Intellivore - Diane Duane [38]
Clif sighed and handed her a small flask he had been carrying. Ileen took a long, thoughtful drink, blinked, coughed in an evaluatory kind of way, and then coughed again and had another drink.
Picard and Clif looked at her, and she gazed calmly back at them. “After today,” she said, “I think I can use it.”
“Well,” Clif said in a tone of good-natured scorn, “that’s hardly the worst thing you’ve ever seen—”
“No,” she said cheerfully enough. “I guess not. There was this floor show in the capital city in one of the countries on beta Ophiuchi Six, I can’t remember its name, but I never thought I’d live to see a gelatin dessert perform a nautch dance. And in the middle of it, this guy comes out and starts singing—”
There was a whistle in the middle of the air. With some relief, Picard said, “Picard here—”
“Captain,” said Data, “I have completed some of those correlations you were asking for, and I have come across some very disquieting results.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Sir, there is no need,” Data said. “I can display them for you right there, if you like.”
Picard glanced at Clif and Ileen. Ileen had put aside the rum bottle and looked interested. Clif nodded.
“Please do.”
A hologrammatic simulation of a viewscreen appeared in the air, hanging over the deck of the ship and carefully slewing as the deck did. “I started,” Data said, “by sampling for the most—”
“Oh, for gosh sakes, Mr. Data,” said Captain Maisel suddenly, “have the thing hold still. I’m getting seasick here trying to watch it.”
“My apologies, Captain.” The screen steadied and showed a list of ship names and star names. “During the past three hundred fifty years, there have been some ninety colonization attempts in this general area. In fifty-nine of them, the ships or vessels setting out with intention to colonize successfully reached their intended planets. Fourteen of these did not reach their target planets due to accident or, in two or three cases, sabotage. Of the remaining seventeen, we have no record. But it is very much worth noticing that of the fifty-nine ‘successfully’ established colonies in this part of space, only nine remain viable.”
The list on the screen vanished to show a section of the surface of a huge sphere. Nine colonies were all scattered along this pseudosurface.
“Mark the ‘unsuccessful’ colonies for us, would you, Mr. Data?” said Ileen.
A rash of small red lights appeared in the darkness above the section of pseudosphere.
“Can you shade them in color, say, red through violet, to demonstrate the time at which they failed or seemed to fail?” Clif said.
“Certainly, Captain.” The reds changed color here and there. All three captains peered at the diagram.
“I think there seems to be a slight correlation,” Ileen said, squinting a little. “It’s easier to see if you let your eyes go unfocused.” She tried a couple different degrees of squint. “But I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure I’m not seeing things.”
“I do not believe you are, Captain Maisel. There are indications of a sort of pathway or trail of ‘failed’ enterprises in this area, proceeding forward through time, but at no point crossing that spherical boundary.”
“How are you defining failure, Mr. Data?” said Picard.
“Either investigators could find no trace of the colonists or their vessel on or around the planet on which they intended to settle,” Data said, “or the ships themselves were lost, or lost contact with: in which case the point of light marks that ship’s last known position. In a seventy-year period, there were three separate colonization attempts—one making for B Hydri, one for twenty-two Ophiuchi, and one heading for three thirty-four Scorpii. Here is the planet of B Hydri to which the first group was heading.”
A planet’s image appeared on the screen in front of them. “And here is the second.”
Clif’s mouth dropped open.
“And the third.”
Picard stared.
The images were all slightly different, some taken with slightly better equipment, some with worse. They showed different aspects of each planet from slightly different directions,