The Broken Cycle

by A Bertram Chandler

  Chapter 7

  She said, "But we shouldn't be alive . . ."

  He said, "But we are." He added, glumly, "But for how long? This boat must be as radioactive as all hell. I suppose that it was the bomb that went off."

  "It was," she told him. "But there's no radioactivity. I've tested. There is a counter in my bomb disposal kit."

  He said, "It must be on the blink."

  "It's not. It registers well enough with all the normal sources—my wristwatch, against the casing of the fusion power unit, and so on."

  He said doubtfully, "I suppose we could have been thrown clear. Or we were in some cone of shadow . . . . Yes, that makes sense. We were toward the stern of the ship, and the shielding of her power plant must have protected us."

  She asked, "What now?"

  Grimes stared through the viewports of the control cabin. There was no sign of Skink. There was no sign of any wreckage from Delta Geminorum. The stars shone bright and hard in the blackness; the mini-Mannschenn had stopped and the boat was adrift in the normal Continuum.

  He said, "We stay put."

  She said, "Shouldn't Delamere be sniffing around to pick up the pieces?"

  "Delamere's sure that there aren't any pieces," he told her, "just as I should be sure if I were in his shoes. And, in any case, he's in a hurry to get to Olgana. He knows we're dead, vaporized. But he'll have used his Carlotti to put in a report to Base, giving the coordinates of the scene of the disaster. When anything of this kind happens a ship full of experts is sent at once to make an investigation." He laughed. "And won't they be surprised when they find us alive and kicking!"

  "Can't we use our radio to tell them?"

  "We can't raise Skink on the N.S.T. transmitter while she's running on Mannschenn Drive. We can't raise the Base, either. Oh, they'd pick up the signal eventually—quite a few months from now. And you've seen the mess that our Carlotti set is in . . ."

  "So we just . . . wait?"

  "S.O.P. for shipwrecked spacemen," said Grimes. "We haven't a hope in hell of getting anywhere in our lifetimes unless we use Mannschenn Drive—and, looking at the mess the mini-Mannschenn is in, I'd sooner not touch it. We've survived so far. Let's stay that way."

  "Couldn't you fix the Carlotti transceiver to let Base know that we're here?"

  "I'm not a Carlotti technician, any more than I'm an expert on Mannschenn Drives."

  "H'm." She looked around the quite commodious interior of the boat. "Looks like we have to set up housekeeping for a few days, doesn't it? We could be worse off, I suppose. Much worse off . . . . We've food, water, air, light, heat . . . Talking of heat, I may as well get into something more comfortable . . ."

  Grimes, never one to look such a magnificent gift horse in the mouth, helped her off with her spacesuit. She helped him off with his. In the thick underwear that they were wearing under the suits they might just as well still have been armored. She came into his arms willingly enough, but there was no real contact save for mouth to mouth.

  She whispered, "I'm still too warm . . ."

  He said, "We'd better take our longjohns off, until we want them again. No point in subjecting them to needless wear and tear . . ."

  "Are you seducing me, sir?"

  "I wouldn't think of it!" lied Grimes.

  "I don't believe you, somehow. Oh, John, how good it is to get away from that horrid Base and Frankie's nasty little ship! I feel free, free!" She pulled the zip of her longjohns down to the crotch. Her released breasts thrust out at him, every pubic hair seemed to have a life of its own, to be rejoicing in its freedom from restraint. Grimes smelled the odor of her—animal, pungent—and his body responded. His underwear joined hers, floating in mid-cabin in a tangle of entwining limbs. Within seconds he and the girl were emulating the pose of the clothing that they had discarded. Stirred by the air currents the garments writhed in sympathy with the movements of their owners.

  Chapter 8

  "The Survey Service looks after its own," said Grimes.

  "Then it's high time that it started doing so," she said.

  "You can't organize a Search and Rescue Operation in five minutes," he told her.

  "All right, all right. We can't expect any help from Skink, We've already agreed on that. But Frankie will have informed Base of the destruction of the derelict. In the unlikely event of Skink's having been destroyed herself—you said that she was well out of effective range of the explosion—Base will have been wondering why no reports have been coming in from anybody. And how long have we been here now? Over three weeks."

  "If the Carlotti transceiver hadn't been smashed . . ." he began. "And the mini-Mannschenn . . . ."

  "The Normal Space Time transceiver is working—you say, and we hope. Surely by now there'd be somebody in this vicinity, sniffing around for wreckage—and not, therefore, running under interstellar drive. Even I know that. How many days did it take from Lindisfarne Base to the interception?"

  "Twenty."

  "And this is our twenty-third day in this tin coffin. For most of the time we've maintained a continuous listening watch as well as putting out distress calls at regular intervals. I suppose somebody might just pick them up a few years from now."

  "Space is vast," said Grimes.

  "You're telling me, Buster! But surely Delamere was able to give accurate coordinates for the position of the derelict when we boarded her—when we tried to board her, rather—even if he didn't want to risk his own precious hide investigating . . . ."

