Isaac Asimov - Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

Viluekis wasn't bad as Fusionists went-though they never went far. He and Strauss were at least on speaking terms, even though Viluekis had effortlessly collected the prettiest passenger on board after Strauss had seen her first. (That was somehow part of the Imperial rights of the Fusionists en route.)

Strauss contacted Anton Viluekis. It took time for it to go through and when it did, Viluekis looked irritated in a rumpled, sad-eyed way.

“How's the tube?” asked Strauss gently. “I think I shut it down in time. I've gone over it and I don't see any damage. Now,” he looked down at himself, “I've got to clean up.”

“At least it isn't harmed.”

“But we can't use it “

“We might use it, Vil,” said Strauss in an insinuating voice. “We can't say what will happen out there. If the tube were damaged, it wouldn't matter what happened out there, but, as it is, if the cloud cleans up-”

“If-if-if-I'll tell you an 'if.' If you stupid astronomers had known this cloud was here, I might have avoided it.”

That was flatly irrelevant, and Strauss did not rise to the bait. He said, “It might clear up.”

“What's the analysis?”

“Not good, Vil. It's the thickest hydroxyl cloud that's ever been observed. There is nowhere in the galaxy, as far as I know, a place where hydroxyl has been concentrated so densely.”

“ And no hydrogen?”

“Some hydrogen, of course. About five per cent”

“Not enough,” said Viluekis curtly. “There's something else there besides hydroxyl. There's something that gave me more trouble than hydroxyl could. Did you locate it?”

“Oh, yes. Formaldehyde. There's more formaldehyde than hydrogen. Do you realize what it means, Vil? Some process has concentrated oxygen and carbon in space in unheard-of amounts; enough to use up the hydrogen over a volume of cubic light-years, perhaps. There isn't anything I know or can imagine which would account for such a thing.”

“What are you trying to say, Strauss? Are you telling me that this is the only cloud of this type in space and I am stupid enough to land in it?”

“I'm not saying that, Vil. I only say what you hear me say and you haven't heard me say that. But, Vil, to get out we're depending on you. I can't call for help because I can't aim a hyperbeam without knowing where we are: I can't find out where we are because I can't pinpoint any stars-”

“And I can't use the fusion tube, so why am I the villain? You can't do your job, either, so why is the Fusionist always the villain.” Viluekis was simmering. “It's up to you, Strauss, up to you. Tell me where to cruise the ship to find hydrogen. Tell me where the edge of the cloud is. -Or to hell with the edge of the cloud; find me the edge of the hydroxyl-formaldehyde business.”

“I wish I could,” said Strauss, “but so far I can't detect anything but hydroxyl and formaldehyde as far as I can probe.”

“We can't fuse that stuff.”

“I know.”

“Well,” said Viluekis violently, “this is an example of why it's wrong for the government to try to legislate supersafety instead of leaving it to the judgment of the Fusionist on the spot. If we had the capacity for the Double-Jump, there'd be no trouble.”

Strauss knew perfectly well what Viluekis meant. There was always the tendency to save time by making two Jumps in rapid succession, but if one Jump involved certain unavoidable uncertainties, two in succession greatly multiplied those uncertainties, and even the best Fusionist couldn't do much. The multiplied error almost invariably greatly lengthened the total time of the trip.

It was a strict rule of hypernavigation that one full day of cruising between Jumps was necessary-three full days was preferable. That gave time enough to prepare the next Jump with all due caution. To avoid breaking thatrule, each Jump was made under conditions that left insufficient energy supply for a second. For at least some time, the scoops had to gather and compress hydrogen, fuse it, and store the energy, building up to Jump-ignition. And it usually took at least a day to store enough to allow a Jump.

Strauss said, “How far short in energy are you, Vil?”

“Not much. This much.” Viluekis held his thumb and forefinger apart by a quarter of an inch. “It's enough, though.”

“Too bad,” said Strauss flatly. The energy supply was recorded and could be inspected, but even so, Fusionists had been known to organize the records in such a way as to leave themselves some leeway for that second Jump.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Suppose you throw in the emergency generators, turn off all the lights-”

“And the air circulation and the appliances and the hydroponics apparatus. I know. I know. I figured that all in and we don't quite make it. -There's your stupid Double-Jump safety regulation.”

Strauss still managed to keep his temper. He knew-everyone knew-that it had been the Fusionist Brotherhood that had been the driving force behind that regulation. A Double-Jump, sometimes insisted on by the captain, much more often than not made the Fusionist look bad. -But then, there was at least one advantage. With an obligatory cruise between every Jump, there ought to be at least a week before the passengers grew restless and suspicious, and in that week something might happen. So far, it was not quite a day.

He said, “Are you sure you can't do something with your system; filter out some of the impurities?”

“Filter them out! They're not impurities; they're the whole thing. Hydrogen is the impurity here. Listen, I'll need half a billion degrees to fuse carbon and oxygen atoms; probably a full billion. It can't be done and I'm not going to try. If I try something and it doesn't work, it's my fault, and I won't stand for that. It's up to you to get me to the hydrogen and you do it. You just cruise this ship to the hydrogen. I don't care how long it takes.”

Strauss said, “We can't go faster than we're going now,considering the density of the medium, Vil. And at halflight speed we might have to cruise for two years-maybe twenty years”

“Well, you think of a way out. Or the captain.”

Strauss broke contact in despair. There was just no way of carrying on a rational conversation with a Fusionist. He'd heard the theory advanced (and perfectly seriously) that repeated Jumps affected the brain. In the Jump, every tardyon in ordinary matter had to be turned into an equivalent tachyon and then back again to the original tardyon. If the double conversion was imperfect in even the tiniest way, surely the effect would show up first in the brain, which was by far the most complex piece of matter ever to make the transition. Of course, no ill effects had ever been demonstrated experimentally, and no class of hypership officers seemed to deteriorate with time past what could be attributed to simple aging. But perhaps whatever it was in the Fusionists' brains that made them Fusionists and allowed them to go, by sheer intuition, beyond the best of computers might be particularly complex and therefore particularly vulnerable.

Nuts! There was nothing to it! Fusionists were merely spoiled!

He hesitated. Ought he to try to reach Cheryl? She could smooth matters if anyone could, and once old Vil-baby was properly dandled, he might think of a way to put the fusion tubes into operation-hydroxyl or not.

Did he really believe Viluekis could, under any circumstances? Or was he trying to avoid the thought of cruising for years? To be sure, hyperships were prepared for such an eventuality, in principle, but the eventuality had never come to pass and the crews-and still less the passengers-were surely not prepared for it.

But if he did talk to Cheryl, what could he say that wouldn't sound like an order for seduction? It was only one day so far and he was not yet ready to pimp for a Fusionist.