"Go on — surprise me."
"Well, those old ships were incredibly slow, averaging only about ten klicks, at least for freighters. So really long journeys, even on Earth, could take weeks. Just like space travel."
"I see. In those days, the countries on Earth were almost as far apart as the planets."
"Well, some of them. The most perfect analogy is the old British Commonwealth, the first and last world empire. For almost a hundred years, countries like Canada, India, and Australia relied entirely on steamships to link them to Britain; the one-way journey could easily take a month or more, and was often a once-in-a-lifetime affair. Only the wealthy, or people on official business, could afford it. And — just like today — people in the colonies couldn't even speak to the mother country. The psychological isolation was almost complete."
"They had telephones, didn't they?"
"Only for local use, and only a few even then. I'm talking about the beginning of the twentieth century, remember. Universal global communication didn't arrive until the end of it."
"I feel that the analogy is a little forced," protested Duncan. He was intrigued but unconvinced, and quite willing to listen to Mackenzie's arguments — as yet, with no ulterior motive.
"I can give you some more evidence that makes a better case. Have you heard of Rudyard Kipling?"
"Yes, though I've never read anything of his. He was a writer, wasn't he? Anglo-American — sometime between Melville and Hemingway. English Lit's almost unknown territory to me. Life's too short."
"True, alas. But I have read Kipling. He was the first poet of the machine age, and some people think he was also the finest short-story writer of his century. I couldn't judge that, of course, but he exactly described the period I'm talking about. ‘McAndrew's Hymn,’ for example — an old engineer musing about the pistons and boilers and crankshafts that drive his ship round the world. Its technology — not to mention its theology! — has been extinct for three hundred years; but the spirit behind it is still as valid as ever."
"And he wrote poems and stories about the far places of the empire which make them seem quite as remote as the planets are today — and sometimes even more exotic! There's a favorite of mine called ‘The Song of The Cities.’ I don't understand half the allusions, but he tributes to Bombay, Singapore, Rangoon, Sydney, Aukland... make me think of Luna, Mercury, Mars, Titan..."
Mackenzie paused and looked just a little embarrassed.
"I've tried to do something of the same kind myself — but don’t worry, I won't inflict my verses on you."
Duncan made the encouraging noises he knew were expected. He was quite sure that before the end of the voyage he would be asked for his criticism — translation, praise — of Mackenzie's literary efforts.
It was a timely reminder of his own responsibilities. While the voyage was still beginning, he had better start work.
* * * * *
Exactly ten minutes, George Washington had directed — not a second more. Even the President will be allowed only fifteen, and all the planets must have equal time. The whole affair is scheduled to last two and a half hours, from the moment we enter the Capitol until we leave for the reception at the White House...
It still seemed faintly absurd to travel three billion kilometers to make a ten-minute speech, even for an occasion as unique as a five hundredth anniversary. Duncan was not going to waste more than the bare minimum of it on polite formalities; anyway, as Malcolm had pointed out, the sincerity of the speech of thanks is often inversely proportional to its length.
For his amusement — and, more important, because it would help to fix the other participants in his mind — Duncan had tried to compose a formal opening, based on the list of guests that Professor Washington had provided. It started off: "Madame President, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Chief Justice, Honorable Leader of the Senate, Honorable Leader of the House, Your Excellencies the Ambassadors for Luna, Mars, Mercury, Ganymede, and Titan" — at this point he would incline his head slightly toward Ambassador Farrell, if he could see him in the crowded gallery — "distinguished representatives from Albania, Austrand, Cyprus, Bohemia, France, Khmer, Palestine, Kalinga, Zimbabwe, Eire..." He calculated that if he acknowledged all fifty or sixty regions that still existed on some form of individual recognition, a quarter of his time would be expended before he had even begun. This, obviously, was absurd, and he hoped that all the other speakers would agree. Regardless of that protocol, Duncan had decided to opt for dignified brevity.
"People of Earth" would cover a lot of ground — to be precise, five times the area of Titan, an impressive statistic which Duncan knew by heart. But that would leave out the visitors; what about "Friends from other worlds"? No, that was too pretentious, since most of them would be complete strangers. Perhaps: "Madame President, distinguished guests, known and unknown friends from many worlds..." That was better, yet somehow it still didn't seem right.
There was more to this business, Duncan realized, than met the eye, or the ear. Plenty of people would be willing to give him advice, but he was determined, in the good old Makenzie tradition, to see what he could do himself before calling for help. He had read somewhere that the best way to learn to swim is by being thrown into deep water. Duncan could not swim — that skill being singularly useless on Titan — but he could appreciate the analogy. His career in Solar politics would start with a spectacular splash, and before the eyes of millions.
It was not that he was nervous; after all, he had addressed his whole world as an expert witness during technical debates in the Assembly. He had acquitted himself well when he weighed the complex arguments for and against mining the ammonia glaciers of Mount Nansen. Even Armand Helmer had congratulated him, despite the fact that they had reached opposing conclusions. In those debates, affecting the future of Titan, he had had real responsibility, and his career might have come to an abrupt end if he had made a fool of himself.
