Collision Course

ELEVEN

“You mean we’re lost?” Dominici asked, his voice rising to an incredulous screech.

“I mean just that.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Bernard demanded. “Why did you leave us to stew here in uncertainty all this time?”

Laurance shrugged. “We were making course compensations, trying to find our way back to the right path; but it didn’t work. There wasn’t even a trace of a single one of our course referents. And everything we did only seemed to make things worse. In the final analysis we really don’t know the first bit about faster-than-light navigation.” Laurance’s shoulders slumped wearily. “We decided to give up trying, a little while ago, and converted back to the normal universe. But there isn’t a single familiar landmark. We’re as lost as can be.”

“How could such a thing happen?” Stone wanted to know. “I thought our course was pre-set—everything calculated automatically in advance…”

“To a certain extent, yes,” Laurance agreed. “But there were the minute adjustments, the position feedbacks, and somewhere along there we went astray. Maybe it was a mechanical failure, maybe a human error. We don’t know.”

“Does it matter now?” Bernard said.

“Hardly. A millionth of a second of parallax error— widening into an enormous departure from course almost instantly. And so—here we are.”

“Where?” Stone asked.

“The best I can offer you is an educated guess. We think we’ve emerged from no-space somewhere in the region of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. Hernandez is busy taking observations now. We’ve spotted one star we’re pretty sure is S Doradus, and that would clinch things.”

“So we’re not too far from home,” Dominici said with a harsh chuckle. “Only in the next galaxy, that’s all. What’s a mere 50,000 parsecs?”

“If we know where we are,” said Stone, “shouldn’t we be able to find our way back to Earth?”

“Not necessarily,” Laurance replied. “No-space travel doesn’t follow any logical pattern. There’s no correlation between time and distance, and no way of telling direction. We’re traveling blindfolded; the best we can do is send out an experimental ship unmanned, track its course, find out where it goes, and then duplicate the course. Only we don’t have any unmanned ships to send out. Our only hope for getting home is trial-and-error computation—and it’s just as reasonable to assume that on our next jump we’ll wind up in Andromeda as back in our own galaxy.”

“But we’ll give it a try, at least,” Bernard said.

“I’m not so sure we ought to. Right now we’re in a galaxy very much like our own. We may be wiser simply to pick out an Earth-type planet and settle there, rather than go shooting off into no-space again and possibly ending up stranded between galaxies, slowly starving to death.”

“Better to starve in the attempt to reach home,” Havig said, breaking his silence, “than to waste away on some strange world.”

“Probably you’re right,” Laurance agreed. “But we’ll have to think things out very carefully before we rush ahead and do anything. We have about three months’ food on board ship. So we have some time to play around before we have to start looking for a habitable planet. I…”

Nakamura entered the cabin suddenly. In a low voice he said to Laurance, “Commander, could you come up front for a moment? There’s something we’d like to show you.”

“Certainly. Excuse me, gentlemen.”

The spacemen left. For a long moment there was silence in the cabin after they had gone.

Bernard stared at the vision screen. It was a breathtaking view: a sprawling field of stars, a Milky Way no human eyes had ever seen before. Blazing blue-white giants and dim red stars studded the field of vision. And down in the lower part of the screen hung a dazzling white cloud, a coil with an arm drifting loose at either end. With a jarring sense of shock Bernard realized he was looking at his own galaxy. Somewhere within that seemingly tightly packed mass of light lay Sol, and the thousands of worlds of the Terran system; in there, too, were the Norglan worlds, and as many millions more of uninhabited, unexplored planets. And there they all were, both rival empires and perhaps all the intelligent life of the universe, looking at this distance like a bright blotch the size of a man’s hand.

Bernard caught his breath. It was a numbing sight to see the galaxy from a distance of some 50,000 parsecs. It tended to provide a different perspective on things, to demonstrate beyond the power of all words to convey how small was man and all his aspirations, how unintelligibly mighty the universe. At this distance, no single star of the home galaxy could be discerned by the unaided eye. And yet, in that inconsequential cluster of stars in the corner of the screen, how many grandiose plans for universal conquest were born before each sunrise?

