Arthur Trent clearly heard the words he spat the receiver.
- Trent! You can not escape. Intercept your orbit in a couple of hours. If you try to resist, we will make pieces.
Trent smiled and said nothing. He had no weapons and no need to fight. Within a few hours the ship would jump into hyperspace and never would find. It would take a kilogram of krilio, enough to build pathways to the brain of thousands of robots, worth ten million credits in any world in the galaxy, and no questions asked. The old Brennmeyer had planned it all. He had been planning for over thirty years. It was the job of a lifetime. "It's
flight, young man, he had said. So I need you. You can pilot a ship and taken to space. I do not.
-carried into space will not help, sir Brennmeyer. We captured at noon.
"We do not capture if we jump. We do not capture if we cross the hyperspace and appear several light years away.
"We take half a day to plan the jump, and even if we did alert the police time all star systems.
"No, Trent, no. "The old man took her hand with trembling excitement. Not all the star systems, only those who are nearby. The galaxy is vast and settlers from the last fifty thousand years have lost touch with each other. He described the situation in an anxious tone. The galaxy was and as the surface of planet Earth originally, they called in prehistoric times. Humans had spread throughout all continents, but each group knew only the neighboring area. "If we make the jump at random," he explained Brennmeyer-be anywhere, even to fifty thousand light years, and find them as easy as finding a pebble in a cluster of meteorites.
Trent shook his head.
"But we will not know where we are. So we will not reach an inhabited planet.
Brennmeyer looked suspiciously around him. I had no one around, but lowered his voice
"I've spent thirty years collecting data on all habitable planets in the galaxy. I researched all the old documents. I have traveled thousands of light years further than any space pilot. And the whereabouts of every habitable planet is now in memory of the best computer in the world.
-Trent
raised his eyebrows. The old man continued: "Design and I have the best computers. I have also located the whereabouts of all bright stars in the galaxy, all stars of spectral class F, B, A and O, and I have stored in memory. After the jump, the computer searches the skies spectroscopically and compared the results with map galaxy. When you find the right match, and sooner or later have to find it, the ship is located in space and then is automatically guided through a second jump, to the vicinity of the nearest inhabited planet.
"It seems complicated.
"It can not fail. I worked on it for many years and can not fail. I will be ten years to be a millionaire. But you are young. You'll be a millionaire for much longer.
-When you jump at random, can be completed within a star.
"Not a chance in a hundred trillion, Trent. We may also appear as far from any bright star computer does not find anything that matches your program. We could jump to light only a year and discover that the police have us on the trail. The odds are even smaller. If you want to worry, worry about the possibility of dying from a heart attack at the time of takeoff. The odds are much higher.
"I could have a heart attack. Is older.
The old man shrugged.
"I do not count. The computer will do everything automatically. Trent nodded and remembered that detail.
One midnight, when the spacecraft was ready and Brennmeyer arrived with a briefcase krilio , Had no difficulty in obtaining it, he was a man of confidence, "Trent took the bag with one hand while the other moved with speed and certainty. A knife was still the best, as fast as a molecular depolarizer, just as deadly and much quieter. He left the knife in the body, with his fingerprints. What did it matter? They would not grasp it.
Honduras Once in space, pursued by patrol craft, felt the tension that always preceded a jump. No physiologist could explain it, but every veteran driver knew that feeling. For a moment of no space and no time there was a tear, as the ship and the pilot became not matter and not energy, then immediately were assembled elsewhere in the galaxy. Trent smiled. Still alive. There were no stars too close and there were thousands at a sufficient distance. The sky looked like a swarm of stars and their settings were so different that it knew that the jump had taken away. Some of those stars had to be of spectral class F or better yet. The computer would have many chances to use your memory. Not take long.
leaned back comfortably and watched the movement of the starlight shining as the ship turned slowly. Saw a very bright star. There seemed to be more than two light years and his experience as a pilot told him it was a hot star and auspicious. The computer would use as a basis for studying the environment settings. Not take long, he thought Trent again. But it took. It took minutes, one hour. And the computer continued with their clicks and flashes. Trent frowned. Why not find the settings? Had to be there. Brennmeyer had shown him his long years of work. There could not be excluded or having registered a star in the wrong place. Of course, the stars were born, died and moved in the course of its existence, but those changes were slow, very slow. Brennmeyer configurations that could not change was recorded in a million years.
Trent felt a sudden panic. No! It was not possible. The odds were even lower than jumping into a star.
waited for the bright star appeared again and, with trembling hands, the focused through a telescope. Put all the possible increase, and about the bright speck of light appeared telltale haze turbulent gas leak. It was a nova! The star had gone from a dark cloudy dazzling brightness, maybe just a month ago. Formerly a member of a class so low that spectral the computer had ignored, but probably deserved tenérsela into account. But the nova that there was no space in computer memory because Brennmeyer had not registered. Did not exist when Brennmeyer gathered their data. At least, there was as bright and shining star.
- I do not have in mind! Trent yelled. Ignore it!
But yelling at a vending machine that would compare the pattern centered on the galactic nova with the pattern without finding it, and perhaps continue comparing the duration of the energy. The air would be exhausted much earlier. Trent's life would be exhausted much earlier. Trent sank into the seat, saw that mock starlight and began the long and agonizing wait for death.
If only he had kept the knife ...
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