“I recognize that long instrument,” Chimal said excitedly. “It’s a telescope, for making far away things look bigger. It can be used for looking at the stars. I wonder what the other instruments do.”

He had forgotten Steel, which she did not mind at all. There was a couch attached to one portion of the wall and she found that she could fix herself in it by tightening straps across her body. She did this and closed her eyes.

Chimal was almost unaware of the lack of any force pulling him down as he read the operating instructions on the machine. They were simple and clear and promised wonders. The stars outside of the bulging, hemispherical window, were rotating in slow circles about a point in the middle. Not as fast as the stars in the observation room, and they weren’t rising or setting, but they were still moving. When he actuated a control, as instructed, he felt a sudden force pulling on him, the girl moaned, and the sensation quickly stopped. When he turned to look out of the doorway it looked as though the tunnel was now turning — and the stars were now still. The room must now be rotating in the opposite direction from the rest of the world, so they were motionless in relation to the stars. What wonders the Great Designer had created!

Once the computer was actuated it needed two points of reference. After it knew these it was self orientating. Following the instructions, Chimal pointed the pilot scope at a bright, glowing red star, fixed it in the crosshairs of the telescope, then pressed the spectrum analysis button. The identification was instantly projected on a small screen: Aldebaran. Not far away from it was another bright star that appeared to be in the constellation he knew as The Hunter. Its name was Rigel. Perhaps it was in The Hunter, it was so hard to tell even well-known constellations with the infinitude of lights that filled the sky.

“Look at it,” he called to the girl, in pride and wonder.

“That is the real sky, the real stars.” She looked quickly and nodded, and closed her eyes again. “Outside this window is space, vacuum, no air to breathe. Just nothing at all, an empty immensity. How can the distance be measured to a star — how can we imagine it? And this, this world of ours, is going from one star to another, will reach it some day. Do you know the name of the star that is our destination?”

“We were taught — but I’m afraid I have forgotten.”

“Proxima Centauri. In an old language that means the closest star in the constellation of the centaur. Don’t you want to see it? What a moment this is. It is one of those out there, right in front of us. The machine will find it.”

Carefully, he set the dials for the correct combination, checking them twice to be sure he had entered the right numbers from the printed 1ist. It was correct. He pressed the actuate button and moved back.

Like the snout of a great, questing animal the telescope shivered and swung slowly into motion. Chimal stayed clear as it turned with ponderous precision, slowed and stopped. It was pointing far to one side, almost 90 degrees from the center of the window.

Chimal laughed. “That can’t be,” he said. “There has been a mistake. If Proxima Centauri were way over there, out to the side, it would mean that we were going past it…”

His fingers shook as he returned to the list and checked his figures over and over again.

“Just look at these figures and tell me if they are true or not — that’s all I ask.” Chimal dropped the papers onto the table before the Master Observer.

“I have told you, I am not very practiced at the mathematics. There are machines for this sort of thing.” The old man stared straight ahead, looking neither at the papers nor at Chimal, unmoving except for his fingers that plucked, unnoticed, at his clothing.

“These are from a machine, a readout. Look at them and tell me if they are correct or not.”

“I am no longer young and it is time for prayers and rest. I ask you to leave me.”

“No. Not until you have given me an answer. You don’t want to answer, do you?”

The old man’s continued silence destroyed the last element of calmness that Chimal possessed. The Master Observer gave a hoarse cry as Chimal reached out to seize his deus and, with a quick snap, broke the chain that supported it. He looked at the numbers in the openings in the front.

“186,293… do you know what that means?”

“This is — close to blasphemy. Return that, at once.”

“I was told that this numbered the days of the voyage, days in old Earth time. As I remember it there are about 365 days in an Earth year.”

He threw the deus onto the table and the old man snatched it up at once, in both hands. Chimal took a writing tablet and a stylus from his belt. “Divide… this shouldn’t be hard… the answer is…” He scrawled a line under the figure and waved it under the Master Observer’s nose. “It’s been over 510 years since the voyage began. The estimate in all the books was five hundred years or less, and the Aztecs believe they will be freed in 500 years. This is just added evidence. With my own eyes I saw that we are no longer going toward Proxima Centauri, but are aimed instead almost at the constellation Leo.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I was in the navigation chamber and used the telescope. The axis of rotation is no longer pointing at Proxima Centauri. We are going somewhere else.”

“These are all very complex questions,” the old man said, dabbing a kerchief at the corners of his red-rimmed eyes. “I remember no relationship between the axis of rotation and our direction…”

“Well I do — and I have checked already to make sure. To keep the navigational instruments functioning correctly, Proxima Centauri is fixed at the axis of rotation. Automatic course corrections are made if it drifts — so we move in the direction of the main axis. This cannot be changed.” Chimal chewed at a knuckle in sudden thought. “Though we might now be going to a different star! Now tell me the truth — what has happened?”

The old observer stayed rigid for a moment longer, then collapsed, sighing, inside the restraining support of his eskoskeleton.

“There is nothing that can be kept from you, First Arriver, I realize that now. But I did not want you to know until you had come to full knowledge. That must be now, or you would not have found out these things.” He threw a switch and the motors hummed as they lifted him to his feet and moved him across the room.

“The meeting is recorded here in the log. I was a young man at the time, then the youngest observer in fact, the others are long since dead. How many years ago was that? I am not sure, yet I still remember every detail of it. An act of faith, an act of understanding, an act of trust.” He seated himself again, holding a red bound book in both hands, looking at it, through it, to that well remembered day.

“We were weeks, months almost, weighing all of the facts and coming to a decision. It was a solemn, almost heart-stopping moment. The Chief Observer stood and read all of the observations. The instruments showed that we had slowed, that new data must be fed in to put us into an orbit about the star. Then he read about the planetary observations and we all felt distress at what had been discovered. The planets were not suitable, that was what was wrong. Just not suitable. We could have been the Observers of the Day of Arrival, yet we had the strength to turn away from the temptation. We had to fulfill the trust of the people in our charge. When the Master Observer explained this we all knew what had to be done. The Great Designer had planned even for this day, for the chance that no satisfactory planets could be found in orbit about Proxima Centauri, and a new course was set to Alpha Centauri. Or was it Wolf 359 in Leo? I forget now, it had been so many years. But it is all in here, the truth of the decision. Hard as it was to make — it was made. I shall carry the memory of that day with me to the recycler. Few are given such a chance to serve.”