“Did he ever tell you the answers?”

“He never knew them. He spent his life looking. The answers were not on Pentecost — we know now that the true controllers of Pentecost are the Immortals, with the cooperation of a nervous planetary government. They control through superior knowledge, and they use the planet — so they say — as a source of new Immortals. Those ideas were beyond my father’s imaginings. But he was right about the important questions.”

Elissa stirred at his side. She was lightly dressed, and the air was cold on her bare arms, but she was reluctant to suggest a move.

“I finally tried to ask the important questions myself,” said Peron at last. “Not about Pentecost — about the Immortals themselves. They have a well-developed society. But who runs it? How, and most of all why? At first I thought we had the answer to the first question: the Immortals were run from The Ship. As soon as I was in S-space, I found that wasn’t true. Then I thought we would have the answer at Sector Headquarters. But we learned that was false — headquarters is nothing but an administrative center with a switching station and cargo pickup point for travelling starships. So what next? We decided control had to be back at Sol, and we came here. But we have no more answers. Who runs the show in the Sol system? Not Jan de Vries, I’ll bet my life on it. He’s a good follower, but he’s not a leader. And even if we find out who, that still leaves how and why.” “So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Look harder, I suppose. Elissa, we’ve been on Earth for nearly five days now. How do you feel?”

“Physically? I feel absolutely wonderful. Don’t you?”

“I do. Do you know why?”

“I’ve wondered. I think maybe part of the reason is our ancestry. We come from millions of years of adaptation to Earth as the natural environment — gravity, air pressure, sunlight. We ought to feel good here.”

“I know all that. But Elissa, I think there’s another reason. I think everything is relative, and we had spent over a month in S-space before we came here. I’ll tell you my theory, and it’s one that makes me uncomfortable. I think that S-space isn’t right for humans, in ways that we haven’t been told.” “Even though we will live many times as long there? I don’t just mean long in S-time, I mean live subjectively longer. Doesn’t that suggest S-space is good for our bodies?”

Peron sighed. Elissa didn’t know it, but she was presenting arguments to him that he had wrestled with for days, and found no satisfactory answers. “It looks that way. It seems so logical: we live longer there, so it must be good for us. But I don’t believe it. Think of the way you feel. S-space didn’t give you the same sense of vitality. Think of our love-making. Wasn’t it wonderful on Pentecost, and hasn’t it been even better in the last few days on Earth?”

Elissa reached out and ran her fingers gently up Peron’s thigh. “You know the answer to that without asking. Be careful now, or you’ll give me ideas.” He placed his hand gently over hers, but his voice remained thoughtful and unhappy. “So you agree, some things just don’t feel right in S-space. We’ve known that, deep inside, but I assumed it was all part of the adjustment process. Now I feel just as sure that’s not the case. And everybody who has lived in S-space for any length of time must know it, too.”

Peron rose slowly to his feet. Elissa followed suit, and they both stood there for a few moments, shivering in the seaward night wind sweeping off the snowy eastern peaks.

“Suppose you’re right,” said Elissa. “And you have me fairly well persuaded. What can we do about it?”

Peron hugged her close to him, sharing their warmth; but when he spoke his voice was as cold as the wind. “Love, I’m tired of being manipulated, and I’m tired of blind guesswork. We must go back to orbit now. We must stop allowing ourselves to be fobbed off with sweet reasonableness and bland answers, from Olivia, or Jan de Vries, or anyone else. And we have to push as hard as we can for the real answers about S-space civilization: who, how, and why?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At Elissa’s insistence, they set a meeting with Sy as their first priority on returning to orbit and to S-space. Elissa agreed with Peron’s ideas, but she wanted Sy’s unique perspective on them.

Their journey back up the Beanstalk took place in a totally different atmosphere from the trip down. The cable car was as crowded as ever, but the travellers were subdued, the mood somber. After a few days on the surface, everyone had sensed at some deep level that Earth was now alien, a world so affected by wars and changing climate that permanent return there was unthinkable. Humanity had left its original home. There would be no going back. The travellers looked down at the planet’s glittering clouds and snow cover, and said their mental farewells.

Olivia Ferranti had mentioned that few people made more than one visit to Earth. Now Peron and Elissa knew why.

When they arrived at the set of stations that formed the upper debarkation point of the Beanstalk, Elissa queried the information system for Sy’s location. While she did so, Peron prepared to transfer them back to S-space. It proved surprisingly easy. Since almost everyone returning from a visit to Earth moved at once back to S-space, the procedure had been streamlined to become completely routine. Peron gave their ID codes, and was quickly offered access to a pair of suspense tanks.

“Ready?” he said to Elissa.

She was still sitting at the information terminal. She shook her head and looked puzzled. “No. Not ready at all. Hold off on booking us into the tanks.” “What’s the problem? Can’t you find Sy.”

“I found him — but he isn’t in S-space any more. He moved to normal space even before we did.”

“You mean he went down to Earth, too?”

“Not according to the information service. He’s been here all the time we were on Earth. And he left S-space a quarter of an S-hour before we did — so that means he’s been in normal space for over twenty days!”

“What’s he been doing?”

Elissa shook her head again. “Lord knows. That information isn’t in the computer bank. But he was last reported on one of the stations here in the synchronous complex. If we want to get our heads together with his, there’s no point in going to S-space yet.”

Peron cancelled the suspense tank request. “Come on then. I don’t know how to do it, but we have to discover some way to track him down.”

That task proved easier than Peron had imagined. Sy had made no attempt to conceal his whereabouts. He had lived in one room for the whole time, with an almost continuous link to the orbiting data banks and central computer network. He was sitting quietly at a terminal when Elissa and Peron slid open his door. He took his eyes away from the screen for a second and nodded to them casually. “I’ve been expecting you for a few days now. Give me a moment to finish what I’m doing.”

Elissa looked curiously around the small room. It was a one-fifth gee chamber, with few material signs of Sy’s presence. The service robots had cleared away all food and dishes, and there were no luxury or entertainment items. The bed looked unused, and the small desk top was completely empty. Sy was neatly groomed, clean-shaven and dressed in tight-fitting dark clothes.

“No hurry,” she said. She sat herself down calmly on the bed.

“Got a message from Kallen,” said Sy, without taking his eyes off the screen. “Lum and Rosanne are delayed, won’t be here as soon as they thought. How was Earth?”

“Thought-provoking.” Peron seated himself next to Elissa, and waited until Sy had completed data storage, signed off, and swung to face them. “You ought to make a trip there, Sy. It’s something you’d never forget.”

“I thought of it,” said Sy. “Then I decided I had higher priorities. Plenty of time for Earth later — it won’t go away.”