He switched it off again, to squander none of its short period of
usefulness until he had decided upon what his further questions should
be. At last, he had some grounds for conjecture; had learned something
about the warp the designers of the shuttle had not suspected. Their
calculations had been correct when they showed a ship would travel in
the warp at many times the normal space speed of light. But somewhere
some little factor had been overlooked--or never found--and their
precise mathematics had not indicated that the travel would be produced
by expansion.
_Nature abhors a vacuum._ And the black, empty warp was a vacuum more
perfect than any that existed in normal space. In the normal space
universe there were millions of stars in the galaxy and millions of
galaxies. In the warp there was utter Nothing. Did the physical laws of
the warp demand that matter be scattered throughout it, in emulation of
its rich neighbor in the adjoining dimension? Was the warp hungry for
matter?
He rejected the thought as fantasy. There was some explanation that the
physicists would eventually find. Perhaps there was a vast size-ratio
difference between the two dimensions; perhaps the warp was far larger
than the normal space universe and some co-universal law demanded that
objects entering it become proportionally larger.
None of that aspect of his circumstances, however, was of importance.
There was only one prime problem facing him: how to move the ship
within less than an hour to some point in the warp where his emergence
into normal space would result in neither instant nor days-away
death and where he would have the time to try to carry out the
responsibility, so suddenly placed in his hands, of delivering the
space warp shuttle to the _Thunderbolt_.
The long-range task depended upon his immediate survival. He had to
move the ship, and how did a man move a driveless ship? It might not
require a very large propulsive force--perhaps even an oxygen tank
would serve as a jet. Except that he had none.
He could use part of the air in the ship. Its sudden release should
move the ship. There was a sun very near: Alpha Centauri. If he had the
proper tools, and the time, he could cut a hole in the hull opposite
Centauri ... but he had neither the tools nor the time.
And what good would it do him if he could emerge into normal space at
the desired distance from Centauri? He would be provided with power for
the air regenerators by the solar power units but not power sufficient
to operate the shuttle. He would breathe, and eat, for a week. Then the
small amount of food on the ship would be gone and he would breathe for
another four or five weeks. And then he would die of starvation and his
driveless ship would continue its slow drift into the sun, taking his
bones and the shuttle with it.
He would have to go to Sirius and he would have to reach it the first
try or never. If he could emerge into normal space at the proper
distance from Sirius he would have power from it to operate the
communicator. The _Thunderbolt_ would come at once when it received
his message and swallow the little _Argosy_ in its enormous hold. The
return to Earth would be the swift one through the warp and the Slug
cruisers, so bold in pursuit of unarmed interplanetary ships, would
quickly cease to exist.
At 13:53 Sirius would be somewhere in or near the bow of the ship.
The ship would not have to be moved more than two thirds of its
length--twenty meters. He could do that by releasing part of the air in
the shuttle room through the sternward airlock.
How much air?
He tried to remember long-forgotten formulas. So many cubic feet of
air at such and such a pressure when released through an opening of
such and such a diameter would exert a propulsive force of.... Hell,
he didn't know. And not even the computer would be able to tell him
because there were so many unknown factors, such as the proportion of
the ship's mass lost to the Slug blasters, the irregular shape of the
airlock opening, the degree of smoothness of its metal....
He made calculations with pencil and paper. He would have to move
the ship with extreme precision. A light-hour short of the proper
distance put him too far from the sun for it to power the communicator,
a light-hour beyond put him in the sun's flaming white heart. One
light-hour out of eight point six light-years was approximately one
part out of seventy-five thousand. He would have to move the ship with
an accuracy of point aught three centimeters--one hundredth of an inch.
_One hundredth of an inch!_
He laid the pencil back down, almost numbly. He could never open and
close an airlock and move a mass of thousands of tons with an accuracy
of a hundredth of an inch. The very thought was wildly fantastic.
He was already far closer to Sirius than he would be if he tried to get
any closer. And that was over eight light-years from it.
He looked at the chronometer and saw the hands had already reached
13:20. Thirty-three minutes left to him. Sirius was near--soon it would
be in the bow of the ship--and Sirius was eight point six light-years
away.
How could he move the ship a certain distance accurate to one hundredth
of an inch? He couldn't. The answer was blunt and ugly and irrefutable:
he couldn't.
He got up and walked across the room, feeling like a man who had in
quick succession been condemned, reprieved, recondemned. He had been
projected into a situation for which he had had no preliminary training
whatever; had been made sole custodian and operator of a computer and a
space warp shuttle that he had never before been permitted to touch. He
had used the sound but not at all brilliant mind nature had given him
to solve the riddle of the paradoxes and learn where he was and where
he wanted to go. He had done quite well--he had solved every problem of
his survival and the shuttle's delivery except the last one!
