Gateway to Never (John Grimes)

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Good. The Council is waiting for us.”

  The Council was waiting for them in a great hall on the ground floor of one of the towers. It was a huge room, with a vast expanse of polished floor, a high, vaulted ceiling, a platform against one wall. There was neither ornamentation nor furniture, save for the eight inflatable chairs for the humans, incongruous in the vastness. Six of these chairs were on the floor before the platform, the other two were on the platform itself.

  On the dais stood the members of the Council—ten of them, all tall, all attenuated, each one indistiguishable, to human eyes, from any of the others. Dwynnaith joined them on the platform, accompanied by Mayhew and Clarisse. He stood behind their chairs as they seated themselves.

  “Is it all right for us to sit?” asked Grimes.

  “That is what the chairs are for, John,” replied Mayhew.

  The humans seated themselves. They looked up at the grave Martians, the Martians looked down at them. The silence was becoming oppressive. Grimes wished that he had his pipe with him—and that he had something with which to fill it.

  Mayhew spoke again—but it was not, somehow, his voice. Just as he had controlled the girl Elena, Grimes realized, somebody or something was now controlling him. His face was the face of a humanoid robot, mobile yet not really alive.

  He said, “I, Gwayllian, Moderator of the Council, have studied and learned your language. It is not possible for my vocal cords to form the necessary sounds, therefore I speak through the mouth of Mayhew. You will forgive me if my vocabulary is in any way deficient.”

  “You’re doin’ fine,” remarked the irrepressible Williams.

  “I thank you. But you will please not interrupt. The time fast approaches when we, when we all, must . . . go. But before our departure you should know what is about to happen.

  “The first time that you came to this world, which you call Mars, we wanted nothing of you. Your landing, in your ship, would have interfered with our preparations for the . . . voyage. You were, with all the resources of your own technology at your disposal, quite capable of . . . looking after yourselves. The second time that you came, as fugitives, our preparations were almost complete. You were in no way a menace to our plans. Our engineers, our mathematicians, our scientists could spare the time to consider your problem. The solution of it was an amusing mental exercise.

  “But, as a beginning, I must tell you who and what we are.

  “We are not of this world. Many millennia ago our people lived on another planet, many light years from here. The name of the sun, the star, around which it revolved would be meaningless to you; besides, that star is no more. We—our ancestors—escaped before our sun became a nova. Our ships dispersed. One ship found this planet which, as it was then, was almost a twin to the one which we had abandoned. Slowly, over the centuries, we rebuilt our civilization. But slowly, over the long centuries, this world was dying. Rejuvenation of the planet was considered; this would have been a far from impossible feat. But our astronomers warned of an inevitable, coming catastrophe. An extrapolation of the orbits of Mars, as you call this world, and of sundry planetoids made it obvious that a disastrous meteoric bombardment could not be avoided.

  “Yet we did not wish to leave this planet, even though we still possessed the technology for faster-than-light travel between the stars. It had become home. We did not wish to leave our cities, which had grown up with us. But there was a way. There was a way to avoid the inevitable wreck, to save our cities as well as ourselves. And we took it.”

  He’s getting his tenses mixed, thought Grimes. He said—some comment seemed to be expected—“So you will convert your cities into FTL spaceships . . .”

  “Not will,” replied Mayhew in that voice which was not his own. “Not will, but did. And not space ships, but time ships. We went back in Time to a period just prior to the landing of our ancestors, so that they found the civilization which they, themselves, had founded already well established and flourishing. We have repeated the cycle now a thousand times, on each occasion with only minor variations.

  “You will be such a variation—and a very minor one.”

  Somewhere a great bell was tolling, slow, measured strokes.

  A countdown, thought Grimes, a temporal countdown . . . He said desperately, “Suppose that we don’t want to come with you?”

  “You and your people may stay if you wish. You may hope to survive the meteoric storm which will wreck this world, or you may return to Earth. But do not forget that we offer you hope.”

