And if there waswhat, conceivably, could it be?
There was no answer. At his elbow, on the control chassis which he had thrust aside during that first moment of infinitely protracted panic, the calendar continued to tick.
The engine noise was gone. His breath came and went in natural rhythm. He felt light and strong. The ship was quiet, calm, unchanging.
The calendar ticked, faster and faster. It reached and passed the first hour, ship-time, of flight in overdrive.
Pock.
Garrard looked up in surprise. The familiar noise, this time, had been the hour-hand jumping one unit. The minute-hand was already sweeping past the past half-hour. The second-hand was whirling like a propellerand while he watched it, it speeded up to complete invisibility Pock.
Another hour. The half-hour already passed. Pock. Another hour. Pock. Another. Pock. Pock. Pock, Pock, Pock, Pock, pck-pck-pck-pck-pckpckpckpck… .
The hands of the calendar swirled toward invisibility as time ran away with Garrard. Yet the ship did not change.
It stayed there, rigid, inviolate, invulnerable. When the date tumblers reached a speed at which Garrard could no longer read them, he discovered that once more he could not move and that, although his whole body seemed to be aflutter like that of a hummingbird, nothing coherent was coming to him through his senses. The room was dimming, becoming redder; or no, it was …
But he never saw the end of the process, never was allowed to ‘ look from the pinnacle of macro-time toward which the Haertel overdrive was taking him.