HYPERSPACE

1.

Trevize said, “Are you ready, Janov?”

Pelorat looked up from the book he was viewing and said, “You mean, for the Jump, old fellow?”

“For the hyperspatial Jump. Yes.”

Pelorat swallowed. “Now, you’re sure that it will be in no way uncomfortable. I know it is a silly thing to fear, but the thought of having myself reduced to incorporeal tachyons, which no one has ever seen or detected—”

“Come, Janov, it’s a perfected thing. Upon my honor! The Jump has been in use for twenty-two thousand years, as you explained, and I’ve never heard of a single fatality in hyperspace. We might come out of hyperspace in an uncomfortable place, but then the accident would happen in space—not while we are composed of tachyons.”

“Small consolation, it seems to me.”

“We won’t come out in error, either. To tell you the truth, I was thinking of carrying it through without telling you, so that you would never know it had happened. On the whole, though, I felt it would be better if you experienced it consciously, saw that it was no problem of any kind, and could forget it totally henceforward.”

“Well—” said Pelorat dubiously. “I suppose you’re right, but honestly I’m in no hurry.”

“I assure you—”

“No no, old fellow, I accept your assurances unequivocally. It’s just that—Did you ever read Santerestil Matt?”

“Of course. I’m not illiterate.”

“Certainly. Certainly. I should not have asked. Do you remember it?”

“Neither am I an amnesiac.”

“I seem to have a talent for offending. All I mean is that I keep thinking of the scenes where Santerestil and his friend, Ban, have gotten away from Planet 17 and are lost in space. I think of those perfectly hypnotic scenes among the stars, lazily moving along in deep silence, in changelessness, in— Never believed it, you know. I loved it and I was moved by it, but I never really believed it. But now—after I got used to just the notion of being in space, I’m experiencing it and—it’s silly, I know—but I don’t want to give it up. It’s as though I’m Santerestil—”

“And I’m Ban,” said Trevize with just an edge of impatience.

“In a way. The small scattering of dim stars out there are motionless, except our sun, of course, which must be shrinking but which we don’t see. The Galaxy retains its dim majesty, unchanging. Space is silent and I have no distractions—”

“Except me.”

“Except you. —But then, Golan, dear chap, talking to you about Earth and trying to teach you a bit of prehistory has its pleasures, too. I don’t want that to come to an end, either.”

“It won’t. Not immediately, at any rate. You don’t suppose we’ll take the Jump and come through on the surface of a planet, do you? We’ll still be in space and the Jump will have taken no measurable time at all. It may well be a week before we make surface of any kind,