He had never even heard the two-minute mark; the great world rising out of the horizon clouds must have held him hypnotized. In sixty seconds, the automatic sequencer in the heart of the drive unit would initiate its final mysteries. Forces which only a handful of living men could envisage, and none could truly understand, would awaken in their fury, tear Sirius from the grip of Saturn, and hurl her sunward toward the distant goal of Earth.
“... ten seconds... five seconds... ignition!”
How strange that a word that had been technologically obsolete for at least two hundred years should have survived in the jargon of astronautics! Duncan barely had time to formulate this thought when he felt the onset of thrust. From exactly zero his weight leaped up to less than a kilogram. It was barely enough to dent the cushion above which he had been floating, and was detectable chiefly by the slackening tension of his waist belt.
Other effects were scarcely more dramatic. There was a distinct change in the timbre of the indefinable noises which never cease on board a spacecraft while its mechanical hearts are operating; and it seemed to Duncan that, far away, he could hear a faint hissing. But he was not even sure of that.
And then, a thousand kilometers below, he saw the unmistakable evidence that Sirius was indeed breaking away from her orbit. The ship had been driving into night on its final circuit of Titan, and the wan sunlight had been swiftly fading on the sea of clouds far below. But now a second dawn had come, in a wide swathe across the face of the world he was soon to leave. For a hundred kilometers behind the accelerating ship, a column of incandescent plasma was splashing untold quintillions of candlepower out into space and across the carmine cloudscape of Titan. Sirius was falling sunward in greater glory than the sun itself.
“Ten minutes after ignition. All drive checks complete. We will now be increasing thrust to our cruise level of point two gravities—two hundred centimeters second squared.”
And now, for the first time, Sirius was showing what she could do. In a smooth surge of power, thrust and weight climbed twenty-fold and held steady. The light on the clouds below was now so strong that it hurt the eye. Duncan even glanced at the still-rising disc of Saturn to see if it too showed any sign of this fierce new sun. He could now hear, faint but unmistakable, the steady whistling roar that would be the background to all life aboard the ship until the voyage ended. It must, he thought, be pure coincidence that the awesome voice of the Asymptotic Drive sounded so much like that of the old chemical rockets that first gave men the freedom of space. The plasma hurtling away from the ship’s reactor was moving a thousand times more swiftly than the exhaust gases of any rocket, even a nuclear one; and how it created that apparently familiar noise was a puzzle that would not be solved by any naïve mechanical intuition.
“We are now on cruise mode at one-fifth gee. Passengers may unstrap themselves and move about freely—but please use caution until you are completely adapted.”
That won’t take me very long, thought Duncan s he unbuckled himself; the ship’s acceleration gave him his normal, Titan weight. Any residents of the Moon would also feel completely at home here, while Martians and Terrans would have a delightful sense of buoyancy.
The lights in the lounge, which had been dimmed almost to extinction for better viewing of the spectacle outside, slowly brightened to normal. The few first-magnitude stars that had been visible disappeared at once, and the gibbous globe of Saturn became bleached and pale, losing all its colors. Duncan could restore the scene by drawing the black curtains around the observation alcove, but his eyes would take several minutes to readapt. He was wondering whether to made the effort when the decision was made for him.
There was a musical “Ding-dong-ding,” and a new voice, which sounded as if it came from a social stratum several degrees above the Captain’s, announced languidly: “This is the Chief Steward. Will passengers kindly note that First Seating for lunch is at twelve hundred. Please do not attempt to make any changes without consulting me: Thank you.” A less peremptory “Dong-ding-doing” signaled end of message.
Looking at the marvels of the universe made you hungry, Duncan instantly discovered. It was already 1150, and he was glad that he was in the First Seating. He wondered how many starving passengers were now converging upon the Chief Steward, in search of an earlier time slot.
Enjoying the sensation of man-made weight which, barring accidents, would remain constant until the moment of mid-voyage, Duncan went to join the rapidly lengthening line at the cafeteria. Already, his first thirty years of life on Titan seemed to belong to another existence.
12. Last Words
For one moment more, the achingly familiar image remained frozen on the screen. Behind Marissa and the children, Duncan could see the two armchairs of the living room, the photograph of Grandfather (as usual, slightly askew), the cover of the food-distribution hatch, the door to the main bedroom, the bookcase with the few but priceless treasures that had survived two centuries of interplanetary wandering... This was his universe. It held everything he loved, and now he was leaving it. Already, it lay in his past.
It lay only three seconds away, yet that was enough. He had traveled a mere million kilometers in less than half a day; but the sense of separation was already almost complete. It was intolerable to wait six seconds for every reaction and every answer. By the time a reply came, he had forgotten the original question and had started to say something else. And so the attempted conversation had quickly degenerated into a series of stops and starts, while he and Marissa had stared at each other in dumb misery, each waiting for the other to speak... He was glad that the ordeal was over.
The experience brought home to him, as nothing else had yet done, the sheer immensity of space. The Solar System, he began to suspect, was not designed for the convenience of Man, and that presumptuous creature’s attempts to use it for his own advantage would often be foiled by laws beyond his control. All his life, Duncan had assumed without question that he could speak to friends or family instantly, wherever he might be. Yet now—before he had even passed Saturn’s outer moons!—that power had been taken from him. For the next twenty days, he would share a lonely, isolated bubble of humanity, able to interact with his fellow passengers, but cut off from all real contact with the rest of mankind.
His self-pity lasted only a few moments. There was also an exhilaration—even a freedom—in this sense of isolation, and in the knowledge that he was setting forth on one of the longest and swiftest voyages that any man could make. Travel to the outer planets was routine and uneventful—but it was also rare, and only a very small fraction of the human race would ever experience it. Duncan remembered a favorite Terran phrase of Malcolm’s, usually employed in a different context, but sound advice for every occasion: “When it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.” He would do his best to enjoy this voyage.
Yet Duncan was exhausted when he finally climbed into his bunk at the end of his first day in space. The strain of innumerable farewells, not only to his family but to countless friends, had left him emotionally drained. On top of this, there were all the nagging worries of departure: What had he forgotten to do? What vital necessities had he failed to pack? Had all his baggage been safely loaded and stowed? What essential good-byes had he overlooked? It was useless worrying about these matters now that he was speeding away from home at a velocity increasing by twenty-five thousand kilometers an hour, every hour, yet he could not help doing so. Tired though he was, his hyperactive brain would not let him sleep.