“Good morning, Jani.” She had a cool, professional voice. “And be assured, I’m quite happy to stay here and keep my feet on the ground.”
“‘Your feet?’” said Jani.
“Sorry about that, Jani. But people tend to get the point when I use metaphors.”
Rudy wasn’t worried about the Voice of Truth and its allies. He was enough of a politician to know that virtually the entire planet agreed that AIs were people.
A half dozen telescopes, four in orbit and two mounted on the station, had picked up the big cargo ship and were tracking it. Rudy wandered through the room, talking with reporters, shaking hands with the politicians, thanking the board members for their support. Through it all, it was impossible not to watch the clock.
He was surprised at how effectively Jon handled the media. He moved easily among them, telling jokes on himself, obviously enjoying being the center of attention. There was none of the exaggeration or self-importance or condescension that was so common with inexperienced people thrust into the spotlight.
He relaxed, and watched the Happy Times, barely visible now, a dull star off to one side of the moon. The minutes slipped easily away. A countdown clock ticked off the time remaining as the Locarno charged. Then, precisely on schedule, the ready lamp lit up. All systems were go.
Moments later, the star blinked out, the ship vanished from the screens. Rudy walked over and shook Jon’s hand.
If you watched a vessel making its jump with the Hazeltine system, you saw it gradually turn transparent and fade from view. The process took only a few seconds, but the transition was visible. It had not been like that on this occasion. The Happy Times had simply disappeared from sight.
Rudy inhaled twice, held his left wrist out so he could see his watch, and counted off six seconds. Then he allowed himself to look hopeful. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “if everything has gone as intended, the test vehicle has just jumped back into normal space, but it is out in Pluto’s neighborhood. It should now be starting a transmission to us. That transmission doesn’t have the benefit of Jon’s drive, so it will need about six hours to get here. It should arrive this evening at approximately 7:04. That could go a few minutes either way. There’s some imprecision in our ability to gauge exactly how far a jump will take a Locarno-equipped vessel. In any case, we’ll be back here tonight listening to the radio. I hope you’ll all join us.”
And, on cue, Doris delivered her line: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Refreshments will be served in the dining area.”
Some of the politicians and Foundation people retired to a meeting room that Rudy had arranged. Others, who wanted something more substantial than finger sandwiches and oatmeal cookies, fanned out among bars and restaurants to wait out the interval. Jon appeared confident. “It’ll be okay,” he told Rudy. “We’re through the most dangerous part of the process. The one I was worried about.”
“Which one was that?”
“Entry. It’s where the math was most uncertain.”
“I see.”
“If we were going to have a problem, that’s where it would have occurred.”
“You’re sure it didn’t?”
“I’m sure.” They were sitting in armchairs with a potted palm between them. “It would have exploded.”
“At the moment of transition?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Right there in River City. For everybody to see.” He was drinking something. Looked like brandy. “Have no fear, Rudy. It’s over. We’re in business.”
Hutch, who wasn’t personally invested quite the way Rudy was, had taken a wait-and-see attitude. She had a vague sense of how far Pluto was, at least much more so than anyone else present, and her instincts warned her that nobody could get out there in six seconds. Of course, her instincts also told her that getting there inside a minute was just as absurd. It was odd that she’d never thought of it in those terms. All those years, she’d sat down on the bridge, activated the system, and they’d drifted through an interdimensional haze for a few days, or a few weeks, and she would arrive in another star system.
She stopped to think how far Alpha Centauri was. A mere four light-years down the road. It didn’t sound far. Yet, had we been limited to the velocity of the first moon flights, a mission to that dull neighbor would have required more than fifty thousand years. One way.
When asked in Rudy’s presence about her reaction to the experiment, she said she was confident. Everything was going to be fine. It might have been the moment that brought her doubts to the forefront. “I’m never going to get used to this,” she told one reporter. “An armload of dimensions, space-bending drives. Sometimes I think I’d rather have been around when they flew the first planes.”
“I don’t know,” Rudy said. “They weren’t big about women in cockpits in those days.”
At about five o’clock, GMT, when they were starting to talk about a late meal, Paul showed up. “My treat,” he said. Nobody gave him an argument.
They knew they’d get no peace in one of Union’s restaurants, so they gathered in Rudy’s room and had pizza sent up. The dinner was a quiet one, everybody watching the clock, lots of talk about how good the food was, people looking out the window and making philosophical remarks about the planet below. They were over one of the oceans, but Rudy had no idea which one.
He hated having to wait for the results. Had it been a Hazeltine flight, they could have used its associated FTL comm system, the hyperlink, and everyone would have known the result within a few minutes. The Locarno had not yet been adapted for a hyperlink. There was no point spending the time and effort until they knew whether the transport system worked. Consequently, they had to wait it out. And radio signals, which crawled along at the speed of light, took forever.
That should be the next project, he decided. If everything turned out all right today. Rudy had already asked Jon whether it could be done. “It’ll be expensive,” he said. “And it’ll take time. But yes. I can’t see any reason why not.”
They watched some of the reports, watched their own interviews, laughed at the things they’d said. “The entire galaxy will be within reach,” Rudy had told New York Online.
“Right.” Paul shook his head. “If you don’t mind three-year missions.”
“That’s still pretty decent,” said Hutch. “The other side of the galaxy and back. In a few years.”
One of the board members, Charles McGonigle, who also headed the Arlington National Bank, chuckled and looked around. “Any volunteers?”
“I’d go,” said Rudy, turning serious.
Paul looked pensive. “Not me.”
Rudy was surprised. “Really?” he said. “You wouldn’t go on a flight to the other side of the galaxy?”
“Are you serious? That’s the problem with the Locarno. It puts all this stuff within range. But what’s really going to be there that we haven’t already seen? If we’ve learned anything at all these last few decades, it’s that the galaxy looks pretty much the same everywhere. Dust clouds, empty worlds, a few ruins. The stars are all the same. What’s the big deal?”
Rudy took a moment to chew down a piece of pizza. “It’s someplace we’ve never been before, Paul. The other side of the forest.”
At a quarter to seven they trooped back down to the control center. Jon was escorted by reporters, who never seemed to tire of asking the same questions. Margo Dee took him aside to wish him luck. “Let’s hope,” she said, “this is a day we’ll always remember.”