Voice Off. The more complex a human society, the more an individual wants to do right, the more divided will that individual's loyalties be.
DC Derek Hawkins sits before the terminal. He has faxed the prints, is awaiting a response from Central Records. It comes — Unknown.’
Records wants a name to attach to these new prints. ‘Unknown’, DC Hawkins tells them; and under 'Description' he types ‘Amnesiac, Ward 11, Bed 2, Northampton General. Giving his own rank and number as the reporting officer, he closes the enquiry.
Before calling up Missing Persons he glances back through his notes. Why didn't the uniforms interview the man? Hs calls up the day's log. 14:15 a call reporting a collapsed man in Harborough Road. Two mobile officers directed with ambulance to scene. 14:17 those two officers redirected to a crash and fire in Sheep Street. No further entries then until 15:48, when a call from Emergency said the man was being transferred to Ward 11, General. No action taken. The uniforms were busy. Two more pileups, a street fight, three burglaries, a shoplifter. 17:03 a call from Ward 11 telling of their amnesiac, referred to plainclothes. Had it not been for that one call, the uniforms would have picked up the case in the morning. Now it is his.
Faxing the polaroid he calls up Missing Persons, types in the man's statistics, including the man's blood group — 0 positive -which the ward sister gave him. He waits. Missing Persons tell him that they have nine possibles. He asks for printouts, crosses to the printer, scans each as it is printed, tears off the nine sheets.
Separating the sheets he studies each one, places it in the man's file. None are from Northampton. Two have records. He discards those. Of the remaining seven, two come from London, one from Birmingham, one from Swansea, one from a Yorkshire village, one from Bolton and one from Liverpool. Sighing he flips the file closed, reaches for another. He has work to do.
Voice Off. All life, all reproduction on the planet, from the simplest to the most complex of organisms, depends to a major extent upon chance. Yet, save where it applies to statistical probability, human intelligence has made no concerted attempt to understand the mechanics and consequences of chance.
This program is new. No-one else has reported a fault in it. That, though, does not mean that the program is faultless. Barry decides to employ its tried and trusted predecessor.
By the time he has found the old program two more printouts have shown the line to be deepening. He loses three printouts setting up the old program. At 00:24 the first printout from the old programme shows the line to be even deeper, obscuring Sheliak altogether. At which point Barry flings himself out of his chair and marches furiously back and forth across the cluttered room.
At 00:32 he leans on the printer staring at the darkening line. Hardware failure. Has to be. That's what comes from working in a near museum. And the on-call Engineer lives in Tunbridge Wells. He will shut down the computer when he arrives. By the time the computer is up again it will be daylight. Tomorrow night the scope is not his.
The line is also on the VDU. Possibly, hope reasons, the fault lies somewhere in the region of the program just prior to its being displayed on the VDU and printout. Possibly the images being stored on disc will be satisfactory and when the fault has been cured he can retrieve them from there.
He rubs his fingers nervously over his lips. The line has now deepened over both Sheliak and Vega. The multiple E, the binary and the Ring Nebula are also obscured, with the line now encroaching on Y Lyre.. What if, the thought further dismays him, the line isn't a computer fault but an optics failure? In that case he should call the scope engineers immediately, so that the failure can be quickly rectified and tomorrow night's viewing rescued.
If it is an optics failure, though, a hairline crack in a mirror or a lens, then the line would have remained central to the image and not be shifting from right to left in this manner.
Flicking over the printout he tears it off, lays it on the floor and crawls its length. The line has definitely widened out from Vega. On the last printout Vega's luminosity was just visible on the line's edge.
At the clatter of the printer Barry rushes over, tears off the new image. Vega is wholly visible again.
Taking up his calculator Berry estimates the drift of the line. At the line's present rate of drift, Sheliak will he fully visible again in 46 minutes. The night’s work is not wholly lost.
The following two printouts confirm his estimate. What then, he squats by the long ribbon of paper, is causing the fault? On the scope's present co-ordinates the line will be off his printout altogether by dawn. In which case he will have nothing to show the engineers but the printout; and to be able to cure a fault one has to be able to recreate that fault.
What, the thought takes shape as he examines the next few printouts, if the line is external? Is atmospheric? A freakish vapour trail maybe? A vapour trail would drift in the westerly air flow. It would also widen. But would a vapour trail cause that much refraction? Picking up a pair of binoculars from the console he trudges up to the scope.
Through the partly open roof the milky way spangles the night sky from East to West. He seeks out Lyrae. No line is visible to the naked eye. He looks at Lyrae through the binoculars. The line is visible.
As far as he can see through the binoculars, from the lilac glow of the Hastings streetlights to the orange haze of the Northern horizon, the line cuts like a cheesewire across the sky, bisecting the Cygnus and Pegasus constellations. And the line is beyond Lyrae now; and far far too high to be a vapour trail. Not of the atmosphere, nor of the solar system. To register on the reflector, at its focus, it has to be in the order of parsecs distant.
As he traces and retraces the line with the binoculars his anxiety and uncertainty, piece by piece, give way to the excitement and elation of discovery. Never before has he seen or heard of anything resembling this line.
