check out with the theory—roughly, at least.”
He spread his hands out on the table. “This was our primary goal. The expedition ahead is subsidiary. Colonization may result from our exploration, true; but now we have opened the universe.”
It was nice to know that things were progressing as planned. I asked, “What do you mean about things checking ‘roughly’? Is there some error?”
He nodded and swallowed the dregs from the magnesium cup. “A considerable error, but it’s on the safe side. Our velocity checks perfectly, but our estimate of the time-shrinkage factor is so far off that Mr. Einstein’s formulae will take some major revision to reconcile what has happened.”
“We’ll arrive sooner than planned?”
Larson nodded again. “According to shipboard elapsed time we will arrive in the vicinity of our destination in just ninety-two hours from now—a total of 122 hours since take-off. You were worrying earlier about our scanty supplies; this should put your mind at rest.”
It didn’t displease me. The lack of privacy on this tin bathtub was even worse than I had anticipated. The news came as sort of a reprieve.
I looked at Larson, and suddenly I knew why the long face. His Tina!
For her, ten years would already have passed, and as we sat there talking, weeks of her existence were fading into oblivion—and Hans Larson was begrudging every second of it. Damned fool, should have stayed at home.
I left him brooding into his empty cup and went forward to the little control dome. One wonderful attribute of the Larson Drive was that there was no acceleration discomfort. Gravity was nullified at the outset, and ship’s gravity was kept at an comfortable one-half “g”.
Mac Hulberg, chief navigator, was alone up there, one foot cocked up on the edge of the broad instrument-board that looked like a cluttered desktop with handles. He was staring out into the void.
Yes, void! They had said it would be black in space, but not even a glimmer of light showed through the transparent dome. As you looked to the side and back, faint, violent specks seemed to catch at your peripheral vision, but it was impossible to focus on a single heavenly body.
Mac didn’t turn or greet me. His face was no longer that of the carefree adventurer with whom I had tied on a fair binge less than a week ago.
“Getting you down, too, Mac?” I asked. He was about the only one aboard I could even tolerate. He wasn’t as sour on humanity as I, but he granted me the right to my opinions, which was something.
“God, yes!” he said. “Skipper tell you about the time-error?”
I said, “Yes, but what’s there to be sad about? You don’t mind that part, do you?” To my knowledge, Mac hadn’t left anything behind but his dirty laundry.
Hulbert was In his mid-thirties, slender, balding and normally as cheerful and stupidly optimistic as they come. Now he looked worse off than Larson.
“Yeah, I mind that,” he said kind of resentfully. “I thought we’d have more time to—sort of get used to the idea of—well, outgrowing our generation. But think, by now many of my older buddies will be dead. A dozen World Series will be over. Who knows, maybe there’s a war going on back there?”
Of all the morbid nonsense. Yearning for the obituary column, the sports page and the headlines. But then people are rarely sensible when something disturbs their tidy little universe that they take for granted.
It was a little terrifying, though, staring out into that smothering lamp-black. We were moving so fast and living so slowly that even the light-waves from the galaxies toward which we moved had disappeared. We were reversing the “redshift” effect of receding light sources. We approached the stars before us at such a velocity that their light impinged at a rate above the visible violet spectrum.
Mac blurted out, “It will never work out.”
“What won’t?”
“Colonization. Not at these unholy distances, even if we do find an Earth-type planet or two. People won’t leave everything behind them like this. I—I feel cut off. Something’s gone, everything, everybody we knew back there. It’s terrible to consider!”
I sat down beside him, stared out into the India-ink and faced a few overdue realities myself. Our chances of finding a habitable planet were remote. Finding intelligent life on it was even more unlikely. That such life would resemble men, was so improbable that the odds in favor were virtually nonexistent.
So—what had I really to look forward to? A quick survey of the star-system in the company of these nincompoop idiot-savants, then a return to a civilization of complete strangers—a culture in which we would all be anachronisms, almost a century behind the times.
A parade of faces began peering at me out of the darkness. There was Bess with the golden hair, and Carol and petite Annette—and Cliff, my red-headed old room-mate who knew how to charcoal-broil a steak—and our bachelor apartment with the battered old teevee set and my collection of books and pipes, and there was my outboard jet up on lovely Lake Vermillion where a man could still catch a fat pike.
What would it be like when we got back? More people, less food, tighter rationing, crowding beyond conception.
Hell!
When the rest of the crew learned of our sharply-revised estimated time of arrival they came down with the same emotional cramps afflicting Larson and Hulbert. It was sickening, a bunch of so-called mature technicians and scientists moping around like a barracks full of drafted rookies, matching miniature billfold photos of cuties that were now approaching crone-hood. The whole venture had become a tragic affair overnight, and for the next few days all thoughts turned backward.
So nobody was remotely prepared for what happened. They were even unprepared to think straight—with their heads instead of their hearts. And Larson was worst of all!
On the last day Larson eased off our 1800-mile-per-second velocity, and as the stars started showing again, shifting from faint violet down into the more cheerful spectrum, spirits aboard began lifting a little.
* * * *
I was in the control-room with Larson and Mac when we got our first inkling. Mac was fooling with the electronic search gear, sweeping for planets, when he gave a yip and pointed a jabbing finger at the scope.
“Audio,” he stammered. “Look at that!” He lengthened the sweep and the jumble of vertical lines spread out like a picket fence made of rubber.
“A carrier wave with audio modulation,” he said with disbelief all over his face.
Larson remained calm. “I hear you, lad. Don’t shout.” He studied the signal and frowned deeply. “It’s faint, but you can get a fix.”
As they played with the instruments I looked forward through the green shield that protected us from Alpha C’s heavy radiation. Our destination star was now a brilliant blob dominating our piece of heaven. It was a difficult thing to grasp that we had travelled almost 26 trillion miles—in five days, ship’s time.
Mac said, “It’s a planet, sure enough, but that audio—”
Larson snapped, “Forget the audio! Give me a bearing, and let’s be getting on course. That may be the only planet in the system, and I don’t want to lose it.”
His arms pumped and his big hands pawed at the controls as he brought the inertialess drive into manual manipulations.
For the next few, tense hours we stalked the planet at a discreetly low velocity. When his navigation problem was complete and we were on a slow approach orbit, Mac began playing with the communication rig again.
The ship’s intercom was cut in, and we had to chase people out as excitement mounted over our discovery. Finally, when his elbow had been jostled once too often, Larson ordered the control room cleared of all hands but Hulbert and me.
When