by Bob Shaw
"There was enough time – for ships that were actually in the cradles." The pilot, rapidly regaining her professional composure, sounded almost casual. "But there must have been a few ships in transit between portals at the time. I'd like to know what happened to them. Even if they were somehow, by some kind of miracle, injected into orbit around new planets – how will the people on board get down to the surface?
"Ships with a surface-to-space capability are rare birds – as we very well know – and those that may still be available will only be on planets which happen to have spaceports. Even on the equatorial band that could be as few as one in a hundred." Fleischer's voice became abstracted, fading almost to inaudibility as she developed the line of thought.
"I wonder how far Hepworth's Good Fairy is prepared to go to preserve human lives. I mean, how good is she at detail planning?"
Another good question, Nicklin thought, realising that even the qualified optimism he had begun to feel over the fate of the Tara had been ill-considered and premature. Fleischer had said that there were four pinnaces at P16, but there was a strong probability that all four had been in exterior cradles when the portal closed. In that case it was possible, as she had suggested, that they were now inside Hilversum's brand-new custom-built world.
It all came down to the fact – an echo of Montane's oft-repeated warning – that everything had been made too easy for the inhabitants of Orbitsville. The great shell had been rotating at a rate which meant that the portals in the equatorial band had a velocity exactly equal to that of a ship which was in orbit around the sun. That had made embarking and disembarking through a portal extremely simple. It had also made it pointless for an ordinary commercial spacecraft to carry the equivalent of an ocean liner's lifeboat.
Lifeboat, Nicklin mused. LIFEboat. The character who thought up that name knew exactly what he…
He lost track of the thought as the radio speakers gave their preliminary click well in advance of the four-minute interval which had been anticipated.
"This is spaceport control at Hilversum, formerly Portal 16," a male voice said tentatively. "We are receiving an autoscan transmission. Please identify yourself. Over."
"He sounds more scared than we are." Fleischer gave the others a wry smile which warmed Nicklin towards her. "I wonder who he thinks is calling."
"Answer the man," Voorsanger said impatiently.
"This is spacecraft W-602874 answering your call, Hilversum. Are you receiving me? Over." Fleischer glanced at the communications panel then settled back in her chair. "That's the call I was hoping for. We'll soon know how we stand."
Voorsanger moved into the chair beside her. "How long will it take?"
"Hilversum is farther away along the equator. The range is nearly seventy-five miks this time, so the round-trip delay will be over eight minutes."
"That's too long," Voorsanger said in sepulchral tones. "We should have been tachyonic."
"I can wait eight minutes. Every reply we get increases our chances of getting out of this alive – and I'm hoping to raise a hundred spaceports in the next few hours. If two of them are functioning there's no reason every port there is shouldn't come on the air."
As he listened to the pilot Nicklin felt a growing respect for her tough-minded style of thinking. Whereas he was allowing himself to swing between optimism and despair, she appeared to be holding steady, concentrating her experience, talent and mental energies on maximising their chances of survival. There had been 207 portals on Orbitsville's equator, virtually all of them developed as spaceports, and they represented a vast reserve of hardware and manpower which could be tapped to bring the Tara in from the cold.
The big battalions are on our side, he thought. Now, if only I could forget about… He tried to fend off a secondary thought, but it was coming with too much speed, too much power. If only I could forget about the time limit. The world cloud is thinning out – just the way Blackhead Hepworth said it would. The new planets are going somewhere, and – according to the Benign Hypothesis – it's somewhere good. And if we don't get ourselves bedded down on one of them pretty damn quick it's going to be lonely out here…
He tried not to think about the prospects for all those on board the Tara if the ship were to be left in orbit around a barren sun. The food would last two years, but would anybody in his right mind want to hang on right to the end, in a drifting tomb in which the dead were beginning to outnumber the living? And in which the taboos against cannibalism were outmoded? It would be better to steer the ship into the sun long before that unimaginable degree of horror was attained, but even that would result in protracted and agonising deaths for the little ones. The best plan might be to override all the safety mechanisms and vent the ship, thus ensuring that suffering was kept to a minimum.
Nicklin, suddenly beset by feelings of suffocation, pulled air deeply into his lungs and wrenched his thoughts on to a different course. He was grateful to discover that Voorsanger had asked Fleischer about the procedures for putting the ship into parking orbit about a planet and transferring its company to the surface. The subject was life-oriented, and he poured his consciousness into it, managing to lose track of the minutes until – with heart-stopping abruptness – the speakers again emitted their now-familiar preliminary click.
"This is space traffic control at Amsterdam, formerly based on P3," a woman's voice said. "We are receiving your autoscan signal on the general band. Please identify yourself. Over."
"Things are looking up," Fleischer said calmly.
She was reaching towards the communications panel when the speakers were activated yet again. This time the call was from Peking P205. Nicklin listened in a kind of pleasurable bemusement as Fleischer dealt with the two new contacts. The family of communities on Orbitsville's equator had survived the dissolution, and were reaching out across space to gather in their prodigals and strays. The only appropriate response was to acknowledge hope – anything else would be a betrayal of the human spirit.
