"Then if people travel at the speed of light they won't get any older?"
Robert flicked a curious glance at her. "If you could watch them from
Earth they appear not to. But it's a matter of relativity...."
Ninon rushed on. She had studied that book carefully. "And if people
travel faster than light, a lot faster, they'll grow younger, won't
they?"
Robert said, "So that's what's in your mind." He busied himself with
parking the car at the spaceport, then went on: "You want to go back in
the past thirty years, and be a girl again. While I grow younger, too,
into a boy, then a child, a baby, at last nothing...."
"I'll try to be sorry for you, Robert."
Ninon felt again for her beta-gun as he stared at her for a long minute,
his gaze a curious mixture of amusement and pity. Then, "Come on," he
said flatly, turning to lead the way to the gleaming space ship which
poised, towering like a spire, in the center of the blast-off basin. And
added, "I think I shall enjoy this trip, Madame, more than you will."
The young man's words seemed to imply a secret knowledge that Ninon did
not possess. A sudden chill of apprehension rippled through her, and
almost she turned back. But no ... there was the ship! There was youth;
and beauty; and the admiration of men, real admiration. Suppleness in
her muscles and joints again. No more diets. No more transfusions. No
more transplantations. No more the bio-knife. She could smile again, or
frown again. And after a few years she could make the trip again ... and
again....
* * * * *
The space ship stood on fiery tiptoes and leaped from Earth, high into
the heavens, and out and away. Past rusted Mars. Past the busy
asteroids. Past the sleeping giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Past pale
Uranus and Neptune; and frigid, shivering Pluto. Past a senseless,
flaming comet rushing inward towards its rendezvous with the Sun. And on
out of the System into the steely blackness of space where the stars
were hard, burnished points of light, unwinking, motionless; eyes--eyes
staring at the ship, staring through the ports at Ninon where she lay,
stiff and bruised and sore, in the contoured acceleration sling.
The yammering rockets cut off, and the ship seemed to poise on the ebon
lip of a vast Stygian abyss.
Joints creaking, muscles protesting, Ninon pushed herself up and out of
the sling against the artificial gravity of the ship. Robert was already
seated at the controls.
"How fast are we going?" she asked; and her voice was rusty and harsh.
"Barely crawling, astronomically," he said shortly. "About forty-six
thousand miles a minute."
"Is that as fast as the speed of light?"
"Hardly, Madame," he said, with a condescending chuckle.
"Then make it go faster!" she screamed. "And faster and faster--hurry!
What are we waiting for?"
The young spaceman swivelled about in his seat. He looked haggard and
drawn from the strain of the long acceleration. Despite herself, Ninon
could feel the sagging in her own face; the sunkenness of her eyes. She
felt tired, hating herself for it--hating having this young man see
her.
He said, "The ship is on automatic control throughout. The course is
plotted in advance; all operations are plotted. There is nothing we can
do but wait. The light drive will cut in at the planned time."
"Time! Wait! That's all I hear!" Ninon shrieked. "Do something!"
Then she heard it. A low moan, starting from below the limit of
audibility, then climbing, up and up and up and up, until it was a
nerve-plucking whine that tore into her brain like a white-hot tuning
fork. And still it climbed, up beyond the range of hearing, and up and
up still more, till it could no longer be felt. But Ninon, as she
stumbled back into the acceleration sling, sick and shaken, knew it was
still there. The light drive!
She watched through the ports. The motionless, silent stars were moving
now, coming toward them, faster and faster, as the ship swept out of the
galaxy, shooting into her face like blazing pebbles from a giant
slingshot.