Starborne (35 page)

“
Angels
,”
Paco snorts.

“
Angels, yes!”
cries Elizabeth, as though inspired, and claps her hands in a sort of rapture of fantasy.

“
Of course
I don
’
t mean that literally,”
says Heinz, a little sourly. He casts an annoyed look in Elizabeth
’
s direction. “
But let
’
s postulate that they are there, whatever they are, these alien beings, these strange g
i
gantic things. And as we pass through them, they
give off biopsychic transmissions that disrupt the Yvonne-Noelle circuit
—”

“
Biopsychic transmissions,”
Paco repeats mockingly.

“
Yes, biopsychic transmissions, causing accidental interference
—
or maybe it
’
s deliberate, maybe they are actually feeding on the
sisters
’
mental output, soaking it up, revelling in the energy flow that comes their way
—”

“
 
‘
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshipped be,
’
 
”
says Elizabeth.

“
What?”
Huw asks, mystified as usual by her.

“
She
’
s quoting po
etry again,”
Heinz once more explains to him. “
Shakespeare, I think.”

“
John Donne,”
says Elizabeth. “
Why do you always think it
’
s Shakespeare?”

“
Shakespeare is the only poet he
’
s ever heard of,”
Paco says.

“
 
‘
Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light,
’
 
”
says
Elizabeth. “
 
‘
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, hear my decree, which u
n
revoked shall stand.
’
 
”

“
Now
that
’
s
Shakespeare for sure,”
Heinz says.

“
Milton,”
Elizabeth tells him sweetly. Heinz only shrugs. “
Shak
e
speare is
‘
Angels and ministers
of grace defend us,
’
 
”
she continues. “
Shakespeare is
‘
Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
’
 
”

Elizabeth is an inexhaustible reservoir. She is capable of going on indefinitely quoting scraps of verse about angels, and is c
ertainly willing to do so, but Heinz
’
s improbable little burst of poetic fancy, which Heinz plainly has come to regret almost immediately, has excited ev
e
ryone in the room and no one cares to listen to her further recitations, because they all have things
of their own to say. Paco, unsurprisingly, wants to bury the whole idea beneath a mound of manly contempt, and stolid Huw is having a great deal of trouble grasping the idea of non-corporeal life-forms at all, let alone angels, and Heinz keeps insis
t
ing th
at he was simply reaching for a figure of speech, not making a s
e
rious suggestion; but nearly everyone else finds it a striking concept, if a trifle implausible, and those others who have serious reservations about it are too abashed by the general enthusi
asm to speak up openly against it. And in any case the term “
angels”
seems a convenient shorthand for whatever may be out there causing the problem.

Almost everybody is fascinated by the idea and they all want to pr
o
vide individual embellishments of the ge
neral theme, speculating about whether the “
angels”
are benign or malevolent, whether they are s
u
premely intelligent or mindless, immortal or evanescent, and so on and so on. Giovanna suggests that they could even be responsible for the sinister effects th
at she and Huw and Marcus had experienced during their visit to Planet A. Why not? Perhaps these space-beings, these “
a
n
gels,”
are troubled by humanity
’
s incursion into interstellar space and are taking steps to thrust it back. But Huw, practical as ever,
suggests that they wait to see if the same things happen to those who make the landing on Planet B, before coming to any conclusions of that sort.

Where the space-beings might live is discussed, too, but not with any clarity. It is generally agreed that wh
ether the “
angels”
live within the tube as proposed by Heinz, or in some sector of realspace just outside it as pictured by Roy, is unimportant to decide at the moment; the basic concept is what needs exploration. And a consensus has definitely emerged in
the group this afternoon that the interference Noelle is exp
e
riencing is in all likelihood the work of some kind of alien intelligence into whose vicinity they keep moving from time to time. That idea arouses wonder in all, even Huw. Even
—
however much he t
ries to co
n
ceal the fact
—
in Paco.

The year-captain, who has not been present for any of this, arrives at the lounge now, and stands perplexed by the entrance for a few m
o
ments as the talk of angels and biopsychic transmissions swirls about him.

“
What angel
s?”
he asks, after a while. “
Where?”

