Writers of the Future, Volume 28 by L. Ron Hubbard Page B

that among the thousands of points some were three to four times larger than the rest, looking more like embedded pearls than distant stars. Those pearl points were located in pairs, some almost touching and others separated by up to an inch. Each pearl was also connected to another, more distant, pearl by a hair-thin line.
    “Weird,” Jack said in an almost whisper. “Those bolos or barbells are some kind of pattern, but . . .”
    “Computer, overlay any existing star charts in the database with these patterns.”
    “I have only rudimentary navigational aid star charts in my local database,” the computer said in its charming southern belle voice, causing Jack to look at me with a smile and raised eyebrows. “Do you want me to search the base archives or send a download request to Earth ? ”
    “Does Nellie have star charts ? ” I asked the still grinning Jack.
    “Malcolm ? You must really . . .”
    “Just answer the question.”
    He shook his head. “No real need. Go ahead and tap base camp, it’s only a matter of hours until they find us anyway.”
    “Check the base first, then send to Earth if they don’t have an all-inclusive chart.”
    “I’m loading the 3D star chart from base camp data stores,” the computer said. “Please provide a relative scale for the newly constructed pattern.”
    Jack and I looked at the slowly rotating pattern on the screen, then back at each other with shrugs.
    “We have no scale. You’ll have to look for relational patterns, then adjust scales accordingly.”
    “Understood,” the computer said.
    “Inform us if you have any pattern match greater than seventy percent.”
    “Understood.”
    Radio calls from base camp increased after the computer’s download connection, but we ignored them. Jack started fixing a simple dinner, but I couldn’t stop looking at the pattern. I could see two exceptions to the pearls appearing in pairs. A single pearl resided in one corner of the block, but was connected to the nearest pair by a line nearly two feet long. The second exception was a line that ran to a large cluster in the diagonally opposite corner, but due to my shaky camera work, the computer just showed them as a slightly disc-shaped clump.
    We took turns counting while we ate and agreed upon seventeen pearls excluding the clump.
    The display changed abruptly, showing the original pattern in blue, overlaid with a new blinking red pattern. The legend at the bottom of the screen identified the red as “KNOWN STARS.” A little over half the points overlaid perfectly, but a few were shifted, all in the same direction, but by different amounts. About twenty percent of the stars in the blue pattern had no red counterpart and none of the red points aligned with the pearls.
    “Well, crap,” muttered Jack. “That wasn’t much help.”
    “Computer ? If you take known movement into account and project backwards, would some of those stars from our database have matched the new pattern at some time in the past ? ”
    At first the computer didn’t understand the request, but after I explained it in simpler terms a counter appeared at the bottom of the screen and the red stars started creeping toward the blue points. When they stopped moving the number on the counter read “4372 BCE.” Aside from six that blinked a label of “track unknown” all of the shifted red stars now matched. There were still no points at the pearl locations.
    “Damn! Over six thousand years ago,” I said.
    “They’re still not as old as I expected,” Jack said.
    “Computer ? Have you displayed all the stellar information you have ? Please show quasars, pulsars, brown dwarfs, comets, asteroids and galaxies, any objects that would show up within this pattern.”
    “And black holes,” Jack included.
    The red star pattern density nearly doubled. Now six dots matched locations with the pearls.
    “Computer. Show black holes or singularities as green.”
    Dozens of points flashed green, including all