what is wrong."
Fedoroff looked at the deck. His words ran on, more soliloquy than report. A desperate man will rehearse obvious facts over and over. "In the nature of the case, the decelerators must have been subjected to greater stress than the accelerators. I would guess that those forces, reacting through the hydromagnetic fields, broke the material assembly in that part of the Bussard module.
"No doubt we could make repairs if we could go outside. But we'd have to come too near the fireball of the accelerator power core in its
own magnetic bottle. The radiation would kill us before we could do any useful work. The same is true for any remote-control robot we might build. You know what radiation at that level does to transistors, for instance. Not to mention inductive effects of the force fields.
"And, of course, we can't shut off the accelerators. That would mean shutting off the whole set of fields, including the screens, which only an outside power core can maintain. At our speed, hydrogen bombardment would release enough gamma rays and ions to fry everybody aboard within a minute."
He fell silent, less like a man ending a lecture than a machine running down.
"Have we no directional control whatsoever?" Reymont asked, still toneless.
"Yes, yes, we do have that," Boudreau said. "The accelerator pattern can be varied. We can damp down any of the four Venturis and boost up any others—get a sidewise as well as a forward vector. But don't you see, no matter what path we take, we must continue accelerating or we die."
"Accelerating forever," Telander said.
"At least," Lindgren whispered, "we can stay in the galaxy. Swing around and around its heart." Her gaze went to the periscope, and they knew what she thought of: behind that curtain of strange blue stars, blackness, intergalactic void, an ultimate exile. "At least . . . we can grow old . . . with suns around us. Even if we can't ever touch a planet again."
Telander's features writhed. "How do I tell our people?" he croaked.
"We have no hope," Reymont said. It was hardly a question.
"None," Fedoroff replied.
"Oh, we can live out our lives—reach a reasonable age, if not quite what antisenescence would normally permit," said Pereira. "The bio-systems and organocycle apparatus are intact. We could actually increase their productivity. Do not fear immediate hunger or thirst or suffocation. True, the closed ecology, the reclamations, are not 100 per cent efficient. They will suffer slow losses, slow degrading. A spaceship is not a world. Man is not quite the clever designer and large-scale builder that God is." His smile was ghastly. "I do not advise that we have children. They would be trying to breathe things like acetone, while getting along without things like phosphorus and smothering in things like earwax and belly-button lint. But I imagine we can get fifty years out of our gadgets. Under the circumstances, that seems ample to me."
Lindgren said from nightmare, staring at a bulkhead as if she could see through: "When the last of us dies— We must put in an automatic cutoff. The ship must not keep on after our deaths. Let the radiation do what it will, let cosmic friction break her to bits and let the bits drift off yonder."
"Why?" asked Reymont.
"Isn't it obvious? If we throw ourselves into a circular path . . . consuming hydrogen, always traveling faster, running tau down and down as the thousands of years pass ... we get more massive. We could end by devouring the galaxy."
"No, not that," said Telander. He retreated into pedantry. "I have seen calculations. Somebody did worry once about a Bussard craft getting out of control. But as Mr. Pereira remarked, any human work is insignificant out here. Tau would have to become something like, shall we say, ten to the minus twentieth power before the ship's mass was equal to that of a minor star. And the odds are always literally astronomical against her colliding with anything more important than a
Fedoroff looked at the deck. His words ran on, more soliloquy than report. A desperate man will rehearse obvious facts over and over. "In the nature of the case, the decelerators must have been subjected to greater stress than the accelerators. I would guess that those forces, reacting through the hydromagnetic fields, broke the material assembly in that part of the Bussard module.
"No doubt we could make repairs if we could go outside. But we'd have to come too near the fireball of the accelerator power core in its
own magnetic bottle. The radiation would kill us before we could do any useful work. The same is true for any remote-control robot we might build. You know what radiation at that level does to transistors, for instance. Not to mention inductive effects of the force fields.
"And, of course, we can't shut off the accelerators. That would mean shutting off the whole set of fields, including the screens, which only an outside power core can maintain. At our speed, hydrogen bombardment would release enough gamma rays and ions to fry everybody aboard within a minute."
He fell silent, less like a man ending a lecture than a machine running down.
"Have we no directional control whatsoever?" Reymont asked, still toneless.
"Yes, yes, we do have that," Boudreau said. "The accelerator pattern can be varied. We can damp down any of the four Venturis and boost up any others—get a sidewise as well as a forward vector. But don't you see, no matter what path we take, we must continue accelerating or we die."
"Accelerating forever," Telander said.
"At least," Lindgren whispered, "we can stay in the galaxy. Swing around and around its heart." Her gaze went to the periscope, and they knew what she thought of: behind that curtain of strange blue stars, blackness, intergalactic void, an ultimate exile. "At least . . . we can grow old . . . with suns around us. Even if we can't ever touch a planet again."
Telander's features writhed. "How do I tell our people?" he croaked.
"We have no hope," Reymont said. It was hardly a question.
"None," Fedoroff replied.
"Oh, we can live out our lives—reach a reasonable age, if not quite what antisenescence would normally permit," said Pereira. "The bio-systems and organocycle apparatus are intact. We could actually increase their productivity. Do not fear immediate hunger or thirst or suffocation. True, the closed ecology, the reclamations, are not 100 per cent efficient. They will suffer slow losses, slow degrading. A spaceship is not a world. Man is not quite the clever designer and large-scale builder that God is." His smile was ghastly. "I do not advise that we have children. They would be trying to breathe things like acetone, while getting along without things like phosphorus and smothering in things like earwax and belly-button lint. But I imagine we can get fifty years out of our gadgets. Under the circumstances, that seems ample to me."
Lindgren said from nightmare, staring at a bulkhead as if she could see through: "When the last of us dies— We must put in an automatic cutoff. The ship must not keep on after our deaths. Let the radiation do what it will, let cosmic friction break her to bits and let the bits drift off yonder."
"Why?" asked Reymont.
"Isn't it obvious? If we throw ourselves into a circular path . . . consuming hydrogen, always traveling faster, running tau down and down as the thousands of years pass ... we get more massive. We could end by devouring the galaxy."
"No, not that," said Telander. He retreated into pedantry. "I have seen calculations. Somebody did worry once about a Bussard craft getting out of control. But as Mr. Pereira remarked, any human work is insignificant out here. Tau would have to become something like, shall we say, ten to the minus twentieth power before the ship's mass was equal to that of a minor star. And the odds are always literally astronomical against her colliding with anything more important than a
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