The Final Countdown, page 11
“Say again, Buster.”
“Uh, sorry, sir. It just took me by surprise. Those planes, the ones below us. I swear they’re Zero fighters. You know, the old Mitsubishi Zeros out of the Second World War. Over.”
Lasky tapped Yelland’s arm. “The mike. May I?” Yelland pushed a headset and microphone to him and Lasky spoke immediately. “Uh, Buster One from Old Salt One. Can you get a good look at the bogies? They might not be Zero fighters. There are a bunch of old SNJ trainers rebuilt to look like Zeros for Hollywood. Can you be certain of your identification?” Yelland looked with open admiration at Lasky. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that? There were a bunch of pilots who rebuilt and flew World War II fighters and bombers and trainers. That outfit in
Florida; the Valiant Air Command. And the Confederate Air Force down in Texas. There were others. They flew every old warplane on which they could get their hands. My God, maybe all this wasn’t so crazy after all. The bubble burst.
“Old Salt One, we can’t see that kind of detail from up here, but there’s no way they could be the modified trainers. We’ve got radar track over the surface of those two aircraft and they’re cruising at 200 knots, which is faster than the old SNJ could ever do. Maybe it’s an air show of some kind. I heard they had a couple of Zero fighters flying, and it could be a kind of special ceremony for the Pearl Harbor anniversary. Over.”
Lasky shook his head slowly at Yelland, who nodded his own agreement. Yelland spoke into his mike. “Have you been spotted, Buster?”
“Negative on that, sir. We’re too high. We’ve got our wings swept forward and we’re making S-turns to stay well behind them. We can pretty much hold six o’clock high on those old crates. Over.”
“Very good, Buster. Continue as you are. Try to keep them in visual contact at all times and maintain your position out of their visual. Take no action without direct clearance from Old Salt One. Do you copy? Over.”
“Copy five by five, sir.”
Yelland removed his headset “Mr. Damon, you will assume the con, if you please. I will be in my cabin with Mr. Lasky.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
12
They ate lunch quietly, by unspoken agreement holding off from the conversation Matthew Yelland and Warren Lasky knew they must finally broach. The mess attendant cleared away the dishes, left a full pot of coffee, and at Yelland’s orders closed the door behind him, leaving the two men alone. The captain opened a humidor and offered Lasky a slim dark cigar. As he lit up, Yelland spoke easily. “I used to smoke these before ’nam. One of the things that helped pull me through in two years of solitary, in a cage not big enough so I could stand, was to smoke three imaginary cigars every day. I suppose I actually mesmerized myself. I could smell them and taste them and it became a ritual. Now,” he sighed, “I’m keeping a promise I made to the me that used to be in the cell. Three a day. The flight sturgeon,” Yelland said with an easy laugh, “gives me hell. He tells me smoking isn’t good for my lungs after all the damage they took. What the hell does he know? These are the things that saved my sanity and my life.” Yelland let smoke drift from his nostrils. He looked at the smoke as he spoke to Lasky.
“Warren, you ever wear the uniform?”
Lasky didn’t miss the first name from the other man. He twirled the cigar in his fingers and nodded. “Surprisingly, yes. Would you believe coast guard?
Four years and one of them at sea and in the Antarctic. Scientist type. Oceanography.”
Yelland swung his gaze to him. “That’s right. You chewed on me pretty good when we were talking about tsunamis.”
“Sorry about that, Captain.”
“Never be sorry for being right. Especially,” Yelland emphasized, “when your right keeps someone like me from being wrong. I suppose I was grasping pretty desperately for straws.”
“You were,” Lasky said bluntly. “Now you’re doing your best to avoid the reality that’s shaken you to the depths of your soul.”
“It’s time to cut the mustard, Warren.”
“I know.”
“I just don’t understand it. All that radio crap with Jack Benny and Franklin Roosevelt and then that wartime newscast—”
“The satellites and lunar stations that winked out of existence,” Lasky added.
