possible that without superluminal communication, superluminal flight won't be practical.'
'Why not?'
'The lack of superluminal communication cuts the umbilical cord. Could Settlements live far from Earth - far from the rest of humanity - and survive?'
Wendel frowned. 'What's this new line of philosophy you've begun to track down?'
'Just a thought. Being a Settler, Tessa, and being accustomed to it, it may not occur to you that living on a Settlement is not truly natural to human beings.'
'Really? It never seemed unnatural to me.'
'That's because you weren't really living on one. You were living in a whole system of Settlements among which one was a large planet with billions of people on it. Might not the Rotorians, once they reached the Neighbor Star, find that living on an isolated Settlement was unsatisfactory? In that case, they would surely return to Earth, but they haven't. Might that not be because they have found a planet to live on?'
'A habitable planet circling a red dwarf star? Most unlikely.'
'Nature has a way of fooling us and upsetting supposed certainties. Suppose there is a habitable planet there. Shouldn't it be carefully studied?'
Wendel said, 'Ah, I'm beginning to get what you're driving at. You feel that the ship may come to the Neighbor Star, and find that there is some sort of planet there. We would then make a note of it, decide from a distance that it is uninhabited, and go on about our task of further exploration. You would want us to land and make a much more thorough search, so that we can at least try to find your daughter. But what if our neuronic detector finds no trace of intelligence anywhere within any planetary system the Neighbor Star may have? Must we still search the individual planets?'
Fisher hesitated. 'Yes. If they show any signs of being habitable, we must study them, it seems to me. We must know all we can about any such planet. We may have to begin evacuating Earth soon, and we must know where to take our people. It's all very well for you to overlook that, since Settlements can just drift off without the necessity of evacua-'
'Crile! Don't start treating me as the enemy! Don't start suddenly thinking of me as a Settler. I'm Tessa. If there is a planet, we'll investigate it as much as we can, I promise you. But if there is and if the Rotorians are occupying it, then- Well, you spent some years on Rotor, Crile. You must know Janus Pitt.'
'I know of him. I never met him, but my wi - my ex-wife worked with him. According to her, he was a very capable man, very intelligent, very forceful.'
'Very forceful. We knew of him on other Settlements, too. And we were not generally fond of him. If it was his plan to find a place for Rotor that was hidden from the rest of humanity, he could do no better than to go to the Neighbor Star, since it was so close and since its existence was not known by anyone outside Rotor at the time. And if, for any reason, he wanted a system all to himself, he would, being Janus Pitt, fear the possibility of being followed and having his monopoly upset. If he happened to find a useful planet that could be used by Rotor, he would be even more resentful of intrusion.'
'What are you getting at?' asked Fisher, who looked perturbed, as though he knew what she was getting at.
'Why, tomorrow we take off, and in not too long a time, we'll be at the Neighbor Star. And if it does have a planet, as you seem to think it might, and if we find the Rotorians are occupying it, it's not going to be a matter of just going down to the surface and saying, "Hello! Surprise!" I'm afraid that at the first sight of us, he would give us his version of a "Hello" and blast us into oblivion.'
Chapter 29. Enemy
63
Ranay D'Aubisson, like all the inhabitants of the Erythro Dome during their period of habitation, visited Rotor periodically. It was necessary - a touch of home, a return to the roots, a gathering of renewed strength.
This time, however, D'Aubisson, had 'moved upward' (the usual phrase for passing from Erythro to Rotor) a bit earlier than her schedule had called for. She had, indeed, been summoned by Commissioner Pitt.
She sat in Janus Pitt's office, noting with her skilled eyes the small signs of aging that had accumulated