by Brian N Ball
“Sometimes the Charlies disappear,” he said. “Most times they come back.”
“And what happens to those that disappear?”
Garvin shrugged and Ellison’s face, distorted by the mask, looked uncomfortable, as if he were about to apologize for causing her unnecessary concern.
Henry Sokutu began to complain. “You can’t expose yourself to these dangers—why, they found odd bits of men circling a hundred years afterwards and still alive!”
“Is there no other way?” asked Del.
“No!” boomed Ellison’s voice. “I can’t locate the Planet without pinpoint accuracy. The performance we’re getting won’t give us more than a general estimate of the part of space we’ll have to sweep. Look!” The monstrous arm gestured with authority at the ever-present simulation of the ship’s progress. Though “forward” motion was purely notional, the picture represented roughly the ship’s position relative to its presumed location; tiny star clusters whirled away, vast clouds of glowing vapour seeped into the wastes of space, and here and there a supernova blistered the picture; the ship was represented conventionally, as a jagged splinter of fiery steel.
“You knew this before we came?” asked Del.
“Yes.” Ellison was strongly confident, his absurd voice deepened, his small frame reinforced by the bulk of his suit. “The old voyagers travelled along the interior lines of hyper-space, just as we're doing. Sometimes they caught onto an expanding star system and were blown away beyond any dimensions they could plot; sometimes a white dwarf imploded and took them with it into a volume of a mass a few metres across; or they were whirled into a maelstrom of hypercubes they couldn't reach out of without some extraordinary exertion on their part, or some fortunate combination of forces—”
“The ‘Snakes and Ladders Effect!” shouted Henry Sokutu.
“You wrote about it in The Field” said Garvin. “This is why you came.”
It was as simple as that, Del realized. Ellison had joined the expedition to try out his theory “—and we're in the same kind of thing now ”
The four of them looked at Ellison in stunned amazement.
'We’re stuck!” said Garvin.
“Like the early sailors,” said Sokutu, wonderingly, 'looking at the winds that blow them to all points of the compass. Actually,” he said, assuming his didactic manner, “there’s an interesting classical parallel.”
“Pandora’s Box,” supplied Suzanne Rosetti.
“Opened by meddlers,” said Henry Sokutu. “I trust you’ll be able to close it, Charlie.”
“He has to go,” said Garvin.
“How dangerous is it?” asked Del.
Ellison considered. He was becoming impatient, but he was as courteous as ever. “Bad,” he said at last. “But statistically, I have a chance.” He was about to move off when he turned: “You know,” he boomed, “there’s something worrying me—the Commander’s Report—” He mumbled incomprehensibly for a moment and turned again to the entrance of the shuttle tunnel that would rocket him instantly into the hell below.
That was how Del would always remember him, unsurely confident, mumblingly assertive, timidly stepping into hell.
What happened was the distilled essence of horror.
Obligingly, Ellison had left on the telemonitors, and they saw every detail of his end. He was attended in the glowing inner chamber by the busy, frantically attentive little Charlies, but he dismissed them. “G— g—going in. No mmm—mm—more m—mmessages,” he said, and there were no more.
There was the briefest surge of power as Ellison grasped the ponderous levers which could be used manually to direct the banks of force-fields in their various combinations. Ellison and the lever he was holding disappeared.
The watchers instinctively craned forward. The pale flash on the monitoring screens had been brief and not unusually powerful. But Ellison had gone. Only pale blue light filtered around the spot where he had been standing. Suzanne grasped Del’s hand. When the horror took shape, she collapsed against him.
“Ellison!” whispered Sokutu.
