He was in an unknown medium called "the Space Warp." Something not anticipated occurred when a ship went into the warp and Harding had not yet solved the mystery when he died. The physicists in Observation would be able to find an answer but he could not ask them. The forward movement of the ship was not transferred with it into the warp and if he emerged into normal space the waiting Slug cruisers would disintegrate him before he spoke three words to Observation. There was a pencil and a tablet of paper by the computer. He used them to calculate the time at which the charge in the damaged batteries would reach a critical low, beyond which the charge would be insufficient to activate the shuttle.
The answer was 13:53. He would have to go out of the warp at 13:53 or remain in it forever. He had a great deal less than two hours in which to act.
He typed the first question to the computer:
WHAT IS THE POSITION OF THIS SHIP RELATIVE TO NORMAL SPACE?
The answer appeared on the panel at once; the coordinates of a position more than a light-year toward Ophiuchus.
He stared at the answer, feeling it must be an error. But it could not be an error—the computer did not make mistakes. How, then, could the ship have traveled more than a light-year during its second stay in the warp when it had not moved at all during the first stay? Had some factor of the warp unknown to him entered the picture?
As a check he typed another question:
WHAT WAS OUR POSITION, RELATIVE TO NORMAL SPACE, IMMEDIATELY BEFORE
THIS SHIP WAS SHUTTLED BACK OUT OF THE WARP?
The answer was a position light-days toward Ophiuchus.
He typed: IMPOSSIBLE.
The computer replied: THIS STATEMENT CONFLICTS WITH PREVIOUS DATA.
He recalled the importance of keeping the computer free of all faulty or obscure data and typed quickly: CANCEL CONFLICTING STATEMENT.
CONFLICTING STATEMENT CANCELED, it replied.
He tried another tack. THIS SHIP EMERGED FROM THE SPACE WARP INTO THE SAME
NORMAL SPACE POSITION IT HAD OCCUPIED BEFORE GOING INTO THE WARP.
He thought the computer would proceed to give him some sort of an explanation. Instead, it noncommittally replied: DATA ACKNOWLEDGED.
He typed: EXPLAIN THIS DISCREPANCY BETWEEN SPACE WARP AND NORMAL SPACE
POSITIONS.
It answered: INSUFFICIENT DATA TO ACCOUNT FOR DISCREPANCY.
He asked: HOW DID YOU DETERMINE OUR PRESENT POSITION?
It replied: BY TRIANGULATION, BASED ON THE RECESSION OF EARTH, THE SUN, SIRIUS, ORION, AND OTHER STARS.
BUT THE RECEDING SUN WENT INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET, he objected.
Again it answered with the noncommittal, DATA ACKNOWLEDGED.
DID YOU ALREADY HAVE THIS DATA? he asked.
YES.
EXPLAIN WHY THE RECEDING SUN SHIFTED INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET INSTEAD OF
THE INFRARED.
It replied: DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION.
He paused, pondering his next move. Time was speeding by and he was learning nothing of value. He would have to move the ship to some place in the warp where emergence into normal space would not put him under the blasters of the Slug cruisers. He could not know where to move the ship until he knew where the ship was at the present. He did not believe it was in the position given him by the computer, and its original space warp position had certainly not been the one given by the computer. The computer did not have the ability to use its knowledge to explain contradictory data. It had been ordered to compute their space warp position by triangulation of the receding sun and stars and was not at all disturbed by the contradicting shift of the sun into the ultraviolet. Suppose it had been ordered to calculate their position by computations based on the shift of the sun's and stars' spectrum into the ultraviolet?
He asked it: WHAT IS OUR POSITION, IGNORING THE TRIANGULATION AND BASING
YOUR COMPUTATIONS ON THE SHIFT OF THE SPECTRUMS OF THE SUN AND ORION
INTO THE ULTRAVIOLET?