  "We've been over all this before," said Grimes.

  "Then we'll go over it again, lover boy."

  "Nobody survives a nuclear explosion at Position Zero, as we were," said Grimes.

  "Are you trying to suggest that we're dead and in some sort of spaceman's heaven? Ha, ha. It certainly ain't no policewoman's paradise!"

  Grimes ignored this. In any case, the double negative made her meaning unclear (he told himself). He went on, "And Delamere had his schedule to maintain . . . ." Even so, Delamere must have reported the destruction of Delta Geminorum to Base. And Base must have dispatched a properly equipped vessel to the scene of the disaster to gather whatever evidence, no matter how little, remained, even though it was only radioactive dust and gases.

  But why had the boat, and its occupants, not been reduced to that condition?

  She broke into his thoughts, remarking, "As I've said before, I'm not a spaceman."

  He looked across the table at her spectacular superstructure. "Insofar as gender is concerned, how very right you are!"

  She pointedly ignored this. "I'm not a spaceman, but I do remember some of the things that you people have condescended to tell me, from time to time, about the art and science of astronautics. More than once people have nattered to me about the peculiar consequences of changing the mass of a ship while the Mannschenn Drive is in operation."

  "Old spacemen's tales!" scoffed Grimes.

  "Really? Then how is it that in every ship that I've traveled in people have regarded that cock-eyed assemblage of precessing gyroscopes with superstitious awe? You're all scared of it. And what about the odd effects when the Drive is started, and the temporal precession field builds up, not when it's stopped, and the field fades? The feeling of déjà vu . . . The flashes of precognition . . ." She started to laugh. "What's so funny?"

  "I had a real beaut aboard Skink. I saw you out of uniform. When I saw you for the first time out of uniform, in actuality, it was in this boat. But I'd already seen that scar you have on your right thigh. But that isn't the funny part. In my . . . vision you were not only naked, but riding a bicycle . . ."

  "Very funny. As a matter of fact I saw you the same way. But bicycles are one article of equipment that this boat doesn't run to."

  "All right. Let's forget the bicycles. Maybe someday we'll enjoy a holiday on Arcadia together. I suppose the Arcadians ride bicycles as well as practicing naturalism. But Delta Geminorum . . . . She was running under interstellar drive when she blew up
. So were we, maintaining temporal synchronization with her."

  "Go on."

  "I'm only a glorified cop, John, but it's obvious, even to me, that a few thousand tons of mass were suddenly converted into energy in our immediate vicinity. So, Mr. Lieutenant Commander Grimes, where are we?"

  Grimes was beginning to feel badly scared. "Or when . . . ?" he muttered.

  "What the hell do you mean?"

  He said, "Brace yourself for yet another lecture on the Mannschenn Drive. The Mannschenn Drive warps the Continuum—the space-time continuum—about the ship that's using it. Putting it very crudely, such a ship is going astern in time while going ahead in space . . . ."

  "So . . . . So we could be anywhere. Or anywhen. But you're a navigator. You should be able to find out something from the relative positions of the stars."

  "Not so easy," he told her. "The Carlotti transceiver, which can be used for position finding as well as communicating, is bust. We do carry, of course, a Catalogue of Carlotti Beacons—but in these circumstances it's quite useless."

  "Especially so," she pointed out, "when we don't even know if there are any Carlotti Beacons in this space-time. So, lover boy, what are you doing about it?"

  Grimes' prominent ears flushed angrily. She was being unfair. She shared the responsibility for getting them into this mess. She, the bomb-disposal expert, should have warned him of the possible consequences of using a Carlotti transmitter in close proximity to the derelict. He rose from the table haughtily. It was no hardship for him to leave his unfinished meal. He stalked, insofar as this was possible when wearing only magnetic sandals in Free Fall, to the forward end of the boat. He stared out through the control cabin viewports at the interstellar immensities. There was no star that he could identify, no constellation. Had he been made a welcome visitor in Skink's control room he would have known how the stars should look in this sector of Space. As it was . . . . He shrugged. All that he could be sure of was that they were in a universe, not necessarily the universe. At least the boat hadn't fallen down some dark crack in the continuum.

  He turned away from the port, looked aft. He saw that Una Freeman had taken the broken, battered Carlotti transceiver from the locker in which it had been stowed, was picking up and looking at the pieces intently. Nude with Moebius Strip, he thought sardonically.

  She waved the twisted antenna at him. "Are you sure you can't do anything with this lot?" she demanded.

  "Quite sure. I'm not a radio technician."

  "Then you can't be sure that it is a complete write-off." Her wide, fun mouth was capable of quite spectacular sneering. "Get the lead out of your pants, lover boy—not that you're wearing any. You've been having a marvelous holiday for the last three weeks; it's high time that you started work again."

  "Mphm?"

  "I thought, in my girlish innocence . . . ."

  "Ha, ha."

