Free Gateways by Elizabeth Anne Hull Page B

admiration. “Like threading a microscopic needle across centuries and light-years. They had to time it perfectly.”
    The mighty gas planet swerved by unnervingly fast, and the pellet, with its sail still billowed open, now plunged slightly
away
from the sun, then plunged toward it again, from a different angle.
    Patri interjected. “But it would still have loads of excess velocity. This needle would have been chosen to offer
multiple
swings past other planets, as well as Jupiter and the sun, again and again.”
    His appraisal was borne out, as the broiling solar sphere darted by, making Wer’s eyes water. Just after nearest passage, the sail furled back into its container . . . and soon a smaller ball swung past, so close that Wer felt he was passing
through
the topmost of its churning, yellow clouds, while a brief, glowing aura surrounded the image.
    “Atmospheric braking through the atmosphere of Venus. Dang! They’d need orbital figures down to ten decimals, in order to plan this from so far away, so long in advance.”
    Then, another sudden veer and gyre past Jupiter . . .
    “Yes, though it could make small, real time adjustments, in between encounters, by tacking with the sail,” Anna replied. “Still they wouldn’t arrange it in such detail without a destination in mind.” She made her own rapid finger movements. “They had to know about Earth already. From instruments, like our LifeSeeker Telescope . . . only far more advanced. They’d know it had an oxygen atmosphere, life, nonequilibrium methane, possibly chlorophyll. Even so—”
    Without shifting his transfixed gaze, Wer had to shake his head. There was no way that ancient peoples could have made anything of this, even if
Courier
showed them all the same images and told them all about these worlds, named after their gods—or the other way around. Wer’s head seemed to spin, nauseated, as the whirling, planetary dance went through several further encounters—more dizzying, gut-wrenching pirouettes—until the sense of pell-mell speed finally diminished. The pace grew sedate—if no less urgent.
    Then a different-colored dot appeared, just ahead.
    Once again, the storytelling image zoomed in upon the box at the front of the pellet. A little hatch opening, the sail reemerging.
At long last, the goal lay in sight,
Now to approach gently, and find a perch,
To focus, study, and appraise,
Then to sleep again and wait.
Wait until a time of claiming,
When allures are certain. Ready . . .
    Only, this time, something went wrong, as the sail came out of its box—and one corner dimpled inward, crossing its own lines and causing a tangle.
    “Uh-oh, that can’t be good,” Patri Menelaua commented. “How’d that happen?
    Wer blinked in surprise and felt his guts clench as the sail rapidly collapsed, its slender cables knotted and spoiled. While this happened, Patri’s commentary continued.
    “It must have intended to fine-tune its approach to Earth, by gradually tacking on sunlight till entering a high, safe orbit, Perhaps at a Lagrange point. Then spend some time—centuries—evaluating the situation. Maybe use the sail as a telescope mirror, to make detailed observations from a secure distance. Then wait.”
    “Wait . . . for what?” Anna was doubtful. “For the planet to produce space travelers? But, the temporal coincidence is incredible! To launch this thing timed so it arrived only a few thousand years before we made it into space? How could they have known?”
    Wer marveled that these skilled people could grasp so much, so quickly. Even allowing for all of their fancy tools and aids, it was a privilege to be in such company.
    “Incredible, but implicit! Anyway, how do we know the solar system isn’t filled with these stone-things, arriving all across the last billion years? We never surveyed the asteroid belt for objects this small. And that astronaut snagged one that drifted in—”
    “It’s still an appalling coincidence,”