The Astral Mirror

by Ben Bova

  “Even leaving that possibility aside,” the psychiatrist continues, “no group of human beings who could be considered to be normal would ever contemplate such a mission. Why, they would have to be a group of exiles. Or religious fanatics.”

  “Like the Pilgrims or Quakers?” somebody asks.

  The engineer says, “I’m assuming that the rocket engines aboard the ark will be based on nuclear fusion. You know, the hydrogen fusion process, such as the Sun and stars use. Hydrogen atoms come together to make a helium atom, and release energy.”

  “No one’s built a fusion rocket,” the physicist points out. “In fact, even the fission rockets—the kind that use uranium or plutonium, where the atoms are split to release energy—have never gone beyond the testing stage. Nobody’s flown one. And the only way we’ve been able to release fusion energy here on Earth is in hydrogen bombs.”

  “I know,” the engineer admits. “But progress in fusion research has been very encouraging over the past few years. I think we can safely agree that fusion power will be available before the end of this century.”

  “Perhaps,” the physicist says reluctantly.

  “Fusion rockets will make tremendous propulsion systems,” the engineer says glowingly.

  The engineer goes on to explain about a study undertaken by Dwain F. Spencer and Leonard D. Jaffe at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Spencer and Jaffe assumed that fusion rockets could be built, and then they tried to design a starship that uses fusion power. The ship they came up with—on paper— had five stages, each one powered by fusion rockets. It can make a round-trip flight to Alpha Centauri in a total elapsed time of 29 years. The ship would accelerate at 32 feet per second, every second, for several months. This is the same force that we feel here on Earth due to our planet’s gravity. So, during the ship’s acceleration period, the crew would feel 1g, their normal Earth weight.

  “After several months of this acceleration, the ship would be traveling at a relativistic speed—fast enough for time effects to come into play. It would then shut down its engines and coast the rest of the way to Alpha Centauri. The same procedure would be followed for the return trip: a few months of 1g acceleration, then coasting flight back to Earth.

  “The 29 years would seem slightly shorter to the ship’s crew,” the engineer says, “because of the relativistic time-dilation effect.”

  “And that’s using power that we know we can harness,” the science fiction writer adds excitedly. “Why, maybe early next century we could reach Alpha Centauri! People alive today might make the trip!”

  “Excuse me,” says the astronomer. “Have any of you heard of the Bussard interstellar ramjet?”

  “R. W. Bussard was a physicist at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory when he thought of the interstellar ramjet idea,” the astronomer explains.

  “Bussard realized that one of the main drawbacks to any rocket engine is that it must carry all of its propellant with it. Spencer and Jaffe’s five-stage fusion rocket, for example, must be more than 90 percent hydrogen propellant—allowing very little payload for such a huge vehicle. The rocket must also spend a considerable amount of its energy just lifting its own propellant mass. The situation becomes a vicious circle. As long as you must carry all the rocket’s propellant along with you, any increase in speed must be paid for by more propellant mass. When you’re considering flight at close to the speed of light, this becomes a serious obstacle. It poses a fundamental limitation on the amount of energy you can get out of the fusion rocket.

  “But suppose the interstellar ship didn’t have to carry any fuel at all? It could carry much more payload. And its range would be unlimited—it could go anywhere, at close to light speed, as long as it could somehow find propellant to feed to its engines.

  “Interstellar space is filled with propellant for a hydrogen fusion rocket—hydrogen gas. There is enough hydrogen gas floating freely among the stars to build billions of new stars. This is an enormous supply of propellant.

  “However,” the astronomer admits, “when I use the word filled I’m being a little overly dramatic. The hydrogen gas is spread very thinly through most of interstellar space... no more than a few atoms per cubic centimeter. By contrast, there are more than 1019 atoms per cubic centimeter in the air we’re breathing. That’s ten million trillion atoms in the space of a sugar cube. Out among the stars, there are fewer than ten atoms per cubic centimeter.

