my word for it. It doesn't use either space or hyperspace in a steady way, but skids along at the interface, wobbling to one side or another for short periods, and moving from space to hyperspace and then from hyperspace back to space several times a minute, perhaps. The passage from one to the other may therefore have taken place a million times or more in the course of the trip from here to the Neighbor Star.'
'And so?'
'And so, it happens that the transition is far more dangerous than is level flight in either space or hyper-space. I don't know how thoroughly the Rotorians had established hyperspatial theory, but the chances are that they had done so in only a rudimentary fashion, or they would have surely developed true superluminal flight. In our project, which has worked out hyperspatial theory in great detail, we've managed to establish the effect on material objects of passing from space to hyperspace and vice versa.
'If an object is a point, there is no strain on it during the transition. If an object is not a point, however - if it is an extended bit of matter, as any ship would be - then there is always a finite period of time during which part of it is in space and part is in hyperspace. This creates a strain - the amount of strain depending on the size of the object, its physical makeup, its speed of transition, and so on. Even for an object the size of Rotor, the danger involved in a single transition - or a dozen, for that matter - is so small that it can reasonably be ignored.
'When the Superluminal will travel, superluminously, to the Neighbor Star, we are liable to make a dozen transitions, or possibly only as few as two. The flight will be a safe one. In a flight with hyper-assistance only, on the other hand, there may be a million transitions in the course of the same trip, you see, and the chances of fatal strain mount up.'
Fisher looked appalled. 'Is the chance of fatal strain certain?'
'No, nothing is certain. It's a statistical matter. A ship might undergo a million transitions - or a billion - with nothing happening. It might be destroyed, on the other hand, on the very first transition. The chances, however, increase rapidly with the number of transitions.
'I suspect, then, that Rotor embarked on its trip understanding very little about the dangers of transition. Had they known more, they would never have left. There is a very good chance, then, that they experienced some sort of strain that might have been weak enough to allow them to "limp" to the Neighbor Star or one that was strong enough to blow them completely out of existence. Therefore, we might find a hulk, or we might find nothing at all.'
'Or we might find a Settlement that has survived,' said Fisher rebelliously.
'Admitted,' said Wendel. 'Or we might ourselves be strained against the odds, be destroyed, and, for that reason, find nothing. I ask you not to be prepared for certainties but for probabilities. And remember that those who think about the matter, without some accurate knowledge of hyperspatial theory, are not likely to come to reasonable conclusions.'
Fisher fell into a profound and clearly depressed silence, while Wendel watched him uneasily.
62
Tessa Wendel found Station Four a weird environment. It was as though someone had built a small Settlement, but fitted it out to be a combination of nothing more than a laboratory, an observatory, and a launching platform. It had no farms, no homes, none of the appurtenances of a Settlement, however small. It was not even equipped with a spin that would set up an adequate pseudo-gravitational field.
It was, in fact, nothing but a spaceship with acromegaly. It was clear that, although it could be permanently occupied, provided there was a continuous drizzle of food, air and water supplies (there was some recycling, but it wasn't efficient), no single individual could remain there for very long.
Crile Fisher made the wry comment that Station Four was like an old-fashioned space station from the early days of the Space Age that had unaccountably survived into the twenty-third century.
In one respect, though, it was unique. It presented a panoramic view of the Earth-Moon system. From the Settlements that orbited Earth, the two bodies could rarely be seen in their true relationship. From Station Four, however, Earth and Moon were never more than fifteen degrees apart, and as Station