The Way Back

by A Bertram Chandler

  And then . . .

  And then Grimes was no longer looking at the bird. He was the bird. He was dimly aware of the feel of the deck underfoot—unyielding timber instead of sand or grassy soil—and more strongly aware of the constriction of the harness about the upper part of his body. Suddenly there was a greater awareness. It was as though every atom of calcium in his bones had been replaced by those of iron. It was as though, somewhere ahead, there was a huge, fantastically powerful magnet—but not exactly ahead, that was the worst of it. He cried out with the pain of it as supernal forces twisted his body. (He learned later that his cry was the squawk of a bird.)

  He thought defiantly, But I am a man. I am an Earthman.

  A scrap of half-forgotten verse drifted into his brain, Earthmen, shape your orbits home . . . Home . . . And again the scrap of verse, The green hills of Earth . . . The green hills and, vivid against the dark verdure, a flight of white pigeons . . . Wings beating, beating . . . And the noise in his ears was no longer the steady stamping of a triple-expansion engine, but the drumming of wings. Wings—and a skein of geese dark and distant against the cloudless blue sky. Wings—and the migrating flock maintaining its course over the black, foam-streaked sea, through the blizzard . . .

  The blizzard and the whirling flakes, glowing white, incandescent against the darkness, the snow-flakes that were stars, multitudinous, brightly scintillant in the ultimate night . . .

  The blizzard, the whirling blizzard of stars, and through it, beyond it . . .

  Home.

  Again there was the wrenching of his bones, his nervous system, his entire body. That supernaturally powerful magnetic field was not ahead, was not in the direct line of flight. Something, thought Grimes, would have to be done about it. He was, he knew, a bird, a huge bird, a metal bird with machinery in lieu of wings. His hands went out to the console before him. Williams and Carnaby were out of their chairs, tense, ready to take over. There were so many things that could go wrong, that could be done with a dreadful and utterly final wrongness. Nobody knew, for example, just what would happen if an alteration of trajectory were carried out while the dimension-twisting Mannschenn Drive was in operation . . . (It had been tried from time to time with small, unmanned, remote- or robot-controlled craft, and such vessels had vanished, never to return.)

  But Grimes, temporarily a homing bird, was permanently a spaceman.

  Under his hand the inertial drive fell silent, the ever-precessing rotors of the Mannschenn Drive sighed to a stop. There was the weightlessness of Free Fall, succeeded by the uncomfortable, twisting pull of centrifugal forces as the directional gyroscopes hummed and then whined, dragging the Quest about her short axis on to the new heading.

  The persistent tug on Grimes' bones lessened but did not die—but now that it came from the right direction the sensation was more pleasant than otherwise.

  He restarted the inertial drive and then the interstellar drive.

  He heard Williams' voice coming from a very long way away, "Cor, stiffen the bleedin' crows! I do believe that the old bastard's done it!"

  Grimes smiled. He knew that the word "bastard," in Williams' vocabulary, was a term of endearment.

  Chapter 5

  Inward, homeward bound sped the old Quest. Only she and her Master, Grimes, were of actual Terran origin—but humans, no matter where born on any of the Man-colonized worlds of the Galaxy, speak of Earth as Home. Inward, homeward she sped through the warped Continuum, falling down the dark dimensions, deviating now and again from her trajectory to avoid plunging through some sun or planetary system. Once course had been set, however, there was little for the Commodore to do. He would know, Mayhew assured him, when the star directly ahead was Sol. "But how do I know," demanded Grimes, "just how far we have to go before planetfall?"

  "You don't," said the telepath. "You can't. Oh, you might feel the strength of the pseudo-magnetic field—I have to use language that you non-telepaths understand—increase, but even that's not certain."

  Sonya remarked acidly that she had read somewhere that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Grimes, the acknowledged Rim Worlds authority on Terran maritime history, talked about Columbus. He had known that those islands which, after weeks of voyaging, had loomed on his western horizon were part of the East Indies. And he had been wrong.

  Columbus, said Mayhew, wasn't navigating by homing instinct.

  "How do you know he wasn't?" asked Grimes. "After all, if he'd kept on going he'd have finished up back where he started from . . ."

  "Like hell he would!" scoffed Sonya. "Neither the Suez Canal nor the Panama Canal was in existence then. Even I know that."

  "He could have rounded Cape Horn," her husband told her, "just as Magellan and Drake did, only a few years later, historically speaking . . ."

  Nonetheless, thought Grimes, he had something in common with Columbus. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, driving his tiny squadron west and ever west into the Unknown, had been threatened with mutiny. And what, now, was the state of crew morale aboard Faraway Quest?

  Mayhew answered the unspoken question. "Not bad, John. Not bad. Most of the boys and girls trust you." He laughed. "But, of course, they don't know you as well as I do."

  "Or I," added Sonya.

  The Commodore scowled. "You're ganging up on me. Billy Williams should be here, to even the odds."

  "He's an extremely conscientious spaceman," said Sonya. "A hull inspection is far more important, in his book, than a few drinks and some social chitchat with his captain before dinner."

