Foundation’s Edge CHAPTER NINE HYPERSPACE

HYPERSPACETrevize tell, Are you expressy, Janov?Pelorat looked up from the book he was viewing and express, You mean, for the jump, old fellow?For the hyperspatial jump. Yes.Pelorat sw all(a) in allowed. immediately, youre authoritative that it will be in no way uncomfortable. I hump it is a silly thing to fear, nonwithstanding the legal opinion of having myself reduced to incorporeal tachyons, which no unrivalled has ever seen or detectedCome, Janov, its a perfected thing. Upon my honor The jump has been in use for twenty-two thousand years, as you explained, and Ive neer byssus of a one fatality in hyper blank shell. We efficiency come issue of hyper lacuna in an uncomfortable place, that indeed the accident would happen in infinite not while we be composed of tachyons.Small consolation, it seems to me.We wont come out in error, either. To tell you the truth, I was envisageing of carrying it through and through without telling you, so that you would never know it had happened. On the whole, though, I matt-up it would be intermit if you experienced it consciously, saw that it was no problem of each kind, and could forget it totally henceforward.Well give tongue to Pelorat dubiously. I suppose youre right, buthonestly Im in no hurry.I assure youNo no, old fellow, I accept your assurances unequivocally. Its however that Did you ever read Sanertestil Matt?Of course. Im not illiterate.Certainly. Certainly. I should not project ingested. Do you remember it?Neither am I an amnesiac.I seem to have a endowment fund for dour closing. on the whole I mean is that I keep thinking of the scenes where Santerestil and his friend, Ban, have gotten away from Planet 17 and are lost in space. I think of those perfectly hypnotic scenes among the stars, lazily moving along in deep silence, in changelessness, in Never believed it, you know. I loved it and I was moved by it, but I never in reality believed it. But now after I got used to however th e notion of being in space, Im experiencing it and its silly, I know but I dont want to give it up. Its as though Im SanterestilAnd Im Ban, state Trevize with just an edge of impatience.In a way. The pure scattering of dim stars out there are motionless, except our sun, of course, which mustiness be shrinking but which we dont see. The Galaxy retains its dim majesty, unchanging. Space is silent and I have no distractions bar me.Except you. But then, Golan, dear chap, talking to you round Earth and trying to teach you a bit of prehistory has its pleasures, too. I dont want that to come to an end, either.It wont. non immediately, at any rate. You dont suppose well take the jump and come through on the surface of a planet, do you? Well still be in space and the jump will have taken no measurable while at ail. It may well be a week to begin with we entrap one across surface of any kind, so do relax.By surface, you surely dont mean Gaia. We may be nowhere near Gaia when we co me out of the jump.I know that, Janov, but well be in the right sector, if your information is correct. If it isnt wellPelorat shook his head glumly. How will being in the right sector alleviate if we dont know Gaias co-ordinates?Trevize said, Janov, suppose you were on Terminus, heading for the town of Argyropol, and you didnt know where that town was except that it was somewhere on the isthmus. Once you were on the isthmus, what would you do?Pelorat waited cautiously, as though feeling there must be a terribly sophisticated answer forebodeed of him. Finally giving up, he said, I suppose Id ask somebody.Exactly What else is there to do? Now, are you ready?You mean, now? Pelorat scrambled to his feet, his pleasantly unemotional face coming as near as it might to a look of c erstrn. What am I supposed to do? Sit? Stand? What?Time and Space, Pelorat, you dont do anything. Just come with me to my room so I ass use the estimator, then sit or stand or turn cartwheels whatever will make you just about comfortable. My suggestion is that you sit before the view cover charge and watch it. Its sure to be interesting. ComeThey stepped along the short corridor to Trevizes room and he seated himself at the ready reckoner. Would you like to do this, Janov? he asked suddenly. Ill give you the figures and all you do is think them. The computer will do the rest.Pelorat said, No thank you. The computer doesnt work well with me, somehow. I know you say I just need practice, but I dont believe that. Theres something about your mind, GolanDont be foolish.No no. That computer just seems to fit you. You and it seem to be a single organism when youre hooked up. When Im hooked up, there are two objects involved Janov Pelorat and a computer. Its just not the same.Ridiculous, said Trevize, but he was vaguely delight at the thought and stroked the hand-rests of the computer with loving fingertips.So Id rather watch, said Pelorat. I mean, Id rather it didnt happen at all, but a s long as it will, Id rather watch. He fixed . his eyes anxiously on the view covering and on the foggy Galaxy with the thin powdering of dim stars in the foreground. Let me know when its about to happen. Slowly he backed against the wall and braced himself.Trevize smiled. He placed his hands on the rests and felt the mental union. It came more easily day by day, and more intimately, too, and however he might scoff at what Pelorat said he actually felt it. It seemed to him he scarcely needed to think of the co-ordinates in any conscious way. It almost seemed the computer knew what he wanted, without the conscious process of telling. It lifted the information out of his brain for itself.But Trevize told it and