But since ship and pilot were part of the same system, both covered by the same expression in Haertel’s equation, it had never occurred to anyone that the pilot and the ship might keep different times. The notion was ridiculous.
One-and-a-sevenhundredone, one-and-a-sevenhundredtwo, one – and – a – sevenhundredthree, one – and – a – sevenhundred four …
The ship was keeping ship-time, which was identical with observer-time. It would arrive at the Alpha Centauri system in ten months. But the pilot was keeping Garrard-time, and it was beginning to look as though he wasn’t going to arrive at all.
It was impossible, but there it was. Somethingalmost certainly an unsuspected physiological side effect of the overdrive field on human metabolism, an effect which naturally could not have been detected in the preliminary, robot-piloted tests of the overdrivehad speeded up Garrard’s subjective apprehension of time, and had done a thorough job of it.
The second hand began a slow, preliminary quivering as the calendar’s innards began to apply power to it. Seventy-hundred-forty-one, seventy-hundred-forty-two, seventy-hundred-forty-three …
At the count of 7,058 the second hand began the jump to the next graduation. It took it several apparent minutes to get across the tiny distance, and several more to come completely to rest. Later still, the sound came to him: pock.
In a fever of thought, but without any real physical agita-tion, his mind began to manipulate the figures. Since it took him longer to count an individual number as the number became larger, the interval between the two calendar ticks probably was closer to 7,200 seconds than to 7,058. Figuring backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he wanted: