What do we mean by “now,” really? It’s odd to be compelled to think in relativistic terms. At this moment, the creatures on Wolf 25 (the planet circling its dark companion, technically) are unaware of our existence. We’re twelve light-years away, so in twelve years they will be able to observe the raging matter/antimatter beacon of our braking engine.

If things have gone according to plan—you could also say “if things are going to be going according to plan”—our prerecorded explanation of what we are attempting to do will have preceded the beacon by exactly one hundred days.

Their response to our pacifistic message might be to blow us out of their sky as soon as the beacon appears. If they did that, when would it happen? How long do we have before we know they haven’t killed us?

If we take the worst possible case, that they attack the instant they see us, their response can’t come faster than the speed of light. So, if my notebook is right, we will meet our doom no sooner than three years and some weeks.

Unless they figure out a way around the speed of light. Then we could be doomed any old time. As we could, supposedly, any time Other-prime decides the universe would be better off without us.

So it’s eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. I can do something about the eat and drink part. Tonight it will be meat loaf without meat, served with wine that’s not wine, all washed down with water distilled from our various body wastes. Be merry.

Chapter 9 - RELATIVITY IS RELATIVE?

9

RELATIVITY IS RELATIVE?

On Spy’s fourth trip into ad Astra, it dropped a bombshell. For some reason it chose me to tell it to, not exactly the most technically sophisticated woman aboard.

Spy had said it wanted to talk to us one at a time, so we were sitting on the floor in “the onion field,” the part of the garden where we cultivated scallions and garlic.

We’d been talking about human history and customs, and as always, I was trying to extract information about the Others in return. I asked it about the voyage out here with Other-prime. Did they have anything like a social relationship? What did they do to pass the time?

“Carmen, there was no actual ‘time’ to pass. We knew in what part of space-time you would be turning around, and we just went there. Went here, approximately.”

“Wait. You just went here? Without traveling the twelve light- years in between?”

“Of course we traveled the distance. We got here. But there was no reason for the journey to have any duration, so it didn’t.”

“You were on Triton one instant, and here the next?”