Within moments of Fleischer having sent identification messages there came a second response from Hilversum.
"Hilversum calling in answer to your query, Tara," the man's voice said, "we have two Type-II pinnaces in land dock. Both have transfer facilities compatible with the Explorer class, and both can be operational within three or four days. We foresee no difficulty in evacuating one hundred personnel, so set your mind at rest on that score. We will get you out of there, and that is a promise, but before I end this transmission I have another message for you."
There was a brief pause – during which Nicklin, Fleischer and Voorsanger exchanged looks of surmise – then a different male voice was heard.
"Tara, this is Cavan Gomery. I'm head of the astronomical section here at STC. I want to back up everything my colleague has just said – all you have to do is get into orbit and we'll take care of the rest. In the mean time, I'm asking for your assistance with another problem.
"You don't need to be told that something very big has happened to Orbitsville, but you may not know that the residual planets are reducing in number. We don't even know how to begin explaining this, but we need as much data as we can get to help us put a handle on the problem – and you are in a unique position in that respect.
"Can you send us a wide-angle, general view of the residual sphere? We need a good picture from you, and we need it for as long as possible to help us make the best computer predictions about the rate of disappearance.
"I will stand by for your answer. Over."
For the remainder of the "night" period Nicklin watched and listened as Fleischer dealt with an increasing volume of radio traffic – each new contact adding to the proof of Hepworth's Benign Hypothesis.
Eventually calls were coming in from spaceports which identified themselves with P numbers in the region of 100. Those calls, originating on the far side of the world cloud, were subject to a forty-minute delay in responses – a chastening reminder of the scale upon which Orbitsville had been built. As the electro
nic babel built up to a level where Fleischer had to institute computer procedures to impose order, it came to Nicklin that what he was hearing represented only a tiny fraction of the newly created worlds which filled the main screen.
Radio communications had never been possible within the Orbitsville shell, and therefore only those planets which happened to have former spaceports had a voice in the new congress. A far greater number had library access to the relevant technology, and Nicklin had no doubt they were hastily building the equipment which would allow them to speak to their neighbours in the close-packed sky. He also had no doubt that they would be seeking some kind of reassurance.
That was the common factor in all communications being received by the Tara. The radio messages, beneath the terseness and jargon, gave a composite picture of a civilisation which had been jarred out of its age-old complacency. Nicklin had been so preoccupied with his own traumatic experiences that he had spared no thought for the vast majority of humanity who had been going about their humdrum daily lives when the transformation had come. But the voices on the control-room radio gave him an inkling of what it had been like to live through the ultimate bad dream.
There had been the distortions of the sky patterns, the terrifying fluctuations of gravity, the sudden alternations between day and night, culminating in stroboscopic frenzies which stopped the heart and suspended reason.
Then had come the … snap.
For some it had been followed by a new kind of daytime, with once-familiar landscapes rearranged and the sun wildly displaced from its normal position at the zenith. For others there had come a new kind of night, with the glowing archways of the heavens replaced by millions of blue brilliants, shimmering in every design the eye wished to impose on them. And for those on the extreme edge of the world cloud there had been the first experience of night as their forebears on Earth had known it – a direct look into the spangled blackness of interstellar space.
As well as responding to the Tara's distress, those on the spaceport worlds were communicating with each other, symbolically huddling together in the face of the unknown, seeking answers to questions which could not even have been formulated a day earlier. What had happened? Why had it happened? What was going to happen next? Were the new planets being relocated by some kind of dimensional sorcery, or were they simply ceasing to exist? Were all the planets going to disappear, or would the thinning-out process eventually stop and leave a handful of worlds in stable orbits?
For those on board the Tara, there was a set of questions in a special category of urgency: how rapidly was the world cloud dispersing? Were the disappearances evenly diffused through the cloud, or were there zonal effects which had not yet been detected? Was the dispersal taking place at a uniform rate, or was it accelerating?
In short – what were the chances of the ship reaching the safety of Hilversum before that planet blinked out of existence?
Try as he might, in spite of all his resolves to think positively and hopefully, Nicklin was unable to keep that particular question from dominating his mind.
Effectively, he lived on the control deck, leaving it as infrequently and for as short a time as possible.
On the second night of retardation, when all the lower decks were dim and quiet, he went down to the canteen to have a coffee, and was surprised to find Danea Farthing sitting at a table in the otherwise empty room. He knew she had been working flat out all day, relaying explanatory messages from Fleischer to worried families, trying to convey to them something of the pilot's stoic optimism.
It was a task Nicklin did not envy. Little had actually been put into words, as far as he knew, but a number of the pilgrims bitterly regretted ever having heard of Corey Montane, and their feelings of resentment and betrayal were close to the surface. In particular, Nicklin dreaded having to face the Whites – but for his intervention in their lives they would still be in Beachhead City, which now seemed a haven of security.
On entering the canteen he drew a bulb of hot coffee from the dispenser. His first instinct was to leave with it in silence, but he became aware that Danea was watching him with the enigmatic and moody-eyed intentness he had noticed earlier. He decided, with some misgivings, to risk her resumption of full hostilities.