Stone laughed, bitterly, mirthlessly. “Which is worse, anyway?” he asked. “To get lost out here fifty thousand parsecs from home—or to return to Earth with the Norglan ultimatum? Me, I almost think I’d rather stay lost, and at least not have to bring that kind of news home.”

“Not me,” Dominici retorted without hesitation. “I’m not in the same boat you are. If we got back home, I’d survive the Technarch’s anger, and maybe I’d be lucky enough to live through the war with the Norglans. At least if I died it wouldn’t be a lingering death. I can’t buy your preference for staying lost. It wouldn’t have been so bad with a couple of women on board, maybe, but to be stranded this way, on the edge of nowhere? Nine Adams and no Eves? Uh-uh. Not for me, friends.”

Ignoring the discussion, Bernard continued to stare at the alien sky in the vision screen.

Ten thousand light-years had seemed so far from home, once. A staggering distance, inconceivably vast. But it wasn’t, not really, not when you put matters into their proper perspective. Earth and Norgla were virtually next-door neighbors when you stood this far away and looked back. Bernard smiled ironically. And to think that we and the Norglans were all set to divvy up the universe between us! What cosmic arrogance, what, supreme gall! What right do any of us, in our puny little galaxy, have to stake even a tentative claim out here?

“How about you, Bernard?” Dominici asked. “You haven’t been saying much. What do you think of Stone’s idea? Would you rather stay lost out here, or be the bearer of evil tidings?”

“Oh, I’d like to get back home,” Bernard said mildly. “No doubt about it. I miss my books, my music, I even miss my teaching chores.”

“No family?” Dominici asked.

“Not really.” Bernard leaned back. “Two marriages; both dissolved. I have a son somewhere, by my first wife. David Martin Bernard, that’s his name. I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. I guess he doesn’t use my last name. He’s been raised to think that someone else is his father. If I met him on the street, he wouldn’t know me even by name.”

“Oh,” the biophysicist said in embarrassment. “Sorry to bring it up.”

Bernard shrugged. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not a wound that rankles in my bosom, anything like that. I simply wasn’t cut out to be a family man. Can’t get myself sufficiently involved with other people except on non-practical levels of scholarship or connoisseurship or the like. More’s the pity I didn’t realize that before my first marriage, that’s all.” Bernard wondered why he was saying all this. “It wasn’t till the second marriage broke up,” he went on, “that I realized that temperamentally I was a born bachelor. So I’ve got no family ties with Earth. But I’d still like to get home, all the same.”

“I guess we all do,” said Stone. “I didn’t really mean what I said a few minutes ago. It was just a thought off the top of my head.”

“I was married once too,” Dominici said to no one in particular. “She was a lab technician with golden hair, and we honeymooned in Farrarville on Arcturus X. She died ten years ago.”

And you obviously haven’t gotten over it, Bernard thought, seeing the sudden anguished look on Dominici’s face.

The sociologist felt uncomfortable. Up till now there had been a certain understanding of reserve in effect between the four of them; cooped up though they were, they had kept back details of their private lives. But if it all came spilling forth now as a relief from stress, all the long sad autobiographies of frustrations and petty disappointments and lost loves, the situation in the cabin would be intolerable. Each man would clamor to spew out his autobiography, while the others would wait their turns. And, Bernard knew, it would be his fault for having touched off the revelations.

Stone had caught it now. “I never married,” he was saying, “so in a sense I don’t have much to go home to. Not that there wasn’t a girl, but it didn’t work out, and—well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to rot for the rest of my life on some strange planet half the universe away from Earth. To die unmourned, alone, forgotten…”

“It would be the will of God, wouldn’t it?” Dominici asked. “Everything’s the will of God. You just sit back and let God pour trouble all over you, and you shrug your shoulders stoically because it’s His will and therefore there’s just no use complaining.” Dominici’s voice had taken on a shrill, flippant edge. “Isn’t that so, Havig? You’re our expert on God. How come you haven’t been spouting your usual stuff to console us? We— Havig!”

Bernard swung around.

