He was tired; that explained it, though he did not feel depleted. Perhaps it was not so much a physical effect as a psychic one. Knowing how far they had ranged from Earth — so far that light reflected from their base of operations, the planet Neptune, would not reach home for thousands of years — knowing this, he unconsciously sought a closer identification with the home planet. He wanted to step into the world he saw, somehow, much as a child wanted to step into a storybook picture. A world of ancient adventure and glory, where the threat of nuclear holocaust or mind-destruction did not exist. For all its primitive faults, a better world…
If it happened again, he would quit. Afra was right; there was no point in wearing himself out, when his mission was so important. A misreading of a year or two might throw them a light-year or two off course. Better to be sensible: to wait a few hours and do it properly, than to risk inaccurate information.
And it was important, he reminded himself again. They were not just traveling; they were attempting to map the convolutions of the cosmos as the jump cycles penetrated them, and in that sense an error of as much as a day might invalidate the phase. How much would a tiny inaccuracy be magnified by a large jump? There was no point in the map unless it were precise, and without the map they would never be able to return physically to Earth. Only the macroscope could pinpoint their location so exactly; the telescope, over a distance of a thousand light-years, was a blunderbuss.
“You know best, Ivo,” she said quietly.
Almost, he quit then. “Thanks,” he said, meaning it. “I don’t think Egypt is doing us much good. Where else should I try?”
“You might try Damascus. That’s traditionally the oldest city in the world, and a very important one. Move northeast about four hundred miles—”
“On my way.” He could jump there instantly by touching the correct coding, since Damascus was on the list; but he preferred to make the trek by, as it were, his own power. It gave him badly needed confidence.
He shot across the delta of the Nile at jet-plane velocity and intersected the coastline. His route would take him over the southwest corner of the Mediterranean Sea — probably the same route used by the Egyptian ships in the course of trade or war with Asia minor. Except that he was high above the ground. Even so must the fabulous spirits of Near East legend have swooped in minutes over land and sea — the godlets, the genii, gaseous creatures of malevolence and power. Their number was supposed to have been severely curtailed by Biblical King Solomon, who confined them to bottles when they would not swear fealty to him. Some were said to have remained helpless in such confinement for thousands of years. Could they be considered in fact travelers via the macroscope, able to witness without participating? What a horrible fate, to be corked forever, sentient, within a tiny sphere!
Time had passed during his sojourn in the land of Egypt, and his exodus was late. The day was terminal, dusk approaching, and he was traveling into it. The descending sun sparkled from the waves and tinted the edges of clouds. “How still the plains of the waters be! / The tide is in his ecstasy. / The tide is at his highest height: / And it is night.” And what if this were the Mediterranean instead of the marshes of Glynn? The words of the poet still applied.
A ship came into sight upon the ocean. He swerved to study it: a stout galley, a dozen or fifteen oars stroking the water rhythmically on each side. So they really did use them, in the olden days! It had a mast, but the sail was furled: not enough wind. Probably anxious to get home tonight, he thought fondly, and no wonder; this ship could not be much over fifty feet long. Compared to the modern liners, a thousand feet from stem to stern (he smiled a little wistfully, remembering Brad’s pun)… though this one did not appear to have much of a stem… or even the three-hundred-foot sailing ships…
No. This toy dared not stray far from its port.
He was too low, too slow; he wanted to reach Damascus before nightfall. He could not afford to tarry beside every curiosity along the way, tempting as such diversions might be.
He lifted — and did not rise. The ocean was nearer now, less placid; the green waves slopped randomly fifty feet beneath him. He felt cold.
He concentrated on the macroscopic controls, closing his eyes to the scene around him. If this were a second snooze, he wanted to pull out of it before admitting defeat. Pride required at least an orderly retreat. If it were a momentary slip of the fingers, no problem. The spherical control was in his right hand, guiding his journey as he automatically adjusted it, hardly conscious of his manipulation. A twist—
The ball was gone! His fingers closed on air.
He opened his eyes. The living liquid was twenty feet below and he was falling.
He grabbed at the goggles. His hand smacked into his bare face.
“Ivo!” Afra’s voice, from a distance.
The water struck, the force and chill of it numbing his naked body. Brine slapped into his eyes, his mouth, blinding and choking him.
He forgot about the niceties of perception and probability, and swam. His head broke surface and he coughed out the spume fogging his lungs and shook the sting from his eyes.
He was here. No doubt of that. Had he really heard Afra cry his name, as though she cared, just before the splash? Academic curiosity, now.
Who was he to claim the thing was impossible? He could drown in mid-protest. Better to deal with reality as he found it.
He had fallen somewhat ahead of the ship, and to the side. He did not know how far he was from land, but it was too far. He was not that strong a swimmer, and the cold was getting to him already, and he did not even know the direction. His best hope was to intercept the galley; otherwise—
He swam. His arms were heavy already, unused to these conditions and probably fatigued in advance by the melting/gastifying/compression cycle, though he had no personal awareness of the details. They had set the program, and had gone under the melt-beam… and come out of it to find space shifted about them. Space travel, in practice, was that simple. Afra no longer demanded the handling, such was her own confidence now. Meanwhile, it was hard to keep from breathing the water, since the waves came irregularly and he was not adept at the crawl breathing cycle. Finally he lifted his head and switched to breast-stroke/frog-kick, watching for the ship.
It seemed it was easier for him to traverse the light-years than to cover a hundred feet of choppy water.
The galley was in sight! The oars lifted and stroked, lifted and stroked, and the vessel cut through the sea at an impressive rate, large and sleek from this lowly angle. Circular shields lined the top, and in occasional swells he could see the great front ram lift: a warship.
He was not going to make it. He was still a little ahead, but his rate of progress toward it was insufficient and getting slower. Already the numbness of his arms had reduced him to a dog-paddle. In a few minutes the ship would pass him and be on its way, leaving him to tire at last and sink. Would that return him to their Neptune-base, buried deep in the continent of Triton with the screaming methane storms above and impacted matter below? Or would it simply be the end?
He did not have the nerve to find out. His struggle had to be for life as he experienced it; he could not end this adventure by suicide, even if it were no more than a nightmare.
He saw the galley now with sharp clarity: dark brown wood low in the water surmounted by the row of oar-holes, and above them square windows with additional mountings for oars. The bow was vertical and without ornament, curving forward near the waterline to project into the massive six-foot spike that clove the ocean and, upon occasion (he was sure), the hulls of enemy ships. The rear curved up and back like the neck of a swan, terminating in a forward-tilting point twelve feet above the waterline. The last oar-brace was larger, and from it came the sturdy rudder, resembling a paddle inserted backwards. The side of the vessel above the oar-banks was checkered with alternate wooden and wickerwork panels, and the capping row of multicolored circular shields contributed to the galley’s increasingly formidable aspect.