Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

the gas giant and realized that they were little worlds, worlds with human and Nar people living on them. There was a round black speck pasted on Jumb. After a moment his eye turned it into the shadow of another moon that he couldn’t see, and in a bright flash of intuition he suddenly could appreciate the scale of what he was seeing.
    “Would you like to see Juxt One, Bram?” Jun Davd asked. “There are people living there, too, almost a light-year away. Next to this world and Ilf, there are more human beings living there than any other place in the universe—thousands of them.”
    Bram tore his gaze away from the eyepiece and nodded dumbly.
    “I’ll have to show it to you on a screen. We can’t see the actual light directly through a telescope like this, of course. I’m going to tap into a relay from the orbiting multiple-mirror telescope. They keep an eye on it all the time for the laser message traffic.”
    Jun Davd busied himself with a terminal that had been fitted out with buttons for human use. “All the mirrors gather photons and combine them into one computer-enhanced image,” he said. “Human engineers contributed a lot to the system. We’re considered to be very mechanical-minded, you know.” There was a hint of the proprietary in his tone.
    The screen lit up with a rather diffuse round glow, but Jun Davd seemed very pleased with it. “Watch,” he said. He manipulated his terminal, and the glow seemed to coalesce and dim. It moved sideways off the screen, and after a moment a tiny irregular blob of light moved to the center of the screen from the other side.
    “There you are, Juxt One!” Jun Davd said triumphantly. “You know, Bram, the Nar were awfully lucky in their choice of a planet to evolve on. They were able to learn star travel by easy steps. First, being part of a double star system with a companion only light-hours away. A companion star with its own habitable planet, Ilf, and a gas giant with seven decent-size moons more or less within the ecosphere. And then, when they were ready for the next big step, being blessed with another star system less than a light-year away. The average stellar distances in this part of the galaxy are four or five times that. But even a human being can get to Juxt within a reasonable fraction of a lifetime.”
    “Jum Davd, are there any human beings farther away than Juxt?”
    “Hmm, yes, we’ve spread with the Nar to four or five of the nearer stars. And I’m sure that future generations of human beings will spread still farther from those foci. The Nar themselves now occupy a volume of space with a diameter of about a hundred light-years, and that’s about the limit for them, even with their longer lifetimes. But as their outposts continue to develop the way Juxt One has, they’ll serve as jumping-off points too. Why, in a million years they could even expand through the entire galaxy! And you can rest assured that wherever they go, they’ll take human beings with them. Or grow a new crop of us.”
    “I’m going to go myself! ” Bram exclaimed. He found Jun Davd’s words disturbing, though he could not have said why.
    Jun Davd smiled winningly. “Bram, Voth-shr-voth says you’re very good at arithmetic for your age. Do you know how big a million is?”
    “I guess so,” Bram said unwillingly.
    “Except for Juxt One, and maybe Next, you’d have to spend most of your life journeying even to the nearer inhabited stars, with no company except your ship-brothers. Almost all of the humans who live in those places were born and grew up there.”
    Bram wished he could close his ears and not hear what Jun Davd was saying, but he didn’t want to hurt Jun Davd’s feelings, so he gave him his full attention and said nothing.
    “But the next best thing to going to the stars,” Jun Davd went on, “is studying them. How would you like to be an astronomer when you grow up?”
    “I guess it would be okay,” Bram said.
    “Voth-shr-voth thinks it might be a good profession for you.”
    Bram was surprised to hear that. Voth’s own field was genetics, and if Bram had ever visualized an adult career for himself at all, he would have supposed that Voth would wish to take him under his own arm.
    “Well, think it over,” Jun Davd said. “You’re welcome to come back and visit any time. We can talk, and we can look at the stars together. Would you like that?”
    Bram nodded vigorously. “Yes,” he said, meaning it.
    There must have been