And no doubt they think it’s just as mysterious to write a sonnet or formulate theorems in sociometrics, he thought. Complexity is all a matter of viewpoint. Chalk up another score for relativistic philosophy.
The hours dragged mercilessly. Some time later that day, when the four passengers were coming to their breaking-point, the door to their compartment opened and the crewman named Clive entered.
He was a small man, built on a slight scale, with a mocking, youthful face and unruly, sttangely graying hair. He smiled and said, “We’re passing across the orbit of Pluto. Commander Laurance says for me to tell you that we’ll be makings the mass-time conversion any minute now.”
“Will there be warning?” Dominici asked. “Or will it—just happen?”
“You’ll know about it. We’ll sound a gong, for one thing. But you can’t miss it.”
“Thank God we’re out of the solar system,” Bernard said fervently. “I thought the first leg of the trip would last forever.”
Clive chuckled. “You realize you’ve covered four billion miles in less than a day?”
“It seems like so much longer.”
“The medieval spacemen used to be glad if they could make it to Mars in a year,” Clive said. “You think this is bad? You ought to see what it’s like to make a plasma-drive hop between stars. Like five years in one little ship so you can plant a transmat pickup on Betelgeuse XXIX. That’s when you learn how to be patient.”
“How long will we be in warp-drive?” Stone asked.
“Seventeen hours. Then it’ll take a few hours more to decelerate. Call it a day between now and landing.” The little spaceman showed yellowed teeth. “Imagine that! A day and a half to cover ten thousand light-years, and you guys are complaining!” He doubled up with laughter, slapping his thigh. Bernard and the other three watched the spaceman’s amusement without comment.
Then Clive was serious again. “Remember—when you hear the gong, we’re converting.”
“Should we strap down?”
Clive shook his head. “There’s no change in velocity; you won’t feel any jolt.” He grinned. “Maybe you won’t feel anything at all. We’re still kinda new at this faster-than-light stuff, y’know.”
There was no reply. Clive shrugged and walked out, letting the bulkhead swing shut behind him.
Bernard laughed. “He’s right, of course. We’re idiots for being so impatient. It’s just that we’re accustomed to getting places the instant we want to get there. To them, this trip must seem ridiculously fast.”
“I don’t care how fast it seems to them,” Dominici said tightly. “Sitting around in a little cabin for hour after hour is hell for me. And for all the rest of us.”
“Perhaps you can now see the advantages of learning to resign yourself to the existence of discomfort,” advised Havig gravely. “Impatience is unwise. It leads to anger, anger to rashness, rashness to sin. But…”
Dominici whirled to face the Neopuritan, a muscle cording in his cheek. The biophysicist snapped heatedly, “Don’t hand me any of your filthy piousness, Havig! I’m tensed up and I’m damned if I like being cooped up, and words aren’t going to make me feel any better! And anyway…”
“Not words, no,” Havig said equably. “But the truths that lie behind the words are important. The truth of seeing yourself in relation to Eternity—of knowing that a momentary delay is of no importance—of seeing your place in the vast mechanism of the universe—this helps one overcome the itch of impatience.”
“Will you keep that to yourself?” Dominici shouted.
“Hold it, hold it, both of you!” Stone broke in. The chubby diplomat seemed to be cast in a permanent role as peacemaker in the expedition. “Calm down, Dominici. Steady. You aren’t making it any easier for us by blowing your stack. Just ease off.”
“He had provocation,” Bernard said, glaring at Havig. “Mr. Gloom over there in the corner was handing out free advice. That’s enough to touch anyone off. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a bunch of tracts along to distribute, Havig.”
An uncharacteristic flicker of amusement appeared on the Neopuritan’s face. “My apologies. I was trying to relieve the general tension you others feel, not to increase it. Perhaps I erred in speaking up. It seemed my duty, that’s all.”
“We aren’t convertible,” Bernard said bluntly.
“We teach, but we do not proselytize,” Havig replied levelly. “I was only trying to help.”
“It wasn’t needed.”
Stone sighed. “Some fine bunch of treatymakers we are! You’ll all be leaping for each other’s throats before long if this goes…”
The gong sounded suddenly, resonating through the cabin with an impact that everyone felt. It was a deep, full-throated bonging chime, repeated three times, dying away slowly after the last with a shimmer of harmonics.
The quarrel ended as though a curtain had been brought down to separate the quarrellers.
“We’re making the conversion,” Dominici muttered hoarsely. He swung around to face the wall, and Bernard realized in some surprise, by observing the motions Dominici’s right elbow was describing, that the seemingly skeptical biophysicist was making the sign of the cross.
Bernard felt uncomfortable. Although not a religious man himself, he wished he could commend himself in some way to a watchful deity, and take comfort therein. As it was, he could do no more than trust to good fortune. He felt monumentally alone, with the dark night of the universe only inches from him beyond the walls of the ship. And soon not even the universe would be there.
Distressed, Bernard looked at his fellow voyagers. Havig was moving his lips in silent prayer, eyes open but lost in contemplation of the Eternity that now was so near. Dominici’s hoarse whisper rasped across the room, intoning Latin words Bernard knew only from his studies. Stone, evidently like Bernard a man without religious affiliation, had lost some of his cheery ruddiness of cheek, and sat staring leadenly at the wall opposite him, trying to look unconcerned.
They waited.
If the hours since their blastoff from Earth had seemed long, the minutes immediately following the gong were eternities. No one spoke. Bernard sat back, tasting the coppery taste of fear in his mouth, and wondering what he was afraid of that turned his tongue so dry.
He had no clear idea of what effect to anticipate as they made the conversion. Moments passed, and then he felt a dull vibration, heard a thrumming sound: the mighty Daviot-Leeson generators building up potential, most likely. Bernard knew about as much of the theory as any intelligent layman might. In a moment or two, he realized, a fist of energy would lash out in cosmic violence, sunder the continuum, and create a doorway through which the XV-ftl might glide.
Into where?
Into what kind of universe?
Bernard’s mind could form no picture of it. All he knew was that they would enter some adjoining universe where distances were irrational figures, where objects might simultaneously occupy the same space. A universe that had been mapped—how accurately, he wondered?—in five years of experimental work, and now was being navigated by bold men who plunged onward with but the foggiest concept of where they were or where they might be heading.
The thrumming grew louder.
“When does it happen?” Stone asked.
Bernard shrugged. In the silence, he heard himself saying, “I guess it must take a couple of minutes for the generators to build up the charge. And then we go kicking through…”