Time for the Stars

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Vicky took a trick in the middle of the night, over Kathleen’s objections. Kathleen wanted to take it herself, but the truth was that she and I could no longer work easily without Vicky in the circuit, at least not anything as difficult as code groups.

  The Captain did not come in to breakfast and I got there late. I looked around and found a place by Janet Meers. We no longer sat by departments—just one big horseshoe table, with the rest of the mess room arranged to look like a lounge, so that it would not seem so empty.

  I was just digging into scrambled yeast on toast when Mr. Eastman stood up and tapped a glass for attention. He looked as if he had not slept for days. “Quiet, please. I have a message from the Captain.” He pulled out a sheet and started to read:

  “‘Notice to All Hands: By direction of the Long Range Foundation the mission of this ship has been modified. We will remain in the neighborhood of Beta Ceti pending rendezvous with Foundation Ship Serendipity. Rendezvous is expected in approximately one month. Immediately thereafter we will shape orbit for Earth.

  “‘F. X. Urqhardt, commanding Lewis and Clark.’”

  My jaw dropped. Why, the silent creeper! All the time I had been lambasting him in my mind he had been arguing the home office into canceling our orders…no wonder he had used code; you don’t say in clear language that your ship is a mess and your crew has gone to pot. Not if you can help it, you don’t. I didn’t even resent that he had not trusted us freaks to respect the security of communications; I wouldn’t have trusted myself, under the circumstances.

  Janet’s eyes were shining…like a woman in love, or like a relativistic mathematician who has just found a new way to work a transformation. “So they’ve done it!” she said in a hushed voice.

  “Done what?” I asked. She was certainly taking it in a big way; I hadn’t realized she was that anxious to get home.

  “Tommie, don’t you see? They’ve done it, they’ve done it, they’ve applied irrelevance. Dr. Babcock was right.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why, it’s perfectly plain. What kind of a ship can get here in a month? An irrelevant ship, of course. One that is faster than light.” She frowned. “But I don’t see why it should take even a month. It shouldn’t take any time at all. It wouldn’t use time.”

  I said, “Take it easy, Janet. I’m stupid this morning—I didn’t have much sleep last night. Why do you say that ship…uh, the Serendipity…is faster than light? That’s impossible.”

  “Tommie, Tommie…look, dear, if it was an ordinary ship, in order to rendezvous with us here, it would have had to have left Earth over sixty-three years ago.”

  “Well, maybe it did.”

  “Tommie! It couldn’t possibly—because that long ago nobody knew that we would be here now. How could they?”

  I figured back. Sixty-three Greenwich years ago…mmm, that would have been sometime during our first peak. Janet seemed to be right; only an incredible optimist or a fortune teller would have sent a ship from Earth at that time to meet us here now. “I don’t understand it.”

  “Don’t you see, Tommie? I’ve explained it to you, I know I have. Irrelevance. Why, you telepaths were the reason the investigation started; you proved that ‘simultaneity’ was an admissible concept…and the inevitable logical consequence was that time and space do not exist.”

  I felt my head begin to ache. “They don’t? Then what is that we seem to be having breakfast in?”

  “Just a mathematical abstraction, dear. Nothing more.” She smiled and looked motherly. “Poor ‘Sentimental Tommie.’ You worry too much.”

  * * *

  I suppose Janet was right, for we made rendezvous with F. S. Serendipity twenty-nine Greenwich days later. We spent the time moseying out at a half gravity to a locus five billion miles Galactic-north of Beta Ceti, for it appeared that the Sarah did not want to come too close to the big star. Still, at sixty-three light-years, five billion miles is close shooting—a very near miss. We also spent the time working like mischief to arrange and prepare specimens and in collating data. Besides that, Captain Urqhardt suddenly discovered, now that we were expecting visitors, that lots and lots of things had not been cleaned and polished lately. He even inspected staterooms, which I thought was snoopy.

  The Sarah had a mind reader aboard, which helped when it came time to close rendezvous. She missed us by nearly two light-hours; then their m-r and myself exchanged coordinates (referred to Beta Ceti) by relay back Earthside and got each other pinpointed in a hurry. By radar and radio alone we could have fiddled around for a week—if we had ever made contact at all.