  “Give it a go, Skipper,” urged Williams. “Give it a go. What have we to lose?”

  “Nothing,” said the Moderator of the Council through Mayhew. “Nothing, but there may be—there just may be—much to gain. And now you will return to your boat.”

  Chapter 28

  THEY HURRIED BACK TO THE BOAT.

  It lay there, in the center of the plaza, glistening in the fine spray that was blowing over it from the fountain. The Martian technicians had finished their work and were gone. The Carlotti transceiver was back in its old place. It was Sonya who noticed that the blankets they had brought from the encampment had gone. It seemed a matter of no great importance—but, thought Grimes, it looked as though it had been decided that they were to take no local artifacts with them to wherever—or whenever—they were being sent.

  “Button up, Skipper?” asked Williams.

  “Yes, we’d better,” Grimes told him.

  The doors slid shut, sealing the hull.

  What was going to happen now? That great bell was still tolling with slow, solemn deliberation, measuring off the remaining minutes of time. The plaza was deserted, as were the streets and the bridges. There was a brooding atmosphere of tense expectancy.

  Grimes said, more to himself than to anybody else, “I wonder if we’re supposed to switch on the Carlotti . . .” He walked slowly to the instrument, put out his finger to the On-Off button. But it was no longer there. The panel was featureless. “Ruth!” he called. “Come here! What do you make of this?”

  Then the bell stopped, and the silence was like a heavy blow. “Look!” shouted Carnaby. “Look!”

  They looked. Atop the towers surrounding the plaza the antennae were starting to rotate, slowly at first, about their long axis, the sunlight flashing from the polished, twisted surfaces. And—“Look!” cried Ruth Macoboy. The miniature antenna of the Carlotti transceiver was rotating too, in synchronization. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the sun was setting, falling back towards the eastern horizon. Abruptly there was deep shadow as it was obscured by the towers. Then there was twilight, but morning not evening twilight, come again. There was twilight, and night, and day, with the sun rising in the west and setting in the east.

  Night followed day and day followed night, faster and faster, a flicker of alternating light and darkness that became too fast to register on the retina, that was seen as a gray dusk. Overhead the sun was a wavering band of yellow light in the sky, with Phobos as a narrower, dimmer band. The stars were streaks of silver.

  Yet the buildings surrounding the plaza were still substantial, were glowing with a hard luminosity. The whirling antennae at their pinnacles flared like torches in the dimness.

  For hours this went on.

  It was fascinating to watch, at first, but the fascination wore off. One can get used to anything in time. Brenda Coles left the port beside which she was seated, went into the little galley. She returned with mugs of instant coffee, which all of them sipped gratefully. It was not very good coffee, but the very ordinariness of what they were doing was psychologically beneficial. They talked a little, in disjointed sentences. They wondered what was going to happen next, more for the sake of idle speculation than in the hope that any questions would be answered thereby.

  Said Grimes, “I hope that we are able to watch the first colonists landing. I’d like to see what sort of ship they have . . .”

  Williams said, “It must be about time for our le
arned friends to start putting on the brakes . . . I don’t know when we are—but at this rate we shall be slung back to the birth of the Solar System . . .”

  “Our Carlotti antenna is still spinning as fast as ever,” commented Ruth Macoboy. “They must have fitted it with new bearings . . .”

  “Mphm?” grunted Grimes. He looked into his empty mug. “Any more of this vile brew, Brenda?”

  “I’ll get some for you, Commodore.”

  “Don’t bother. A short stroll to the galley will stretch my legs.”

  He got to his feet. He glanced out through the nearest viewport. The mug dropped from his hand, bounced noisily on the deck.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Sonya sharply.

  “Something,” he said at last. “Something is very much wrong!”

  He thought bitterly, The bastards! They said all along that they didn’t want us, and now they’ve got rid of us!