A ribbon of tiny Ellisons appeared. A whirlpool of Ellisons swam round the ribbon in a contrapuntal movement. One great and ghastly head supplanted them, with thousands of familiarly protruding teeth and a hundred shocked eyes. A ring of fiery Ellisons began to whirl around the glowing chamber, endless chains of over-huge suited figures, faster and faster, until the eyes were points of light and the shocked faces were emerged into one pitiful and imploring look that told the watching four that Ellison knew his fate. His constituent matter was dissolving from the molecular to the atomic, to the sub-atomic level, and then into concentrations of energy that somehow would become part of the fabric of universal matter; but, and the watchers knew this, and they knew, horrifyingly, that Ellison was imploring them to help because he knew too. He had become, immortally, terrifyingly, incredibly, part of the tension of space and time.
‘Time-bound,” said Garvin.
Had his face a smile? Was there a hint of satisfaction? Del caught himself wondering about Garvin before he remembered the situation they were in.
“What do we do?” said Suzanne Rosetti. She had screamed. They had all become rigid with shock and fear. But they had all recovered. “Can’t we do anything for him?”
“Nothing,” said Del. “We have to help ourselves now.”
“Lost in time,” said Sokutu. “A brave young man.”
With a strange laugh, Garvin said:
“A fool.”
“He wasn’t!” said the girl. “Someone had to go!”
Del looked at her. She knew. There had to be someone like Ellison to take the chance. And he had gone with a smile, though his last look had lost all its humour—the hint of humour at the comers of the eyes that had classed Ellison as an enthusiast rather than a crank had been noticeably missing when he had been flung off into the maelstrom of hypercubes.
‘Where is he now?” wondered Henry Sokutu. ‘With all the others? The cowards, the heroes, the humorists, the cunning, the merely inquisitive? Will he be found a million years from now? Still whole? Still undead?” Struck by a sudden wonderful thought, the fat man's face creased in a great and marvellous smile: “There was a survivor once!”
“There was,” said Del.
“Almost whole,” said Garvin. “Bits of him disappeared from time to time. He would age and then reverse the ageing process. Then he'd go altogether for years.”
“What happened?” said Henry Sokutu, fascinated.
“Blew himself up. His corpse backed into hyperspace. Or so the recording instruments said.”
“Garv!” Suzanne was looking in fascination too at Garvin. “Garv, you don't care!' She took a step towards him and looked closely at him. “You're enjoying this,” she said.
“He could return,” marvelled Henry Sokutu. “Ellison could sidle back into the ship and we might never know!”
“You’re inhuman!” said the girl. Her face was contorted in revulsion against Garvin.
“Stop it,” ordered Del. He pushed her back and down into a seat. “And you, Sokutu. Garvin, you know something.”
“Yes.”
“About Ellison’s theory?”
“He was wrong. The ship's safe enough. You could handle it, Del.”
“You tried to interfere! You altered the readings!” screamed Suzanne. She was silent when Del patted her hand.
"Give it,” said Del.
"I told him he was wrong. Days ago.”
"But you let him go down there knowing he was wrong!” This time it was Henry Sokutu who shouted.
"He wanted it that way. I couldn't have stopped him. He’d have gone without your knowing it. This way at least we know what he was trying to do.”
"How was he wrong?” asked Del. He sensed a new factor in the situation. Garvin was too sure of himself. The smooth competent manner, the almost aggressive sense of new knowledge and with it power. Against this, Del balanced Ellison’s incoherent statements. Where had the two clashed?
"Ellison was a fool. There’s nothing wrong with the shields. The drive’s inhibited by a different factor altogether.”
Del choked suddenly. He too realized what lay behind Garvin’s words, and he saw then how they had all been swayed by Ellison’s sad single-mindedness. They had overlooked the obvious.
"Yes,” said Garvin, to the little group. "That’s it. We’re getting interference from the Planet.”
"Ellison said something before he went,” said Sokutu. “Did you hear it?”
"He murmured—the way he mumbled,” said the girl, "—something about looking at nothing.”
"And Smith,” said Del. "Something about the Commander, too.”
Garvin nodded. "He half-knew, but he wouldn’t admit it. He wanted to prove his own internalized geodesic concept right. He’d twist any facts he came across to fit his theory.”
"The poor man,” said the girl. "To think of him, maybe strung in bits along our course like so many parts of a machine!”
