Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 28

Our trip out from the Cuchulain had been no great triumph of ship manoeuvering. Compared with our return it was a masterpiece. After endless effort I managed to free from its moorings the corkscrew ship—I still found it hard to think of that misshapen object as a home for the Godspeed Drive. More hard labor attached our prize to the cargo beetle. But what I could not do was balance masses, and once we were under way we yawed and rolled this way and that in every direction that I could imagine. Sometimes the hawsers were taut, sometimes they floated slack and then tightened with a great jerk. Sometimes, don’t ask how, the Godspeed ship we were towing flew out ahead of us.

I was not pleased with my performance, and Mel was outright rude. But Jim Swift didn’t say one bad word. He was so full of the idea that we had succeeded. When we got back to the Cuchulain we would be hailed by the others as conquering heroes.

I wasn’t so sure. If the crew of the Cuchulain had found a Godspeed Drive for themselves in their search of the space base, then what we had done was no big deal. If they had found nothing, we had made them look like a bunch of lamebrains. Dr. Jim Swift was a lot older than me, but in my experience you didn’t become popular by showing people what fools they were.

Donald Rudden confirmed my opinion when we called him on the beetle’s communicator, to say we were going to moor the object we were towing alongside the Cuchulain. “Wondered where you’d got to. Found something, have you?” He laughed. “Just as well, because Tom Toole called a while ago. Said they’d come up with nothing. Crew’s all as mad as a pack of Limerick pipers. They’ll be on their way back any time now.”

That gave me one more thing to worry about. I had to get Mel on board the Cuchulain and safely into Doctor Eileen’s quarters before the other party returned. Jim was too full of himself to worry about that or much else, so as soon as I had fought us to a rough docking I left him to gloat. I steered the beetle to the Cuchulain’s cargo region, and Mel and I made a quick run through the interior to Eileen Xavier’s empty rooms.

“Sit tight,” I said as I left her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“How long?”

“Don’t know. But hang in. We’ll soon be on our way home.”

I was at last beginning to believe it myself. It’s an odd thing, but when you wait for something long enough you can’t believe it has arrived, even when it does. But Jim Swift, in spite of his uncontrollable temper, was Erin’s top expert on the Godspeed Drive. If he was convinced that the oddity hanging next to the Cuchulain had inside it a device able to bring the stars close enough to touch, who was I to question?

As for his worries about disturbing space-time, I dismissed them. He had been dwelling too much on his own specialty subject. Jim with his space-time obsession was like the Lake Sheelin fishermen, who saw all the whole world in terms of hooks, lines, baits, and nets.

By the time that I returned to the Cuchulain’s bridge, Donald Rudden was showing signs of stirring. “Chief’s on his way over there,” he said. He nodded his head to a display screen showing the corkscrew ship, hanging where Mel and I had left it. “And I hafta go over myself, with some tools they want. Rory’s supposed to spell me here.”

That wasn’t good news. Rory O’Donovan was the worst possible choice—not very bright, but full of energy. I couldn’t trust him to stay put in the control room.

“What’s going on at the other ship?”

“That thing’s a ship?” Rudden puffed out his cheeks. “I’ll believe it when I see it fly. Anyway, Rory says there’s hell to pay over there. That redhead friend of yours, Swift, he’s full of it. Been laying down the law about ships and drives. He don’t know beans about ships, and anyway the lads won’t take that stuff from a Downsider. He’s been warned twice by Pat O’Rourke, but he takes no mind.”

I wondered if Jim Swift knew how much danger he was in. After seeing Walter Hamilton shot, I wouldn’t argue with an angry crewman. The only thing Jim had protecting him was Danny Shaker’s control of the crew—a control that Shaker said became less every day.

As soon as Rudden left the bridge I made another quick run for the top level. I had to tell Mel what was happening, and warn her to lie low once O’Donovan was aboard and running loose. She didn’t take it well.

“I’ve had it with skulking away. You say hang in, but when do I get out?”

