Between the Strokes of Night

Libby Trask objected, “Even if you are right about the equipment — and I must admit I don’t recognize most of it, even in my own field — it would make no sense to abandon Gulf City as the central organizing group.”

“Wrong. It would make no sense to keep Gulf City in the decision loop at all, so long as people here insisted on remaining in S-space. Interstellar communication times are long enough as it is. Can you imagine the frustration of waiting for some answer, knowing that for every day in S-space on Gulf City, two thousand days — more than five years — were flashing by on your planet? The center of action moved to the planets, coordinating their own development. This place became a backwater.”

Emil said, “A backwater, maybe. But that doesn’t account for Gulf City being totally deserted.”

“Correct. I suspect there is a different reason for that, and it’s something we’ll be able to confirm when we send messages to the planetary web and say we’re home from Urstar. When we left Gulf City, we had on board the most advanced knowledge that humans could offer. But by the standards of planetary civilizations we were travelling for a long, long time. Humans moved out of caves and into space in less time than it took us to go to and return from Urstar. I think that human scientific knowledge has moved on, far past anything with which we can claim familiarity. Someone — almost certainly, a group working on a planet and therefore working in N-space — discovered for themselves the unpleasant truths that we were warned about after our ship was halted and JN’s body was taken over. S-space, over long periods of time, is fatal to us. What was it we were told? Ultimately, time consumes flesh.”

Dan Korwin, sitting next to Sy, turned in his seat. “So everyone returned to live in normal space and time, leaving Gulf City to fade away? I don’t believe it.”

“Nor do I, and I didn’t say that. I think something much more complicated took place. I agree with the list that Delsy Gretz showed us, those are a hundred and seventy-eight different planetary colonies, all operating and communicating with each other in N-space. But there are other lists. Here’s one that I found when I was poking around.”

A group of about twenty names and coordinates appeared as glowing symbols, standing a few centimeters in front of the tall unit that still displayed Delsy Gretz’s list.

“Not nearly so many of these,” Sy said. “But there’s an important difference. Not one of them is associated with a planetary or a stellar system — not even a brown dwarf or a free-flying rogue planet. My guess is that every one is like Gulf City, as far removed as they can get from all other matter.” “Doing what?” Eva Packland was making her own rapid check, confirming that the coordinates did not correspond to any known celestial objects.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Free space facilities, far away from gravitational perturbations. Low density of interstellar matter, and with only the galactic fields as disturbance.”

“Perfect for delicate physical measurements,” said Rolf Sansome. “Minimal interference.”

“Or for long-range astronomy and astrophysics,” Eva Packland added. Sy nodded. “Both of those are logical. My own belief is a little different. Humans set up Gulf City to study parts of the universe that they didn’t understand, but this was also a fine place to explore the different states in which people can exist. S-space was used here, but this is also where the first T-state experiments were performed. I believe that those” — he pointed to the list — “represent the next generation of free-space experiment stations. Different groups had different ideas as to what should be done next. They took everything learned here on Gulf City as a starting point, and set up facilities dedicated to their own explorations.”

“Exploring what?” Charlene, not for the first time, was losing track of the direction of Sy’s thinking.

“All the open questions of space and time. When we left for Urstar, people here were groping their way toward understanding how humans could live in T-state. A time-rate difference of two million to one sounded like a lot to us — it is a lot, four Earth-years flashing by for every minute spent in T-state. But why think of that as an end point for progress? We can survive, unconscious and in cold sleep, and we have no idea how much time would elapse before physical deterioration. There could also be any number of other states between T-state and cold sleep, in which humans can remain conscious and with reduced rates of perception.”

Emil shook his head. “The beings who met us at Urstar said not. You yourself just quoted what they did say: Time consumes flesh.”