Lucifer Comet (2464 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  “I yield to others.”

  Olga was displaying mild interest for the first time in two days. “There is a faint possibility,” she growled, “that the designs on the throne could constitute a primitive form of writing.” Seal cordially invited her to the dig at her convenience. “Tomorrow,” asserted Olga, and she finger-drummed the table, frowning ferociously.

  Methuen had been looking from one speaker to another, courteously attentive always; but Zorbin could see that the captain was worried. Everyone was in silent thought after Olga’s insertion; presently they were all looking at their chairman. It was Chu who apprehended what Zorbin sensed; and he remarked, “I suspect that the captain has something to contribute.” Zorbin looked at Chu with gratitude; Chu caught the look and nodded.

  Said Methuen, talking slowly, “Your chairman has been delinquent, in that he did not report to you a piece of information which our telepathic interpreter Dorita Lanceo elicited from Quarfar. Independently, you have now confirmed this information. Quarfar said that Narfar had excluded fire from his Dora culture—and that he had also excluded metals.”

  Silence again. Then Seal, quietly: “Oboy.”

  “Right,” Methuen agreed. “But there is more on my mind; and please be advised that your chairman knows he is going way out

  “I am facing a group of scientists who are eminent in eight disciplines. The following is a sober question. Other than Dr. Ombasa—what does any of you know about time-paradox?”

  The silence that followed Methuen’s question was a jolted one. All these scientists had learned to respect their chairman as a realistic pro in his own field which happened to make sophisticated applied use of several of their disciplines. When such a man hit them with a query about time-paradox, he just possibly might be mad, but he certainly wasn’t joking, and they’d better explore the matter seriously pending establishment of unexpected insanity. Further, seven of the eight were drawing inferences from the discussion-exclusion of Ombasa who had adopted an attitude of close attention.

  Chu was the one who responded first. “I don’t know of any actual time-invasions, but I happen to like a select group of science fictioneers, and many of them write about such invasions. A time-paradox is a situation in which a person from the present invades the past, changes something in the past, and thereby alters the entire course of temporal evolution, so that the present suddenly becomes different from what it has been. Is that how you understand it, Mr. Chairman?”

  “Precisely,” said Methuen, and reflected. They waited, glancing at Ombasa’s poker face.

  The captain said, very low, “When Dorita departed, she left me a note stating that she was leaving with Narfar, and that they would not be on Erth or, as she stated, quote, ‘anywhere else in this time-slot,’ unquote.

  “We know from Quarfar that this very planet Dora was Narfar’s home, that Narfar was in some sense king of it. Dr. Sari confirmed that Saiph, the sun of this planet, was the sun of Quarfar’s Dora; and she established also that Saiph lies directly on the five-forty-six gradient. This gradient could conceivably have been established by Narfar on his first flight from Erth to Dora much more than fifty thousand years ago—long before the origin of Comet Gladys.

  “Let me put this all together. I think—and I believe that I think with good reason—that Dorita and Narfar followed the five-forty-six gradient to Dora. And I think that Dorita somehow took Narfar time-traveling back to the era when he departed Dora on the comet. If time-travel is a possibility, I would not put this ability past Dorita.”

  He paused for a look-around. All were staring at him; Olga was gaping; Chu was quizzical; Ombasa seemed faintly alarmed—possibly because he now understood that the captain had questioned him for practical reasons.

  Methuen put it to them. “Tell me, gentle-people of science—if time travel is a possibility, and if Dorita and Nar-far did indeed bring it off—could they possibly have discovered Narfar’s old era still alive and able to respond again to his renewed leadership?”

  Now all of them were frowning down.

  Chu said presently, “It does not seem to me a possibility. Either past eras no longer exist except in their present vestiges, or else they exist perpetually frozen as they were and incapable of being revitalized. That is what my logic tells me. But I do regret the absence of Dr. Sari from this discussion.” Some of the others nodded.

