Norby`s Other Secret

13. Useful Time Trouble

"I'm sorry, Cadet," said Yobo as Jeff sat down in Fargo's chair in the control room. "I was perhaps a bit undiplomatic in the matter of Norby, and I've alienated Mentor First needlessly."

"I would like to trust you, Admiral," said Jeff.

"I would rather you understood me, Cadet. My first duty is to the Terran solar system. I want the secret of hyperdrive and I must have it before anyone else gets it; in particular, before the Inventors Union does. The Union was founded for praiseworthy purposes, I suppose, but it has been increasingly taken over by militant radicals, who want to use their inventions for the establishment of power."

"Do you suppose they plan a revolution and to take over the Federation?"

"It's my job as head of Space Command to see to it that they don't. And if I'm to do that properly, Norby's talents can't be viewed as amusing toys anymore. They have become vital. We must have his secrets."

"You'll be killing the goose that lays the golden egg, sir. Norby, intact, would be far more useful to the Federation than any of his parts would be."

They both looked at Norby, who was plugged into the Hopeful's computer.

"Ready to go back to the Terran solar system, Admiral?" asked Norby.

"Yes. Take me to Space Command Spome."

"Do you need my help in visualizing it?" asked Jeff.

"No," said Norby.

"Admiral," Jeff said, "please watch the monitor viewscreen closely so that you can tell us exactly where to go to drop you off."

Once the admiral was occupied in that fashion, Jeff leaned forward and touched Norby.

— You haven't taught me long-distance telepathy, so I've had to distract the admiral to keep him from watching us touch. I'm sorry that we can't trust him any more than we can trust Mentor First.

— My father is trustworthy!

— They both are, under ordinary conditions, Norby, but they both want something desperately, and that's you. They want to use your talents, find out your secrets, because for each of them, a world is at stake.

— That's true, Jeff. Mentor First wants hyperdrive before Terrans have it, because he is afraid of Terrans. I made the mistake of giving him a short telepathic course in human history. He was particularly appalled at my personal experience with the lions in the Roman Coliseum. I tried to explain that human beings have improved in behavior since then, but the fight with the pirates convinced him that you are all dangerous.

— That was thoughtless of you, Norby. What you told him of us made him suspicious and defensive, which encouraged Yobo to grow suspicious and defensive, and I just wonder if anyone will ever be friendly again.

— You won't have to be mad at me for long, Jeff. I'll take you home and then bring Fargo back, and then I'll go to Jamya where I'll be safe.

Jeff let go of Norby and put his hand over his eyes. I've messed things up even worse, he thought.

He was suddenly aware of something on his forearm. He looked down at it and discovered that the gold collar Zi had thrown to him circled it. He had put it on absently and promptly forgotten it.

"Admiral!" he said, awed. "See here. You won't have to use Norby! This collar is a powerful antigrav device. Take it to your scientists and let them use it to work out the mechanism for mini-antigrav. And from that they might get hyperdrive without trouble."

Yobo grunted and took the collar. "How does it work?"

Jeff said, "Imagine yourself moving up."

Yobo did, and his head hit the ceiling with an audible thump. He yelled and must have visualized dropping again, for he hit the floor with a considerably louder thump. He sat there, looking pained. "I accept the mini-antigrav part, but what makes you think that will lead us to hyperspatial travel?"

"Fargo thinks it will."

"Fargo is not a theoretical physicist, but an overgrown adolescent. I still must have Norby. My duty to the Federation…"

"Ready?" asked Norby. "I can't keep my mind properly adjusted forever. "

"Just a minute," said Jeff, thinking furiously. "I know you said you could hyperjump back to any solar system yourself, but I don't want you to. If you have to be taken over by the scientists of the Fleet or leave Earth for good, I must, either way, learn the technique of hyperspatial travel to the point where I can do it without you in a ship like this, adjusted for it."

Quickly, before Yobo or Norby could say anything, Jeff tuned into the controls of the computer and reached out to touch minds with Norby.

— You're up to something, Jeff.

— You bet I am, Norby. Take us into hyperspace, and then out of it to Earth, like this. Jeff visualized it for Norby, who chuckled.

