of them both, Yvonne and Noelle, Noelle and Yvonne, standing facing each ot h er across the cosmos with their hands upraised and light streaming from the ir fingertips, and the glowing bond that stretches across the galaxy between the two sisters gives off so brilliant a radiance that he stirs and moans and presses his forehead into the pillow.
***
“ I have a funny idea,” Sieglinde says, and everyone looks u p, for Sieglinde is not noted for funny ideas. Nor is there anything at all comic in the unusually thin, high, strained tone in which she is speaking now. But something has been building up in her for the past half hour and now it comes erupting forth. “ W h at if we throw the switch and the ship doesn ’ t want to come out of nospace?” she asks. “ What if we find that we simply can ’ t reach this Planet A, or any other realspace destination? What do we do then? Do we have a fall-back plan?”
This is the first brains torming session for the group that is planning the change of course. They are meeting in the control cabin. Intelligence readouts embedded in the curved wall glow all around them, soft em a nations of pulsing light, amethyst and amber and jade. Sieglinde and Roy and Heinz and Paco and Julia and the year-captain have been tal k ing for two hours straight and they are all getting tired and a little silly, now.
“ If that happens, then we find a nice nospace planet somewhere and we settle down there instead,” Paco a nswers. “ That ’ s our fall-back plan.”
Roy gives him a glowering stare. “ What you say is absurd and irre l evant. There aren ’ t any nospace planets. Such a thing is a logical impo s sibil —”
Heinz, smiling as always but displaying an edge of controlled a n noyance, says to Sieglinde, “ Why do you even ask these things? This is a meeting to discuss a survey mission into realspace. You ’ re conjuring up imaginary demons for us. The stardrive wasn ’ t designed to fail. It will not fail.”
“ And if it does?” Sieglinde asks.
“ He inz is right,” says the year-captain wearily. “ It won ’ t fail. It simply won ’ t. You can count on that.”
“ I count on nothing,” Sieglinde says, speaking in a throaty mock-dramatic way. Maybe she is trying to be funny. But her eyes are strangely bright. She se ems possessed by some powerful contrary ene r gy that will not relent. “ Anything may happen. We are dealing with tr e mendous physical forces and we still have relatively little experience with this equipment. And we work with stochastic processes here. Do you understand what I am saying? Each jump we make is in effect a gamble. The odds are in our favor each time, of course. But with each jump there is always the possibility of the random event, whenever the stardrive is changed from one state to another. It i s here in the equations: the random factor, the fatal probability. The more often we jump, the more often we expose ourselves to that small but real probability. And on one of our jumps we may leap from one nospace to another instead of returning to reals p ace, or experience something even worse. It is poss i ble.”
“ Not highly probable, though,” says Heinz. “ The odds favor us, you say.”
“ Not highly probable, no, but possible, distinctly possible, and what is possible is worth a little thought when that possibi lity can be fatal to our endeavor. You are an engineer, Heinz: you deal in tangible things, in absolute concepts of what works and what does not. I am a mathemat i cian. We are more poetic than you, do you understand me? I deal in a x ioms and certainties; but I also know that beneath the axioms lie only assumptions, and beneath the assumptions lies — chaos!”
“ Rely on faith, then, if you can ’ t trust your own equations,” says the year-captain. “ We all took a leap into the dark when we signed on. If you didn ’ t thin k the drive would work properly, you should have stayed home.”
“ I say only that
***
“ I have a funny idea,” Sieglinde says, and everyone looks u p, for Sieglinde is not noted for funny ideas. Nor is there anything at all comic in the unusually thin, high, strained tone in which she is speaking now. But something has been building up in her for the past half hour and now it comes erupting forth. “ W h at if we throw the switch and the ship doesn ’ t want to come out of nospace?” she asks. “ What if we find that we simply can ’ t reach this Planet A, or any other realspace destination? What do we do then? Do we have a fall-back plan?”
This is the first brains torming session for the group that is planning the change of course. They are meeting in the control cabin. Intelligence readouts embedded in the curved wall glow all around them, soft em a nations of pulsing light, amethyst and amber and jade. Sieglinde and Roy and Heinz and Paco and Julia and the year-captain have been tal k ing for two hours straight and they are all getting tired and a little silly, now.
“ If that happens, then we find a nice nospace planet somewhere and we settle down there instead,” Paco a nswers. “ That ’ s our fall-back plan.”
Roy gives him a glowering stare. “ What you say is absurd and irre l evant. There aren ’ t any nospace planets. Such a thing is a logical impo s sibil —”
Heinz, smiling as always but displaying an edge of controlled a n noyance, says to Sieglinde, “ Why do you even ask these things? This is a meeting to discuss a survey mission into realspace. You ’ re conjuring up imaginary demons for us. The stardrive wasn ’ t designed to fail. It will not fail.”
“ And if it does?” Sieglinde asks.
“ He inz is right,” says the year-captain wearily. “ It won ’ t fail. It simply won ’ t. You can count on that.”
“ I count on nothing,” Sieglinde says, speaking in a throaty mock-dramatic way. Maybe she is trying to be funny. But her eyes are strangely bright. She se ems possessed by some powerful contrary ene r gy that will not relent. “ Anything may happen. We are dealing with tr e mendous physical forces and we still have relatively little experience with this equipment. And we work with stochastic processes here. Do you understand what I am saying? Each jump we make is in effect a gamble. The odds are in our favor each time, of course. But with each jump there is always the possibility of the random event, whenever the stardrive is changed from one state to another. It i s here in the equations: the random factor, the fatal probability. The more often we jump, the more often we expose ourselves to that small but real probability. And on one of our jumps we may leap from one nospace to another instead of returning to reals p ace, or experience something even worse. It is poss i ble.”
“ Not highly probable, though,” says Heinz. “ The odds favor us, you say.”
“ Not highly probable, no, but possible, distinctly possible, and what is possible is worth a little thought when that possibi lity can be fatal to our endeavor. You are an engineer, Heinz: you deal in tangible things, in absolute concepts of what works and what does not. I am a mathemat i cian. We are more poetic than you, do you understand me? I deal in a x ioms and certainties; but I also know that beneath the axioms lie only assumptions, and beneath the assumptions lies — chaos!”
“ Rely on faith, then, if you can ’ t trust your own equations,” says the year-captain. “ We all took a leap into the dark when we signed on. If you didn ’ t thin k the drive would work properly, you should have stayed home.”
“ I say only that
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