The screen went blank for a second, then the 3-D projection of Jack Wenek, a well- known comedian, abruptly hovered in the air a meter in front of the screen. Carmody did not care to listen, so ignored the button which would have brought Wenek’s voice to him. However, he felt that he needed something to divert himself. Or something even stronger than a diversion, something which would put his grief and problems in a different perspective. He needed immensity, awe and wonder to make him shrink.
He reached under the seat and took from the rack a helmet-shaped device with a snap- down visor. After placing it on his head, he moved the visor down over his face. Immediately, he heard the voice of an officer of the White Mule.
“... Provided individually so that your fellow passengers won’t have to view this if they don’t wish to. Some people, encountering this for the first time, are thrown into a state of shock or hysteria.” The curved inner side of the visor leaped into solid life. Carmody could see the spaceport outside, the white, mural-decorated buildings gleaming in the bright mid-afternoon sun, the people looking out of the windows of the port buildings at the White Mule.
“A dozen spaceships take off every day from this port. But the spectacle, unspectacular as it is, continues to attract hundreds, even thousands of sightseers every day on every planet of the Federation. And on every non-Federation planet, too, for sentients are just as curious as Terrestrials. Even much-traveled passengers, the port employees, and the crews of other ships do not become accustomed to this seemingly magical trick.”
Carmody drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, for he had heard similar speeches many times. At once, a voice cut in: “Are you all right, sir?”
Carmody said, “Huh?” Then he chuckled. “I’m OK. I was just a little impatient with the lecture. I’ve made over a hundred jumps.”
“Very well, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”
He made an effort to calm himself, and settled back to watch the scene on the visor.
The first voice returned. “...three, two, one, zero!”
Carmody, knowing what was coming, refrained from blinking. The port was gone. The planet of Wildenwooly and the brightness of its sun were gone. Cups of burning wine hung on a black table: red, green, white, blue, violet. The one-eyed beasts of the jungle of space glared.
“... approximately 50,000 light-years away in quote nothing flat unquote. The Earth- sized planet you were just on is too far away to be seen, and its sun is only one of the millions of stars scattered prodigally through the universe around you, ‘the eternally sparked thoughts in God’s mind,’ to quote the great poet Gianelli.
“Just a moment. Our ship is turning now to align herself for the next jump. The protein computer which I briefly described a moment ago is comparing the angles of light from a dozen identifiable stars, each of which radiates its unique complex of spectral colors and each of which has a known spatial relation to the other. After the quote artificial brain unquote of the computer ascertains our location, it will point the ship for the next jump.”
Fine horizontal and vertical lines appeared on the visor before Carmody.
“Each square of the grid is numbered for your convenience. Square 15, near the center, will contain the luminary of Wildenwooly in a few seconds. It is now in No. 16, drifting at a 45-degree angle across it. Watch it, ladies and gentlemen. It is now becoming brighter, not because it is getting closer but because we have amplified its light for your easier identification.”
A yellow spark passed beneath a larger but ghostly pale blue one, then entered the corner of square fifteen. It slipped across the grid line, stopped in the middle, and bobbed up to the center.
Carmody remembered the first time he had seen this happen, so many years ago. Then he had felt a definite pain in his belly, as if his umbilical cord had been reattached, only to be savagely ripped out and to go trailing away from him through space. He had been lost, lost as never before in his life.
“The location of Wildenwooly’s sun relative to the other point-stars has been determined and stored by the computer. The ship was ready several million microseconds ago to hurl itself on its next leap through the so-called subspace or nonspace. But the captain has delayed the ship because Saxwell Interstellar Lines cares about the enjoyment of its passengers. Saxwell wants its guests to see for themselves what is occurring outside the White Mule.
“The next jump will take us another 50,000 light-years, and we will quote emerge unquote from nonspace or extraspace, a hundred kilometers outside the extreme limits of the atmosphere of our next planetary destination, Mahomet.
“This precision is possible only because of the numerous flights that the White Mule has made between Wildenwooly and Mahomet. Of course, the relative positions of the two have changed since the last trip. But a cesium clock is coordinated with the computer, and the distance and angles traversed by the pertinent planets since the last trip have been calculated and compared to our present position. When the captain activates the proper control, he gives the order for the entire navigational complex of the White Mule to bring the calculations up to the microsecond and then to automatically jump the ship.”
The officer paused, then said, “Are you ready, ladies and gentlemen? I will now count. . .”
Minimum jump, for some reason Carmody did not understand, was the length of the spacecraft. Maximum jump depended on the number of translation generators used and the power available. The White Mule could have passed from the Galaxy to anywhere in Andromeda in one leap. One and a half million light-years could be spanned as swiftly as the spurt of an electron down a wire. And the distance from Wildenwooly to a position just outside the atmosphere of Kareen could be spanned in four maneuvers, total “real” time sixty seconds. But the owners of the White Mule were more interested in making money than in displaying the powers of the vessel. Thus, there were two more planetary stops before Kareen.
The blackness and the burning globes flickered. Before Carmody was the great bow of a planet, forever taut with the pull of gravity, sunlight striking off an ocean, the darkness of a tortoise-shaped continent, the whiteness of a cloud mass like an old, huge scar on the shell of the tortoise.
Despite his previous experience, Carmody jerked back. The massy bulk was falling toward him. Then he was lost in admiration, as always, at the seeming ease and sureness of the maneuver. The complex of artificially grown cells, only three times the size of his own brain, had given the White Mule its true course. It had directed the jump so that the vessel popped like a rabbit out of a hat, perilously close to the upper air of Mahomet, tangent to the course of the planet around its sun and moving at the same velocity. Moreover, the White Mule was over the hemisphere on which it was to land.
Carmody blinked. The curve leaped at him. Another flicker of the eyelid. The visor was filled with a large lake, a mountain range, and a few clouds. The ship rocked for a few seconds, then steadied as the compensating drives took over.
A blink. The range was now a dozen mountains and the lake had expanded. On the western shore of the lake was the spiderweb outline of a city’s streets and a number of huge white round spots, like a spider’s eggs—the landing circles—in the center of the web.
Down on the surface, those looking upward would see the White Mule, if they saw it all, only as a glint of light. But in a few seconds they would hear the boom made by the White Mule’s first displacement of air as it had flashed from “nonspace” into the atmosphere. Then, as the ship became visible as a larger disc, another boom would follow the first. And a third.