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"Not even the crossing of billions of light years of space, visiting planets of other galaxy clusters, measures up to the significance of seeing this probe coming in," I said to Natalia.
"You dreamer!" she said, and hugged me.
Her hug now felt richer in the wake of the mental odyssey in which Odessa had left her mark. It didn't have the connotation of being anything physical. It was perhaps another historic event where the human experience was drawn beyond the limits imposed by its traditional material mentality. Natalia looked up and smiled. She felt something too. She obviously did.
"I have crossed billions of light years while visiting planets of other galaxies," I said to her.
"Sure you have, we all have," she said and smiled. "It's easy to do in dreams. But the probe coming back that's not a dream. That's a miracle."
The luncheon commenced exactly as planned. Nobody worked that day, except for a few volunteers who were involved with the meals and essential tasks. As it turned out the probe didn't arrive on time. It didn't arrive until six that evening. Of course, considering that it had traveled over sixty trillion kilometers, it was more exactly on time than any train or plane ever had been in all of human history.
The computer simulation was ready at midnight. "That's a hell of a good job," said a voice from behind me in the theater when the show commenced. The man who spoke was Martin.
"At first I was fascinated by this ship," he whispered, "because I have a weakness for primitive technology. But this one here is top notch. There's nothing primitive about it."
I leaned back and grinned.
This was music to my ears.
The simulation showed every planet that circled the three suns, including their moons. The simulation could be speeded up, by which the interaction of the various gravitational fields became clearly visible. Also the relative size of each planet was indicated, together with an estimated possibility of finding humanoid life there. One planet showed some hope. It was a smaller planet than the Earth. The planet was orbiting the sun marked Gamma. The planet was indicated to have a relative Earth-mass of point eight.
"Have you ever been on Gamma Point Eight," I whispered to Martin.
He shook his head. "Maybe Bohr has, I must ask him."
Moments later he tapped me on the shoulder. "Odessa asked me to convey her love," he whispered.
"Eh, who is this Odessa?" Natalia got into the act.
I introduced Natalia to him.
"Odessa is my wife," said Martin, "whom your friend had an affair with a couple of eons ago."
Natalia was taking a deep breath, but Martin waved her off: "They spent an afternoon together in my house, and slept together for one night."
"What house?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I had invited your friend to my house on Bohr's planet, that's three galaxy clusters from here. Bohr required my help for a while, so he suggested that Odessa look after your friend. I'm sure James couldn't have told you about it, he doesn't fully understand himself what had happened."
Natalia reacted like I did at first, with her mouth open, speechless, staring into space.
"If you want to get away from this ship for a holiday, my house is open to you both, any time," he added with his usual grin.
Before she could reply Martin was gone, and I was left with the momentous task of explaining the unexplainable.
Somewhere in between all this occurred the great unveiling of the model of Alpha Centauri. Captain Matthew, or Mat, as some people called him who didn't call him Johnny, opened the ceremony with a speech. It was a short speech about the model and those who made it. Then he opened the floor to a dance. Strangely, the person he chose to have his first dance with was Natalia. For the moment it appeared that the bitter war between us, which had nearly spilled out over the whole ship, had been temporarily set aside or had been won by us. It appeared that we had been successful in taking away his battlefield with no loss to ourselves. Or perhaps he felt himself to have been the victor, since we no longer challenged his austere morality. But the real victory, if there was such a thing, was ours. I felt that we had won since we had learned that the freedom indicated in the constitution was merely a challenge to expand our individually, instead of a license to force anyone else onto the same platform. This step forward left the captain off the hook, as he no longer was required to 'authorize' us to be ourselves as our love moved us. Whoever wrote the constitution must have been advanced enough to recognize that the wider horizons it encourages inevitably become a protection also for those left mentally behind, like our captain.
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