  We look for signs of the H~I transverse proximity effect in the spectra of
130 QSO pairs, most with transverse separations in the plane of the sky of 0.1
-- 3 Mpc at z ~ 2.2. We expected to see a decrease in Lyman-alpha forest HI
absorption in the spectrum of background QSOs near the position of foreground
QSOs. Instead we see no change in the absorption in front of the foreground
QSOs, and we see evidence for a 50% increase in the absorption out to 6 Mpc
behind the foreground QSOs. Further, we see no change in the H I absorption
along the line-of-sight to the foreground QSOs, the normal line-of-sight
proximity effect. We may account for the lack of change in the H I absorption
if the effect of extra UV photons is canceled by higher gas density around
QSOs. If so, the increase in absorption behind the QSOs then suggests that the
higher gas density there is not canceled by the UV radiation from the QSOs. We
can explain our observations if QSOs have had their current UV luminosities for
less than approximately a million years, a time scale that has been suggested
for accretion disk instabilities and gas depletion.
