A World Out of Time

"There's nothing more powerful than controlling everybody's water. A water-control empire can grow so feeble that a single barbarian horde can topple it. But, Peerssa, the State doesn't have any outside."

Much later, Corbell learned that he had changed his life again. At the time he only suspected, from Peerssa's silence, that he had offended Peerssa.

And Peerssa was not Pierce. The checker was long dead; the computer personality had never harmed Corbell. It was worth remembering. Corbell gave up talking about the State. Peerssa was loyal to the State; Corbell emphatically was not.

There was another topic he eventually gave up. Once too often he told Peerssa, "I still wish you'd sent a woman with me."

"Must I remind you that the life-support system is too small for two? Or that Sol is now a vast distance behind us? Or that your sex urge tested low? If it had not, you would not be here."

"It was a matter of privacy," Corbell said between his teeth.

"But the loving bunks in the dormitory were not the only test. In word association you tested low. Your testosterone level tested low."

"You ball-less wonder! How can you talk to me about low sex urge!"

"The State has a superfluity of testicles," Peerssa said with no particular emphasis.

Would Pierce the checker have reacted that way? It was a weird response... but Peerssa meant it. Corbell stopped talking about women.

Six months passed. Stars passed, too. A few passed close enough to show like violet windows into Hell, and receded like dim red fireballs. Corbell was fat, too fat for his own tastes, fat enough for Peerssa's, when at last he climbed into the great coffin.

It happened seven times.

III

"Corbell? Is something wrong? Speak, please."

Corbell sighed in the cold-sleep tank. He did not move. He had become very used to this routine: the terrible weakness, the hunger, the six months of exercises and of forcing insipid food down his throat, the climbing into the tank to start the cycle over. At this, his seventh awakening, he felt a deadly reluctance to wake up.

"Corbell, please say something. I can sense your heartbeat and respiration, but I can't see you. Have you turned catatonic? Shall I administer shock?"

"Don't administer shock."

"Can you move, or are you too weak?"

He sat up. It made him dizzy. Ship's thrust was very low. "Where are we?"

"Beyond midpoint of our course, thrusting laterally to force us back into the plane of the galaxy. Proceeding according to plan. Your plan, not mine. Now I want to monitor your health."

"Later. Make me soup. I'll take it to the Womb Room." He moved toward the Kitchen, bouncing oddly in the low gravity. He had aged more than the four years he bad been awake. After each awakening the exercises had taken longer to build him up again. He felt brittle, and ravenous.

The soup was good. The soup was always good. He settled himself in the Womb Room and let his eyes roam the dials. Some of the readings were frightening. The gamma-ray flux would have charred him in minutes, if the power of the ram fields were not guiding the particles aside. Other readings made no sense. Peerssa had told the truth: The seeder ramship was not designed for velocities this close to the speed of light. Neither were the instruments and dials.

And what about Peerssa's senses? Was he flying half blind?

"Give me a full view," he said.

The stellar rainbow had hardened and sharpened over seven decades. It had lost symmetry, too. To one side the stars were thickly clustered; the arc of blue-whites blazed like diamonds in an empress's necklace. To the other, the side that faced intergalactic space, the rainbow was almost dark. Each star was sharply defined within its band of color. But within the central disk of violet stars (dimmer than the blue, but of a color that made one squint) was a soft white glow: the microwave background of the universe, at 30 absolute, boosted to visible light by Don Juan's terrible speed.

His ship's drive flame had become a blood-red fan of light facing intergalactic space. Peerssa was thrusting laterally to bend their course back into the plane of the galaxy.

"Give me a corrected view," Corbell instructed.

Now Peerssa worked a kind of fiction. From the universe he perceived through the senses on Don Juan's hull, he extrapolated a picture of the universe seen at rest, and he painted that picture around the wall of the Womb Room.

The galaxy was incomparably beautiful, a whirlpool of light spread out across half the universe. Corbell looked ahead of him for his first view of the galactic core. It was there, just brighter than the rest, and hazy, without definition. He was disappointed. He had thought the close-packed ball of stars would flame with colors. He could pick out no individual stars; only a vague glow around a central bright point. Behind him the stars were similarly blurred.

"I'm getting poor definition in the view aft," Peerssa volunteered. "The light is drastically red-shifted."

"And forward?"

"This is not according to theory. I would have expected more definition within the core. There must be a great deal of interstellar matter blocking the light. Even so... I need more data."

Corbell didn't answer. A multiple star cluster had caught his eye, half a dozen brilliant points whirling frantically as they came toward him. They passed on the right, still jiggling madly, and froze in place as they came alongside.

"The next time that happens, I'd like to see an uncorrected view."

"I'll call you, but you won't see much."

So here he was at the halfway point, with his destination in sight. No man before him could have seen the glow of the galactic core, or the frantically spi

Corbell flies toward the core suns like a moth toward a flame, expecting death. But he has his victories.

He finished his anonymous soup. Don Juan's Kitchen and/or chemistry lab supplied just enough taste, just enough variety, to keep a State non-citizen from cutting his throat. On such fare he must grow fat... and exercise to distribute the fat. Lately it tended to settle in a potbelly, which was no help at all.

He was getting old. Despite the cold-sleep tank and all the medicines available, he would be decrepit before they reached the core suns.

His second life should have been more like his first. He had hoped to make friends, to carve out some kind of career... he had been frozen at age forty-four, there would have been time... time even for a marriage, children...

Things would look better when he had built up some strength. He could go on an oxygen drunk. On request Peerssa would fill the cabin with pure oxygen, while lecturing Corbell on the adverse medical effects for as long as Corbell would let him.

"About now you usually start telling me my duty," he said.

"There's no point," said Peerssa. "We're decelerating now. We'll be among the core suns before we can brake to a stop."

Corbell smiled. "Anyone but you would have given up sooner. Expand my view of the core suns, please."

The hub of the galaxy rushed toward him. Dark clouds with stars embedded in them surrounded a bright core. They looked like churning storm clouds. They had changed position since his last waking period.

But the core itself was a flat featureless glow, except for a single bright point at the center. "The interstellar matter must be almighty thick in there. Can our ram fields handle it?"

"If we give up thrust and settle for shielding the life-support system and nothing else, you'll be amazed at what we can handle."

"I'll be dying anyway, of old age."

"Corbell, there is a way you can go home again."