Del was oddly stirred by the girl's sympathy. She had an intensity of feeling that could shock him from his usual calmness: as now. He knew there were decisions to make, but the girls warm presence invited attention. He shook off the feeling of empathy:
“Garvin,” he said. “You’ve been working on Field Theory?” Obviously Garvin had.
“I worked through all Ellison’s charts.”
“Can you handle the drive?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. A flat statement.
“And you’re sure we’re getting interference from the Planet?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful!” said Sokutu. He pushed his big face up to Garvin’s. “Proof?”
“How can you prove anything in this ship!” said Garvin. He was excited, midway between anger and hilarity. “All you can say is what are the probabilities.”
“And?” said Del.
Garvin explained. It was the time factor. Del felt cold, uncanny tendrils brushing against his spine. The girl was looking at him and Del knew that she too was undergoing the same experience of premonition. Garvin’s account of ancient discovery, and the memory of present horror, combined to make the analysis an eerie experience.
“Ellison programmed the computers to analyse the data in any number of ways—except the one that mattered. He checked the readings we were getting from our instruments in so many ways that the main computer told him he was wasting time. That was when I started to run through simulated sightings of the Planet.” He looked at the girl. “Ellison didn’t like it. I transferred to my own computer, and even that was able to come up with results.”
“Well?” asked Del.
“A comparison of the sighting reports from the Trusts archives showed the same freak temporal factor. Do you remember the phrasing of the Report? ‘A kind of time-shift*, Smith said.”
Henry Sokutu also quoted, but from the earlier Report:
“ ‘ ... a matrix of forevers .. .’ said the fat man. “Isn’t that it? Isn’t that Ellison’s pattern?”
“The main computer details it,” said Garvin. “Listen.” He flicked the button and the machine at once spoke out:
“Evidence of a state of cycloidal perpetuity in this section of hyperspace,” it reeled off. “A configuration of hyperspatial matrixes is a definite possibility. Causation unknown, but the best guess is time-warping from an extra-Galactic source. Hypothesis suggested is possible.” It stopped, and its voice changed. Someone had had the wit to build an informal tone for such occasions. “As a matter of fact, I’ve built up a picture for you.”
“It’s programmed to make suggestions,” Garvin explained. ‘"Ellison always built a talkback into his programmes.”
“He was good with machines,” said Suzanne inconsequentially. “He always understood them.”
“That’s the ship,” said Garvin, as the picture slowly emerged.
The interplay of forces that made up the grotesque dimensional framework they were travelling in was represented by fluctuating and intertwining webs of light The ship was the usual romanticized sliver of fiery steel, but, by a quirk of computer humour, the Planet was shown as a clock, melting, spinning backward, and ringing out a message of alarm. It was alone with its two small suns, almost a lone sentinel in its comer of the Universe.
“Look at the time factor,” said Garvin insistently. “Here’s the graph of the effects of shield imbalance. Here’s the chart of each sector as we passed through it. If you check the coordinates against the mean readings of all previous recorded voyages, the answers there. There's a sharp rise in time-shift, and the nearer each ship gets to the Planet, the more effect there is. Smith's voyage is the only one that's comparable, of course, but it's too much of a coincidence that the same pattern should emerge in other voyages too."
“Then we're near it?” said Suzanne.
“I think so,” said Garvin.
There seemed nothing else to say. The girl brought coffee and she talked slowly:
“Del,” she said, “did you ever have the feeling that you were so lost you couldn't find yourself even?” Women didn't reason, thought Del. They accepted events and the words tumbled from them, spilt over into inconsequentialities until they suddenly touched off the thunder in the mind. “We're children and we accept our lives, and suddenly we're as mature as well ever be—Del, did you ever want to stop for one moment, stop everything, and hold onto that one moment that you thought was real, I mean the odd time when you know what you and another person are.” She said the words with an intense conviction that baffled Del.
He turned to Garvin. “Garv, can you work something out?”