“Those Vigilante photos shook me up,” Yelland said, continuing the slow sparring.
“The Zero fighters didn’t help, either,” Lasky continued, driving in yet another nail.
“Goddamnit, Warren, somebody, for some reason, wants us to believe we’re back in 19411”
“Captain, you can quit now. You can face the absolutely impossible. You’re lying to yourself. Those straws again. You don’t believe for a moment that someone wants to believe we’re back in 1941.”
Yelland snorted with disdain. “Either that or I have to accept that I’ve gone off the deep end. And don’t give me that mysterious knowing smile again, damn you!”
“You’re not crazy and we both know it. That eliminates two possibilities.” Lasky locked eyes with Yelland. “There’s the third.”
The words came out. slowly, distinctly, each a separate utterance. “1—don’t—believe—it.”
“You’d better, Captain. Because it’s the only reality we have. Is it that difficult to say it out loud?”
“You want me to believe that all this, everything that’s happened, is real?”
“I know it and you know it,” Lasky said with open irritation, “and all we’re doing here is sparring. I’ll spit it out Somehow, in a way we don’t understand and may never understand fully, the Nimitz and its entire crew was warped back in time from 1980 to December 6th in 1941. There, goddamnit, it’s out in the open now!”
“But it’s completely crazy!”
“It’s not crazy and above all, for the reason that it happened. It happened, it is happening right now. That was no ordinary storm. I said before there can be a confluence of a massive electromagnetic effect and a stumbling gravity wave. If that happens, it can twist space into a knot. It did happen. Space is the same thing as time, just as you can’t exist unless you have a lifetime. There was this storm beyond all our knowledge, and it ripped up space one side and down the other, and we were caught right in the middle of it, like a web that’s pulled and distorted, and when everything snapped back into place—we’re here, forty years ago.”
They settled on another period of silence. Their cigars went out Lighting up again was their agreement to renew the utter, stark impossible.
“That is one hell of a pill to swallow, Warren.”
“I don’t argue the point. I just face the reality.” “What do your computers have to say about all this?”
“I think they tried to throw up.”
They laughed together. It made things easier. Lasky swallowed a cup of coffee, chewed on his cigar, and leaned forward with both elbows on the table. “Captain, do you mind if I lay something on you?”
Yelland waved aside all objections. “Jesus Christ, man, the name is Matt. Go on.”
“All right, Matt Think about this. If I had a time machine, and for some reason I decided I had a score to settle with, oh, let’s say my grandfather, and I got in that little fancy gadget of mine and went back through the years with a revolver—”
‘Tm with you and ahead of you,” Yelland broke in. “You spend a lot of time with paradoxes when you live in a cage as long as I did. So you go back in time, right? And you find your grandfather and you fill him full of neat holes, and that spells finis for the old boy right then and there. The next question comes of itself. What happens if you shoot your grandfather before he bedded down with your grandmother, and your own parent never happened?”
“Very good,” Lasky said “I’ll take it another step down the line. It’s the old paradox that’s confounded physicists for decades. Or at least it was more of a paradox before we confirmed the existence of black holes. You know, a collapsed star that begins its collapse with a mass at least three times or more than that of our own sun.”
“I’m up with the subject. Go ahead”
“Well, in that kind of situation, the inward acceleration of gravity of a black hole is so great that not even light can escape the gravitational field”
“Agreed.”
“My point is, Matt, that such a situation is absolutely impossible. Do you understand what I’m saying? I am postulating a literal condition that is impossible— at the same time that it’s acceptable. Presto; we have an understandable paradox, which in itself, at least in the philosophical sense, is impossible. Now, let me take lie next step. In our universe—call it our physical space-time—we know that the velocity of light is an absolute. The speed of light is a finite reality. If you accelerate a mass to the velocity of light, what happens? That object reaches infinite mass, time comes to an absolute standstill, and since you’re out of moving time, you can’t accelerate something that’s reached infinity.”