He passed by the shuttle and stopped to rest his hand on the bright,
silvery focal ball. The solar system would be deep inside the ball;
the atoms of the ball larger than Earth, perhaps, and far more
impalpable than the thinnest air. The Slug cruisers would be in there,
infinitesimally tiny, waiting for him to return....
No--faulty reasoning. The solar system was as it had always been, not
diminished in size and not really in the ball. It was only that two
different points in two different dimensions coincided in the ball....
He saw the answer.
He did not have to move the ship to Sirius--he had only to move the
ball!
* * * * *
There would be little time, very little time. First, to see if the warp
shuttle was portable--
It was. When he unfastened the clamp that held it to the stand it
lifted up freely, trailing a heavy cable behind it. He saw it was only
a power supply cable, with a plug that would fit one of the sockets in
the bow of the ship. He left the shuttle floating in the air, leashed
by the cable, and went to the computer. Next, he would have to know if
Sirius would be fully in the ship--
He switched the computer on and typed:
DETERMINE THE DISTANCE FROM THE CENTER OF THE WARP SHUTTLE'S FOCAL BALL
TO THE SPACE WARP POSITION OF SIRIUS AT 13:53, BASING YOUR COMPUTATIONS
ON THE EXPANDING-SHIP THEORY.
It gave him the answer a moment later: 18.3496 METERS.
He visualized the distance, from his knowledge of the ship's interior,
and saw the position would be within the forward spare-parts room.
Next, to learn exactly where in that room he should place the shuttle.
He could not do so by measuring from the present position of the
shuttle. The most precise steel tape would have to be at exactly the
right temperature for such a measurement to be neither too short nor
too long. He had no such tape, and the distance from the focal ball
was only part of the necessary measuring: he would have to measure
off a certain distance and a precisely certain angle from the purely
imaginary central line of the ship's axis to intersect the original
line. Such a measurement would be impossible in the time he had.
He considered what would be his last question to the computer. The
hand was touching the zero and his question would have to be worded
very clearly and subject to no misinterpretations. There would be no
follow-up questions permitted.
He began typing:
IT IS DESIRED THAT THIS SHIP EMERGE INTO NORMAL SPACE ONE LIGHT-HOUR
THIS SIDE OF SIRIUS AT 13:53. THIS WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MOVING
THE WARP SHUTTLE TO SUCH A POSITION THAT ITS FOCAL CENTER WILL BE IN
A SPACE WARP POSITION COINCIDING WITH A NORMAL SPACE POSITION ONE
LIGHT-HOUR THIS SIDE OF SIRIUS AT 13:53. CONSIDER ALL FACTORS THAT
MIGHT HAVE AFFECTED THE DIMENSIONS OF THIS SHIP, SUCH AS TEMPERATURE
CHANGES PRODUCED BY OUR NORMAL SPACE ACCELERATION AND DECELERATION,
WHEN COMPUTING THE POSITION OF SIRIUS. THEN DEFINE THAT LOCATION IN
RELATION TO THE STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE ROOM'S INTERIOR. DO THIS
IN SUCH A MANNER THAT PLACING THE SHUTTLE IN THE PROPER POSITION WILL
REQUIRE THE LEAST POSSIBLE AMOUNT OF MEASURING DISTANCES AND ANGLES.
It seemed to take it an unduly long time to answer the question and he
waited restlessly, unpleasantly aware of the hand touching zero and
wondering if the computer's mind was baffled by the question; the mind
that thought best in terms of orderly mathematics and could not know
or care that measurement by protractor and tape would result in a
position fatally far from that described by the neat, rigid figures.
Then the answer appeared, beautifully concise:
POSITION WILL BE IN CORNER OF ROOM, 764.2 CENTIMETERS ABOVE FLOOR
PLATE, 820 CENTIMETERS PERPENDICULAR TO PANEL AA, 652.05 CENTIMETERS
PERPENDICULAR TO PANEL AB.
The computer died with an oddly human sigh. Its last act had been
to give him the location of Sirius in such a manner that he could
accurately position the shuttle's focal ball with the aid of the
precision measuring devices in the ship's repair room.
He went to the shuttle and picked it up in his arms. It was entirely
weightless, and each magnet-clicking step he took toward the bow of the
ship brought Sirius almost half a light-year nearer.
* * * * *
He squinted against the white glare of Sirius in the viewscreen as he
continued his terse report to the _Thunderbolt's_ commander: "I have
about a week's supply of food. How long will it be until you reach me?"
The commander's reply came after the pause caused by the distance
involved:
"We'll be there within three days. Go ahead and eat hearty. But how did
you travel from Earth to Sirius in only two hours? My God, man--what
kind of a drive did that ship have?"
"Why, it didn't have any drive from the start," he said. "To get here
I"--he frowned thoughtfully--"you might say I walked and carried the
ship."