"I am answering, damn it," he roared. "What took you so long?"
"Herrell McCray," droned the tiny voice in his ear, "Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank responding to your message, acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray...."
It kept on, and on.
McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or—no. That was not it; they had heard him, because they were responding. But it seemed to take them so long....
Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was it he called them? Two hours ago? Three?
Did that mean—did it possibly mean—that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took hours to get a message to the ship and back?
And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?
Herrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the guesses of his "common sense." When Jodrell Bank, hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into a position.
If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's message implied; but it was not necessary to "believe," only to act.