"—can't come back ... Skipper.... Sparks will understand. Tell him ... mass-energy ... relationships. And tell ... Diane ... I love...."
That was all. And my brain reeled beneath the import of those fading words. Suddenly I knew! I didn't need to hear Cap Hanson screaming wild orders to the sailors on the aft deck below, nor to hear their answer.
"He's not here, sir. He cast off the auxiliary a moment or so ago."
I knew!
Later, I told them. My explanation was short, for the solution was simple. Simple, once you grant that a man can possess infinite loyalty, infinite courage, in one lean and gangling frame.
"Biggs saw," I said, "that there was only one way to save us all from death. Oh, he had blundered, yes, but we all blunder sometimes. But not all of us pay the penalty as willingly, as bravely, as he did.
"Jupiter was upon us. Within minutes we would have crashed into the greatest of the solar planets. Only Biggs saw a way out. And that was—to make the speed of our ship exactly approximate the speed of light at the moment of impact!"
Dick said, "But how—"
"He told us the answer. Mass-energy relationships. You know the fundamental theory of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. Objects moving in space are contracted along their major axis in direct proportion to their speed, with the limiting velocity, the speed of light, as their ultimate limit. In other words, at the precise speed of light, this ship existed in only a unilateral dimension!"