And, as he walked, his eyes drank in what they saw.
“Hydroponics.” Jak waved a hand. “Algae plant which reprocesses the air and provides food if necessary.” He halted as a uniformed technician came up to him; the sound of Talk vibrated with a clean, crisp precision.
Smith looked about the compartment. It was big and clean and terribly bright. Tanks of green algae swirled to the impact of hidden pumps, and artificial sunlight blazed down on the seething contents. Pipes snaked from the ceiling, and the whirr of blowers, the sighing whine of fans, filled the place with murmuring vibration. The technician glanced at Smith.
“Interested,” said Jak, anticipating the question. “Such curiosity among People is rare.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“You don’t approve, Vin?”
“It is not for me to approve or disapprove, Captain.”
“All well, Vin?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Jak continued his Walk. Through the kitchens, the Folk recreation room, the Folk quarters, the tiny sick bay with its conglomeration of instruments for electro-medtherapy. He unsealed the double doors of the hold and passed within. He checked and sealed the doors behind him. He was hardly conscious of Smith’s presence.
Smith didn’t mind. He followed the Captain like a dog, eyes everywhere. He touched nothing, but the caress of his eyes was as if he fondled everything he saw. He burned with a hundred questions but, aside from a too-brief word of explanation, Jak volunteered nothing. He was not, Smith knew, being rude. It was just that he was so familiar with every part of the vessel that it never occurred to him that anyone could feel at a loss.
“Engine room.” Jak paused at the door. Lor had returned to duty, and he glanced at his mate, eyebrows lifted in resignation.
“Watch it,” he said to Con. “You know what curiosity did?”
“What?”
“You mean that you don’t know?” Con winked lecherously
“Well, I was curious about you, remember?”
Con flushed. She was heavy with child. Jak had heard the byplay but chose to ignore it. It was impolite to use Talk before People, but in this case he was glad of it. Smith didn’t look the type of man who would appreciate Lor’s humour. Jak could hardly appreciate it himself. Married couples, he assumed, had their own language just as the Folk did. Maybe one day he would learn it for himself
“You know how the drive works, of course,” he said to Smith.
“No, Captain.”
“No?” Jak could hardly believe it. Such ignorance! Even the youngest of the Folk knew the basic principles of the Vortiski drive.
“I’m afraid not.” Smith gave his gentle smile.
“Well, you know that ships don’t travel in normal space. If they did, they would be restricted to the speed of light. It would take at least one year to travel one light-year. Objective time, that is, not subjective. Subjective time would be much less.” He looked hard at the Cleric. “You understand me?”
“A little. You mean that to a person waiting on a planet it would take, say, four years for a ship to travel four light-years.”
“At least. To the crew, of course, it wouldn’t seem that long. They would be living on subjective time—relative time.” Jak made an impatient gesture. “Surely you can follow that?”
“I think so. Yes, I think I can.”
“Right. So we can’t use normal space. For one thing, it would be hopeless for business.”
For a moment he was afraid that he would even have to explain that, but Smith came to his rescue.
“I follow. Even though the crew would be under subjective time, the ship would still take years, a lifetime even, to make a journey. To a person on a planet, that is.”
“Exactly. If you sent a cargo to a star twenty-light years distant, it would take forty years for the double journey. You can’t make a profit that way.”
“No. I see that.”
“So we use the Vortiski drive. We don’t stay in normal space at all. We lift from a planet, engage the Vortiski drive, and enter No-Space. We travel until we arrive where we want to go and then emerge in normal space again. The journey, apparently, has taken no time at all. To a person on a planet, that is.”
“But not to us in the ship?”
“Of course not. We take about a hundred hours to cover one parsec. You know what a parsec is?”
“About three light-years, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Now tell him some of the other facts of life.” Lor turned a grinning face from where he stood checking the power flux of the engine room. “Quick! Before he asks you if bigger ships are faster.”
He had used Interspacial. Smith had understood.
“All ships travel at the same velocity in No-Space,” explained Jak resignedly. “Extra drive units do not affect that. The Vortiski drive gets you into No-Space. it doesn’t push you through it.”
Detachedly he wondered what his old instructor would have had to say about his explanation. He would probably have burst a blood vessel. Old Captain Ku had believed in cold science and the purity of mathematics.
“I follow.” Smith seemed uncertain. “At least I think I understand.”
Jak doubted it.
“But it would seem logical that with larger engines the speed would be increased.”
“The velocity is the same,” assured Jak.
“I see.”
He wasn’t convinced, Jak knew that, but then he would never be convinced. He was bound by planetary usages; larger, bigger, faster things which had an entirely different meaning in space. Jak sought for an analogy and couldn’t find one. He could have likened travelling in No-Space to scraps of driftwood riding a mighty ocean current, the speed of the current being the same for anything that rode it. Perhaps Smith would have grasped the analogy, but Jak was unable to use it. He had no concept of an ocean current and, even it he had, he would never have likened ships in space to anything planetary. His entire being would have revolted against it.
Jak glanced at his watch as they left the engine room, and lengthened his stride a little, quashing a momentary irritation that this particular Walk of Inspection should be taking so long. Despite his haste, he did not relax his vigilance. His eyes, ears, nostrils, the soles of his feet, his very skin quivered in tune to the vessel around him. Had anything been amiss, he would have known it, sensing it no matter how minor the fault, aware of wrongness before his trained skill could have determined what it was.
Nothing was wrong. This Walk of Inspection was as the one before and the one before that, and
