Phylo laughed. “I hope you’re disappointed, sir.”
“Meaning what?”
“I hope they’re still kicking. I should hate to have to return to earth and explain why we knocked off six top SJF.P.’s.”
“The world,” said Captain Mauris soberly, “might even smell somewhat sweeter for the loss of a few space-frame physicists. Man is becoming just a litde too clever.”
“I wonder why you volunteered for the trip, then,” said Phylo slyly. “A voyage with S.F.P. men for unspecified experimental purposes hardly promises to be uneventful. Besides, there’s the triple danger money—just like the old days when they first tried out the stellar drive.”
“Of the few parts of the world that remain unspoiled by civilization, the Amazonian hinterland is the most attractive—for me,” said Captain Mauris obliquely. “One of these days, Phylo, I shall buy myself ten thousand acres in the middle of nowhere. And then the only time I shall ever take my feet off terra firma will be when I climb into my hammock. . . . The reason I signed on as Master of the Santa Maria is quite simple. It represents almost five thousand acres.”
“If,” said Philo dryly, “we survive whatever tricks the S.F.P.’s are cooking up.”
“Exactly,” said Captain Mauris. “But it is my firm intention to survive.”
Phylo gazed through the plastiglass anti-glare dome at a swarm of hard, unwinking suns. Finally, without looking at Mauris, he said softly, “I think there’s also another reason, sir.”
“Do you, now.” The Captain’s tone was not encouraging.
Phylo took a deep breath and ploughed on. “They told me back at base that you were the first skipper to successfully use the stellar drive.”
“A slight exaggeration,” said Mauris with a cold smile.
“I was merely the first captain to return and collect his pay envelope. ... However, proceed.”
“I notice,” said Phylo uneasily, “that there’s a parallel set of gears—I mean dual controls—on the main panel.” “Well?”
“I don’t understand the calibrations on the dials under the lightometer. Nor do I understand why the second bank of meters should have all their throw-in switches locked and sealed.”
“An interesting little mystery,” observed the Captain noncommittally. “As you have obviously given some thought to it, what conclusion do you draw?”
“Well, sir,” said Phylo hesitantly, “bearing in mind that the Santa Maria has a cargo of S.F.P.’s, a skipper who successfully tested the stellar drive, a set of new instruments, and the fact that we are under sealed orders, I think there’s only one possible conclusion.”
“I should be interested to hear it,” said Captain Mauris. “There have been rumors,” continued Phylo, “of a galactic drive. My guess is that the Santa Maria has been fitted out for a trial run.... What do you think, sir?”
“I think,” replied Captain Mauris, glancing at the bulkhead electrochron, “that I shall shortly break the seal and discover what the Fates have in store for us. . . . I’ll tell you this, though—I don’t think we shall be experimenting with a galactic drive.”
“Why not, sir?”
“Because,” said Captain Mauris with a thin smile, “the United Space Corporation has already developed it—as a logical extension of the stellar drive.”
Phylo gazed at him in sheer amazement. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, sir.”
“I know,” said Mauris imperturbably. “It’s still on the secret list. But as I traveled as a paid observer on the test jump, I can definitely assure you that the galactic drive is a fact.”
Phylo’s voice was filled with awe. “Would it be indiscreet to inquire what distance you logged?”
“Not now,” said the Captain. “I think—in view of our position—that it will do no harm to give you the facts. We—er—had a little jaunt round Beta Centauri.” “Godalmighty!”
“A matter of seven hundred light-years for the round trip,” added Mauris complacently.
“How long did it take?” demanded Phylo incredulously.
The Captain permitted a note of pride to enter his voice. “Three hours, twenty-seven minutes, ship’s time —starting and finishing in the neighborhood of Pluto’s orbit.”
“Were there any—any casualties?”