Slamming back into the tower he scrambles down the steps, tears off the last three printouts. The line is now far to the left of Lyrae. He draws his lips back in indecision, drumrolls his fists gently on the printer's perspex cover. This is too good to miss. Sod the night's schedule: he'll record the line from horizon to horizon.
The time is now 02:27. Two hours viewing left. Ripping off the last sheet of printout he hurries over to the console. Cancelling the Sheliak program he feeds in the present co-ordinates of the line, calculates how many frames he'll need to record the whole of it, and he types in the declinations to give him an horizon to horizon scan.
He sets the program running, hears the scope grinding on its mountings above him as it takes up the new sighting. His whole being is atremble, yet calm, like the first confident look over an exam paper. The scope pauses, photographs. He listens to it move, pause, photograph. The printer rattles. The line is centre of the page.
Imagining the scope up there beginning its slow tilt out of the vertical, he thinks there’ll be hell to pay if this turns out to be a common phenomena. The thought makes him chuckle: he has acted, too late now for second thoughts.
The scope moves, pauses. He hears the roof opening wider. A whole good night wasted if it is a common phenomena. He squeezes up his face in concentration: he cannot recall mention of any such phenomena elsewhere.
If you’re going to make a fool of yourself, Barry tells himself, go the whole hog and log it. Sitting at the console he takes up his biro, opens the ledger. Flicking the biro between thumb and forefinger he composes his opening sentence. '11:05', he writes, 'a line discovered...' Discovered! The word dances like a luminous ping pong around inside of him. Quieting his agitation he gives the line’s co-ordinates, describes its Easterly drift up to its present position.
The scope, following its new instructions, is way out of the vertical. He checks the printout. The line is still there, obliterating Sadr in Cygnus. And the line is still maintaining its Easterly drift. When he moves the scope to the Northern sky he will have to allow for that drift. In the meantime some independent corroboration wouldn't go amiss. He might also gain some idea of its distance. But who? Las Palmas? Not much point if they're out of action. And better to go outside: he can make a fool of himself within the zoo later.
He smiles and picks up the phone, from memory taps out a Teignmouth number. Like electronic footsteps the connection bleeps into place.
On an old school desk, in the corner of a creosoted shed with a hinged roof in a Teignmouth garden, he hears the black phone give two double rings.
"Duncan? Barry here. Didn't think you'd miss a night like this."
Duncan Blythe is now 72, has been an amateur astronomer man and boy. He it was who passed his astral enthusiasms onto Barry. Many nights they spent together in that unhinged shed, long winter nights in mittens with thermos and sandwiches, to the detriment of his appetite and schoolwork the following day.
Barry outgrew that shed when he was fourteen. At nearly six foot then, six three now, he decided against amateurism and an interesting hobby in favour of a profession and hard work. Foregoing his universal nights he had bowed over earthly revision.
"Barry?" Duncan says without recognition. Barry realises that he hasn't see Duncan now for over ten years. Duncan doesn’t know about Barry's breakdown.
"Barry Tappell. I'm at Herstmonceux."
"Lucky you."
"I'm calling for corroboration. Didn't know who else to ring."
"Herstmonceux calling me for corroboration. I'm flattered."
"Can you have a look at Cygnus? Tell me what you see?"
Barry listens to the old man carefully laying down the phone and turning to his skeletal six inch reflector. All movements in that small shed have to be slow and deliberate. Barry hears a boy's voice. Laughter as Duncan laconically replies. Another young acolyte whose mother is also probably worried by his spending nights in a roofless shed with a peculiar old man.
The printer rattles. Barry listens to Duncan conferring with the acolyte.
"The Filamentary Nebula's gone," Duncan says into the phone, "Like the universe's been zipped up."
"That's it!" Barry laughs, "Exactly like a zip. Thanks Duncan. It was Lyrae when I spotted it. Any ideas?'
"Not a one."
Returning the phone, with a grateful and affectionate pat, to its cradle, Barry crosses to the printer. The frame has moved off Cygnus. A thought has Barry grabbing up the binoculars and charging up to the scope. The Filamentary Nebula is obscured.
The line is some distance then, is certainly no vapour trail if it is visible from both Hastings and Teignmouth. What, though, can it be?
Descending slowly back into the tower Barry loses himself in speculation. ‘Insufficient data’, he cautions himself, records the observations, and takes pleasure in entering Duncan Blythe’s name, and the precise details of his Teignmouth reflector, in the Herstmonceux log. As he is writing he hears the scope grinding back up to the perpendicular. Before it can start plotting the other half of the sky Barry checks the line on the last frame, moves the co-ordinates further East.
The scope begins its whirr, pause, photograph. Barry takes up his biro. Mid-sentence, he stops. If it is so high as to appear stationery from observation points 200 miles apart, and yet its rate of movement is such that, in five hours, it has moved from Lyrae to the other side of Cygnus, what then is its speed..?
He looks up at the star charts. Saturn is in Aquarius. He studies his printout, rips more off the printer, lays it on the floor. And there is Saturn, between Pegasus and Cygnus, and not obscured by the line. The line then is definitely outside the solar system. Grinning he returns to the console to record that observation in the official log.
