The Star Lord
of the cabins were small, they were cleverly designed toprovide the maximum of comfort, even the least expensive of them. Forthe very wealthy, the rulers of the galaxy's finance, the owners of thegalaxy's industries, the makers of the galaxy's entertainment, therewere the luxury cabins. The floors glowed with the soft reds of orientalrugs, the lounge chairs were upholstered in fabrics gleaming with goldthread. Cream-colored satin curtains fluttered in an artificial breezeat the simulated windows, and on the walls hung tranquil landscapes indull gold frames. To those who had engaged them, the ornate cabinsseemed only appropriate to their own eminent positions in life.
Delicious meals were served three times a day in the several diningrooms, the softly lighted Bar was never closed, and every day threetheaters offered a varied program of stereo-dramas. There was even--themost marvelous, daring, expensive luxury of all--a swimming pool. Thepool was small, and was open only to the first cabin passengers, but thefact that a ship travelling to a distant solar system could afford roomenough for a pool, and extra weight for the water needed to fill it,seemed evidence that man had achieved a complete conquest of theinconveniences of space travel.
One luxury, however, freely accessible to even the poorest sheep herderon earth, was denied the passengers of the _Star Lord_.
They could not see the stars. They could not see the sky.
The ship had portholes, of course, and observation rooms which could beopened if at any time she cruised in normal space, but the ports andobservation windows were closed now, for there was nothing to see. Theship was surrounded by blackness, the impenetrable, unknowableblackness, of hyperspace, but this black emptiness did not frighten thepassengers because they never bothered to think about it.
But the builders of the ship had designed it so that even the simplepleasure of looking at a friendly sky should not be denied itspassengers. An artificial day and night of the appropriate length wasmaintained by the dimming and brightening of lights, and the mainlounges were bounded with special walls which looked like windows,through which could be glimpsed bright summer days, fleecy cloudsdrifting over a blue sky, and, in the evenings, soft starlight.
* * * * *
Every passenger should have been soothed into contentment by thesedevices, but by the end of the first week, Burl Jasperson was restless.
He hated to sit still, and the hours and the days seemed endless. Hisbald head and portly body were a familiar sight as he roamed the ship,inspecting every detail as though it were his personal responsibility.Once a day he called on Captain Evans to check on the progress of the_Star Lord_, once a day he chafed under the cold courtesy of theCaptain's manner, and then wandered on. In his jacket he wore his pocketrecorder, and he was momentarily cheered whenever he found an excuse formaking a memorandum:
"Chairs in lounge should be two centimeters lower. Sell Deutoniumshares. How about monogrammed linens for the first cabins? Installgymnasium?"
As he walked, he murmured these thoughts to his recorder, and each nighthis meek and colorless secretary sat up late to transcribe them into thelocked notebook which was his special charge, after Jasperson had takenhis sleeping pills and crawled into bed.
On the evening of the eighth night out, Burl Jasperson wandered into theBar, and drummed his pudgy fingers on the table as he waited to give hisorder.
"A glass of ice water, and a Moon Fizz. And be sure you make it withgenuine absinthe. You fellows seem to think you can get away with makingit with _'arak_, and your customers won't know the difference. Well,just remember I'm one customer that does, and I want _real_ absinthe."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Jasperson," said the Bar steward.
Turning restlessly in his chair, Burl let his eyes stop on thewhite-haired old gentleman beside him, happily consuming a brandy andsoda. After a moment's inspection, he stuck out his hand confidently.
"My name's Jasperson. Everything all right? Enjoying the trip?"
The pink skin wrinkled in amusement.
"I am Wilson Larrabee. Everything's fine, thank you, except that theship is almost too luxurious for a man of my background. A professor'ssalary does not often permit him indulgences of this kind."
"You a professor? Of what?"
"Various things at various times. Philosophy, physics, Elizabethandrama, history of science--"
"Myself, I never could understand why a sensible man would go into thatbusiness. No money. No prestige. Never doing anything, just reading andthinking."
