Lesbee said, 'We could theoretically go instantly from no motion to millions of times the speed of light. But as I've said, from a practical point of view, the inner motions of cells hold us back a little. We fear at some level that the movement is threatening, and we grab for a handrail, and hold on for dear life.'
He finished, 'My thought is, naturally, that we respect that feeling of the cells, and proceed with caution, but proceed.'
Tellier stared at him blankly, 'I don't get it,' he said. 'All right, so the matter-state beyond light is the norm. I've been there, too. Nothing that I could notice happened to me.'
'That is because you lay very still during the whole time,' said Lesbee. 'That's because you weren't tuned in to a landing device that could operate on thought impulses.'
Tellier looked at him blankly. Then he blurted out: 'You don't mean to tell me you left that connected all this time?'
'No. But that's the one thing I reconnected when I was fooling around with the drive controls.'
As he explained it, he had been striving to think of every possible precaution before they left the ship. And so he had come early to the thought that the arrangement whereby the lifeboat-landing mechanism operated through the controls of the Hope of Man – exactly as he had used it with Dzing -would enable them to control the big vessel from a distance, if necessary.
'It was really all just scheming,' he confessed. 'I pictured Miller being used to follow us or something – and so I did one thing that might give us control at a key moment. I had no other purpose in mind than that. All the rest of this came when I was reviewing, among other things, what happened to Dzing when I operated that switch.'
'Didn't he just blow up?'
'That's what it looked like.'
'The corridor was a shambles; the explosion literally almost dissolved him. The pieces found were like pieces of fluff, without weight.'
'Don't you think that was odd?' Lesbee was smiling faintly but tautly.
'Well– ' Tellier looked baffled.
Gazing at the other's face, Lesbee realized anew how difficult it was for people to have creative thoughts. His own brain had evidently attained some peak of quick comprehension from his years of operating under the basically hostile control of the Brownes. Overstimulated by fear, rage, envy, feelings of the rightness of his cause... he had seen the whole picture, as he now understood it, in a single flash of vivid comprehension.
Tellier, lacking that background, would have to have the explanation spelled out for him.
Lesbee hesitated before the fact of the other's inability. For the first time he questioned his impulse to share with Tellier.
He had been sitting on the edge of the control chair. The doubt brought him to his feet. He stood, eyes narrowed, considering what it was he had to say.
What remained to tell was fantastic but simple, unquestionably related to the basic structure of the universe – but explainable. When he had activated Dzing's self-destruct system, he had destroyed the robot. The evidence was the shattered wall and the indented ceiling and floor of the corridor where it had happened. But the Karn had been at the norm period when it happened.
Throughout, Dzing had operated and functioned outside the space-time limitations of the Hope of Man. The robot had been unaffected by four g's of acceleration. That could not be explained by energy flows. Even more important, the light weight of what was left of the robot body fitted what Browne had said about the nature of matter at light-speed. The Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction Theory applied in all its remarkable meaning.
And so he had – while Tellier slept – reached into his pocket and pressed a control button of the landing mechanism; and he had let its energy amplify his thought.
Instantly, he was in the norm state of the universe, at light-speed and beyond. He had set the time ratio at 973 to one, because of Hewitt's experience. Lesbee decided that the cells of a human body – perhaps of all bodies – had some natural balance at that ratio. He preferred not to go counter to such a native state of being without a lot of experimentation.
That first time, he had stared down at Tellier, eager to wake him up, and tell him the great discovery. Now, the excitement faded, he changed his mind.
He turned, and faced his friend, and said quietly, 'Armand, I can see I've given you as much new data as your brain should absorb at one time.'
Tellier did not reply. The high excitement of what he had seen and heard was fading from him. There was something in his friend's manner, a certain hardness, the presence of which had always surprised him. It surprised him again now. Suddenly, he saw that such a momentous discovery by a man who, despite his many likable qualities, was at heart a dictator... was not a good thing.
Lesbee was speaking once more, his voice friendly, his manner kind, as always. He said, 'I'll tell you the rest at some later time.'
But he never did.
36
A bright light gleamed in Gourdy's eyes. He stirred in his sleep, then awakened with a start.
His bedroom was brightly lighted. He blinked the brightness away and saw Hewitt and half a dozen men dressed in the uniforms of – Gourdy stared unbelieving. He recognized the gray-blue cloth from old films:
...Space Patrol...!
One of the uniformed men, a stern-faced older person, said in a deep baritone, 'Mr. Gourdy, you are under arrest and will be taken off this ship.'
Two of the uniformed men stepped forward and grabbed him, brought his wrists together. There was a gleam of metal, the cold feel of it on his skin. Handcuffs clicked with a steely sound.
Gourdy managed to sit up at this point. He was still struggling to shake off sleep. As he stared down at the gleaming metal things, he had the feeling that he was having a nightmare.
To one side, a uniformed man said to Marianne: 'You may accompany your husband to Earth, if you wish, Mrs. Gourdy.'
'No, no, no -' Her voice was high-pitched, unnatural. 'I'll stay right here -'
'That is your privilege, madame. It is Mr. Hewitt's decision that the voyage shall go on. You are one of the few aboard who may choose to stay or go.'
Strong hands were now pulling Gourdy to his feet. 'Come along!' somebody commanded.
He made his first real resistance. 'Hey!' he said. He tried to jerk away.
The stern-faced man made a gesture to the two men who Were holding him. Without a word, they picked him up and carried him out of the bedroom into the main room.
As Gourdy's glance flicked over the room, he saw that the three other women – Ruth, Ilsa, and Ann – were in their dressing gowns, huddled in the doorway of the second bedroom.
Even as he watched, a woman in the uniform of a Space Patrol officer went over to them, and said, 'Please get dressed, ladies!'
Ruth nodded and drew the other two gently back into the room, out of sight. The door closed.
Gourdy saw now that two uniformed men stood at the corridor door. They stepped aside. A few moments later, Harcourt, one other of his men, and four Space Patrolmen, entered. Gourdy's two henchmen were handcuffed to each other. They appeared bewildered and at first they did not seem to notice Gourdy.
The patrolmen held a low-voiced conversation with Hewitt, then they went out.
During the next hour, all eighteen of Gourdy's men were captured and brought to the captain's cabin. When they were all there in a sullen group, Hewitt motioned the patrol officers aside and addressed the prisoners.
'That photograph with the splotch of light on it was the key,' he began. 'It was not defective, a fact which I began to suspect right away. When I looked at the enlargement as it was projected onto a screen by Astronomer Josephs, it occurred to me that I was looking at a section of my own salvage ship, the Molly D.