His Terran audience might be a thousand times larger, but it would be very much less critical. Indeed, his listeners would be friendly unless he committed the unpardonable sin of boring them.
This, however, he could not yet guarantee, for he still had no idea how he was going to use the most important ten minutes of his life.
15
At The Node
On the seas of Earth, they had called it "Crossing the Line." Whenever a ship had passed from one hemisphere to another, there had been light-hearted ceremonies and rituals, during which those who had never traversed the Equator before were subjected to ingenious indignities by Father Neptune and his Court.
During the first centuries of space flight, the equivalent transition involved no physical changes; only the navigational computer knew when a ship had ceased to fall toward one planet and was beginning to fall toward another. But now, with the advent of constant-acceleration drives, which could maintain thrust for the entire duration of a voyage, Midpoint, or "Turnaround," had logical impact. After living and moving for days in an apparent gravitational field, Sirius' passengers would lose all weight for several hours, and could at least feel that they were really in space.
They could watch the slow rotation of the stars as the ship was swung through one hundred eighty degrees, and the drive was aimed precisely against its previous line of thrust, to slowly whittle away the enormous velocity built up over the preceding ten days. They could savor the thought that they were now moving faster than any human beings in history — and could also contemplate the exciting prospect that if the drive failed to restart, Sirius would ultimately reach the nearest stars, in not much more than a thousand years...
All these things they could do; however, human nature having certain invariants, a majority of Sirius' passengers had other possibilities in mind.
It was the only chance most of them would ever have of experiencing weightlessness long enough to enjoy it. What a crime to waste the opportunity! No wonder that the most popular item in the ship's library these last few days had been th
e Nasa Sutra, an old book and an old joke, explained so often that it was no longer funny.
Captain Ivanov denied, with a reasonably convincing show of indignation, that the ship's schedule had been designed to pander to the passengers' lower instincts. When the subject had been raised at the Captain's table, the day before Turnaround, he had put up quite a plausible defense.
"It's the only logical time to shut down the Drive," he had explained. "Between zero zero and zero four, all the passengers will be in their cabins, er, sleeping. So there will be a minimum of disturbance. We couldn't close down during the day — remember, the kitchens and the toilets will be out of action while we're weightless. Don't forget that! We'll remind everyone in the late evening, but some idiot always gets overconfident, or drinks too much, and doesn't have enough sense to read the instructions on those little plastic bags you'll find in your cabins — no thanks, Steward, I don’t feel like soup."
Duncan had been tempted; Marissa was beginning to fade, and there was no lack of opportunity. He had received unmistakable signals from several directions, and for groups with all values of n from one to five. It would not have been easy to make a choice, but Fate had saved him the trouble.
It was a full week, and Turnaround was only three days ahead, before he had felt confident enough of his increasing intimacy with Chief Engineer Mackenzie to drop some gentle hints. They had not been rejected out of hand, but Warren obviously wanted time to weigh the possibilities. He gave Duncan his decision only twelve hours in advance.
"I won't pretend this might cost me my job," he said, "but it could be embarrassing, to say the least, if it got around. But you are a Makenzie, and a Special Assistant to the Administrator, and all that. If the worst comes to the worst, which I hope it won't, we can say your request's official."
"Of course. I understand completely, and I really appreciate what you're doing. I won't let you down."
"Now there's the question of timing. If everything checks out smoothly — and I've no reason to expect otherwise — I'll be through in two hours and can dismiss my assistants. They'll leave like meteors — they'll all have something lined up, you can be sure of that — so we'll have the place to ourselves. I'll give you a call at zero two, or as soon after as possible."
"I hope I'm not interrupting any — ah — personal plans you've made."
"As it happens, no. The novelty's worn off. What are you smiling at?"
"It's just occurred to me," Duncan answered, "that if anyone does meet the pair of us at two o'clock on the morning of Turnaround, we'll have a perfect alibi..."
Nevertheless, he felt a mild sense of guilt as he drifted along the corridors behind Warren Mackenzie. The weightless — but far from sleeping — ship might have been deserted, for there was no occasion now for anyone to descend below the freight deck on Level Three. It was not even necessary to pretend that they were heading for an innocent assignation.
Yet the guilt was there, and he knew why. He was taking advantage of a friendship for secret purposes of his own, by suggesting that his interest in the Asymptotic Drive was no more than would be expected from anyone with a scientific or engineering background. But perhaps Warren was not as naïve as he seemed; he could hardly be unaware that the Drive posed a threat to the entire economy of Duncan's society. He might even be trying to help, in a tactful way.
"You may be disappointed," said Warren as they passed through the bulkhead floor separating Levels Three and Two. "There's not much to see. But what there is is enough to give some people nightmares — which is why we discourage visitors."