  “Unfortunately,” Methuen rejoined, “she is not here. And—I have to tell you this—I am seeing a possibility of hazard for us, a hazard which may materialize before Dr. Sari returns for consultation.”

  Chu anticipated him with silky precision. “Perhaps I see this hazard. We are camped here on a Dora which has moved along through time many millennia since the comet-departure of Narfar; and obviously civilization and perhaps all human life has ceased to exist here. But if you are right, Captain, and if Narfar with Dorita has returned to his era, why then his germinal civilization did or now will have continued to flourish in its era, and—” he paused, raised eyebrows, waved a hand, “—somebody please take it from there.”

  Blandly Ombasa reentered: “In such a case, perhaps, the culture which had died will now not have died. Captain, I see your premonition of hazard. You are thinking that perhaps we will go to sleep tonight in this jungle desolation, and will awaken tomorrow suddenly surrounded by Narfar’s people, his cultural descendants and perhaps his blood descendants, all abruptly entering into life tomorrow as a chain consequence of the time-paradox precipitated by Dorita and Narfar.”

  Agitated, Peranza broke in. “If that is the form of your problem, Captain, how can it possibly be a problem for us today? Even granting the proposition, if Narfar’s era were fifty thousand years back, wouldn’t it take fifty thousand years for the consequences of such a paradox to reach the present?” Methuen demanded, “Would it, Doctor? You tell me.”

  Olga snarled. “Peranza, Peranza, where did you study logic? That’s an infinite regression! If it takes x years for Narfar’s culture to progress from x years ago to today, then today will no longer be in the present, but the present will have gone on another, x years meanwhile, and the culture will still be x years in the past! That would create problems only for archaeologists and not for any then-current culture—and certainly not for us here now! Captain Methuen, I’m not competent to say whether your fear has any substance, but I will say this; in my opinion, if such a time-paradox can occur and has occurred, and if it has the potential of creating consequences which will indeed break through eventually to change some present, then I do not know how to calculate the velocity of such changes, and I would imagine that they could make themselves manifest just any time at all.” Methuen said, “Thank you, Doctor. You have expressed the basis of my apprehension, and you echo certain speculations by Dr. Ombasa. My position is, that the situation may not create a problem for us, but then again it may; and we need to be on the lookout.”

  Manumuto queried; “As our leader, Captain, do you have any suggestions, recommendations or orders?”

  “Commander Zorbin has the security con,” Methuen asserted. “May we hear from you, Commander?”

  Zorbin said promptly, “First, I have extended ship-security sensors to a range of five hundred kilometers in every direction. They are programmed to warn us of any creature having humanoid cephalic rhythms, even if such rhythms are drastically different from our own.

  “Second, I recommend that all of us enter the ship daily at sunset, or on sunless days when the ship sounds a siren indicating that light has dropped below sunset level. The siren might also be an emergency return signal. This recommendation adds that none of us should leave the ship until a suitable bell signals that outside light has risen above sunrise level.

  ‘Third, I recommend that we immediately make radio contact with Dr. Sari and Dr. Green, who are distant on detached duty. We should advise them to be on the lookout for humanoids, to alert us when humanoids are first observed,

  and to drop everything else in order to
observe such humanoids from the air and report continuously. When they return to the ship, they are to exercise caution, signaling all the way, and waiting for our reentry instructions. Finally, we should advise them to run for the ship at the first sign of aircraft; we will have to deal with that sort of problem from here.

  “Fourth, I recommend that the entire crew be placed on standby security duty. And this will mean, of course, that crew assistance for your projects will become somewhat limited and conditional, subject to the orders of myself or the captain.

  “I await your instructions.”

  Profound mood of brown.

  Said Chu, with unusual heaviness: “Captain Methuen, you are the captain. I regret such measures, but I see the point. Let me be the one to mention to my colleagues that as captain you have authority to override us on this matter anyway. After that remark, I for one give you my vote of confidence.”

