by John Kippax
'Dismiss.'
Panos saluted and left; Creighton shambled after him.
A few steps away from the CO's office. Creighton hissed: This is - impossible!'
'Don't be like that, sir,' Panos said, with astonishing kindness. 'What's wrong with a medical gentleman learning to salute correctly? I reckon you'll get the idea after about an hour. We've got all evening, haven't we?'
Chapter 4
Space is curved, has dimension. But postulate that time is curved. This idea the human mind first rejects. Time is tick tock from the clock on the wall, the watch on the wrist. This we have known since we were toddlers. Are we, then, suddenly being asjted to ignore this measurement?
T. D. RANTZ
in 'An Introduction to Astrophysics for the Middle School' (supervised by Professor Koninburger)
Despite the length of the meeting - four hours in the morning, another three in the afternoon - Elsa Niebohr was not in the least weary. She was in charge, a permanent source of enjoyment to her. She had the whole picture, and she liked what she saw, looking down the long table, every place for her twenty-four top-ranking executives filled. Some of them were imposing-looking men of various skin shades; five were women. She knew she cracked the whip, and they all had to jump.
'Agreed, then, that we afford Space Corps some air time because of the equipment and techs they are lending us. Agreed that the documentaries on Below the Ice, and that fancy piece of work of Mr Ameen's, Onward and Upward, be shown at peak times. Agreed also, that failure would only be admitted if we were all personally broke. Ninety per cent of all your private fortunes would be available for Project Elkan after I have given ninety five per cent of mine. Anyone backing out?'
Her eyes roved along the double line. No one was backing out.
She spoke to Fane. 'Can you handle Koninburger for our purpose?'
'Yes.' Fane was unsmiling.
'Good.' (Fane would never know how massively he had been checked out by her agents.) 'I'm sure we all realize what could be the result of failure? Invasion, subjugation, possibly annihilation. Therefore, though denied by the subject, this is inherent in his calculations. Koninburger knows full well that he has this condition, which absolutely precludes his leaving home planet. He does not know that it can now be so alleviated and suppressed to the extent of which I am totally confident. Therefore I say that the figures which these four gentlemen have so carefully examined are unconsciously falsified, relating as closely as they do to Koninburger's own future. You can expect complete accuracy in the rest of his work.'
When she had concluded, no one had anything to add. She looked at each one in turn, conscious that she was the boss, and that they waited for her. She mentally reviewed all the hazards in the venture, from the underground workings to that great pie in the sky. The aliens could use it, could flick instantaneously out of normal space to - somewhere else. Earth had to meet the challenge now.
She said: 'The plan goes forward. Failure is unthinkable.'
Anderson Fane was happy: With a careful tax spread, he should do quite well out of it.
He paused to take a look at Koninburger, in the single bed, a lilac-coloured light by his side; yes, he was pleased with the way in which the conditioning of Koninburger had progressed. Certainly, Fane was not modest about his own skills. He had hunted out, under light hypnosis, the roots of the condition known as Geo-Nostalgic Psychosis,
with his patient, and decided that they could be suppressed. He had flown south with this precious man, and together they had walked the workings and the domes of the expensive fake, in the certain knowledge (for Fane) that what they saw would be reproduced on far Balomain Four. Deception in colour was easy, if the idea were put forward that the lighting system had been altered, and as for the rich coal seams, they too could easily be faked. The domes and facemasks could convincingly be called protection against the Antarctic weather, while the low hills of the Balomain locations could be sprayed white. Fane estimated that Koninburger would see himself as the ruler of a small but hugely important kingdom, who had only to ask and it would be given. As long as the work went well, as long as Koninburger was equal to the task, then he would not grow querulous over incidentals which, accumulating, might lead him first to fret, then to feel pain, then to investigate just what 'outside' was really like. That must never happen.
