Time Travel Omnibus, page 393
The next night there were more empty seats than filled ones.
The second night after that was busy on account of they didn’t show up at all, and we had to get down to the job of returning the 25c., and refusing claims for wasted gas.
And the next night they didn’t come, either; nor the one after that. So then all we had to do was to pitch right in with the job of cleaning up Daniel City—and the reputation it had been getting lately—and the thing was pretty well over.
At least, we say it’s over. Jimmy maintains that’s only the way it looks from here. According to him, all they had to do was to modify out the visibility factor that was causing the trouble, and it’s likely they’re still peeping around—here and other places.
Well, he could be right, at that. Maybe the guy Pawley, whoever he is, or will be, has a chain of Fun Fairs operating all around the world and all through history right now. We wouldn’t know—and just so long as he keeps them out of sight we’d not care a lot, either.
Pawley had been fixed as far as we were concerned. He had to be fixed some way—even the vicar of All Saints appreciated that; and he had something when he began his address of thanksgiving with: “Paradoxical, my friends, paradoxical are the uses of vulgarity.”
And once it was fixed, I could find some time to go round and see Sally again. I found her looking brighter than she’d been in some weeks, and lovelier on account of it. She seemed pleased to see me, too.
“Hullo, Jerry,” she said. “I’ve been reading in the paper how you got it all fixed to fade them out. And I think it was just wonderful of you.”
A bit before, I’d maybe have taken that for a cue, but it didn’t trigger right now. I kind of kept on seeing her with armfuls of twins, and wondering how they got there, in a dead-inside way.
“Go to, honey! It wasn’t a lot. Any other guy might have hit the idea,” I told her, modestly.
“That’s maybe, but there’s a whole lot of people don’t think so. And I’ll tell you another thing I heard to-day. They’re going to ask you to stand for the Council, Jerry.”
“Me, on the Council, that’d be a big laugh——” I began. Then I stopped, kind of smitten. “If——Say, would that mean I’d be called ‘Councillor’ ?”
I asked her.
“Why—why, yes, I guess so,” she said, looking puzzled.
Things shimmered a bit.
“Er—Sally, sweetheart, there’s—er—something—something I’ve been trying to get around to saying to you for quite a while . . .” I began.
THE END
TIME FLAW
Russell Branch
“Throughout the ages it has been the common fate of the traveler, having once lost his beatings, to end up where he had begun. The unfortunate wanderer in deep space may find himself treading the same disheartening circle, not only in Space but Time . . .”
from Speculations and Interpolations
Dean Halverell, Lode Pub. Co. 2150
THE LEGEND
IT was a mere pin-point in space when they first saw it—a fly-speck on the shining face of Infinity.
The younger ones pointed and speculated and wondered. The elders, whose eyes had grown as dim as their hopes, could only shake their heads and return grumbling to the cool of the caves. All but one, a white-haired woman—she still watched and faith helped her sight.
The natives, who had no eyes at all, merely nodded in their own peculiar way and registered impartial patience.
Yet on the morning they all looked again. The flyspeck was still there, infinitesimally larger, immeasurably nearer. They claimed they could mark its progress, those who had seen it at first. They said: Look at the difference in angle! See how much closer to the edge of our Mother!
The natives, who had no mouths to speak, said: It is only to be expected. The white-haired woman said: He has come at last!
But the others could only stare unseeing. They saw only the great golden globe of the Mother Planet, looming stupendous and sheltering against the rim of their own tiny world. They tried to dissuade their young from heartbreaking expectation. Far easier to endure in resignation, they said, than to suffer again the pangs of disappointment. For there have been other calls before your time, other false alarms.
Still the young looked, and one white-haired woman; still the natives waited with dauntless patience.
The third day there was a fleck on the rim of the great planet; by night a star where there had been none before. They began building their signal fire at daybreak, the young and hopeful, while the natives signified approval.
