“Misery loves company,” said Martand.
And the captain smiled. “Perhaps you're right,” he said.
Writer-friends come and go, too, alas. After I moved to New York, I frequently saw a number of writers whom, while I was in Boston, I had seen only occasionally. Lester del Rey and Robert Silverberg are examples. But then in 1972 Bob moved to California and I lost him again.
I had a chance to do one last thing for John Campbell, by the way. Itoccurred to Harry Harrison to do an anthology of stories of the kind that John Campbell had made famous by the authors he had made famous. Naturally, I was one of the authors, and in March 1972 I offered to do another “thiotimoline” article.
I had done three in my time and they had made a considerable stir. The first was The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline and it had appeared in the March 1948, Astounding under circumstances described in THE EARLY ASIMOV (where the article was reprinted).
The second was The Micropsychiatric Applications of Thiotimoline, which appeared in the December 1953 Astounding. It, along with the first, was included in my collection ONLY A TRILLION (Abelard-Schuman, 1957).
The third was Thiotimoline and the Space Age, which appeared in the September 1960 Analog and was included in my book OPUS 100 (Houghton Mifflin, 1969).
Now I wrote a fourth, a quarter century after the first, and it was THIOTIMOLINE TO THE STARS.
Thiotimoline To The Stars
“Same speech, I suppose,” said Ensign Feet wearily.
“Why not?” said Lieutenant Frohorov, closing his eyes and carefully sitting down on the small of his back. “He's given it for fifteen years, once to each graduating class of the Astronautic Academy.”
“Word for word, I'll bet,” said Feet, who had heard it the year before for the first time.
“As far as I can tell. -What a pompous bore! Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension.”
But the class was filing in now, uniformed and expectant, marching forward, breaking into rows with precision, each man and woman moving to his or her assigned seat to the rhythm of a subdued drumbeat, and then all sitting down to one loud boom.
At that moment Admiral Vernon entered and walked stiffly to the podium.
“Graduating class of '22, welcome! Your school days are over. Your education will now begin.
“You have learned all there is to know about the classic theory of space flight. You have been filled to overflowing with astrophysics and celestial relativistic mechanics. But you have not been told about thiotimoline.
“That's for a very good reason. Telling you about it in class will do you no good. You will have to learn to fly with thiotimoline. It is thiotimoline and that alone that will take you to the stars. With all your book learning, you may still never learn to handle thiotimoline. If so, there will yet be many posts you can fill in the astronautic way of life. Being a pilot will not, however, be one of them.
“I will start you off on this, your graduation day, with the only lecture you will get on the subject. After this, your dealings will thiotimoline will be in flight and we will find out quickly whether you have any talent for it at all.”
The admiral paused, and seemed to be looking from face toface as though he was trying to assay each man's talent to begin with. Then he barked:
“Thiotimoline! First mentioned in 1948, according to legend, by Azimuth or, possibly, Asymptote, who may, very likely, never have existed. There is no record of the original article supposed to have been written by him; merely vague references to it, none earlier than the twenty-first century.
“Serious study began with Almirante, who either discovered thiotimoline, or rediscovered it, if the Azimuth/Asymptote tale is accepted. Almirante worked out the theory of hypersteric hindrance and showed that the molecule of thiotimoline is so distorted that one bond is forced into extension through the temporal dimension into the past; and another into the future.
“Because of the future-extension, thiotimoline can interact with an event that has not yet taken place. It can, for instance, to use the classic example, dissolve in water approximately one second before the water is added.
“Thiotimoline is, of course, a very simple compound, comparatively. It has, indeed, the simplest molecule capable of displaying endochronic properties-that is, the past-future extension. While this makes possible certain unique devices, the true applications of endochronicity had to await the development of more complicated molecules; polymers that combined endochronicity with firm structure.
“Pellagrini was the first to form endochronic resins and plastics, and, twenty years later, Cudahy demonstrated the technique for binding endochronic plastics to metal. It became possible to make large objects endochronic-entire spaceships, for instance.
“Now let us consider what happens when a large structure is endochronic. I will describe it qualitatively only; it is all that is necessary. The theoreticians have it all worked out mathematically, but I have never known a physics-johnny yet who could pilot a starship. Let them handle the theory, then, and you handle the ship.
“The small thiotimoline molecule is extraordinarily sensitive to the probabilistic states of the future. If you are certain you are going to add the water, it will dissolve before the water is added. If there is even the slightest doubt in your mind as to whether you will add the water, the thiotimoline will not dissolve until you actually add it.
“The larger the molecule possessing endochronicity, the less sensitive it is to the presence of doubt. It will dissolve, swell, change its electrical properties, or in some way interact with water, even if you are almost certain you may not add the water. But then what if you don't, in actual fact, add the water? The answer is simple. The endochronic structure will move into the future in search of water; not finding it, it will continue to move into the future.
“The effect is very much that of the donkey following the carrot fixed to a stick and held two feet in front of the donkey's nose; except that the endochronic structure is not as smart as the donkey, and never gets tired.
“If an entire ship is endochronic-that is, if endochronic groupings are fixed to the hull at frequent intervals-it is easy to set up a device that will deliver water to key spots in the structure, and yet so arrange that device that although it is always apparently on the point of delivering the water, it never actually does.
“In that case, the endochronic groupings move forward in time, carrying all the ship with it and all the objects on board the ship, including its personnel.
“Of course, there are no absolutes. The ship is moving forward in time relative to the universe; and this is precisely the same as saying that the universe is moving backward in time relative to the ship. The rate at which the ship is moving forward, or the universe is moving backward, in time, can be adjusted with great delicacy by the necessary modification of the device for adding water. The proper way of doing this can be taught, after a fashion; but it can be applied perfectly only by inborn talent. That is what we will find out about you all; whether you have that talent.”
Again he paused and appraised them. Then he went on, amid perfect silence:
“But what good is it all? Let's consider starflights and review some of the things you have learned in school.
“Stars are incredibly far apart and to travel from one to another, considering the light-speed limit on velocity, takes years; centuries; millennia. One way of doing it is to set up a huge ship with a closed ecology; a tiny, self-contained universe. A group of people will set out and the tenth generation thereafter reaches a distant star. No one man makes the journey, and even if the ship eventually returns home, many centuries may have passed.