Collision Course

FOUR

One thing mankind had forgotten how to do, in the peaceful years of expansion under the Archonate: it had forgotten how to wait. The transmat provided instantaneous transport and communication; from any point within the 400-light-year radius of Terra’s sphere of dominion, any other point could be reached instantaneously. Such convenience does not breed a culture of patient men. Of all Terra’s sons, only a special few knew how to wait. They were the spacemen who piloted the lonely plasma-drive ships outward into the night, bearing with them the transmat generators that would make their destinations instantaneously accessible to their fellow men.

Someone had to make the trip by slow freight first. Spacemen knew how to wait out the empty hours, the endless circlings of the clock-hands. Not so others; they fidgeted the hours past.

The XV-ftl had left Earth at a three-g acceleration hurling a fiery jet of stripped nuclei behind it until it had built up to a velocity of three-fourths that of light. The plasma-drive was shut down, and the ship coasted onward at a speed fast enough to drive it nearly five times around the Earth in a twinkling of an eye. And its four passengers fretted in an agony of impatience.

Bernard stared without comprehending at the pages of his book. Havig paced. Dominici ground his teeth together and narrowed his forehead till his frowning brows met. Stone haunted the vision port, peering at the frosty brilliance of the stars as if searching in them for the answer to some wordless question.

The four men were quartered together, in the rear compartment of the slender ship. Fore, Laurance and his four crewmen were stationed. When acceleration had ended, Bernard went forward to watch them at work. It was like observing the priests of some arcane rite. Laurance stood in the center of the control panel like a tree in a storm, while about him the others carried on in a furious rage of energy. Nakamura, eyes hooded by the viewpiece of an astrogating device, chanted numbers to Clive; Clive integrated them and passed them to Hernandez, who fed them to a computer. Peterszoon correlated; Laurance coordinated. Each man had his job, each did it well. Bernard turned away, impressed by their fierce efficiency, feeling a layman’s awe.

And no doubt they think it’s just as mysterious to write a sonnet or formulate theorems in sociometrics, he thought. Complexity is all a matter of viewpoint. Chalk up another score for relativistic philosophy.

The hours dragged mercilessly. Some time later that day, when the four passengers were coming to their breaking-point, the door to their compartment opened and the crewman named Clive entered.

He was a small man, built on a slight scale, with a mocking, youthful face and unruly, sttangely graying hair. He smiled and said, “We’re passing across the orbit of Pluto. Commander Laurance says for me to tell you that we’ll be makings the mass-time conversion any minute now.”

“Will there be warning?” Dominici asked. “Or will it—just happen?”

“You’ll know about it. We’ll sound a gong, for one thing. But you can’t miss it.”

“Thank God we’re out of the solar system,” Bernard said fervently. “I thought the first leg of the trip would last forever.”

Clive chuckled. “You realize you’ve covered four billion miles in less than a day?”

“It seems like so much longer.”

“The medieval spacemen used to be glad if they could make it to Mars in a year,” Clive said. “You think this is bad? You ought to see what it’s like to make a plasma-drive hop between stars. Like five years in one little ship so you can plant a transmat pickup on Betelgeuse XXIX. That’s when you learn how to be patient.”

“How long will we be in warp-drive?” Stone asked.

“Seventeen hours. Then it’ll take a few hours more to decelerate. Call it a day between now and landing.” The little spaceman showed yellowed teeth. “Imagine that! A day and a half to cover ten thousand light-years, and you guys are complaining!” He doubled up with laughter, slapping his thigh. Bernard and the other three watched the spaceman’s amusement without comment.

Then Clive was serious again. “Remember—when you hear the gong, we’re converting.”

“Should we strap down?”

Clive shook his head. “There’s no change in velocity; you won’t feel any jolt.” He grinned. “Maybe you won’t feel anything at all. We’re still kinda new at this faster-than-light stuff, y’know.”

There was no reply. Clive shrugged and walked out, letting the bulkhead swing shut behind him.

Bernard laughed. “He’s right, of course. We’re idiots for being so impatient. It’s just that we’re accustomed to getting places the instant we want to get there. To them, this trip must seem ridiculously fast.”

“I don’t care how fast it seems to them,” Dominici said tightly. “Sitting around in a little cabin for hour after hour is hell for me. And for all the rest of us.”

