Chapter 17 third quarter

Pelorat stared at Trevize with wide eyes, seeming to wince.His rectangular face was blank, devoid of any emotion other than a look of extreme discomfort. Then, his eyeballs began to flick to the right—and all the way to the left. Trevize immediately remembered how he had felt the first time he left the atmosphere. He said in an understatement tone as much as possible: "Janov," (this is the first time he has called the old professor so affectionately, but this time it is the veteran comforting the novice, so he has to pretend to be "the boss")" We'll be safe, we're in the belly of the base fleet warship. It's unarmed, but we travel the galaxy, and wherever we go, the name of the base is enough to protect us. Even if any ship goes mad , if you want to attack us, we can get away in an instant. And I assure you, I found myself in complete control of this spaceship."

Pelorat said: "I just thought of it suddenly, G...Glenn, thinking of that empty..." "Hey, there is also nothing around Terminus. We live on the surface of the planet, and there is only a thin layer of air between us and the empty space above. What we are doing now is just passing through the thin air. Just a thin layer." "Although it's only a thin layer, the air we breathe is all there." "We can still breathe here. Compared with the natural atmosphere of Terminus, the air inside the spacecraft is cleaner and purer, and it will always remain so clean and pure."

"What about meteorites?" "What about meteorites?" "The atmosphere can help us block the invasion of meteorites, and in the same way, it can also block radiation." Trevize said: "Man has been traveling in space for twenty thousand years, and I believe—" "Twenty-two thousand years. If we go by the Holbrak Chronology, it obviously goes back to—" "Enough! Have you ever heard of a space accident caused by a meteorite strike or radiation damage? I mean recently? I mean, have any base ships ever had such an accident? ?” "I never really pay attention to the news, but I'm a historian, boy, so listen—"

"In history, yes, such things have indeed happened, but technology is constantly advancing. Any meteorite that is large enough to harm us, as long as it approaches a certain distance, we will definitely take necessary evasion measures. If there are four large meteorites Meteorites, coming from four different directions at the same time, like coming from the four vertices of a regular tetrahedron with the spaceship in the center, we might get hit. But if you calculate the probability of such an event, Then you will find that the chance of observing this interesting phenomenon is no more than 50 percent after you die of old age a trillion trillion times."

"You mean, if you control the computer?" "No," Trevize said in a contemptuous tone: "If I manipulate the computer with my own senses and reactions, then it is very likely that we will be hit by a meteorite before I even realize it. In fact, the people who are actually working It’s a computer, and its reaction rate is millions of times faster than yours and mine.” He suddenly reached out and grabbed Pelorat, “Janov, come, let me show you what this computer can do, and at the same time I'm going to show you what real space looks like." Pelorat stared wide-eyed, and his eyeballs kept rolling.He laughed twice before saying, "I'm not sure I want to know, Grant."

"Of course you hesitate, Janov, because you don't know what you're going to see. Try it! Come! Come to my room!" Trevize grabbed the opponent's hand and half pushed and half pulled him to his room.As soon as Trevize sat down in front of the computer, he asked, "Have you ever seen the Milky Way, Janov? Have you ever looked at it carefully?" Pelorat said, "You mean the one in the sky?" "Of course, is there another one?" "I've seen it, everybody's seen it. Just look up and see it." "Have you ever looked closely at the Milky Way on a dark, clear night, when the cluster of diamonds is below the horizon?"

The so-called "diamond group" refers to a few stars not far from the terminal star, and their luminosity is strong enough, so they can show moderate brightness in the night sky.This small cluster of stars does not extend more than twenty degrees from the celestial sphere, and is below the horizon for most of the night.In addition to this group of diamonds, there are some faint stars scattered all over the night sky, which can only be barely seen with the naked eye.Beyond that, all that's left is the blurry milky Milky Way.Since the terminal star is located at the endpoint of the outermost ring of the spiral arm of the Milky Way, the residents living in this kind of world must look up at night to see the sky like this.

