But the men he would actually be on shipboard with hadn’t liked the arrangement much, especially the provision that Keth was to have the run of the ship insofar as he didn’t interfere with operations. And like many other people who dealt with him in person, they might not have cared much for Keth. He was undersized and thin, still on the young side but already—since he lived well—sporting a small, round paunch. A point which seemed to irk the Navy scientists in particular was that he hadn’t bothered to take notes on the information they had given him for the telecast. Keth never did take notes, of course; he had nearly perfect recall. But they didn’t know that.
There was a brief, sharp tingling in the palm of his right hand—a signal from Furnay, his technician, that the telecast, which would be transmitted to normspace by special Navy communicators, was beginning; and Keth automatically began to talk . . .
As usual, he didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. It wasn’t necessary. The relevant material was stored in his mind, already arranged into a number of variant patterns. Depending on the circumstances, it would emerge in one sequence or another, always coherently, smoothly, effectively. He discovered he had started now with the statement that this was another milestone in newscasting history—the first direct report from pseudospace or Space Three. They were shifting at the moment into the field of an entirely new class of energies, a region where space appeared to exist only as a useful symbol, or as an illusionary medium in the recording instruments. The discovery of pseudospace five years ago had been a triumph of human ingenuity; its existence had been established by the calculations of Navy mathematicians, and the means of contacting it derived from those same calculations. Since then two new mathematical systems already had been developed to provide even a theoretical understanding of the problems encountered in the further exploration of this weird new stratum of the Universe.
He turned briefly to technicalities. They would remain in pseudospace for the period of one hour less a few minutes, in a Navy ship especially designed and constructed to permit even temporary existence there. Aside from the standard drives, it was equipped with an engine which made the shift possible. This engine would be shut off as soon as the shift was accomplished, would be turned on again ten minutes before the scheduled return because it took five minutes to build up the required power for the shift. One hour was at present the maximum period a ship could remain safely in Space Three.
The shift engine would be shut off for the curious reason that although motion in Space Three was impossible, motion relative to normal space and subspace while in Space Three was not only possible but greatly augmented. What produced it was any use of energy by the intruding vessel. The result was that a pseudospace ship always emerged into normspace again at a point removed from its point of entry—and at a distance far greater than it could otherwise have covered by the full use of standard drive engines in the same period of time. The potential value of this phenomenon for space travel was obvious; but at present there was no fixed ratio between the energy expended by a ship and the distance it moved, and the direction in which it would move was equally unpredictable. Many of the multiple studies programmed for today’s one-hour shift were designed to yield additional information on precisely those points.
Their shift had been initiated in the vicinity of Orado. They would release an exceptional amount of energy because of a demonstration graciously prepared by the Navy to illustrate certain interesting qualities of pseudospace to Adacee’s billions of viewers. So all they knew definitely was that when they emerged again, they would find themselves somewhere within the space boundaries of the Federation. The exact location would be determined after they had arrived.
Keth Deboll came to that point at the instant the Marsar Shift ended and the ship lights reappeared. He hadn’t consciously planned it that way; but he’d been told how long the shift would take, and the material stored in his mind had re-sorted itself so that he’d have the preliminary explanations cleared up when the moment came.
He went on without a break into the next part. In a moment the vision screens would go on. He and Furnay had been provided with a smaller duplicate of the main screen at the far end of the personnel section; and Adacee’s viewers would get the first live look afforded the general public of the instruments’ rendition of a nonspatial energy field. They would be seeing something no eyes had seen, or could have seen, before Man’s supreme intelligence, determination and courage found a way to begin to map Space Three—perhaps eventually to make use of it.
The illusionary medium of Space Three appeared abruptly. Keth’s stomach seemed to turn over twice. He had the feeling that he was being pulled painlessly but inexorably apart. His mouth went on talking but he hadn’t the faintest idea now of what he said. The medium was a bright pink and white, gave the impression of vast but unstable depth. The colors shifted in slowly changing patterns. Something like a transparent vapor streamed by from right to left—Keth had the impression it was a considerable distance away—like clouds moving across a summer sky. Of course, “distance” had no actual meaning here.
And neither, his voice reminded the viewers, did the word “cold” retain its familiar meaning in Space Three. It was cold beyond any previous understanding of the term, not merely in the sense of an utter absence of heat, but cold on the ascending scale, so to speak—cold above cold above cold.
This was the great hazard of Space Three, the factor which would have made it impenetrable, if its existence had been known, to life before Man. For the reason Man could penetrate it was the great discovery of the Marsar Field . . .
This whole universe-of-the-moment, Keth decided, was being twisted slowly in two directions at once! Not only Space Three in the screen, but the pseudospace ship itself, and he and Furnay in the seat beside him. He couldn’t actually see anything to tell him why he knew that, but he knew it, and it was an extraordinarily unpleasant thing to know. He heard Furnay swallowing noisily—no harm done, the filters would catch it—and began to wish he had eaten a less healthy breakfast an hour ago . . .
The Marsar Energy Field, his voice was continuing smoothly, coated the outer boxlike hull of the pseudospace ship. The personnel section in the center of the ship, where they now were, was another box, separated from the other compartments of the ship by gravity pressors. In other words, the personnel section was suspended, floating free within the ship; and it also was coated with the Field.
This was a very necessary precaution because the Marsar Field was the only thing which stood now between them and the ultimate cold of Space Three—and it would be demonstrated immediately what that ultracold did to objects from normal space which lacked the Field’s protection . . .
Keth had come to his feet, still speaking, and was moving along an open aisle toward an adjoining part of the personnel section. He wasn’t concerned about getting beyond the range of the instruments; it was Furnay’s department to cover him wherever he was in the ship, and Furnay would do it. He stopped at another screen where two Navy technicians were sitting. The expectancy in their faces as he approached had told him they were hoping for signs that Space Three was churning the unwelcome guest’s brain along with assorted other innards; so he flashed them the famous Keth Deboll grin without interrupting his easy flow of talk. They swung back disappointedly to their switches and buttons.
“And these are the two gentlemen selected to carry out the demonstration . . . ” Keth gave their full names, which shook them a little, went on explaining each move they made as they made it, never at a loss, never hesitant, enjoying his control of the situation and of the continuing awful feeling of internal and external distortion . . .
The pseudospace ship had brought another vessel into Space Three with it—a chunky, old-fashioned siege boat, of no greater length than a destroyer but covered with armor of the densest, toughest workable material known, designed to move in against the fire of heavy planet-based guns and remain operational. Unmanned because it was to be sacrificed now for the benefit of Adacee’s viewers, it hung in the screen, gradually increasing in size. The two ships were in motion relative both to normal space and to each other, Keth explained—the siege boat only because its Marsar Field and the shift engine with which it had been equipped were giving off energy while the pseudospace ship was additionally using its standard drives to maneuver closer to the intended victim . . . but not too close because any contact with another solid object would collapse its Marsar Field—