“Which may be impossible,” said Ferranti. “Keep an open mind. Anyway, we didn’t need them. The drive system research on Salter Station would allow us to accelerate a ship up to better than a tenth of light-speed, and that was enough. In Mode Two consciousness — S-space — a human being could remain fully aware, live an extended subjective life, and travel across the whole Galaxy in a single lifetime.
“That led to a new crisis. Everyone loved the idea of an extended subjective life span — if it were safe. But everyone was terrified of possible side effects. “We split into two groups. Some of us said, let’s move to S-space, and wait there at least until Earth is habitable again. No one knew how long that would be, but in S-space we could afford to wait centuries and perceive them as only a few weeks. Others were afraid. They argued that there were too many unknowns and too many risks in S-space living; until those were pinned down it was better to stay with our normal perception.”
Olivia Ferranti smiled ruefully. “As it turned out, both groups were right. Earth recovered slowly. It took more than a thousand years to develop new and stable plant and animal communities. None of us had ever dreamed it would be so long. And at the same time, we were discovering serious physical consequences of S-space living.
“Fortunately we didn’t fight over our differences of opinion on the move to S-space. Maybe the destruction of Earth had taught us all something about the need for peaceful resolution of conflicts. We agreed we would pursue both actions. Most people elected to stay as they were, creating a decent society in the spaceborne environment. After a few generations it was clear that a life in space was as satisfying as most of us had ever hoped. By then a few hundred of us had long since moved to S-space, using ourselves as the subjects for experiments that might reduce the risk for those who followed. While we were doing that we discovered a new mode of metabolic change, this one a true suspended animation. Five of you have personal experience of that cold sleep, here on the ship. We still don’t know how long someone can remain safely unconscious in that mode, but it’s certainly a long time — thousands of years at least.
“The move to S-space had two other important consequences. First, we realized that we couldn’t go back down and live on Earth, or anywhere with a substantial gravity field, even if we wanted to. That had been deduced when the experiments were still all on animals, and it was one major reason for moving the work out to orbit and away from the surface of Earth. You see, perceived accelerations — “ “We understand,” said Peron. “Kallen and Sy” — he pointed to them — “figured it out.”
“Smart.” Olivia Ferranti looked at the group appraisingly. “When I’m through, perhaps you’ll tell me a little more about yourselves. All I know so far is what I was told by Peron and by Captain Rinker.”
“Won’t he be wondering what’s happening?” said Rosanne. Then she stopped and put her hand to her mouth.
“He might — in a few more days.” Ferranti smiled and Rosanne grinned back at her. The initial tension of confrontation was fading. They were all increasingly absorbed in the first-person tale of remote history.
Olivia Ferranti leaned against the wall and pushed back the blue cowl from her forehead, to reveal a mop of jet-black tight curls. “We have lots of time. At the moment, Captain Rinker and the others hardly know I’ve left.” “But you’ve got hair!” blurted out Lum.
Olivia Ferranti raised her dark eyebrows at him. “I’m glad to hear that you think so.”
“It’s what I told them,” said Peron. “I thought S-space made you bald.” “It does. Didn’t you ever hear of wigs, down on Pentecost? Most of the men in S-space don’t worry about it, but I don’t care to face the world with a naked scalp. My ideas on the right way for me to look were fixed long before I ever dreamed of S-space. Anyway, I have a lumpy skull that I have no great desire to show off to others.” She patted her dark ringlets. “I much prefer this. The nice thing about it is that it will never go gray.”
“What else does S-space do to people?” asked Sy. More than the rest of them, except possibly for Kallen who had typically not spoken at all, Sy seemed reserved and unwarmed by Olivia Ferranti’s open manner.
“I’m getting there,” she said. “Let me tell you that in a few minutes. I want to do this in a logical order, and explain what happened after Earth had been destroyed. It’s important that you know, so you’ll understand why we behave the way we do in the Cass system.
