"The Jump we are about to make will take place in about ten minutes. You will be warned. There is never more than some momentary minor discomfort; therefore, I hope all of you will remain calm. Thank you."
The ship lights went out altogether, and there were only the stars left.
It seemed a long while before a crisp announcement filled the air momentarily: "The Jump will take place in exactly one minute." And then the same voice counted the seconds backwards: "Fifty...forty...thirty...twenty... ten...five...three...two...one..."
It was as though there had been a momentary discontinuity in existence, a bump which joggled only the deep inside of a man's bones.
In that immeasurable fraction of a second, one hundred light-years had passed, and the ship, which had been on the outskirts of the solar system, was now in the depths of interstellar space.
Someone near Biron said shakily, "Look at the stars!"
In a moment the whisper had taken life through the large room and hissed itself across the tables: "The stars! See!"
In that same immeasurable fraction of a second the star view had changed radically. The center of the great Galaxy, which stretched thirty thousand light-years from tip to tip, was closer now, and the stars had thickened in number. They spread across the black velvet vacuum in a fine powder, back-dropping the occasional brightness of the nearby stars.
Biron, against his will, remembered the beginning of a poem he himself had once written at the sentimental age of nineteen, on the occasion of his first space flight; the one that had first taken him to the Earth he was now leaving. His lips moved silently:
"The stars, like dust, encircle me
In living mists of light;
And all of space I seem to see
In one vast burst of sight."
The lights went on then, and Biron's thoughts were snapped out of space as suddenly as they had entered it. He was in a space liner's salon again, with a dinner dragging to an end, and the hum of conversation rising to a prosaic level again.
He glanced at his wrist watch, half looked away, then, very slowly, brought the wrist watch into focus again. He stared at it for a long minute. It was the wrist watch he had left in his bedroom that night; it had withstood the killing radiation of the bomb, and he had collected it with the rest of his belongings the next morning. How many times had he looked at it since then? How many times had he stared at it, taken mental note of the time and no note at all of the other piece of information it shouted at him?
For the plastic wristband was white, not blue. It was white!
Slowly the events of that night, all of them, fell into place. Strange how one fact could shake an the confusion out of them.
He rose abruptly, murmuring, "Pardon me!" under his breath. It was a breach of etiquette to leave before the captain, but that was a matter of small importance to him then.
He hastened to his room, striding up the ramps rapidly, rather than waiting for the non-gravity elevators. He locked the door behind him and looked quickly through the bathroom and the built-in closets. He had no real hope of catching anyone. What they had had to do, they must have done hours ago.
Carefully, he went through his baggage. They had done a thorough job. With scarcely any sign to show that they had come and gone, they had carefully withdrawn his identification papers, a packet of letters from his father, and even his capsular introduction to Hinrik of Rhodia.
That was why they had moved him. It was neither the old room nor the new that they were interested in; merely the process of moving. For nearly an hour they must have legitimately-legitimately, by Space!-concerned themselves with his baggage, and served their own purposes thereby.
Biron sank down upon the double bed and thought furiously, but it didn't help. The trap had been perfect. Everything had been planned. Had it not been for the completely unpredictable chance of his leaving his wrist watch in the bedroom that night, he would not even now have realized how close-meshed the Tyranni's net through space was.
There was a soft burr as his door signal sounded.
"Come in," he said.
It was the steward, who said respectfully, "The captain wishes to know if there is anything he can do for you. You seemed ill as you left the table."
"I'm all right," he said.
How they watched him! And in that moment he knew that there was no escape, and that the ship was carrying him politely, but surely, to his death.
4. Free?
Sander Jonti met the other's eyes coldly. He said, "Gone, you say?"
Rizzett passed a hand over his ruddy face. "Something is gone. I don't know its identity. It might have been the document we're after, certainly. All we know about it is that it had been dated somewhere in the fifteenth to twenty-first century of Earth's primitive calendar, and that it is dangerous."
"Is there any definite reason to believe that the missing one is the document?"
"Only circumstantial reasoning. It was guarded closely by the Earth government."
"Discount that. An Earthman will treat any document relating to the pre-Galactic past with veneration. It's their ridiculous worship of tradition."
"But this one was stolen and yet they never announced the fact. Why do they guard an empty case?"
"I can imagine their doing that rather than finding themselves forced to admit that a holy relic has been stolen. Yet I cannot believe that young Farrill obtained it after all. I thought you had him under observation."
The other smiled. "He didn't get it."
"How do you know?"
Jonti's agent quickly exploded his land mine. "Because the document has been gone twenty years."
"What?"