Norby`s Other Secret

5. Time And Other Troubles

"You've brought us to Alaska!" Jeff was shivering. "Or some such place far north! Or someplace far south, like Antarctica. Or maybe even to some other planet."

"This is Earth. I'm certain of it," Norby said as they skimmed above the ice. "The coordinates check, and I'm sure that's Earth's sun. I guess it's Antarctica."

"No, it isn't," Jeff said. "If that's Earth's sun, it's quite high in the sky, so it can't be Antarctica. Or Alaska, either. I'd say it was the Tibetan plateau, except we'd be able to see mountains, and we don't."

"Don't get all excited, Jeff. Here come some horses, and maybe we can ask the riders…"

Jeff squinted in the direction Norby was pointing. "There aren't any riders, and those are camels. Big, shaggy camels, and they're walking over snow! Uh, oh!"

Norby's pair of eyes facing Jeff closed suddenly and then popped open "You think…"

"Yes, I think! Which you don't." Jeff studied the circle of the horizon. What had seemed to be solid whiteness resolved itself into a slope, and in the south-if it was south-there was a valley with stunted pine trees beginning where the glacier ended. The valley went on and on, deeper and deeper, and way out was the Atlantic. Or was it the Pacific?

"Norby! There's another herd of animals over there by those pine trees. Take us closer!"

It was worse than Jeff had imagined. "Do you know what those animals are?" he demanded.

"Elephants," quavered Norby, "and they shouldn't be up in the snow country, should they?"

"It's worse than elephants. Those elephants are extinct elephants."

"But they're alive."

"They're alive now, but they're going to be extinct some day. Look at them, Norby! Elephants don't have long blond hair. They're mastodons, and we're seeing them with our own eyes, which no one else of our generation has ever done."

"Maybe they're woolly mammoths. Aren't woolly mammoths supposed to live in cold climates?"

"Not any more. Not since the last Ice Age-which is where you've taken us to."

"I'm sorry, Jeff. I really am. I was thinking so much about time travel that I automatically did it when I was just trying to get us home."

"You said you didn't know how."

"I don't, but something inside me…"

"Oh, never mind," Jeff said. "Anyway, mammoths had large round bulges on top of their heads and mastodons didn't. Mastodon bones were found up the Hudson River Valley in the eighteenth century."

Jeff paused. Then he said thoughtfully, "Well, then, this is the Hudson River Valley, or what will become the Hudson River Valley once the glacier retreats. Over there is the prehistoric Hudson canyon with a river carrying melted glacier water to the sea, and it will be covered by ocean in our own time. This could even be before the Indians entered the Americas. Norby, you've got to take us to our own century." The hassock was getting awkward to hold in the cold, and Jeff tried to balance it on his hip. He wished he could put his hands in his pockets because it was so cold.

"Jeff," Norby said, "I'm too scared to try. I muddle things. Maybe we should just stay here."

"In this Ice Age? We'll surely freeze to death. And if we go south to where it's warm, we'll still have nothing to eat, no weapons for catching game, and nobody to talk to but each other. Besides, I want to be back in my own time."

"But I don't know how to get back!"

"You got back from the Roman Coliseum."

"Well, when the lion jumped on me, I got so scared that I stopped thinking. I just time jumped."

"Then do it again now."

"I can't stop thinking."

It's my responsibility, thought Jeff. Norby is just a mixed-up little robot with talents he doesn't understand or know how to use very well. It's no use blaming him or trying to make him solve the problem. I've got to do it. Fargo always says "Don't think a lot, little brother, just think smart, and when you decide to act, do it with all your heart:' He was still having trouble with the awkwardly shaped hassock. He couldn't get a comfortable grip on it with his chilled fingers. -How do I think smart? he wondered.

— I don't understand you, Norby interjected. Then he remembered. Ever since the dragon bite, he and Norby had been able to telepathize when they were in contact and thinking hard. He said, "I was just trying to think, Norby, and you're reading my mind."

"I wish you could read my mind and tell me how to get back to our own time. I can do it, but I can't seem to make myself. Maybe it isn't part of either the alien me or the Terran me, but from the two being mixed together."