It was a startling sight. Sitting by himself, as usual, in his corner bunk, taking no part in the conversation, the lanky Neopuritan was very quietly having what looked like a fit of hysterics.

Like every other aspect of the man, even his very hysteria was subdued, repressed. His body was being racked with great whooping sobs, but Bernard realized that he was choking them back with an almost demonic intensity of concentration. His eyes were wet with tears; his jaws were tightly clenched, his white-knuckled hands gripped the edge of the bunk. The sobs rippled up through him, and grimly he forced them back, not letting a sound escape from his mouth. The conflict between discipline and collapse was evident. The effect was totally astonishing.

The three other men were frozen in surprise a moment. Then Dominici snapped curtly, “Havig! Havig, what’s the matter with you? Are you sick, man?”

“No—not sick,” Havig said, in a low, dark, hollow voice.

“What’s wrong, then? Is there anything we can get for you? Do for you?”

“Leave me alone,” Havig muttered.

Bernard stared at the Neopuritan in consternation. For once, the sociologist felt that he had penetrated Havig’s mask and understood.

“Can’t you see what he’s thinking?” Bernard said quietly to Dominici and Stone. “He’s thinking that all his life he was a good man, kept the ways of God as he saw them, worked hard, prayed. Worshipped Him as he thought He must be worshipped. And—and then this. Lost here, billions and billions of miles from home, church, family. Wife. Children. Gone, and why? He’s breaking up under that. He doesn’t know why.”

The big man rose and took two tottering steps forward, eyes fixed, jaws flecked with spittle.

“Grab him!” Dominici shouted in panic. “He’s cracking up! Grab him or he’ll run wild!”

Without wasting another second, all three sprang toward him. Bernard and Stone each grabbed one enormously long, spidery arm; Dominici reached up, straining practically on tiptoes, and clamped his hands to the linguist’s thin shoulders. Together, by sheer force, they pressed him down onto his bunk and held him there.

Havig’s eyes blazed with indignant fury. “Let go of me! Get your hands away from me! I forbid you to touch me, do you hear?”

“Just lie there until you’re calm,” Bernard told him. “Relax, Havig. Don’t snap now.”

“Watch him,” Dominici murmured.

But Havig was not resisting now. He glowered at the floor and muttered in a broodingly introspective voice, “I have committed some sin—I must have—otherwise why would this have happened? Why has He forsaken me—forsaken all of us?”

“You’re not the first to ask that question,” Dominici said. “At least you’re in good company there.”

A blasphemous quip at a time like this infuriated Bernard for reasons he did not fully understand. “Shut up, you idiot,” he whispered harshly. “You want to drive him out of his mind? Get me a sedative for him.”

“In some way I have offended Him unknowingly,” Havig went on. “And He has taken his light from me. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken us?”

Bernard felt a wave of pity and compassion so intense that it startled him. This was a man he had once despised for mysticism and fanaticism, a man he had once attacked in print in terms that he now saw had been vicious and petty— and, now that Havig’s shell of faith seemed about to shatter, Bernard felt deep pity.

Bending over Havig, he said sharply, “You’re wrong, Havig. You haven’t been forsaken. This is a trial—a trial of your faith. God is sending tribulations upon you. Remember Job, Havig. He never lost faith.”

Havig’s eyes brightened, and a faint smile broke through the despair. “Yes, perhaps,” he said softly. “A trial of my faith—of my faith and yours, too. As Job, yes. But how can we stand it? Lost out here—perhaps God has turned his face from us—perhaps…” He fell silent, and tears rolled down the gaunt cheeks. Havig looked up imploringly at Bernard, all the old self-willed strength seemingly gone, and began to shake.

Reaching behind him, Bernard deftly took the sonic spray-tube from Dominici and jammed it against a vein in Havig’s thin arm.

He flipped the release, injecting the fluid instantly. Havig muttered something unintelligible and shivered; his eyes glazed; within moments, he had relaxed and was on his way to sleep.

Rising, Bernard mopped the beds of sweat from his forehead. “Whew! I wasn’t expecting that to happen. And it came on so suddenly…”

“Crazy. Absolutely crazy,” Stone said. “How could someone so unstable get sent aboard on this mission?”