  Sensors, detecting above-sunrise light-level outdoors, automatically tripped the sunrise bell aboard ship. The bell was virtually unheard, however, because a dozen other sensors had triggered an alarm-horn warning that humanoid creatures were present close to the ship. And two startled human sentries, mounting duty on a small external submarine-type deck atop the broadest beam of the ship (which lay horizontally on the grass) realized simultaneously with the warning horn and the sunrise bell that a city had materialized all around them.

  The entire crew, male and female, many still in pajamas or undershorts, burst like startled hornets from their cabins and barracks and moved swiftly to beef up the second watch at action stations. Uniformed Zorbin, currently pulling duty in command of the second watch, hurried up to the sentry deck; pajama’d Methuen almost immediately joined him, followed by muumuu’d Olga and kimona’d Chu and pajama’d Seal and the other scientists on board.

  It was a city of adobe houses having thatched roofs right out of modern Anglia or Norska. It extended as far as they could see in every direction—except in one direction, the quarter where the throne had been discovered; and there the city beyond was hidden by the mighty bulk of a circular adobe palace which rose in stepped-back tier upon tier to a height of seven stories and whose ground-diameter must have been at least a hundred meters.

  Chu murmured, low but clearly audible in the hush: “Captain, you were right again. Madam Archaeologist, pray consider the modern outcome of the rooted-out vestiges which you exposed there only two days ago.” Ombasa was reflecting that if this paradox had first been generated on the day when Dorita disappeared, he had his first verifiable measure of chain-consequence velocity: fifty thousand years in a mere twenty-eight days.

  Methuen snapped, “Mr. Zorbin, our alarm horns will have aroused the people in that city. Kindly activate measures of passive defense, but do not attempt any aggressive activity until one of us two is certain that we are under attack which can do damage.”

  Spear-armed men were appearing in the city streets….

  29

  Day Twenty-Eight

  The humanoids were clustering round the Farragut, peering upward toward the people atop her on the observation deck. Someone handed Methuen his holographic binoculars (ten-power, self-focusing); he studied man after man, all breech clouted and otherwise naked; then he whistled and passed the glasses to Olga to his left. She examined two or three men, whistled low, passed the glasses along, and observed to the captain, “It’s remarkable how much they resemble the holographs I saw of that Narfar creature, except for their winglessness and their blue-green skin color. I would call them splendid living examples of Homo neanderthalensis, except that the species pooped-out on Erth about sixty millennia ago.”

  Chu, who was next to her and had just relinquished the glasses to Seal, added, “Also, except that their city is more sophisticated than anything Neanderthal could have built”

  “Not necessarily,” Olga countered. “I’ve gathered that Neanderthal may have been natively as intelligent as Homo sapiens, just constructed differently and perhaps lacking our ambition and imagination. Captain, if you let me go down, I can learn to speak with them, but I do have to hear and record their talking—”

  “You may have that learning already,” suggested Methuen.

  “I may? How? Oh—you mean, if they speak the language of Quarfar and Narfar? But that’s impossible!”

  “Why?”

  Seal contributed: “I know of a modern Tellene who went on a dig as a laborer. He happened to be the one to unearth a tablet dating from the tenth century BC; and although he was ill-educated, he was able to read the most ancient Tellene inscription quite easily.”

  Olga expostulated: “But that was written language! Without writing, or even with writing, language evolves, is distorted, pronunciations change—” She fisted her forehead: “Now why am I talking like this? It might be basically the same language, and I can cut through the evolved variations—”

  Methuen told her, “If you will go to the bridge and see Zorbin, you’ll find that he has a crew watching and listening and reporting from a level near the ground, using viewports and receptors, of course. See what you can do with what you hear; the crew chief may even be able to select a particular man for you to hear while fading out the other voices.”

