Futures Past

by James White

  "There was plenty of time for him to reach safety. The only danger was that he might try to break into the ship to restrain the pilot, but he had been made to believe the ship was deserted. Besides, I had told him repeatedly what to do in the event of there being a premature ignition of the fuel or some similar accident. Knowing the thorough safety measures practiced by technicians and the numerous locks and alarms designed to prevent such accidents, he probably thought I was inclined to worry needlessly or that I wasn't quite myself because of the nearness of the takeoff. The point I want to make is that he knew exactly what to do, and he was in no danger at any time. Also—" Mathewson glanced quickly at the corporal again. It made him uncomfortable to be constantly saying "he" when the object of the discussion was barely two feet away, "—You have probably found out by now that we were on very good terms—quite friendly, in fact." He stopped, waiting.

  "True?" asked the major, switching his attention to the corporal. His expression conveyed exactly what he thought of soldiers who made friends with people who sabotaged multimillion-pound defense projects.

  The corporal's mind had been busy during the doctor's version of the affair and was still a little confused. He badly wanted to give Mathewson the benefit of the doubt, but he needed time to think this out. The sudden question startled him. He nodded foolishly, then seeing the frown of displeasure gathering on the major's brow, clipped out a hasty, "Yes, sir."

  After a moment's silence, Turner resumed. He looked slightly disappointed.

  "That seems to prove your innocence of attempted murder, but it could also mean you were clever enough to have a good story to fall back on if the plan failed. You see, I still think the corporal was meant to die; otherwise, why are you still on the site? Why aren't you with Allen's friends, safe and sound, back in ..."

  He broke off. One of the earphoned N.C.O.'s cleared his throat and said, in that emotionless singsong peculiar to all radio operators, "London reporting in. Seeing nil, still raining. Radar shows objects still in close proximity, no further maneuvering. Ends." During acknowledgment of the message the people in that room who had been straining to catch every word of that brief but meaningful report slowly brought their attention back to Mathewson and the major.

  "The taking of a life is of secondary importance compared to the main charge, so we'll forget about that for the moment. You aided in the theft, and probably destruction, of a spaceship that was the culmination of many years of research and cost a truly astronomical amount of the nation's money—money it could ill afford, as you well know. Beside this a human life was only, well . . ." he glanced at the corporal, ". . . of sentimental value. I think it's time we got down to business. I suggest you start at the beginning, and don't forget I can check on almost everything you say. First. When did you meet Allen originally? And, just for the record, what is his real name? What do his friends call him—if you can pronounce it, that is?"

  "His real name is Allen. He spells it differently, though. And he hasn't got any friends other than the ones he made here," said Mathewson, and waited for Turner to say something.

  The major settled back in his chair, and looked at Mathewson steadily. It was obvious that he didn't believe him, but he kept silent, waiting for the rest of it.

  The accused shuffled uncomfortably and shifted his weight onto one foot. Nobody had even thought of giving him a chair, he wasn't quite human any more. He looked at the group of civilians. They seemed a little less hostile, but very puzzled. He knew that the higher technical staff on the site were for the most part shrewd, brilliant, if somewhat erratic men. Perhaps some of the most civilized men on the planet. Moreover, he knew them to be the greatest collection of starry-eyed idealists ever collected in one place, a fact which they all strove desperately to conceal. Surely someone would believe him, and understand his reasons for doing this thing. He started to speak again.

  I met him for the first time on that Met expedition to the Antarctic which took rocket soundings above the south magnetic pole. One of the prefabs developed a bad flaw and had to be written off. I was the only person with a hut all to myself, if you didn't count the ton or so of equipment that shared it with me, so naturally one of the displaced persons was dumped on me, together with a couple of cubic yards of his equipment. The D.P. was Allen. The living space became so severely limited that extreme caution had to be observed in getting in and out of bed lest a careless movement of a foot or an elbow damage an irreplaceable piece of apparatus. In cramped quarters like those one either gets to like a roommate or dislike him intensely. We got on very well.

  "His job was to see to the cameras and various telemetering devices that went up in the sounding rockets, but I quickly found out that he could do any job almost as well, and sometimes better than the people whose specialty it was. He made good tea, too, so naturally he was well liked. It was everyone's considered opinion that he was a born genius. But he was very shy and hesitant, and when he did say something, especially if it was on a technical subject, you got the impression that he'd given it all the consideration one usually gives only to a move in chess. He had a really brilliant mind, though like most of us on that project he was quite young, so we couldn't understand this shyness of his.

  "One night, however, he let his hair down. We had gone out to retrieve the spools and tapes from a rocket that had been blown some distance from the camp. We had quite a job finding it, too. The thing was buried under about ten feet of snow and we had to use a mine detector. When the job was finished we were tired, cold and hungry, and had a mile or more to walk back to our hut. Misfortunes and confidences seem to go together. It happened something like this ..."

