Captain Urqhardt watched it all, Old Stone Face in person.
At last Mr. Whipple put out his cigar and said, “Well, that’s that, Captain. Thompson will stay and take you in and Bjorkenson will go on in the Sarah. I’m afraid you will have to put up with me, too, for I am going back with you.”
Captain Urqhardt’s face was a gray-white. “Do I understand, sir, that you are relieving me of my command?”
“What? Good heavens, Captain, what makes you say that?”
“You seem to have taken charge of my ship…on behalf of the home office. And now you tell me that this man…er, Thompson-will take us in.”
“Gracious, no. I’m sorry. I’m not used to the niceties of field work; I’ve been in the home office too long. But just think of Thompson as a … mmm, a sailing master for you. That’s it; he’ll be your pilot. But no one is displacing you; you’ll remain in command until you can return home and turn over your ship. Then she’ll be scrapped, of course.”
Mr. Regato said in a queer, high voice, “Did you say “scrapped,” Mr. Whipple?” I felt my stomach give a twist. Scrap the Elsie? No!
“Eh? I spoke hastily. Nothing has been decided Possibly she will be kept as a museum. In fact, that is a good idea.” He took out a notebook and wrote in it. He put it away and said, “And now, Captain, if you will, I’d like to speak to all your people. There isn’t much time.”
Captain Urqhardt silently led him back to the mess deck.
When we were assembled, Mr. Whipple smiled and said, “I’m not much at speechmaking. I simply want to thank you all, on behalf of the Foundation, and explain what we are doing. I won’t go into detail, as I am not a scientist; I am an administrator, busy with the liquidation of Project Lebensraum, of which you are part. Such salvage and rescue operations as this are necessary; nevertheless, the Foundation is anxious to free the Serendipity, and her sister ships, the Irrelevant, the Infinity, and Zero, for their proper work, that is to say, their survey of stars in the surrounding space.”
Somebody gasped. “But that’s what we were doing!”
“Yes, yes, of course. But times change. One of the null-field ships can visit more stars in a year than a torchship can visit in a century. You’ll be happy to know that the Zero working alone has located seven Earth-type planets this past month.”
It didn’t make me happy.
Uncle Alfred McNeil leaned forward and said in a soft, tragic voice that spoke for all of us, “Just a moment, sir. Are you telling us that what we did … wasn’t necessary?”
Mr. Whipple looked startled. “No, no, no! I’m terribly sorry if I gave that impression. What you did was utterly necessary, or there would not be any null ships today. Why, that’s like saying that what Columbus did wasn’t necessary, simply because we jump across oceans as if they were mud puddles nowadays.”
“Thank you, sir, “ Unc said quietly.
“Perhaps no one has told you just how indispensably necessary Project Lebensraum has been. Very possibly-things have been in a turmoil around the Foundation for some time-I know I’ve had so little sleep myself that I don’t know what I’ve done and left undone. But you realize, don’t you, that without the telepaths among you, all this progress would not have taken place?” Whipple looked around. “Who are they? I’d like to shake hands with them. In any case-I’m not a scientist, mind you; I’m a lawyer-in any case, if we had not had it proved beyond doubt that telepathy is truly instantaneous, proof measured over many light-years, our scientists might still be looking for errors in the sixth decimal place and maintaining that telepathic signals do not propagate instantaneously but simply at a speed so great that its exact order was concealed by instrumental error. So I understand, so I am told. So you see, your great work has produced wondrous results, much greater than expected, even if they are not quite the results you were looking for.”