Larry Niven - The Mote in God's Eye

MacArthur shuddered and dropped into existence beyond the orbit of Dagda. For long moments her crew sat at their hyperspace transition stations, disoriented, fighting to overcome the confusion that always follows instantaneous travel.

Why? One branch of physics at the Imperial University on Sigismund contends that hyperspace travel requires, not zero time, but transfinite time, and that this produces the characteristic confusion of both men and computer equipment. Other theories suggest that the Jump produces stretching or shrinking of local space, affecting nerves and computer elements alike; or that not all parts of the ship appear at the same time; or that inertia and mass vary on a subatomic level after transition. No one knows, but the effect is real.

“Helmsman,” Blaine said thickly. His eyes slowly focused on the bridge displays. “Aye aye, sir.” The voice was numbed and uncomprehending, but the crewman automatically responded.

“Set a course for Dagda. Get her moving.”

“Aye aye.” In the early days of hyperspace travel, ship’s computers had tried to accelerate immediately after popout. It didn’t take long to find out that computers were even more confused than men. Now all automatic equipment was turned off for transition. Lights flashed on Blaine’s displays as crewmen slowly reactivated MacArthur and checked out their systems.

“We’ll put her down on Brigit, Mr. Renner,” Blaine continued. “Make your velocity match. Mr. Staley, you will assist the Sailing Master.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The bridge came back to life. Crewmen stirred and returned to duties. Stewards brought coffee after acceleration and gravity returned. Men left hyperspace stations to return to patrol duties, while MacArthur ’s artificial eyes scanned space for enemies. The trouble board flashed green as each station reported successful transition.

Blaine nodded in satisfaction as he sipped his coffee. It was always like this, and after hundreds of transitions he still felt it. There was something basically wrong with instantaneous travel, something that outraged the senses, something the mind wouldn’t accept at a level below thought. The habits of the Service carried men through; these too were ingrained at a level more basic than intellectual functions.

“Mr. Whitbread, my compliments to the Chief Yeoman of Signals and please report us in to Fleet Headquarters on New Scotland. Get our course and speed from Staley, and you can signal the fuel station on Brigit that we’re coming in. Inform Fleet of our destination.”

“Aye aye, sir. Signal in ten minutes, sir?”

“Yes.”

Whitbread unbuckled from his command seat behind the Captain and walked drunkenly to the helm station. “I’ll need full engine power for a signal in ten minutes, Horst.” He made his way from the bridge, recovering rapidly. Young men usually did, which was one reason for having young officers in command of the ships.

“NOW HEAR THIS,” Staley announced. The call sounded through the ship. “NOW HEAR THIS. END OF ACCELERATION IN TEN MINUTES. BRIEF PERIOD OF FREE FALL IN TEN MINUTES.”

“But why?” Blaine heard. He looked up to see Sally Fowler at the bridge entranceway. His invitation to the passengers to come to the bridge when there was no emergency had worked out fine: Bury hardly ever made use of the privilege. “Why free fall so soon?” she asked.

“Need the power to make a signal,” Blaine answered. “At this distance it’ll use up a significant part of our engine power to produce the maser beam. We could overload the engines if we had to, but it’s standard to coast for messages if there’s no real hurry.”

“Oh.” She sat in Whitbread’s abandoned chair. Rod swiveled his command seat to face her, wishing again that someone would design a free fall outfit for girls that didn’t cover so much of their legs, or that brief shorts would come back into fashion. Right now skirts were down to calves on Sparta, and the provinces copied the Capital. For shipboard wear the designers produced pantaloon things, comfortable enough, but baggy…

“When do we get to New Scotland?” she asked.

“Depends on how long we stay off Dagda. Sinclair wants to do some outside work while we’re dirtside.” He took out his pocket computer and wrote quickly with the attached stylus. “Let’s see, we’re about one and a half billion kilometers from New Scotland, that’s—uh, make it a hundred hours to turnover. About two hundred hours’ travel time, plus what we spend on Dagda. And the time it takes to get to Dagda, of course. That’s not so far, about twenty hours from here.”

“So we’ll still be a couple of weeks at least,” she said. “I thought once we got here we’d—” She broke off, laughing. “It’s silly. Why can’t you invent something that lets you Jump around in interplanetary space? There’s something faintly ridiculous about it, we went five light years in no time at all, now it takes weeks to get to New Scotland.”

“Tired of us so soon? It’s worse than that, really. It takes an insignificant part of our hydrogen to make a Jump— Well, it isn’t trivial, but it’s not a lot compared to what it’ll take getting to New Scotland. I don’t have enough fuel aboard to go direct, in fact not in less than a year, but there’s more than enough to make a Jump. All that takes is enough energy to get into hyperspace.”

Sally snared a cup of coffee from the steward. She was learning to drink Navy coffee, which wasn’t like anything else in the Galaxy. “So we just have to put up with it,” she said.

“Afraid so. I’ve been on trips where it was faster to drive over to another Alderson point, make a Jump, move around in the new system, Jump somewhere else, keep doing that until you come back to the original system at a different place—do all that and it would still be faster than merely to sail across the original system in normal space. But not this time, the geometry isn’t right.”

“Pity,” she laughed. “We’d see more of the universe for the same price.” She didn’t say she was bored; but Rod thought she was, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He had little time to spend with her, and there weren’t many sights to see.

“NOW HEAR THIS. STAND BY FOR FREE FALL.” She barely had time to strap herself in before the drive cut out.

Chief Yeoman of Signals Lud Shattuck squinted into his aiming sight, his knobby fingers making incredibly fine adjustments for such clumsy appendages. Outside MacArthur ’s hull, a telescope hunted under Shattuck’s guidance until it found a tiny dot of light. It hunted again until the dot was perfectly centered. Shattuck grunted in satisfaction and touched a switch. A maser antenna slaved itself to the telescope while the ship’s computer decided where the dot of light would be when the message arrived. A coded message wound off its tape reel, while aft MacArthur ’s engines fused hydrogen to helium. Energy rode out through the antenna, energy modulated by the thin tape in Shattuck’s cubicle, reaching toward New Scotland.

Rod was at dinner alone in his cabin when the reply arrived. A duty yeoman looked at the heading and shouted for Chief Shattuck. Four minutes later Midshipman Whitbread knocked at his captain’s door.

“Yes,” Rod answered irritably.

“Message from Fleet Admiral Cranston, sir.”

Rod looked up in irritation. He hadn’t wanted to eat alone, but the wardroom had invited Sally Fowler to dinner—it was their turn, after all—and if Blaine had invited himself to dine with his officers, Mr. Bury would have come too. Now even this miserable dinner was interrupted. “Can’t it wait?”

“It’s priority OC, sir.”

“A hot flash for us? OC?” Blaine stood abruptly, the protein aspic forgotten. “Read it to me, Mr. Whitbread.”