Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

of ‘em got off the ground. I was over there yesterday helping the dispatcher to figure weights and balances, and we had to make them take off a big statue of three naked men wrestling a snake. Would have spoiled the trim—had the platform tumbling end over end. Had one of those art fellows almost in tears.”
    “I’m sure they got it off later.”
    “They’ve had a year and a half to loot that museum. I thought the idea was to take a small representative sample and leave the rest for the ages—or for whenever we can get back this way.”
    “You know how it is. All of a sudden we’re about to leave, and they start having second thoughts. There’s this last-minute rush. Everybody’s suddenly discovered that there are things they just can’t bear to leave behind—the historians, the archaeologists, the agronomists, everybody.” He laid a hand on the saddlebags. “You, too, it looks like.”
    Jun Davd grunted. “It just occurred to me that it might be a good idea to abscond with part of the backlog of original plates—do you know, their astronomers were still recording images on light-sensitive paper for centuries after they had more advanced methods available? Oh, I’ve got all the electronically stored data I need, but it’ll take years—decades—to go through it all, and I started worrying about accumulated signal errors.”
    “Have you made any more progress in locating Sol?”
    “There are four candidates in the immediate stellar neighborhood. I’ve all but ruled out three of them—but I want to refine my mass estimates a bit further before I set a course out of this system.”
    “Waiting until the last minute, are you?”
    Jun Davd hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the red-rimmed world-edge that overlooked the masked sun.
    “I think I’ve identified our hidden friend, though. It must have been the star they called Delta Pavonis.”
    Bram tried not to show his disappointment. “Well, it’s a possible reference point, I suppose. Though the relative positions of the stars in the neighborhood will have changed a lot in seventy-four million years.”
    “Delta Pavonis was almost Sol’s twin,” Jun Davd went on serenely. “It was a G-type star with ninety-eight percent of Sol’s mass. It was about nineteen light-years distant. The other nearby G stars had masses of eighty or ninety percent of Sol, except for one called Beta Hydri— that was about one and a quarter solar masses—and one other exception. So the invisible star we’re circling almost has to be either Sol or Delta Pavonis—and I think we’ve already agreed that Original Man would hardly have dismantled his own system for a radio station.”
    “Or it could be an interloper. A wanderer they used.”
    “In that case, the proper motion of all the nearby stars would be much greater than we’ve observed during our stay.”
    “Oh, right.” Bram blushed like an apprentice. After more than five centuries of subjective time, Jun Davd could still make him feel like the little boy whom Voth had sent to the observatory to take astronomy lessons.
    “The interesting thing is that the other exception is also almost a twin of Sol—a G-4 of one point oh eight solar masses.”
    “So we still can’t tell which—”
    “Except for the fact that it was part of a triple star system that went by the name of Alpha Centauri. Which also happened to be Sol’s closest neighbor—just a shade over four light-years away.”
    With mounting excitement, Bram began, “That means—”
    Jun Davd nodded. “On the assumption that stars that close might have been gravitationally bound—however tenuously—I searched for matching G stars about that distance apart, one of which was part of a triple system.” A grin spread slowly across his dark face. “They’re still there, drifting hand in hand through the spiral arms, and they haven’t changed position much with respect to Delta Pavonis, either.”
    “Jun Davd, you’re incorrigible! I’ll never forgive you for keeping me in suspense like that. How far?”
    “Less than twenty light-years. Boosting at one gravity, we can be home in seven subjective years.”
    Home. The word had a strange ring to it. Bram slapped Jun Davd on the back. “Let’s hurry and get started, then.”
    The walker, misinterpreting the slap, rose to its full height. The drover came over and said, “Are you ready to go?”
    “In a minute,” Jun Davd told him. He turned back to Bram. “There’s