stared at Childe's graph
again. After a few minutes, he angrily slapped it in a drawer, slammed
the thing shut, and stamped out of the room.
* * * * *
Personal matters were soon buried in the excitement of another
discovery, this time an important one. It looked promising.
Kurtzman and Kulaki finally discovered what form of energy the antennas
were beaming out.
After years of trial-and-error experimentation, the engineer and
electronicist asked Richards and Childe to lend a hand. With a firm
theoretical and mathematical background to bolster their work, Kurtzman
and Kulaki started out on a process of elimination.
They soon proved that the antennas were not broadcasting any known
form of electromagnetic energy, from gamma to long-radio waves. They
investigated one possibility after another, turning up a steady
succession of negative answers. Negative, but answers all the same. It
was time-consuming, but at least they were definitely determining which
avenues were blind alleys.
Then Childe started tinkering with a hunch, and showed his paperwork
to Richards. The two of them made a few suggestions to Kurtzman and
Kulaki. Their problem was that their detection instruments were drawing
blanks, when applied to the antennas' output. But the power input to
the antennas showed they were working continuously.
Childe showed, mathematically, that their output must be an extremely
weak, low-frequency form of energy. Richards agreed, and pointed out
that there was only one known form of energy that fulfilled these
conditions: gravity.
"Gravity waves?" Kurtzman asked, incredulously, when they told him
about it.
Kulaki's mind reacted faster. "Knowing it's gravity waves, on paper,
and proving it experimentally are two different things."
But they were up to the test. They had to scavenge equipment from the
center's grav screen machinery, and the whole underground community
was without its Earth-normal grav field for two and a half days, but
when the field was returned to normal (and people stopped hopping and
bouncing all through the center) Kurtzman and Kulaki had proved that
the antennas were indeed beaming out gravity waves.
_It's all here_, Lee thought, as he read their combined report. _Now
we know what the machine is doing. But to what purpose? What influence
does this have on Earth?_
Then he put down the report and turned to another bit of paperwork that
lay on his desk: Elaine's official request for a transfer. He looked
through it automatically. There was a place marked _Justification for
Request_. Elaine had typed simply, "Personal." Lee flipped to the last
page and signed.
He leaned back in his chair and tried to let his mind float free;
forget about her, forget about the buildings out there, forget about
everything ... at least for a few moments. Just drift and let your mind
wander where it pleases....
* * * * *
The automatic secretary on his desk hummed into life and announced,
"Department heads' meeting starts in five minutes."
To hell with the department heads. To hell with Titan. A world of cold
and dark and ice. Like Dante's Inferno. Titan is hell. A place where
sinning scientists are sent. Their punishment is to stand out in the
cold and try to solve the unanswerable. Forever. Stand in the icy
darkness and try to understand the unknown. Once in a while you make
a discovery that excites you; but when you look again, your discovery
is meaningless, you know as little about the real answer as you knew
before. The discoveries are just part of the punishment, part of the
eternal torment, they just keep you going after the carrot on the
stick, but the carrot is always out of reach....
"Department heads' meeting beginning now," the automatic voice said.
Lee cocked an eye at the tiny device. "All right," he said, getting up,
"I'm going."
The meeting was strictly routine. The reaction had set in. A week ago
they had all been agog with the gravity-waves discovery. Now it had
become apparent that the discovery had not opened the door they were
trying to get through. _We're like children_, Lee thought, _trying to
put together a stereo transceiver from an assembly kit; all the pieces
are there, but we can't get them together in the proper way_.
It was a short meeting. As they broke up, Lee saw Richards walk over to
Elaine.
"I hear you're leaving us," the young physicist said. "Going Earthside?"
"Yes," Elaine answered. "For a while, at least."
Richards broke into his feline grin again. "Good. I'll be vacationing
on Earth in a few weeks. Do you like to ski?"
"I haven't skied in years...."
"There's a lodge I go to in Switzerland. Really fine. And the skiing is
marvelous. Even if you don't want to ski, there are mountains to
climb ... and glaciers...."
Lee started toward them, thought better of it, and walked sullenly out
of the room. He went to his office, sat fidgeting at his desk for a
while, then called her on the intercom. She was not at her office or
her quarters, so the equipment automatically paged her. When her face
finally showed on the viewscreen, Lee could see that she was still in
the conference room, which was now empty, except for her and Richards.
"What is it, Sid?"
"Uh ... can you come down to my office for a minute? Right now?"