  The two men shifted their packs higher as they approached a particularly steep snow drift. Their breath drifted behind them, slowly dissipating in the brittle air. There was no moon, but the snowfield was lit softly by the subdued fitful glow of the Aurora, and the sharp, coldly burning stars that crowded thickly in the sable sky. It was a beautiful night. The men plodded wearily to the top of the drift and stopped. Allen said, "I'd better check the direction again. These pint-sized mountain ranges have got me all crossed up." He fished out a compass. Mathewson just grunted, glad of the rest.

  Mathewson had been leaning on his ski-stick, regaining his breath, and looking down at his dimly-seen snowshoes, thinking of that badly overworked joke about "Tennis, anyone?" when he suddenly realized that his feat were cold and that Allen hadn't said a word for over ten minutes. He looked up. After a few seconds he coughed deliberately and tried to whistle in an exaggerated attempt to attract attention.

  Allen was standing motionless with his head thrown back, looking at that glorious sky. His attention as far as Mathewson could see, was focused in the region of a first-magnitude star which the doctor guessed was Fomalhaut. The compass, held loosely in a clumsy mitten, had slipped and thudded softly into the powdery snow, but the man remained a statue. And he looked as if he would so remain until the next blizzard blew up and covered him. In the dim light his expression couldn't be discerned, but he obviously was in the grip of some strong emotion. His eyes seemed to be wet, but that might have been due to the cold. Seeing him like that made Mathewson feel uncomfortable, as if in some way he was eavesdropping. He shuffled up to Allen, feeling just like a bull on the threshold of a china shop, and shook his elbow gently.

  "Penny for your thoughts."

  Stammering, Allen came abruptly back to earth. Then he spoke rapidly as if nothing had happened.

  "Uh—er—if we follow that star," he pointed, "for about twenty minutes, we'll be home. We should see the lights from the top of that big drift ahead."

  "You must have been a boy scout in your young and formative period," bantered Mathewson. If Allen didn't feel like telling him anything he certainly wasn't going to pry. He went on, hamming it strongly, "Sir, I place myself completely in your hands."

  "Onward!" said Allen, and humming a rousing fanfare which was horribly off key, led the way down the slope. He was
himself again.

  They had been trudging for ten minutes and the yellow lights of the camp were well in sight ahead when Allen spoke again. He seemed queerly hesitant.

  "I hear you're for Australia when you finish here, Doc?"

  "That's right," said Mathewson.

  There was no point in denying it, the doctor knew. The fact that he was shortly to take charge of the satellite vehicle project at Woomera was supposed to be top secret, but as half the men on this present job were joining him the secret hadn't been kept very well.

  "I like working with rockets," said Allen seriously, then he finished with a rush, "Maybe you could get me a job?"

  It seemed a silly request to the doctor, for he knew Allen had the necessary technical qualifications to obtain a post in any rocket research project in the world, judging from the things he'd done here. Why, there was one little gadget he'd thought up in only two hours to get distortion-free signals from high altitudes during magnetic storms. That extremely simple but utterly revolutionary dingus would make him a fortune when he patented it. Since Allen was an American—at least he spoke like an American—it was strange that the White Sands crowd hadn't grabbed him long ago. They spared neither trouble, nor expense to get the best brains, he knew, and it seemed the logical place for Allen to go. But the thing that struck the doctor as being most strange was the manner of his asking, as if hoping for a great favor. He said quietly, not allowing a hint of his puzzlement to show in his voice, "I'd be glad to have you along, you know that. Just send your application through the usual channels and I'll O.K. it. I didn't know unemployment was a problem with you." He paused. "Why you poor starving genius, you." He fumbled with an imaginary wallet in the region of his hip pocket, he was hamming it again. "Would you like a little something . . . not charity, of course ... a loan, or an advance?"

  But Allen wasn't entering into the spirit of the thing this time. When he spoke again his voice was still serious, and he was very ill at ease.

  "I meant could you, personally, get me a job. You see, Doc, it's that application through channels that is the whole trouble. Doc, I haven't got a single degree."

  Before Mathewson could make any reply to this startling bit of information he was talking again.

  "And I suppose you've been wondering why I didn't try for White Sands. Well I did, but I couldn't get a look in. Not even as a very junior technician. Security wouldn't pass me," he said bitterly. He was probably thinking of the things they were doing at that heaven of rocket technicians, where they had chucked chemical fuels entirely because, it was whispered, they had an atomic motor a-building that was suitable for use in a spaceship, though its completion and tests would take a few years yet. He hurried on, "But don't think it was anything political. It wasn't, though they thought so. They wanted to trace me back to the cradle to check up. It was unheard of that anyone as well up in technical subjects as I undoubtedly was could be without at least a few degrees. They wanted to know what universities and what colleges I had attended. Science, in this modern age, is a highly complicated and specialized affair. Did I expect them to believe that I got all this knowledge just by reading books? All right then, what primary school had I attended?

  "I wouldn't tell them so I got the push."

  To give himself time to take this in Mathewson started to rearrange the hood of his parka. Finally he coughed and said, "And did you pick up all your gen from books?"

  As soon as he uttered it he knew it was a stupid question, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment.

  Allen shook his head. "My education was the same as thousands of others back home, though I knew what I wanted to be and specialized almost from the beginning. But I just can't tell you where I got it." His voice became almost inaudible. It must have cost him an effort to get out the last sentence, "for . . . well . . . strong personal reasons."

