Adventures in the Far Future by Donald A. Wollheim (ed)

Author:Donald A. Wollheim (ed) [Wollheim, Donald A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2015-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

II

HE OPENED the door of his cabin and went out. His door opened on the main lounge. It was full of the Delilah’s passengers. He’d never seen so many of them at once before. There were some children. They were playing. There was a woman with a painted, empty face. She smiled fixedly, but her eyes were filled with horror.

Brent looked at the girl he’d thought of first. He moved toward her. A man clutched his arm and babbled:

“Look here! They say—they say the ship’s in touch with home. Do you think that’s so?”

Brent nodded.

“Oh, surely!” he said untruthfully. “They have a new faster-than-light communication system. All ships have it now. We’ll be all right.”

The man gasped in relief.

“You’re sure? Positive?” Then he began to laugh foolishly. “Then it’s all right! It’s all right!”

Brent moved on. It would be wonderful if it were true, he thought sourly to himself. Now was no time to refuse a comforting lie to someone who needed it.

Jim frowned to himself. There was something in the back of his mind that was trying to come out. But his head wasn’t working just right.

Nobody’s mind is clear when filled with the numbing knowledge that he is absolutely helpless against absolutely certain doom. Of course the Delilah wasn’t in communication with anybody or anything. Radiation is propagated at the speed of light, only. If a message beam could be held tight enough, and if enough power could be put into it, and if it were aimed straight enough—why—a liner like the Delilah could send a message back to Khem IV, from which it had departed two weeks before. But the message would take two years to get back. More, it wasn’t likely to hit. The sun Khem had a proper motion, which might be anything from fifteen to three hundred miles a second in any direction. The light from it showed it where it had been two years before. A beam would have to be aimed where it would be two years hence. And even then the beam would hardly hit Khem IV in its orbit. No. The Delilah could never get a message back to its base. That was out of the question.

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