Not the most important reason, thought Duncan. The Drive was not exactly a secret; there was an immense literature on the subject, from the most esoteric mathematical papers down to popularizations so elementary that they amounted to little more than: "You pull on your bootstraps, and away you go." But it would be fair to say that Earth's Space Transportation Authority was curiously evasive when it came down to the practical details, and only its own personnel were allowed on the minor planet where the Drive was assembled. The few photos of Asteroid 4587 were blurred telescopic shots showing two cylindrical structures, more than a thousand kilometers long, stretching out into space on either side of the tiny world, which was an almost invisible speck between them. It was known that these were the accelerators that smashed matter together at such velocities that it fused to form the node or singularity at the heart of the Drive; and this was all that anyone did know, outside the STA.
Duncan was now floating, a few meters behind his guide, along a corridor lined with pipes and cable ducts — all the anonymous plumbing of any vehicle of sea, air, or space for the last three hundred years. Only the remarkable number of handholds, and the profusion of thick padding, revealed that this was the interior of a ship designed to be independent of gravity.
"D'you see that pipe?" said the engineer. "The little red one?"
"Yes — what about it?"
Duncan would certainly never have given it a second glance; it was only about as thick as a lead pencil.
"That's the main hydrogen feed, believe it or not. All of a hundred grams a second. Say eight tons a day, under full thrust."
Duncan wondered what the old-time rocket engineers would have thought of this tiny fuel line. He tried to visualize the monstrous pipes and pumps of the Saturns that had first taken men to the Moon; what was their rate of fuel consumption? He was certain that they burned more in every second than Sirius consumed in a day. That was a good measure of how far technology had progressed, in three centuries. And in another three...?
"Mind your head — those are the deflection coils. We don't trust room-temperature superconductors. These are still good old cryogenics."
"Deflection coils? What for?"
"Ever stopped to think what would happen if that jet accidentally touched part of the ship? These coils keep it centered, and also give it all the vector control we need."
They were now hovering beside a massive — yet still surprisingly small — cylinder that might have been the barrel of a twentieth-century naval gun. So this was the reaction chamber of the Drive.
It was hard not to feel a sense of almost superstitious awe at the knowledge of what lay within a few centimeters of him. Duncan could easily have encircled the metal tube with his arms; how strange to think of putting your arms around a singularity, and thus, if some of the theories were correct, embracing an entire universe...
Near the middle of the five-meter-long tube a small section of the casing had been removed, like the door of some miniature bank vault, and replaced by a crystal window. Through this obviously temporary opening a microscope, mounted on a swinging arm so that it could be moved away after use, was aimed into the interior of the drive unit.
The engineer clipped himself into position by the buckles conveniently fixed to the casing, stared through the eyepiece, and made some delicate micrometer adjustments.
"Take a look," he said, when he was finally satisfied.
Duncan floated to the eyepiece and fastened himself rather clumsily in place. He did not know what he had expected to see, and he remembered that the eye had to be educated before it could pass intelligible impressions to the brain. Anything utterly unfamiliar could be, quite literally, invisible, so he was not too disappointed at his first view.
What he saw was, indeed, perfectly ordinary — merely a grid of fine hairlines, crossing at right angles to from a reticule of the kind commonly used for optical measurements. Though he searched the brightly lit field of view, he could find nothing else; he might have been exploring a piece of blank graph paper.
"Look at the crossover at the exact center," said his guide, "and turn the knob to the left — very slowly. Half a rev will do — either direction."
Duncan obeyed, yet for a few seconds he could still see nothing. Then he realized that a tiny bulge was creeping along the hairline as he tracked the microscope. It was as if he was looking at the reticule through a sheet of glass with one minute
bubble or imperfection in it.
"Do you see it?"
"Yes — just. Like a pinhead-sized lens. Without the grid, you'd never notice it."
"Pinhead-sized! That's an exaggeration, if I ever heard one. The node's smaller than an atomic nucleus. You're not actually seeing it, of course — only the distortion it produces."
"And yet there are thousands of tons of matter in there."
"Well, one or two thousand," answered the engineer, rather evasively. "It's made a dozen trips and is getting near saturation, so we'll soon have to install a new one. Of course it would go on absorbing hydrogen as long as we fed it, but we can't drag too much unnecessary mass around, or we'll pay for it in performance. Like the old seagoing ships — they used to get covered with barnacles, and slowed down if they weren't scraped clean every so often."
"What do they do with old nodes when they're too massive to use? Is it true that they're dropped into the sun?"
"What good would that do? A node would sail right through the sun and out the other side. Frankly, I don't know what they do with the old ones. Perhaps they lump them all together into a big granddaddy node, smaller than a neutron but weighing a few million tons."
There were a dozen other questions that Duncan was longing to ask. How were these tiny yet immensely massive objects handled? Now that Sirius was in free fall, the node would remain floating where it was — but what kept it from shooting out of the drive tube as soon as acceleration started? He assumed that some combination of powerful electric and magnetic fields held it in place, and transmitted its thrust to the ship.
"What would happen," Duncan asked, "If I tried to touch it?"
"You know, absolutely everyone asks that question."
"I'm not surprised. What's the answer?"
"Well, you'd have to open the vacuum seal, and then all hell would break loose as the air rushed in."