Biggs chuckled.
"But it did work, Sparks. We're now traveling at a speed in excess of five hundred million miles per hour!"
Cap Hanson gulped and looked green. "F-five—?"
"That's right, sir. If you don't believe me take a peek through the viewpanes."
I moved to the fore-wall, slid back the metal slide that covered the quartzite viewpane. Space lay before us—but what space! Not the dark, velvety pall, brightly agleam with an infinitude of starry jewels, that all spacemen know. This was a blotched, striped crazy-quilt of color! Crimson, ochre, emerald—all the hues of the rainbow, of the Aurora. It was beautiful in a mad, fantastic way; there was a faery, magic loveliness to that swift-streaming space that fascinated and at the same time chilled me with dread.
Hanson's eyes bulged, and his voice was fearful.
"We—we've done it again, Biggs! Busted clean out of our universe into something else!"
"No, sir. This is our universe. But we are seeing it as no man has ever seen it before. Our speed is so great that we are seeing the 'landmarks' of space with a distorted viewpoint. Our relationship—or I should say relativity—is no longer to Earth, or any of its sister planets, but to the Greater Constant, the fundamental motion of the universe itself.
"Thus, at one and the same time, we see the planets as they are and as they were; they are no longer mere points in space, they are streaks of color." And he grinned. "The stars, too. Pretty, aren't they?"
Cap Hanson made weak motions at the viewpane.