“Soon. But don’t take risks.”

I headed for the control room, wondering when I was going to take my own advice. Every trip to the upper level was a risk, for me as well as Mel.

When I reached the bridge Rory O’Donovan was not there, but Doctor Eileen was, staring at the displays. Her shoulders were slumped and she seemed half-asleep. She knew I was present, though, because as I moved to her side she said, “Jay,” in a far-off voice, as though I was some sort of ghost.

“Are you all right, Doctor Eileen?” As she turned to me I saw that her eyes had dark rings under them.

She gave me a faint trace of a smile. “As good as I’ll ever be. I’m tired. And I’m beginning to think I’m mortal.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much. We had an exhausting and aggravating sixteen hours, that’s all, and we didn’t find anything inside the big lobe except confusion. I gather you did better.”

“Jim Swift says we found the Godspeed Drive. He’s sure of it.”

“And I’m sure he believes he can fly it better than any crewman in the Forty Worlds.” Doctor Eileen sighed. “You know, this ought to be the greatest day of my life. Erin will get what I’ve wanted and worried about for fifty years: a new future. That’s what I ought to be thinking. But I can’t get out of my head the notion that things aren’t as they seem to be. That’s what being old does to you, Jay. It won’t let joy have a clear run in the sunlight, not even for one hour.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“At your age, I should hope not.” She stared at me, studying my face. “Jay Hara, I hardly know you.” Instead of explaining what she meant by that, she nodded at the image of the corkscrew and the twisted bubble on the end of it. “That little mystery will give us the stars, eh? Well, maybe. In my life I’ve seen stranger things.”

She reached out as though she was going to tousle my hair, the way she had ever since I was tiny. But this time she didn’t do it. She stroked my cheek instead. “Another month or two and I won’t know you at all,” she said. “I guess I ought to be pleased. Keep an eye on things here, and let me know if anything happens. I’ve got to take a little rest.”

Doctor Eileen left me on the bridge, wondering what on earth she had been talking about. She was the one who had changed, and that upset me. Doctor Eileen had always been as constant as the stars.

I went across to stand in front of the big convex mirror at the exit to the bridge, situated so that people entering and leaving through the angled doorway would not run into each other. Its rounded surface reflected a miniature and distorted image of my face, thin and dark-shadowed.

I stretched my arm out in front of me. My jacket sleeve showed three inches of bare wrist. It was the same coat that mother had made for me the night before I left home. It used to fit perfectly.

How long I stood standing in front of the mirror is anyone’s guess. I had intended to take one quick look and get back to the controls, but as I examined the neat stitching on the jacket sleeve my mind went spinning away: to lamplit winter evenings in the comfortable house by Lake Sheelin, to long summer days with old Uncle Toby, and finally to my secret sailing trips across the lake to Muldoon Spaceport. That wasn’t just a different world, it was a different universe.

When I came back to life and returned to the control room displays, I learned that in this universe things had been happening. The ship containing the Godspeed Drive had turned, so that the axis of the corkscrew now pointed away from the Cuchulain. Shimmering rings of violet haze were running back and forth along its length before spiraling away off the end. They moved on like ghostly smoke rings through open space for a few seconds, then at last faded.

Was the crew going to use the Godspeed Drive at once, without Doctor Eileen (or me) there to be part of it?

I hated that idea, but my worry vanished when all the shimmering rings suddenly disappeared. The Godspeed ship again hung motionless in vacuum. A minute later, a cluster of suited figures appeared from the distorted bubble at the end. They moved along the line of the corkscrew, apparently inspecting it, then jetted as a group toward the Cuchulain.

Doctor Eileen had to be told what was happening. For the third time in an hour I started at top speed for the upper level. The door of Doctor Eileen’s quarters was open, and I hurried in without knocking. She was there, sitting at a table with Mel next to her. I also saw—my heart jumped inside my chest—a broad male back, in a blue-clothed spacer jacket.

