“Adds up, y’know,” Maggie told him, perhaps responding to his silence. “The divergence. The least bit off’n true at this point and we’d miss the entrance. Or worse, we’d go in at too dang sharp an angle. It’s gotta be normal to the cross section. Better to miss and come back ’round than to skid going in, an’…” She came to a halting stop, then fiddled unnecessarily with the log. A furrow formed on her brow, a deep fold between her eyes, as if someone had struck her with a chisel.
“I understand completely, ma’am,” Kalim said.
“Do you,” Maggie B. said curtly. She shook off the study into which she had fallen. “Get me a Doppler shift on the Eye of Allah—and let’s check our speed.”
During the last day before entering Electric Avenue, the watch was continuous and the crew took catnaps when they dozed at all. January was always on the deck, although he deferred to Maggie B. for the astrogation. She, for her part, switched from screen to screen on the computer as fast as Kalim and Tirasi could feed her the data. The stellar spectra had blue-shifted as the speed of the ship approached the speed of the medium whereby they measured it. The stars in the forward viewscreen crowded together and actually seemed to recede the faster the ship moved. Visible light slid off the scale, and the sensors shifted to infrared. Ringbao, with no specific duties, ran food and drink to the deck and to the power room, where Hogan and Malone tended the alfvens.
An hour before entry, Slugger O’Toole appeared, fully rested and sober, and took his place in the pilot’s saddle. “How’s the fookin’ groove?” he asked of no one in particular. “Ringbao, d’ye have any more o’ that tay?”
Maggie B. told him that the trajectory was within five degrees of normal to the entrance. O’Toole nodded and placed an induction cap on his head. Ringbao handed him the cup and he took a long swig of the hot liquid. “I’ll see yez when I see yez,” he announced, then inserted his earphones and pulled down a pair of black goggles. Ringbao, who had always traveled as a passenger before and had never seen an entrance actually being made, stood in the rear and watched everything with fascination.
Tirasi took a final set of parallax views of the weirdly distorted sky. The intelligence computed the ship’s bearings and Maggie ordered a final course correction. Her hand hovered over the red slap-button, ready to snatch the last string in the fabric of space and yank the ship over the threshold should the intelligence fail to act.
The chronometer clicked, Ringbao glanced up at the sound, and—he missed the transition. When he looked again at the forward screen he saw nothing but a blur of xanthic light. January called out, “Status?”
“In the groove,” said Maggie.
“Alfvens spinning sweet,” reported Hogan from the power room.
O’Toole, cocooned in his headgear and in rapport with the ship, said, “Minor skidding. Nothing I can’t handle.”
And as slick as that, they were sliding down the Grand Trunk Road.
Now, Shree Einstein once said that nothing in the universe could move faster than light; but like many gods, he spoke in oracles. On one hand, nothing could be seen to travel faster than light; for such an object was moving faster than the medium by which it was seen, and an ancient superstition holds that “out of sight is out of mind.”
On the other hand, if the universe is composed of all those parts that can be perceived, a superluminal ship is no longer in the universe. Instead, it voyages in those blank regions of the map in which men once wrote “Here there be dragons.”
So just as a world includes parts unseen as well as seen, the universe is more manifold than subluminal instruments reveal. Yet, the limits still apply. In the superluminal creases, the ship did not move faster than light, relative to local space. It was space itself that was moving. After all, space is not itself a material body, and so not subject to the limits placed on matter. Not even Shree Einstein could tell Shree Ricci to hold still.
January hosted a dinner in the wardroom to celebrate their entry onto the Grand Trunk Road. “Here’s to a successful slide!” he announced, holding aloft a glass of Gladiola Black Saffron, otherwise known as Old Thunderhead, because it delivered maximum impact at minimum cost.
“An’ the end o’ th’ fookin’ crawl,” O’Toole seconded him.
Tirasi twirled the stem of his wineglass between thumb and forefinger. “How smart is it to leave the bleeding control deck unwatched?” he asked. By the roll of the eyes around the table, Ringbao judged this was not the first time he had raised such an objection. He wondered if anyone on this crew ever said anything that the others had not heard unnumbered times before.
O’Toole favored the Queensworlder with one eye. “We’re in the fookin’ groove, boyo. Dead nuts center in the tube. Won’t need a tweak for another tin watches, by th’ drift.”
Tirasi sighed elaborately. “We have to trust your judgment then…”
O’Toole reddened. “My judgment and the intelligence’s!” Too late, he saw the trap. The words were flown!
All innocence, Tirasi turned to January and said, “As long as an intelligence concurs.”
January snapped, “Enough of that!” And Tirasi sat back, puzzled and hurt; for in spite of many years in which he might have learned better, he had thought the captain smiling at the joke.
Neither Ringbao nor Kalim had joined in the laughter at Tirasi’s trick. Little Hugh thought there was too much malice in it, and he preferred to save malice for when it was genuinely needed. The Fudir, for his part, preferred no distractions from his quest, and becoming embroiled in these petty squabbles was no part of his plan. But Tirasi had heard the two newcomers’ silence, and since he could not chide his own captain, turned to the deckhand. Kalim was sitting between Tirasi and Ringbao, so Tirasi had to lean past him to address Ringbao.
“You disapprove, Ring-o?”
“So sorry,” the deckhand answered. “Queensworld humor so subtle.”
Tirasi made a fist. “Do you know why they call me ‘Fighting Bill’?”
Little Hugh studied the fist, looked in the acting astrogator’s eye. “Because you cannot control temper?”
O’Toole burst into laughter. Hogan and Malone traded smirks. Captain January smacked the table. “I said, Enough!”
“Do you want a piece of me, mate?”
Little Hugh shook his head. “Too many pieces remain when done. Not able to choose.”
Both O’Toole and Malone went blank, but Maggie B. understood right off. So did Tirasi himself, who clenched his teeth and glared at Ringbao. But he hesitated. Perhaps he saw something in the deckhand’s face. Perhaps he saw the Ghost of Ardow, for there is a gulf between those who brawl and those who kill, and the Ghost waited on the far side of it. Tirasi backed off, glancing at Kalim, who had been calmly eating his stew the while. “Aren’t you going to help your mate?” he asked with belligerency false in his voice.
The Fudir blinked and looked up as if in surprise. “Why? Does he need help?” There were little knots of anger at the corners of his jaw, and a certain unexpected hardness had crept into his voice. The others at the table fell quiet.
And January, in particular, regarded his two new hands more thoughtfully.
Later, the Fudir visited Little Hugh in his cabin, and shutting the door on them both, he grabbed the younger man by the front of his coverall. “Don’t ever do that again!” he said in a whisper more terrible than a shout. “Don’t ever let them see anything more than a simple deckhand!”