There was silence for a while, during which Jeff could feel himself shivering and hear his teeth chattering. Finally he said" All I can hear in your mind is 'Oh, my, Jeff will sell me if I keep being so mixed up.' Now, just stop that, because I'm not going to sell you. You're my robot forever, mixed up or not."

"Thank you, Jeff," said Norby. "And all I can hear in your brain is 'I'm so cold. I'm so cold.' I feel terrible about that, Jeff."

"Well," said Jeff miserably, "at least it's summer here, or the sun wouldn't be so high in the sky, and it's a clear afternoon, with no wind blowing. It's cold enough, but it could be lots colder another day or another season. Let's try together, Norby. I'll think hard about our apartment. You tune into that image in my head and then perhaps you'll find the time coordinates maybe by reflex."

They tried and failed.

"It doesn't work!" Norby wailed.

Jeff bit his lip and tried not to feel despair. There had to be some way out. "Norby," he said, "maybe we're not trying hard enough because we don't really want to go back to the apartment, and it might not be safe. If we could go to our family scoutship, the Hopeful, that might make more sense, only…"

"Only what?"

"Well, I'm not sure where it is. It could be at the big dock that orbits Mars along with Space Command-now that Fargo is part of Admiral Yobo's team. but there are thousands of berths there, and I don't know which one would be Hopeful's. In fact, I can't be absolutely sure the scoutship is even there."

"We can try," said Norby. "Try to visualize the Space Command dock. You've seen it, haven't you?"

"Yes, but I can't visualize the Hopeful there." Jeff clumsily managed to shift the hassock under his arm to a new position and tried to grip it comfortably. "I can imagine the control room of the Hopeful clearly, however. Maybe we can tune into it regardless of where she is." He winced with pain. "I'm so cold that the arm holding this hassock hurts. My muscles are cramping.".

At that very moment, the hassock fell out of Jeff's numbed arm and tumbled over and over in the air-down, down to the snow.

"Oh, no," he shouted, and beat his arm against his chest to get circulation back into it. He didn't have a chance to make much noise or do much beating because the wind was knocked out of him by the force of Norby's dive.

Zoom! Norby plunged through the cold air, holding onto Jeff, and he managed to get under the hassock. He caught it just before it hit the ground. In the process, however, he let go of Jeff.

Fortunately, Norby was just starting his upswing again so that Jeff fell without the added velocity of the dive-and the top layer of the snow was soft. He landed spread eagle on his back and was half-buried. He struggled clumsily to his feet.

Contritely, Norby swept down again,. holding the hassock in one arm, while the other arm stretched out to take Jeff's hand.

Up in the air again, Jeff writhed in his efforts to knock off the snow that clung to him.

"Hold still," said Norby.

"I can't. If the snow stays on me it will melt from what little body heat I have and I'll get wet. And one thing that's much worse than being this cold is being this cold and wet, too."

"Think about the control room."

Jeff tried. Fargo had taught him concentration and meditation techniques years ago, and now he needed them to save his life.

— The Hopeful. Small. Neat. Useful.

— Don't think in words, Jeff. Just pictures.

The pictures came and slowly Jeff immersed himself in them, relaxing and trusting Norby to hang on to him, and to the hassock, too, and at the same time to keep them in air with his antigrav.

As Jeff relaxed, the pictures came more vividly until he forgot he was cold and cramped and desperate-or even that he was himself. He was he-and-Norby, looking at the control room of the Hopeful seeing it clearly in their joined minds, so clearly that it was real, located in space and time.

And suddenly they were there!

"Oh!" said Albany, who was much too cool a policewoman to scream.

Jeff smiled at them weakly and shivered uncontrollably as he brushed at his hair to remove the melting snow.

"It was all ice," Norby shouted. "Jeff nearly froze. It was all my fault, but I couldn't help it."

Fargo waved him to be quiet and had his hands on Jeff quickly. "Explain later. Get those clothes off."

"But Albany…" protested Jeff.

Albany turned around. "I won't look," she said.

