by Jerry
Burdeen gripped my hand hard. “Forget it. I said and did some things that would give anybody the wrong ideas. Here’s hoping you get home safely . . . Chuck.”
I LEFT a few days later. To avoid excess weight, I had to discard many of the souvenirs I’d intended to take along. I had also to refuse gifts of food and flowers from the Ardians, which in quantity would have filled to bursting at least half a dozen ships the size, of the Starling. I did, however, take with me several small light articles which would prove that Ard had actually existed. And there was a letter from Burdeen to Professor Alward, which in a moment of high spirits he had written in the form of a resignation.
Leaving was harder than I had anticipated. Julon, Mera, Elvar, and Varis had become my friends in the deepest sense of the word. And Ard, with its classical buildings and tall golden people, had after all been a very pleasant place. It was with a burning constriction in my throat that I shook hands all around and closed the entrance port against the farewell cries of those who had come to see me off.
I buckled my safety straps and watched the view-plate, waiting until the crowd had moved a safe distance away. The last thing I saw, as I took off, was Burdeen, waving, his arm around Varis. Though tiny in the view-plate, her face looked radiantly happy.
The tasks involving, my return were not difficult. I had only to follow the original course which the Starling had taken, being careful to accelerate and decelerate within the former time intervals. The translation into and out of negative space would occur automatically, as the intensity of the propelling warp rose toward and fell below the critical level. While in negative space, I would travel for a half hour at close to light speed, so that the same amount of time would pass relative to Earth as had passed previously. Since this would be negative time, I would find, upon my landing, that I had returned to a period close to that from which I had left. In actual practice, however, I intended to travel at close to light speed for a little longer than a half hour, to make up for the time I had spent in Ard.
During the trip back, I was filled with constant anxiety that something might go wrong. That nothing actually did, I can only thank the Omni-mech—or Fate. Time—relative to myself, of course—seemed to drag like centuries. I found that I was able to stand the acceleration with less discomfort than on the first flight. It was as though my sojourn in Ard had toughened me.
Negative space proved to be disappointing. It looked almost exactly like normal space, except that there seemed to be fewer stars. The only sensations I experienced in the translation into and out of it were brief tingles throughout my body, as though every atom had momentarily generated a tiny current.
At last Earth was under me—the familiar Earth I knew—and I was dropping down toward the upper end of Lake Michigan. Various landmarks guided me to the little lake, inland, near which Alward’s house was situated. Then I was gliding down toward the construction hangar. The Starling settled gently to the ground.
I was home.
IT HIT me quite suddenly. I was back at last, after all the unhappy hopeless months. And it wasn’t just a dream. It was real—as real as the promise of tomorrow. As real as tears . . .
After a while I pulled myself together sufficiently to unbuckle my safety straps and unlock the port. As I swung to the ground, Suzanne and Alward came running from the house. The surprise and delight on their faces was a welcome more eloquent than words could ever have been.
“Charles!” Suzanne cried. “Charles—you’re back! You’ve come back!”
“Back to stay,” I said against her hair.
“Did the ship work?” Alward asked impatiently. “But why were you gone so long? It’s been almost two weeks since you left. And . . . and where’s Dan?”
My story took up most of the afternoon. I don’t think Alward and Suzanne actually fully believed me until I showed them Burdeen’s letter and the articles which I had brought with me from Ard. Even then it took quite a while for them to grasp the extent of my adventure. And I was called upon for days afterward to recount various aspects and phases of it. I don’t think that the wonder of it ever dulled for them. I know it will never dull for me. In my mind, memories of Ard, of Julon, and of the Omni-mech will always be shining and bright.
I should end here, but it really needs one more detail to conclude my narrative satisfactorily.
Several days later, Alward told me of a new project upon which he was working. “I never thought of the time flaw in my principle, Charles, and this because the principle itself opened up new vistas which blinded me to everything else. You see, I have come to realize that it is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. It is the basis for something bigger, more significant. The calculations I am now engaged in working out will, I feel, in time lead to a vastly superior method of interstellar travel than that which the principle first suggested. It is linked with hyperspace.”
Alward looked as though he expected me to be surprised, but I’d been expecting this sooner or later. I’d said nothing to him about the Hyperspace Equations, or the method of interstellar travel through hyperspace possessed by the ancients of Julon. It hadn’t been necessary. There had been more of a link between Alward’s warp generator principle and the Hyperspace Equations than the Omni-mech had guessed.
The name of the man who had created the Equations and thereby the interstellar drive had been given in the instruction sheets which I had obtained and translated for Julon. The man was Professor Alward.
THE END
NO ONE BELIEVED ME
Will Thompson
I tried to tell them the truth. I wasn’t insane, but
IT’S late, awfully late, two o’clock. I guess really I should be tired, but I’m not. Standing here by my window, looking out at the night, I don’t see the stars or the shapes of the trees, or hear the rustling of the leaves. I know they are all there, but they don’t seem to count. What does count is, there are no bars across this window. For tonight I am not at Green Mills.