  But once that was done, the Sarah turned out to be a fast ship, lively enough to bug your eyes out. She was in our lap, showing on our short-range radar, as I was reporting the coordinates she had just had to the Captain. An hour later she was made fast and sealed to our lock. And she was a little ship. The Elsie had seemed huge when I first joined her; then after a while she was just the right size, or a little cramped for some purposes. But the Sarah wouldn’t have made a decent Earth-Moon shuttle.

  Mr. Whipple came aboard first. He was an incredible character to find in space; he even carried a briefcase. But he took charge at once. He had two men with him and they got busy in a small compartment in the cargo deck. They knew just what compartment they wanted; we had to clear potatoes out of it in a hurry. They worked in there half a day, installing something they called a “null-field generator,” working in odd clothes made entirely of hair-fine wires, which covered them like mummies. Mr. Whipple stayed in the door, watching while they worked and smoking a cigar—it was the first I had seen in three years and the smell of it made me ill. The relativists stuck close to him, exchanging excited comments, and so did the engineers, except that they looked baffled and slightly disgusted. I heard Mr. Regato say, “Maybe so. But a torch is reliable. You can depend on a torch.”

  Captain Urqhardt watched it all, Old Stone Face in person.

  At last Mr. Whipple put out his cigar and said, “Well, that’s that, Captain. Thompson will stay and take you in and Bjorkenson will go on in the Sarah. I’m afraid you will have to put up with me, too, for I am going back with you.”

  Captain Urqhardt’s face was a gray-white. “Do I understand, sir, that you are relieving me of my command?”

  “What? Good heavens, Captain, what makes you say that?”

  “You seem to have taken charge of my ship…on behalf of the home office. And now you tell me that this man…er, Thompson—will take us in.”

  “Gracious, no. I’m sorry. I’m not used to the niceties of field work; I’ve been in the home office too long. But just think of Thompson as a…mmm, a sailing master for you. That’s it; he’ll be your pilot. But no one is displacing you; you’ll remain in command until you can return home and turn over your ship. Then she’ll be scrapped, of course.”

  Mr. Regato said in a queer, high voice, “Did you say ‘scrapped,’ Mr. Whipple?” I felt my stomach give a twist. Scrap the Elsie? No!

  “Eh? I spoke hastily. Nothing has been decided. Possibly she will be kept as a museum. In fact, that is a good idea.” He took out a notebook and wrote in it. He put it away and said, “And now, Captain, if you will, I’d like to speak to all your people. There isn’t much time.”

  Captain Urqhardt silently led him back to the mess deck.

  When we were assembled, Mr. Whipple smiled and said, “I’m not much at speechmaking. I simply want to thank you all, on behalf of the Foundation, and explain what we are doing. I won’t go into detail, as I am not a scientist; I am an administrator, busy with the liquidation of Project Lebensraum, of which you are part. Such salvage and rescue operations as this are necessary; nevertheless, the Foundation is anxious to free the Serendipity, and her sister ships, the Irrelevant, the Infinity, and Zero, for their proper work, that is to say, their survey of stars in the surrounding space.”

  Somebody gasped. “But that’s what we were doing!”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Bu
t times change. One of the null-field ships can visit more stars in a year than a torchship can visit in a century. You’ll be happy to know that the Zero working alone has located seven Earth-type planets this past month.”

  It didn’t make me happy.

  Uncle Alfred McNeil leaned forward and said in a soft, tragic voice that spoke for all of us, “Just a moment, sir. Are you telling us that what we did…wasn’t necessary?”

  Mr. Whipple looked startled. “No, no, no! I’m terribly sorry if I gave that impression. What you did was utterly necessary, or there would not be any null ships today. Why, that’s like saying that what Columbus did wasn’t necessary, simply because we jump across oceans as if they were mud puddles nowadays.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Unc said quietly.