Bernard shook his head. “Havig’s not unstable, despite the performance we just saw.”

“What is he if not unstable, then?”

“All this was perfectly understandable. He’s a man who’s built his entire life around one solid set of beliefs. And he’s lived those beliefs, not just talked about them. Call him a fanatic, if you want; I certainly called him enough names. Well, he had the rug yanked out from under him. I guess this was one time he couldn’t write every trial and tribulation off to God’s will and endure it stoically. He ran out of explanations. So he snapped.”

“Will he be okay when he wakes?” asked Dominici. “Or will he take up where he left off?”

“I think he’ll be all right. I hope so. I gave him enough of that stuff to keep him out for hours. Maybe he’ll be calmer when the drug wears off.”

“If he goes on ranting like that,” said Stone, “we’ll just have to gag him. Or keep him drugged, for his good and ours. He’ll drive us all nuts otherwise.”

“I think he’ll get his balance back,” Bernard said. “He’s too fundamentally solid to go off the deep end.”

“I thought you called him a crackpot,” Dominici objected. “Are you going off the deep end too?”

“Maybe I understand Havig and his beliefs a little better now,” Bernard said quietly. “Well, whatever. We just have to sell him on the Job theme when he wakes up. If we can get that idea across to him, he’ll be a tower of strength from now on, and there won’t be any more crackups.”

“Job? What’s that?” Stone asked.

“Figure from the Judaeo-Christian religious books,” Bernard said. “It’s a very good poem, really. It tells how the Devil made a bet with God that this man Job would lose his faith under stress, and so the Devil was permitted to visit all manner of plagues and calamities on Job. Things that make getting lost in space look perfectly mild. But Job stood his ground all the same, never weakening in his faith even when things looked blackest. And eventually…”

The cabin door opened. Commander Laurance entered, followed by Clive and Nakamura.

“What’s been going on back here?” Laurance asked. “I heard wild shouting…”

“Havig went off his rocker,” Dominici said.

“What?”

“It’s not quite that desperate,” Bernard said quickly. “He was simply having a fit of despondency. The universe suddenly became too much for him all at once, or something, and his control snapped.”

“He do any damage?”

“No,” Bernard said. “We got him down on his bunk fast enough. He’s conked out under sedatives now, and I think he’ll be okay when he wakes.”

“It sounded like a riot from up front,” Clive said. “We thought you were murdering each other back here.”

Not that you’d mind if we did, Bernard thought. So long as we didn’t jeopardize your safety.

“He’ll be okay,” Bernard said again. “What’s the news from up front? Have you figured out where we are yet? Or is it classified information?”

Laurance looked sharply at him and said, “Greater Magellanic Cloud.”

Dominici glanced up. “Is that definite?”

“About as definite as it’s going to get,” Laurance said flatly. “We’ve found S Doradus, bright as a beacon. And some RR Lyrae variables that we’re pretty sure of. The way the stellar population scans out—plenty of Cepheids, lots of O and B stars and K-type supergiants, it fits the Magellanics, all right.”

“But how about Sol-type suns?” Stone asked anxiously. “Have you found any of those yet? These other kinds aren’t any good for landings, are they?”

“I don’t think we have to worry much about that,” Laurance said with a tight little nervous smile.

“What do you mean?” Dominici asked.

“I mean that matters don’t seem to be in our hands any longer,” Laurance said.

For the first time, Bernard realized what should have been immediately obvious to him—except that it was the sort of thing nobody would expect to look for. He became aware that all five of the crewmen had left the control cabin at the same time. That had never happened before on the voyage. Yet Laurance, Clive, and Nakamura were in here, and Peterszoon and Hernandez were waiting just outside. And if no one were in the control cabin…

“What’s happening?” Bernard demanded in sudden panic. “Who’s piloting the ship?”

“I wish I knew,” Laurance said. He walked to the vision screen. “About half an hour ago some external force seized control of us. We’re powerless to move of our own free volition. We’re being dragged down as if by an invisible hand— toward a yellow sun right up here.”