PLATINUM POHL (36 page)
Authors: Frederik Pohl
There was motion and activity on the bridge while they waited; and Lorch observed that Ciccarelli had kicked loose his shoes to float high enough off the steel floor to touch the hands of the chronometer. If he was floating now, thought Lorch, it was no lie of the light. And was what he had seen a moment before the image of
now,
received before it was sent?
now,
received before it was sent?
They waited, and asked themselves such demented questions, while
Terra II
described the complex curve that passed for a Riemannian straight line, and the exec thoughtfully counted his heartbeats.
Terra II
described the complex curve that passed for a Riemannian straight line, and the exec thoughtfully counted his heartbeats.
Then: “Full jets, One, Four, Five Main,” snapped the exec. The ship bucked and shuddered.
And then it was over, and they came “down” out of hyperspace, down into the normal space-time frame that held their own sun and their own planet. They had backtracked, as near as could be, every component of their course. And they had come out.
They stared wordlessly at the stars, until the captain said briskly, “Belay that. Take a fix, Mr. Ciccarelli!” And down in the sick-bay, little Conboy, able once more to trust his vision, was rapidly assembling a hypodermic. But as he turned to his patient, he saw that it wasn’t necessary; Groden, who had been mumbling and crying out throughout the jump into hyperspace, was out cold again.
Ciccarelli put down his abacus.
“No position, sir,” he said throatily to the captain. “We’ve checked everything down to third magnitude.”
The old man’s chin went up a degree of arc, but that was all. “All right,” he said. “Keep going.”
“We’ll try, sir,” Ciccarelli promised. “I’ll get to work on the faint ones.”
The captain nodded and walked delicately, almost mincingly in the light spin-gravity, away. Commander Broderick from the surgeon’s office down the corridor replaced him. He was staring after the captain, as he came into the navigation room.
“If I were the old man,” he said thoughtfully, “I would still be here.”
“Maybe that’s why you aren’t the old man.” Ciccarelli wearily leaned over his crewman’s shoulder to scan the rough log.
“Maybe,” Broderick agreed. “Still, what’s he going to do back on the bridge? Go through this same routine again? Make another jump and see where we come out? Might work, I don’t deny it. Given infinite time
and
infinite fuel and a couple of other infinites, sooner or later we’d come out right spang in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
and
infinite fuel and a couple of other infinites, sooner or later we’d come out right spang in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
“Tell him your troubles,” Ciccarelli said shortly. “How’s Groden?”
“He’ll live. If any of us do.”
“That,” said Ciccarelli, picking up the completed sheaf of observations from his crewman, “is a pretty long shot, Doc.”
The captain, in his own mind, would have agreed with Ciccarelli. He walked soberly, unswervingly, down the galley-ways toward the bridge, ticking off the possibilities with a part of his brain while the big, deep area that might have been labeled “officer’s country” was making careful note of the ship’s condition.
The fuel and food reserves would outlast the air; and Broderick’s sick bay was an Asiatic mess. Lacking the Atlas’s data and Groden’s skill on the bridge, it would take a miracle to get them home; and Spaceman-Second Kerkam was out of uniform.
The enlisted women’s quarters needed floor polishing; and the mind of no three-dimensional animal could, by definition, grasp the geodesics of Riemannian space. It was a matter of trial and error and record, and all you could hope to do was retrace a course once you had found one that brought you somewhere worth being. It was, he reflected with mild distaste, a shoddy way to run a spaceship.
Recorder Mate Eklund, having ducked into the enlisted women’s area scant yards ahead of the captain, sighed to her bunkmate, “Thank heaven! I thought he was coming in here!”
“Did you have a rough time on the bridge?” her bunkmate asked sympathetically.
“No, not that. But he’s a fish, Julia. He was just standing there, not looking scared or anything, and all the time we were going straight to—straight to goodness knows where,
He
doesn’t know what to do,” she added bitterly. “None of them do.”
He
doesn’t know what to do,” she added bitterly. “None of them do.”
“You think we’re lost?”
“Think it? Honey, I
know
it.” She sat down and complained, “I’ve got a headache.”
know
it.” She sat down and complained, “I’ve got a headache.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” her bunkmate said warmly. “Here, let me get you a cup of tea.”
Nancy Eklund said doubtfully, “Do you think you should? Every time you boil water, it’s just that much more heat. And—”
“Now let me worry about that,” said Julia. “You’re a pretty important person on this ship, and you’ve got to keep yourself in good shape.”
