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"Come back and meet Max," came Yaeger's voice from behind the illusionary chamber. "Then we'll get to work."
Pat was on the verge of saying "I can't," because the chamber seemed so real. But she broke the illusion by stepping through the wall as if she were a ghost, and rejoined Yaeger behind the console.
"Max," said Yaeger, "meet Dr. Pat O'Connell."
"How do you do?" came a soft feminine voice.
Pat eyed Yaeger suspiciously. "Max is a woman."
"I programmed my own voice into the original program. But I've made any number of modifications since then and decided that I'd rather listen to a female voice than that of a male."
"She's voice-activated?"
Yaeger smiled. "Max is an artificial intelligence system. No buttons to push. Just talk to her like you would a normal person."
Pat looked around. "Is there a microphone?"
"Six, but they're miniatures you can't see. You can stand anywhere within twenty feet."
Apprehensively, Pat said, "Max?"
On the huge monitor just beyond the platform, the fac
e of a woman appeared. She stared at Pat in vivid color. Her eyes were topaz brown and her hair a shiny auburn. Her lips were spread in a smile that revealed even white teeth. Her shoulders were bare down to the tops of her breasts, which just showed above the bottom of the monitor. "Hello, Dr. O'Connell. I'm pleased to meet you."
"Please call me Pat."
"I shall from now on."
"She's lovely," said Pat admiringly.
"Thank you." Yaeger smiled. "Her real name is Elsie, and she's my wife."
"Do you work well together?" Pat asked facetiously.
"Most of the time. But if I'm not careful, she can get as testy and petulant as the original."
"Okay, here goes," Pat murmured under her breath. "Max, have you analyzed the symbols that were scanned into your system?"
"I have." Max's voice answered in tones that sounded positively human.
"Could you decipher and translate any of the symbols into the English alphabet?"
"I've only scratched the surface, but I have made progress. The inscriptions on the ceiling of the chamber appear to be a star chart."
"Explain." Yaeger ordered.
"I see it as a sophisticated coordinate system that is used in astronomy to plot the positions of celestial objects in the sky. I think it might suggest changes in the declinations of stars visible in the sky over a particular part of the world in past epochs."
"Meaning that because of deviations in the earth's rotation, the stars appear to shift positions over time."
"Yes, the scientific terms are precession and nutation," Max lectured. "Because the earth bulges around the equator from its rotation, the gravitational pull of the sun and moon is heaviest around the equator and causes a slight wobble to the earth's spinning axis. You've seen the same phenomenon in a spinning top, due to gravity. This is called precession, and it traces a circular cone in space every 25,800
years. Nutation, or nodding, is a small but irregular movement that swings the celestial pole 10 seconds away from the smooth precessional circle every 18.6 years."
"I know that sometime in the distant future," said Pat, "Polaris will no longer be the North Star."
"Exactly," Max agreed. "As Polaris drifts away, another star will move into position above the North Pole in approximately 345 years. A hundred years before the time of Christ, the vernal equinox-- Excuse me, are you familiar with the vernal equinox?"
