From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Blue as Ushas - long
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 03:11:05 -0600

Welcome, Chris
>It stands to reason that the ship itself wasn't made for FTL travel,
>otherwise it wouldn't have been made a generation ship. The ship could be
>accelerated to light speed by a miracle, of course, but generally speaking
>the Outsider doesn't work that way. Yes, God does work in mysterious ways,
>but there's a certain perversity involved in manifesting divine power to
>change the course of a starship and violate the laws of physics, and yet
>working so indirectly (through Silk) on affairs inside the starship. As far
>as the time stoppage, if this were a product of the ship's velocity then
>everyone would have experienced it, not just Silk - not to mention there
are
>some other effects of such phenomena that would have been rather disruptive
>to the Whorl.

I agree that FTL travel for the _Whorl_ is very doubtful. Anyway, the usual
take on FTL ships is that they travel *backwards* in time. Therefore the
arrival of the ship in Ushas' far future is even less likely.

-Roy



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