Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [73]
Pelorat said, "No thank you. The computer doesn't work well with me, somehow. I know you say I just need practice, but I don't believe that. There's something about your mind, Golan--"
"Don't be foolish."
"No no. That computer just seems to fit you. You and it seem to be a single organism when you're hooked up. When I'm hooked up, there are two objects involved--Janov Pelorat and a computer. It's just not the same."
"Ridiculous," said Trevize, but he was vaguely pleased at the thought and stroked the hand-rests of the computer with loving fingertips.
"So I'd rather watch," said Pelorat. "I mean, I'd rather it didn't happen at all, but as long as it will, I'd rather watch." He fixed his eyes anxiously on the viewscreen and on the foggy Galaxy with the thin powdering of dim stars in the foreground. "Let me know when it's about to happen." Slowly he backed against the wall and braced himself.
Trevize smiled. He placed his hands on the rests and felt the mental union. It came more easily day by day, and more intimately, too, and however he might scoff at what Pelorat said--he actually felt it. It seemed to him he scarcely needed to think of the co-ordinates in any conscious way. It almost seemed the computer knew what he wanted, without the conscious process of "telling." It lifted the information out of his brain for itself.
But Trevize "told" it and then asked for a two-minute interval before the Jump.
"All right, Janov. We have two minutes: 120--115--110--Just watch the viewscreen."
Pelorat did, with a slight tightness about the corners of his mouth and with a holding of his breath.
Trevize said softly, "15--10--5--4--3--2--1--0."
With no perceptible motion, no perceptible sensation, the view on the screen changed. There was a distinct thickening of the starfield and the Galaxy vanished.
Pelorat started and said, "Was that it?"
"Was what it? You flinched. But that was your fault. You felt nothing. Admit it."
"I admit it."
"Then that's it. Way back when hyperspatial travel was relatively new--according to the books, anyway--there would be a queer internal sensation and some people felt dizziness or nausea. It was perhaps psychogenic, perhaps not. In any case, with more and more experience with hyperspatiality and with better equipment, that decreased. With a computer like the one on board this vessel, any effect is well below the threshold of sensation. At least, I find it so."
"And I do, too, I must admit. Where are we, Golan?"
"Just a step forward. In the Kalganian region. There's a long way to go yet and before we make another move, we'll have to check the accuracy of the Jump."
"What bothers me is--where's the Galaxy?"
"All around us, Janov. We're well inside it, now. If we focus the viewscreen properly, we can see the more distant parts of it as a luminous band across the sky."
"The Milky Way!" Pelorat cried out joyfully. "Almost every world describes it in their sky, but it's something we don't see on Terminus. Show it to me, old fellow!"
The viewscreen tilted, giving the effect of a swimming of the starfield across it, and then there was a thick, pearly luminosity nearly filling the field. The screen followed it around, as it thinned, then swelled again.
Trevize said, "It's thicker in the direction of the center of the Galaxy. Not as thick or as bright as it might be, however, because of the dark clouds in the sprial arms. You see something like this from most inhabited worlds."
"And from Earth, too."
"That's no distinction. That would not be an identifying characteristic."
"Of course not. But you know--You haven't studied the history of science, have you?"
"Not really, though I've picked up some of it, naturally. Still, if you have questions to ask, don't expect me to be an expert."
"It's just that making this Jump has put me in mind of something that has always puzzled me. It's possible to work out a description of the Universe in which hyperspatial travel is impossible and in which the speed