“I’m getting there,” she said. “Let me tell you that in a few minutes. I want to do this in a logical order, and explain what happened after Earth had been destroyed. It’s important that you know, so you’ll understand why we behave the way we do in the Cass system.
“While we were still busy working out the stable society for life away from Earth, and some of us were also learning how to live in S-space, we didn’t have time to worry about what was happening to Eleanora and the other arcologies. And to tell the truth, we didn’t really give a damn. They’d selfishly deserted us, said our logic, so to hell with them. As far as we were concerned they could fly away and rot.
“But after a while those of us who were living in S-space — I was one of the first twenty people to take Mode Two hibernation — became pretty curious. You see, we knew we had the stars within reach. We had the drive we needed, and the time we needed. And Helena, Melissa, and Eleanora had all headed off outside the Solar System, in different directions. We didn’t know how much of the reason for their departure was an interest in exploration, and how much of it was fear of reprisals from us. We weren’t planning revenge of any kind, but how were they to know that? All three of them had shown signs of paranoia, back when they were first colonized. We got more and more curious to know what had happened to those three arcologies.
“Eventually we equipped four ships with service robots, similar to the ones on this ship, and with limited life-support systems. We didn’t need perfect recycling, only enough for a few months of travel in S-space. The final design gave the ships a useful exploration range of up to fifty light-years. At the slow speed of the arcologies, we knew they couldn’t be farther out than that. And the stellar profiles in the neighborhood of Sol gave us a fairly good idea where the colony ships were likely to be headed. Political systems change, but the physical constraints are still there. We thought we’d find them about twenty light-years out.
“When we had everything ready, our ships set off with their volunteer crews. We had no shortage of people willing to make the trip — I put my own name in, but didn’t make it. There were many with better qualifications than mine for interstellar cruising.
“As it happened, we had overestimated the distance they had gone. We had made insufficient allowance for the difficulties that Melissa and the others might be having on board. It hadn’t been a smooth ride by any means. There had been a civil war on Melissa, an economic collapse on Eleanora, and a power plant failure on Helena. Those variables affected both their speeds and their directions. Helena actually reversed and started back for Sol for a while, until the trouble was fixed and she could head outward again.
“Our ships had no trouble tracking and finding the arcologies. After all, they had no reason to expect pursuit, and nothing to be gained by concealing their presence. But when we reached them, we found that no arcology had found a habitable planet, and all three were still in deep interstellar space. After reporting back to us — S-space radio signal time was only a couple of days — it was agreed that we would not establish contact with them. We decided to do nothing, and not interfere in any way unless an arcology was in actual danger of extinction. They hadn’t asked for help, and we didn’t want to give it. Your ancestors would be allowed to wander around until either they found a habitable planet, or they decided that a permanent space life suited them better. Then we would reconsider possible contact.
“Our ships left automated tracking probes to follow the arcologies and report on their movements, and headed for home.
“It may seem strange to you that we had so little interest in the arcologies. But we were in no hurry. We could wait in S-space and see what developed. And certainly we had plenty of other things to interest us, because by that time Earth was finally being visited again on a regular basis.
“Still we had doubts that humans could thrive there. The long dust-winter had exterminated ninety percent of the plant species, and all land-based animal forms bigger than the rat — I mean an Earth rat, not one of the thirty-kilo monsters you call rats on Pentecost. We also found that the surviving plants and animals had changed from their old forms. The grasses were unrecognizable. Many of the old food plants tasted wrong in subtle ways, and some had lost all their nutritional value. We all realized that it would take millennia to restore Earth and make it a place worth living. But oddly enough, we all thought it a worthwhile effort — even those who had found life on Earth absolutely intolerable before the holocaust.
“By the time that the Earth visits began we were feeling much more comfortable about S-space. Some of us had been living there for many Earth-generations, and we were all fine — better than fine, because we didn’t seem to be aging at all. Our best estimate, based on limited data, was that the aging rate was twenty times as slow subjectively as it was in normal living. That extrapolated to a seventeen hundred year subjective lifetime — and even if we were wrong by a factor of two, that was still a mighty attractive thought.
“When our result became known, naturally more and more people wanted to move to S-space. It didn’t happen overnight, but as time went by we learned how to make the transitions both ways, with minimal danger. By then we also knew the big problem with S-space existence.”
“You keep referring to problems and never telling us about them,” said Elissa. “What problem?”
“I’ve not been talking because I’m not supposed to talk,” said Ferranti. “No one back on Pentecost should know what I’m telling you until they’ve been through indoctrination, and not one of you has; but you’ll realize the problem for yourselves in two seconds as soon as we arrive at local Headquarters, so I’m not revealing any great secrets.”
Olivia Ferranti moved her thin hands to her cheeks, framing her eyes. “You’ll find no children at Headquarters,” she said abruptly. “A woman cannot conceive in S-space, or a man produce active sperm. S-space is a wonderful place for an individual, but it’s an evolutionary blind alley. Worse than that, anyone who makes frequent transitions between S-space and normal space suffers reduced fertility.
“That presented us with a terrible choice. Did we opt for extended personal life span in S-space, or would we guarantee the survival of the human race by staying in normal space?
“While we were still agonizing over that, we received a signal from the probe that had been tracking Melissa. The colony ship was in the Tau Ceti system, and it had finally found a habitable planet. They were exploring it. We eventually found out that they had named it Thule.
“It was twelve light-years from Earth, which made it a four week one-way journey in S-space when we allowed for acceleration and deceleration. I don’t think I mentioned it, but no matter how we tried we had been unable to come up with an economical drive that would take us much faster than a tenth of light-speed. But it wasn’t important any more. As you can see, that’s good enough when you live in S-space.
“Our ship went out, and in due course it made contact with Melissa. That first meeting was traumatic for the Melissa inhabitants. They had left Earth twelve thousand years earlier — five hundred generations of shipboard life. Earth was nothing but a distant legend. It was something that was still talked about, but stories of Earth’s destruction were regarded as of the same practical importance as tales about the Garden of Eden. When our crew contacted them and claimed to remember the death of Earth, that was too much for the Melissans to take. “After we learned something of their history since leaving the solar system, we could see why. They had never had a stable and trustworthy government that lasted more than a century. We found historical evidence of every form of rule from water-control to neo-Confucianism. When they discovered Thule they were just recovering from the effects of a long dictatorship. Their mistrust and suspicion was considerable. Even the most rational of them had difficulty believing that our intentions were wholly innocent, nothing more than curiosity to learn how another culture was faring after so long without any kind of planetary home. They would not let us visit their colony on Thule. Putting it mildly, they suspected our motives.”