  Mathewson couldn't see his face, but he could imagine it burning hot with shame and embarrassment, and wondered what tremendous scrape the other could have got himself into to make him act like this. Still, it was none of his business. And, if you looked at it properly, there really wasn't a problem at all. He spoke, choosing the words carefully.

  "This is all very unusual. The important thing though is your ability and not your past life. I have a good idea of your character generally, so I think it would be possible to give you a position there." Talking like this made Mathewson feel like a stuffed shirt. He stopped, and then in his more normal tones said, "Buck up, Buster. We'll fiddle it through somehow. It'll be all right."

  Allen said, "Thanks, Doc," very softly, and that was all. But into those two words he put something that made the other sure that he'd just done the greatest good deed of his life. It was an altogether pleasant sensation.

  At their hut, while they were hanging up the snow-shoes, Allen paused and looked up at that glorious sky again. Mathewson joined him. "It's quite a sight, isn't it?" he said softly.

  The other could not have heard him. He murmured, "It's a terrible thing to be homesick, Doc," and turned quickly to enter the hut.

  As the present job would finish in two days this seemed a strange remark to come off with, but when they had bunked down just before going to sleep, Allen came up with an even stranger one. He said, "Do you remember when I was checking our course on top of that drift, and you said I must have been a boy scout? Doc, what is a boy scout?"

  He seemed quite serious about it, too. Mathewson didn't know what to think. He told him to shut up and go to sleep or he'd crown him with something.

  Next morning Allen talked about nothing but Woomera.

  "All right, all right. So he made a neat contact." The major was growing impatient. "But I don't want a whole history. You wangled him the job—by going over my head when I turned him down—and he settled in. Then what? How did he convert you, or was it money?"

  "No. It wasn't money, and he didn't 'convert' me either. It wasn't anything like that at all." Mathewson sighed. The other seemed to have a one-track mind.

  "Oh, so he just asked you nicely for the ship and you gave it to/him, just like that." Turner's tone was bitingly sarcastic. "What's a spaceship more or less between friends sort of thing, is that it?"

  "Yes, something like that." The doctor waited for the shock wave of the inevitable explosion to hit him.

  Turner rose half out of his seat and stiffened in that strained position while his face reddened and a vein in his temple started a measured throbbing. His eyes were pure murder. He opened his mouth, but the explosion didn't come. He eased back into the chair and said dully, "Tell me about the first time he asked for it." Then recovering himself somewhat, "And don't take all day."

  "It was one night about three months ago. I had asked him to stay with us over the weekend. The project looked like it would be finished eight months ahead of schedule. Incidentally, this was due to the amazing work put into new engine designs by Allen, and by his ability at bug-suppressing generally, as anyone here will tell you. We were taking it easy. My wife had taken the children to the pictures and we were just loafing around and talking. He began to get more and more nervous and restless, but I didn't mention it. We were discussing the effect of acceleration on some of the more sensitive valves—they are practically foolproof, of course, but we were being morbid. He kept suggesting improvements, and alternative layouts, just as he did when that refrigeration problem came up. And the time when we bogged down on the venturi linings and he ended up by inventing that new alloy that stayed at white heat for two hours before it softened. These suggestions were like the others, wild, unheard of, and impossibly simple—and, when we'd screwed up enough courage to try them, quite workable. I told him to please, please stop. Most of the radio equipment was already installed and it would mean tearing it all out again. He was undoubtedly a genius, but hadn't he improved that ship enough already? Anyone would think he was taking the thing out.

  "It was meant to be a joke, but he shut up like a clam for more than ten minutes
. Finally he said, "Who is going to take her out, Doc?"

  "That," I said, "is information to be divulged to nobody until the day before takeoff, it is classified, it is top secret, but it is too utterly hush-hush for words. It has been entrusted to only two people on the site, the chief security officer and myself. But anyone will tell you it's Ellison." "Ellison." He appeared disappointed somehow. Then, "He's the logical one, I suppose, but . . . Doc, I want to go."

  "I think I just gaped at him for a bit. There might have been two, or just possibly three people on the site who wouldn't have sold their souls to be able to take off in that ship, but the job of piloting rockets is a highly specialized one, one for which the final exams have yet to be set. He couldn't even fly a plane. But I thought I knew how he felt.

  "Suddenly he started talking, rapidly, his voice was low and deadly in earnest. 'I can do it, Doc, you can believe me. I've experience you don't know about, lots of it, I've got to go out. Why do you think I nearly killed myself to get this job here when White Sands turned me down, and all those gadgets and improvements I "suggested" and had built into the ship, when I could have been pulling in a fat salary? I wanted to impress the high-ups, I wanted to be indispensable, the only person who really knew the ship. But because I never flew a jet I get the brush-off. Don't you think I could have learned easily if I'd known it was necessary? You don't have to be able to ride a bike to drive a car. These last two years that has been my only aim in life, the only aim, to get out into space again . . .' He bit the sentence off and froze, slowly going pale.