to catch the old man's dying words. Brossen had beckoned to Pitt, who had leaned close to him. Brossen had reached out a feeble hand, the skin dry as paper. Clutching feebly at Pitt, he had whispered, 'How bright the Sun of Earth was,' and had died.
So because Rotorians could not forget how bright the Sun had once been, and how green the Earth had once been, they cried out in exasperation against Pitt's logic and demanded that Rotor orbit a world that was not green, and that circled a sun that was not bright.
It meant the loss of ten years in the rate of progress. They would have been ten years farther ahead had they been located in the asteroid belt from the start. Pitt was convinced of that.
That alone was enough to poison Pitt's feelings toward Erythro, but there was, in connection with it, matters that were worse - much worse.
Chapter 12. Anger
20
As it happened, Crile Fisher, having given Earth its first hint that there was something peculiar about Rotor's destination, gave it its second hint as well.
He had been back on Earth two years now, with Rotor growing dimmer in his mind. Eugenia Insigna was a rather perplexing memory (what had he felt for her?), but Marlene remained a bitterness. He found he could not separate her from Roseanne in his mind. The one-year-old daughter he remembered and the seventeen-year-old sister he also remembered fused into one personality.
Life was not hard. He drew a generous pension. They had even found work for him to do, an easy administrative position in which he was required to make decisions on occasion that were guaranteed to affect nothing of importance. They had forgiven him, at least in part, he thought, because he had remembered that one remark of Eugenia's, 'If you knew where we were going-'
Yet he had the impression that he was kept under watch, anyway, and he had grown to resent it.
Garand Wyler appeared now and then, always friendly, always inquisitive, always returning the subject to Rotor in one way or another. He had, in fact, made his appearance now, and the subject of Rotor came up, as Fisher expected it would.
Fisher scowled, and said, 'It's been nearly two years. What do you people want of me?'
Wyler shook his head. 'I can't say I know, Crile. All we have is that remark of your wife's. It's obviously not enough. She must have said something else in the years you spent with her. Consider the conversations you have had; the talk that bounced back and forth between the two of you. Is there nothing there?'
'This is the fifth time you've asked that, Garand. I have been questioned. I have been hypnotized. I have been mind-probed. I have been squeezed dry, and there is nothing in me. Let me go and find something else to tackle. Or put me back to work. There are a hundred Settlements out there, with friends confiding in each other and enemies spying on each other. Who knows what one of them may know - and may not even know that he knows.'
Wyler said, 'To be truthful, old man, we've been moving in that direction, and we've also been concentrating on the Far Probe. It stands to reason that Rotor must have found something the rest of us don't know. We've never sent out a Far Probe. Neither has any other Settlement. Only Rotor had the capacity for it. Whatever Rotor found must be in the Far Probe data.'
'Good. Look through that data. There must be enough there to keep you busy for years. As for me, leave me alone. All of you.'
Wyler said, 'As a matter of fact, there is enough there to keep us busy for years. Rotor supplied a great deal of data in line with the Open Science Agreement. In particular, we have their stellar photography at every range of wavelength. The Far Probe cameras were able to reach almost every part of the sky, and we've been studying it in detail and have found nothing in it of interest.'
'Nothing?'
'So far, nothing, but, as you say, we can continue to study it for years. Of course, we already have any number of items the astronomy people are delighted with. It keeps them happy and busy, but not a single item, not the sniff of one seems to help us decide where they went. Not so far. I gather that there is absolutely nothing, for instance, to lead us to think that