The library let herself be persuaded easily enough, though she had an idea that her bunkmate had an ulterior motive or two. But she
did
have a headache and she
was
tired.
did
have a headache and she
was
tired.
And it was true that on the bridge during a jump, she was about the most important person aboard.
It was a duty that Nancy hated, though, important or not. She thanked her lucky stars that most of the time she was in a trance state and not able to observe, for instance, what the distortions of hyperspace were doing to her own personal appearance. But it was finicking, wearing work, even in a trance state. Some of it was bound to seep through to the conscious level, however distorted, and she had been having dreams about hyperspace courses, fixes and triangulation points.
Julia came back with the tea and Nancy Eklund said, “I’m sorry to be always complaining. Heaven knows it’s no worse than we had a right to expect. We knew this was dangerous when we signed up for it.”
“But we didn’t know we’d sweat ourselves to death, Nancy! We didn’t expect this eternal should-I-light-the-lights, should-I-boil-some-coffee. Honestly, I don’t mind dying half as much as I mind being nibbled to death by one little annoyance after another!” She glanced speculatively at the other girl, and in a different tone said, “I guess you’re pretty tired—”
Nancy Eklund sat up and stared at her. “Julia! You can’t want me to go on with that horrible story.”
“Not if you don’t feel up to it,” her bunkmate said humbly. “But it passes the time—if you aren’t too hoarse.”
“Well, no.” Nancy took a sip of tea. “I was receiving, not putting out,” she said professionally. “I suppose if you
really
want-”
really
want-”
“Index!” said Julia triumphantly, not waiting for her to change her mind. As Nancy Eklund, at the cue word, slumped into the trance state, Julia caught the cup of tea before it spilled. “Fiction!” she said, and went on to give the author’s name, the title and the chapter of the mystery she had been “reading.” She settled back happily as the library took up the story again.
It wasn’t, Julia told herself, as if it really mattered. After all, there wasn’t anything for Nancy or anyone else to do, until the geniuses in navigation and computation had figured out where they were. And that would probably take days.
But she was wrong. In the wardroom, Commander Broderick was brooding over a bowl of coffee, half watching a bridge game, when Ciccarelli walked in. He looked tired; he didn’t even wait for anyone to ask; he volunteered, “Yeah, yeah, we have a position. It isn’t good.”
“Pretty far?” one of the card players asked wistfully.
Ciccarelli nodded, unsmiling. “Pretty far. We got our fix by triangulating on extragalactic nebulae, which will give you an idea. I make—”he glanced at them under his eyebrows—“better than fifteen thousand light-years from Sol.”
Ensign Lorch picked up the cards and began to deal them automatically; there wasn’t anything much else to do. But his mind was not very completely on bridge.
Fifteen thousand light-years from Sol.
In hyperspace, he thought, it might have been a voyage only of minutes. Outside of the three dimensions in which humans live their normal lives, distances are a matter of cosmic whim. Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, in hyperspace, may almost touch; Luna and the Earth may be infinities apart.
Lorch, staring unseeing at his cards, licked his lips. They had cruised around in hyperspace for a few hours of actual “jump” time before the meteorite had struck. And they had found themselves perhaps a thousand light-years from Earth, perhaps less. They had backtracked moment for moment, as well as they could figure, the same course—and their new position was a dozen times as far.
That was the nature of hyperspace. Line A-B in Newton’s universe might be more than line A-B in Riemann’s, or it might be less, but it was never the same. And the distances, Lorch thought cloudily, might not even be commutative; A-B plus B-C might not be, probably was not, the same as B-C plus A-B. That was why the Atlas, with his infinite stored checkpoints and positions, had a place on the bridge … .
“Bid, for God’s sake,” someone was saying impatiently.
Lorch shook himself. “I’m sorry,” he said, focusing on his cards. “Say, isn’t it getting hot?”
Nobody answered.
They wouldn’t, thought Commander Broderick, lowering into his bowl of cold coffee. Hot? Sure it’s getting hot. Not starvation, not thirst, not suffocation—heat. That was the spaceman’s enemy, that was what would kill them all. Every time one of the crew drew a breath, carbon in his body oxidized and gave off heat. Every time the rocket jets blasted, heat seeped from the tubes into the frame of the ship. Every time the diesels that drove the nucleophoretic generators coughed and spun, or the cooks fried an egg, or a spaceman lit a cigarette, there was heat.
