Mr. Whipple came aboard first. He was an incredible character to find in space; he even carried a briefcase. But he took charge at once. He had two men with him and they got busy in a small comportment in the cargo deck. They knew just what compartment they wanted; we had to clear potatoes out of it in a hurry. They worked in there half a day, installing something they called a "null-field generator," working in odd clothes made entirely of hair-fine wires, which covered them like mummies. Mr. Whipple stayed in the door, watching while they worked and smoking a cigar—it was the first I had seen in three years and the smell of it made me ill. The relativists stuck close to him, exchanging excited comments, and so did the engineers, except that they looked baffled and slightly disgusted. I heard Mr., Regato say, "Maybe so. But a torch is reliable. You can depend on a torch."
Captain Urqhardt watched it all, Old Stone Face in person.
At last Mr. Whipple put out his cigar and said, "Well, that's that, Captain. Thompson will stay and take you in and Bjorkenson will go on in the Sarah. I'm afraid you will have to put up with me, too, for I am going back with you."
Captain Urqhardt's face was a gray-white. "Do I understand, sir, that you are relieving me of my command?"
"What? Good heavens, Captain, what makes you say that?"
"You seem to have taken charge of my ship... on behalf of the home office. And now you tell me that this man... er, Thompson—will take us in."
"Gracious, no. I'm sorry. I'm not used to the niceties of field work; I've been in the home office too long. But just think of Thompson as a... mmm, a sailing master for you. That's it; he'll be your pilot. But no one is displacing you; you'll remain in command until you can return home and turn over your ship. Then she'll be scrapped, of course."
Mr. Regato said in a queer, high voice, "Did you say "scrapped," Mr. Whipple?" I felt my stomach give a twist. Scrap the Elsie? No!
"Eh? I spoke hastily. Nothing has been decided Possibly she will be kept as a museum. In fact, that is a good idea." He took out a notebook and wrote in it. He put it away and said, "And now, Captain, if you will, I'd like to speak to all your people. There isn't much time."
Captain Urqhardt silently led him back to the mess deck.
When we were assembled, Mr. Whipple smiled and said, "I'm not much at speechmaking. I simply want to thank you all, on behalf of the Foundation, and explain what we are doing. I won't go into detail, as I am not a scientist; I am an administrator, busy with the liquidation of Project Lebensraum, of which you are part. Such salvage and rescue operations as this are necessary; nevertheless, the Foundation is anxious to free the Serendipity, and her sister ships, the Irrelevant, the Infinity, and Zero, for their proper work, that is to say, their survey of stars in the surrounding space."
Somebody gasped. "But that's what we were doing!"
"Yes, yes, of course. But times change. One of the null-field ships can visit more stars in a year than a torchship can visit in a century. You'll be happy to know that the Zero working alone has located seven Earth-type planets this past month."
It didn't make me happy.
Uncle Alfred McNeil leaned forward and said in a soft, tragic voice that spoke for all of us, "Just a moment, sir. Are you telling us that what we did... wasn't necessary?"
Mr. Whipple looked startled. "No, no, no! I'm terribly sorry if I gave that impression. What you did was utterly necessary, or there would not be any null ships today. Why, that's like saying that what Columbus did wasn't necessary, simply because we jump across oceans as if they were mud puddles nowadays."
"Thank you, sir, " Unc said quietly.
"Perhaps no one has told you just how indispensably necessary Project Lebensraum has been. Very possibly—things have been in a turmoil around the Foundation for some time—I know I've had so little sleep myself that I don't know what I've done and left undone. But you realize, don't you, that without the telepaths among you, all this progress would not have taken place?" Whipple looked around. "Who are they? I'd like to shake hands with them. In any case—I'm not a scientist, mind you; I'm a lawyer—in any case, if we had not had it proved beyond doubt that telepathy is truly instantaneous, proof measured over many light-years, our scientists might still be looking for errors in the sixth decimal place and maintaining that telepathic signals do not propagate instantaneously but simply at a speed so great that its exact order was concealed by instrumental error. So I understand, so I am told. So you see, your great work has produced wondrous results, much greater than expected, even if they are not quite the results you were looking for."
I was thinking that if they had told us just a few days sooner, Uncle Steve would still be alive.
But he never did want to die in bed.
"But the fruition of your efforts," Whipple went on, "did not show at once. Like so many things in science, the new idea had to grow for a long time, among specialists... then the stupendous results burst suddenly on the world. For myself, if anyone had told me six months ago that I would be out here among the stars today, giving a popular lecture on the new physics, I wouldn't have believed him. I'm not sure that I believe it now. But here I am. Among other things, I am here to help you get straightened away when we get back home." He smiled and bowed.
"Uh, Mr. Whipple," Chet Travers asked, "just when will we get home?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Almost immediately... say soon after lunch."
XVII OF TIME AND CHANGE
I might as well finish this off and give it a decent burial. I'll never have time to write again.
They held us in quarantine for a week at Rio. If it had not been for the LRF man with us, they might have been holding us yet. But they wore nice to us. Emperor Dom Pedro III of Brazil presented us each with the Richardson Medal on behalf of the United System and made a speech which showed that he was not quite sure who we were or where we had been, but nevertheless our services were appreciated.
But not as much attention was paid to us as I had expected. Oh, I don't mean that the news services ignored us; they did take our pictures and they interviewed each of us. But the only news story I saw was headed: THIRD LOAD OF RIP VAN WINKLES ARRIVE TODAY.
The reporter or whoever it was who wrote the piece had fun with it and I hope he chokes. It seems that our clothes were quaint and our speech was quaint and we were all deliciously old-fashioned and a bit simple-minded. The picture was captioned: "Off Hats, Chuckies! Grandpa Towncomes."
I didn't look at the stories.
It didn't worry Unc; I doubt if he noticed. He was simply eager to see Celestine. "I do hope," he said to me half seriously, "that child can cook the way her mother could."
"You'll be living with her?" I asked.
"Of course. Haven't we always?"
That was so logical that I had no answer. Then we ex changed addresses. That was logical, too, but it seemed odd
—all the address any of us had had was the Elsie. But I exchanged addresses with everybody and made a note to look up Dusty's twin, if he was still alive, and tell him he could be proud of his brother—perhaps I could locate him through the Foundation.
When they turned us loose and Celestine Johnson did show up I did not recognize her. I saw this tall, handsome old lady rush up and put her arms around Unc, almost lifting him off his feet, and I wondered if I should rescue him.
But then she looked up and caught my eye and smiled and I yelled, "Sugar Pie!"