“Perhaps you can now see the advantages of learning to resign yourself to the existence of discomfort,” advised Havig gravely. “Impatience is unwise. It leads to anger, anger to rashness, rashness to sin. But…”

Dominici whirled to face the Neopuritan, a muscle cording in his cheek. The biophysicist snapped heatedly, “Don’t hand me any of your filthy piousness, Havig! I’m tensed up and I’m damned if I like being cooped up, and words aren’t going to make me feel any better! And anyway…”

“Not words, no,” Havig said equably. “But the truths that lie behind the words are important. The truth of seeing yourself in relation to Eternity—of knowing that a momentary delay is of no importance—of seeing your place in the vast mechanism of the universe—this helps one overcome the itch of impatience.”

“Will you keep that to yourself?” Dominici shouted.

“Hold it, hold it, both of you!” Stone broke in. The chubby diplomat seemed to be cast in a permanent role as peacemaker in the expedition. “Calm down, Dominici. Steady. You aren’t making it any easier for us by blowing your stack. Just ease off.”

“He had provocation,” Bernard said, glaring at Havig. “Mr. Gloom over there in the corner was handing out free advice. That’s enough to touch anyone off. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a bunch of tracts along to distribute, Havig.”

An uncharacteristic flicker of amusement appeared on the Neopuritan’s face. “My apologies. I was trying to relieve the general tension you others feel, not to increase it. Perhaps I erred in speaking up. It seemed my duty, that’s all.”

“We aren’t convertible,” Bernard said bluntly.

“We teach, but we do not proselytize,” Havig replied levelly. “I was only trying to help.”

“It wasn’t needed.”

Stone sighed. “Some fine bunch of treatymakers we are! You’ll all be leaping for each other’s throats before long if this goes…”

The gong sounded suddenly, resonating through the cabin with an impact that everyone felt. It was a deep, full-throated bonging chime, repeated three times, dying away slowly after the last with a shimmer of harmonics.

The quarrel ended as though a curtain had been brought down to separate the quarrellers.

“We’re making the conversion,” Dominici muttered hoarsely. He swung around to face the wall, and Bernard realized in some surprise, by observing the motions Dominici’s right elbow was describing, that the seemingly skeptical biophysicist was making the sign of the cross.

Bernard felt uncomfortable. Although not a religious man himself, he wished he could commend himself in some way to a watchful deity, and take comfort therein. As it was, he could do no more than trust to good fortune. He felt monumentally alone, with the dark night of the universe only inches from him beyond the walls of the ship. And soon not even the universe would be there.

Distressed, Bernard looked at his fellow voyagers. Havig was moving his lips in silent prayer, eyes open but lost in contemplation of the Eternity that now was so near. Dominici’s hoarse whisper rasped across the room, intoning Latin words Bernard knew only from his studies. Stone, evidently like Bernard a man without religious affiliation, had lost some of his cheery ruddiness of cheek, and sat staring leadenly at the wall opposite him, trying to look unconcerned.

They waited.

If the hours since their blastoff from Earth had seemed long, the minutes immediately following the gong were eternities. No one spoke. Bernard sat back, tasting the coppery taste of fear in his mouth, and wondering what he was afraid of that turned his tongue so dry.

He had no clear idea of what effect to anticipate as they made the conversion. Moments passed, and then he felt a dull vibration, heard a thrumming sound: the mighty Daviot-Leeson generators building up potential, most likely. Bernard knew about as much of the theory as any intelligent layman might. In a moment or two, he realized, a fist of energy would lash out in cosmic violence, sunder the continuum, and create a doorway through which the XV-ftl might glide.

Into where?

Into what kind of universe?

Bernard’s mind could form no picture of it. All he knew was that they would enter some adjoining universe where distances were irrational figures, where objects might simultaneously occupy the same space. A universe that had been mapped—how accurately, he wondered?—in five years of experimental work, and now was being navigated by bold men who plunged onward with but the foggiest concept of where they were or where they might be heading.

The thrumming grew louder.

“When does it happen?” Stone asked.

Bernard shrugged. In the silence, he heard himself saying, “I guess it must take a couple of minutes for the generators to build up the charge. And then we go kicking through…”

The change came.

