by Jerry
But Will Hawkline, with the help of his computers and his people and the Little Johns, Will Hawkline did it! He found a way to separate time from space-time, so his little jugs could go back a little way in time while they went forward a long way in space—all at once! That way space travelers could go away to a star and come back again, while the people they loved were still alive to welcome them and listen to their stories. I know that’s a long funny way to solve a problem, but then they weren’t Zados, and you have to admire them. Jonna Verret tested the new little jugs—scouts is the Earth name for them—and they worked, and because they worked, a terrible thing happened.
And now I will tell you about Mindpod, and Orel.
No one knows when or where it came from, but a great dark jug landed on the planet Orel, and in it were 26 things, alive and awful which together are called Mindpod. Zados are not the only ones in the universe who can link minds, but unlike us, the Mindpod used their linkage as a weapon.
Orel was a wild place where the biggest animal was a meercath, a lizard with thick quick hind legs and small deft hands, bigger than me, with a toothy mouth that could take off my head, and a mind just good enough to feed and be happy. In a blip the Mindpod had those meercaths’ minds, and all they would do forever after was to make weapons and go off to other worlds to kill and destroy. Nothing could ever give them back their own minds. A meercath commanded by the Mindpod is a terrible thing. And there were enough worlds within reach of the Mindpod’s big dark jug—the Earth word for it is ‘cruiser’—that the Mindpod itself could rest safely on Orel for a very long time, and take other worlds which take other worlds and Oh! (Oh! cried the young ones. Oh! they wept.)
The Mindpod cruiser had in it all sorts of structures and inventions that could do things that the Mindpod could not—they were rather like Earth people that way, but not at all funny. They had feeler things and listening things and find-out things so that they knew right away what had happened when Jonna tested the back-in-time jug, the little one she called a ‘scout’. That made the Mindpod afraid. When the Mindpod was afraid it was immediately very, very angry. It knew how to travel in zero time but it didn’t know how to travel back in time, so the Mindpod sent a cruiser toward Earth to steal and destroy.
On Avalon, in Time Center Control, Jonna had just come in from the last of her flights. She stood proud and happy, happy because she had done everything right, happy for Will too, because it was truly a great thing he had done. Will Hawkline looked at her, how she stood smiling, her hair a bright tumble, her eyes pleased and giving. Just for a moment his regret that she was a pammie and not a bigger and older pup grew smaller and he smiled and took her hand.
At that moment the very walls boomed with a terrible voice:
Attention Time Center: You have one complete revolution of your planet to prepare all records of your experiments and to have yourselves and the records ready for pickup. One hour later Planet Detonation will occur, whether or not you are planetside.”
Will Hawkline, still holding Jonna’s hand though he had quite forgotten it, bawled “Littlejohn!”
Immediately Little John Five stepped up—a big Earth person, strong as a Zado, with close golden hair and eyes very wide apart. Will Hawkline cried: “I have done a terrible thing, but—how could I know?
Who are they? What do they want? Can they do what they say?”
The large growing eyes closed; and now the Little John was one with the big computer and its instant logic and immense memory. He said “Subspace wake-trace indicates that they came in zero time from OREL—Orion Remote Earthtype Landbase. Who they are: No data, except that they are not indigenous to Orel. Can they do what they say: All revelant data indicate that they can, to a probability of 99 point eleven nines. Could you have known: You could not. What do they want: Clearly, it is the back-in-time scout device; if they had it they would have used it, and would have struck before our tests.”
“But if we don’t give it to them, they’ll blow us up anyway, and then they’ll never have it.”
“Which indicates they are afraid of it. If they can’t have it, no one will have it.”
“Then they’ve given us the answer!” When Will Hawkline made up his mind, he did it altogether. If they’re afraid of it, we’ll use it. We’ll arrive on Orel before they leave and stop them.” He turned to Harper Townsend, his chief of operations. “Harper—are both scouts ready for launch?” At his nod: “Jonna—are you willing to take a Little John and go to Orel, while I take the other scout and rendezvous with you before they attack?”
