you're working on.
'Something like Hyper City can't be kept a total secret. The incredible sums of money being invested must leave a noticeable trace. So every Settlement is scrabbling for odds and ends they may be able to convert into bits of knowledge. And every bit gives them hints that will enable them to progress much more quickly than you were able to. You tell them all that, Tessa, if any question arises over ending the project. We can and will be overtaken in the race if we stop running. That thought will keep the new people as fired-up over the matter as ever Tanayama was, and it all has the merit of being true.'
Wendel was silent for a considerable time while Fisher watched her carefully.
'You're right, my dear wheedler of secrets,' she said at last. 'I made a mistake in thoughtlessly considering you a lover rather than an adviser.'
'Why should the two necessarily be mutually exclusive?' asked Fisher.
'Although,' said Wendel, 'I know very well that you have your own motivations in this.'
'What does that matter,' said Fisher, 'even if it's true, provided mine run parallel with yours?'
43
A delegation of Congressmen eventually arrived, along with Igor Koropatsky, the new Director of the Terrestrial Board of Inquiry. He had been in subordinate positions at the Office for years, so he was not completely unknown to Tessa Wendel.
He was a quiet man, with smooth, thinning gray hair, a rather bulbous nose, a comfortable double chin, who looked well-fed and good-natured. He was shrewd undoubtedly, but he obviously lacked Tanayama's almost diseased intensity. At a full kilometer, you could see that.
Congressmen were with him, of course, as though to show that this successor was their property and under their control. They must surely be hoping it would stay that way. Tanayama had been a long and bitter lesson.
No-one suggested that the project be ended. Rather, the concern was that it be hastened - if possible. Wendel's cautious attempt to stress the possibility that the Settlements might overtake Earth, or be hot on its heels, was accepted without demur, almost dismissed as obvious on the face of it.
Koropatsky, who was allowed to be spokesman and to take the responsibility, said, 'Dr Wendel, I do not ask for a long, formal tour of Hyper City. I have been here before, and it is more important that I spend some time reorganizing the Office. I mean no disrespect to my distinguished predecessor, but any shifting of an important administrative body from one person to another requires a great deal of reorganization, especially if the predecessor's tenure has been a lengthy one. Now I am not, by nature, a formal man. Let us, therefore, speak freely and informally, and I will ask some questions which I hope you will answer in a way that a man of my own modest attainments in science will have no trouble in understanding.'
Wendel nodded. 'I will do my best, Director.'
'Good. When do you expect to have a superluminal starship in operation?'
'You must realize, Director, that this is an essentially unanswerable question. We are at the mercy of unforeseen difficulties and accidents.'
'Assume only reasonable difficulties and no accidents.'
'In that case, since we have completed the science and need only the engineering, if we are fortunate we will have a ship in three years, perhaps.'
'You will be ready in 2236, in other words.'
'Certainly not sooner.'
'How many persons will it carry?'
'Five to seven, perhaps.'
'How far will it go?'
'As far as we wish, Director. That is the beauty of superluminal velocity. Because we are passing through hyperspace, where the ordinary laws of physics do not apply, not even the conservation of energy, it costs no more effort to go a thousand light-years than to go one.'
The Director stirred uneasily. 'I am not a physicist, but I find it difficult to accept an environment without constraints. Are there not things you cannot do?'
'There are constraints. We need a vacuum and a gravitational intensity below a certain point if we are to make the transition into and out of hyperspace. We will, with experience, undoubtedly find additional restraints which might have to be determined through test flights. The results might necessitate further delays.'
'Once you have the ship, where will the first flight take you?'
'It might seem prudent to allow the first trip to go no farther than the planet Pluto, for instance, but that might well be considered an unbearable waste of time. Once we have the technology with which to visit the stars, the temptation to