The man turned, and I realized with huge relief that it was Duncan West.

“Uncle Duncan!”

He nodded at me, and smiled as though my sudden appearance was the most natural thing in the world. “Just came to tell Doctor Eileen the good news. The ship that you and Jim Swift found has a Godspeed Drive, we’re all sure of it. And from the first look it seems in good working order.”

If the whole universe was ready to change, Duncan West didn’t show much sign of it.

“Have they tested it?” I asked. “I saw the violet rings.”

“Fly it here, inside the Eye? That would really be asking for trouble. What you saw was just preliminaries.” The deck of the Cuchulain groaned, and gave a dreadful quivering lurch. Duncan put his hand to the table top, feeling the continuing vibrations. “That’s our own drive going on—what’s left of it. We’ll be leaving the Eye and towing the Godspeed ship along with us. I came to tell you and Mel and Doctor Eileen what’s going on, and say it’s captain’s orders that you stay in quarters while we’re flying out. When we get clear of the Eye, he’ll announce it. You can take it easy until then.”

Duncan ambled out, not back to the bridge but along the corridor that led to his own berth. Doctor Eileen stared after him enviously.

“Know where he’s going, don’t you?”

“No,” said Mel.

“To take a nap,” I said. “He won’t worry about the vibrations.”

Doctor Eileen nodded. “Or the fact that the fabulous Godspeed Drive is being pulled along behind our ship. You know what your mother says, Jay.”

“That Uncle Duncan is the best eater and sleeper she ever met.”

“We should all be so lucky.” Doctor Eileen stood up. “I’ve got to lie down for a few minutes myself, or I’ll fall apart. You two can stay if you like, I don’t mind.”

She wandered away into one of the rooms equipped with a couple of bunk beds. Mel and I were left to sit and stare at each other. Doctor Eileen must be feeling really out of it, because she knew as well as we did that Mel had to stay here. She couldn’t safely go anywhere else in the Cuchulain.

We went through the other sleeping area and locked the door. Mel turned off the lights, and each of us climbed onto one of the side-by-side beds. We lay there in shuddering darkness, for so long that I began to think that Mel had fallen asleep despite the vibration from the engines. I envied her. For more than twenty hours the two of us had been busy with hardly a break, and now my brain would not stop running. I kept reliving the discovery of the Godspeed Base, and our decision to fly to it. My hands were again on the cargo beetle’s controls, guiding us to our rendezvous in space.

Finally Mel said softly, “Jay?”

I came back from miles away. “What?”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“You’ll be fine. Girls and women on Erin do very well. They are treated as something really special and precious, unless they happen to be like my mother and won’t put up with it. And when we get there we’ll all be rich. You can make trips to Paddy’s Fortune as often as you want.”

The snort in the darkness could have been disgust or frustration. “I’m not thinking of Erin, you dummy—or of Paddy’s Fortune. I’m worrying about the next few days. If the Cuchulain is in as bad condition as everyone says, it won’t be able to fly to Erin. And you’ve seen the Godspeed ship. The living space on it is tiny. Maybe the ship can reach Erin in record time, but I don’t see a hiding place on board for me.”

Mel was right, and I was the world’s prize idiot. I could blame Doctor Eileen a little for not seeing the problem either, but I was the one who had allowed Mel to guide me to the cargo beetle, back on Paddy’s Fortune, and let her stay there. Looking back on it I decided that I should have insisted that she leave me, the moment that I caught sight of the beetle.

“Well?” Mel said at last.

“I’ll ask Danny Shaker. I’m sure he’ll have an answer.”

“You mean you’re sure you don’t.”

“Maybe the engines on the Cuchulain just need a thorough overhaul to carry us home.”

Mel didn’t comment on that. A dreadful shudder through the whole ship did it for her. The engines sounded ready to die. But I had no more thoughts to offer.

We lay there without speaking, in an uneasy darkness thick enough to feel. At last I did what I most needed to do. I fell asleep.