All day they labored, dragging thorny limbs of the giant spider-cactus up the rocky trail. By nightfall the pile was huge on High Point; and the distant star was a comet. The elders came again to plead—but stayed to help. They too called it a “ship” now, and excitedly added their efforts. The natives only nodded again, in a headless way, and withdrew in silent expectancy.
In the morning it was there, burnished and gleaming. A slender silver streak in the cloudless sky. The promise of a tomorrow they never thought would come; the answer to an old woman’s prayer.
A boy was sent running back to the desterted caves. He brought a brand, and they touched off the towering heap of cactus limbs. Its message rolled up in great billowing clouds, and then they retreated higher still, to the very edge of the ultimate crevasse.
Here the younger leaped and danced and shouted, far beyond any thought of exhaustion. “They” would see the signal, they surely would—and the ship was getting closer. But some only watched now and grew more thoughtful, and began to mutter among themselves.
“What’s the matter, old Sour One? You can’t say that isn’t a ship!”
“Yes . . . it’s a ship, all right.”
“Of course it’s a ship! And an Earth ship at that!”
“Yes, but—”
“Just like the one we’ve always pictured! Just like the one you yourself drew for me when I was a lad.”
“Yes . . . just like the one which brought us here.”
There was the trouble. That was what dried their words in the First Settlers’ mouths. For it had been . . . how long?
The trip itself, until their trouble, had ticked off long years on the clocks back home. How long here, on this barren isle? Who could say, where time itself was stranded? Where a man lived to be called “Sour One” by the tenth generation?
Anyway, time had passed. A wisp of time as the natives marked it—but centuries of time as it was measured on Earth. To the old ones who pondered this, who remembered the way of Earth—the ship was impossible. Not a hope, only a ghost from the bitter past.
Thus memory stirred in their unwilling brains, and they looked at each other sadly, shook their heads.
Still the young ones refused to heed. They had heard the Legend before, over and over again. What matter the superstitious tales of a few senile ancients who forever confused past with future? This was today, that was a ship. Their ship, their hope of rescue. The fact was as real as the gleam of her hull.
But there was still the anxiety that she would pass them by. Her course now seemed tangent, not direct as it had appeared at first. More wood was fetched in frantic haste, heaped upon the beacon. Then they all climbed back to the cliff’s top ridge, to hope and pray and watch, while below the natives waited in perfect silence.
The natives knew, the elders knew, but the young still held out to the very last. As they always did, until the answer was plain beyond dispute that there would be no turning. For the ship still held her curve across the face of the Mother Planet: a course as fixed and constant and irrevocable as the blazing orbit of their own giant sun.
Then the Leader told them: told those who would listen. He repeated the Legend as he knew it himself, as it had been repeated through the ages in a speechless tongue. This he told them: what the ship was, and whence it had come, and why it must pass them unswerving by.
Still there were a few whose ears were deaf, whose eyes still uplifted in unquenchable hope. They interrupted now with shouts of triumph. “They’ve seen us, they’ve spotted our signal! They’re launching a lifeboat to pick us up!”
And that seemed true, as far as it went. For there was another pinpoint now, diverging from the gleaming path of the ship itself, rapidly getting bigger.
But the ship herself still sailed on! That posed a fearsome question, even to those who had shouted down the Leader. Had the lifeboat only been abandoned then? Did it only bring those who like themselves were in trouble?
Even this the Leader could answer—and now they all listened. They heard the Legend out to its bitter end—or was it only the beginning?
For the Leader said thus: The space ship and her craft were but a mirage, a shimmering reflection of what had happened long ago. A flaw, as he put it, in the fabric of space and time; the Legend itself was proof indisputable.
Then he paused and waited for the protest he knew would come. It came from the weeping, white-haired woman like a cry of despair . . .
“That’s not true! It can’t be true, for the ship is real!”
His answer was gentle, as to a child. “My dear, if the ship is real, then we are the illusion.”