Her face told him how ready and willing she was.
“Then let’s go! Harper, put every computer on the problem of destroying that cruiser—but don’t make a move until the last minute, or they’ll strike before the deadline.”
He sprinted toward the launch gate and only then realized he was still holding Jonna’s hand—he almost pulled her off her feet. “Sorry . . .” he said and was gone. She looked sadly at her hand. “Sorry?” she said, then turned and ran for her own scout, shouting for Little John Twelve.
And you know, by the time they were in their scouts, the Little Johns and the computers had worked out every single figuring they needed to make the trip back in time, forth in space, to Orel before the Mindpod cruiser left.
At that very moment, on the place in the dark cruiser where the devices that made it go were—the Earth word is ‘bridge’—a meercath left his lace of blinking lights and came to the commander. “There are stowaways, sir.” (That’s the way they talk in jugs. And a stowaway is a person who gets on a jug or whatever they call them, without anyone knowing.) “Stowaways, sir. i thought at first there were three, then it seemed like four. Anyway, it’s certainly two.”
“Start a search then,” the commander said. “Every compartment, room, pathway.” The meercath went away, and another one called out, “Small craft leaving the planet, sir.” But even as they fixed their look-at thing on it and spit fire, the scout slipped into faster-than-light and was lost to them. Just then another appeared, and a great fan of flame swept out from the Orellian cruiser and sliced off a tail section just before this scout flung itself into faster-than-light and also escaped the attack.
None of us could possibly know what it’s like to fly out in one of those little scouts. Acceleration squeezes you backward until you can’t breathe any more and you can’t see anything right or really think straight, and all of a sudden there’s a great bloom of light, a spinning spiral, and you’re in another universe full of grey shapes that make you dizzy when you look at them. In time—how much time depends how far in real-space you are going—you’re back in this universe, blinking at a whole different set of stars, with a strange planet floating nearby. Terrifying.
But for Will Hawkline it was infinitely worse. Seconds before they slipped into faster-than-light, “We’re hit!” Little John Five cried out, and Will Hawkline said, “Too bad, but we’re counting down and we’re going out anyway!” At that, the bloom of light spiraled around them and they were in the grey place, and—crunch-ring-blang—things broke in the scout’s insides. Their lights went out and flared bright and dim again. “Damage report,” Will Hawkline ordered, and the Little John told him a long list of awful things. “Can you get a fix on Jonna?” And that was worst of all.
“She’s on Orel—on the surface!”
“Captured,” Will Hawkline whispered, and oh, he had a feeling inside himself he didn’t know he could feel. “She’s alive though,” he almost-said, almost asked. “She’s alive,” said the Little John. “But they are doing something to her.”
Oh yes they were doing something to her. She was flat out under a force-beam with a fearful light shining on and through her, and bending over her was one of the actual members of the Mindpod; and I can’t tell you what it looked like because no one’s told me, except that it was horrible beyond description so that even if I could I wouldn’t. And it said:
“We have placed a substance in your
bloodstream which will kill you in a very certain time it will become ineffective, and you will stay locked in a world of visions so dreadful that you will die of your own free will to escape them. So quickly now: answer my questions. What was the mission? What kind of work was going on at your Time Center?
Who were you trying to contact when we captured your scout . . .?”
—question, question, question.
Jonna lay there and spoke only once: “Little John Twelve was right.” And then she wouldn’t explain. For when the tractor beam from Orel took them, Little John Twelve said to her quietly, talking the way Little Johns do: “The probability of escape is negligible. My ability to refuse the information they will demand, not only of me, but of the entire contents of our computer banks, is equally negligible. There is therefore only one reasonable course. It has been nice knowing you Jonna Verret,” whereupon he smiled slightly and died.
