RIBBON IN THE SKY
Murray Leinster
I
"An error is a denial of reality, but mistakes are mere mental malfunctionings. In an emergency, a mistake may be made because of the need for precipitate action. There is no time to choose the best course; something must be done at once. Most mistakes, however, are made without any such exterior pressure. One accepts the first-imagined solution without examining it, either out of an urgent desire to avoid the labor of thinking, or out of impassioned reluctance to think about the matter at hand when prettier or more pleasurable other things can be contemplated . . ."
The Practice of Thinking—Fitzgerald
It turned out that somebody had punched the wrong button in a computer. It was in a matter in which mistakes are not permissible, but just as nothing can be manufactured without an ordinary hammer figuring somewhere in the making or the making-ready-to-make, so nothing can be done without a fallible human operator at some stage of the proceedings. And humans make mistakes casually, offhandedly, with impartial lack of either malice or predictability, so . . .
Calhoun heard the speaker say, "When the gong sounds, breakout will follow in five seconds." Then it made solemn ticking noises while Calhoun yawned and put aside the book, The Practice of Thinking. He'd been studying. Study was a necessity in his profession. Besides, it helped to pass the time in overdrive. He went to the control-desk and strapped in. Murgatroyd the tormal uncoiled his tail from about his nose and stood up from where he was catching twenty winks. He padded to the place under Calhoun's chair where there were things to grab hold of, if necessary, with one's four black paws and prehensile tail.
"Chee," said Murgatroyd conversationally, in his shrill treble.
"I agree," Calhoun told him gravely. "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor Med Ship hulls a cage. But it will be good to get outside for a change."
The speaker ticked and tocked and ticked and tocked. There was the sound of a gong. A voice said measuredly, "Five—four—three—two—one."
The ship came out of overdrive. Calhoun winced and swallowed. Nobody ever gets used to going into overdrive or coming out of it. One is hideously dizzy for an instant, and his stomach has a brief but violent urge to upchuck, and no matter how often one has experienced it, it is necessary to fight a flash of irrational panic caused by the two sensations together.
After an instant Calhoun stared about him as the vision screens came to life. They showed the cosmos outside the Med Ship. It was a perfectly normal cosmos—not at all the cosmos of overdrive—but it looked extremely wrong to Calhoun. He and Murgatroyd and the Med Ship were in emptiness. There were stars on every hand, and they were of every conceivable color and degree of brightness. But every one of them was a point of light, and a point only.
This, obviously, was not what he'd expected. These days ships do not stop to view the universe from the monstrous loneliness which is between-the-stars. All ships go into overdrive as near their port of departure as they can. Usually, it is something like five or six planetary diameters out from the local spaceport. All ships come out of overdrive as near their destinations as computation makes possible. They do not stop to look at scenery on the way. It isn't good for humans to look at stars when there are only stars to see. The sight has a tendency to make them feel small—too small. Men have been known to come out of such an experience gibbering.
Calhoun scowled at the sight of between-the-stars. This was not good. But he wasn't frightened—not yet. There should have been a flaming sun somewhere nearby, and there should have been bright crescents of half-disks or mottled cloudy planets swimming within view. The sun should have been the star Merida, and Calhoun should land in commonplace fashion on Merida II and make a routine planetary health check on a settled, complacent population, and presently he should head back to Med Headquarters with a report containing absolutely nothing of importance. However, he couldn't do any of these things. He was in purely empty space. It was appalling.
Murgatroyd jumped up to the arm of the control-chair, to gaze wisely at the screens. Calhoun continued to scowl. Murgatroyd imitated him with a tormal's fine satisfaction in duplicating a man's actions. What he saw meant nothing to him, of course. But he was moved to comment.
"Chee," he said shrilly.
"To be sure," agreed Calhoun distastefully. "That is a very sage observation, Murgatroyd. Though I deplore the situation that calls for it. Somebody's bilged on us."
Murgatroyd liked to think that he was carrying on a conversation. He said zestfully, "Chee-chee! Chee-chee-chee!"
"No doubt," conceded Calhoun. "But this is a mess! Hop down and let me try to get out of it."
Murgatroyd disappointedly hopped to the floor. He watched with bright eyes as Calhoun annoyedly went to the emergency equipment locker and brought out the apparatus designed to take care of problems like this. If the situation wasn't too bad, correcting it should be simple enough. If it was too bad, it could be fatal.
The average separation of stars throughout the galaxy, of course, is something like four or five light-years. The distance between Sol-type stars is on an average very much higher, and with certain specific exceptions habitable planets are satellites of Sol-type suns. But only a fraction of the habitable planets are colonized, and when a ship has traveled blind, in overdrive, for two months or more, its pilot cannot simply look astern and recognize his point of departure. There's too much scenery in between. Further, nobody can locate himself by the use of star-maps unless he knows where something on the star-map is with reference to himself. This makes a star-map not always useful.
The present blunder might not be serious. If the Med Ship had come out into normal space no more than eight to ten light-years from Merida, Calhoun might identify that sun by producing parallax. He could detect relative distances for a much greater range. However, it was to be hoped that his present blunder was small.
He got out the camera with its six lenses for the six vision screens which showed space in all directions. He clamped it in place and painstaking snapped a plate. In seconds he had everything above third magnitude faithfully recorded in its own color, and with relative brightnesses expressed in the size of the dots of tint. He put the plate aside and said, "Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd."
He pressed the short-hop button and there was dizziness and nausea and a flash of fear—all three sensations momentary. Murgatroyd said, "Chee" in a protesting tone, but Calhoun held down the button for an accurate five minutes. He and Murgatroyd gulped together when he let up the button again and all space whirled and nausea hit as before. He took another plate of all the heavens, made into one by the six-lensed camera. He swung the ship by ninety degrees and pressed the short-hop button a second time; more dizziness, panic and digestive revolt followed. In five minutes it was repeated as the ship came out to normal space yet again.
"Chee-chee!" protested Murgatroyd. His furry paws held his round little belly against further insult.
"I agree," said Calhoun. He exposed a third film. "I don't like it either. But I want to know where we are, if anywhere."
He set up the comparator and inserted the three plates. Each had images of each of the six vision screens. When the instrument whirled, each of the plates in turn was visible for part of a second. Extremely remote stars would not jiggle perceptibly—would not show parallax—but anything within twenty light-years should. The jiggling distance could be increased by taking the plates still farther apart. This time, though, there was one star which visibly wavered in the comparator. Calhoun regarded it suspiciously.