I
HIS name was Brad Hunter and at twenty-seven he could call himself “Captain.” Captain Brad Hunter, master and owner of the S.S. Stella . . .
It was going to look fine in his obituary, in the report that would list the Stella missing with all aboard. Or rather “elapsed,” which was the official designation since time had grown fluid.
His desk mocked him with its clutter of useless charts and meaningless plot-curves. He raised his eyes and a bright promotion poster leered back at him from the bulkhead above. Vagabond Cruise to Adventure and Riches, it screamed in gaudy letters. Seek Your Fortune Among the Stars!
Well, they were going to get their money’s worth. His eyes drifted hopelessly out toward the open bridge. Spike Casey—First Mate, Second Mate, helmsman and bottleman—was giving the controls his usual go-to-hell attention. Brad’s own feeling of inadequacy rose harsh in his throat.
“Check your course, Mister! Look alive out there!”
That fetched Casey up off the end of his spine, momentarily at least.
“Bearing ought-six-three by two-four.” He added unnecessarily, “She still doesn’t answer.”
“Check speed.”
Spike read the spectra-dial almost unwillingly. “One hundred eighty-three and four, Cap. We’ve gained five hundred.”
Brad’s lips set grimly. “Blow tubes three and four.”
The little mate’s ray-bleached eyebrows went up like twin flags of distress. “That’s all we got left.”
“I said blow three and four, dammit!”
“Blow three and four, yes sir!”
The ship shivered twice and then hurtled on in full free flight. Spike shook his head, watching the dials. But Brad already knew—knew by the seat of his pants alone—that it hadn’t done a bit of good.
He slumped back again, regretting both the command and the tone he had used. Spike was a good man, with a lot of experience. Spike’s only trouble was thinking he could find the rest of the answers in the bottom of a bottle.
But he couldn’t blame Spike for this, and he couldn’t blame the good old Stella. Old, sure . . . the only reason he’d been able to buy her. But her plates had been laid back in the days when they really built ’em, and her hull was as sound as the newest of cruisers.
Most of his money had gone into her conversion. He hadn’t stinted there, despite the Bureau inspector who’d called her a tramp and refused her a commercial license. He’d fitted her out with the newest and best of solar drives, to end up without a license or enough money left for operation. Which was why he found himself now with an inadequate crew and a bunch of landlubbers who could call themselves “partners.” But they were partners who shared neither blame nor responsibility. Trouble was his baby—master and owner.
He turned back to his futile work with slide rule and dividers. How can you navigate when your instruments have gone screwy? When your ship itself is beyond control, lost in the tides of an unknown galaxy?
Captain Hunter . . . For this he’d left a soft Second’s berth on a Martian freighter!
A soft voice behind him echoed the irony of his thought. “Captain Hunter, our handsome skipper . . .”
SHE had come in eagerly, without even knocking. She wore a scant lamp-suit which was completely appealing. Her skin was a smooth golden tan, and her hair was the color of honey. She wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but she had looks and brains and a fascinating nebula of tiny freckles on a pert little nose.
He had kissed her once, in a weak off-moment. He’d been regretting it ever since. A captain can’t fall in love; he has to maintain his distance . . .
“I’ve reminded you before, Miss Fairchild. Passengers are not allowed on the bridge.”
Her lips twisted in a gamin pout, but the hurt showed in her eyes. “Passengers? That’s not the way the articles read, and don’t you think ‘Miss Fairchield’ is just a bit stuffy?”
“The articles say I’m in command,” he said wearily. “What do you want, Fay?”
She slid one slim hip over the corner of his desk. She swung one bare slim leg with almost boyish innocence, She said, “Just our position, Master,” but her eyes said other things, frankly and without equivocation.
Brad frowned. Did that mean the passengers already suspected? That the word had somehow leaked out? “Why?” he asked.
