Captive of the Centaurianess by Poul Anderson Page B

he drifted weightless while Jupiter whizzed past the viewports.
    The engine throbbed, the hull shivered— wasted energy, but what could you expect from an experimental model? Stars blazed in his sight. Struck by a thought, he cast a terrified glance at certain meters. Relief left him weak. Even surface flyers in the Jovian System were, necessarily, equipped with superb magnetohydrodynamic radiation screens. Those of this boat were operating well. Whatever else happened, he wouldn't fry.
    The stars began to change color, going blue forward and red aft. Was he traveling so fast already?
    "Vat planet is that?" Dyann pointed at a pale gray globe.
    "I think—" Ray stared behind him. "I think it was Neptune."
    The stars appeared to be changing position. They crawled away from bow and stern till they formed a kind of rainbow around the waist of the boat. Elsewhere was an utter black. Optical aberration , he understood. And I'm seeing by Dopplered radio waves and X-rays. What happens when we pass the speed of light itself? No, we must have already—is this what it feels like, then? The starbow of science fiction song and story pinched out into invisibility; he flew through total blindness. If only we'd figured out some kind of speedometer .
    "Glorious, glorious!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together as if he were foreclosing on yet another mortgage. "My teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now eben te Eartlings must needs admit tat I  am always right. And how tey will habe to pay!"
    Dyann's laughter rolled Homeric through the hull. "Ha, ve are free!" she bawled. "All the vorlds are ours to raid. Oh, vat fun it is to ride in a vun-force boat and slay!"
    Ray reassembled his wits. They'd better slow down and turn around while they could still identify Sol. He made himself secure in his seat, studied the gauges, calculated what was necessary, set the controls, and pushed the master switch.
    Nothing happened. The vessel kept on going.
    "Hey!" the man wailed. "Who"! . . . Urushkidan, what's wrong? I can't stop accelerating!"
    "Of course not," the Martian told him. "You must apply an exact counterfunction. Use te omega-wabe generator."
    "Omega wave? What the hell is that?"
    "Why, I told you—"
    "You did not."
    Ray and Urushkidan stared at each other. "It seems," the Martian said at length, "tat tere has been a certain failure of communication between us."
     
    Weightlessness complicated everything . By the time that a braking system had been improvised, nobody knew where the boat had gotten to.
    This was after a rather grim week. The travelers floated in the cabin and stared out at skies which, no matter how splendid, seemed totally foreign. Silence pressed inward with a might that would have been more impressive were it not contending against odors of old cooking and unwashed bodies.
    "The trouble is my fault," Dyann said contritely. "If I had brought Ormun, she vould have looked after us."
    "Let's hope she takes care of the Solar System," Ray said. "The Jovians aren't fools. When we left Ganymede, jetless, it must've been obvious we'd built the drive. They'll want to take action before we can give it to Earth."
    "First," Urushkidan pointed out, "we habe to find Eart."
    "It should be possible," Ray said. His tone lacked conviction. "We can't have gone completely out of our general part of the galaxy. Could those foggy patches yonder be the Magellanic Clouds? If they are, and if we can relate several bright stars to them—Rigel, for instance—We should be able to estimate roughly where we've come to."
    "Bery well," Urushkidan replied, "which is Rigel?"
    Ray held his peace.
    "Maybe ve can find somevun who knows," Dyann suggested.
    Ray imagined landing on a planet and asking a three-headed citizen, "Pardon me, could you tell me the way to Sol?" Whereupon the alien would answer, "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself."
    Never being intended for proper space trips, the boat carried no navigational or