“All of us,” said Captain Mauris soberly. “We couldn’t stop laughing for two days. . . . But I forgot. There was one serious casualty: Egon, the navigator. His star maps were damn near useless, of course. He swore we’d never get home. And when we finally hit the system, the relief was too much for him. ... He was the only one who didn’t stop laughing. And from what I hear, he’s still enjoying himself.”
Phylo couldn’t make up his mind whether or not Captain Mauris was having a private joke. After a moment or two he said in a matter-of-fact voice: “I wonder what the hell is going to happen on this trip, then?”
“Probably,” said Captain Mauris, “we shall cease to exist.”
Four hours later, in the privacy of his cabin, the Captain of the Santa Maria broke the seal on a slim envelope and read his instructions. He skipped impatiently through the conventional wording until he came to the part that mattered. He went through it carefully, word for word, three times. The final paragraph gave him a certain grim amusement.
While the normal articles of space travel obtain for this experimental voyage, he read, there must of necessity be a fluid definition of the Safety Clause. Clearly the primary responsibility of the Master for the safety of his ship and all personnel must be to some extent subordinated by the actual program sanctioned by the Field Testing Executive of the United Space Corporation. It is not implied, however, that the prerogative of Master's Discretion will inevitably be superseded by test requirements. If the Master should satisfy himself, and the authorized scientists concerned, that the danger factor is sufficient to render the ship’s safe return as improbable, therefore neutralizing the validity of the experiment, he is entitled to cancel the test program and return immediately to base. A Court of Inquiry will then evaluate the circumstances leading to such a decision. It is, however, earnestly hoped that scientific and ship personnel will so cooperate as to bring both the experiment and the voyage to a successful conclusion.
“Why the devil,” said Captain Mauris to himself, “do they use a lot of big words to tell me that I’m merely acting wet nurse for a bunch of S.F.P.’s? If the Master should satisfy himself and the authorized scientists concerned . . . Very funny! The whole idea is not less than one hundred per cent suicidal, and then they talk about a sufficient danger factor!”
There was a knock at die door.
“Come in,” called Mauris.
It was Kobler, chief of the S.F.P. team. He was a thin, pasty-faced man of perhaps forty. His mouth looked as if it would split if he tried to smile.
Mauris motioned him into a chair and reached for two glasses and the decanter. As he poured the drinks, Kobler glanced at the ship’s articles lying on the desk.
“I see you have been studying the scriptures,” said the physicist.
“I was merely trying to find out,” explained Captain Mauris equably, “what authority, if any, I possess—in case of an emergency.”
“And have you found out?” enquired Kobler, sipping his whisky.
“Yes.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“No. From the point of view of getting a clear-cut definition, it’s as woolly as hell.”
“I shouldn’t worry, if I were you,” said Kobler pleasantly. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll probably have a megasecond in which to think a last beautiful thought.”
“That,” retorted Mauris thinly, “is why I would have liked sufficient power to overrule you people—just in case I happened to anticipate the hypothetically fatal megasecond.”
“Sorry,” said Kobler, “but I’m the boss-man. That’s the way it has to be for this sort of thing. You’d better resign yourself to praying for my spiritual guidance.”
&n
bsp; “I don’t know why you people need a space captain,” said Mauris testily. “You could have programmed the Santa Maria to take you to dissolution point under her own steam.”
Kobler smiled, and his face didn’t crack. “You may not believe it,” he said ironically, “but we space-frame gentry have nice orderly minds. We’re very conventional really. Besides, even a space captain has his uses. . . . How did you enjoy the hop round Beta Centauri?”
“So that was why they wanted me to go,” said Mauris. “I wondered about it.”
“You were lucky,” said Kobler. “They wouldn’t let me go because some idiot mathematician suggested that the ship might surface too near a sun, or something damn silly like that. ... It seems that my brain was considered too valuable to be fried.”
“Mine evidently wasn’t,” observed the Captain.
“You, my friend, are unique,” said Kobler dryly. “You are a veteran of the stellar drive and the galactic jump. We regard you as a curio, a kind of talisman.”
