She said, ‘The pattern should not have changed.’
‘Shouldn't it?’
‘We haven't moved far enough. Or shouldn't have. Only one and a third milli-light-years. That would not have been enough to alter the star pattern to the unaided eye. However’ - she drew a deep, shuddering breath -‘it's not as bad as it might have been. I thought we had slipped and moved out thousands of light-years.’
‘Would that have been possible, Tessa?’
‘Of course it would have been possible. If our passage through hyperspace weren't tightly controlled, a thousand light-years is as easy as one.’
‘In that case, we can as easily just go-’
Wendel anticipated the conclusion. ‘No, we couldn't just go back. If our controls were that slipshod, every pass we would make would be uncontrolled travel, ending at some random point, and we'd never find our way back.’
Fisher frowned. The euphoria of having passed through hyperspace and back - and stayed alive - began to leak away. ‘But when you sent out test objects, you brought them back safely.’
‘They were far less massive and were sent out through far shorter distances. But, as I said, it's not too bad. It turns out we went the correct distance. The stars are in the correct pattern.’
‘But they changed. I saw them change.’
‘Because we're oriented differently. The long axis of the ship has veered through an angle of better than twenty-eight degrees. In short, we followed a curved path rather than a straight one for some reason.’
The stars, as seen through the viewport, were moving now, slowly, steadily.
Wendel said, ‘We're turning to face the Neighbor Star again, just for the psychological value of facing in the right direction, but then we must find out why we curved in passage.’
The bright star, the beacon star, the star of brilliance entered the viewport and moved across it. Fisher blinked.
‘That's the Sun,’ said Wendel, answering Fisher's look of astonishment.
Fisher said, ‘Are there any reasonable explanations why the ship curved in passage? If Rotor also curved, who knows where they ended?’
‘Or where we will end either. Because I don't have any reasonable explanation. Not right now.’ She looked at him, clearly troubled. ‘If our assumptions were correct, then we should have changed position but not direction. We should have moved in a straight line, a Euclidean straight line, despite the relativistic curve of space-time, because we weren't in space-time, you see. There may be a mistake in the programming of the computer - or a mistake in our assumptions. I hope the former. That can be corrected easily.’
Five hours passed. Wendel came in, rubbing her eyes. Fisher looked up uncomfortably. He had been viewing a film, but had lost interest. He had then watched the stars, allowing the patterns to hypnotize him, like anesthesia.
He said, ‘Well, Tessa?’
‘Nothing wrong with the programming, Crile.’
‘Then the assumptions must be wrong?’
‘Yes, but in what way? There are an infinite number of assumptions we might make. Which are correct? We can't try them one after another. We'd never finish, and we'd be hopelessly lost.’
Silence fell between them for a while and then Wendel said, ‘If it had been the programming, it would have been a stupid mistake. We would have corrected it, without learning anything, but we'd have been safe. But now, if we must go back to fundamentals, we have a chance of discovering something really important, but if we fail, we may never find our way back.’
She snatched at Fisher's hand. ‘Do you understand, Crile? Something is wrong and if we don't find out what, there's no way - except sheer incredible accident - that will allow us to find our way home. No matter how we try, we may continue to end up in the wrong place, and find ourselves steadily wronger and wronger. Which means death eventually, when our cycling fails, or our power supply peters out, or deep despair drains away our ability to live. And it's I who've done this to you. But the real tragedy would be the loss of a dream. If we don't come back, they'll never know if the ship was successful at all. They might conclude the transition was fatal and they might never try again.’
‘But they must if they expect to escape from Earth.’
‘They may give up; they may sit cowering, waiting for the Neighbor Star to complete its approach and pass on, and dying bit by bit.’ She looked up, her eyes blinking rapidly, her face looking terribly tired. ‘And it would be the end of your dream, too, Crile.’
Crile's lips tightened, and he said nothing.
Almost timidly, Wendel said, ‘But for years now, Crile, you've had me. If your daughter - your dream - is gone, was I enough?’
‘I might ask: If superluminal flight is gone, was I enough?’
There seemed no easy answer on either side, but then Wendel said, ‘You're second-best, Crile, but it has been a good second-best. Thank you.’
Fisher stirred. ‘You speak for me, too, Tessa, something I wouldn't have believed at the start. If I had never had a daughter, there would have only been you. I almost wish-’
‘Don't wish that. Second-best is enough.’
And they held hands. Quietly. And gazed out at the stars.
Until Merry Blankowitz poked her face through the doorway. ‘Captain Wendel, Wu has an idea. He said he had it all along, but was reluctant to mention it.’
Wendel started to her feet. ‘Why was he reluctant?’
‘He said he once suggested the possibility to you, and you told him not to be a fool.’
‘Did I? And what has convinced him that I'm never wrong? I'll listen to it now and if it's a good idea, I'll break his neck for not forcing it on me earlier.’
And she hurried out.
72Fisher could only wait during the day and a half that followed. They all ate together as they always did, but silently. Fisher did not know if any of them slept. He slept only in snatches, and woke to renewed despair.
How long can we go on like this? he thought on the second day, as he looked at the beauty of that unattainable bright dot in the sky that, so brief a time ago, had warmed him and lighted his way on Earth.
Sooner or later, they would die. Modern space technology would prolong life. Recycling was quite efficient. Even food would last a long time if they were willing to accept the tasteless algae cake they would end up with. The micro-fusion motors would dribble out energy for a long time, too. But surely no-one would want to prolong life through the full time that the ship would make possible.
With a lingering, dragging, hopeless, lonely death finally certain, the rational way out would be to use the adjustable de-metabolizers.
That was the preferred method for suicide on Earth; why should it not be onboard ship as well? You could - if you wished - adjust the dose for a full day of reasonably normal life, live it out as joyously as you could - a known last day. At the end of the day, you would grow naturally sleepy. You would yawn and release your hold on wakefulness, passing into a peaceful sleep of restful dreams. The sleep would slowly deepen, the dreams would slowly fade, and you would not wake up. No kinder death had ever been invented.
And then, Tessa, just before 5 p.m., ship-time, on the second day after the transition that had curved instead of being straight, burst into the room. Her eyes were wild and she was breathing hard. Her dark hair, which, in the last year had become liberally salted with gray, was mussed.
Fisher rose in consternation. ‘Bad?’
‘No, good!’ she said, throwing herself into a chair rather than sitting down.
Fisher wasn't sure he had heard correctly, wasn't sure that perhaps she might only have been speaking ironically. He stared at her and watched her as she visibly gathered herself together.
‘Good,’ she repeated. ‘Very good! Extraordinary! Crile, you're looking at an idiot. I don't suppose I'll ever recover from this.’
‘Well, what happened?’
‘Chao-Li Wu had the answer. He had it all along. He told me. I remember him telling me. Months ago. Maybe a year ago. I dismissed it. I didn't even listen, really.’ She paused to catch her breath. Her excitement had completely disoriented the natural rhythm of her speech.