“In the galley, I think,” I said, sitting down at the instrument table beside him.
“I don’t want Dolores to hear me. I’ve been wondering whether I should try and have her communicate again with the outside. It has been a month since we did that.”
This, almost more than any other aspect of our adventure, interested me. “Tell me about those thought communications, Dr. Weatherby.”
“There is nothing else to tell. There seem to be two . . . shall we call them people? A young man and a girl. They are in dire distress. The man is intelligent—more so than we are, I should judge. He was surprised to have us answer him.”
“Does he know where we are?”
“No, I think not. But when I told him, he seemed to understand. Dolores gets, not words, but ideas, which naturally she can only translate into our English words. But, Leonard, I do not conceive these beings will be physically of an aspect very different from ourselves. We are . . . so close to them.”
“Close!”
He smiled. “Quite close, Leonard. One of them might be holding us—our whole universe—on the palm of his hands. An inch from a thumb, a foot from his ear. I was thinking of that when I was trying to fathom the possible velocity of thought-waves. It’s all in the viewpoint. His thoughts would not have to travel far to reach us. His brain gives orders to his muscles in a fraction of a second over a far greater distance.”
The dials showed us to be ten thousand light-years from earth, our velocity fifty light-years an hour, when Dr. Weatherby called to us all to assemble in the instrument room. Days, or what would have been days on earth, had passed since we started.
I had lost all count, though upon Dr. Weatherby’s charts the relative time-values were recorded. We ate regularly, slept when we could.