"I suppose so, but why look at it? It's just a common sight." "Of course it's just a common sight," Trevize said. "That's why no one takes a good look at it. If you can see it anytime, anywhere, why pick a time to observe it in detail? But now you have Opportunity to take a good look, and if you look from space, you will see new aspects that you have never seen before. Observing the sky from the surface of the terminal star will always be disturbed by clouds and fog. No matter how you use your eyes, no matter how clear the sky is , no matter how dark the surroundings are, the Milky Way you have seen before is guaranteed to be incomparable to this time. How I wish I had never been to space, so that I can witness the naked beauty of the Milky Way for the first time like you today."

He pushed a chair for Pelorat, "Sit down, Janov, it will take a while, I have to get used to this computer slowly. From the information I have already felt, I know that vision is full information so we don't need any screens. The visualization goes straight into my brain, but I guess I can tell it to generate an objective image that you can see too—can you turn off the lights, please? No, I How stupid, I can tell the computer to do it, and you just sit there." Trevize started to interact with the computer, and felt that the computer held his hand warmly and affectionately. The lights gradually dimmed, and finally went out completely, and Pelorat looked quite disturbed in the darkness.

Trevize said, "Take it easy, Janov. I'm trying to get control of this computer, and maybe I'll run into a little hiccup, but I'll take my steps, so you have to be patient. Do you see that thing? That Crescent?" In the darkness, the crescent hung before their eyes.It was a little dim at first, and the light and shadow flickered a little, but it gradually became clearer and brighter. "Is that Terminus? Are we really that far away from it?" Pelorat's voice was full of awe. "Yes, the spaceship moves very fast." At this time, Apostellar was arcing into the shadow of the night, so Terminus appeared as a bright half-moon.Trevize suddenly had an urge to fly to the sun of this planet in a large arc to see its overall beauty, but finally held back.