“I'm trying something now.” One by one the Charlies had returned from their vigil in the drive chamber and now they waited for instructions. Garvin's hands flickered over the massive console and the ship glanced this way and that as it trod over the thresholds of more and more pyramidal complexes of hypercubes.
“Del,” the girl insisted again. “Del, with you now— I feel it's real now. Being in this place here and now with you.”
“You’ve had a shock. We all have.”
“But we re more real here than back in the dream Galaxy—it is all dreams there, there’s nothing that means anything!”
Del held her to him briefly and she began to weep silently.
“Tension,” he said to Henry Sokutu who was an interested spectator. Garvin ignored them. A robot jumped at Garvin’s command and hurried away on some important errand.
“You’re real, Del!”
“Leave it, Suzanne,” said Del.
And then there was no time for talk or comfort, for the man at the console had bellowed out:
“I’ve found it! The Planet!”
And the ship was full of noise as the robots dashed to their stations for the conversion of the drive’s power to something usable in a small fragment of space. Del felt cold coffee spilt on his hands. The girl had knocked the mugs over as she fainted. Emergency signals made an excruciating noise until Garvin swept them away with a flicker of clever, skilled hands. Del jumped to the position simulator. The computer showed the Planet. And the ship. The two were in a definite relationship with one another.
“A triumph!” yelled Henry Sokutu at his elbow. “Look! Garvin! Suzanne! We’ve found it! Look, the computers say were here! What a triumph for the human race!”
“It is the Planet?” Del said to Garvin.
Garvin turned away impatiently. “Yes, yes, of
course! No doubt—no shifting of the pattern on the simulator!”
“The Forever Planet! Ah! We’ll unzip time itself! We’ll tear time right out of its frame and take it back with us! There’ll be an answer waiting there for us!” Henry Sokutu capered around the cabin in delight.
The vast vessel shuddered as more robot messengers were dispatched on errands. Garvin confidently
blanked off more and more screens, tore down the defensive barriers against the tensions of hyperspace, and shut down bank after bank of power units. There was a tremendous exhilaration in the cabin. Only the girl was still. Del was caught up in the excitement-all thought of the ghost of Ellison still wandering in the hyperspace behind them completely gone—and the prospect of imminent action brought back the confidence that had enabled him to withstand the many years of desperate encounters.
The quietness, when it came, was frightening. For a second, absolute stillness and quietness filled the cabin. The ship was momentarily dead. The simulated picture faded, the fantastic power of the hyperspace drive was gone. Garvin had killed all the power units. Then, with a sudden leap, the ship moved on again, a recognizable motion, not the frantic horror of the strange hyperspace drive, but the jolting motion of a massive ion-jet projector. Now the ship was under its own slow drive, its powerful auxiliary engines sending it pounding towards the Planet. The engines pulsed regularly, at a rate that made the colossal distances of space seem small, but which was infinitesimally slow when compared with the power of the hyperspace drive.
The three men looked at the images on the screen. It was not now the guessed-at simulated picture they were accustomed to. They saw images based on direct, physical observation. And they saw the two glittering suns. And the Planet.
Del felt the small hairs crawl on his neck. The girl stirred and reached out to him. She saw the picture and she too shivered.
“How long?” said Del.
Garvin looked at his instruments. “Maybe two days.”
Chapter Twelve
The waiting. Henry Sokutu mourned Ellison; his flabby bulk normally buoyed up with ebullient high spirits seemed to droop until he was half the man he had been. Garvin, on the other hand, flourished. He was tremendously busy, his active mind planning, checking, correlating, conceiving of a thousand plans for the immediate future. Del watched them all, especially the girl. She had turned to him, an unsure figure, that rare modern being, a dependent woman. They were three rather forlorn figures, Del thought: himself, able only to sit back and let Garvin plan their fate; Henry Sokutu a dejected, idle man; and the girl, who spent hours watching and waiting. Ellison hung about, a ghost in the ponderous mechanism that was the ship.
