Between the Strokes of Night

“Eventually we equipped four ships with service robots, similar to the ones on this ship, and with limited life-support systems. We didn’t need perfect recycling, only enough for a few months of travel in S-space. The final design gave the ships a useful exploration range of up to fifty light-years. At the slow speed of the arcologies, we knew they couldn’t be farther out than that. And the stellar profiles in the neighborhood of Sol gave us a fairly good idea where the colony ships were likely to be headed. Political systems change, but the physical constraints are still there. We thought we’d find them about twenty light-years out.

“When we had everything ready, our ships set off with their volunteer crews. We had no shortage of people willing to make the trip — I put my own name in, but didn’t make it. There were many with better qualifications than mine for interstellar cruising.

“As it happened, we had overestimated the distance they had gone. We had made insufficient allowance for the difficulties that Melissa and the others might be having on board. It hadn’t been a smooth ride by any means. There had been a civil war on Melissa, an economic collapse on Eleanora, and a power plant failure on Helena. Those variables affected both their speeds and their directions. Helena actually reversed and started back for Sol for a while, until the trouble was fixed and she could head outward again.

“Our ships had no trouble tracking and finding the arcologies. After all, they had no reason to expect pursuit, and nothing to be gained by concealing their presence. But when we reached them, we found that no arcology had found a habitable planet, and all three were still in deep interstellar space. After reporting back to us — S-space radio signal time was only a couple of days — it was agreed that we would not establish contact with them. We decided to do nothing, and not interfere in any way unless an arcology was in actual danger of extinction. They hadn’t asked for help, and we didn’t want to give it. Your ancestors would be allowed to wander around until either they found a habitable planet, or they decided that a permanent space life suited them better. Then we would reconsider possible contact.

“Our ships left automated tracking probes to follow the arcologies and report on their movements, and headed for home.

“It may seem strange to you that we had so little interest in the arcologies. But we were in no hurry. We could wait in S-space and see what developed. And certainly we had plenty of other things to interest us, because by that time Earth was finally being visited again on a regular basis.

“Still we had doubts that humans could thrive there. The long dust-winter had exterminated ninety percent of the plant species, and all land-based animal forms bigger than the rat — I mean an Earth rat, not one of the thirty-kilo monsters you call rats on Pentecost. We also found that the surviving plants and animals had changed from their old forms. The grasses were unrecognizable. Many of the old food plants tasted wrong in subtle ways, and some had lost all their nutritional value. We all realized that it would take millennia to restore Earth and make it a place worth living. But oddly enough, we all thought it a worthwhile effort — even those who had found life on Earth absolutely intolerable before the holocaust.

“By the time that the Earth visits began we were feeling much more comfortable about S-space. Some of us had been living there for many Earth-generations, and we were all fine — better than fine, because we didn’t seem to be aging at all. Our best estimate, based on limited data, was that the aging rate was twenty times as slow subjectively as it was in normal living. That extrapolated to a seventeen hundred year subjective lifetime — and even if we were wrong by a factor of two, that was still a mighty attractive thought.

“When our result became known, naturally more and more people wanted to move to S-space. It didn’t happen overnight, but as time went by we learned how to make the transitions both ways, with minimal danger. By then we also knew the big problem with S-space existence.”

“You keep referring to problems and never telling us about them,” said Elissa. “What problem?”

“I’ve not been talking because I’m not supposed to talk,” said Ferranti. “No one back on Pentecost should know what I’m telling you until they’ve been through indoctrination, and not one of you has; but you’ll realize the problem for yourselves in two seconds as soon as we arrive at local Headquarters, so I’m not revealing any great secrets.”

Olivia Ferranti moved her thin hands to her cheeks, framing her eyes. “You’ll find no children at Headquarters,” she said abruptly. “A woman cannot conceive in S-space, or a man produce active sperm. S-space is a wonderful place for an individual, but it’s an evolutionary blind alley. Worse than that, anyone who makes frequent transitions between S-space and normal space suffers reduced fertility.