“So there’s a contradiction here,” said Nisa, resting her head on her hand in a childish manner, “the stronger the gravitational field the slower we have to fly!”

“That’s only true where velocities close to the speed of light are concerned, when the spaceship is something like a ray of light and can only move in a straight line or along the so-called curve of equal tension.”

“If I’ve understood you correctly we have to aim our Tantra light ray straight at the solar system.”

“That’s where the great difficulty of space travel comes in. It’s practically impossible to aim directly at any star although we make all the corrective calculations imaginable. Throughout the entire journey we have to compute the accumulating error and constantly change the course of the ship so that no automatic piloting is possible. Our position now is a dangerous one. We have nothing left to start another acceleration going so that a halt or even a considerable reduction in speed after this acceleration would be certain death. Look, the danger is here — in area 344 4- 2U that has never been explored. Here there are no stars, no inhabited planets, nothing is known except the gravitational field — there is its edge. We’ll wait for the astronomers before we make the final decision — after the fifth circle we’ll wake up everybody but in the meantime….” The commander rubbed his temples and yawned.

“The effect of the sporamin is wearing off,” exclaimed Nisa, “you can go to sleep!”

“Good, I’ll be all right here, in this chair. Suppose a miracle happens… just one sound from them!”

There was something in Erg Noor’s voice that sent Nisa’s heart palpitating with her love for him. She wanted to take that stubborn head of his, press it to her breast and stroke the dark hair with its prematurely grey threads.

Nisa got up, placed the reference sheets carefully together and turned out the light, leaving only a dull green glow that illuminated the instrument panels and the clocks.