As the Hopeful leaped out of the space-time of Jamya, Jeff felt the usual odd sensation inside himself. It was much worse than usual, almost as though something had turned over in his abdomen, but that might only have been because he was nervous about what he was doing.

The admiral said, "Very good, we're in the solar system. but where's Space Command? I don't see any spomes anywhere."

"Perhaps," said Jeff, "we missed the solar system. We may be in the planetary system of another star."

"Nonsense," said Yobo, "that's the moon over there. It's quite as usual. And directly ahead is Earth. Those are Terran cloud formations. I've studied them for decades. And if there's any question…Can this visiscreen be adjusted for microwave emission and reception? Yes, I see it can."

He made the necessary adjustments. "We can look through the cloud cover and see the continents. Although clouds can be mistaken, continents cannot be."

Even as he spoke, the swirls of white clouds that hid the blueness of Earth's atmosphere thinned and disappeared, and the Earth's globe turned into a circle of ruddy artificial color in which red continents showed up against a black ocean.

Yobo's breath came out in a large whoosh, as though he had been bashed in the abdomen. It was a minute or so before he could say in a strangled way, "There's no Atlantic Ocean. There's one big continent. If that's Earth-and it must be because the moon is still unmistakable-we're 250 million years ago."

Jeff stared at the viewscreen. "Interesting."

"Interesting?" Yobo didn't quite gnash his teeth, but if he had had fangs, he might have shown them. "You and that idiot robot of yours haven't just moved the Hopeful across hyperspace-you've moved it in time as well."

Jeff said, "I'm afraid that's part of Norby's mixed-upness, Admiral. Sometimes he takes you right where you want to go and sometimes…"

"Sometimes he doesn't! That is horribly obvious, Cadet. Since when have you known that Norby gets mixed up in time as well?"

"Well, he was reading history…"

The admiral waved Jeff to silence and shook his finger at Norby, whose back eyes were staring at Yobo with equal innocence. "Listen, you Jamyn robot. Did that sick Mentor make you capable of traveling through time as well as through hyperspace? Is this something that Mentor First planned?"

"No, sir." The domed hat slid down until only the tops of Norby's eyes were peering out at the admiral in his wrath. "I think that McGillicuddy did something that caused this talent of mine."

"Talent? It's a liability!"

"It's Norby's other secret," said Jeff. "The only trouble is that he can't seem to go to any time period when he existed-at least not easily-and he can't go into the future."

"You mean we can't get back to our own time?"

"Oh, no, sir. I mean he can't go into the future from our present-the present we used to be in. I mean…"

"I know what you mean, Cadet. Don't confuse me. Is this-talent-controllable?"

"Not exactly, sir. Time traveling keeps getting mixed up with space traveling, and we hardly ever go directly where we want to."

The admiral sat down against the visiscreen, his huge shoulders slumped and an expression of dismay on his broad face.

"Tell me, you miserable robot and you ridiculous human being, is there any slight possibility of my being taken forward to a time when human beings exist on Earth?"

"Yes, sir," said Jeff. "Norby-let's try."

"Aye, aye, Captain," said Norby, overdoing it as usual.

The Hopeful shivered and shook, and so did Jeff. What if he and Norby got things so mixed up that they were all lost forever?

"I can't see a thing," said Yobo as he peered at the visiscreen. "You've brought us close enough to Earth to be inside the cloud cover. That's dangerous, a little closer and…"

Jeff said hastily, "I'll bring the Hopeful closer through ordinary space. There'll be no danger."

The Hopeful poked her nose out of the cloud and the visiscreen magnified the ground. They were over a continent; in fact, they were over a city. In view were buildings and people.

Jeff said, "We're back to human beings and civilization, Admiral. "

Norby said, "And the Coliseum. Jeff, it's Roman times again. We tied into where and when I was before, so maybe now I'll get to see how that gladiator came out in the fight. They took me to the lion cage just when the fight was starting. Big husky fellow, that gladiator. Reminds me of you, Admiral."

"You mean to say," said Yobo, apparently suppressing a snarl, "that your fascination with this period of history had caused what passes for a mind in that tin hat of yours to get mixed up and drag all of us into Roman times just so that you would have a chance to find out what happened to a gladiator?"