She remembered wondering through her shock and fear what it must be like to be a clone among clones. He was as real as she was, yet dying could hardly be the same thing, for all the Little Johns had complete access to everything Twelve had ever done or thought or felt, so in a way he would live on in all of them, more than a memory.
Now, helpless under the light, his words rang in her mind: “There is therefore only one reasonable course . . .” and she closed her eyes. But she didn’t know how to die this way, and she did not know—yet—if she really wanted to.
And the light burned on, and the questions rained down, and it seemed that the podmember’s face (if that could indeed be a face) grew larger and larger until it filled the room, the planet, and the endless space outside, and its wet pores grew into caves and from them came dripping horrors with pointed, poisoned teeth and sounds more ghastly than any sight, sounds rising growlhowl scream shriek, and loud and more and huge and new worse sights ashake, ashudder and tearing apart with the noise absolute; and all at once dead quiet so sudden it was agony, and in a dim radiance stood Will Hawkline smiling, smiling at last right at her, his eyes captured by hers, his hand out, his arms out, and, and, a spear of white metal striking up from somewhere, entering his breast and emerging scarlet from the top of his head, and oh, his look of complete astonishment as she screamed at last, then all was dark, then she was gone . . .
“Gone,” said Little John Five in the scout with Will Hawkline. “She’s gone.”
Never knowing Jonna’s last most terrible illusion, Will Hawkline asked, out of a dry throat, “What do you mean gone?” feeling again that which he had not known he could feel.
“No sign now from Orel, not from her.
. . . Are you well? Your breathing stopped.” It started again with a great shudder. The Little John said, “And yet I have her life signals . . . no this can’t be. This is not in my data banks.”
“What? What?”
“The life signals come from another place . . . not Orel at all, but nowhere else either. No chart or survey or probe has ever reported anything but emptiness just there. And yet—I get her sign.”
“Pull out of this into real-space, and set a course, and go there, wherever she is,” Will cried harshly.
“But Orel . . . the cruiser . . . the detonation of Earth—”
“Five, I order you.” And the Little John obeyed, saying only, “You know we’re damaged,” and did the things necessary to fling them into the real. A moment’s observation and the Little John had set the new course and flung them spiraling into the grey. “You still get signs?”
“Naturally not.”
“What do you mean naturally not?”
“Forward in space, backward in time,” the Little John said. “Have you forgotten? She will not have arrived there yet. Wherever ‘there’ is.”
Off they went then, back in time, forward in space, until they emerged; and there, where all the data banks everywhere said there was nothing, was a planet in orbit around a distant star—distant enough and so erratically aflame that there had never been (would be) a reason to look for perturbations. They stared at the world in wonder until Will Hawkline said, “It’s molten. The planet’s molten!”
“Yes. It’s newborn.”
“We’ve come that far back?” And the Little John answered, “We’re damaged.”
“Orbit in close,” said Will Hawkline, “and speed up our time.” Reluctantly the scout responded and they watched in fascination the agonies of a molten ball becoming a world, its heaving throes and spouts of lava, gouts of flame and writhes of color as the strata turned up edgewise and sank again; then a nearly endless time of clouds and fireflickers, and the emergence of land and oceans, land that stayed, land that sank, oceans roaring across land newly alive with grasses just invented.
And at last the beauty came, and calm—isthmus and estuary making firm agreements with the island dotted sea, and life flourishing at last, sure and powerfully evolving. And for Will, a growing sense of presence, of a newer kind of mind, strong and gentle and sane and fearless. “Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?” And by what, Will Hawkline knew that a Little John, for all his mental powers, could not feel certain things.
Then together, they gasped.
It was—gone. The planet vanished! All about them the stars shone, the distant sun flamed, but this world was gone
Because he felt what he felt, Will Hawkline said, “Tighten your orbit. Move in closer.”
“Orbit around what? Closer to what? There’s nothing there anymore! I can’t see it, my instruments can’t see it . . .” Will Hawkline had never seen a Little John so upset. But he could feel the emanations of Mind close by, and he smiled and said, “Pretend it’s still there, and go down.
