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"It was their choice to follow this path," he replied when I pressed him for a statement. He said that he had warned what would happen.
He didn't have to say more than this. Everyone had been at the conference in the great auditorium during gravity change when he gave his warning. Everyone knew what he had said.
I respected Olaf for not mentioning the captain's fault for the tragedy. I took it as a sign of compassion, even though normally he wouldn't bother wasting any breath over what he knew we would be aware of already. It also might have been, as he once told me, that the concept of a future or of a past held no validity with him. It was no longer a part of his experience, but a measure that pertained to a universe of limits that he had withdrawn himself from. He did though, speak at great length of the prospects ahead of us, of our exploring with him the secrets of the planet 'O'. He spoke of the 'O' people as a civilization that has been remarkably successful, that also had become gentle, caring, even to the point that the very concept of peace no longer seemed to apply. It didn't apply, since the opposite, apparently, was inconceivable by them.
Olaf explained that the ship would be put in orbit over planet 'O' and become mankind's base of operations for a real first contact. He offered that his own home planet, Bohr's planet, should be used to serve as a logistical base and as a base for resting and learning the language that was spoken on 'O'. He suggested that there could be a daily shuttle service set up between the two planets, and of course an hourly shuttle between the orbiting ship and the planet surface of 'O'. There would, of course, be a constant interchange with the people from 'O' and those in the ship where he himself would become one of us for the duration of the exploration project.
He spoke a fascinating language, like a science fiction writer might speak whose story fires on the imagination. Only once in a while we got jolted back to the incomprehensible awareness that this was actually real what he talked about.
At one point a mathematics genius asked how he intended to get us across three galaxy clusters in the space of a lifetime, and back to Earth.
I still remember his smile. Olaf just sat there and smiled. "Go to the planetarium," he said to the man. "You will discover that we are already there."
The only explanation as to how this was possible, that he was able to give, was based on revealing the secret behind the nose cone of the ship that had allowed them to make their journey to Alpha Centauri in the first place.
"Now Bohr would have his chance!" I said to myself. As far as I could tell, I was not alone with this assessment. As far as I could tell Olaf was truly his old self again, the old Bohr coming to life. We all had a chance now to make discoveries, of ourselves and a of a new world, beyond anything we ever hoped for or had dreamed of.
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