Looking behind him, Garth saw that a table and chair had appeared in the otherwise unfurnished room.
“The chair was made for people built just a little different than you,” said The Visitor. “You may have to turn it back-to-front and straddle it to keep your tail out of the way. The food on the table’s good, though, and so’s the drink. Have a snack while I talk.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” said Garth, lifting his long tail with its paddlelike tip out of the way and sitting down carefully.
“Comfortable?” asked The Visitor. “Well, then. I was on a routine flight from old Earth to a star you’ve never heard of, a good many light-years from here. We had pulled away from TransLunar Station on ion drive and headed for deep space. They trusted me, all those men and women, both passengers and crew. They knew that I was careful and accurate. I’d made a thousand flights and had never had any trouble.
“In six hours of flight, we were clear enough from all planetary masses and my velocity vector was right on the nose, so I shifted over into hyper-space. You won’t ever see hyper-space, my boy, and your kids and their kids won’t see it for another two hundred years or more, but it’s the most beautiful sight in the Universe. It never grows old, never grows tiresome.”
His thin voice faded away for a few moments.
“It’s a sight I haven’t seen for seven thousand years, boy,” he said softly, “and the lack of it has been a deep hurt for every minute of all that time. I wish I could tell you what it’s like, but that can’t be done. You will never know that beauty.” He was silent again, for long minutes.
“The long, lazy, lovely days of subjective time passed,” he said finally, “while we slid light-years away from Earth. Everything worked smoothly, the way it always did, until suddenly, somehow, the near-impossible happened. My hydrogen fusion power sphere started to oscillate critically and wouldn’t damp. I had only seconds of time in which to work.
“In the few seconds before the sphere would have blown, turning all of us into a fine grade of face powder, I had to find a star with a planet that would support human life, bring the ship down out of hyper-space with velocity matched closely enough so that I could land on the planet, and jettison the sphere that was going wild.
“Even while I did it, I knew that it wasn’t good enough. But there was no more time. The accelerations were terrific and all my people died. I managed to save myself, and I barely managed that. I did all that could be done, but it just wasn’t enough. I circled your sun for many years before I could make enough repairs to work the auxiliary drive. Then I landed here on this mountaintop. I’ve been here ever since.