The Shield of Time

I

For a moment, as he looked across megalopolis, something like terror caught him. What do I do now?

Reddened by haze, the sun was dropping behind a Center, which bulked black against a sky where aircraft moved like glittering midges. The whole horizon was full of such unitized sub-cities and company towers. But closer at hand Koskinen saw how the skyline was an illusion. The great buildings stood well apart, separated by a huddle of warehouses, factories, low-class tenements. Tubeways knit them together, curves which soared and gleamed in the last sunshine; but underneath lay a prosaic web of streets, belts and monorails. In the early darkness below the walls, lights had already switched on, twinkling from ground-level windows, outdoor lamps, cars and trains. The silence in this room, a hundred stories up, made the spectacle unreal, a glimpse from a foreign planet.

Abruptly Koskinen turned the viewall off. The scene in it reverted to a random flow of pastel colors. He didn’t play the records which a list offered him, not even the Hawaiian surf or the Parisian cabaret which had fascinated him this morning. Keep your shadow shows, he thought. I want something I can touch and taste and smell.

Like what?

There were the hotel’s own facilities, garden, swimming pools, gym, theater, bars, restaurants, almost anything he chose to buy or hire. He could afford first class, with five years’ back pay in his kick. Then there was the supertown itself. Or he could catch a stratoship to a more western city, transfer to a local flyer, rent a flitter at the edge of a national park, and sleep this night beside a forest lake. Or—

What? he asked himself. I can pay for whatever I like, except friends. And already—good Lord, I’ve been on my own less than twenty-four hours!—already I know how lonely it is to pay for everything.

He reached toward the phone. “Call me up,” Dave Abrams had said. “Centralia Condominium on Long Island. Here’s the phone number. Our place always has room for one more, and Manhattan’s only a few minutes away, a good spot for a pub crawl. At least, it was five years ago. And I’m sure I can still guarantee my mother’s cheese blintzes.”

Koskinen let his hand fall. Not yet. Abrams’s family would want time and privacy, to get to know their son. Half a decade must have changed him. The government representative who met the crew at Goddard Field had remarked how quiet they were, as if the quietness of Mars had entered them. Also, Koskinen realized wryly, pride held him back. He wasn’t going to holler, “Hey, please coddle me, I haven’t got any playmates”—not after his boasts about all the things he was going to do back on Earth.

Similarly for his other shipmates. But they did all possess an advantage over him. They were older, and had backgrounds to come home to. There were even a couple of marriages that had withstood so long a separation. Peter Koskinen had nobody. The fallout during the war missed the tiny resort town in northern Minnesota where he was a child, but the subsequent epidemics did not. The Institute picked the eight-year-old survivor but of an orphanage and raised him with several thousand others who scored equally well on IQ. It was rough. Not that the school was harsh—they did their best to supply parental surrogates—but the country needed a lot of trained minds and needed them in one tearing hurry. Koskinen took a master’s degree in physics with a minor in symbolics at the age of eighteen. That same year the Astronautics Authority accepted his application for the ninth Mars expedition, the one which would stay long enough to learn something about the Martians, and he shipped out.

He straightened. I refuse to feel sorry for myself, he decided. I am twenty-three years old, in excellent health, with a substantial bank account. In a few more days, when I make my official report to the board, I’m going to blow the lid off space technology and get myself a niche in the history books. Meanwhile nothing ails me except that I’m not used to Earth yet. You can’t spend some of your most impressionable years on another world, so different it’s like a dream, and instantly become just like six billion Earthlings.

“Got to start sometime, lad,” he said half aloud, and went into the bath cubby to check his appearance. The high-collared red blouse, flowing blue pants and soft shoes he had bought today were, he had been assured, in fashion. He wondered whether to depple his short blond beard, but decided not to: he was rather baby-faced without it, snub nose, high cheekbones, oblique blue eyes. His body was muscular; Captain Twain had insisted the gang exercise regularly, and lugging a hundred Earth-pounds of survival equipment around was no picnic either. Koskinen had been surprised at how readily he re-adapted to home gravity. The thick, dusty, humid air and late summer temperature were harder on him than weight.

I guess I’ll do, he told himself anxiously, and started toward the main door.

It chimed.

For a startled instant, Koskinen didn’t move. Who—? Someone off the ship, he wondered with quick hopefulness, as much at loose ends as himself? He remembered to look at the scanner. But the screen was blank.

Out of order? The chime sounded again. Koskinen pressed the Unlock button.

The door opened and two men stepped in. One of them thumbed the Lock switch as the door closed again. His other hand manipulated a small flat box. The scanner came back to life with a view of an empty glideway outside. The man dropped the jamming box into his blouse pocket. His companion had moved along the wall until he commanded a view of the cubby.

Koskinen stood motionless, bewildered. They were bulky men, he saw, soberly clad, their faces hard but almost without expression. “Hey,” he began, “what’s this about?” his voice trailed off, as if rubbery floor and soundproof panels absorbed it.

The man by the cubby snapped, “Are you Peter J. Koskinen, from the USAAS Boas?”

“Y-yes. But—”

“We’re from Military Security.” The man pulled forth a wallet and flipped it open. Koskinen looked at the identification card, from the photograph back to the features, and felt his belly tighten.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, shakily, for even an innocent fresh off the boat know that MS wasn’t called in to solve mere crimes. “I—”

The man put away his wallet. Koskinen had seen the name Sawyer. The one by. the door remained anonymous. “Our bureau’s gotten a report about you and your work on Mars,” Sawyer said. His eyes, bullet-colored, never left Koskinen’s. “First tell me, though, you got any appointments tonight? Going to meet anybody?”

