"Except you. - But then, Golan, dear chap, talking to you about Earth and trying to teach you a bit of prehistory has its pleasures, too. I don't want that to come to an end, either."
"It won't. Not immediately, at any rate. You don't suppose we'll take the jump and come through on the surface of a planet, do you? We'll still be in space and the jump will have taken no measurable time at ail. It may well be a week before we make surface of any kind, so do relax."
"By surface, you surely don't mean Gaia. We may be nowhere near Gaia when we come out of the jump."
"I know that, Janov, but we'll be in the right sector, if your information is correct. If it isn't - well..."
Pelorat shook his head glumly. "How will being in the right sector help if we don't know Gaia's co-ordinates?"
Trevize said, "Janov, suppose you were on Terminus, heading for the town of Argyropol, and you didn't know where that town was except that it was somewhere on the isthmus. Once you were on the isthmus, what would you do?"
Pelorat waited cautiously, as though feeling there must be a terribly sophisticated answer expected of him. Finally giving up, he said, "I suppose I'd ask somebody."
"Exactly! What else is there to do? - Now, are you ready?"
"You mean, now?" Pelorat scrambled to his feet, his pleasantly unemotional face coming as near as it might to a look of concern. "What am I supposed to do? Sit? Stand? What?"
"Time and Space, Pelorat, you don't do anything. Just come with me to my room so I can use the computer, then sit or stand or turn cartwheels - whatever will make you most comfortable. My suggestion is that you sit before the viewscreen and watch it. It's sure to be interesting. Come!"
They stepped along the short corridor to Trevize's room and he seated himself at the computer. "Would you like to do this, Janov?" he asked suddenly. "I'll give you the figures and all you do is think them. The computer will do the rest."
Pelorat said, "No thank you. The computer doesn't work well with me, somehow. I know you say I just need practice, but I don't believe that. There's something about your mind, Golan..."
"Don't be foolish."
"No no. That computer just seems to fit you. You and it seem to be a single organism when you're hooked up. When I'm hooked up, there are two objects involved - Janov Pelorat and a computer. It's just not the same."
"Ridiculous," said Trevize, but he was vaguely pleased at the thought and stroked the hand-rests of the computer with loving fingertips.
"So I'd rather watch," said Pelorat. "I mean, I'd rather it didn't happen at all, but as long as it will, I'd rather watch." He fixed . his eyes anxiously on the viewscreen and on the foggy Galaxy with the thin powdering of dim stars in the foreground. "Let me know when it's about to happen." Slowly he backed against the wall and braced himself.
Trevize smiled. He placed his hands on the rests and felt the mental union. It came more easily day by day, and more intimately, too, and however he might scoff at what Pelorat said - he actually felt it. It seemed to him he scarcely needed to think of the co-ordinates in any conscious way. It almost seemed the computer knew what he wanted, without the conscious process of "telling." It lifted the information out of his brain for itself.
But Trevize "told" it and then asked for a two-minute interval before the jump.
"All right, Janov. We have two minutes: 120 - 115 - 110 Just watch the viewscreen."
Pelorat did, with a slight tightness about the corners of his mouth and with a holding of his breath.
Trevize said softly, "15 - 10 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0"
With no perceptible motion, no perceptible sensation, the view on the screen changed. There was a distinct thickening of the starfield and the Galaxy vanished.
Pelorat started and said, "Was that it?"
"Was what it? You flinched. But that was your fault. You felt nothing. Admit it."
"I admit it."
"Then that's it. Way back when hyperspatial travel was relatively new - according to the books, anyway - there would be a queer internal sensation and some people felt dizziness or nausea. It was perhaps psychogenic, perhaps not. In any case, with more and more experience with hyperspatiality and with better equipment, that decreased. With a computer like the one on board this vessel, any effect is well below the threshold of sensation. At least, I find it so."
"And I do, too, I must admit. Where are we, Golan?"
"Just a step forward. In the Kalganian region. There's a long way to go yet and before we make another move, we'll have to check the accuracy of the jump."
"What bothers me is - where's the Galaxy?"
"All around us, Janov. We're weal inside it, now. If we focus the viewscreen properly, we can see the more distant parts of it as a luminous band across the sky."
"The Milky Way!" Pelorat cried out joyfully. "Almost every world describes it in their sky, but it's something we don't see on Terminus. Show it to me, old fellow!"
The viewscreen tilted, giving the effect of a swimming of the starfield across it, and then there was a thick, pearly luminosity nearly filling the field. The screen followed it around, as it thinned, then swelled again.
Trevize said, "It's thicker in the direction of the center of the Galaxy. Not as thick or as bright as it might be, however, because of the dark clouds in the spiral arms. You see something like this from most inhabited worlds."
"And from Earth, too."
"That's no distinction. That would not be an identifying characteristic."