  She glared at him. "I thought, in my girlish innocence that all you spacefaring types were men of infinite resource and sagacity, able to make repairs, light years from the nearest yard, with chewing gum and old string. I'd like to see some proof of it."

  He said, "I might be able to straighten out the antenna and get it remounted. But the printed circuits are a mess."

  She said, "There're soldering irons in the workshop."

  "I know. But have you had a good look at those trays?"

  "Of course. Trays of circuitry. Since simple soldering seems to be beyond your capabilities . . . ."

  "And yours."

  "I'm not the skilled, trained, qualified spaceman, lover boy. You are. But let me finish. As a Sky Marshal I had to do quite a few courses on general spacemanship, including Deep Space communications. One of the things I learned was that quite a few circuit trays are interchangeable between NST and Carlotti transceivers. Since it's obvious now that we shall not be needing the NST transceiver—we cannibalize. After that's been done, lover boy, all we have to do is home on the Lindisfarne Beacon."

  "And how many years will it take us?" he asked sarcastically.

  "Oh, I forgot. After you've fixed the Carlotti set you fix the mini-Mannschenn."

  Chapter 9

  There was a Radio Technician's Manual in the boat's book locker. Grimes got it out. Unluckily the writer of it had assumed that anybody reading it would possess at least a smattering of knowledge concerning Deep Space radio. Grimes was not such a person. He knew that the Carlotti equipment propagated signals which, somehow, ignored the normal three dimensions of Space and, by taking a shortcut of some kind, arrived at the receiving station, no matter how many light years distant, practically instantaneously. In any ship that he had been in the thing had worked. There had always been fully qualified officers to see that it worked. Had the complete boarding party been in the boat when she pushed off from Skink there would have been such an officer among her crew. (But, thought Grimes, had he taken the full boarding party with him he would not have been alone with Una.)

  He and the girl puzzled over the text and the diagrams. They could make neither head nor tail of the latter, but they discovered that printed circuit tray #3 of NST transceiver Mark VII could be substituted for tray #1 of Carlotti transceiver Mark IVA, and so on and so on. It began to look as though Una's idea would work.

  Before commencing operations he started up the inertial drive. He was not, as yet, going anywhere in particular, but physical work is more easily carried out in a gravitational field—or under acceleration—than in free fall conditions. Then, with Una assisting, he pulled the circuit trays out of the Carlotti set. Number one, obviously, would have to be replaced. That presented no problem. Number two was obviously nonfunctional. Number two from the NST transceiver was the recommended substitute. Number three appeared to be undamaged. Number four was in almost as big a mess as number one—and none of the NST circuits could be used in its stead.

  So, soldering it had to be.

  Grimes carried the tray to the little workshop that shared space with the boat's power plant and propulsive units, put it on the bench. He had the Manual open at the proper page, thought that he would be able to patch things up. He was a messy solderer and soon discovered that clothing is worn for protection as well as for adornment or motives of prudery. Una—who was annoyingly amused—applied first aid; then Grimes got into his longjohns before continuing.

  When he was finished—a few hours and several burns later—the tray still looked a mess, but Grimes was reasonably confident that the circuits were not anywhere shorted. He carried the tray back to the transceiver—which had been set up in its proper position—and slid it carefully into place. He switched on. The pilot lights lit up. There would be neither transmission nor reception, however, until the antenna was remounted and operational.

  They had a hasty meal, then returned to the workshop. The antenna was a metal Moebius Strip, oval rather than circular, on a universal bearing which, in turn, was at the head of a driving shaft. The shaft had been snapped just below the bearing, and the antenna itself had been bent out of its elliptical configuration. Fortunately there was among the motor spares a steel rod of circular section and exactly the right diameter. It had to be shortened by about five centimeters, but with the tools available that was no hardship. The broken shaft was removed from the transceiver, the new one shipped. The antenna—back in shape, Grimes hoped—was, on its bearing, secured to the projecting end of the shaft with a set screw.

  "Will it work?" asked Una skeptically. "There's only one way to find out," Grimes told her. He switched on again, set the Direction Finding controls to hunt. In theory (and, hopefully, in practice) the aerial array would now automatically line up on the strongest incoming Carlotti signal.

  The shaft began to rotate slowly, the Moebius Strip antenna wobbled on its universal bearing. It seemed to be questing as it turned. Abruptly it steadied, although still turning about its long axis. From the speaker came not the Morse sequence of a Beacon but something that sounded like somebody speaking. It was in no lang
uage that either of them knew, and the voice did not sound human. Suddenly it stopped, but Grimes had noted relative bearing and altitude.

  He looked at Una, his eyebrows raised. She looked at him dubiously.

  "Something . . ." he said slowly.

  "Not . . . somebody?"

  "All right. Somebody. Somebody capable of constructing—or, at least, using—Deep Space communications equipment."

  "Should we put out a call now that this contraption's working?"

  "No," he decided. He laughed harshly. "I like to see whom I'm talking to before I talk to them. We'll let the direction finder go on hunting for a while. Maybe it will pick up something a little more promising . . . ."