  “Bussard calculated that the ramjet will need a tremendously large scoop to funnel in a continuous supply of hydrogen for the fusion rocket engines. For a ship with a payload of 1,000 tons—about the size of a reasonable schooner—a funnel some 2,000 kilometers in radius would be needed.”

  The mathematician smiles. “I’m tempted to say that such a scoop would be astronomically big.”

  “Yes,” the engineer says, “but there’s plenty of open space out there.”

  “And the scoop needn’t be solid material,” the physicist adds. “If you could ionize the hydrogen with laser beams, so that the atoms are broken up into electrically charged ions, then the scoop could be nothing more than an immense magnetic field—it would funnel in the electrified ions quite nicely.”

  “Such a ship,” the astronomer goes on, “can reach the nearest stars in a few years—of ship time, that is. The center of the Milky Way would be only about 20 years away, and the great spiral galaxy in Andromeda could be reached in about 30 years. Of course, the elapsed time on Earth would be thousands, even millions of years.”

  “Even forgetting that for a moment,” the science fiction writer asks, “don’t you think the crew’s going to get bored? Spending 20 or 30 years traveling isn’t going to be much fun. And they’ll be getting older...”

  A polite cough from the other side of the table turns everyone’s head toward the biochemist.

  “As long as we’re stretching things,” he says, “we might as well consider the possibility of letting the crew sleep for almost the entire flight—slowing down their metabolism so that they don’t age much at all.”

  “Suspended animation?” the writer asks.

  With a slightly uncomfortable look, the biochemist replies, “You could call it something like that, I suppose. I’m sure that by the time we’re ready to tackle the stars, a technique will have been found to freeze a human being indefinitely. You could freeze the crew shortly after takeoff and then have them awakened automatically when they reach their destination. They won’t age while they’re hibernating.”

  “This is the idea of freezing them at cryogenic temperatures, isn’t it?” the medical doctor asks.

  Nodding, the biochemist says, “Yes. Temperatures close to absolute zero. Nearly 400 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit thermometer.”

  “That simply can’t be done,” the doctor says firmly.

  “Not now,” the biochemist agrees. “But by the end of this century, we might have learned how to quick-freeze live human beings without damaging their cells.”

  The doctor looks unconvinced and shakes his head.

  “I must point out,” the psychiatrist says, “that you still have the basic problem of motivation on your hands. Who would want to leave the Earth, knowing that he would return to a world that’s several thousand years older than the one he left?”

  “It would be a one-way trip, wouldn’t it?” the writer muses. “Even if the crew comes back to Earth, it won’t be the same world that they left. It’ll be like Columbus returning to Spain during the time of Napoleon.”

  “Or Leif Ericson coming back to Scandinavia, next week.”

  “The crew members will want to bring their families with them,” the writer points out. “They’ll have to.”

  “Nothing man has ever done comes even close to such an experience,” the psychiatrist says.

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” objects the anthropologist. He has been sitting next to the psychiatrist, listening interestedly and smoking a pipe through the wh
ole discussion.

  Now he says, “The Polynesian peoples settled the islands of the Pacific on a somewhat similar basis. They started in one corner of the Pacific and expanded throughout most of the islands in the central regions of that ocean. And they did it on a somewhat haphazard basis—a mixture of deliberate emigrations into unknown territory plus accidental landings on new islands when ships were blown off course by storms.”

  “That’s hardly...”

  “Now listen,” the anthropologist insists quietly. “The Polynesians ventured out across the broad Pacific in outrigger canoes. Their travels must have seemed as dark and dangerous to them as interstellar space seems to us. They left their homes behind—purposely, in the case of the emigrants. Usually, when they were forced to emigrate because of population pressure or religious differences, they took their whole families along. But they knew they’d never return to their original islands again. That’s how Hawaii was first settled, and most of the other islands of the central Pacific.”

  “That is somewhat similar to starflight,” the psychiatrist agrees.

