RADAR

I guess they usually caught these things early, but this time it was obviously too late. The captain came over the loudspeaker and told us, in cool, mathematical terms, that we would probably end up in the side of a mountain. He didn’t tell us when this would happen, strangely, only that it would. This confused most of us on board. One of us screamed, another laughed. What if he means twenty years from now? said the man next to me. What if he means we’ll end up in the side of a mountain in, like, fifty years—or seventy? I nodded at the man. I certainly couldn’t fault his logic.