The first hint was the flickering of the lights, only momentarily, as the great power surge drained the dynamos. The only other immediate effect was a psychological one: Bernard felt cut loose, severed from all he knew and trusted, cast into a darkness so mighty it was beyond comprehension by mortal man.

The feeling passed. Bernard took a deep breath. Nothing was different, after all. The sensation of loneliness, of separation, that had been nothing but the trick of an overeager imagination.

“Look at the vision port,” Stone breathed. “The stars—they aren’t there!”

Bernard spun around. It was true. A moment before, the port, a three-by-four television screen that gave direct pickup from the skin of the ship, had been dazzling with the glory of the stars. Unending cascades of brightness had glinted against the airless black. Some of the planets had been visible against the backdrop of the Milky Way: red Mars, gem-like Venus.

Now all that was gone. Stars, planets, cascades of bright glory. The screen showed a featureless gray. It was as though the universe had been blotted out.

Once again the bulkhead light flashed. Stone pushed the switch to admit, this time, John Laurance himself.

“We’ve made the conversion successfully, gentlemen. What you see on the screen is a completely empty universe in which we’re the only bit of matter.”

Stone said, “In that case, what do you steer by?”

Laurance shrugged. “Rule of thumb. The unmanned ships were sent into no-space; they travelled along certain vectors that we’ve charted, and they came out someplace else. For lack of landmarks we just follow our noses.”

“It doesn’t sound like a very efficient way of getting places,” Dominici said.

“It isn’t,” Laurance admitted. “But we don’t happen to have any other choice.”

Bernard studied the spaceman closely. Fatigue was evident in every line of Laurance’s craggy face. The oddly soft eyes were red with shattered capillaries. They said that Laurance needed no more than three hours of sleep out of each twenty-four; but it would seem, just to look at him, that he had not even been getting his normal minimum.

“You look tired, Commander,” the sociologist said.

Again Laurance shrugged. “I am, Dr. Bernard. All of my men are tired. Again—we don’t have any other choice.”

“Is it safe to operate a complicated ship like this if you’re overtired?”

“The Technarch seemed to think so,” replied Laurance with what seemed a lingering trace of bitterness. “The Technarch was in an almighty hurry to get this ship back out into space again.”

“We have faith in the Technarch,” said Dominici. “McKenzie’s got as good a head on his shoulders as old Bengstrom ever had. He must have some reason for wanting the hurry-up.”

“Technarch McKenzie is but a mortal man,” Havig remarked. “He’s subject to error.”

Dominici lifted an eyebrow. “There are people who’d fall down in catatonic shock if you ever said anything like that about an Archon in their hearing, Havig.”

“I have no exaggerated awe for these men. They were chosen from among mankind,” the Neopuritan went on.

“Yes,” Bernard said. “Chosen in their teens and trained for decades in the art of ruling, before they eventually take over their Archonates. It’s obviously a good system, the first really workable system of government Earth as a whole has ever had. But Commander Laurance didn’t come in here to discuss the Technarch’s qualifications with us, I imagine.”

“No, I didn’t,” Laurance said with a grave smile. “I came in to tell you that all was well with the ship, that we’ll be eating in half an hour, and that we expect to be in the neighborhood of Star NGCR 185143 in, oh, about seventeen hours plus or minus a few seconds.” Laurance paused just a moment, long enough to consolidate his dominance in the little group. Then he said, “Ah—Mister Clive tells me you’re all a bit edgy back there. That you’ve even been doing some bickering.”

Bernard reddened. He was positive that there was the beginning of contempt in Laurance’s eyes, contempt of the hardbitten spaceman for the soft academics in the cabin.

Out of the embarrassed silence came, as usual, Stone’s mollifying voice. “We’ve had our little disagreements, yes, Commander. Minor differences of opinion…”

“I understand, gentlemen,” Laurance said blandly—but behind the blandness lay solid steel. “May I remind you that you’ve been entrusted with a very great responsibility. I hope you’ll have settled your—ah—’minor differences’ before we reach your destination.”

“Matter of fact, we just about have them under control now,” Stone said.

“Good.” Laurance moved toward the door. “You’ll find a packet of relaxotabs in the medical supply cabinet over there to my left, just in case your ‘edginess’ should continue and become a serious problem. I’ll expect you in the fore galley in half an hour.”

