He shivered again as reaction set in. That could have been him emerging in the center of a star . . . a star the computer had not known about. "You almost fried out both!" he howled. There was no reply. He remembered his last command. "Override lifted," he said. "I want to hear what you have to say for yourself. Why did you think you were diving into a nebula instead of a star?"
"That should be obvious even to you," the computer said, testy as usual after an override. "When my navigation data was compiled, that star did not exist."
"Tell me another one," Chang snorted, "one I'll believe."
"Your ignorance is not my problem, except that it almost destroyed Praise of Folly, and you with it. You would not listen to my warning. As long ago as the end of the second century pre-Confederacy, astronomers knew that a Herbig-Haro object was the precursor to a star."
"You really mean it," the scout pilot said in wonder.
"Yes, I really do," The computer seemed determined to get its own back. "Why do you think a Herbig-Haro object is luminous? The energy emitted by the slowly condensing cloud in the center ionizes the gas around it and makes it glow.
"But when gravitational contraction brings the cloud down to about the size of Sol's system—say, eighty AU's across—something new happens. Some of the energy inside stops going into heating the gas of the cloud and starts breaking up hydrogen molecules and such in the center, things are beginning to get hot in there.
"And when that energy gets diverted, there isn't enough gas pressure left to support the outside of the cloud any more. It falls in on itself over the next half a standard year or so, until it shrinks to a diameter of about eight-tenths of an AU. Then the heat and pressure generated by the collapse restore equilibrium and the new star becomes visible, with a surface temperature of 4,000° K or so."
"Visible! I should say so." Chang would never forget that fierce red glare. "Why hasn't any survey since the old Confederacy come by and noticed it?"
"There isn't much human traffic out this way," Praise of Folly said with what sounded like an electronic shrug. "And no one on more traveled routes would have seen the star yet; its light simply hasn't traveled far enough. From its diameter and spectrum, it can hardly have been shining longer than twenty years."
"Twenty years," the scout pilot murmured. As the fear leached out of him, awe began to replace it, the awe of having been present at the biggest birth in recorded history.
"Shape direct course for home," he told Praise of Folly. "Now I have something to keep B'kila happy and the astrophysicists too." His expression suddenly went mercenary. "I wonder how much I can get for the tapes."
The air inside B'kila's sanctum was conditioned to the same temperature as every other part of Salvage Service Central, but always seemed five Celsius colder. "Incompetent," she was saying,
"fumbling, harebrained, lucky—lucky twice, which is more than anyone deserves." She sounded annoyed that Chang had come back at all.
He grinned like an impudent schoolboy. "Who is it who teaches that nothing matters like results?
And how do you like my results, O mentor mine?"
"I can find flaws there too," she said grimly. "These Zanat of yours will have to be reckoned with. From your tapes, I'd rate their technology at the level of mid-twentieth century Terra: say, 130
pre-Confederacy. There can't be more than a couple of hundred planets in human space that can match them, and no three of those trust a fourth, Loki sadly included. Now a whole united species knows where we are."
"They had a fair notion before I met them," Chang replied. "And we can hope they also have the idea we're a good people to stay away from. They took out our first scouts, yes, but from what Liosh said they had to work for it. Then they sent four good-sized warships after Praise of Folly, and lost every one."
"No thanks to you," B'kila said.
"Ah, but they don't know that. What can they think? Either Praise of Folly handled all four of their bigger ships by itself, or else everything I told them about the Confederacy was true, and I had reinforcements waiting. Neither prospect can appeal to them,"
B'kila smiled thinly. "You didn't make a hash of that." she admitted. "By all odds, it was the best you did out of the whole mission."
"Well, not quite," Chang said. His tapes and records had sent the entire astronomy department of the Collegium of Loki into ecstasies, and fetched even more than he expected. He had plenty for a really first-class spree, to make up for the one B'kila had cheated him out of. She was not through with him yet, though. "How do you read the Zanat? Do you really believe they'll avoid us, say by fortifying their Sphere to the eyebrows and waiting for trouble to find them, or will they come looking to see what went wrong. Honestly, now."
Chang's smile slowly disappeared. B'kila had a way of picking to the heart of problems. The scout pilot had to answer, "I'm afraid they'll come looking."
"That was the impression your reports gave me," she nodded, "but firsthand experience and the feel it brings are worth more than all the reports ever recorded. It was important to have your judgment check mine."
B'kila doled out compliments sparingly. Flushed under the effects of this one. Chang ventured,
"When Liosh was grilling me, I had the impression that you and he would have worked well together." He brought the notion out hesitantly: it half-pleased and half-disturbed him. She did not turn a hair. "I think so too," she replied. "Yes, as a species they're quite a bit like us—altogether too much, as a matter of fact." She sighed and shook her head. "Interesting times, interesting times."
She turned away as if Chang was not there, spoke into her phone box: "Josip, Neelam, are you in place? It'll be plan two." The scout pilot took his leave; B'kila did not stand on ceremony, and often went straight from one piece of business to the next. She paid no attention to his departure. Just outside Salvage Service Central, though, another of those curseworthy young lieutenants saluted and said, "Excuse me, sir, are you Master Pilot Chang? I'm Josip Bros; I'll be briefing you on your new assignment."
Chang's mind raced. As usual, B'kila was one step ahead of him, but this time he could see where she was going. "Interesting times" translated to "crisis," and he knew only too well what the crisis was. He also knew with sudden dreadful certainty that his leave was about to get canceled again. Not without a fight, though. "Chang?" he said blandly. "No, he's an older fellow. I did see him in the lobby, if you're looking for him." As Josip Bruz trustingly turned his back, the scout pilot bolted. Lieutenant Neelam Sanjiva Reddy corralled him, of course, before he made a hundred meters.
