First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe by Richard Preston

a starship. We must have been traveling at warp fifteen, except when 4-shooter bombed, when the screens would fill with jazzy stripes and we would drop to auxiliary impulse power, and Jim Gunn and Don Schneider would shout invective at 4-shooter and pound keys, while Maarten Schmidt whistled bits of Bach. When 4-shooter behaved, the astronomers liked to discuss what was passing on the screens.
    Don Schneider touched the main screen. “Look at that, Maarten. A straight line of galaxies.”
    “It looks like a string,” Maarten commented rather dryly.
    “Goodness,” Don said. “Still more galaxies. This must be a supercluster. There’s lots of little junk going by.” What he considered to be “little junk” were galaxies the size of the Milky Way, but viewed from such a distance that they were only dapples on the screen, like shoals of leaves that had fallen onto a pond.
    I wondered aloud if the galaxies we were looking at had ever been given names by people.
    Jim Gunn said, “Absolutely not.”
    “Have they ever been numbered or catalogued in some way?”
    “No, actually not,” he said.
    “Have they ever been
seen
by any astronomers before?”
    “I don’t think so.” Jim pulled a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Maarten, would these galaxies ever have turned up on a photographic plate?”
    Holding a Chips Ahoy! cookie, Maarten reflected on that idea. “I would say not—eh what, James?”
    “We are going pretty deep.”
    “Ja, except for the bright ones, most of these galaxies are too faint to show up on a survey plate.”
    “It is somewhat mind-boggling, isn’t it?” Jim remarked. He turned to the night assistant. “This is an exciting night.”
    “Oh, yes,” Juan said. “Everything is working,”
    Jim laughed. “Don’t say that!”
    The stereo in the data room was now playing Beethoven. While Maarten Schmidt found Beethoven not completely objectionable, he was mindful that J. S. Bach’s three hundredth birthday was coming up. Crossing to the stereo, he said, “I’ll interrupt this to see if there’s Bach on the radio.” He got a crash of cymbals and a soprano’s wail. “That’s not Bach.” He kept turning. Human voices soared. Schmidt cranked up the volume. He had found a Bach cantata—and a radio station that was playing nothing but Bach that night. Schmidt said, “It’s a good bet that you can find him on the radio on the night before his birthday.” A while later, the B Minor Mass came on: “Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo …”
    Juan leaned over and called to Don, “What do you think of the seeing tonight?”
    Don thought it was pretty good on the whole, despite some high haze.
    So did the Principal Investigator. He conducted the B Minor Mass with a Chips Ahoy! cookie held between thumb and forefinger, and the voices sang: “Et in terra pax hominibus /Bonae voluntatis …”
    “Quick—Jim! There’s a strange one!” Juan Carrasco called.
    Jim Gunn rolled forward in his chair and stared at a large, bright galaxy. He said, “Is there a warp in that galaxy?”
    Maarten Schmidt sat down and yanked off his glasses and squinted at the galaxy in question. It was bent like a crushed and twisted hat. Maarten groped around the table until he had found a plastic ruler. He put it against the drifting galaxy on the screen.He said, “Why, yes, yes—ah, James—this does look like a warp.”
    “It’s certainly not symmetrical,” Jim remarked.
    “Gad, that’s a neat galaxy!” said Maarten.
    “Isn’t that beautiful,” Jim said. “Someone could spend a long time studying that thing. Strange things …” His voice trailed off, and he took a swig from a can of Von’s Lemon-Lime soda.
    “Should I get a picture of it?” Juan asked.
    “Yeah, go for it!” Jim said.
    Juan grabbed a Polaroid camera from a shelf. He pointed it at his television screen and snapped a picture of the warped galaxy. He pulled the photograph and watched it develop. Slowly a contorted and apparently