A. Van Vogt: Rogue Ship

It was Roscoe who stood up. 'Mr. Hewitt,' he said, 'during all my life and all my father's life, the captain of the Hope of Man has been a man with more than one wife. Are you telling us that you are going to change this, that you are going to limit yourself to one wife?'

Hewitt stood quietly staring out at an audience that had remained silent and expectant. Everybody seemed to be gazing at him intently. He felt it was ridiculous, that these foolish men were going to try to hold him to the tradition of more than one wife. He surmised that conforming would be proof to them that he would maintain male hegemony aboard the Hope of Man.

Whatever their motive, he rejected the reasoning behind it, and he said, 'Yes – one wife.'

All over the auditorium, grins suddenly showed on the upturned faces.

Then Lawrence came over and shook Hewitt's hand.

From the floor, Roscoe said, 'Well, Captain Hewitt, you've passed our tests. We're for you. We'll trust you. Right, men?'

Hewitt received his second ovation.

Eight years went by on the ship.

The scientists aboard learned by trial and error what John Lesbee V had divined in a flash of insight. But they rejected his description of it. The universe was not a 'lie.' It was what it was. There had been an 'apparency' perceived by the highly evolved nervous system of man and animals. Evidently – it was postulated – life had required a unique stability and had therefore created brain mechanisms that limited perception to the apparent stable condition. Within this 'solid' frame, life lived its lulled existence, evolving painfully, constantly adjusting at some unconscious level to the real universe.

And so here was man, through his scientifically trained senses, able to examine the truth at last.

...They measured that truth, discovered basic principles, made predictions, verified them. Control of time was achieved through a gradational, mechanical manipulation of the light-speed conditions.

Originally, the Hope of Man had slipped back in time accidentally. Now, the great ship was manipulated through the timeless universe of translight-speeds.

Although over four hundred weeks had gone by aboard, it came to a one-to-one ratio in the solar system one week, Earth time, after the Molly D had cast loose and started back to Earth.

The two vessels went into orbit around the planet within a day of each other. For the salvage ship, seven days had gone by; for the interstellar ship, nearly three thousand days -

There followed an emergency meeting of the cabinet, consultation with the Asian bloc, and widespread intercommunication among scientists.

Then, and not till then, Peter Linden and Averill Hewitt addressed the world.

The physicist spoke first and gave the scientific information. In sum, this was: the Hope of Man had gone into the future of the solar system and had observed the sun briefly assume some of the characteristics of a Cepheid Variable.

As he made these statements, the television showed motion pictures of that future event: the sudden flare-up, the heat wave striking one side of the Earth -

The scientist was careful to explain many times that what they were seeing on their television was something that had actually been photographed in the future. It was – or would be when it happened – the result of a translight-speed condition of basic matter. Moving faster than light, on a front of many light-years, this condition – which resembled in shape a ripple in space – would shortly envelop the solar system.

Traveling faster than light, the ripple would pass through the sun in about four seconds and would traverse the ninety-three million miles from the sun to Earth in six and a half minutes.

All the damage would be caused by the heat transported by the ripple from its four-second contact with the sun.

'Mercury,' said Peter Linden, 'will be horribly scorched, but all the planets, including Earth, will survive.'

Nevertheless, shelters must be dug. During the period of flare-up, the people on the side of the Earth exposed to the sun must be underground... Fortunately, the huge Pacific Ocean would bear the brunt -

When his turn came before the cameras and microphones, Hewitt said, 'I have happier news.'

During its period of translight-speed cruising, the Hope of Man had visited scores of other sun systems. They had found three other available planets that men could live on. Many colonists were needed to augment those who were already there.

'Right now,' said Hewitt, 'my own family – my wife, Ruth, and our four children – are on one of those planets. It will be our permanent home.'

Those words were the beginning of the sales talk he made as the world listened in.