“How could such a thing happen?” Stone wanted to know. “I thought our course was pre-set—everything calculated automatically in advance…”
“To a certain extent, yes,” Laurance agreed. “But there were the minute adjustments, the position feedbacks, and somewhere along there we went astray. Maybe it was a mechanical failure, maybe a human error. We don’t know.”
“Does it matter now?” Bernard said.
“Hardly. A millionth of a second of parallax error— widening into an enormous departure from course almost instantly. And so—here we are.”
“Where?” Stone asked.
“The best I can offer you is an educated guess. We think we’ve emerged from no-space somewhere in the region of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. Hernandez is busy taking observations now. We’ve spotted one star we’re pretty sure is S Doradus, and that would clinch things.”
“So we’re not too far from home,” Dominici said with a harsh chuckle. “Only in the next galaxy, that’s all. What’s a mere 50,000 parsecs?”
“If we know where we are,” said Stone, “shouldn’t we be able to find our way back to Earth?”
“Not necessarily,” Laurance replied. “No-space travel doesn’t follow any logical pattern. There’s no correlation between time and distance, and no way of telling direction. We’re traveling blindfolded; the best we can do is send out an experimental ship unmanned, track its course, find out where it goes, and then duplicate the course. Only we don’t have any unmanned ships to send out. Our only hope for getting home is trial-and-error computation—and it’s just as reasonable to assume that on our next jump we’ll wind up in Andromeda as back in our own galaxy.”
“But we’ll give it a try, at least,” Bernard said.
“I’m not so sure we ought to. Right now we’re in a galaxy very much like our own. We may be wiser simply to pick out an Earth-type planet and settle there, rather than go shooting off into no-space again and possibly ending up stranded between galaxies, slowly starving to death.”
“Better to starve in the attempt to reach home,” Havig said, breaking his silence, “than to waste away on some strange world.”
“Probably you’re right,” Laurance agreed. “But we’ll have to think things out very carefully before we rush ahead and do anything. We have about three months’ food on board ship. So we have some time to play around before we have to start looking for a habitable planet. I…”
Nakamura entered the cabin suddenly. In a low voice he said to Laurance, “Commander, could you come up front for a moment? There’s something we’d like to show you.”
“Certainly. Excuse me, gentlemen.”
The spacemen left. For a long moment there was silence in the cabin after they had gone.
Bernard stared at the vision screen. It was a breathtaking view: a sprawling field of stars, a Milky Way no human eyes had ever seen before. Blazing blue-white giants and dim red stars studded the field of vision. And down in the lower part of the screen hung a dazzling white cloud, a coil with an arm drifting loose at either end. With a jarring sense of shock Bernard realized he was looking at his own galaxy. Somewhere within that seemingly tightly packed mass of light lay Sol, and the thousands of worlds of the Terran system; in there, too, were the Norglan worlds, and as many millions more of uninhabited, unexplored planets. And there they all were, both rival empires and perhaps all the intelligent life of the universe, looking at this distance like a bright blotch the size of a man’s hand.
Bernard caught his breath. It was a numbing sight to see the galaxy from a distance of some 50,000 parsecs. It tended to provide a different perspective on things, to demonstrate beyond the power of all words to convey how small was man and all his aspirations, how unintelligibly mighty the universe. At this distance, no single star of the home galaxy could be discerned by the unaided eye. And yet, in that inconsequential cluster of stars in the corner of the screen, how many grandiose plans for universal conquest were born before each sunrise?
Stone laughed, bitterly, mirthlessly. “Which is worse, anyway?” he asked. “To get lost out here fifty thousand parsecs from home—or to return to Earth with the Norglan ultimatum? Me, I almost think I’d rather stay lost, and at least not have to bring that kind of news home.”
“Not me,” Dominici retorted without hesitation. “I’m not in the same boat you are. If we got back home, I’d survive the Technarch’s anger, and maybe I’d be lucky enough to live through the war with the Norglans. At least if I died it wouldn’t be a lingering death. I can’t buy your preference for staying lost. It wouldn’t have been so bad with a couple of women on board, maybe, but to be stranded this way, on the edge of nowhere? Nine Adams and no Eves? Uh-uh. Not for me, friends.”
Ignoring the discussion, Bernard continued to stare at the alien sky in the vision screen.
Ten thousand light-years had seemed so far from home, once. A staggering distance, inconceivably vast. But it wasn’t, not really, not when you put matters into their proper perspective. Earth and Norgla were virtually next-door neighbors when you stood this far away and looked back. Bernard smiled ironically. And to think that we and the Norglans were all set to divvy up the universe between us! What cosmic arrogance, what, supreme gall! What right do any of us, in our puny little galaxy, have to stake even a tentative claim out here?
“How about you, Bernard?” Dominici asked. “You haven’t been saying much. What do you think of Stone’s idea? Would you rather stay lost out here, or be the bearer of evil tidings?”
“Oh, I’d like to get back home,” Bernard said mildly. “No doubt about it. I miss my books, my music, I even miss my teaching chores.”
“No family?” Dominici asked.
“Not really.” Bernard leaned back. “Two marriages; both dissolved. I have a son somewhere, by my first wife. David Martin Bernard, that’s his name. I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. I guess he doesn’t use my last name. He’s been raised to think that someone else is his father. If I met him on the street, he wouldn’t know me even by name.”
“Oh,” the biophysicist said in embarrassment. “Sorry to bring it up.”
Bernard shrugged. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not a wound that rankles in my bosom, anything like that. I simply wasn’t cut out to be a family man. Can’t get myself sufficiently involved with other people except on non-practical levels of scholarship or connoisseurship or the like. More’s the pity I didn’t realize that before my first marriage, that’s all.” Bernard wondered why he was saying all this. “It wasn’t till the second marriage broke up,” he went on, “that I realized that temperamentally I was a born bachelor. So I’ve got no family ties with Earth. But I’d still like to get home, all the same.”
“I guess we all do,” said Stone. “I didn’t really mean what I said a few minutes ago. It was just a thought off the top of my head.”
“I was married once too,” Dominici said to no one in particular. “She was a lab technician with golden hair, and we honeymooned in Farrarville on Arcturus X. She died ten years ago.”
And you obviously haven’t gotten over it, Bernard thought, seeing the sudden anguished look on Dominici’s face.
The sociologist felt uncomfortable. Up till now there had been a certain understanding of reserve in effect between the four of them; cooped up though they were, they had kept back details of their private lives. But if it all came spilling forth now as a relief from stress, all the long sad autobiographies of frustrations and petty disappointments and lost loves, the situation in the cabin would be intolerable. Each man would clamor to spew out his autobiography, while the others would wait their turns. And, Bernard knew, it would be his fault for having touched off the revelations.