  “Perhaps no one has told you just how indispensably necessary Project Lebensraum has been. Very possibly—things have been in a turmoil around the Foundation for some time—I know I’ve had so little sleep myself that I don’t know what I’ve done and left undone. But you realize, don’t you, that without the telepaths among you, all this progress would not have taken place?” Whipple looked around. “Who are they? I’d like to shake hands with them. In any case—I’m not a scientist, mind you; I’m a lawyer—in any case, if we had not had it proved beyond doubt that telepathy is truly instantaneous, proof measured over many light-years, our scientists might still be looking for errors in the sixth decimal place and maintaining that telepathic signals do not propagate instantaneously but simply at a speed so great that its exact order was concealed by instrumental error. So I understand, so I am told. So you see, your great work has produced wondrous results, much greater than expected, even if they are not quite the results you were looking for.”

  I was thinking that if they had told us just a few days sooner, Uncle Steve would still be alive.

  But he never did want to die in bed.

  “But the fruition of your efforts,” Whipple went on, “did not show at once. Like so many things in science, the new idea had to grow for a long time, among specialists…then the stupendous results burst suddenly on the world. For myself, if anyone had told me six months ago that I would be out here among the stars today, giving a popular lecture on the new physics, I wouldn’t have believed him. I’m not sure that I believe it now. But here I am. Among other things, I am here to help you get straightened away when we get back home.” He smiled and bowed.

  “Uh, Mr. Whipple,” Chet Travers asked, “just when will we get home?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Almost immediately…say soon after lunch.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  OF TIME AND CHANGE

  I might as well finish this off and give it a decent burial. I’ll never have time to write again.

  They held us in quarantine for a week at Rio. If it had not been for the LRF man with us, they might have been holding us yet. But they were nice to us. Emperor Dom Pedro III of Brazil presented us each with the Richardson Medal on behalf of the United System and made a speech which showed that he was not quite sure who we were or where we had been, but nevertheless our services were appreciated.

  But not as much attention was paid to us as I had expected. Oh, I don’t mean that the news services ignored us; they did take our pictures and they interviewed each of us. But the only news story I saw was headed: THIRD LOAD OF RIP VAN WINKLES ARRIVE TODAY.

  The reporter or whoever it was who wrote the piece had fun with it and I hope he chokes. It seems that our clothes were quaint and our speech was quaint and we were all deliciously old-fashioned and a bit simple-minded. The picture was captioned: “Off Hats, Chuckies! Grandpa Towncomes.”

  I didn’t look at the stories.

  It didn’t worry Unc; I doubt if he noticed. He was simply eager to see Celestine. “I do hope,” he said to me half seriously, “that child can cook the way her mother could.”

  “You’ll be living with her?” I asked.

  “Of course. Haven’t we always?”

  That was so logical that I had no answer. Then we exchanged addresses. That was logical, too, but it seemed odd—all the address any of us had had was the Elsie. But I exchanged addresses with everybody and made a note to look up Dusty’s twin, if he was still alive, and tell him he could be proud of his brother—perhaps I could locate him through the Foundation.

  When they turned us loose and Celestine Johnson did show up I did not recognize her. I saw this tall, handsome old lady rush up and put her arms around Unc, almost lifting him off his feet, and I wondered if I should rescue him.

  But then she looked up and caught my eye and smiled and I yelled, “Sugar Pie!”

  She smiled still more and I felt myself washed through with sweetness and love. “Hello, Tommie. It’s good to see you again.”

  Presently I promised to visit them at my very first chance and left them; they didn’t need me for their homecoming. Nobody had come to meet me; Pat was too old and no longer traveled, Vicky was too young to be allowed to travel alone, and as for Molly and Kathleen, I think their husbands didn’t see any reason for it. Neither of them liked me, anyhow. I don’t blame them, under the circumstances…even though it had been a long time (years to them) since I had mind-talked to their wives other than with Vicky’s help. But I repeat, I don’t blame them. If telepathy ever becomes common, such things could cause a lot of family friction.

  Besides, I was in touch with Vicky whenever I wanted to be. I told her to forget it and not make a fuss; I preferred not to be met.