During the next four weeks, forty-one freight ships lifted from Sol Three to go to Balomain Four, where the work area had been selected, the digging and boring begun, the whole setup for the mighty project on the move. The little natural ice there was in the area had been added to, and the illusion of Earth's Antarctic exterior was shaping. Domes as protection from the cold as well as for the pumping to human necessity of the thin natural air of the planet were set up; it was all an icy nest in which four hundred men and three hundred women were to work, ant-like, to prepare for the machinery and computers, the double cyclotron, and the arrival of those scientists whose inspired leadership was to take man into a new universe.
Such was the hope.
Bruce was not a man who forgave easily. He felt certain that if once a man revealed himself in an unfavourable light, then this was a true evaluation of the sort of man he was.
He was in number eighteen hangar, the place where Creighton learned how to salute. He stood with Maseba to one side of the newly erected platform, watched personnel file in.
'Lee Hoon Hock,' Bruce said, as a slim Chinese officer took his place. 'I put him in for his half ring, you know.'
'He didn't get it?'
Bruce grunted. 'He's one month short in service for it, and the admin types wouldn't stretch a point. I had a row with Mariano.'
'No dice.'
'None.'
Maseba said: 'Look at old Dockridge. One of these days I'll have that leg off and do a better job.'
'Don't,' Bruce said.
'Why not?'
'George, he is now fully adjusted to that leg. It makes him different, strengthens his personality.'
'He'd still have a good personality if he had no legs at all.'
'Bullshit. Let limping legs limp.' Bruce scanned. "Who's that Eurasian little darling, just come in? The mid-brown PO?'
Talina Dafi. Caiola's consolation.'
Bruce changed the subject and put a rumble in his voice. 'Shall we learn much from Creighton, do you think?'
'He's the world authority on alien life, so you've answered your own question. The point is that you've got to keep up crew morale, let them think they're part of an "in" group. We're really that already; think back, and you'll remember that this crew, except for replacements, is in business re the aliens to the exclusion of just about everybody else. That satisfy you?'
'What will satisfy me,' Bruce said, 'is the sight of a dozen Kilroy prisoners.'
The day may come.'
'Here's the ship's best saluter.'
So Bruce and Maseba took their seats.
Creighton was already an accepted 'character' to the crew. They did not know much about his capabilities as a medic, but they did know that his accent was a real tickler and that he didn't rate Corps discipline very much.
Dockridge operated the rear-projection machine, which Creighton did not need right at the start
Bruce sat with his arms folded, looking at a split in the laminations at the edge of the platform.
'The unknown,' Creighton began, 'is always more frightening than the known. I hope to give you some idea, in the next half hour, of the sort of creature the aliens may be. Let me say, too, that what I have to tell you is not all guesswork.'
Everyone knew before ten minutes had passed, that James Creighton truly was an expert. What sort of a Corps man he would make, what his shortcomings in the service were, was another matter, and one that continued to occupy Bruce's thoughts.
Take from your minds,' Creighton said, 'all thought of bug-eyed monsters, hairy hippopotami-type creatures twelve feet high; in other words, put away your story book, and pay attention to
the simple, vital statement that I believe that the aliens are like ourselves in many respects.
'You are all acquainted with the marsupial family of animals, which family is strongly related to the human family, even as are the apes. The evidence points to a humanoid creature, something like ourselves. I do not know how they breathe, but it may not be by lungs, as we understand them. I cannot guess if they have sex, even.' A murmur of amusement went round the assembly, but Creighton was not amused. 'I mean that the procreative process of these people may not be by there being male and female sexes. Perhaps it needs more than two people to make an alien, but more likely it needs only one. Thus they may be not merely marsupials, diverging from the tree of life and taking a direction different from that of our own, but they may well be male and female in one body. Thus, if they do not have sex, as we understand it, then logically much of the emotion of the human being is absent in them. Therefore, we may expect to find that they are more rational beings than ourselves. Yes?'
Leading Crewman Lachlan MacAllister had a question. 'Sir, why don't the bastards stay and fight? I saw what happened to Kepler Three...'