“I am flattered,” said Captain Mauris. “And now, I think, we had better discuss ways and means.”
“You know the destination?” asked Kobler.
The Captain inclined his head toward the papers on the desk. “According to the Field Testing Executive,” he said calmly, “it is Messier 81.”
“What do you think of it?” asked Kobler smugly.
“I think it might be—interesting,” said Captain Mauris with sarcasm. “I don’t think I’ve ever visited a spiral nebula before.”
Kobler grinned. “One million six hundred thousand light-years,” he said. “Quite a little hop when you come to think of it.”
“How long do you think it will take.”
The physicist’s grin broadened. “I don’t know,” he said happily. “Probably just that hypothetically fatal meta-second.”
Mauris restrained himself with an effort. “I’d appreciate a brief exposition of the theory,” he said. “It might be useful.”
Kobler helped himself to more whiskey, leaned back in his chair, and regarded the ceiling. “Essentially,” he began, “it involves my private theory of matter, which also involves the stress characteristic of space and the so-called temporal regression.”
“Proceed,” said Mauris. “For a moment I thought you were going to get complicated.”
Kobler ignored him. “You understand, of course,” he continued, “that matter is a form of locked-up energy?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I now have news for you. Energy is simply a form of locked-up space. There is, from the physicist’s point of view, quite a reasonable amount of energy in the cosmos: there is also a devil of a lot of space. Now there is, as well, the curious phenomenon of the expansion and unwrinkling of space alongside the actual diminution of energy.”
“You wouldn’t be throwing overboard the first and second laws of thermodynamics, would you?” interrupted the Captain mildly.
Kobler admired his own fingernails complacently.
“Child’s play,” he said. “Entropy and the first and second laws are all washed up. Funny thing, when I was a student I instinctively knew there was something wrong.
. . . But back to the point. I have established a definite coefficient—the practical application of which means, my friend, that we too can adopt the charming habit of energy. We can submerge in space. Just as energy, when it thinks nobody is looking, opens a little door into the fifth dimension and smartly sidesteps all detection by becoming space, so we can play the same trick. . . . Only we can go one better: we can become energy again. Which, in effect, means that we can knock the mainspring out of time. . . . Because, Captain Mauris, by becoming virtually nonexistent, we escape the temporal regression. That, in a simpler fashion, is why you were able to hop round Beta Centauri and swallow seven hundred light-years. And of the three hours twenty-seven minutes it took, you spent most of the time surfacing so that Egon could panic over his star maps.”
“That is true,” said Mauris. “But—if you will forgive a simple space captain for pointing out the obvious—we were functioning in a known energy system. ... By making the new target M 81, you are postulating a jump clean out of the local energy pattern.”
“Not out of, but through corrected the physicist. “On the Beta Centauri trip you were still slightly limited by a temporal regression. This time the deceleration will be so sharp as to make a total breakthrough. We shall make a neat hole in our own space frame and enter sub-space. We shall become a pattern of space on the frame of sub-space. Then we shall localize our return breakthrough when a pretty little instrument that I have programmed for M 81 recognizes the surface energy pattern.”
“Suppose the programming fails.”
Kobler laughed. “As it is the first true cosmometer, there is the possibility. But you can take it from me that it is theoretically perfect.”
Captain Mauris thought nostalgically of the Amazonian hinterland. After nearly a minute’s silence, he said, “It’s nice to feel that somebody’s confident, anyway.”
“Space has a very definite direction,” pursued Kobler. “Its vortices are the galactic leaks. In some respects, we can regard the sub-echoes of nebulae as stepping-stones. In the extragaiactic jump, it’s chiefly a question of defining the direction/deceleration crisis—or in plain language, of making the right hole at the right time.”
“I expect you’ll want to clear the System before the—er—experiment begins,” ventured Mauris.
“Naturally,” said Kobler. “By the way, would you like me to tell the crew what it’s all about?”