"I didn't exactly mean to do it, sir," said Norby. "I mean, even if I'd intended to do it, I couldn't always guarantee that I could. It's not my fault that I've got emotive circuits and imagination and special talents that get mixed up. I can't help being different from other robots."

Jeff manipulated the controls of the Hopeful and the little ship rose back into the clouds. Hiding a smile, he said, "I think we'd better go someplace else. We don't want to be seen and cause any changes in history."

"Changes in-history?" The admiral mopped his brow. "I suppose that if our scientists tried to copy talents such as this, we'd end up with the constant danger of messing up the past and changing history in such a way that none of us would exist?"

"I think you're right," said Jeff. "Maybe the whole human race wouldn't exist." He touched Norby.

— Mission accomplished, Norby.

— Right, Jeff. He's convinced I'm unreliable.

— Well, you are, aren't you?

— Not really. It's just that…

— Never mind. Now let's really go home.

Only they didn't.

"Where are we now?" Yobo asked weakly.

"Norby," Jeff asked, "where are we?"

Norby was plugging himself into various parts of the computer rather frantically. "I don't know, Jeff. You got my emotive circuits stirred up and something's gone wrong."

"Can't see a thing in the visiscreen," said Yobo. "Everything is all shiny and vague."

"The screen's polarized," said Jeff in horror. "The light outside is so strong that the Hopeful is compensating for it by not letting it show on the visiscreen. And the instrument panel shows that the outside of the hull is getting hotter and hotter."

"I think we're stuck, Jeff," said Norby, his voice tinny.

"Unstick us," yelled Jeff. "We humans won't be able to live much longer if the heat goes any higher!"

"Neither will I," said Norby. "I have delicate brain mechanisms."..

"Then put them to work on solving this problem," roared Yobo.

Jeff's head was pounding and he had never been so frightened in his life. "Have we come inside a star?"

"No, Cadet. Impossible! We'd be dead in a microsecond."

"Then where…Look, Admiral, the readings show a gravitational pull on us. We're being dragged in, or down, somewhere."

"I have deciphered the incoming data," said Norby importantly, "and this is the situation. We are quite close to a star much dimmer than Earth's sun, close enough so that it is heating us rapidly and is pulling at us strongly."

"And we are spiralling inward under that pull," said Jeff. "Norby-get us out of here quickly."

"But Jeff, my circuits are resonating improperly. I can't."

Jeff touched him.

— Norby, I bought and paid for you, and until you go back to Jamya, you are my robot. Join minds with me and we'll both try to move the Hopeful back into hyperspace.

— But Jeff, we're both mixed up when it comes to time travel.

— We tried to show how mixed up we were to fool the admiral. But now we're in trouble, and it serves us right. So let's try to move again and let's try not to be mixed up.

They touched each other and the control panel and suddenly Jeff felt as if he were the Hopeful herself.

He was not Jefferson Wells. He was not Norby. He was just the ship, fighting to save her life and the lives of three sentient beings she carried-and winning.

"Oof!" said Yobo, rubbing his bald head. "That was a rough trip."

"We're out!" Jeff picked up Norby and jumped around the control room. "We did it!"

"This is our own time exactly," said Norby proudly, his little arms waving triumphantly.

"Quiet!" roared Yobo. "I see Space Command ahead, and I have never before thought it to be the most beautiful object in the Universe, but I certainly think so now. Take me home."

The great artificial world of Space Command Spome, the circling wheel of the fleet's space home (for which "spome" was the universally used term), hung like a brilliant three-dimensional pattern in the blackness of space.

In the distance was Mars, around which the spome circled, and Jeff could see the lights of the small shuttle boats going back and forth. People took shuttles because the transmits were so expansive, but soon, with hyperdrive, human beings would be able to spread through the galaxy and establish a great empire of the stars.

— Maybe that's not such a great idea, Jeff. Jeff was still holding Norby.

— The Mentors will be traveling, too, Norby. There will be room for both of us.

— And I'll be a sort of go-between, won't I. I'm part both, aren't I, Jeff?"

Jeff laughed.

— Well, let's assume an optimistic attitude, Norby. Or at least have a sense of humor about it. Everything might go well.

But Admiral Yobo shouted impatiently, "Let's get a move on, Cadet!"