There was a moment of awkward silence after Laurance had gone. Then Dominici said, “That fellow’s almost as regal as the Technarch, you know? They’re of the same breed. ‘May I remind you that you’ve been entrusted with a very great responsibility,’ ” he mimicked. “The Commander’s got the same lordly way of telling you off and making you feel three feet high that McKenzie has.”

“Maybe Laurance is a trainee who didn’t quite make the grade for the Archonate,” Stone suggested quietly. As a trainee himself—for the Archonate of Colonial Affairs—he might be expected to know something of the inside story of maneuvering for high office.

But Bernard said, “It just isn’t likely, really. McKenzie wouldn’t trust a runner-up with anything as big as this; too much rivalry involved. But it’s always possible that Laurance is one of the next generation of trainees. For all we know, he’s been picked to succeed McKenzie some day.”

“Would McKenzie risk losing his hand-picked successor in a dangerous flight like this?” Dominici asked.

“A Technarch must be forged in the crucible of danger,” Havig observed. “If Laurance could not survive a voyage in space, how would he survive the pressures of office? This may be a testing flight.”

“You may have something there,” Stone admitted.

There were no further speculations. The tension and uncertainty of the job that lay ahead of them dulled conversation, made them all jumpy and restless.

When a half hour had elapsed, the four went up front for the meal. The menu was an array of synthetics, of course—but synthetics lovingly prepared by Nakamura and Hernandez, who approached the job of meal-making the way other men might approach the writing of poetry. After the meal, the four passengers made their way rearward to their cabin.

More than sixteen hours remained to the no-space leg of their journey. Time was crawling; it might just as well have been sixteen years of traveling ahead.

Bernard settled into his acceleration cradle and tried to read; but it was no use. Obtrusive thoughts of danger got between his mind and his book. The words danced on the page, and the delicate imagery of Suyamo’s classic verse blurred into hopeless confusion. In complete disgust, Bernard slammed the book shut.

He closed his eyes. After a while, the babel of thought slackened, and he fell into a light, uneasy sleep that gradually deepened.

Some time later, he groped his way back to wakefulness. A glance at the cabin clock told him that only four hours yet remained till transition, so he had been asleep nearly twelve. It surprised him. He had not thought he was as fatigued as that, to let twelve hours slip away almost instantaneously in sleep.

He looked around the cabin. Dominici was fast asleep, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth contorted in a peculiar grimace. He was twisting and turning as he slept; obviously he was having a bad dream. Bernard wondered if he had looked as restless and troubled in his sleep.

Next to him, Stone sat peering endlessly out the vision port at nothing whatever. Realizing that Bernard was awake, Stone turned and flashed a quick, insincere grin, then turned his attention back to the port.

Only Havig seemed at peace with himself and with the mysterious environment outside. The big man leaned back, his long legs stretched forward in a rare gesture of relaxation. A book lay open in Havig’s lap—a prayerbook, probably, Bernard thought. The Neopuritan was turning the pages slowly, nodding, occasionally smiling to himself. He took no notice of anything about him. The very tranquility of the man irritated Bernard obscurely.

Bernard forced himself to stop thinking about the frictions that existed in the cabin, and to ponder the enigmatic nature of the aliens waiting ahead.

He had seen their photos, in tridim and color, and so he had at least a tentative idea of what to expect physically.

But yet he looked forward to the coming meeting with complete uncertainty. Would contact be possible, communication of even the simplest sort? And if they could speak to each other, would an agreement be forthcoming? Or was the civilization of men doomed to be racked by an interstellar war that would send the centuries-old peace imposed by the Archonate crumbling?

The rise of the oligarchy, Bernard thought, had ended the confusion and doubt of the Nightmare Years. But what if the aliens refused to meet and enter into peaceful treaties? What would the strength of the Archonate be worth then?

He had no answers. He forced himself to concentrate on his reading. The hours marched past, until the gong sounded once again, as if foretelling an apocalypse.

The sound of the gong died away. Transition was made.

The vision screen exploded into brilliant life. New constellations; eye-numbing new clusters of stars, perhaps including among them a dot of light that was Earth’s sun.

And, hanging before them like a blazing ball, was a golden-yellow sun darkened by the shadow of planets in transit across its disk.