there are planets orbiting either large star of the Alpha Centauri system. Nor are there any unexpected Sun-like stars we don't know about in our neighborhood. Personally, I wouldn't expect to find much anyway. What could the Far Probe see that we couldn't see from the Solar System? It was only a couple of light-months away. It should make no difference. Yet some of us feel that Rotor must have seen something and rather quickly, too. Which brings us back to you.'
'Why me?'
'Because your ex-wife was the head of the Far Probe project.'
'Not really. She became Chief Astronomer after the data had been collected.'
'She was the head afterward and certainly an important part during. Did she never say anything to you about what they had found in the Far Probe?'
'Not a word. Wait, did you say that the Far Probe cameras were able to reach almost every part of the sky?'
'Yes.'
'How much is "almost every part"? '
'I'm not in their confidence to the point where I can give you exact figures. I gather it's at least 90 per cent.'
'Or more?'
'Maybe more.'
'I wonder-'
'What do you wonder?'
'On Rotor, we had a fellow named Pitt running things.'
'We know that.'
'But I think I know how he would do things. He would hand out the Far Probe data a little at a time, living up to the Open Science Agreement, but just barely. And somehow, by the time Rotor left, there would have been some of the data - 10 per cent or less - that he would not have had time to get to you. And that would be the important 10 per cent or less.'
'You mean the part that tells us where Rotor went.'
'Maybe.'
'Only we haven't got it.'
'Sure, you have it.'
'How do you make that out?'
'Just a little while ago you wondered why you should expect to see anything in the Far Probe photographs that you couldn't see in the Solar System records. So why are you wasting your time on what they gave you? Map out the part of the sky they didn't give you and study that part on your own maps. Ask yourself if there's anything there that might look different on a Far Probe map - and why. That's what I would do.' His voice suddenly rose to a formidable shout. 'You go back there. Tell them to look at the part of the sky they don't have.'
Wyler said thoughtfully, 'Topsy-turvy.'
'No, it isn't. Perfectly straightforward. Just find someone in the Office who does more with his brain than sit on it, and you may get somewhere.'
Wyler said, 'We'll see.' He held out his hand to Fisher. Fisher scowled and wouldn't take it.
It was months before Wyler made an appearance again, and Fisher didn't welcome him. He had been in a quiet mood on this off-day from work, and had even been reading a book.
Fisher was not one of those people who felt that a book was a twentieth-century abomination, that only viewing was civilized. There was something, he thought, about holding a book, about the physical turning of pages, about the ability to lose one's self in thought over what one has read, or even to drowse off, without coming to, and finding the film a hundred pages beyond, or flickering at its close. Fisher was rather of the opinion that the book was the more civilized of the two modes.
He was all the more annoyed at being roused out of his pleasant lethargy.
'Now, what, Garand?' he said ungraciously.
Wyler did not lose his urbane smile. He said, between his teeth, 'We've found it, just exactly as you said we would.'
'Found what?' said Fisher, not remembering. Then, realizing what this must refer to, he said hastily, 'Don't tell me anything I'm not supposed to know. I won't be tangled with the Office any more.'
'Too late, Crile. You're wanted. Tanayama himself wants you in front of him.'
'When?'
'As soon as I can get you there.'
'In that case, tell me what's going on. I don't want to face him cold.'
'That's what I intend to do. We studied every portion of the sky that the Far Probe did not report on. Apparently those who did so asked themselves, as you advised, what it was that a Far Probe camera could see that a Solar System camera could not. The obvious answer was a displacement of the nearer stars, and once that was in their heads, the astronomers found an astonishing thing, something they couldn't have predicted.'
'Well?'
'They found a very dim star with a parallax