  No longer were the towers of the city visible from the viewports. Outside was just a featureless landscape, although overhead the sun and the larger moon still were arches of light in the gray sky. The boat was still falling through Time, but the city must have been left many years in the future. And that city, Grimes realized, had been to the boat no more than a temporal booster, analogous to the first stage of a primitive space rocket, a booster that had given the small craft escape velocity from Now.

  “Ruth,” he said, “stop that bloody thing!”

  “I . . . I can’t, Commodore. There are no controls . . .”

  “Open it up. Take a hammer to it. An axe . . .”

  “No,” said Mayhew. “No.”

  “And why not?”

  “Can’t you see, John? This is intentional . . .”

  “I know bloody well it’s intentional. Your long-headed friends put over a far better marooning stunt than even Dalzell could have managed. We must stop this blasted time machine before it’s too late, and then we return to Earth . . .”

  “And get nibbled by dinosaurs, John?” asked Sonya. “No, thank you. Hear Ken out before you do anything rash.”

  “We must have faith . . .” persisted the telepath.

  “Faith?”

  “They meant us no harm, John. They were doing their best for us. They gave us a chance to get back to our own Time . . .”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  Grimes glared through the port. Was that water out there, a vast, sullen sea? How far back had they come? Seas on Mars? Was that water, or was it barren rock, glowing incandescently, flowing like water? Was it molten rock—or a fire mist?

  Was it a fire mist—or nothingness?

  The nothingness before the birth of the worlds, of the suns, of the universe itself . . .

  There is no place to go, thought Grimes.

  “There is no place to go,” he said.

  “But there will be,” stated Mayhew with an odd certainty. “There will be, or there was. There must be.”

  “I’ll make some more coffee,” said Brenda Coles.

  Chapter 29

  TIME, subjective Time, passed.

  The boat hung in a formless nothingness, an empty void. And yet, Grimes knew, she was not in a vacuum. She was afloat in a vast sea of hydrogen atoms, the building blocks of the universe. She was afloat, and she was adrift. To have started the inertial drive would have been pointless; there was no place to go. Furthermore nobody, not even Carnaby, was mathematician enough to work out the possible consequences. The antenna of the modified Carlotti transceiver was still whirring about its long axis, and who could say what the resultant would be if motion in Space were added to the motion in Time?

  She hung there, motionless, a tiny bubble of light and life in the all-pervading nothingness. She hung there, while her crew went about the dreary business of staying alive apathetically, gulping at regular intervals their unappetizing meals, maintaining, without enthusiasm, the machinery that ensured their continued survival. Brenda Coles was beginning to look worried, however. Their stores, although ample to begin with, would not last forever. She reported the dangerous depletion of foodstuffs to Grimes.

  He said, “We shall have to ration ourselves.”

  “Luckily,” remarked Sonya, “that is no great hardship.”

  “Not with this tucker,” agreed Williams.

  “I think,” said Carnaby hesitantly, “that we may be getting somewhere at last. Or somewhen . . .”

  “Masterly navigation, James,” said Williams. “If you can find your way through this interstellar fog you’re a super genius!”

  Carnaby took offense. “Nobody could find his way in this, Commander, and you know it. But it seems to me that there’s the start of a definite luminosity . . .”

  “The heat death of the Universe in reverse . . .” murmured Grimes. “The wheel always comes full circle, no matter which way it’s spinning . . .”

  “James is right,” stated Brenda Coles firmly. “It is getting lighter.”

  There was an intense, dreadful flare of radiation, dazzling, blinding, but lasting for only an infinitesimal fraction of a second. When at last Grimes was able to reopen his watering, smarting eyes, he thought that what he was seeing was only a persistent after image, a wavering band of dull crimson light that bisected the blackness outside the viewport. But it did not fade; it seemed, instead, to be growing steadily brighter.

  “The sun . . .” he whispered.

  “The sun . . .” murmured Williams. “This is where we came in.”

  “No. Not yet. But we have to think about stopping that infernal contraption the Martians planted on us. Not yet, but as soon as conditions outside seem capable of supporting life . . .”

