Night of Light

Carmody said good-bye to His Eminence, who wanted to return to the city and start making arrangements for the funeral. He also had several letters to dictate to the officials in the Vatican, explaining why he was delayed.

The checkout required for every interstellar traveler took a half-hour. Carmody stripped off his clothes, which were taken away to be sanitized. In the physical- examination cubicle, he stood motionless for two minutes while the sca

However, a letter, also sanitized, was delivered to him via tube. A woman’s voice came through a speaker to inform him that the letter had just come off the

Mkuki, direct from Earth. Carmody looked at the seal, which bore his name and address and that of the sender: R. Raspold. He dropped it into his beltbag with the other letter.

Meanwhile, his passport and other papers were brought up to date, checked, and validated. He had to sign a waiver whereby both the governments of Wildenwooly and the Federation were absolved of any obligation if he were to die or be injured on Kareen. He also took out insurance for the flight as far as Springboard. Half went to his order, one quarter to his daughter (begotten two years after he had become a priest), and one quarter to the governmental agency that supervised the reservations for the sentient but primitive aboriginals of Wildenwooly.

He finished a few minutes before a

A voice from the speaker asked all to sit down. A minute later, the room in which the travelers sat detached itself from the main building and moved out toward the White Mule. The liner was a hemisphere the flat part of which rested on the griegite-paved landing circle. Its white irradiated plastic skin gleamed in the midafternoon sun of Wildenwooly. As the mobile room approached, the seemingly unbroken surface of the

White Mule split near the ground, and a round port swung out. The mobile, directed by remote control, nudged gently into the entrance, and its front door collapsed on itself. An officer in the green uniform of the Saxwell line entered and bade them welcome.

The passengers filed into a small chamber with only a green rug for furnishings and thence into a large room. This was a cocktail lounge, now closed. They passed through another room, where they were handed a small document. Carmody glanced through his to see if anything new had been added, then stuck the paper into a pocket of his blouse. It contained a short history of the Saxwell line and a list of procedures for the passenger, with all of which he was familiar.

There were three levels open to passengers, first, second, and third class. Carmody had purchased a ticket for third class, in accordance with the economy required by his order. His level was a huge room that looked more like a theater than anything else, except that the screen at this moment showed the view outside the ship. The seats were arranged two abreast with aisles between the rows. Most of the eight hundred seats were filled, and the room was noisy with chatter. At that moment, Carmody wished he were in a first-class cabin, where he could have privacy. But that was out of the question, so he sat down beside a vacant seat.

A stewardess checked him to make sure he was strapped in, and asked him if he had read the rules. Would he care for a space pill? He said he did not need one.

She smiled at him and went on to the next passenger. Carmody could overhear the fellow say that he wanted another pill.

The pilot’s smiling face appeared on the screen. He welcomed his passengers aboard the White Mule, a fine ship which had not had an accident or even been behind schedule in its ten years of service. He warned them that takeoff would be within five minutes and repeated the stewardesses’ instructions not to remove the straps. After a few words about their next stop, he signed off.

The screen went blank for a second, then the 3-D projection of Jack Wenek, a well- known comedian, abruptly hovered in the air a meter in front of the screen. Carmody did not care to listen, so ignored the button which would have brought Wenek’s voice to him. However, he felt that he needed something to divert himself. Or something even stronger than a diversion, something which would put his grief and problems in a different perspective. He needed immensity, awe and wonder to make him shrink.

He reached under the seat and took from the rack a helmet-shaped device with a snap- down visor. After placing it on his head, he moved the visor down over his face. Immediately, he heard the voice of an officer of the White Mule.

“... Provided individually so that your fellow passengers won’t have to view this if they don’t wish to. Some people, encountering this for the first time, are thrown into a state of shock or hysteria.” The curved i

“A dozen spaceships take off every day from this port. But the spectacle, unspectacular as it is, continues to attract hundreds, even thousands of sightseers every day on every planet of the Federation. And on every non-Federation planet, too, for sentients are just as curious as Terrestrials. Even much-traveled passengers, the port employees, and the crews of other ships do not become accustomed to this seemingly magical trick.”

Carmody drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, for he had heard similar speeches many times. At once, a voice cut in: “Are you all right, sir?”

Carmody said, “Huh?” Then he chuckled. “I’m OK. I was just a little impatient with the lecture. I’ve made over a hundred jumps.”

“Very well, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”

He made an effort to calm himself, and settled back to watch the scene on the visor.

The first voice returned. “...three, two, one, zero!”

Carmody, knowing what was coming, refrained from blinking. The port was gone. The planet of Wildenwooly and the brightness of its sun were gone. Cups of burning wine hung on a black table: red, green, white, blue, violet. The one-eyed beasts of the jungle of space glared.

“... approximately 50,000 light-years away in quote nothing flat unquote. The Earth- sized planet you were just on is too far away to be seen, and its sun is only one of the millions of stars scattered prodigally through the universe around you, ‘the eternally sparked thoughts in God’s mind,’ to quote the great poet Gianelli.

“Just a moment. Our ship is turning now to align herself for the next jump. The protein computer which I briefly described a moment ago is comparing the angles of light from a dozen identifiable stars, each of which radiates its unique complex of spectral colors and each of which has a known spatial relation to the other. After the quote artificial brain unquote of the computer ascertains our location, it will point the ship for the next jump.”