The only ones who had ever cared had been the people back on Earth who had launched the ship, and, for a little while, the Folk who rode the ship. And finally, he and one old man. They two against all space.
The only ones who cared.
"It's bigger than the others," said Joshua. "We are closer to it."
That was what was wrong!
That was what had rung the alarm within his mind. The star was far too close!
It shouldn't be that close!
He wrenched his eyes from space and looked down at the control board and all he saw was a meaningless mass of trips and levers, banks of buttons, rows of dials.
He watched the board and slowly his mind began to sort it out, to make some sense of it, the knowledge the machine had pounded into him beginning to take over.
He read the dials and he got some knowledge from them. He located certain controls that he had to know about.
Mathematics rose unbidden in his brain and did a nightmare dance.
It was useless, he told himself. It had been a good idea, but it hadn't worked. You couldn't educate a man by a machine.
You couldn't pound into him the knowledge necessary to navigate a ship.
"I can't do it, Joshua," he cried. "It's impossible to do it."
Where were the planets? he wondered. How could he find the planets? And when he found them, if he found them, what would he do then?
The ship was falling toward the sun.
He didn't know where to look for planets.
And they were going too fast—they were going far too fast.
Sweat burst out upon him, beading brow and running down his face, dripping from his armpits. "Take it easy, lad. Take it easy now."
He tried to take it easy, but it didn't work.
He reached down and slid open the tiny drawer beneath the control panel. There was paper there and pencils. He took out a sheet of paper and a pencil. He jotted down the readings on the dials.
Absolute velocity.
Increase of velocity.
Distance from the star. Angular approach to the star.
There were other readings, but those were the essential ones, those were the ones that counted.
And one thought rose in his brain, one thought that had been impressed upon it time after time:
To navigate a ship is not a matter of driving it toward a certain point, but in knowing where it will be at any time within the immediate future.
He made his calculations, the mathematics struggling upward into his consciousness.
He made the calculations and he made a graph and then reached out and pushed a control lever forward two notches and hoped that he was right.
"You are making it out?" Joshua asked.
Jon shook his head.
"We'll know—an hour from now we'll know."
A slight increase in thrust to keep the ship from plunging too close toward the sun. Skirting the sun and curving back, under the attraction of the sun, making a long wide loop out into space, and then back toward the sun again.
That was the way it worked—that was the way he hoped it worked.
That was the way the machine had told him it might work.
He sat there limp, wondering about the strange machine, wondering how much reliance you could put in tape running on a spool and a cap clamped on your head.
"We'll be here a long time," said Joshua.
Jon nodded. "I am afraid so, Joshua. It will take a long time."
"Then," the old man said. "I'll go and get some food."
He started toward the door, then turned back. "Mary?" he asked.
Jon shook his head. "Not yet. Let's leave them in peace. If we fail . . ."
"We won't fail." Jon spoke sharply. "If we do, it's best they never know."
"You may be right," the old man said. "I'll go and get the food."
TWO hours later Jon knew that the ship would not crash the sun. It would come close, almost too close for comfort—only a million miles or so, but the ship's velocity would be such that it would skim past the sun and climb out into space again, pulled to one side by the attraction of the sun, fighting outward against the pull of the flaming star, dropping off its speed on the upward, outward haul.
With its flight path curved inward by the sun, it would establish an orbit—a highly dangerous orbit, for on the next swing around, left to its own devices, the ship would crash the sun.
Between the time that it passed the sun and curved inward once again he must establish control over it, but the important thing was that he had bought some time. Without the added two notches of velocity he had gained by the shoving of the lever, he was sure, the ship either would have plunged into the sun or would have established a tightening orbit about it from which even the fantastic power of the mighty engines could not have pulled it free.
He had time and he had some knowledge, and Joshua had gone to bring some food.
He had time and he had to use the time. He had the knowledge, lying somewhere in his brain, planted there, and he must dig it up and put it to the job for which it was intended.
He was calmer now and a little surer of himself. And he wondered, in his own awkwardness, how the men who had launched the ship from Earth, the men who had watched and tended it before the ignorance, could have shot so closely. Chance, perhaps, for it would have been impossible to shoot a thousand-year-long missile at a tiny target and have it hold its course . . . or would it have been possible? Automatic — automatic — automatic. The word thrummed in his brain. The single word over and over again. The ship was automatic. It ran itself, it repaired itself, it serviced itself, it held true to the target. It needed only the hand and brain of Man to tell it what to do. Do this, the hand and brain of Man would say, and the ship would do it. That was all that was needed—the simple telling of instructions.
The problem was how to tell the ship. What and how to tell it.
And there were certain facts that haunted him about the telling of the ship.
He got down from the navigator's chair and prowled about the room. There was a thin fine dust on everything, but when he rubbed his sleeve along the metal, the metal shone as brightly as on that day it had been installed.
He found things, and some of them he knew and recognized and some of them he didn't.
But, most important, he found the telescope, and after some trials and errors, he remembered how to operate it.
And now he knew how to find the planets—if this were the target star and there were any planets. Three hours gone and Joshua had not returned. It was too long to be gone just to get some food. He paced up and down the room, fighting down his fears.
Something had happened, something must have happened to the old man.
He went back to the telescope and began the work of running down the planets. It was hard work and purposeless at first, but bit by bit, with the handling of the instruments, the facts started drifting up into his consciousness.
He found one planet—and there was a knock upon the door.
He left the telescope and strode across the room.
The corridor was full of people and all at once they were shouting at him, shouting hateful words, and the roaring of their voices was a blast of anger and of condemnation that sent him back a step.
In front were Herb and George and behind them all the others—men and women both, and he looked for Mary, but he didn't see her.
The crowd surged forward and there was hatred and a loathing on their faces and the fog of fear came out of them and struck deep into Jon Hoff.
His hand went down to his waistband and closed upon the gun butt and he dragged the weapon free.
He tilted the gun downward and stabbed at the button, just one quick, light stab. Light bloomed out and filled the doorway and the crowd went reeling back.