“Just once.”
“In normal space,” Ramsey explained, “we feel acceleration and deceleration because the increase or decrease in velocity is experienced at different micro-instants by all the cells of our body. In hyper-space the velocity is felt simultaneously in all parts of the ship, including all parts of us. We become weightless, of course, but the change is instant and we feel no pressure, no pain.”
Ramsey was waiting until 0134:57 on the ship chronometer. At that precise instant in time, and at that instant only, blastoff would place them on the proper hyper-space orbit. And, before they could feel the mounting pressure of blastoff, the timelessness of hyper-space would intervene.
“0130:15,” Margot read the chronometer for Ramsey. “It won’t be long now. 30:20—”
“All right,” Ramsey said suddenly. “All right. I can read the chronometer.”
“Why, Ramsey! I do believe you’re nervous.”
“Anxious, Margot. A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover. You’ve got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you fifty thousand light years off course.”
“So? All you’d have to do is re-enter hyper-space and go back.”
Ramsey shook his head. “Hyper-space can only be entered from certain points in space. We’ve never been able to figure out why.”
“What certain points?”