  “So we can reach the stars after all,” the science fiction writer says. “It’s not fundamentally impossible.”

  “It won’t be simple,” the engineer insists.

  “Yes, but imagine a time when we can travel with interstellar ramjets from star to star.”

  “You’ll never be able to go back to the same place again,” the physicist reminds him. “Too much time will have elapsed between one visit and the next.”

  “I understand,” the writer answers. “But consider it: Starship crews would be forced to think ahead in terms of centuries. They’d never know what would be coming up next, what the next world would hold for them. What an age for adventure!”

  The mathematician chuckles. “And if a star traveler should deposit a few dollars in a savings account, then come back several centuries later, what an age for compound interest!”

  The science fiction writer turns his beaming face to the panel of experts and thanks each one of them in turn.

  “You have certainly answered my problem. I can now write about interstellar ramjets, where the crews are frozen during the travel time from one star to the next. Why—the crew members will become virtually immortal! Who needs Mars? The rest of the universe is going to be much more exciting!”

  Free Enterprise

  Much has been said and written about the failures of American industry and the successes of the Japanese. Here is a tale that examines an industry I know rather well, publishing, and shows why we may soon be buying our books from Japan, as well as our automobiles and television sets. If any of my friends in the publishing industry take umbrage at this candid appraisal, good !

  The Idea

  It happened at approximately midnight, late in April, when they both should have been studying for their final exams.

  Mark Moskowitz (a.k.a. “Mark the Monk”) and Mitsui Minimata shared a rented room over one of Berkeley’s shabbier head shops, less than a half-mile from the campus. Mark was going for his doctorate in logic; Mitsui was working doggedly toward his in electrical engineering. The few friends they had, years later, claimed that the idea was probably inspired by the various strange aromas wafting up from the shop below their room.

  Mark’s sobriquet was two-edged: not only did he have the heavy-browed, hairy, shambling appearance of an early homonid; he was, despite his apeish looks, exceedingly shy, bookish, and unsocial to the point of reclusiveness. Mitsui was just the opposite: tiny, constantly smiling, excruciatingly polite, and an accomplished conversationalist. Where Mark sat and pondered, Mitsui flashed around the room like an excited electron.

  He was struggling with a heavy tome on electrical engineering, just barely managing to stagger across the room with it, heading for his reading chair, when he tripped on the threadbare rug and went sprawling face-first. Mark, snapped out of his glassy-eyed introspection by the thud of his roommate’s impact on the floor, spent a moment focusing his far-sighted eyes on the situation. As Mitsui slowly sat up and shook his head groggily, Mark heaved himself up from the sagging sofa which served as his throne, shambled over to his friend, picked the little Japanese up with one hand, the ponderous textbook in the other, and settled them both safely on Mitsui’s reading chair.

  “Thank you ten thousand times,” said Mitsui, after a sharp intake of breath to show that he was unworthy of his friend’s kindness.

  “You ought to pick on books your own size,” Mark replied. For him, that amounted to a sizzling witticism.

  Mitsui shrugged. “There are no books my size. Not in electrical engineering. They all weigh a metric ton.”

  Mark glared down at the weighty tome. “I wonder why they still print books on paper. Wouldn’t electrons be a lot lighter?”

  “Yes, of course. And cheaper, as well.”

  “H’mm,” said Mark.

  “H’mm,” said Mitsui.

  And they never spoke of the idea again. Not to each other, at least. A month later they received their degrees and went their separate ways.

  The Presentation

  Gene Rockmore blinked several times at the beetle-browed young man sitting in his office. “Mark M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.,” the visitor’s card said. Nothing else. No phone number or address. Rockmore tried to engage the young man in trivial conversation while studying him. He looked like a refugee from a wrestling school, despite his three-piece suit and conservative tie. Or maybe because of them; the clothes did not seem to be his, they barely fit him, and he looked very uncomfortable in them.