“While we were still busy working out the stable society for life away from Earth, and some of us were also learning how to live in S-space, we didn’t have time to worry about what was happening to Eleanora and the other arcologies. And to tell the truth, we didn’t really give a damn. They’d selfishly deserted us, said our logic, so to hell with them. As far as we were concerned they could fly away and rot.
“But after a while those of us who were living in S-space — I was one of the first twenty people to take Mode Two hibernation — became pretty curious. You see, we knew we had the stars within reach. We had the drive we needed, and the time we needed. And Helena, Melissa, and Eleanora had all headed off outside the Solar System, in different directions. We didn’t know how much of the reason for their departure was an interest in exploration, and how much of it was fear of reprisals from us. We weren’t planning revenge of any kind, but how were they to know that? All three of them had shown signs of paranoia, back when they were first colonized. We got more and more curious to know what had happened to those three arcologies.
“Eventually we equipped four ships with service robots, similar to the ones on this ship, and with limited life-support systems. We didn’t need perfect recycling, only enough for a few months of travel in S-space. The final design gave the ships a useful exploration range of up to fifty light-years. At the slow speed of the arcologies, we knew they couldn’t be farther out than that. And the stellar profiles in the neighborhood of Sol gave us a fairly good idea where the colony ships were likely to be headed. Political systems change, but the physical constraints are still there. We thought we’d find them about twenty light-years out.
“When we had everything ready, our ships set off with their volunteer crews. We had no shortage of people willing to make the trip — I put my own name in, but didn’t make it. There were many with better qualifications than mine for interstellar cruising.
“As it happened, we had overestimated the distance they had gone. We had made insufficient allowance for the difficulties that Melissa and the others might be having on board. It hadn’t been a smooth ride by any means. There had been a civil war on Melissa, an economic collapse on Eleanora, and a power plant failure on Helena. Those variables affected both their speeds and their directions. Helena actually reversed and started back for Sol for a while, until the trouble was fixed and she could head outward again.
“Our ships had no trouble tracking and finding the arcologies. After all, they had no reason to expect pursuit, and nothing to be gained by concealing their presence. But when we reached them, we found that no arcology had found a habitable planet, and all three were still in deep interstellar space. After reporting back to us — S-space radio signal time was only a couple of days — it was agreed that we would not establish contact with them. We decided to do nothing, and not interfere in any way unless an arcology was in actual danger of extinction. They hadn’t asked for help, and we didn’t want to give it. Your ancestors would be allowed to wander around until either they found a habitable planet, or they decided that a permanent space life suited them better. Then we would reconsider possible contact.
“Our ships left automated tracking probes to follow the arcologies and report on their movements, and headed for home.
“It may seem strange to you that we had so little interest in the arcologies. But we were in no hurry. We could wait in S-space and see what developed. And certainly we had plenty of other things to interest us, because by that time Earth was finally being visited again on a regular basis.
“Still we had doubts that humans could thrive there. The long dust-winter had exterminated ninety percent of the plant species, and all land-based animal forms bigger than the rat — I mean an Earth rat, not one of the thirty-kilo monsters you call rats on Pentecost. We also found that the surviving plants and animals had changed from their old forms. The grasses were unrecognizable. Many of the old food plants tasted wrong in subtle ways, and some had lost all their nutritional value. We all realized that it would take millennia to restore Earth and make it a place worth living. But oddly enough, we all thought it a worthwhile effort — even those who had found life on Earth absolutely intolerable before the holocaust.
“By the time that the Earth visits began we were feeling much more comfortable about S-space. Some of us had been living there for many Earth-generations, and we were all fine — better than fine, because we didn’t seem to be aging at all. Our best estimate, based on limited data, was that the aging rate was twenty times as slow subjectively as it was in normal living. That extrapolated to a seventeen hundred year subjective lifetime — and even if we were wrong by a factor of two, that was still a mighty attractive thought.
“When our result became known, naturally more and more people wanted to move to S-space. It didn’t happen overnight, but as time went by we learned how to make the transitions both ways, with minimal danger. By