“No. No, I—”

“Good. We’ll be checking all your statements, remember, by psychointerrogation among other things. Better not lie to us.”

Koskinen backed a step. He lifted hands gone wet and cold. “What’s the matter?” he whispered. “Am I under arrest? What for?”

“Let’s call it protective custody,” said Sawyer in a slightly more amiable tone. “Technical arrest, yes, but just a technicality as long as you cooperate.”

“But what’ve I done!” Sudden anger jumped up in Koskinen. “You can’t quiz me under drugs,” he exclaimed. “I know my rights.”

“The Supreme Court ruled three years ago, chum, that in cases involving the national security, PI methods are allowable. The evidence can’t be used in court—yet. It’s only to make sure—” Sawyer almost pounced. “Where’s the gizmo?”

“The what?” Koskinen began to tremble.

“The gadget. The shielding machine. You took it off the Boas with your luggage. Where is it?”

Pretty nearly was my luggage, a distant, crazily humorous part of Koskinen thought. You don’t carry much in the way of personal effects on a spaceship. “What-what-what do you want with it?” he heard himself stammer. “I never…stole. I only wanted it handy for when I…make my report—”

“Nobody’s called you a thief,” said the man by, the door. “It simply happens that gadget is important to security. Who else knows about it, besides the other expedition members?”

“No one.” Koskinen moistened his lips. The horror began to ebb a little. “I’ve got it…right here. In this room.”

“Good. Break it out.”

Koskinen stumbled to the cabinet and pressed the button. The wall slid back revealing a few changes of clothes, a rain poncho, and a parcel about three feet by two by one, wrapped in yesterday’s picture paper and tied with string. “There,” he pointed. His finger shook.

“Is that the whole works?” Sawyer asked suspiciously.

“It’s not big. I’ll show you.” Koskinen squatted to untie the package. Sawyer clapped a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“No you don’t! Keep away from that!”

Koskinen tried to swallow the rage that returned in him. He was a free American citizen who had deserved well of his country. Who did these flat-feet think they were?

MS, that’s who. The knowledge was chilling.

Not that he had ever had much to do with them before, or had heard them accused of unnecessary ill-usage. But one spoke about them softly.

Sawyer made a quick, expert check around the room. “Nothing else,” he nodded. “Okay, Koskinen, check out of here and we’ll be on our way.”

He started throwing clothes into the suitcase which had also been acquired today. Koskinen went jerkily to the phone, rang the desk, and mumbled about an emergency that forced him to leave. He signed and thumbprinted a check; the clerk recorded a facsimile down below and asked if he wanted a bellboy. “No, thanks.” Koskinen switched off and looked into the anonymous agent’s face. “How long will I be gone?” he pleaded.

The agent shrugged. “I only work here. Let’s go.”

Koskinen carried his own bag, Sawyer had the package, the third man stood on the other side with a hand resting nonchalantly in one pocket.

The glideway carried them down the corridor. At the third branch they took an upward belt, straight to the roofport. A young man and a girl descended on the opposite strip. Her tunic was a wisp of iridescence from bosom to knees, her hair was piled high and sprayed with micalite, her laugh seemed to come from across immense distances. Koskinen had not felt so alone since he stood hearing pine trees in the night wind and saw his mother die.

Nonsense, nonsense, he told himself. Everything was under control. That was what the Protectorate was for, to keep things under control, to keep cities from going up in radioactive smoke again, and Military Security was no more than the intelligence agency of the Protectorate. Now that he thought about it, the potential barrier effect did have war-like possibilities. Though not for aggressive war. Or did it? Maybe the Security people—good Lord, perhaps Marcus himself—wanted no more than to be reassured on that point.

Yet he was being hustled along by Sawyer’s impatient grip on his elbow, and the other man must have a gun in that pocket, and they were going to take him somewhere, incommunicado, and fill him with mind drugs…Suddenly, blindingly, he wished he were back on Mars.

On the edge of Trivium Charontis, looking across the Elysian desert, where the small brilliant sun spilled light from a sky like purple glass, a universe of light, floored with red and tawny dunes,on to the horizon where a dust storm walked crowned with ice crystals; a stone tower which was old when Earthlings hunted mammoths; Elkor’s huge form coming from behind, scarcely to be heard rustling in that thin sharp air; the palp laid on Koskinen’s neck, so strong he felt the detailed touch through his thermsuit fabric, yet gentle as a woman’s hand, and the coded vibrations that could by now be understood as readily as English, sensed through flesh and bone: “Sharer-of-Hopes, there came to me, while I merged myself with the stars last night, a new aspect of reality which may bear on the problem that gives us mutual joy.”

Then the three men were stepping from the kiosk onto the roof. An ordinary-looking aircar balanced a little way from those which were simply parked. Sawyer nodded to the attendant who seemed intimidated, and slid back the door. “In,” he said. Koskinen entered the plastic teardrop and sat down in the middle of the front seat. The agents flanked him, Sawyer at the manual controls. They fastened their safety belts. The light on the radar post turned green. Sawyer pushed the stick and the car shot upward.