Charles Sheffield - Starfire

“Well, it will naturally be a team effort. But if you mean who will lead the engineering design, I guess that’s me.”

“Then the Aten asteroid project—”

“Is on the shelf. It’s not needed for the new protection method.”

“And you?”

He hesitated. “I’m back in my old job. Actually, it isn’t much like my job used to be.”

While Maddy, by the sound of it, didn’t have a job on Sky City at all. She had to get in touch with Gordy Rolfe. Did he know what was happening? It would be typical of Gordy to have information and not bother to pass it on. But if John had been reassigned, where did that leave Maddy? John himself would surely see no reason to have her around.

He had fallen silent and was fingering the control panel on his lap. In the display in front of Maddy, the holograms constantly changed. First, Sky City dwindled to a bright point of silver in a steady diurnal orbit around the Earth. Then at some new command the silver dot began to move outward. The space shield appeared, a ghostly green lattice defining a long cone. Sky City veered toward the axis of the cone and started along it, beginning the long ascent away from Earth.

Maddy realized that she was seeing a new simulation, one that reflected Amanda Corrigan’s recent calculations. John might be too polite to say so, but when he was trying to work it was better for Maddy to go away and leave him to it.

The display began to change again, moving to an image of the space shield — the old space shield, useless now because it was unable to deal with the problem of particle bundles. Maddy felt reassured. If John needed to work, it made no sense for him to be examining an obsolete solution. He was doing the engineering equivalent of doodling.

They sat silently until he said, “I suppose that if I’m not going to be involved in the Aten project, you’ll be heading back to Earth.”

Maddy tried to catch his eye. He stared resolutely away from her, focused on infinity. At last she said, “Back to Earth. Yes, I guess so.”

He nodded. His fingers tapped faster at the control panel on his lap. The display changed randomly, different sections of the space shield appearing and disappearing every few seconds. Maddy glanced at her watch. It was past midnight in Houston, but Gordy Rolfe kept strange hours. If he was at The Flaunt, she had a good chance of reaching him in the next hour. The deep hideout in Virginia was another matter. He was often busy with his habitat experiments there. In either place, though, he usually kept an eye on his messages. There was a strong chance that Maddy would be on her way back to Earth in the next few hours.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could stay, is there?” John said abruptly. His eyes moved to her face for a moment, then as quickly looked away. He went on, “My group hasn’t talked much about schedules, but if Oldfield and Vjansander are right, it will be touch and go. We’ll need every hand that we can get. You could be very useful.”

That wasn’t true. Maddy would be almost useless. Also, she heard stronger come-ons almost every day of the week back on Earth. But she was learning. From a man as romantically tentative as John Hyslop, an expression of interest in her continued presence on Sky City was close to a proposal. It didn’t sound like much, but it changed her mood to one of confidence and energy.

“I’d like to stay,” she said. Don’t be wishy-washy. “ I’d absolutely love to stay with you. I’ll have to check with my boss, make sure he doesn’t have other plans for me.”

“I understand.”

But John didn’t, because Maddy had already made her decision. Forget that check-with-my-boss stuff; she was staying. If she had to, she would fabricate a role for herself with the Sky City engineering team. She would also invent for Gordy Rolfe a reason why her continued presence here was of vital importance to the Argos Group. She would, in fact, for the first time in nine years do something that was not aimed directly at advancing her career. And it didn’t worry her at all.

Maddy saw John turning in his chair. Seth Parsigian stood in the doorway.

Right on cue. She actually felt pleased to see him. She waved him forward.

“John, I want you to meet a colleague of mine, Seth Parsigian. Seth and I are working together. He has things for me to do part of the day around Sky City. The rest of the time, we’ll be available to work with you.”

She saw their expressions. Surprise. Logically, she had some explaining to do. In practice, she proposed to explain nothing. John wanted her to stay; she wanted to stay with John. Seth needed her to help him; she needed Seth to help her. Explanations were unnecessary when everybody wanted the same thing.

And life? Maddy sat down between the two men. Life was meaningless only when you let yourself think it was meaningless.

From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

Uncharacteristically, I am drawn to quote from another source. About to set down my own thoughts, I find myself unable to better another’s description of a psychological phenomenon.

Here, then, is my translation and summary of the statements of the nineteenth-century French mathematician Henri Poincare concerning the process of intellectual discovery:

For fifteen days I struggled to prove that a certain class of mathematical functions did not exist. Every day I sat down at my worktable, but despite all my efforts I arrived at no result. One evening, contrary to my custom, I took black coffee; I could not go to sleep; ideas swarmed up in clouds; I sensed them clashing until, so to speak, a pair hooked together to form a stable combination … By morning the main work was done, and I had only to write up the results.

Next I wished to represent the functions in a certain way. That called for a great deal of straightforward labor, which I performed without any major new insights.

I then left Caen, where I was living at the time, to participate in a geological trip sponsored by the School of Mines. The travel made me forget my mathematical efforts, until at Coutances we took a bus for an excursion. The instant I put my foot on the step a new idea came to me that integrated and illuminated all my previous work. I did not at once make the verification — I did not have the time, because once in the bus I resumed an interrupted conversation; but I felt an instant and complete certainty. On returning to Caen I verified the result at my leisure . . .

I then undertook the study of certain other mathematical questions without much apparent success. After much hard work, disgusted at my lack of progress, I went to spend a few days at the seaside and thought of something else. One day, while walking along the cliffs, the solution came to me with the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness, and immediate certainty.

Given my susceptibilities, it is highly improbable that I would experience anything other than panic if forced to walk along the edge of cliffs, as Henri Poincare did. However, the process that he describes is familiar to me, as I imagine it is to every other creative individual.

First one engages in long hours of hard work on a problem, apparently unproductive but completely under the control of the conscious mind. One at last ceases the effort; and then, at a time and place that cannot be predicted, comes the illuminating idea.

Poincare did not understand the process any more than I do, but he clearly believed that this semblance of “sudden illumination” is “a manifest sign of previous long subconscious work.” The drudgery is a necessary precursor to the inspiration.

As others have stated it, more succinctly, “No pain, no gain.”

The relevance of all this will soon become clear.