  "And so it should be," Grimes told her firmly. "All the same, I wanted him here. He's my second-in-command, just as you are supposed to be my intelligence officer . . ."

  "Not your intelligence officer, John. I hold my commission from the Federation's Survey Service, not the Navy of the Rim Worlds Confederacy."

  "And neither the Federation nor the Confederacy is in existence yet—and won't be for a few million years. But I wanted you to flap your physical ears, just as I wanted Ken to flap his psionic ones."

  "Nothing to report, sir," replied Sonya smartly. "The troops are well-fed and happy, Commodore, sir. The last batch of jungle juice that the biochemists cooked up has met with the full approval of all hands and the cook. Even Mr. Hendriks seems to be happy. He's doing something esoteric to the fire-control circuits so that he'll be able to play a symphony, using his full orchestra, using only the little finger of his left hand. He hopes."

  "I know. And I'm taking damn' good care that it never gets past the drawing board. And the bold Major?"

  "He and his pongoes seem to be monopolizing the gym. I'll not be surprised if they start wearing Black Belts as part of their uniforms."

  "Mphm. I could wish that some of the others were as enthusiastic keep-fitters . . . And what is your story, Ken?"

  "I've been . . . snooping," admitted the telepath unhappily. "I realize its necessity, although I don't like doing it. Throughout the ship, insofar as I have been able to discover, morale is surprisingly high. After all, it's not as though Kinsolving were a very attractive planet, and we are going somewhere definite. But . . ."

  "But what?"

  "Hendriks isn't happy."

  "My heart fair bleeds for him."

  "Let me finish. Hendriks isn't happy. That's why he's shut himself up with his toys, to play by himself in a quiet corner."

  "I suppose he's sulking because he wasn't allowed to play at Master Gunner on Kinsolving's Planet."

  "That's only one of the reasons. Mainly he's sulking because his fine new friends won't have anything more to do with him."

  "You mean Dalzell and his Marines?"

  "Yes."

  "Interesting. And what about the Major and his bully-boys?"

  "I don't know, John."

  "You don't know? Don't tell me that your conscience got the better of you."

  "No, it's not that. But Dalzell and his people aren't spacemen; they're Marines. Soldiers."

  "And s
o what?"

  "Did you ever hear of the Ordonsky Technique?"

  "No . . ."

  "I have," said Sonya. "If I'd stayed on the Active List of the Intelligence Branch I would have taken the tests to determine whether or not I was a suitable subject." She added a little smugly, "Probably I would not have been."

  "I don't think that you would, Sonya," Mayhew said. "As a general rule it works only on people whose I.Q.'s are nothing to write home about. I'm not at all surprised that it was effective on the Marine sergeant and the other ranks, but on Dalzell . . . It all goes to show, I suppose, that it doesn't take all that much intelligence to be a soldier. Do what you're told, and volunteer for nothing . . ."

  "At times," remarked the Commodore, "that has been my own philosophy. But this Ordonsky. And his technique . . ."

  "A system of mental training that makes the mind impenetrable to the pryings of a telepath. Almost a sort of induced schizophrenia. One part of the mind broadcasts—forgive the use of the term—nonsense rhymes, so powerfully as to mask what the rest of the mind is thinking. The use of the technique was proposed as a means whereby military personnel can be made immune to interrogation of any kind after capture. It involves a long period of training, combined with sessions of deep hypnosis. It does not work at all well, if at all, on people accustomed to thinking independently. I had heard, as a matter of fact, that the top trick cyclists of the Rim Worlds Marine Corps had been playing around with it."

  "This is a fine time to tell us. So you just don't know what my brown boys are thinking, is that it?"

  "That's it, John. Dalzell's defenses went up as soon as he felt the first light touch of my mental probe. So did those of his men. They're not talking to Hendriks any more, they're just not sharing their childish secrets with him. So . . ."

  "So we bug the Marines' mess deck," said Sonya.

  "Do we?" asked Grimes. "Do we? Dare we? Would we? Can I order Sparky Daniels to plant bugs all through the bloody ship? Oh, I could—but what would that do to morale?"

  "I'm no Bug Queen," Sonya told him, "but I think I could knock up a couple or three with materials to hand. And plant them, without being spotted."

  "All right," said Grimes at last. "You can try—as long as you promise me that you can do it with no risk to yourself. But it wouldn't at all surprise me to find out that some bright Marine has done a course in Anti-Bugging."

  He was not surprised.

  Chapter 6

  Take a personalized finger-ring type transceiver and plant it in some place where it cannot easily be seen but from where it can pick up normal, or even whispered, conversation—and you have a quite effective bug. Have a receiver-cum-recorder tuned to the frequency of the transceiver, continuously monitoring—and you're in business. Take a Corporal of Marines who has done a few courses in electronics and who has been ordered by his superior officer to be alert for bugging—and you're not in business for long.

  Sonya, accompanying Grimes and Williams on Daily Rounds, had managed to plant two of her special finger-rings, one of them among the glittering flowers and fruit of the Eblis jewel cactus that was the pride and joy of the Marines' mess deck—they regarded the thing as a sort of mascot—and the other in a ventilation duct in Dalzell's cabin. A couple of recorders, locked in the Commodore's filing cabinet, completed the assembly.