“I was going to suggest a brief lecture,” replied Mauris. “But since you have explained the background to me so lucidly, I think I might save you that little job. I’ll tell them we’re going to make a nice little hole in the balloon of space and pop up again sixteen hundred thousand light-years away. That should make for some interesting discussion.”
“You think they’ll panic?”
The Captain shook his head. “They’ll just laugh politely and think I’m getting too old for the job.”
“So far as I can see,” said Kobler, downing the remainder of his whiskey, “everything is predictable—except the human reaction.”
“It makes for a nice philosophical problem,” observed Mauris.
“What does?”
“Whether or not we can be conscious of our own nonexistence.”
Kobler gave him a look of respect. “That’s the crux of the matter,” he admitted. “You see, the Santa Maria and all aboard will cease to be a system of molecular organizations.”
“Conversely,” said the Captain in a matter-of-fact voice, “it will become the abstract memory of an energy pattern which will be resynthesized out of space—when and if your infallible cosmometer correlates the pattern of M 81 with that of its own environment.”
Kobler sat up. “I didn’t know you were a physicist.”
“I’m not,” retorted Mauris dryly. “But I’ll tell you something else, too. It’s going to be damn cold!”
Pluto’s orbit was a hundred million miles astern, and the Santa Maria had achieved a satisfactory clearance of the System. For the last ten hours she had voyaged under her stellar drive. Through the dark plastiglass portholes, men occasionally stared at the long star-torn silence of total night.
The navigation deck was a scene of activity and tension, for deceleration point was rapidly approaching. A fat copper cylinder had been battened to the deck in front of the main control panel, and the second bank of switches, with their mysterious calibrations, had now been unsealed. Kobler had lovingly supervised the installation of his cosmometer and was now displaying sufficient humanity to fuss about it much as an anxious father nursing his firstborn. Phylo, the first officer, was surreptitiously biting his nails. He was definitely unhappy. His appreciation of the science of physics being rather more limited than usual for one in his position, he had come to believe simply that the approaching - experiment was merely the most e
laborate method yet invented of committing suicide.
Of all the personnel of the Santa Maria, Captain Maims was the most calm. He was very busy breaking several regulations. He lay on his master’s contour berth and watched all the extra berths that were needed by the physicists being bolted down. Kobler had decided, after much consultation, that the entire S.F.P. team should foregather on the navigation deck for the experiment. Half a dozen extra baths had then been hastily erected, giving the impression of a surrealist hospital.
Normally Captain Mauris would have regarded the invasion with frigid resentment. But now he watched the proceedings with a benevolent air.
It was his duty as Master of the ship to present at all times an aspect of confidence. With the aid of a bottle of Scotch and a somewhat prehistoric corncob pipe, he was fulfilling this obligation admirably. He was also sweating, for he had discarded his uniform jacket in favor of two old polo-necked jerseys. . . . Doubtless the Field Testing Executive would strongly disapprove of his unconventional approach, but then the F.T.E. were millions of miles away.
Having taken what he considered to be a sufficiency of spirit, the Captain was now engaged in chewing glucose tablets. Phylo watched him with silent awe.
Eventually Kobler looked up from his cosmometer. “Nine minutes to go, Captain,” he said formally.
Mauris glanced at the bulkhead electxochron and nodded. “Five hundred seconds,” he said pleasantly. “And then sixteen hundred thousand light-years. . . . Science is quite wonderful.”
Kobler was nettled. “What are you eating—nerve pills?”
“Glucose,” said Mauris affably. “I’ve been dieting on whiskey and glucose.”
“Why?”
“Because,” explained Mauris, “I intend to keep both warm and energetic.”
“There should not be any drop in temperature,” said Kobler. “In any case, the thermostat will fix it.”
“The nonexistent thermostat,” corrected Mauris gently. “But I was not thinking of coldness that can be measured in degrees centigrade.”
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