The temperature in the dome had risen a little. Wilmer opened his faceplate and sniffed the air.
“Warm enough,” he said. “I suggest we all open our faceplates and conserve air in the suits — we may need it.”
He took another cylinder from his case. “Here.” He handed it to Elissa. “This will improve the atmosphere. Bleed this into the central circulator for the dome, then we can take that face mask off Peron.”
“Is he alive?”
“For the moment — but he’s still in danger.”
Elissa took the cylinder across to the air circulation unit and snapped it into position. She cracked the nozzle. At first it seemed that nothing had happened. Then the chilly air of the dome took on a heavy, perfumed weight, as though the oxygen in it was bleeding away. Elissa turned frowning toward Wilmer. She noticed that he had closed the faceplate of his suit. She wanted to ask him what he was doing, but she could not phrase her thought. The moment stretched. Wilmer was motionless, watching and waiting. There was a final, odd sense of detachment, as though she were rising to the ceiling of the dome and leaving her body behind.
And now… she was awakening… to find Peron standing anxiously over her. She blinked her eyes to clear the blurred image.
“Elissa? Are you all right?”
He put his arm around her shoulders and raised her to a sitting position. She shivered uncontrollably, from a mixture of emotion and freezing cold. She looked down at herself. She had been wearing thermal clothing in the dome, now she was naked except for a transparent membrane of fine cloth.
Where was she? How had she come here? She struggled to think clearly. In the moment of waking it was hard to be logical. And what did logic matter? Peron was here, alive. She felt peculiar, chilled but fluffy-headed and giggly. Explanations could wait for a few more seconds. She snuggled into Peron’s embrace.
“Here I am,” she said. Everything was pleasant and vastly amusing. “But Peron, I’m cold.”
“Good, you’re waking up.” He pointed to an assortment of garments in a heap by their side. “Help yourself to any that fit you. I’ve got to see how the others are doing.”
“Peron!” She shivered, then reached out and gave Peron a hug strong enough to make their ribs creak. “Explain. What’s been happening to me?”
“Tell you later.” He returned the embrace with interest. “Come on. I may need help to get Lum out. He should have been called Lump.”
Elissa rummaged through the pile and found an adequate set of coveralls while Peron opened the door of the next tank and did his best to pull out its occupant. There was a good deal of grunting and swearing. Lum was semi-conscious, and offering plenty of disorganized resistance.
“Here. Let me have a go at him.” Elissa moved round to the other side and leaned over. She took hold of Lum’s hair and gave it a great tug. He came suddenly upright, his eyes popped wide open, and he yelped in protest.
“No need to do that. I’m awake.” His eyes closed again, and he started to sink back. “It’s all right, I’m awake, I’ll be up in just a minute.”
“Pull his hair again, then give him a hand with his clothes,” said Peron. “See if you can find anything big enough. Kallen’s next, but I bet he’ll be easier. Rosanne told me Lum sleeps like a dead man, even under normal conditions.” In a few more minutes Rosanne and Kallen had been brought back to groggy wakefulness. Peron left them sighing and shivering and searching for warm clothes. Sy was processed last of all. He went instantly from sleep to full attention. Even as his eyes popped open he was twisting sideways like a cat, moving his body to a defensive posture.
“Relax,” said Peron. “You’re with friends.”
Sy gave Peron one brief, incredulous look, then stared around him. “Where am I? Last thing I remember we were in the Whirlygig dome. What happened?” “That’s a long story. Get some clothes on, and follow me. I’ll explain as we go.”
Peron led them to the dining room, where Ferranti and the others were finally showing signs of movement. Garao was halfway to the door, one foot clear of the floor.
“I wanted each of you to see this to save arguments,” said Peron. “Or you might have told me I was chewing dillason weed. Fourteen hours ago I was in that condition. That’s S-space. Remember how much we were troubled by the idea that the Immortals could travel to the stars in days?”
“I still don’t believe it,” said Sy. “They can’t exceed light-speed.” “You’re right — but you’re wrong, too. Here’s a question for all of you. How far does light travel in one second, or in one year?”
There was a brief silence.
“We all know the answer to that,” said Rosanne. “So I assume it’s a trick question.”
“In a way,” said Peron. “The answer depends on your definition of a second and a year. We’ve been thinking about S-space all wrong. It’s not some sort of parallel universe, or hyperspace. It’s the same space we live in, but S-space is a state of changed perception. If you want proof, look at these people.” Kallen had been watching Olivia Ferranti very closely. “She seems to be unconscious,” he said softly. “And her skin is cold. But her eyes are open. They’re alive, that’s clear. Are they hibernating?”
“No. Each of them is fully conscious. In that condition you feel normal except for a few subtle differences. But their metabolisms have been drastically slowed — two thousand times slower than usual. That’s S-space, and it changes your perception of everything. In one of our seconds, light travels three hundred thousand kilometers. In one of theirs, it travels six hundred million kilometers. To us, Sol is eighteen light-years away. To them, it’s only a little more than three light-days. That’s why we heard that the Immortals can travel between the stars in days — their days. Time passes so slowly for them that what feels like a day to us they experience as less than a minute.”
Peron went close to Garao and passed his hand slowly in front of the other’s face. “See? They don’t even know we’re here.” He moved over to the stationary figure of Atiyah, removed the belt from around the man’s tubby middle, and looped it around Olivia Ferranti’s neck. “In about twenty minutes he’ll notice that his belt is missing. In another hour of our time he’ll begin to wonder where it went. It will be an hour more before he can do anything to get it back.”
The others made their own inspections, touching skin and fingering hair. “How did they get this way?” asked Lum.
“The same way that I did, when Wilmer operated on me back on Whirlygig. I know that’s not much of an answer, but it’s the best one I can give you. There has to be a complicated treatment, but it must be fairly standardized — and it’s fully reversible. I’ve been both ways, and so has Captain Rinker. He had to go back to normal living to fix a mechanical problem with this ship. Let’s take a look at the ship now. We’ll all need that information later.”
Peron led the way back through to the suspense room. As they went he responded to their torrent of questions. The ship they were travelling on was deep in interstellar space, heading for the headquarters of the Immortals. That headquarters was far from any sun or planet, a full light-year away from the Cass system. They were moving at only a fraction of light-speed — probably no more than a tenth. During their journey, nearly ten years would pass back on Pentecost.
The other Planetfest winners were not on board. Their fate could only be conjectured, but Peron thought they were all still back in the Cass system, probably living on The Ship. That was where the Immortals lived in the Cass system. The other winners would probably become Immortals themselves after some kind of indoctrination. They would prefer to live in S-space for the longer subjective life span it offered, and they would return to normal life, as Wilmer had done, only for special duties.
“How long does an Immortal live?” asked Sy. “It’s obvious that nobody can be truly immortal.”
“Seventeen hundred years.”
There was another long silence. Finally Elissa said: “You mean seventeen hundred subjective years? That’s two thousand times seventeen hundred ordinary years back on Pentecost — three million four hundred thousand. They live three million four hundred thousand years!”
“Right,” said Peron cheerfully. Adjusting to that idea hadn’t been easy, and he was glad to see that others had the same reaction. “Of course, that’s only a conjecture. As Dr. Ferranti pointed out, they can only make estimates of full life span — because no one has lived it yet. It’s only twenty thousand years or so since we left Earth, and no one was living in S-space there.”