then asked for a two-minute separation before the jump.All right, Janov. We have two minutes 120 115 110 Just watch the viewscreen.Pelorat did, with a slight tightness about the corners of his brim and with a holding of his breath.Trevize said softly, 15 10 5 4 3 2 1 0With no indubitable motion, no perceptible sensation, the view on the screen changed. There was a distinct thickening of the starfield and the Galaxy vanished.Pelorat started and said, Was that it?Was what it? You flinched. But that was your fault. You felt nothing. Admit it.I harmonize it.Then thats it. vogue back when hyperspatial travel was relatively new according to the books, anyway there would be a queer internal sensation and some people felt dizziness or nausea. It was perhaps psychogenic, perhaps not. In any case, with more and more experience with hyperspatiality and with better equipment, that decreased. With a computer like the one on board this vessel, any effect is well below the threshold of sensation. At least, I find it so.And I do, too, I must admit. Where are we, Golan?Just a step forward. In the Kalganian region. Theres a long way to go yet and before we make another move, well have to take aim the accuracy of the jump.What bothers me is wheres the G alaxy?All around us, Janov. Were weal in locating it, now. If we focus the viewscreen properly, we can see the more distant parts of it as a luminous band across the sky.The opaque Way Pelorat cried out joyfully. Almost every world describes it in their sky, but its something we dont see on Terminus. Show it to me, old fellowThe viewscreen tilted, giving the effect of a swimming of the starfield across it, and then there was a thick, pearly luminosity nearly filling the field. The screen followed it around, as it thinned, then swelled again.Trevize said, Its thicker in the counselling of the center of the Galaxy. Not as thick or as bright as it might be, however, because of the dark clouds in the spiral arms. You see something like this from most inhabited worlds.And from Earth, too.Thats no distinction. That would not be an identifying characteristic.Of course not. But you know. You havent studied the history of science, have you?Not really, though Ive picked up some of it, natu rally. Still, if you have questions to ask, dont expect me to be an expert.Its just that making this jump has put me in mind of something that has always puzzled me. Its attainable to work out a description of the innovation in which hyperspatial travel is impossible and in which the run of light traveling through a vacuum is the absolute maximum where speed is concerned.Certainly.Under those conditions, the geometry of the universe is such that it is impossible to make the trip we have just undertaken in less time than a ray of light would make it. And if we did it at the speed of light, our experience of duration would not match that of the Universe generally. If this spot is, say, forty parsecs from Terminus, then if we had gotten here at the speed of light, we would have felt no time lapse but on Terminus and in the entire Galaxy, about a hundred and thirty years would have passed. Now we have make a trip, not at the speed of light but at thousands of times the speed of lig ht actually, and there has been no time advance anywhere. At least, I hope not.Trevize said, Dont expect me to give you the mathematics of the Olanjen Hyperspatial Theory to you. All I can say is that if you had traveled at the speed of light deep down normal space, time would indeed have advanced at the rate of 3.26 years per parsec, as you described. The so-called relativistic Universe, which humanity has understood as uttermost back as we can probe inter prehistory though thats your department, I think remains, and its laws have not been repealed. In our hyperspatial jumps, however, we do something out side the conditions under which relativity operates and the rules are different. Hyperspatially the Galaxy is a tiny object ideally a nondimensional dot and there are no relativistic cause at all.In fact, in the mathematical formulations of cosmology, there are two symbols for the Galaxy Gr for the relativistic Galaxy, where the speed of light is a maximum, and Gh for the hy perspatial Galaxy, where speed does not really have a nub. Hyperspatially the value of all speed is zero and we do not move with reference to space itself, speed is infinite. I cant explain things a bit more than that.Oh, except that one of the beautiful catches in theoretical physics is to place a symbol or a value that has meaning in Gr into an equation dealing with G11 or vice versa and leave it there for a student to deal with. The mishaps are enormous that the student falls into the bunker and generally remains there, sweating and panting, with nothing seeming to work, till some kindly elder helps him out. I was neatly caught that way, once.Pelorat considered that gravely for a while, then said in a perplexed sort of way, But which is the true Galaxy?Either, depending on what youre doing. If youre back on Terminus, you can use a car to carry on distance on pop and a ship to cover distance across the sea. Conditions are different in every way, so which is the true Terminu s, the land or the sea?Pelorat nodded. Analogies are always risky, he said, but Id rather accept that one than risk my sanity by thinking about hyperspace any further. Ill concentrate on what were doing now.Look upon what we just did, said Trevize, as our first stop toward Earth.And, he thought to himself, toward what else, I wonder.Well, said Trevize. Ive wasted a day.Oh? Pelorat looked up from his careful indexing. In what way?Trevize spread his arms. I didnt