"I put on full acceleration fifteen hours ago, when we passed Neptune,
and we have covered thirty billion miles--three hundred times as far as
from the moon to the sun, but only one half of one per cent of a
light-year."
I was speechless, and Garth led me back to the control board. He pointed
out the acceleration control, now turned up to its last notch forward;
he also showed me the dials which were used to change our direction.
"Just keep that star on the cross hairs. It's Pi Orionis, a little out
of our course, but a good target since it is only twenty-five
light-years away. Half the light is deflected on this screen, with a
delicate photo-electric cell at its center. The instant the light of the
star slips off it, a relay is started which lights a red lamp here, and
in a minute sounds a warning bell. That indicator over there shows our
approach to any body. It works by the interaction of the object's
gravitational field with that of my projector, and we can spot anything
sizable an hour away. Sure you've got everything?"
* * * * *
It all seemed clear. Then I noticed at the top three clock-like dials;
one to read days, another to record the speeds of light, and the third
to mark light-years traveled.
"These can't really work?" I said. "We have no way to check our speed
with outer space."
"Not directly. This is geared with clockwork to represent an estimate
based on the acceleration. If your theory is right, then the dials are
all wrong."
"And how long do you expect to go ahead without knowing the truth?"
"Until we ought to be at Pi Orionis. At two weeks and twenty-five
light-years by the dials, if we aren't there we'll start back. By your
figuring, we shouldn't be yet one light-year on the way. Anything more?"
"No, I think I can manage it."
"Wake me if anything's wrong. And look out for dark stars." Then he had
left me there at the controls. In five minutes he was asleep and the
whole ship was in my hands.
* * * * *
For hours nothing happened. Without any control of mine, the ship went
straight ahead. I could get up and walk about, with a weather eye on the
board, and never was there the flash of a danger light. But I was unable
to feel confident, and went back to look out through the glass.
The stars were incredibly bright and clear. Right ahead were Betelguese
and Rigel, and the great nebula of Orion still beyond. There was no
twinkling, but each star a bright, steady point of light. And if Garth's
indicators were correct, we were moving toward them at a speed now
seventy-five times that of light itself. If they were correct.... How
could one know, before the long two weeks were over?
But before I could begin to think of any plan, my eye was caught by the
red lamp flashing on the panel. I pressed the attention button before
the alarm could ring, then started looking for the body we were in
danger of striking. The position indicators pointed straight ahead, but
I could see nothing. For ten minutes I peered through the telescope, and
still no sign. The dials put the thing off a degree or so to the right
now, but that was too close. In five more minutes I would swing straight
up and give whatever it was a wide berth.
I looked out again. In the angle between the cross hairs, wasn't there a
slight haze? In a moment it was clear. A comet, apparently, the two of
us racing toward each other. Bigger it grew and bigger, hurtling
forward. Would we hit?
The dials put it up a little and far off to the right, but it was still
frightening. The other light had come on, too, and I saw that we had
been pulled off our course by the comet's attraction. I threw the nose
over, past on the other side for leeway, then straightened up as the
side-distance dial gave a big jump away. Though the gaseous globe,
tailless of course away from the sun, showed as big as the full Earth,
the danger was past.
* * * * *
As I watched, the comet vanished from the field of the telescope. Five
minutes, perhaps, with the red danger light flickering all the time.
Then, with a ghastly flare through the right hand windows, it had passed
us.
Garth sat straight up. "What happened?" he yelled.
"Just a comet. I got by all right."
He settled back, having been scarcely awake, and I turned to the board
again. The danger light had gone out, but the direction indicator was
burning. The near approach of the comet had thrown us off our course by
several degrees. I straightened the ship up easily, and had only a
little more difficulty in stopping a rocking motion. Then again the
empty hours of watching, gazing into the stars.
Precisely at the end of eighteen hours, Garth awakened, as if the
consummation of a certain number of internal processes had set off a
little alarm clock in his brain. We were forty-one hours out, with a
speed, according to the indicator, of one hundred and twenty-eight times
that of light, and a total distance covered of slightly over one quarter
of a light-year. A rather small stretch, compared to the 466 light-years
we had to go. But when I went back for a look out of the rear telescope,
the familiar stars seemed to have moved the least bit closer together,
and the sun was no brighter than a great number of them.