"Every man to his taste," said Larrabee.
"Yes, within limits. But the things some of you professors think up!Most of the ideas do more harm than good, scaring people to death,hurting business. You'd think they ought to have more sense ofresponsibility!"
He tasted his drink, then nodded knowingly at the bartender. "This issomething like! _Real_ absinthe."
Professor Larrabee studied his companion. "I can hardly suppose, Mr.Jasperson, that you hold professors responsible for all the ills of theworld. And yet you seem disturbed. Did you have something in particularin mind?"
"Yes. The Thakura Ripples!"
* * * * *
Amusement vanished from the professor's eyes. "What about them?"
"Why are people so afraid of them? As far as I can see, they're just apiece of nonsense thought up by a dreamy-eyed physics professor, and hehypnotized people into believing in them. But as I was telling CaptainEvans last night, they've never been seen, never been measured, andthere's nothing at all to prove that they have any existence outside themind of a madman. And yet people are afraid of them!"
"And just what are the Thakura Ripples?" said Alan Chase, drawing up achair. "Waiter, I'll have a spacecap."
"Feeling a little better tonight, Alan?" asked his friend.
"Some, thanks. I just had a checkup from Dr. Willoughby, and he thinksI'm more than holding my own. Now go on about the Ripples. Where arethey? What do they do?"
"Suit yourself," Jasperson muttered. "If you want to tell ghost stories,go ahead."
"Thank you. The Thakura Ripples, my boy, are an unexplained phenomenonof hyperspace. We do not know what they are--only that they aredangerous."
"But I thought that space was entirely uniform?"
"Alas, no. Not even normal space can be called uniform. It has beenknown for a long time that variations exist in the density of theinterstellar gases. Just why they occur, what pattern they follow, ifany, was for many years one of the major unsolved problems confrontingastronomers and physicists. Then they learned that these variations indensity of the interstellar gases were directly connected with thedevelopment of the successive ice ages on the earth, and eventually astudy of the collisions and interactions of the various light forcesfrom the stars in the galaxy made the pattern clear. We know, now, thatthe variations occur only in a certain band of space. They may occur atany given place within that band, but their position is constantlyshifting and unpredictable."
"Now you see it, now you don't?" said Alan.
"Exactly. Now it was Thakura's theory that the Ripples are an analogousband of mysterious forces existing in hyperspace. They may be tangiblebarriers, they may be force barriers, we do not know. But a shipentering this lane _may_ go through it without damage, and by purechance take a course which misses all these bumps in space. Or, by goingslowly and using his instruments to feel his way, a navigator can oftensense them ahead, and if he is skillful he may be able to dodge them.But if, in some terrible moment, he smashes head-on against the ThakuraRipples, the conversion Piles which power his ship are immediatelyaffected. They begin to heat, perhaps to heat irreversibly, and if theyget out of control, they may vaporize. In the last fifty years at leastfive ships have vanished in this region, and it was Thakura's beliefthat they were disintegrated on the Ripples."
"But there isn't any evidence!" Jasperson exploded.
"Isn't a demolished space ship evidence?"
"No! It's evidence that something went wrong, certainly, but it doesn'ttell us _wh
at_ went wrong. I'm not an unreasonable man, professor, I'm ahardheaded business man, and I like to deal with facts."
"I don't have an intimate knowledge of these matters, of course," saidLarrabee, "but it was my impression that in the past fifty years sincetravel in hyperspace became common, several ships have beenunaccountably lost."
"Your first figure was right. Five ships have been lost--that much isfact. Why they were lost is still a question. It's my consideredopinion that they were lost by human failure; the crewmen let the Pilesget hot, and the ships were helpless. In the early days they had to getalong with only one or two Piles, and if they went wrong the ship wasdone for. But we've changed all that. That's why the _Star