Take a hot poker, Broderick suggested meditatively to himself. You can watch it glow red and lose heat that way—that is radiation. You can wave it in the air and let the breeze carry the heat away—that is convection. Or you can quench it in a bucket of oil—and that is conduction. And those are the only ways there are, in Newton’s space or Riemann’s, of taking heat from one body and giving it to another. And in vacuum, the latter two did not operate, for lack of matter to operate with.
Radiation, thought Broderick, radiation would work. A pity we’re not red hot.
If they had been at a temperature of a thousand degrees, they would have cooled quite rapidly. But at a temperature of perhaps 20° Centigrade, average through
Terra II’s
hull, radiation was minute. The loss through radiation was more, much more, than made up through internal heat sources, and so the heat of the ship, hour by hour, climbed.
Terra II’s
hull, radiation was minute. The loss through radiation was more, much more, than made up through internal heat sources, and so the heat of the ship, hour by hour, climbed.
It had been a long time, Broderick remembered, since he had heard the hiss of expanding air. That was how one coped with heat. From the pressurized parts of the ship, valve off air, the expansion cools, the cooling takes heat from the rest of the ship. Replace the air from the high-pressure tanks, and there’s more than enough air in the tanks for any imaginable hyperspace voyage, since none can conceivably last more than a few weeks—and that’s that.
“Sir,” a voice said, and Broderick realized that the voice had said it before. It was a messenger, saluting respectfully.
“What is it?” he growled.
“Surgeon Mate Conboy,” the messenger recited crisply, “asks if you can step down to the sick bay. Lieutenant Groden is cutting up.”
“All right, all right,” said Broderick, and waved the messenger away. Groden, he thought, what’s the use of worrying about Groden? He’ll cook as well as as any of us, on this handsomely adventurous hyperspace cruise that cannot conceivably last more than a few weeks.
“You trumped my trick!” howled Ensign Lorch’s partner as the surgeon was leaving. Lorch blinked and stared.
“Sorry,” he said automatically, then bent and looked closer. “I’ve only got two cards,” he said. “Why does the dummy still have five?”
Recorder Mate Eklund took it as a joke. She looked at herself in the mirror and told her friend Julia, “I think it’s quite nice. I don’t see why we don’t do it all the time.”
“You’ve got the figure for it,” Julia said glumly, comparing her own dumpy silhouette with the other girl’s. These issue bathing suits weren’t particularly flattering either, she told herself resentfully, knowing in her heart that the fabric had never been loomed to flatter her figure the way it did Nancy Eklund’s. “Bathing suits,” she said irritatedly. “Oh, why did I ever sign on for this?”
Recorder Mate Eklund patted her arm and jauntily stepped out into the corridor. The male members of the crew were wearing trunks by now, too. She felt more as though she were at some rather crowded beach than aboard
Terra II.
Except that it was so
hot
.
Terra II.
Except that it was so
hot
.
Not only had the uniform of the day been changed to the bare minimum, but there had been other changes in the ship’s routine. No more spinning the ship for gravity, for instance. The magnetic-soled shoes were issued for everyone now, because spinning the ship took rocket power, and rocket power meant more heat that they couldn’t get rid of.
The magnet shoes were all right, but it did take a certain amount of concentration to remember heel-and-toe-and-lean, heel-and-toe-and-lean, in a sort of bent-over half trot like the one that Groucho Marx had once, long before Nancy’s time, made famous.
The magnet shoes were all right, but it did take a certain amount of concentration to remember heel-and-toe-and-lean, heel-and-toe-and-lean, in a sort of bent-over half trot like the one that Groucho Marx had once, long before Nancy’s time, made famous.
She loped crouching into the captain’s quarters, saluted and took her place. It
was
getting a little wearisome, she thought detachedly. Everything anybody said, it seemed, they wanted recorded in her brain, and nobody ever seemed to take a breath without demanding some part of the stored knowledge recited back to him. Still, when she was recording she was, in effect, asleep; she woke up slightly refreshed, though there were some confusing dreams.
was
getting a little wearisome, she thought detachedly. Everything anybody said, it seemed, they wanted recorded in her brain, and nobody ever seemed to take a breath without demanding some part of the stored knowledge recited back to him. Still, when she was recording she was, in effect, asleep; she woke up slightly refreshed, though there were some confusing dreams.
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