'Yes. I have seen the recordings, crewman, but you have the advantage of having been there at the actual encounter. With our race, the idea of "stand up and fight" carries a certain honour with it. I cannot see the slightest reason why the aliens should have this attitude, because ideas of honour and duty are widely varied within the people of Earth, and with the alien, may be nothing like ours. Remember, please, that it seems to be a characteristic of this alien that he - or it - thinks we are so unimportant that we are not worth fighting, assuming that idea of "worth" in the matter of physical combat has any place in the psychophysical makeup of our potential adversary.'
'Do we have any idea where they come from, sir?' The sweet voice came from PO Yalina Dafi.
Creighton smiled.
'Where do they come from? If we are to believe what has come from certain sources during the past week or so, they have come from somewhere within the holes in space. At the very least, it is certain that even if they come from our own space-time continuum, they know their way about to such an extent that time is annihilated and the universe seems to stand still for them. Some of you may know a lot more about them than I do.'
'That's right, Dr Creighton.' Lee Hoon Hock speaking, in his small, measured tones. 'We could see them, but there was nothing to hit.'
'Yes. I understand your point. I also see that your professional honour as a gunner was touched. But, despite their taking and remaking of the bodies of the colonists on Minos
Four, despite the incineration of Kepler Three, these people may not be our enemies at all.'
A buzz rose, and seemed inclined to turn angry. Bruce, watching Creighton, could not but reluctantly admire the way in which the ET life Forms expert simply waited.
'Soon, you will be suspecting that I am an alien and on their side. I am not, but I cannot allow emotion, however well intentioned, to affect my mind. These are a different kind of people altogether. Not in the minor differences that we know on our own planet, like someone being pink and someone else being light brown and another being dark brown and another being black. We all know these differences mean nothing. These aliens are different from cell number one onwards, and their ideas, to them, are perfectly valid, even as ours are valid to us. There is no abstract standard by which we may say "this is right, this is wrong". Such principles cease to have any value at all, once you go outside the human race. And that human race grew up upon the third planet of an unimportant star in an unimportant little galaxy. We have not the slightest right to impose our ideas upon anyone else, and he who wants to see the aliens in a batch raising their arms and crying "Kamerad" to an Earthman with a gun, is nothing more than a prehistoric relic.'
Upon the field, in the soft dark, they waited for the vehicle. There was not a Corpsman among them, but they were dedicated to their duty. Distantly, in the centre of the field, was a corporation freighter which had undergone a great transformation in its middle sections. Grey, functional holds had been transformed into places of light and beauty, into places where special small hospital wards were partitioned from sections of hospital machinery which gave life and simulation of life wherever it was needed. It was costly, but it was only a tiny fraction of the whole.
Fane was there. His gear and personal effects were already aboard the special ship. So were his doctors and orderlies. It was a team of specialists, no expenses spared, nothing forgotten.
Fane waited.
A distant hum was heard, drawing rapidly nearer.
'There.' Fane peered into the night sky.
It was a large, adequately silenced flycar. It came down gently as a butterfly, switched off. Fane was at the door, the orderly opened it for him. He went directly to the quiet figure of Koninburger there in the bed. He turned and, with his expression only, asked the orderly a question.
'Perfect, sir.'
'Show me the graphs.'
The orderly put the scrawled strips into Fane's eager hands. The psychiatrist studied them avidly, and with increasing relief. 'Oh, yes. Beautiful. A joy to see. I knew we could succeed, but this... oh, this is a dream come true. If only I could write it up in a book...' He reflected. "Well, you never know. I might, before I die.' He became brisk. 'Let's have him out.'
Thus, upon an a/g platform, the bed containing the deeply sleeping Professor Koninburger was transferred to the elevator of the waiting ship, and thence to the sick bay. Fane saw his patient installed, saw him linked up with the history boards, checked him thoroughly, and then stood back. Yes, it was a justifiable deception; it had to succeed, man had to win, man had to catch up with the alien, maybe even to forge past the alien and make it subject to man's wishes.
A ship's officer stood near him. 'Are you satisfied, Professor Fane?'
Fane spoke sombrely, not looking at the other, his eyes upon the pale figure in the bed. *Yes. Just make your gentlest lift-off, and I shall be satisfied.'