Yelland made a sour face. “So they taught me in school”
“But when you went to school they didn’t know about black holes. Hell, they weren’t confirmed until 1968 or so. Do you understand my point, Matt? We know, we absolutely know, it is impossible to travel faster than light That means you cannot have anything, mass or energy, that exceeds light velocity. You still agree with me?”
Yelland eyed him suspiciously. “I still agree.”
“Well, you’re wrong and what you were taught was wrong and what almost everybody believes is wrong. Because when you enter the situation created by a black hole, inward gravitational acceleration is so great that not even light can escape. Something exists that breaks all the rules. It’s a gravitational acceleration that exceeds light velocity.”
“That’s impossible. Or else it’s permissible to violate the laws of actuality. Is that your paradox?”
Lasky nodded. “It is. We are face-to-face with a situation that is impossible. But it exists. And that’s the real brain twister. It’s so impossible it can’t exist It absolutely cannot. But it does. What happens when you hold the impossible in your hand—or the impossible has grabbed you? Ah. It is at this point that nature steps in and says, it’s not nice to screw with nature, and the black hole winks out of existence. The inward acceleration is infinite, so a human body entering a black hole would be subjected to infinite, or greater than infinite acceleration. It would be nasty beyond all comprehension.”
“In what way, Warren?”
‘If you were going down into a black hole feet first, your feet would likely be accelerating a million or a billion or a trillion times faster than your head was moving.”
“That sounds like a very special brand of nasty,” Yelland agreed through a cloud of smoke. “And it’s both paradox and theory—”
“And reality,” Lasky insisted.
“All right, it’s paradox and theory and reality all wrapped in one because you can’t prove it, right?” “Proof is a relative thing,” Lasky snorted. “You can’t prove the sun will rise tomorrow. If I make an X on the back of my hand and present the unmarked side to you, you can’t prove the X is there.”
“Sure I can. I just turn over your hand.”
“And until you do that,” Lasky countered, “what? You have no proof. You’ve got a hell of a supposition but you can’t prove a damn thing.”
Yelland tightened his grip on the cigar. “Go on.” “We know, and I’m not playing theory handball with you, Matt, that black holes exist because we still judge and measure their effect. That’s the key. It’s like dealing with a neutrino. It moves with the speed of light, has no discernible mass, can pass through an average of fifty light years of solid lead before it’s even affected by that medium. We’ve never seen a neutrino but I’m as certain that it exists as I know I’m in this room with you. Back to the black hole. It twists space and you can’t do that without twisting time because they’re the same package. Something happened to this ship, Matt, that could well have involved, and indeed seems to have involved, a tremendous twisting of space-time.”
“Are those gravity waves you spoke of real?”
“As real as waves breaking on a seashore,” Lasky said. “That’s why I’m convinced that everything that’s happened to us, even if we understand only a fraction of the cause and must live with the effect, meets these r newly confirmed laws of astrophysics. Only,” Lasky [ said with careful emphasis, “we have more than a theory with which to work.”
“I’m dying to hear that one,” Yelland sighed.
“For Christs sake, Matt, were here. We’re not in our familiar time anymore. You know that. We’re in yesteryear.”
“So it seems,” Yelland said dryly. “Now tell me something else. How does all this fit in with your going back in time to do the dastardly deed to your grandfather?”
“Neatly done,” Lasky said with a grin. “You’ve brought me full circle, haven’t you?”
“Don’t be evasive or cute, Warren.”
“I’m not trying to do either. I can’t shake the headache all this is giving me. I feel like the scientist who spent all his life proving a rocket can’t work in space because it doesn’t have any air against which to push, and then I discover that the damned thing works very well in a vacuum because it pushes against itself. It’s a bootstrap effect that is very real, very physical, and makes instant common sense once you learn to understand the mechanism of action, reaction, and acceleration. Right now we face something of the same situation. We have to step through some cerebral diaphragm and throw away all the common sense on which we’ve based our lives. It’s not easy.” Lasky took a deep breath. “So we’ll do as you ask and we’ll consider the grandfather paradox. If I do the old gent in before he meets my grandmother, they simply do not meet. They produce no children, and so on down the line. I am never bom. But I exist—therefore, I could never have gone back in time to kill my grandfather, because I’m here. So how could I have been born and have come to invent the time machine, and—”
“You’re giving me your bloody headache, you know,” Yelland growled. “You’re also carrying on what seems to be a splendid exercise in futility.”