Obediently the Little John did it. Nothing, and nothing, and ah.”
And of course you know where they were, and when. They had witnessed the birth of our dear Ceer, and the beginnings of our shield, and had now passed inside it and were filled with wonder.
“Her signs! Her signs! She’s alive here!” The Little John was really excited: amazing! And just then the scout gave a sickening lurch and Will himself overrode the computerized controls and summoned his old skill as a pilot—trained to manage these flying things with his own two hands. He righted it, but lost a great deal of altitude, and scout apparently disliked his firmness because it fought back and set up a great grinding clatter from somewhere inside it. “Where is she?” he shouted over the noise.
“Over there, right at the base of the peninsula! But there’s a mountain.”
Will Hawkline saw it, then lost it in the rush of clouds and rain that swept down on it. He turned toward where he thought Jonna was.
“Climb! Climb!”
“Climb she won’t,” Will said grimly. “Anyway, I don’t see any mountain now,” which was perfectly true. As if insulted, the mountain reached up a high crag, or seemed to, and gouged out a slit a third of the way down the hull, throwing the nose of the scout almost straight up. Through the slit, which stopped just under his feet, he got a split-second glimpse of the peninsula and a wide flat meadow. As the nose came down he swung it that way. The scout tilted to the left and wouldn’t correct, and they came in like that, skittered and slid, nose down, up and over, and it was all black everywhere and quiet.
The first thing Will Hawkline saw as he came out of the blackness was something he couldn’t believe.
Me.
The next thing he knew was that the warm pillow under his head spoke to him: “Will . . . Oh Will—are you all right?” It had Jonna Verret’s voice because the pillow was Jonna Verret’s lap. He tipped his head back and looked at her and then again at me, and tried to sit up and scrabble backwards at once. I think he was afraid.
Maybe my teeth. Jonna said, “It’s all right, Will. That’s Althair. He pulled you out of the scout.”
What was left of it,” said the Little John, still saw him sitting on the floor nearby. He had a bump over one eye but seemed well otherwise. They were in what Will thought . . . as a polished
wooden cave. Well, what would you think if you’d never seen one of our living living-places before?
Anyway, you never heard such a flurry of questions in your life, and if it hadn’t been for Little John Five sitting there nodding his big golden head every now and then, I don’t think Will Hawkline would have believed a word of it. He had to know all about Ceer and we Zados, and the shield we thought up around our planet, and why we have no machines, and how we grow living-places and see-far and move to other worlds when we want to, without jugs.
“The Zados took me away from the Mindpod on Orel,” Jonna told him. “Right out from under a force-beam. They brought me here and stopped the poison the Mindpod had put into my blood and made me well all over, even my head.” And Will had to believe it, because she was here. But when I tried to explain how that making where she was, the only place in the universe she couldn’t be (so she disappeared) and Ceer the only place in the universe she could be, he couldn’t understand it. Slowpokes think tools, you see. When they want to do something, the first thing they look for is something outside of themselves to do it with; tools, machines, inventions. They can do a lot with tools, but that kind of thinking keeps them from doing things the simple way, which is why they are slowpokes. What makes them so funny is that they don’t have to be slowpokes, and they just are.
Will Hawkline was very very bright; you have to understand that. He had to be, to have become Coordinator of his Time Center on Avalon while still so young. As I told you, that is a very high place to reach on Earth. But he was bright in a way that made things a lot more difficult than they had to be. He never stopped asking questions, which is a fine thing in itself, but when he couldn’t understand the answers, he wanted to stop and work at it, and found it very hard just to accept and go on. We can do certain things, we Zados. We had proved it to him. But it was very uphill for him to use what we could do without knowing how it worked, and without tools and inventions to test all the parts. Acceptance is the big word. Acceptance was very hard for Will Hawkline.
