Chapter 37

"We're in worm space," the mate finally said, astonishment suffusing his voice. "Or are we? Did we make it?"

"Aye, I think we did," replied MacPherson slowly. He started to rise and again found himself struggling against the now all-too-familiar excess weight. "Whitherr we did or no', rrese' th' compensa'orrs t'norrmal. We'rre no' accelerra'in' mair."

Cromartie complied, and they both immediately felt a vast sense of relief as the added gravitational pressure vanished. "What the hell happened, Mac?" he asked as he finished.

"I don' know," answered the captain. "Th'shiel' didna worrk. Th' compu'err said i' woul', I though' i' woul', bu' th' rradiation was climbin' like therre was naethin' a' all betwix' us an' th' nova. Perrhaps I did no' plo' th' courrse prroper. 'Twas me own mista'e ye' again, an' i' damn' nearr kill' us. Had ye no' cas' th' hole when ye did, th' coun'"—he meant radiation count—"woul' ha'e been too high in secon's an' we'd be dead."

In actual fact he was blaming himself incorrectly, as later analysis would show. The problem, as scientific review of what came to be popularly known as "MacPherson's Wild Ride" would later show, lay not in his own decision-making, which garnered universal acclaim, but with the on-board computer which had incorrectly advised him that plotting his course along the extended umbra of Eden's sun would shield the Ark from the nova's radiation.

On a small scale this would have been true, just as your hand placed between a lamp and a nearby wall will cast a dark shadow on the wall instead of allowing the light to reach that part of it. But the ship's computer system had never been programmed to take into account the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, which comes into play when the objects involved are vastly larger—large enough that they have sufficient gravity exerting its pull even on the insubstantial particles that convey light and associated radiation.

The beam of emissions of Chen's nova, narrowly focused though it was, had across the hundred or so light-years of distance spread well beyond the diameter of any star it would encounter. Those particles passing near enough to the star's surface would have their course deflected by its gravitational pull. The deflection would be tiny, almost infinitesimal, but sufficient to re-focus the emitted radiation into the seemingly protected umbra only a short way beyond the star. It was this effect to which the Ark's radiation counters had responded.

"MacPherson's immediate reaction to the rapidly climbing radiation levels was the ship's salvation," wrote one analyst much later. "It was yet another illustration of the captain's creative genius, his ability to react instantly to the unexpected flaw in his system's projections before the refocused radiation flow reached a level sufficient to distort the forward-cast wormhole beyond the possibility of the ship's entry."

(None of the ex post facto analyses, of course, made any mention of the captain's role in creating the dilemma of returning to Earth safely, for the simple reason that none of the analysts knew of it; that information had been carefully culled out of the redacted but otherwise fully detailed ship's log filed with SES. MacPherson himself, though, never forgot it, and never let the after-the-fact fulsome praise he received drive awareness of his own culpability out of his mind.)

"Are we dead anyway, though?" Cromartie asked his captain on the bridge. "Did the hole close when we weren't completely through? Are we just the remains of a nuclear explosion waiting to happen as soon as we come to the end of the wormhole?"

"Nae," MacPherson told him, recalling his long-ago studies of interstellar accidents and simulations. "Ivverr' time i' happen' beforre th'blas' was on th' en'ry si'e, all o' i' e'en if th' hole close' doon only on th' las' bi' o' th' ship. I think we'rre thrrough an' gaein' home."

"But how—"

Whatever the mate had been going to say was never completed as Igwanda, fairly bouncing with energy under the compensators' restoration of Earth-normal gravity, appeared in the bridge entrance.

"What the hell's going on, MacPherson?" he demanded as he came in. "Is this some new scheme of yours to make more trouble?"

"Wha's yer prroblem?" asked the captain after a surprised pause.

"My 'problem, '" snapped the younger man, "is that Godawful noise I just heard. What in Christ's name was it?"

"'Noise?'" MacPherson echoed.

"Oh, get off it. That big crash. I know you had to have heard it, too, everybody else did."

"Ah, tha'," said the captain, as if at last understanding. "Tha' was th' swee'es' soun' in th'univerrse t'me, i' was th' soun' o' us passin' inta worrm space. We'rre therre noo, d'ye see?" He pointed to the external monitors, now displaying a featureless void. "An' ha'e ye no' no'ice' tha' yer weigh' is back t'norrmal? We've go' therre, th'nee' forr mair powerr t'accelerra'e is done."

"Oh," said the younger man, temporarily deflating. "Well ... I just hope it's in time for Grandmother. She's been pretty bad, but maybe now ... But at least we're there."

He started back out, but as he was about to exit he turned and flared again. "I liked it one hell of a lot better when you were running the ship on the way out, Mr. Cromartie," he told the mate. "When we made the transition through the wormhole then it was nice and quiet and easy, we didn't even know it had happened except for the monitors. You didn't need to show off."

MacPherson and Cromartie turned to stare at each other. Then the suddenly relieved tension at last manifested itself; first the captain and then the mate burst into uproarious laughter. Noticing only the first of these reactions, Igwanda turned on his heel and walked out.

"You piss me off, MacPherson," they could hear him mutter as he left. Their laughter redoubled.

It was a full minute before they got themselves back under control. Finally Cromartie arose, stretching comfortably in the now normal gravity of the ship. "What now, Mac?" he asked.