  Grimes, Williams, Mayhew and Sonya listened rather guiltily to the results of the first (and only) day's monitoring.

  Male voice: Hey, boys! Old Spiky's sprouted a new jewel!

  Another voice: How did you find it, Corp?

  First voice: Easy. The bloody thing's radiatin' like a bastard. The Major thought that there might be somethin' like this left lyin' around. For once he was right.

  Another voice: Ain't no flies on the Major. Can I have a look at it, Corp? Thanks. Oh, here's a thing, an' a very pretty-thing, an' who's the owner of this pretty thing?

  Another voice: Need you ask? The bleedin' Duchess, that's who. Mrs. snooty ex-Federation Survey Service Grimes.

  Another voice: Careful. She's not so "ex." She's still a Commander on their Reserve List . . .

  First voice: An' so bleedin' what? I'll spell it out to you. One—we're members of the Marine Corps of the Confederacy . . .

  Voices: We're the worst curse of the Universe

  We're the toughest ever seen,

  And we proudly bear the title of A Confederate Marine!

  First voice: Pipe down, you bastards. Let me finish. One—we're members of the Marine Corps of the Confederacy. Two—the Federation ain't liable to happen for another trillion years or so.

  Another voice: An' neither's the Confederacy, Corp.

  First voice: But we're here, ain't we? Gimme that ring back, Timms. I'm takin' it to the Major. Thanks. But first . . . Ah. That's fixed you.

  There was nothing more on that tape but a continuous faint crackling. The other recorder at first played back only the small sounds that a man would make alone in his quarters. There was the clink of glass on glass and the noise of liquid being poured. There was a sigh of satisfaction. There was an almost tuneless humming. Then there was the sharp rapping of knuckles on plastic-covered metal.

  Major: Come in, come in. Oh, it's you, Corporal.

  Corporal: Yessir. I found this, sir. Mixed up in Old Spiky, it was.

  Major: Is it working?

  Corporal: It was working, sir.

  Major: Oh. Oh, oh. And I always thought, until now, that the Commodore was an officer and a gentleman. This shakes my faith in human nature. First of all, that bloody commissioned tea-cup reader, and now this.

  Corporal: Careful, sir.

  Major: You mean . . . ?

  Corporal: Yes, sir.

  Major: Why the hell didn't you say so before?

  And that was all, save for minor scrapings and scufflings that told of a search being made. It was not a long one; presumably the Corporal had some sort of detecting equipment. And then the second transceiver went dead.

  Sonya sighed, "Oh, well. It was a good try."

  "A try, anyhow," said Grimes.

  "An' you'd better not try again," warned Williams. "Come to that, it'll be as well if you don't come with us again on Rounds—not in Marine country, anyhow. Those bastard's be quite capable of rigging a booby trap, just out o' spite. Somethin' that'd look like a perfectly normal shipboard accident." He laughed. "There's an old saying. Listeners never hear good o' themselves! We learned the truth of that!"

  "We also learned," said Mayhew, "that our brown boys aren't as smart as they think they are. If they were really bright they wouldn't have let us know that they'd found the bugs." Then he muttered something, in a hurt voice, about "commissioned tea-cup readers."

  "But we're no forrarder," said Grimes glumly.

  And you can say that again, he told himself. In the old days, the good old days of wooden ships and sail, the Marines had been the most trusted and most trustworthy personnel aboard a vessel, being berthed between the quarterdeck and the seamen's mess decks, a sea-borne police force, ever on guard against mutiny.

  But now . . .

  Then the Commodore allowed himself a faint smile. After all, a certain Corporal Churchill had been among the Bounty mutineers.

  "What are you grinning about?" demanded Sonya.

  "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all, Mrs. Bligh."

  Chapter 7

  Inward, homeward bound sped the old Quest, boring through the warped Continuum, dragged down the dark dimensions by the tumbling, ever-precessing rotors of her interstellar drive. Inward she ran, in from the Rim, in from the frontier of the ultimate dark—and yet, paradoxically, inward to the Unknown. Past suns—yellow, and white, and blue, and ruddy, dwarfs and giants—she scudded, driving through the stellar maelstrom like a bullet through a snowstorm. Planetary systems she passed in her flight—and on none of them, so far as could be determined, had intelligence yet engendered advanced technology. There was life, said Mayhew, on most of those worlds—and intelligent
life on some of them. There was life, intelligent life, but, so far as he could determine by his monitoring of stray, random thoughts, none of those races had yet progressed beyond the level of the nomadic hunter, the primitive agriculturalist—and none of them had yet produced a trained telepath. Daniels, the Electronic Communications Officer, was less definite than his psionic rival. He was able to say that nobody in the worlds that they passed was using the Carlotti Communications System or its equivalent but told Grimes that the Quest's Mannschenn Drive would have to be shut down before any NST—Normal Space-Time—radio signals could be received. Mayhew, however, had been so firm in his opinions that it was obvious that such an investigation would be only a waste of time.