“He had to use his friends in the Legion, but he got his equipment.
The rock with the wrecked barge on it was gone again when he came back, but two others had appeared to take its place.
He nudged this ice asteroid out of the middle of the anomaly—though not far enough to make it very safe.
He installed the beacons and stayed here another year to watch Nowhere, before he went on to something else.
“We’ve been here since—or the station has.
This is my own fourth year.
We keep the beacon burning.
We chart those rocks as they come and go—there are nineteen, now.
We monitor the instruments.
“That’s the history of Nowhere Near.”
Giles Habibula gulped the last bite of the last yeastcake, and blinked at me uneasily.
“What effects do your instruments show?”
“Optical,” I said. “Magnetic. Gravitic.
All connected with those rocks that come and go.
Observing stars at certain angles through the anomaly, we find their images blurred and spectral lines shifted toward the red.
Whenever a rock appears or vanishes, our magnetometers record violent magnetic storms.
The motions of the rocks themselves—and even of the station—show abnormal gravitic fields far more intense than their masses could create.
The gravitic fields keep the swarm of rocks compact.
“But I can’t explain any of those effects.”
Old Habibula had drained the last drop of algae broth from the last of the bowls.
He sat for a moment staring sadly at the greenish smear of spilled broth beyond his empty dishes.
“That’s the dreadful shape of nature!” he wheezed abruptly.
“That’s why I like machines.
I don’t trust people, but mortal nature is by far the greater enemy.
Worse than any faithless woman.
Just when you think you know the rules, she amends ‘em.
Those who say nature’s kind are deluded romantic fools. At the very blessed best, she simply doesn’t care.”
He licked the last brown crumb of yeastcake from the corner of his mouth.
“Living things are in the race against us, for food and space and power.” Hopefully, he licked for another crumb.
“The nearer they are to us, the crueler the conflict.
Life knows our own dear kin are deadly enough.
People might be worse than nature—if they possessed the wondrous mystery of that wicked anomaly.
“Anyhow, each of us is trapped between nature and mankind—pitiless nature and pitiless men!” He shuddered fearfully.
“That’s why I choose machines.
Their mission is to serve us.
They aren’t hi mortal competition with us for the precious prize of life, as our fellow beings are.
They wear no cloak of wicked mystery, as nature does.
They do what they are made to do, and that is that.”
“Giles, you’re dead wrong.”
Lilith Adams had been sitting straight and alert at the little table, gazing down at that dull black death’s-head on her finger.
Her fine head was tilted slightly, and her lean white face wore a look of des-perate intentness—almost I felt as if she were listening for Ken Star to call again from his strange battle in the wild heart of the anomaly.
“I love nature.”
She looked abruptly back at us, her bronze eyes darkly grave.
“I love the seas and fields of Earth.
I love the cratered dust of Mars and the methane glaciers of Titan.
I love the endless wild infinity of space—even as it looks from Nowhere Near.
“I can’t believe this anomaly is natural!”
“We’ve considered that it might be an artifact,” I agreed.
“But in twenty years of watching we’ve never found a clue to indicate any kind of cause for it, natural or not.”
“I think you have a clue now,” she said.