You’ve heard of Green Mills; probably every once in a while seen something about it in the newspapers. That would be when a patient escaped and was at large for a day or two. For, you see, Green Mills Hospital handles the tough ones, the incurables—the psychopathies.But I don’t think you’ll see anything about my case in the papers; I don’t think those doctors will talk.
I am not alone in this room; there is a dog with me—a dog named Charneel. He is asleep now on the rug beside my bed. Yet I cannot sleep, for something happened today that could not happen. I am not asking you to believe me; I can hardly believe it myself. But this is the way it came about:
This morning at Green Mills I was standing, looking through the bars of my window, when the queerness of the day began. It was just after my breakfast tray had been taken out, and as the key turned again in the lock, I became coldly furious. This unscheduled visit could mean but one thing: more of their damnable questioning.
When I heard the door open, I didn’t even turn around. Three men, I knew, would step in; two, of course, would be the nurses; the third, one of the staff doctors. The springs of my cot creaked. That would be the doctor sitting down. For we nuts have no chairs, no table, no furnishings of any kind with which we might hurt ourselves.
I steeled myself for the session. But this man didn’t start out with a quick fire of questions like the others; this man surprised me. For a while he just sat; maybe waiting for me to turn around.
Finally: “Captain Blanchard,” a quiet voice said, “I spent yesterday at Cranton, at the Coast Hospital.”
I squared my jaw; he wasn’t going to get one word out of me. They hadn’t believed me at Coast; they weren’t ever going to believe me here.
“Tell me, Captain,” my visitor went on, “this strange power you seem to possess, this ability of yours to talk to animals, did it come as a result of your wound?”
I said nothing. If he’d spent the day checking at Coast Hospital, as he said, then he already knew the whole business; about the ro
bin—everything. Certainly it must have been the result of the wound. But it hadn’t surprised me at first, because I was so ill. Actually, this sudden ability to talk to animals had seemed the only natural thing that was happening to me. I know that may sound odd, but, you see, all my life I had had animals around me. As a boy, there had been dogs, cats, chickens, pet squirrels and rabbits, and always there had been this feeling, when they looked up into my eyes, that they were trying to say things to me, get their thoughts across to me. And sometimes it had been so strong, so overwhelming, that I felt I was just on the verge of understanding.
But I had told all that to those Coast Hospital doctors, over and over again. And it didn’t faze them. They’d cross-questioned me and grilled me until they had me fairly shouting at them. Yet I had talked to a robin, I had talked to a mouse. First they’d said it was a dream; then hallucinations; and then they’d sent me to Green Mills.
But I had talked to a robin! It was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. At first I hadn’t paid any attention to the little bird; I was so bewildered at finding myself in bed between cool, clean sheets, with the air so still and calm. My mind was all mixed up, too, for the last thing I remembered was leading a detachment down a ravine to wipe out an artillery observation post. Yet there I was in bed, strangely weak, and as if I’d just come up out of a deep black pit. But the robin on my window ledge had kept on crying—Well, not exactly crying; I guess you’d say mourning, about her eggs. When I asked what was wrong, she told me about a big black-feathered bird that had snatched the eggs from her nest and deliberately dropped them on the ground.
That’s when the nurse came into the room—just as I was answering the robin. The nurse had looked at me, startled; and in a moment was back with a doctor. I should have known something was wrong, for the doctor’s line of questioning was so odd: What was my name? . . . William Ralph Blanchard . . . Where was I born? . . . Milton, Kentucky . . . How old was I? . . . Twenty-five . . . My rank? . . . Captain.
He stood up. “Captain,” he said, “you’ve surprised us all. I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for your recovery.” But I was the one who was surprised. I learned I’d been lying there for thirty-three months; thirty-three months in a semicoma, eyes wide open, but never once saying a word. That doctor told me other things too. Of the wound in my head, now healed; of the skillful job the surgeons had done, and of the metal plate at the base of my skull just behind my right ear. Then we got into the business of the robin, and without knowing it, I took my first step toward Green Mills.
“By the way, Captain”—the doctor was at the door, but paused a moment—“when you came to, you were saying something about a blackbird, and calling for a gun. Why?”
So, if this man now sitting on my cot had looked into my case history at Coast, he had a far fuller account than I could give. For I wasn’t the one that said I was crazy; it was those doctors at Coast.
But my visitor was not taking my silence as an answer, and his next remark literally spun me around.
“Captain,” he said, “did any of the doctors at Coast ever check about the doors on the garbage bins?”
“No!” And I heard myself screaming it. “Not one of them!”
“Well, I did,” he said evenly.
It was then I looked at him, my mind working like a trip hammer. This was some kind of trap, I thought, to get me talking.
Yes, there was the little notebook he was just drawing from his pocket. “You can put that back, Doctor,” I said. “You’re not getting anything from me today.”
He didn’t pay attention. Instead, he turned to the two nurses, standing alertly at the foot of my bed. “What takes place in this room this morning,” he said to them, “may affect Captain Blanchard’s whole future. I want you two men to listen carefully to everything I have to say to him. Take notes if necessary.”
He opened the notebook and glanced down at it. “Captain, at two o’clock in the morning—the morning of May the ninth—while you were still at Coast Hospital, you summoned a nurse and asked for a piece of cheese—a small piece of cheese.”