  “Still desert, by the looks of it,” Williams said. “Sand. Nothing but sand . . .”

  Sand, nothing but sand, and then a hint of green under the blue-gray sky, the yellow sun. Sand, and the green area spreading . . . The greenness spreading, flickering through its seasonal changes, but spreading . . . And was that a cluster of white buildings? They appeared briefly, and were gone, but there were others, larger ones where they had stood, their outlines firmer, more solid.

  Again there was the flickering that they had experienced at the start of this voyage, the rapid alternation of light and dark as day followed night, as day followed night, the periods growing longer, hours passing in seconds and then in minutes . . .

  The antenna of the Carlotti transceiver was rotating more slowly now, its shape could clearly be seen. It was slowing down, slowing down, and the rate of temporal regression was slowing with it. It was slowing down, spinning lazily, stopping . . .

  There was a muffled explosion. Acrid smoke billowed from the cabinet.

  But Grimes hardly noticed. He was staring out of the port at a familiar sight. The boat was resting on a concrete apron, clean and bright under the noon sun. Along the perimeter were spaceport administration buildings; from a flagstaff atop the control tower flew the blue, star-spangled flag of the Interstellar Federation. And there were ships—one of the Federation’s Constellation Class cruisers, a couple of Serpent Class couriers.

  “Where are we?” Carnaby was asking. “Where are we?”

  “Still on Mars.” Grimes told him. “The neatly terraformed Mars that I used to know when I was in the Survey Service. Marsport, the Survey Service base . . .” He started to cough as the smoke from the explosion reached him. “Open her up, Bill. The air’s quite good. It was when I was here last, anyhow.”

  He stayed aboard until all the others were out of the boat, then joined them on the concrete apron. He looked at them, deploring the scruffiness of their appearance—and his own, he knew, was equally scruffy. But it could not be helped, and it did not matter.

  An immaculately uniformed officer was walking towards them. He looked at them with a distaste that he could not quite hide. He stared at the Rim Worlds Navy insignia, the stylized wheel, on the stem of the boat and his eyebrows lifted in amazement.

  He asked, “Where are you from? And
who gave you permission to land?”

  “We are castaways, Commander,” Grimes told him. “We request assistance.”

  “And you look as though you need it. And aren’t you a long way from your own puddle?”

  “That will do, Commander,” snapped Grimes, but his authorative manner was wasted. The officer was looking at Sonya, hard.

  He said, “I know you. Commander Verrill, isn’t it? But we’d heard that you were dead, that you’d vanished on some crazy expedition out on the Rim. But what are you doing here?”

  She said, “I’m not quite sure myself. But my husband, Commodore Grimes, is in charge.” She stressed the title of rank. “I suggest that you ask him, after he has had time to get cleaned up and has made his report to his superiors, and to yours.”

  The Federation Survey Service commander was humbly apologetic. “Sir, I have seen photographs of you, but I never recognized you . . . The Commodore Grimes. But you were lost, with your ship, Faraway Quest. On the Rim of the Galaxy. Surely you never came all the way here in that . . .”

  Grimes cut him short. “It’s a long story, and I’m not sure that you’ll believe us, even if we tell it to you. Meanwhile, please take us to whoever’s in charge. My officers and myself are in need of food, fresh clothing, and possibly medical attention. Oh, and you might put a guard on the boat—although I doubt if we will be able to learn anything from the Carlotti transceiver now.”

  “Come this way, sir.” The commander was obviously bursting with curiosity, but restraining it with an effort. “I’m sure that Captain Dell will be happy to make all arrangements for your comfort . . .” Then, “But how did you get here?”

  Grimes sighed. He would be answering questions and writing reports for far into the foreseeable future. He would have to explain, or explain away, the loss of a unit of the Rim Worlds Navy. He would have to tell the stories of two mutinies—that by Druthen and that by Dalzell. When he got back to the Rim he would have to face a Court of Inquiry.

  “How did you get here, sir?” persisted the annoying young man.