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II

 

 

As soon as he was able the next day, Marchand got himself into a wheelchair—all by himself; he didn't want any help in this-and rolled it out into the chart room of the home the Institute had given him, rent free, for all of his life. (He had, of course, given it in the first place to the Institute.)

The Institute had put $300,000 into the chart room. Stayed and guy-wired stars flecked the volume of a forty-foot ballroom, representing in scale all the space within fifty-five light-years of Sol. Every star was mapped and tagged. They had even moved a few of them slightly, a year ago, to correct for proper motion. It was that carefully done.

The twenty-six great starships the Institute had financed were there, too, or such of them as were still in space. They were out of scale, of course, but Marchand understood what they represented. He rolled his chair down the marked path to the center of the room and sat there, looking around, just under yellow Sol.

There was blue-white Sirius dominating them all, Procyon hanging just above. The two of them together were incomparably the brightest objects in the room, though red Altair was brighter in its own right than Procyon. In the center of the chamber Sol and Alpha Centauri A made a brilliant pair.

He gazed with rheuming eyes at the greatest disappointment of his life, Alpha Centauri B. So close. So right. So sterile. It was an ironic blunder of creation that the nearest and best chance of another home had never formed planets . . . or had formed them and swept them into the Bode-area traps set by itself and its two companions.

But there were other hopes. . . .

Marchand sought and found Tau Ceti, yellow and pale. Only eleven light-years away, the colony should be definitely established by now. In another decade or less they should have an answer . . . if, of course, it had planets Man could live on.

That was the big question, to which they had already received so many noes. But Tau Ceti was still a good bet, Marchand told himself stoutly. It was a dimmer, cooler sun than Sol. But it was Type G, and according to spectropolarimetry, almost certainly planetiferous. And if it was another disappointment—

Marchand turned his eyes to 40 Eridani A, even dimmer, even farther away. The expedition to 40 Eridani A had been, he remembered, the fifth ship he had launched. It ought to be reaching its destination soon—this year or perhaps next. There was no sure way of estimating time when the top velocity was so close to light's own. . . .

But now, of course, the top velocity was more.

The sudden wash of failure almost made him physically ill. Faster than light travel—why, how dared they!

But he didn't have time to waste on that particular emotion, or indeed on any emotion at all. He felt time draining away from him and sat up straight again, looking around. At 96, you dare not do anything slowly, not even daydream.

He glanced at and dismissed Procyon. They had tried Procyon lately—the ship would not be even halfway. They had tried almost everything. Even Epsilon Eridani and Groombridge 1618; even, far down past the probable good bets among the spectroscopic classes, 61 Cygni A and Epsilon Indi, a late and despairing try at Proxima Centauri (though they were very nearly sure it was wasted; the Alpha Centauri expedition had detected nothing like viable planets).

There had been twenty-six of them in all. Three ships lost, three returned, one still Earthbound. Nineteen were still out there.

Marchand looked for comfort at the bright green arrow that marked where the Tycho Brahe rode its jets of ionized gas, the biggest of his ships, three thousand men and women. It seemed to him that someone had mentioned the Tycho Brahe recently. When? Why? He was not sure, but the name stuck in his mind.

The door opened and Dan Fleury walked in, glancing at the arrayed stars and ships and not seeing them. The chart room had never meant anything to Fleury. He scolded, "Damn it, Norman, you scared us witless! Why you're not in the hospital now—"

"I was in the hospital, Dan. I wouldn't stay. And finally I got it through Asa Czerny's head that I meant it, so he said I could come home if I would stay quiet and let him look in. Well, as you see, I'm quiet. And I don't care if he looks in. I only care about finding out the truth about FTL."

"Oh, cripes, Norm! Honestly, you shouldn't worry yourself—"

"Dan, for thirty years you've never used the word 'honestly' except when you were lying to me. Now give. I sent for you this morning because you know the answer. I want it.

"For God's sake, Dan!"

Fleury glanced around the room, as though he were seeing the glowing points of light for the first time . . . perhaps he was, Marchand thought.

He said at last, "Well, there is something."

Marchand waited. He had had a great deal of practice at waiting.

"There's a young fellow," said Fleury, starting over again. "He's named Eisele. A mathematician, would you believe it? He's got an idea."

Fleury pulled over a chair and sat down.

"It's far from perfect," he added.

"In fact," he said, "a lot of people think it won't work at all. You know the theory, of course. Einstein, Lorentz-Fitzgerald, the whole roster—they're all against it. It's called—get this!—polynomiation."

He waited for a laugh, hopelessly. Then he said, "Although I must say he appears to have something, since the tests—"

Marchand said gently and with enormous restraint: "Dan, will you please spit it out? Let's see what you said so far. There's this fellow named Eisele, and he has something, and it's crazy, but it works."

"Well—yes."

Marchand slowly leaned back and closed his eyes. "So that means that we were all wrong. Especially me. And all our work—"

"Look, Norman! Don't ever think like that. Your work has made all the difference. If it weren't for you, people like Eisele never would have had the chance. Don't you know he was working under one of our grants?"

"No. I didn't know that." Marchand's eyes went out to the Tycho Brahe for a moment. "But it doesn't help much. I wonder if fifty-odd thousand men and women who have given most of their lives to the deep freeze because of—my work—will feel the way you do. But thanks. You've told me what I want to know."

 

When Czerny entered the chart room an hour later, Marchand said at once, "Am I in good enough shape to stand a smith?"

The doctor put down his bag and took a chair before he answered. "We don't have anyone available, Norman. There hasn't been a volunteer for years."

"No. I don't mean smithed into a human body. I don't want any would-be suicide volunteer donors—you said yourself the smithed bodies sometimes suicided, anyway. I'll settle for a chimp. Why should I be any better than that young fellow—what's his name?"

"You mean Duane Ferguson."

"Sure. Why should I be any better than he is?"

"Oh, cut it out, Norman. You're too old. Your phospholipids—"

"I'm not too old to die, am I? And that's the worst that could happen."

"It wouldn't be stable! Not at your age; you just don't understand the chemistry. I couldn't promise you more than a few weeks."

Marchand said joyously, "Really! I didn't expect that much. That's more than you can promise me now."

The doctor argued, but Marchand had held up his end of many a hard-fought battle in ninety-six years, and besides, he had an advantage over Czerny. The doctor knew even better than Marchand himself that getting into a passion would kill him. At the moment when Czerny gauged the risk of a smith translation less than the risk of going on arguing about it, he frowned, shook his head grudgingly, and left.

Slowly Marchand wheeled after him.

He did not have to hurry to what might be the last act of his life. There was plenty of time. In the Institute they kept a supply of breeding chimpanzees, but it would take several hours to prepare one.

One mind had to be sacrificed in the smith imposition. The man would ultimately be able to return to his own body, his risk less than one chance in 50 of failure. But the chimp would never be the same. Marchand submitted to the beginnings of the irradiation, the delicate titration of his body fluids, the endless strapping and patching and clamping. He had seen it done, and there were no surprises in the procedure. . . . He had not known, however, that it would hurt so much.

 

 

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