Pelorat might have thought it a novel experience, but the beauty was also ordinary.There are countless photographs, maps, and planetariums of this image, and every child knows what Terminus looks like.It is a watery planet - more water than most planets - rich in water and poor in minerals, good for agriculture but not for heavy industry.However, its precision technology and miniaturization industry are the most advanced in the entire galaxy. If he could get the computer to analyze the microwave data and convert it into a visible light model, he could see all the ten thousand inhabited islands on Terminus.Only one of the islands is relatively large, which can barely be regarded as a mainland, and Endpoint City is located on it... turn! It is just a thought, the application of a thought, but the appearance changes in an instant.Like a crescent, the terminal star moved to the edge of the line of sight, and disappeared completely after a while.Now all he could see was the blackness of space, not even a single star. Pelorat cleared his throat and said, "I hope you can get Terminus back, dear boy, I feel blind now." There was a strain in his voice. "You're not blind, look!" A group of translucent misty fog suddenly jumped into their field of vision.The fog gradually spread and became more and more dazzling until the whole cabin seemed to be on fire. miniature! It was another use of thought, and the Milky Way retreated immediately, as if turning the telescope upside down, and continuously increasing the zooming magnification.The Milky Way keeps shrinking, and finally becomes a disk with variable luminosity. Turn up the brightness! The disk gets brighter and brighter, but the scale remains constant.The star system to which the terminal star belongs is located on the "galactic disk", so what they see is not the side of the Milky Way.The image presented to them now is a double helix of the galaxy that has been reduced countless times, corresponding to the result of observing the galaxy from an extremely distant universe.On the side near the terminal star, the gaps of many dark nebulae show arc-shaped dark lines.At the core is a creamy mist, almost shrunk to a point due to the distance, making it look unobtrusive. Pelorat said softly in awe, "You are right, I have never seen a galaxy like this, and I never dreamed that its structure is so complicated." "How could you have been able to see it in the past? The atmosphere of the terminal star is between you and the galaxy, and you can't see the outer half at all, and you can hardly see the core of the galaxy." "It's a pity we can only see it from the side." "It doesn't have to be that way, the computer can show the Milky Way as you see it in every direction. I just want to - and don't have to think too hard." Convert coordinates! This idea is equivalent to a clear instruction.As the image of the galaxy began to slowly change, his mind continued to guide the computer, letting it do what it wanted. The entire galaxy turned slowly, and their line of sight finally came directly above the disk of the galaxy.It now appears that the Milky Way unfolds into a gigantic, shimmering vortex of dark curves and luminous nodes, with a near-invisible flame at its center. "Such a scene can only be seen in space more than 50,000 parsecs away from here. How can the computer display it?" Pelorat asked.He immediately lowered his voice: "Please forgive me for asking this kind of question, I don't know anything about it." "I don't know much more about this computer than you do," Trevize said. "However, even a simple computer has the ability to adjust the coordinates from its sensed true position—that is, The orientation of the computer in space—the Milky Way scene seen by the computer is transformed into the Milky Way seen from any other orientation. Of course, the computer can only use the data it observes, so when it is converted into a wide-angle lens, the image will be blurred. There are gaps and blurs. But now..." "How about it?" "We've got a very realistic visualization. I'm guessing the computer must have stored a complete map of the entire galaxy, so it'll do just as well no matter which angle it's viewed from." "A complete map, what does that mean?" "The space coordinates of every star in the galaxy must be in the computer memory." "Every star?" Pelorat wondered. "Well—maybe not all three hundred billion. But it must include every star of the inhabited planet, and probably every star of the K-type spectrum and hotter, which means that there are at least Seventy-five billion." "To which star does every inhabited galaxy belong?" "I don't want to guarantee that maybe not all of them. In short, in Hari Seldon's time, there were already 25 million inhabited galaxies-although it sounds like a lot, it is actually only 12,000 times the number of all star galaxies. One. While the time of Seldon is five centuries old, the collapse of the empire has not discouraged the continued colonization of mankind, I think it has encouraged it. There are many habitable planets in the galaxy, so there may be three Tens of millions of inhabited galaxies. In the records of the base, it is very likely that some new worlds will be missed." "But what about the old ones? Of course they should all be in there, without exception." "I'm guessing right, of course, I can't guarantee that. But I'd be very surprised if there were any ancient inhabited systems that couldn't be found in the records. Let me show you something - I hope I'm competent enough Take control of the computer." Trevize lowered his hands slightly, the palms seemed to be sunken deeper, gripped more tightly by the computer.In fact, he doesn't need to do that at all, he just needs to silently say in his heart: Terminal Star! When he turned his thoughts, the computer responded immediately, and at the extreme edge of the huge vortex, a shining red diamond-shaped light appeared. "That's our sun," he said excitedly, "the star that Terminus orbits." "Ah—" Pelorat let out a low and trembling sigh. Then, in the center of the Milky Way where the stars gather, a bright yellow point of light suddenly appeared.This point of light is not located in the exact center, but rather towards the terminal star. "That one," Trevize said, "is the sun of Trantor." After another sigh, Pelorat said, "Are you sure? But people always say that Trantor is at the center of the Milky Way." "In a way, it is. Of all the habitable planets, Trantor is the closest to the