Now they depended utterly for survival on the skills of those who
had designed and built the ship. The green hills and blue skies of
Earth were no longer factors of survival and seemed to shed some of
their tangible attributes, almost like the aftermath of a dream
that had seemed real. Hunt came to think of reality as a relative
quantity-not something absolute that can be left for a while and
then returned to. The ship became the only reality; it was the
things left behind that ceased, temporarily, to exist.
He spent hours in the viewing domes along the outer hull, slowly
coming to terms with the new dimension being added to his
existence, gazing out at the only thing left that was familiar: the
Sun. He found reassurance in the eternal presence of the Sun, with
its limitless flood of life-giving warmth and light. Hunt thought
of the first sailors, who had never ventured out of sight of land;
they too had needed something familiar to cling to. But before
long, men would turn their prow toward the open gulf and plunge
into the voids between the galaxies. There would be no Sun to
reassure them then, and there would be no stars at all; the
galaxies themselves would be just faint spots, scattered all the
way to infinity.
What strange new continents were waiting on the other side of those
gulfs?
Danchekker was spending one of his relaxation periods in a
zero-gravity section of the ship, watching a game of 3-D football
being played between two teams of off-duty crew members. The game
was based on American-style football and took place inside an
enormous sphere of transparent, rubbery plastic. Players hurtled
up, down, and in all directions, rebounding off the wall and off
each other in a glorious roughhouse directed-vaguely-at getting the
ball through two circular goals on opposite sides of the sphere. In
reality, the whole thing was just an excuse to let off steam and
flex muscles beginning to go soft during the long, monotonous
voyage.
A steward tapped the scientist on the shoulder and informed him
that a call was waiting in the videobooth outside the recreation
deck. Danchekker nodded, unclipped the safety loop of his belt from
the anchor pin attached to the seat, clipped it around the
handrail, and with a single effortless pull, sent himself floating
gracefully toward the door. Hunt’s face greeted him, speaking from
a quarter of a mile away.
“Dr. Hunt,” he acknowledged. “Good morning-or whatever it happens
to be at the present time in this infernal contraption.”
“Hello, Professor,” Hunt replied. “I’ve been having some thoughts
about the Ganymeans. There are one or two points I could use your
opinion on; could we meet somewhere for a bite to eat, say inside
the next half hour or so?”
“Very well. Where did you have in mind?”
“Well, I’m on my way to the restaurant in B section right now. I’ll
be there for a while.”
“I’ll join you there in a few minutes.” Danchekker cut off the
screen, emerged from the booth, and hauled himself back into the
corridor and along it to an entrance to one of the transverse
shafts leading “down” toward the axis of the ship. Using the
handrails, he sailed some distance toward the center before
checking himself opposite an exit from the shaft. He emerged
through a transfer lock into one of the rotating sections, with
simulated G, at a point near the axis where the speed differential
was low. He launched
himself back along another rail and felt himself accelerate gently,
to land thirty feet away, on his feet, on a part of the structure
that had suddenly become the floor. Walking normally, he followed
some signs to the nearest tube access point, pressed the call
button, and waited about twenty seconds for a capsule to arrive.
Once inside, he keyed in his destination and within seconds was
being whisked smoothly through the tube toward E section of the
ship.
The permanently open self-service restaurant was about half full.
The usual clatter of cutlery and dishes poured from the kitchens
behind the counter at one end, where a trio of UNSA cooks were