  In fact, save for Unc, almost none of us was met other than by agents of LRF. After more than seventy-one years there was simply no one to meet them. But Captain Urqhardt was the one I felt sorriest for. I saw him standing alone while we were all waiting outside quarantine for our courier-interpreters. None of the rest was alone; we were busy, saying good-by. But he didn’t have any friends—I suppose he couldn’t afford to have any friends aboard ship, even while he was waiting to become Captain.

  He looked so bleak and lonely and unhappy that I walked up and stuck out my hand. “I want to say good-by, Captain. It’s been an honor to serve with you…and a pleasure.” The last was not a lie; right then I meant it.

  He looked surprised; then his face broke into a grin that I thought would crack it; his face wasn’t used to it. He grabbed my hand and said, “It’s been my pleasure, too, Bartlett. I wish you all the luck in the world. Er…what are your plans?”

  He said it eagerly and I suddenly realized he wanted to chat, just to visit. “I don’t have any firm plans, Captain. I’m going home first, then I suppose I’ll go to school. I want to go to college, but I suppose I’ll have some catching up to do. There have been some changes.”

  “Yes, there have been changes,” he agreed solemnly. “We’ll all have catching up to do.”

  “Uh, what are your plans, sir?”

  “I don’t have any. I don’t know what I can do.”

  He said it simply, a statement of fact; with sudden warm pity I realized that it was true. He was a torchship captain, as specialized a job as ever existed…and now there were no more torchships. It was as if Columbus had come back from his first voyage and found nothing but steamships. Could he go to sea again? He wouldn’t even have been able to find the bridge, much less know what to do when he got there.

  There was no place for Captain Urqhardt; he was an anachronism. One testimonial dinner and then thank you, good night.

  “I suppose I could retire,” he went on, looking away. “I’ve been figuring my back pay and it comes to a preposterous sum.”

  “I suppose it would, sir.” I hadn’t figured my pay; Pat had collected it for me “Confound it, Bartlett! I’m too young to retire.”

  I looked at him. I had never thought of him as especially old and he was not, not compared with the Captain—with Captain Swenson. But I decided that he must be around forty, ship’s time. “Say, Captain, why don’t you go back to school too? You can afford it.”

  He looked unhappy.
“Perhaps I should. I suppose I ought to. Or maybe I should just chuck it and emigrate. They say there are a lot of places to choose from now.”

  “I’ll probably do that myself, eventually. If you ask me, things have become too crowded around here. I’ve been thinking about Connie, and how pretty Babcock Bay looked.” I really had been thinking about it during the week we had spent in quarantine. If Rio was a sample, Earth didn’t have room enough to fall down; we were clear down in the Santos District and yet they said it was Rio. “If we went back to Babcock Bay, we’d be the oldest settlers.”

  “Perhaps I will. Yes, perhaps I will.” But he still looked lost.

  Our courier-interpreters had instructions to take us all home, or wherever we wanted to go, but I let mine leave once I had my ticket for home. She was awfully nice but she bothered me. She treated me as a cross between grandfather who must be watched over in traffic and a little boy who must be instructed. Not but what I needed instruction.

  But once I had clothes that would not be stared at, I wanted to be on my own. She had taught me enough System Speech in a week so that I could get by in simple matters and I hoped that my mistakes would be charged up to a local accent from somewhere. Actually, I found that System Speech, when it wasn’t upgained to tears, was just P-L lingo with more corners knocked off and some words added. English, in other words, trimmed and stretched to make a trade lingo.

  So I thanked Senhorita Guerra and told her good-by and waved my ticket at a sleepy gatekeeper. He answered in Portuguese and I looked stupid, so he changed it to, “Outdowngo rightwards. Ask from allone.” I was on my way.

  * * *

  Somehow everybody in the ship seemed to know that I was a Rip Van Winkle and the hostess insisted on helping me make the change at White Sands. But they were friendly and did not laugh at me. One chap wanted to know about the colony being opened up on Capella VIII and did not understand why I hadn’t been there if I had spaced all that time. I tried to explain that Capella was clear across the sky and more than a hundred light-years from where I had been, but I didn’t put the idea across.