center, far closer than any of the major inhabited galaxies. Occupied by a black hole with a mass approaching a million stars, the galactic center is a no-go. Based on the information we have, that actual center is devoid of any signs of life, and may not allow life at all. Trantor is located in The innermost ring of the spiral arm, and please believe that if you have the opportunity to witness its night sky, you must think that it is indeed located in the center of the Milky Way, because it is surrounded by countless dense clusters of stars in all directions." "Have you ever been to Trantor, Grant?" asked Pelorat, with obvious envy. "Actually, I haven't been there either, but I have seen a full-scale model of the Trantor night sky." After speaking, Trevize stared at the image of the Milky Way in front of him with a melancholy mood.During the period when the mule appeared, the entire galaxy was looking for the second base. How many people racked their brains to study the map of the galaxy at that time? How many books have recorded, discussed, and interpreted this history in the past more than a century? This is all because Hari Seldon said at the beginning that the second base would be located "on the other side of the galaxy", in a place called "Stars' End". On the other side of the galaxy! As the thought flashed through Trevize's mind, a thin blue line appeared in the visualization.The blue line starts from the terminal star, extends all the way to the center of the galaxy, and after passing through the central black hole, it reaches the edge of the diagonal.Trevize almost jumped out of his chair. He didn't directly order the computer to draw the line, but he had clearly thought about it, and that was enough for the computer. But, of course, this straight line that spans both ends of the galaxy does not necessarily end at the "other end" that Seldon refers to.Ikaty Darrell once used the phrase "a circle has no ends" (if one will believe her autobiography) to illustrate a now-accepted fact...   Trevize quickly tried to suppress this new idea, but the computer's reaction was countless times faster than his.Then the straight line disappeared, replaced by a blue circle around the edge of the galaxy, which arced just past the crimson point of light - the sun of Terminus. A circle has no endpoint, if the starting point of this circle is the endpoint star, if you want to find out its other end, you must go back to the endpoint star.That year, the second base was indeed discovered there, and it was actually in the same world as the first base. However, if in fact, it has not been found at all, what if the so-called "finding the second base" is just a cover? The answer to this riddle, besides the straight line and the circle, can have What reasonable answer? Pelorat suddenly asked, "Are you creating some illusion? Why is there a blue circle?" "I'm just testing the control of the computer - do you want to find out where the Earth is?" After being stunned for a while or two, Pelorat said, "Are you joking?" "No, let me try." Trevize tried it, but nothing happened. "I'm sorry," he said. "No? No Earth?" "I guess I probably misunderstood the command, but this is unlikely. I think the possible explanation is that the data of the earth is not included in the computer." "Perhaps another name is used in the records," Pelorat said. Trevize immediately pressed, "What other name, Janov?" Pelorat said nothing, and Trevize could only smile in the dark.It suddenly occurred to him that many things must wait for the time to ripen before they can come to fruition, so let’s not mention this matter for now.So he deliberately changed the subject and said, "I want to see if I can manipulate time." "Time? How can we do it?" "The Milky Way is a constantly rotating celestial body. It takes nearly 500 million years for the terminal star to make a full circle around the Milky Way. Of course, the closer the star is to the center, the faster it will complete a circle. Every time The movement of a star relative to the central black hole may be recorded in the middle of the computer. If so, it may be possible to ask the computer to speed up those movements by a million times, so that we can see the overall rotation effect. I can try to see— —” He did what he said, and when he was driving his thoughts, the muscles all over his body tensed up involuntarily.It was as if he had grasped the entire galaxy in one hand, pushed it hard, twisted it so that it began to spin against monstrous resistance. The galaxy moved—slowly, solemnly, in the direction that tightened the spiral arms, the galaxy began to spin. Time passed by the eyes of the two with unbelievable steps.It was an unreal, artificial time.With the rapid passage of this artificial time, the stars are no longer eternal, and all of them have turned into passing clouds. Here and there are larger stars, growing redder and brighter as they swell into red giants.Then, in the central cluster, a star exploded silently with blinding brilliance, only to vanish the next instant.But in that brief time, the entire galaxy was eclipsed by it.Then, in one of the spiral arms, there was another such explosion, and a short time later another exploded nearby. "Supernova." Trevize's voice trembled slightly. Could it be that a computer is capable of accurately predicting when a star will explode? Or is it simply using some kind of simplified model to roughly visualize the future fate of stars, rather than making precise predictions? Pelorat said softly in a hoarse voice: "The Milky Way looks like a creature, which is crawling in space." "True," said Trevize, "but I'm getting tired of it. Unless I find a way to make it less strenuous, I won't be able to play this game for much longer." After speaking, he gave up.The rotation of the Milky Way slowed down immediately, then became stationary, and then began to tilt again until the profile image was restored.This is exactly the Milky Way they saw in the first place. Trevize closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.They were now passing through the outermost reaches of the atmosphere, having just skimmed the last puff of thin air.He could sense that Terminus was shrinking, and he could sense every ship in nearby space. But it didn't occur to him to scout out to see if any ships were particularly different; if there was another spaceship that also used gravity propulsion, that was too close to their trajectory, and it was not just a coincidence.