  And as Olga disappeared below, he turned to the others on deck. “Gentlepeople, pray excuse me. All of you are enjoined to remain aboard ship for the time being. As soon as Dr. Alexandrovna succeeds or fails, I will try to communicate with these people.”

  Methuen went to the observation room which was located deep amidships, not at either ship-flank, but centrally. Viewscreens were arrayed to simulate ship-shape; they worked rekamatically like picture windows, revealing all that was occurring on the ground forward, aft and on both flanks. The intricate sound-pickups caused the small room to reverberate with noisy babel which had been tuned down somewhat so the crew would not go mad.

  Olga entered, squired by the crew-chief whom Zorbin had summoned to the bridge as her attendant; she carried the little apparatus that she had used with Quarfar. After one cool nod at Methuen, she stationed herself at room-center and peered first at one quarter and then at another^ She had a way of peering with concentration for several seconds in one tight direction, then shifting her head and eyes a bit to peer for several seconds at a nearby quarter; Methuen suspected that she was picking out individuals, trying to read lips while ear-filtering each person’s contribution to the sound-confusion.

  Presently she selected one group of three men who stood talking intently to each other, glancing frequently at the ship but (unlike most others) not shouting at the ship; these three men wore animal-pelt cloaks. She said to the chief: “I think those are leaders. Can you give me a tight sound-focus on that one group and fade file others down?”

  The chief nodded and issued an order, pointing. The general babel quieted, and three easily discriminable voices came in loud and clear. As anticipated, it was a high-pitched twittering.

  Olga was recording the voices; without replaying the flake, her face transmuted itself into an attitude of astonishment. She looked at Methuen: “Captain, I can understand them, it is the language of Quarfar and Narfar! And you know, it isn’t so terribly distorted, at that!”

  Methuen queried: “So what are they saying?”

  “One of them thinks they ought to attack our ship. Another is counseling patience, he says let’s wait and see what the beings inside will do. The third is reminding them that the god has been advised and will be coming, the god should make the decision.”

  “That would be the king,” remarked Chu, who had followed Methuen. “Do you suppose those three men are his top-kicks?”

  “I think so,” Methuen commented, gazing at them. “Their authority and self-control are certainly the highest among that Crowd… Look there!”

  A crowd-jostling had commenced in a quarter behind the three leaders; it developed into a thrusting-through and a making-way; and gradually the babel died into silence. Those immediately behind the leaders parted; tw
o men appeared thrusting them apart with spears which appeared to be stone-beaked. Behind them, with dignity, walked up to the three leaders a man who was the tallest among them—and he was not blue-green, but yellow-green—and his head-and-body hair was orange-red—and folded on his back were batwings!

  Somebody yelled: “NARFAR!” The yell was taken up, the multitudinously repeated name reverberated in the chamber, while all the men including the three leaders fell to their knees. Narfar stood beaming, slowly rotating to wave at all the men; and as hush returned, he folded arms and stared up at the bulk of the Farragut.

  Methuen ejaculated: “The original Narfar, I am certain! Well, Til be—”

  Narfar was conversing earnestly with his three leaders, now on their feet. Two finally nodded; a third spread hands. Turning to the ship-flank, Narfar spread wings wide, cupped hands around mouth, and bawled; “You guys come out! We talk! You not hurt us, we not hurt you!”

  All members of the task force were now aboard ship, Sari and Green having caused some native consternation by homing-in this morning; they had been pre-briefed by radio.

  Methuen called a conference for the purpose of designating membership of the first party to visit King or God Narfar in his palace. Zorbin spoke up more quickly than his wont, remarking that a representative of ship’s command would have to be protocol leader of the visitation party; the hazard of the assignment was obvious, and he felt strongly that he (Zorbin) should lead the party, leaving the captain aboard ship to deal with whatever might arise. Methuen responded, “Commander Zorbin might perhaps prove a better leader than I will be, but leadership of this party is my job. The executive officer will remain aboard ship to deal with whatever may arise.” That settled that.