“Okay, okay!” I burst out. “And she wouldn’t believe me! She said there wasn’t a mouse in the hospital. And I told her there were mice all over the place and that they hadn’t had a bite to eat since morning. And if she didn’t believe me, ask the mouse; he was right there in the room under the dresser. So, please, bring me that cheese, so I could get to sleep. Yes, Doctor, that’s just what I told her!”
The doctor nodded. “Captain”—and he flicked his little book shut—“I have one item to add to what you have just said—an item I picked up at Coast, all right, but not from the medical files. This item I got from the Maintenance Department records.”
He paused a moment. “On May eighth,” he went on, “while you were still in a sixth-floor room, confined to your bed and helpless, a crew of men, according to the records of the Maintenance Department, went to work in the kitchen basement, took the wooden doors off the garbage bins and replaced them with steel ones; doors which no mouse could ever gnaw through.”
It staggered me. At last, was here someone who believed?
Half an hour later I was stepping into a car in front of the main building. But we weren’t making this trip alone; we had with us two guards, a sergeant and a private. Both were wearing their service pistols. The doctor put me in the back seat with the sergeant; he and the private were in the front, and on the whole trip he said not a word to me.
Where he was taking me, or why, I didn’t know. But there was a thrill in being out on the open road, if only for a brief while; to get the tang of fresh air and space, and see green grass and trees that didn’t belong to any hospital.
Finally we entered a town, a quiet little place; big lawns and houses substantially built. There was plenty of money here. Presently the car stopped, and then I learned that this man was no psychiatrist but a regular medical doctor. For the little sign in the window read: “H.E. Wilson, M.D.”
Our feet hardly touched the concrete of the front walk when a dog began barking inside the house. Dr. Wilson led us directly to his office, and had me sit down in the chair at his desk.
“Can you use a typewriter?” he asked.
I nodded.
He got paper from a drawer, regular typing paper, and counted off some twenty-five sheets.
“Captain Blanchard,” he said, “if you can talk to animals, you’ll be doing quite a bit of typing within the next hour, but I think this should be enough.” And next he did something which caused the two guards to exchange a quick glance. He asked them to examine both sides of each sheet, making certain they were blank, then produced his pen for them to put their initials in the top corner of each page. “Just to make certain,” he explained tersely, “that nobody switches these sheets.” With that, he left the room.
I could sense a new wariness in the guards as their initials went down on page after page.
The men had hardly finished when Dr. Wilson was back. With him was a dog, tawny, golden-haired; a magnificent animal. I wouldn’t know just how to class him, but certainly there were strains of German police in him, and, perhaps, collie. But what struck me most was the complete command Dr. Wilson had over his dog. For big as it was, it didn’t come lunging or romping into the room, but stepping close behind the doctor’s heels and, at a flick of the doctor’s hand, it stopped stock-still in the center of the room.
“Captain, there’s not a doctor at the hospital,” Dr. Wilson began, “who believes you can talk to animals. Frankly, well, this is Charneel.”
I got my assignment then, my first inkling of what he had in mind for me to do.
“I want you to talk to Charneel if you can.” He spoke quietly, soberly. “Charneel recently was involved in a very serious matter. Deliberately I’m not telling you what it is, for that would defeat my whole purpose in bringing you here. But this much I will tell you: there is a court order out for Charneel to be shot.”
“
Doctor—” I hesitated. And all kinds of thoughts were going through my mind. How did I know whether I could talk to this dog? I’d never talked to one before. And suppose I did. What would happen to me then? Would those men at Green Mills use that as just one more blot on my case to keep me locked up for life? No matter what happened, I was still in a jam. “No, Doctor,” I said, “I’m sorry. You’d better just take me back to the hospital.”
A long moment he looked at me, his eyes holding mine. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and I don’t blame you. But let’s put it this way, son: If you do talk to my dog, and convince me of it, I’ll do something about your case; and I’ll take it all the way to Washington, if necessary.”
I heard his words, but at first I didn’t get it. Then all of a sudden I did, and something inside me seemed to swell up and choke me. I could hardly take it in—here at last was someone who was willing to fight for me. Without realizing it, I had taken a step forward and was grasping Dr. Wilson’s hand.
He smiled reassuringly. “Captain, in talking to Charneel, I don’t want it to be just a conversation. What I want is for you to find out certain specific facts from him. So, in order to get you started in the right direction, I guess the thing to do is to give you a clue, a word, a key word: Habel. Find out from Charneel just what happened to Habel. And, man, how I wish you luck!”
With that, he left me.
Whether Habel was a man, a woman or another dog, the doctor had not said. But one thing I did know: I wasn’t going to risk trying to talk to a dog in front of these guards. Not if I could help it.
So I said, “Does it matter whether you’re inside this room with me or outside, just so long as I can’t escape?”
So outside the door the sergeant took up his station. And a moment later, through the windows, I could see Private Howard. Certainly there’d be no getting away, and no one could communicate with me without their knowing it. Charneel and I were alone in the room.
