Janet's eyes were shining... like a woman in love, or like a relativistic mathematician who has just found a new way to work a transformation. "So they've done it!" she said in a hushed voice.-- Robert A. Heinlein, Time For the Stars, 1956"Done what?" I asked. She was certainly taking it in a big way; I hadn't realized she was that anxious to get home.
"Tommie, don't you see? They've done it, they've done it, they've applied irrelevance. Dr. Babcock was right."
"Huh?"
"Why, it's perfectly plain. What kind of a ship can get here in a month? An irrelevant ship, of course. One that is faster than light." She frowned. "But I don't see why it should take even a month. It shouldn't take any time at all. It wouldn't use time."
I said, "Take it easy, Janet. I'm stupid this morning—I didn't have much sleep last night. Why do you say that ship... uh, the Serendipity... is faster than light? That's impossible."
"Tommie, Tommie... look, dear, if it was an ordinary ship, in order to rendezvous with us here, it would have had to have left Earth over sixty-three years ago."
"Well, maybe it did."
"Tommie! It couldn't possibly — because that long ago non body knew that we would be here now. How could they?"
I figured back. Sixty-three Greenwich years ago... mama, that would have been sometime during our first peak. Janet seemed to be right; only an incredible optimist or a fortune teller would have sent a ship from Earth at that time to meet us here now. "I don't understand it."
"Don't you see, Tommie? I've explained it to you, I know I have. Irrelevance. Why, you telepaths were the reason the investigation started; you proved that "simultaneity' was an admissible concept , . . and the inevitable logical consequence was that time and space do not exist."
I felt my head begin to ache. "They don't? Then what is that we seem to be having breakfast in?"
"Just a mathematical abstraction, dear. Nothing more." She smiled and looked motherly. "Poor 'Sentimental Tommie.' You worry too much."
It was a long time ago when I read it. How were the telepaths able to communicate instantaneously over the vast distances again?