  For several minutes Rockmore chatted about the weather, the awful cross-town traffic, and the dangers of being mugged on Manhattan’s streets. He received nothing back from his visitor except a few grunts and uneasy wriggles.

  Why me? Rockmore asked himself silently. Why do I have to get all the crazies who come in off the street? After all, I’m a vice president now. I ought to be involved in making deals with agents, and taking famous writers out to lunch. At least Charlene’s father ought to let me get into the advertising and promotion end of the business. I could be a smash on the Johnny Carson show, plugging our company’s books. Instead, I have to sit here and deal with inarticulate ape-men.

  Rockmore, who looked like (and was) a former chorus boy in a Broadway musical, slicked back his thinning blond hair with one hand and finally asked, “Well, eh, just what is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Mos... I mean, Dr. Moskowitz?”

  “Electronic books,” said Mark.

  “Electronic books?” Rockmore asked.

  “Uh-huh.” And for the next three hours, Mark did all the talking.

  Mitsui hardly spoke at all, and when he did, it was in Japanese, a language both simple and supple. Most of the time, as he sat side-by-side with the vice president for innovation at Kanagawa Electronics and Shipbuilding, Inc., Mitsui tapped out numbers on his pocket computer. The v.p. grinned and nodded and hissed happily at the glowing digits on the tiny readout screen.

  The Reception

  Robert Emmett Upton, president of Hubris Books, a division of WPA Entertainment, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Moribundic Industries, Inc., which in turn is owned by Empire State Bank (and, it is rumored, the Mafia), could scarcely believe his ears.

  “Electronic books? What on earth are electronic books?”

  Lipton smiled gently at his son-in-law. It didn’t do to get tough with Rockmore. He simply broke down and cried and went home to Charlene, who would then phone to tell her mother what a heel her father was to pick on such a sensitive boy as Gene.

  So the president of Hubris Books rocked slowly in his big leather chair and tried to look interested as his son-in-law explained his latest hare-brained scheme. Lipton sighed inwardly, thinking about the time Rockmore suggested to the editorial board that they stop printing books that failed to sell well, and stuck only to best sellers. That was when Rockmore had just graduated from the summer course in management at Harvard. Ten years later, an
d he still didn’t know a thing about the publishing business. But he kept Charlene happy, and that kept Charlene’s mother happy, and that was the only reason Lipton allowed Rockmore to play at being an executive.

  “So it’s possible,” Rockmore was saying, “to make the thing about the size of a paperback book. Its screen would be the size of a book page, and it could display a page of printed text or full-color illustrations...”

  “Do you realize how much color separations cost?” Upton snapped. Instantly he regretted his harshness. He started to reach for the Kleenex box on the shelf behind his chair.

  But Rockmore did not burst into tears, as he usually did. Instead he smirked. “No color separations, Papa. It’s all done electronically.”

  “No color separations?” Lipton found that hard to believe. “No color separations. No printing at all. No paper. It’s like having a hand-sized TV set in your... er, hand. But the screen can be any page of any book we publish.”

  “No printing?” Lipton heard his voice echoing, weakly. “No paper?”

  “It’s all done by electronics. Computers.”

  Lipton’s mind was in a whirl. He conjured up last month’s cost figures. The exact numbers were a blur in his memory, but they were huge—and most of them came from the need to transport vast tonnages of paper from the pulp mills to the printing plants, and then from the printing plants to the warehouses, and then from the warehouses to the wholesalers, and then...

  He sat up straighter in his chair. “No paper? Are you certain?”

  Mitsui bowed low to the president of Kanagawa. The doughty old man, his silver hair still thick, his dark eyes still alert, sat on the matted floor, dressed in a magnificent midnight-blue kimono. He barely nodded his head at the young engineer and the vice president for innovation, both of whom wore Western business suits.

  With a curt gesture, he commanded them to sit. For long moments, nothing was said, as the servants brought the tea. The old man let his favorite, a young woman of heartbreakingly fragile beauty, set out the graceful little cups and pour the steaming tea.