How much formal education is really little more than indoctrination? People with graduate degrees seem to provide a substantial level of understanding of cosmological physics, of 21st century American literature, of mathematics, while often keeping their minds closed to opposing ideas or even common sense. What we seem to be good at doing is persuading individuals that they are considerably more knowledgeable in general than the rest of the population without actually thinking about the issues. If there really is a judgment of some sort, I wonder if the charges lodged against us will turn out to be considerably different from those we hear from the pulpit on Sundays? “I gave you a brain, Beth, and you never used it.”

—Saturday, March 22, 2256

13.

And that inverted bowl they call the sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,

Lift not your hands to it for help—for it

As impotently rolls as you or I.

—Edward Fitzgerald, translation of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (c. 1100), 1887

Finally, at midmorning March 23, Barry informed Hutch that they had arrived. “Transition into normal space is one hour away.” Everybody had known, of course, that this was the day. They also knew of the lack of precision involved in locating the target area. They’d be lucky if they arrived within a hundred light-years of Calliope.

They sat in the galley, congratulating one another, and enjoying a late breakfast. “Hutch, how fast is the star moving?” said Ken, trying to get the details right for his book.

“About forty kilometers per second.”

“Stars routinely move that fast?”

“A lot of them do, yes. Some of them move considerably faster.”

He turned to Derek. “So it’s traveled pretty far since the place where it was when you saw it in the Van Entel.”

“That’s correct.” Derek’s brow wrinkled while he juggled the numbers. “It’s traveled roughly 173 billion kilometers.”

“That would be a long walk.”

“It would.”

“Hutch, since we know its trajectory and everything, we’ll make our exit nearby, right?”

“We know the trajectory and velocity. It’s the distance from Earth where we had to do some guesswork. But we should be okay. What we need is for someone to invent a scope that penetrates through the dimensions. That would allow us to look outside and see where we are before we jump out.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” said Ken.

“I’m not sure it’s possible.”

“It probably is,” said Derek. “We already have a sensor that won’t let us surface inside a planet or a star or even too close to a piece of rock.”

•  •  •

When they got within a few minutes of the transdimensional leap, Hutch returned to the bridge with Derek, while the others took their seats in the passenger cabin, locked the chairs in place, and belted down.

“Okay, Barry,” she said, “activate the Locarno.”

The drive came on line. It hummed softly, like a life support unit in the hull.