“Oh, well,” he said, half aloud.

They reached the special exploration section and entered an office. There was red tape to unsnarl. Ryerson let Maclaren handle it, and spent the time trying to understand that soon the pattern which was himself would be embodied in newly-shaped atoms, a hundred light-years from Tamara. It wouldn’t penetrate. It was only words.

Finally the papers were stamped. The transceivers to/from an interstellar spaceship could handle several hundred kilos at a time; Maclaren and Ryerson went together. They had a moment’s wait because of locked safety switches on the Southern Cross: someone else was arriving or departing ahead of them.

“Watch that first step,” said Maclaren. “It’s a honey.”

“What?” Ryerson blinked at him, uncomprehending.

The circuit closed. There was no sensation, the process went too fast.

The scanner put its signal into the matrix. The matrix modulated the carrier wave. But such terminology is mere slang, borrowed from electronics. You cannot have a “wave” when you have no velocity, and gravitational forces do not. (This is a more accurate rendition of the common statement that “gravitation propagates at an infinite speed.") Inconceivable energies surged within a thermonuclear fire chamber; nothing controlled them, nothing could control them, but the force fields they themselves generated. Matter pulsed in and out of existence qua matter, from particle to gamma ray quantum and back. Since quanta have no rest mass, the pulsations disturbed the geometry of space according to the laws of Einsteinian mechanics. Not much: gravitation is feebler than magnetism or electricity. Were it not for the resonance effect, the signal would have been smothered in “noise” a few kilometers away. Even as it was, there were many relayings across the parsecs until the matrix on the Cross reacted. And yet in one sense no time at all had passed; and no self-respecting mathematician would have called the “beam” by such a name. It was, however, a signal, the only signal which relativity physics allowed to go faster than light — and, after all, it did not really go, it simply was.

Despite the pill inside him, Ryerson felt as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. He grabbed for a handhold. The after-image of the transmitter chamber yielded to the coils and banks of the receiver room on a spaceship. He hung weightless, a thousand billion billion kilometers from Earth.

6

Forward of the ’casting chambers, “above” them during acceleration, were fuel deck, gyros, and air renewal plant. Then you passed through the observation deck, where instruments and laboratory equipment crowded together. A flimsy wall around the shaftway marked off the living quarters: folding bunks, galley, bath, table, benches, shelves, and lockers, all crammed into a six-meter circle.

Seiichi Nakamura wrapped one leg casually around a stanchion, to keep himself from drifting in air currents, and made a ceremony out of leafing through the log-book in his hands. It gave the others a chance to calm down, and the yellow-haired boy, David Ryerson, seemed to need it. The astrophysicist, Maclaren, achieved the unusual feat of lounging in free fall; he puffed an expensive Earth-side cigarette and wrinkled his patrician nose at the pervading smell of an old ship, two hundred years of cooking and sweat and machine oil. The big, ugly young engineer, Sverdlov, merely looked sullen. Nakamura had never met any of them before.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said at last. “Pardon me, I had to check the data recorded by the last pilot. Now I know approximately where we are at.” He laughed with polite self-deprecation. “Of course you are all familiar with the articles. The pilot is captain. His duty is to guide the ship where the chief scientist — Dr. Maclaren-san in this case — wishes, within the limits of safety as determined by his own judgment. In case of my death or disability, command devolves upon the engineer, ah, Sverdlov-san, and you are to return home as soon as practicable. Yes-s-s. But I am sure we will all have a most pleasant and instructive expedition together.”

He felt the banality of his words. It was the law, and a wise one, that authority be defined at once if there were non-Guild personnel aboard. Some pilots contented themselves with reading the regulations aloud, but it had always seemed an unnecessarily cold procedure to Nakamura. Only… he saw a sick bewilderment in Ryerson’s eyes, supercilious humor in Maclaren’s, angry impatience in Sverdlov’s… his attempt at friendliness had gone flat.

“We do not operate so formally,” he went on in a lame fashion. “We shall post a schedule of housekeeping duties and help each other, yes? Well. That is for later. Now as to the star, we have some approximate data and estimates taken by previous watches. It appears to have about four times the mass of Sol; its radius is hardly more than twice Earth’s, possibly less; it emits detectably only in the lower radio frequencies, and even that is feeble. I have here a quick reading of the spectrum which may interest you, Dr. Maclaren.”

The big dark man reached out for it. His brows went up. “Now this,” he said, “is the weirdest collection of wave lengths I ever saw.” He flickered experienced eyes along the column of numbers. “Seems to be a lot of triplets, but the lines appear so broad, judging from the probable errors given, that I can’t be sure without more careful… hm-m-m.” Glancing back at Nakamura: “Just where are we with relation to the star?”

“Approximately two million kilometers from the center of its mass. We are being drawn toward it, of course, since an orbit has not yet been established, but have enough radial velocity of our own to—”

“Never mind.” The sophistication dropped from Maclaren like a tunic. He said with a boy’s eagerness, “I would like to get as near the star as possible. How close do you think you can put us?”

Nakamura smiled. He had a feeling Maclaren could prove likable. “Too close isn’t prudent. There would be meteors.”

“Not around this one!” exclaimed Maclaren. “If physical theory is anything but mescaline dreams, a dead star is the clinker of a supernova. Any matter orbiting in its neighborhood became incandescent gas long ago.”

“Atmosphere?” asked Nakamura dubiously. “Since we have nothing to see by, except starlight, we could hit its air.”

“Hm-m-m. Yes. I suppose it would have some. But not very deep: too compressed to be deep. In fact, the radio photo-sphere, from which the previous watches estimated the star’s diameter, must be nearly identical with the fringes of atmosphere.”

“It would also take a great deal of reaction mass to pull us back out of its attraction, if we got too close,” said Nakamura. He unclipped the specialized slide rule at his belt and made a few quick computations. “In fact, this vessel cannot escape from a distance much less than three-quarters million kilometers, if there is to be reasonable amount of mass left for maneuvering around afterward. And I am sure you wish to explore regions farther from the star, yes-s-s? However, I am willing to go that close.”

Maclaren smiled. “Good enough. How long to arrive?”

“I estimate three hours, including time to establish an orbit.” Nakamura looked around their faces. “If everyone is prepared to go on duty, it is best we get into the desired path at once.”

“Not even a cup of tea first?” grumbled Sverdlov.

Nakamura nodded at Maclaren and Ryerson. “You gentlemen will please prepare tea and sandwiches, and take them to the engineer and myself in about ninety minutes.”

“Now, wait!” protested Maclaren. “We’ve hardly arrived. I haven’t even looked at my instruments. I have to set up—”

“In ninety minutes, if you will be so kind. Very well, let us assume our posts.”