Between the Strokes of Night

“That would explain why we only saw videos of former winners,” said Lum. “They didn’t come back to Pentecost. But there’d be no problem with videos. They could take them at S-space speed, then speed them up so they’d look normal. Personal appearances would be impossible unless they had moved back to normal time — N-space, you called it.”

“And they’ll be reluctant to do that,” said Peron. “They lose the benefit of extended life expectancy when they leave S-space. You have to eat special food there, and you don’t feel quite normal. But people will put up with a lot to increase their subjective life span by a factor of twenty.”

They were again in the suspense chamber. Peron led them into and through one of the caskets, using it as a convenient path to the other parts of the ship. There was a substantial temperature change as they passed through the suspense tank, and they all loosened their warm clothing.

“I’ll tell you one thing I still don’t understand,” Peron said. “When I was in S-space, I felt as though I was in a one-gee environment. Now we’re in exactly the same part of the ship, but we’re in freefall. I don’t see how that can happen.”

There was silence for a while, then Kallen made a little coughing noise. “T-squared effect,” he said softly.

“What?”

“He’s quite right,” Sy said calmly. “Good for you, Kallen. Don’t you see what he’s saying? Accelerations involve the square of the time — distance per second per second. Change the definition of a second, and of course you change the perceived speed. That’s why they can travel light-years in what they regard as a few days. But you change perceived acceleration, too — and you change that even more. By the square of the relative time rates — “

“ — which is another reason the Immortals don’t go down to the surface of planets,” said Lum. “They want to spend their time in S-space to increase their subjective lifespans, but then that forces them to live in a very weak acceleration field. They can’t take gravity.”

“Not even a weak field,” added Rosanne. “They’d fall over before they even knew they were off balance. What did you say the time factor was? — two thousand to one? Then even a millionth of a gravity would be perceived by them as a four-gee field. They have to live in freefall. They have no choice about it. But they perceive a four-millionth of a gee as normal gravity.”

Peron looked around him in disgust. “All right. So everybody saw it easily except me. Try another one. Tell me what’s going on outside the ship. One reason I thought at first that S-space had to be some kind of hyperspace was the view from the ports. When you look out, you don’t see stars at all. All you see is a sort of faint, glowing haze. It’s yellow-white, and it’s everywhere outside the ship.”

This time there was not even a moment’s pause.

“Frequency shift,” said Sy at once. “Let’s see. Two thousand to one. So the wavelengths your eyes could see would be two thousand times as long. Instead of yellow light at half a micrometer, you’d see yellow at a millimeter wavelength. Where would that put us?”

There was a hush.

“The Big Bang,” whispered Kallen.

“The three degree cosmic background radiation,” said Rosanne. “My Lord. Peron, you were seeing leftover radiation from the beginning of the Universe — actually seeing it directly with your eyes.”

“And it’s uniform and close to isotropic,” added Lum. “That’s why it looked like a general foggy haze. At that wavelength you don’t get a strong signal from stars or nebulae, just a continuous field.”

“But it can’t be that straightforward.” Sy frowned. “The pupils of our eyes provide too small an aperture to deal with millimeter wavelengths. There has to be a lot more to S-space modification than the obvious changes.”

Peron looked at Elissa. “Don’t say anything. You’ll tell me it’s all obvious, too. I guess it is. But it was a lot more confusing when I had no idea I was dealing with a difference in time rates. I couldn’t imagine where I might be, for the universe to look like that. Here. Try your hands at something else. This time I think I know what’s going on, but I need help — especially from Sy and Kallen. You’re our computer specialists.”

He led them back along narrow corridors to the chamber where the patient robots sat in their silent rows. The others watched warily as three of the little machines came to life and glided past them along the passage.