“Why don’t you relax, Brad?” she asked softly. “Why don’t you admit it’s got us both? Why—” and her voice trembled the least little bit, “—don’t you say it?”
“Why do you want to know our position?” he repeated doggedly.
She slid off the desk, still slim and provocative, but her face as stiff as if it’d been slapped. “It’s nothing important. Mr. Mund and I got up a pool—a little bet on the day’s run. We didn’t know it’d be such a deep dark secret.”
He looked down at his desk, involuntarily, and she was instantly by his side. “What is it, Brad? Is something wrong?”
He said simply, “I love you, Fay, and I’m in a spot. Isn’t that enough?”
Her eyes looked into his, shining and clear. “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. Her hand touched his shoulder, and then she was gone, but her fragrance lingered behind like a breath of clean air.
Love . . . and here he was master of a ship running wild!
HE got up heavily and went out on the bridge. Ahead was the growing ball of the unknown planet, and just beyond the speck which was probably a satellite.
“Take your choice,” Spike said cheerfully. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Not at this speed.”
“I still can’t figure it, Cap.”
Brad said absently, “The new solar drive. They do that, theoretically, when the inhibitors go out.”
“Theoretically, hell. I wish we’d picked a cooler system. And it still doesn’t explain what mucked up our controls in the first place.”
Brad frowned, trying to concentrate as he bent over the polariscope, but Spike continued. “So we’re outta luck. But you know the way I look at it myself, Cap? I figure with my luck I shoulda been dead long ago—so all the rest has been gravy.” It was poor philosophy to hand a man who’d just told a girl he loved her. It was also a poor choice of songs that Spike began to hum with heavy irony. It was the “Spaceman’s Lament,” all the rage when they left Earth and which one of the passengers had played incessantly . . .
Fetch me a rainbow and let me ride,
Gonna get to Heaven from the other side . . .
Brad tried to drown it out, but the mournful tune pounded maddeningly, and he finally brought up his head like a dog snapping. “Silence on the bridge, damn you!”
Spike bristled. “Damn yourself, Sir! If you’d stuck to charted territory, we’d be all right. But no, you hadda give ’em adventure. You hadda show that Fairchild fluff—” Brad’s fist lashed out uncontrollably. Spike rolled away from it with the practice of many a grog-shop brawl, then faced up to him, his seamy features regretful but determined. For a second there was only the tense sound of their breathing: the final hesitancy before the irrevocable act.
The bell broke it up. Not any cheerful ding-ding of a ship’s chronometer—but the wild insistent clamor of the alarm above the speed indicator.
It was a sound few men had heard in space and none lived to recall, and they stared at each other speechlessly. Spike finally let out his breath in an awestruck blesphemy. “All our tubes gone, and not a lousy thing we can do about it. We don’t even get the consolation of being blown to hell-’n-gone.”
“There’s one thing,” Brad answered grimly. “Get busy on the speaker. Tell the passengers I want every last one of ’em in the main salon inside of one minute flat.”
This time there was no argument or reluctance. Spike pulled down the overhead mike, and his voice became a ringing echo throughout the ship.
Brad worked the polariscope for a last quick check, and then turned to go.
He paused at the door, looking back. “Spike, I’m sorry.”
Spike nodded slowly. “It must be tough, your first command.” Then he added strangely. “You know, I got the damnedest feeling. It seems like . . . well, like I’m remembering this happening before. Just like this, only a long time ago!”
What startled Brad was neither Spike’s words nor even his feeling. Brad knew from his basic psych training that the sense of deja vu—the false recognition of the “already seen”—was a common illusion. What was strange was that he himself should share the same illusion at the same time!
THE group gathered in the main cabin was as unlikely a bunch of star-knockers as space had ever seen. They looked more like an average lot of tourists, and regarded themselves in the same fond light. For which, Brad thought again, he had only himself to blame. What more could he expect, having made this trip into deep space seem as casual as any vacation cruise to Venus?
