38 – Icebergs of Space

Now that they had so much unexpected time on their hands, Captain Smith had finally agreed to give Victor Willis the long-delayed interview which was part of his contract. Victor himself had kept putting it off, owing to what Mihailovich persisted in calling his 'amputation'. As it would be many months before he could regenerate his public image, he had finally decided to do the interview off-camera; the studio on Earth could fake him in later with library shots.

They had been sitting in the Captain's still only partly furnished cabin, enjoying one of the excellent wines which apparently made up much of Victor's baggage allowance. As Universe would cut its drive and start coasting within the next few hours, this would be the last opportunity for several days. Weightless wine, Victor maintained, was an abomination; he refused to put any of his precious vintage into plastic squeezebulbs.

'This is Victor Willis, aboard the spaceship Universe at 18.30 on Friday, 15 July 2061. Though we're not yet at the mid-point of our journey, we're already far beyond the orbit of Mars, and have almost reached our maximum velocity. Which is, Captain?'

'One thousand and fifty kilometres a second.'

'More than a thousand kilometres a second -almost four million kilometres an hour!'

Victor Willis' surprise sounded perfectly genuine; no-one would have guessed that he knew the orbital parameters almost as well as did the Captain. But one of his strengths was his ability to put himself in the place of his viewers, and not only to anticipate their questions, but to arouse their interest.

'That's right,' the Captain answered with quiet pride. 'We are travelling twice as fast as any human beings since the beginning of time.'

That should have been one of my lines, thought Victor; he did not like his subject to get ahead of him. But, good professional that he was, he quickly adapted.

He pretended to consult his famous little memo pad, with its sharply directional screen whose display only he could see.

'Every twelve seconds, we're travelling the diameter of Earth. Yet it will still take us another ten days to reach Jupi – ah, Lucifer! That gives some idea of the scale of the Solar System.

'Now, Captain, this is a delicate subject, but I've had a lot of questions about it during the last week.'

Oh no, groaned Smith. Not the zero gravity toilets again!

'At this very moment, we are passing right through the heart of the asteroid belt -'

(I wish it was the toilets, thought Smith...)

'– and though no spaceship has ever been seriously damaged by a collision, aren't we taking quite a risk? After all, there are literally millions of bodies, down to the size of beachballs, orbiting in this section of space. And only a few thousand have been charted.'

'More than a few: over ten thousand.'

'But there are millions we don't know about.'

'That's true; but it wouldn't help us much if we did.'

'What do you mean?'

'There's nothing we can do about them.'

'Why not?'

Captain Smith paused for careful thought. Willis was right – this was indeed a delicate subject; Head Office would rap his knuckles smartly, if he said anything to discourage potential customers.

'First of all, space is so enormous that even here – as you said, right in the heart of the asteroid belt – the chance of collision is – infinitesimal. We've been hoping to show you an asteroid – the best we can do is Hanuman, a miserable three hundred metres across – but the nearest we get to it is a quarter of a million kilometres.'

'But Hanuman is gigantic, compared to all the unknown debris that's floating around out here. Aren't you worried about that?'

'About as worried as you are, at being struck by lightning on Earth.'

'As a matter of fact, I once had a narrow escape, on Pike's Peak in Colorado – the flash and the bang were simultaneous. But you admit that the danger does exist – and aren't we increasing the risk, by the enormous speed at which we're travelling?'

Willis, of course, knew the answer perfectly well; once again he was putting himself in the place of his legions of unknown listeners on the planet that was getting a thousand kilometres further away with every passing second.

'It's hard to explain without mathematics,' said the Captain (how many times he had used that phrase. Even when it wasn't true!), 'but there's no simple relationship between speed and risk. To hit anything at spacecraft velocities would be catastrophic; if you're standing next to an atomic bomb when it goes off, it makes no difference whether it's in the kiloton or megaton class.'

That was not exactly a reassuring statement, but it was the best he could do. Before Willis could press the point further, he continued hastily:

'And let me remind you that any – er – slight extra risk we may be running is in the best of causes. A single hour may save lives.'

'Yes, I'm sure we all appreciate that.' Willis paused; he thought of adding 'And, of course, I'm in the same boat', but decided against it. It might sound immodest – not that modesty had ever been his strong suit. And anyway, he could hardly make a virtue of a necessity; he had very little alternative now, unless he decided to walk home.

'All this,' he continued, 'brings me to another point. Do you know what happened just a century and a half ago, on the North Atlantic?'

'In 1911?'

'Well, actually 1912 -'

Captain Smith guessed what was coming, and stubbornly refused to cooperate by pretending ignorance.

'I suppose you mean the Titanic,' he said.

'Precisely,' answered Willis, gamely concealing his disappointment. 'I've had at least twenty reminders from people who think they're the only one who's spotted the parallel.'

'What parallel? The Titanic was running unacceptable risks, merely trying to break a record.'

He almost added 'And she didn't have enough lifeboats', but luckily checked himself in time, when he recalled that the ship's one and only shuttle could carry not more than five passengers. If Willis took him up on that, it would involve altogether too many explanations.

'Well, I grant that the analogy is far-fetched. But there's another striking parallel which everyone points out. Do you happen to know the name of the Titanic's first and last Captain?'

'I haven't the faintest – ' began Captain Smith. Then his jaw dropped.

'Precisely,' said Victor Willis, with a smile which it would be charitable to call smug.

Captain Smith would willingly have strangled all those amateur researchers. But he could hardly blame his parents for bequeathing him the commonest of English names.

39 – The Captain's Table

It was a pity that viewers on (and off) Earth could not have enjoyed the less formal discussions aboard Universe. Shipboard life had now settled down to a steady routine, punctuated by a few regular landmarks – of which the most important, and certainly the most long-established, was the traditional 'Captain's Table'.

At 18.00 hours exactly, the six passengers, and five of the officers not on duty, would join Captain Smith for dinner. There was, of course, none of the formal dress that had been mandatory aboard the floating palaces of the North Atlantic, but there was usually some attempt at sartorial novelty. Yva could always be relied upon to produce some new brooch, ring, necklace, hair-ribbon, or perfume from an apparently inexhaustible supply.

If the drive was on, the meal would begin with soup; but if the ship was coasting and weightless, there would be a selection of hors-d'oeuvres. In either event, before the main course was served Captain Smith would report the latest news – or try to dispel the latest rumours, usually fuelled by newscasts from Earth or Ganymede.