The officer turned and left, but Fane continued to look, quite without expression, at Hans Koninburger, genius, who must never be taken from Earth.
Chapter 5
Einstein's general theory, if you study with patience and care, can show you this vital link, this correlation of space with time, 'curved space-time', which is at the very heart of the reasoning. From this we can postulate what amounts to a new science, the science of curved empty space, or, if you wish it, the dynamics of curved geometry; 'geometro- dynamics' is a convenient name, where time and space are both curved.
At this point, let me go back, now, to the thinking of the great Professor John A. Wheeler, once of Princeton University. There were - and are - holes in space; he conceived the idea, to aid his own thinking, of a theoretical particle which is made out of nothing but curved, empty space. Any of you who think you have strolled into the wrong lecture... let me assure you, you haven't. Wheeler's theory was that as the paths or holes in space showed that they could be gravitationally affected by stars or galaxies, then his 'particle made out of nothing' was worth considering as having mass. Let us so consider it.
PROFESSOR HANS KONINBURGER
lecturing at the University of Marseilles
She sat at the desk in the great office in the Excelsior Building, reviewing the state of the company, referring not at all to the board on the wall, or to notes or recordings. All was within her mind, to be held there until it was not needed so to be held. She was not considering mere money, at this stage; all she needed to know was that, up to this moment (or at least within an hour of it) the great enterprise was proceeding as ordered.
It was a source of satisfaction to her that it was she, assisted by the findings of statisticians and other technologists (whose areas of work had been initially designated by her) who had drafted the whole tremendously complex plan for the transportation, in secret, of a great quantity of machinery and electronics to Balomain Four. It was her massive administration order
which had planned for all those concerned in the work on Balomain Four to be at the same time in hospital, where they were to be 'conditioned for their own comfort' (press angle) for the work 'below the Antarctic ice'. She had discovered a new hospital outside Tacoma that was being built by an Order of Sisters of Mercy; they were short of cash. She arranged to finish the building for them, had supplied them with all equipment, helped them recruit staff - Fane had proved himself a wonder here - and all Elsa Niebohr asked was the use of that hospital for four weeks. Thus, while most of the people needed were in the same hospital, and it was assumed that they were all undergoing the 'acclimatization therapy' (press angle) there was one precious and all-important man whose personal conditioning had differed. Fane had started work on Koninburger long before that great man went into 'routine' hospital preparation.
Blue-grey and white. That had been the colour scheme of the hospital; she never wished to see it again, for they had been compelled to allow photographers and press into the place and, while using the 'frank and open' ploy, needed to watch that no one saw something that he shouldn't.
And she had managed it. No, she admitted to herself, she had written the detailed order, but Fane had made it work. He had also recruited a small round doctor from Hanover named Hans UschI; Uschl was already a man devoted to his work. Without harming him in any way, Fane had turned him into his dog and slave, had created in Uschl a devotion to Koninburger which was absolute.
A young Ukrainian tech named Mofra had invented a device which could be fitted to all Excelsior ships and which utterly scrambled any attempted tracking by Earth systems, Corps or privately owned.
Four Excelsior ships had split one cargo; it was a complete smelting plant, ordered and loaded against astounded and alarmed opposition of the Corporation's board of directors, until Mr Roth had read the outline report on the mining potentialities of. Balomain Four, and had rammed home the advantages of the situation with a set of his own irrefutable figures. Her mind checked over all the things that had been needed, how she had worked them out, pondered them... a food preparation factory, a warehouseful supply of medical stores... how she had taken a chance on a new system which chewed up and spat out rock faster than any other... all her argosies were abroad, now, going far into the enemy dark, following the advanced party which had left Earth a month after the first three paras of the gigantic admin order were written. Soon, she would receive their (coded) first report. Then, as the ships arrived - and some would be returning for further cargoes before the last of the first- timers had begun their trip - there would be messages, messages in scores. She had laid the plans, she had consulted, conferred, decided, and now the thing was almost out of her hands, working by virtue of its basic efficiency.