"On your own, I see," he said, taking a seat nearby. "I suppose you miss Christine." The words were out before he could do anything about it, and he was immediately appalled by his ineptitude. He had begun with a banality, and had swiftly progressed to tactlessness.
"I think you have more reason to miss her than I have," Danea said mildly.
Nicklin lowered his gaze and stared at the coffee bulb as his cheeks began to tingle with embarrassment. Why had he not left the canteen while the going was good? To stand up and depart now would be the action of a complete bumpkin, and yet to remain would only increase his discomfiture.
"What's happening up above?" Danea's voice was neutral. "Any new developments?"
"The planets are all developing polar caps," Nicklin said, grateful for the new conversational opportunity. "You know – caps of frost or snow at their north and south poles. It makes them look like all those old pictures of Earth."
"That's interesting, but it isn't what I meant."
"We still don't know how fast they're disappearing. But some pretty good telescopes and computers are working on it." Nicklin sipped his drink. "I think we'll get an answer soon."
"That's good." Danea smiled in a way that revealed utter weariness and her heavy-lidded eyes locked with his. "Are you sorry you left Orangefield?"
What sort of a question is that? Nicklin thought, floundering. That question could mean anything!
"Danea, I – " He was reaching out to touch her hand when there came the sound of someone on the ladder.
"I'm glad somebody else can't sleep – do you mind if I join the party?" The speaker was the blond, bearded young man in spaceport uniform, the same man that Nicklin had encountered before and who seemed to spend most of his time wandering around the ship. Without waiting for a reply he took a drinks bulb from the dispenser and sat down beside Danea.
"Jim, have you met Per Bosshardt?" she said.
"Hi, Jim!" Bosshardt smiled broadly. "We keep seeing each other around – at odd times."
Nicklin nodded. "Yes, we do."
"I've got fifty-two pals with me to liven up the party," Bosshardt said, producing a deck of cards from his breast pocket. "How about a game?"
"I'm sorry," Nicklin said, rising to his feet. "I have to get back to the control room now."
"Too bad." Bosshardt gave him a genial wave. "See you around, Jim!"
Nicklin glanced back into the canteen as he was stepping on to the ladder. Bosshardt was already dealing cards which, because of the minimal gravity, were skittering all over the table. Danea was laughing delightedly as she trapped some of the fleeting rectangles with her forearms.
"Are you sorry you left Orangefield?" Nicklin muttered to himself as he climbed through the higher levels of the ship. "What kind of a question is that?"
As the night wore on it occurred to Nicklin that he would probably feel better were he to sleep in his bunk instead of dozing in the seat beside Megan Fleischer. The circumstances of his existence were unnatural enough without his failing to take proper rest – but he had a compulsion to remain close to the main screen at all times. The image of the world cloud, beautiful in its symmetry, was his past, present and future. It gave the impression of being serene and eternal, but that was only because of the limitations of human perception. The Good Fairy was at work in the cloud, deciding the fate of entire planetary populations at the rate of perhaps hundreds in every passing second, and Nicklin felt that if he stared hard enough and long enough he might find evidence of her design.
Billions of human beings on those newly created and ephemeral worlds were deeply apprehensive about the future. The prospect of being magicked out of the normal continuum – perhaps of ceasing to exist at all – was a terrifying one; but it
was a sad commentary on the plight of those on board the Tara that they were praying to be part of that final disposition. A plunge into the unknowable was infinitely preferable to the alternative facing those who had been lured into joining the New Eden express.
Adding to Nicklin's sense of helplessness was the fact that, in spite of all appearances, the ship was actually flying backwards. It was aimed at the world cloud, its drive unit was thrusting it in the direction of the world cloud, but such was the speed previously attained that – two drawn-out days after entering retardation – the Tara was still receding from its goal.
"There's no point in fuming about it," Fleischer had told him. "Personally, I thank God for every hour that the drive keeps on functioning."
I suppose that's one way to cheer yourself up, Nicklin had thought, tiredly wondering if he would be able to recognise the moment at which the ship eventually came to a standstill and began the return flight proper. It was decelerating continuously, which was why he had a certain amount of weight, but there had to come the instant of turnaround, during which the ship – by definition – would not be moving at all. If it was not moving at all, neither accelerating nor decelerating, it would have to cease generating gravity even though the drive had not been shut down.
But that doesn't sound right. I must be too dog-tired to think properly. I'll just have to go over it again…
He struggled out of sleep to the uneasy awareness that something had altered in the ambience of the control deck.
It took him a few bleary seconds to identify the change – the level of noise from the communications system had fallen. His uneasiness increased as he realised that the sounds of radio traffic had been diminishing for some time. Ever since Fleischer had been forced to computerise and regulate the flood of incoming calls, the speakers had been emitting a near-continuous series of code signals between actual messages. Now, however, they were quite silent.
Nicklin sat up straighter and glanced across the other chairs. Voorsanger was absent, but Fleischer was frozen in an attitude of utter concentration, staring at the image of the world cloud. Nicklin's heart lurched as he noted the pilot's expression.