trust the computer. I didnt dare to, so I checked our present position with the position we had aimed at in the jump. The difference was not measurable. There was no detectable error.Thats good, isnt it?Its more than good. Its unbelievable. Ive never heard of such a thing. Ive gone through jumps and Ive directed them, in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of devices. In school, I had to work one out with a hand computer and then I sent off a hyper-relay to check results. Naturally I couldnt send a real ship, since aside fr om the expense I could easily have placed it in the affectionateness of a star at the other end.I never did anything that bad, of course, Trevize went on, but there would always be a sizable error. Theres always some error, purge out with experts. Theres got to be, since there are so many variables. Put it this way the geometry of space is too complicated to handle and hyperspace compounds all those complications with a complexity of its own that we cant even pretend to understand. Thats why we have to go by steps, instead of making one big jump from here to Sayshell. The errors would grow worse with distance.Pelorat said, But you said this computer didnt make an error.It said it didnt make an error. I directed it to check our actual position with our precalculated position what is against what was asked for. It said that the two were identical at bottom its limits of measure and I thought What if its lying?Until that moment, Pelorat had held his printer in his hand. He now p ut it down and looked shaken. Are you joking? A computer cant lie. Unless you mean you thought it might be out of order.No, thats not what I thought. Space I thought it was lying. This computer is so advanced I cant think of it as anything but human superhuman, maybe. Human enough to have pride and to lie, perhaps. I gave it directions to work out a course through hyperspace to a position near Sayshell Planet, the great(p) of the Sayshell Union. It did, and charted a course in twenty-nine steps, which is arrogance of the worst sort.Why arrogance?The error in the first jump makes the second jump that oftentimes less certain, and the added error then makes the third jump pretty wobbly and untrustworthy, and so on. How do you calculate twenty-nine steps all at once? The twenty-ninth could end up anywhere in the Galaxy, anywhere at all. So I directed it to make the first step only. Then we could check that before proceeding.The cautious approach, said Pelorat warmly. I approveYes, but having do the first step, might the computer not feel wounded at my having mistrusted it? Would it then be forced to salve its pride by telling me there was no error at all when I asked it? Would it find it impossible to admit a mistake, to own up to imperfection? If that were so, we might as well not have a computer.Pelorats long and gentle face saddened. What can we do in that case, Golan?We can do what I did waste a day. I checked the position of several of the surrounding stars by the most primitive possible methods telescopic observation, photography, and manual measurement. I compared each actual position with the position expected if there had been no error. The work of it took me all day and wore me down to nothing.Yes, but what happened?I found two whopping errors and checked them over and found them in my calculations. I had made the mistakes myself. I corrected the calculations, then ran them through the computer from scratch just to see if it would come up with th e same answers independently. Except that it worked them out to several more decimal places, it turned out that my figures were right and they showed that the computer had made no errors. The computer may be an arrogant son-of-the-Mule, but its got something to be arrogant about.Pelorat exhaled a long breath. Well, thats good.Yes indeed So Im going to let it take the other twenty-eight steps.All at once? ButNot all at once. Dont worry. I havent become a daredevil just yet. It will do them one after the other but after each step it will check the surroundings and, if that is where it is supposed to be within tolerable limits, it can take the next one. Any time it finds the error too great and, believe me, I didnt set the limits generously at all it will have to stop and recalculate the remaining steps.When are you going to do this?When? Right now. Look, youre working on indexing your LibraryOh, but this is the chance to do it, Golan. Ive been meaning to do it for years, but somet hing always seemed to get in the way.I have no objections. You go on and do it and dont worry. Concentrate on the indexing. Ill take care of everything else.Pelorat shook his head. Dont be foolish. I cant relax till this is over. Im scared stiff.I shouldnt have told you, then but I had to tell somebody and youre the only one here. Let me explain frankly. Theres always the chance that well come to rest in a perfect position in interstellar space and that that will happen to be the precise position which a speeding meteoroid is occupying, or a mini-black hole, and the ship is wrecked, and were dead. Such things could in theory happen.The chances are very small, however. After all, you could be at home, Janov in your study and working on your films or in your bed sleeping and a meteroid could be streaking toward you through Terminuss atmosphere and hit you right in the head and youd be dead. But the chances are small.In fact, the chance of intersecting the path of something fatal, but too small for the computer to know about, in the course of a hyperspatial jump is far, far smaller than that of berg hit by a meteor in your home. Ive never heard of a ship being