They try to explain, two or three talking at once. Heinz is silent, arms folded, looking smug. He has overcome his initial annoyance at the e
x
citement his casual choice of words has caused, and now
he likes the idea of having stirred everyone up over so ethereal a theory. Sly worldly Heinz, postulating angels in the nospace tube! He isn
’
t really serious, at least not about the angel part of it, the year-captain sees. But should any part of his wild
i
dea be taken seriously? The year-captain, when he has heard them out and managed to grasp something of what they are ba
b
bling at him, seems to think so. “
Angels,”
he says, looking pensive and grave. “
Well, why shouldn
’
t that be so? As good a metaphor as an
y ot
h
er. It
’
s certainly worth investigating.”

They turn, all of them, and stare at him. They are all more or less aware of his background in monasticism
—
in mysticism, even: those years at that odd monkish retreat near the Arctic Circle, that strange i
n
terl
ude in his life between his time as an explorer of the moons of Jup
i
ter and Saturn and his enrollment in the crew of the
Wotan
. He never speaks of that period to anyone on board, nor do any of them really u
n
derstand why he chose to withdraw from the world
at the peak of a great scientific career and enter a monastery, any more than they understand why, much earlier, after training to be a scientist, he chose to go on the stage. He has always been a complete mystery to them, which is one reason they prefer
h
im to remain as their captain. But they are all agreed that he is a serious person, a deep thinker
—
unlike Paco, say, or Heinz
—
and if he, the true philosopher of their group, finds something of interest in this “
angels”
hypothesis, then very likely there m
u
st be something in it.

What to do now, though? If they are indeed in the presence of alien beings of extraordinary nature and power, can some way be found of opening a dialog with them?

Innelda suggests asking Hesper to put his scanning devices to work in
an attempt to determine their location. Roy proposes an all-out ca
m
paign to find them by conventional radio means after the voyagers have emerged from the nospace tube to investigate Planet B. Huw, gamely trying to enter into the spirit of a thing that is
basically uncongenial to his pragmatic nature, puts forth the idea that they ought to aim radio transmissions at the things while still
within
the nospace tube, since if the “
angels”
are in it with them they might well have the capacity to d
e
tect electroma
gnetic energy as well as thought waves.

Then Heinz says, “
There
’
s one other thing we can try. Regardless of where these creatures actually live, it would seem that their ene
r
gy-wave, their thought-manifestations, whatever it is, can come inside the tube he
re with us, since Noelle
’
s thought-beam is being affected by them. Very well. We should be able to reach them the same way, by mental transmission. Noelle could try to speak directly to them. Ask them who they are, where they live, why they
’
re suppressing
her contact with Earth.”

“
Yes!”
someone shouts
—
it is Elliot
—
and Maria echoes him, and then Jean-Claude. “
Of course! Noelle should try! Noelle! Noelle!”

All eyes are on Noelle.

She looks flustered, even a little frightened, but to some degree am
e
nable none
the less. Softly she says, smiling shyly, “
I
’
ve never
tried
to talk with angels before, you know. If that
’
s what they are. But if you all want me to try
—”

“
Yes,”
the year-captain breaks in, saying the word in a tone of voice that often is better understood
aboard the ship as meaning
No
. “
We should definitely consider the project, a little later on. But this isn
’
t the moment for it, really. We
’
re coming within range of the solar system of Planet B. We have that to deal with first; we can worry about speaking
with angels afterwards.”

***

An end has been made, then, at least for the time being, to the e
x
citement over Heinz
’
s angel theory. Heinz
’
s and Roy
’
s theory, really, though Roy
’
s crucial role in propounding it has quickly been ove
r
shadowed in the general c
onsciousness by Heinz
’
s quickness with a lively metaphor. Nobody on board is religious in the way that term once had been understood, but the long months of isolation aboard the sta
r
ship, perhaps, may have conjured a streak of irrationality in some of the
voyagers, and of fierce playfulness in others. “
Angels”
is what ever
y
body now calls the hypothetical alien beings that hypothetically su
r
round the ship. Even hard-core skeptics like Paco and Huw use the term for lack of any better one.

But there will be no
immediate attempt at a telepathic foray by N
o
elle for the purpose of making contact with supposed incorporeal cre
a
tures of extraterrestrial origin that may be lurking in their vicinity of nospace or realspace. As the year-captain has pointed out, the impe
nding arrival of the
Wotan
at Planet B is a matter of higher priority just now.

The year-captain wonders what the Abbot would have said about his suppression of the angel discussion. He thinks about the Abbot
’
s disa
p
proval whenever he does something that i
s blatantly manipulative or selfish; and that is certainly what he has done just now, something both manipulative and selfish, though he hopes he is the only one aboard who fully understands that.