"Get them off, I say," Fargo said. "It doesn't matter whether she looks or not. And get me a blanket, Norby." In a few minutes, Jeff relaxed in the warmth of the blanket while Fargo rubbed a towel vigorously over his head and face. "Now tell me," Fargo said, "Where were you?"

"On a trip," Norby put in brightly.

"With a hassock?" asked Albany.

"Listen!" Jeff interrupted. "Is it safe here? No security police?"

"Just our own devoted Manhattan police," Fargo said, putting his arm about Albany's trim waist, "whom I was trying to persuade to go off on a little search expedition with me. She says she can't because a fiscal crisis in Manhattan has forced the lay-off of so many police that she dare not stay off the job for any length of time. Did you ever hear anything so crazy?"

"You mean we're still in Manhattan?" Jeff asked. "I thought the ship would be at the Space Command dock."

"It was, earlier, but after you left our apartment, I let the security police search it. Naturally, they found nothing and left, breathing fire and slaughter. Then I sat around and waited for you. But days passed, and you didn't come back, so I decided I'd look for you in the ship. But I brought it back to Earth first because I wanted Albany along. After all, she's a good person in a fray, and at other times, too."

"What do you mean 'the days passed'?" demanded Jeff. "How long do you think I've been gone?"

"I don't think, Jeff, I know. You've been gone thirteen days."

"What!"

"Why be surprised? Don't you know how long you've been gone?"

Jeff shook his head. "I guess I'm going to have to tell you Norby's other secret."

"Are you going to tell it while a non-family person is in our midst?" said Norby sounding outraged. His head popped in and out of his barrel.

Albany smiled-as beautifully as she did everything. "That's all right. Since I can't go with you on this trip, I had better not hear any secrets just yet. And now I must go back to my precinct."

She headed for the airlock.

"Do you mean we're in Manhattan?" asked Jeff again.

"On the Great Lawn of Central Park," said Fargo, "which isn't quite according to regulations for a craft of this kind, but I have an official paper from Admiral Yobo, and a police officer I know pulled a few strings," he smiled at Albany, "so here I am."

He went to the airlock and looked back at Jeff. "While I'm escorting my exasperating lass-who would rather be on her job than with me because of her civic spirit-why don't you have a cup of hot chocolate? You might as well get warm inside as well as out. And eat something if you're hungry."

Fargo and Albany went out.

Jeff said to Norby, "I hope you realize you got us back nearly two weeks late."

Norby said, "You really expect everything, don't you? Didn't I get you back right on the button-right in the control room? So I was a few minutes off."

"A few minutes…"

Fargo came back into the Hopeful in a hurry. He sealed the lock behind him. "Prepare for takeoff, mates. The security police have discovered that my ship is in Central Park and they want to search it. We either leave now while Albany tries to hold them off, or you two will have to disappear again."

"Where shall I take you, Jeff?" Norby asked cheerfully.

"Not again," Jeff said. "Take off, Fargo. I'll stay in the Hopeful. I can't stand the thought of getting lost in time and space again."

Fargo's eyebrows shot upward, but he said nothing as he handled the controls. The Hopeful lifted.

The computer outlet spoke. "Security police in antigrav car outside, Captain. You are under arrest and ordered to surrender your ship. If you try to leave, you will be brought back by force grapple."

"So they say," said Fargo, "but they'll have to catch us first."

"But they will," said Jeff.

"No, they won't. I will lose them in the cloud layer, and while they're looking for us, we'll get into hyperspace if Norby can manage it. We'll go in and never come out, so far as they are concerned."

"Then they'll know we have hyperdrive."

"No, they won't. They'll only know we've disappeared, and presumably crashed. They'll spend days looking for the smashed torso of our scoutship." Fargo turned to Norby. "Can you turn this ship's engine to hyperdrive as soon as we're into the cloud?" he asked.

"I can channel my hyperspace entry system into the ship's computer. She's a stupid computer but maybe she'll be able to follow my instructions. If she were as intelligent as I am…"

"Just do it, Norby," Fargo said.

Jeff, at the thought of facing another jaunt through hyperspace, buried his head in his hands.