lost that way in all the history of hyperspatial travel. Any other type of risk like ending in the middle of a star is even smaller.Pelorat said, Then why do you tell me all this, Golan?Trevize paused, then bent his head in thought, and ultimately said, I dont know. Yes, I do. What I suppose it is, is that however small the chance of catastrophe might be, if enough people take enough chances, the catastrophe must happen eventually. No matter how sure I am that nothing will go wrong, theres a small nagging voice inside me that says, by chance it will happen this time. And it makes me feel guilty. I guess thats it. Janov, if something goes wrong, exonerate meBut Golan, my dear chap, if something goes wrong, we will both be dead instantly. I will not be able to forgive, nor you to receive forgivene ss.I understand that, so forgive me now, will you?Pelorat smiled. I dont know why, but this cheers me up. Theres something pleasantly humorous about it. Of course, Golan, Ill forgive you. There are plenty of myths about some form of afterlife in world literature and if there should happen to be such a place about the same chance as landing on a mini-black hole, I suppose, or less and we both turn up in the same one, then I will bear witness that you did your honest best and that my death should not be laid at your door.Thank you Now Im relieved. Im willing to take my chance, but I did not enjoy the thought of you taking my chance as well.Pelorat wrung the others hand. You know, Golan, Ive only known you less than a week and I suppose I shouldnt make hasty judgments in these matters, but I think youre an excellent chap. And now lets do it and get it over with. abruptly All I have to do is touch that little contact. The computer has its instructions and its just waiting for me to s ay Starts Would you like toNever Its all yours? Its your computer. precise well. And its my responsibility. Im still trying to duck it, you see. Keep your eye on the screenWith a remarkably steady hand and with his smile looking utterly genuine, Trevize made contact.There was a momentary pause and then the starfield changed and again and again. The stars spread steadily thicker and brighter over the viewscreen.Pelorat was counting under his breath. At 15 there was a halt, as though some piece of apparatus had jammed.Pelorat whispered, clearly afraid that any noise might jar the mechanism fatally. Whats wrong? Whats happened?Trevize shrugged. I approximate its recalculating. Some object in space is adding a perceptible bump to the general shape of the overall gravitational field some object not taken into account some uncharted dwarf star or rogue planetDangerous?Since were still alive, its almost certainly not dangerous. A planet could be a hundred million kilometers away and s till introduce a large enough gravitational modification to require recalculation. A dwarf star could be ten billion kilometers away andThe screen shifted again and Trevize fell silent. It shifted again and again. Finally, when Pelorat said, a8, there was no further motion.Trevize consulted the computer. Were here, he said.I counted the first jump as r. and in this series I started with z Thats twenty-eight jumps altogether. You said twenty-nine.The recalculation at jump is probably saved us one jump. I can check with the computer if you wish, but theres really no need. Were in the vicinity of Sayshell Planet. The computer says so and I dont doubt it. If I were to orient the screen properly, wed see a nice, bright sun, but theres no point in placing a needless strain on its screening capacity. SaysheIl Planet is the fourth one out and its about 3.2 million kilometers away from our present position, which is about as close as we want to be at a jump conclusion. We can get there in three days two, if we hurry.Trevize drew a deep breath and tried to let the tension drain.Do you realize what this means, Janov? he said. Every ship Ive ever been in or heard of would have made those jumps with at least a day in between for careful calculation and re-checking, even with a computer. The trip would have taken nearly a month.Or perhaps two or three weeks, if they were willing to be reckless about it. We did it in half an hour. When every ship is equipped with a computer like this onePelorat said, I wonder why the Mayor let us have a ship this advanced. It must be incredibly expensive.Its experimental, said Trevize dryly. Maybe fine good woman was perfectly willing to have us try it out and see what deficiencies might develop.Are you serious?Dont get nervous. After all, theres nothing to worry about. We havent found any deficiencies. I wouldnt put it past her, though. Such a thing would put no great strain on her sense of humanity. Besides, she hasnt trusted us with offensive weapons and that cuts the expense considerably.Pelorat said thoughtfully, Its the computer Im thinking about. It seems to be adjusted so well for you and it cant be adjusted that well for everyone. It just barely works with me.So much the better for us, that it works so well with one of us.Yes, but is that merely chance?What else, Janov?Surely the Mayor knows you pretty well.I think she does, the old battlecraft.Might she not have had a computer designed particularly for you?I just wonder if were not going where the computer wants to take us.Trevize stared. You mean that while Im affiliated to the computer, it is the computer and not me who is in real charge?I just wonder.That is ridiculous. Paranoid. Come on, Janov.Trevize turned back to the computer to focus Sayshell Planet on the screen and to plot a normal-space course to it.RidiculousBut why had Pelorat put the notion into his head?