“Captain, very soon you may put that exercise to it’s ultimate test.”
Yelland came fully alert. “How do you mean that?” “What if someone, today, kills your grandfather out there in this world where we find ourselves? Or my grandfather? Or kills the man who invented the jet engine when he did? What happens to the time stream?”
“The answer serves itself, Warren. The answer is that no matter what else happens or has happened or is going to happen, the dominant and pervading reality is that we are here. We exist. You can’t deny that.”
Welcome to my den, Captain,” Lasky said with a smile. “Yes, we do exist, and the denial is a verbal muttering with no value. But I have another question for you.”
Yelland groaned. “Go ahead.”
“We both agree we exist, right?”
“Yes.”
“My question, then, is not whether we exist, but whenP”
Try as he might, Matt Yelland had no answer.
13
Laurel stretched out on the stern deck, soaking in the high sun. Shorts and a thin blouse knotted to support her full breasts, her flowing hair spread behind her, created a sensuality that brought murmured compliments from the passengers and crew alike. Sprawled near by, calm after the hysteria of the strange aircraft with their shattering thunder, was her dog, Charlie. To her other side, his head aching from trying to settle too many questions at one time, Senator Sam Chapman lay inert, hat over his face to shade his eyes, dozing. It was almost as if they had all declared some form of emotional truce aboard the yacht. The sight of those impossible machines, their bulletlike speed, had jangled them all far more severely than they were aware. Instinct had taken over direct thought, guiding them to relax, to give the whole thing a respite. Art Bellman was the only one in the group who had rejected the euphoria of hiding behind a mental wall. That wasn’t his way. He’d gone to the radio shack to make contact with the navy at Pearl Harbor. He described the two machines to a bored radioman to whom, obviously, the voice of Bellman was a crank, a drunk, or a weirdo. The radioman had promised to take down the information and to pass it on to the proper authorities, and as Bellman demanded his name, the radio went dead.
Frustrated, Bellman whipped the headset from him and smashed it to the table. He took a deep breath. Well, scratch one headset. But goddamn that fool operator, they had something that couldn’t exist, but did, and they had several expert witnesses for the navy, and Bellman couldn’t get some son of a bitch off his ass because it was a weekend, and the sailor was probably pissed because he had duty instead of being free to chase broads on the beach. Well, when he got back he’d have them go through every duty roster and he’d track down that son of a bitch and put his feet to the fire.
Art Bellman forced himself to calm down, then climbed up the ladder to the stem deck. For several moments he stood quietly, looking down in frank admiration at Laurel. He shook his head slowly. That was the most sensual, desirable woman he’d ever known in his life. And the smartest. Bellman made up his mind right on the spot that Chappy was a lying son of a bitch. He’d never bedded down this woman. No way in the world. He just dropped little hints and innuendos that he might be sleeping with her, but—
Bellman lifted his head at a familiar sound, a deep-throated but still low growl in the distance. He knew that sound. Aircraft engines. And from the sound, they had to be radial engines. Probably a navy flying boat on patrol. The Japanese had been kicking up a shitfit in recent weeks and Roosevelt had ordered increased patrols in all directions from vital American bases. But … he listened more carefully. Damnit, he knew engines. He’d listened to enough of them on the flight line and in the air over his. own plant. He knew Wrights and Pratt & Whitneys and these weren’t any of those engines. The back of his neck tingled. The buzzing-hornet sound was louder. He could tell there was more than one plane out there. And they were low and coming in their direction. Not the planes he’d heard and seen before. This sound came from a radial, no question.