It gave him the coordinates of a position almost two light-years toward Orion. The triangulation computations had shown the ship to be going backward at many times the speed of light; the spectrum-shift computations showed it to be going forward with approximately the same speed. THIS SHIP CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE IN TWO POSITIONS THREE LIGHT-YEARS
APART. NEITHER CAN IT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE GOING FORWARD AND BACKWARD. DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it agreed.
USE THAT DATA TO EXPLAIN THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE TWO POSITIONS YOU
COMPUTED.
DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL EXPLANATION, it answered.
ARE YOU CERTAIN THERE WAS NO ERROR IN YOUR CALCULATIONS?
THERE WAS NO ERROR.
DO YOU KNOW THAT IF WE DROPPED BACK INTO NORMAL SPACE, IT WOULD BE AT
NEITHER OF THE POSITIONS YOU GAVE ME?
It replied with the characteristic single-mindedness: DATA SHOWS OUR TWO POSITIONS TO BE
THOSE GIVEN.
He paused again. He was still getting nowhere while time fled by. How swiftly less than a hundred minutes could pass when they were all a man had left to him . . .
The computer was a genius with the mental initiative of a moronic child. It could find the answer for him but first he would have to take it by the hand and lead it in the right direction. To do that he would have to know more about the warp.
He wrote: EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THE SPACE WARP AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE AND
WITHOUT USING MATHEMATICS HIGHER THAN ALGEBRA.
It answered at once: THIS CANNOT BE DONE.
The chronometer read 12:30. He typed:
THIS SHIP WILL HAVE TO RETURN TO NORMAL SPACE NO LATER THAN 13:53. IT
MUST BE MOVED TO A DIFFERENT POSITION WHILE STILL IN THE WARP.
DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it replied.
THIS SHIP CANNOT OCCUPY TWO POSITIONS AT THE SAME TIME. YOUR MEMORY
FILES SHOULD CONTAIN SUFFICIENT DATA TO ENABLE YOU TO FIND THE
EXPLANATION OF THIS TWO-POSITION PARADOX. FIND THAT EXPLANATION.
SUBMIT METHOD OF PROCEDURE, it answered.
I DO NOT KNOW HOW. YOU WILL HAVE TO ARRIVE AT THE EXPLANATION UNAIDED. THIS CANNOT BE DONE, it replied.
He wrote, with morbid curiosity:
IF YOU DO NOT FIND THE ANSWER UNAIDED YOU WILL BE DESTROYED ALONG
WITH ME AT 13:53. DON'T YOU GIVE A DAMN?
It answered: GIVE A DAMN IS A SEMANTIC EXPRESSION I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. CLARIFY QUESTION.
He got out of the computer seat and walked about the room restlessly. He passed by the transdimensional viewscreen and communicator and pressed the communicator's signal button. A dial flickered in return, showing his signal was going out, but there was no sound in response. If only he could make contact with the brains in Observation—
He was umpty billion miles east of the sun and umpty billion miles west of the sun. He was racing faster than light in two different directions at once and he was sitting motionless under the blasters of two Slug cruisers.
Another thought came to him: even if he could move the ship while in the warp, where could he go?
He would have to go far beyond the outer limits of the solar system to escape detection by the Slug cruisers. And at that distance the sun would be only a yellow star, incapable of energizing the little solar power units. He would not live long after the last of the power was drained from the batteries and the air regeneration equipment ceased functioning. He would not even dare sleep, toward the last. There were no convection currents in the air of a ship without gravity, and it was imperative that the air be circulated constantly. The air circulation blowers would cease functioning while the ship still contained pure air but he would have to move about continually to breathe that air. Should he lie down to sleep he would smother to death in a carbon dioxide bubble of his own making.
If he managed to emerge into normal space at some point just outside Earth's atmosphere, beyond range of the cruisers, his driveless ship would descend as a blazing meteor. If, by some miracle, he could emerge into normal space just a few inches above the space-field it would be to materialize into space already occupied by air. Such a materialization would be simultaneously fatal to him and to the electronic components of the shuttle and computer.