mind-wracking effort. He was troubled, however, by a vague feeling of something impenetrable equidistant on all sides of him. Could that be the Tube? If the mind were something distinct from the brain, could it sense directly, especially in circumstances like these? He accepted the possibility, and saw no way to prove it or put it to use.
The endlessness of the trip oppressed him. Time might be manâs invention and his tool, but it could also be an enemy to destroy him. With nothing to measure its passing, he could grow senile waiting for an instant to elapse. The objective duration of the trip might be three hours; subjectively it was eternity multiplied.
He had escaped one trapdoor to madness only to find himself standing on another. He must keep his mind busy; he must fill eternity with thoughts.
He planned what he would do when he reached Eron. The Tube would take him to one of the Terminal caps at the poles, a cap bristling with Tubes. The caps didnât rotate with Eron. If they did, the Tubes would soon be twisted together like spaghetti. The broad, spiked caps floated in a shallow pool of mercury. They turned in the opposite direction of Eronâs rotation, or, rather, motors kept them motionless while Eron turned underneath.
The ships pushed through airlocks into the space around Eron. They located their assigned elevator. The massive elevator lowered each ship past level after level until it reached the appropriate one. The freighters went deep, close to the ancient, sterile rock of Eron itself. The fighting ships stopped at the barracks-level. The liners, reserved almost exclusively for the Golden Folk, dropped only a little.
But ships were useless to him. Even if he could steal one and get it into space, he would have no place to go. Not into Eron. The elevators were operated from inside the skin of the world. The nearest planet was years away by conventional drive; he would be recaptured quickly.
There had to be some way to get from the caps to Eron itself, other than by ship. Could he walk out on the surface in his spacesuit and find a way in? No, that wasnât the way. Even if he could jump from the stationary cap to the spinning world without disaster, he would be dangerously exposed while he was searching for an entrance, if any.
There should be a direct connection. Not at the perimeter, although the relative motion would not be so great after all. If the caps were fifty kilometers in diameter and Eron rotated as rapidly as Earth, the relative motion would be less than seven kilometers an hour. But it would be awkward, waiting for doorways to align themselves; Eron would never plan it like that.
The nearer a man approached the pole, on the other hand, the less the linear velocity would be until it dropped away to zero directly over the pole. There, if anywhere, should be an entrance to Eron. Horn planned, in as much detail as his knowledge of Eron permitted, how he would get to Eron from the cap and what he would do when he got there.
But he could never quite forget the mouse of insanity nibbling at the edges of his mind. How swift is thought? How slow is time? How long is three hours?
The insensate mind that called itself Horn floated blind and helpless within a formless area, carried along by an unfelt force toward a shrinking goal. Only faith could sustain it, and the only faith it had was in itself.
It was irony, Horn thought, that when he was most alone, most independent of outside influences, he was unable to react with his environment; a completely isolated individual, he could not move a muscle, he could not alter his circumstances in any way. Perhaps there is a lesson in that, he thought.
Maybe it would have been better to have believed in something, he reflected, even though belief is a form of surrender to the universe. It might have sustained him now, if he could believe, as the Entropy Cult preached, that there was a great, beneficent force behind the apparent aimlessness of
The endlessness of the trip oppressed him. Time might be manâs invention and his tool, but it could also be an enemy to destroy him. With nothing to measure its passing, he could grow senile waiting for an instant to elapse. The objective duration of the trip might be three hours; subjectively it was eternity multiplied.
He had escaped one trapdoor to madness only to find himself standing on another. He must keep his mind busy; he must fill eternity with thoughts.
He planned what he would do when he reached Eron. The Tube would take him to one of the Terminal caps at the poles, a cap bristling with Tubes. The caps didnât rotate with Eron. If they did, the Tubes would soon be twisted together like spaghetti. The broad, spiked caps floated in a shallow pool of mercury. They turned in the opposite direction of Eronâs rotation, or, rather, motors kept them motionless while Eron turned underneath.
The ships pushed through airlocks into the space around Eron. They located their assigned elevator. The massive elevator lowered each ship past level after level until it reached the appropriate one. The freighters went deep, close to the ancient, sterile rock of Eron itself. The fighting ships stopped at the barracks-level. The liners, reserved almost exclusively for the Golden Folk, dropped only a little.
But ships were useless to him. Even if he could steal one and get it into space, he would have no place to go. Not into Eron. The elevators were operated from inside the skin of the world. The nearest planet was years away by conventional drive; he would be recaptured quickly.
There had to be some way to get from the caps to Eron itself, other than by ship. Could he walk out on the surface in his spacesuit and find a way in? No, that wasnât the way. Even if he could jump from the stationary cap to the spinning world without disaster, he would be dangerously exposed while he was searching for an entrance, if any.
There should be a direct connection. Not at the perimeter, although the relative motion would not be so great after all. If the caps were fifty kilometers in diameter and Eron rotated as rapidly as Earth, the relative motion would be less than seven kilometers an hour. But it would be awkward, waiting for doorways to align themselves; Eron would never plan it like that.
The nearer a man approached the pole, on the other hand, the less the linear velocity would be until it dropped away to zero directly over the pole. There, if anywhere, should be an entrance to Eron. Horn planned, in as much detail as his knowledge of Eron permitted, how he would get to Eron from the cap and what he would do when he got there.
But he could never quite forget the mouse of insanity nibbling at the edges of his mind. How swift is thought? How slow is time? How long is three hours?
The insensate mind that called itself Horn floated blind and helpless within a formless area, carried along by an unfelt force toward a shrinking goal. Only faith could sustain it, and the only faith it had was in itself.
It was irony, Horn thought, that when he was most alone, most independent of outside influences, he was unable to react with his environment; a completely isolated individual, he could not move a muscle, he could not alter his circumstances in any way. Perhaps there is a lesson in that, he thought.
Maybe it would have been better to have believed in something, he reflected, even though belief is a form of surrender to the universe. It might have sustained him now, if he could believe, as the Entropy Cult preached, that there was a great, beneficent force behind the apparent aimlessness of
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