Time and Again

XIII

Adams thumbed the lighter and waited for the flame to steady. His eyes were fixed on Sutton and there was no softness in them, but there was softness and irritability and a certain faint unsureness in the man himself, hidden well, but there.

That staring, Sutton told himself, is an old trick of his. He glares at you and keeps his face frozen like a sphinx and if you aren't used to him and on to all his tricks, he'll have you thinking that he is God Almighty.

But he doesn't do the glaring quite as well as he used to do it. There's strain in him now and there was no strain in him twenty years ago. Just hardness, then. Granite, and now the granite is beginning to weather.

There's something on his mind. There's something that isn't going well.

Adams passed the lighter flame over the loaded bowl of his pipe, back and forth deliberately, taking his time, making Sutton wait.

"You know, of course," said Sutton, speaking quietly, "that I can't be frank with you."

The lighter flame snapped off and Adams straightened in his chair.

"Eh?" he asked.

Sutton hugged himself. Caught him off base. Threw him for a loss. A passed pawn, he told himself. That's what it is…a passed pawn.

He said aloud, "You know by now, of course, that I flew home a ship that could not be flown. You know I had no space-suit and that the ports were broken and the hull was riddled. I had no food and water and 61 is eleven light-years away."

Adams nodded bleakly. "Yes, we know all that."

"How I got back or what happened to me has nothing to do with my report and I don't intend to tell you."

Adams rumbled at him, "Then why mention it at all?"

"Just so we'll understand one another," Sutton said. "So that you won't ask a lot of questions that will get no answer. It will save a lot of time."

Adams leaned back in his chair and puffed his pipe contentedly.

"You were sent out to get information, Ash," he reminded Sutton. "Any kind of information. Anything that would make Cygni more understandable. You represented Earth and you were paid by Earth and you surely owe Earth something."

"I owe Cygni something, too," said Sutton. "I owe Cygni my life. My ship crashed and I was killed."

Adams nodded, almost sleepily.

"Yes, that is what Clark said. That you were killed."

"Who is Clark?"

"Clark is a space construction engineer," Adams told him. "Sleeps with ships and blueprints. He studied your ship and he calculated a graph of force co-ordinates. He reported that if you were inside the ship when it hit, you didn't have a chance."

Adams stared at the ceiling.

"Clark said that if you were in that ship when it hit you would have been reduced to jelly."

"It's wonderful," said Sutton, dryly, "what a man can do with figures."

Adams prodded him again. "Anderson said you weren't human."

"I suppose Anderson could tell that by looking at the ship."

Adams nodded. "No food, no air. It was the logical conclusion for anyone to draw."

Sutton shook his head. "Anderson is wrong. If I weren't human, you never would have seen me. I would not have come back at all. But I was homesick for Earth and you were expecting a report."

"You took your time," Adams accused him.

"I had to be sure," Sutton told him. "I had to know, you see. I had to be able to come back and tell you one thing or another. I had to tell you if the Cygnians were dangerous or if they weren't."

"And which is it?"

"They aren't dangerous," said Sutton.

Adams waited and Sutton sat silently.

Finally Adams said, "And that is all?"

"That is all," said Sutton.

Adams tapped his teeth with the bit of his pipe. "I'd hate to have to send another man out to check up," he said. "Especially after I had told everyone you'd bring back all the dope."

"It wouldn't do any good," said Sutton. "No one could get through."

"You did."

"Yes, and I was the first. Because I was the first, I also was the last."

Across the desk, Adams smiled winterly. "You were fond of those people, Ash."

"They weren't people."

"Well…beings, then."

"They weren't even beings. It's hard to tell you exactly what they are. You'd laugh at me if I told you what I really think they are."

Adams grunted. "Come the closest that you can."

"Symbiotic abstractions. That's close enough, as close as I can come."

"You mean they really don't exist?" asked Adams.

"Oh, they exist all right. They are there and you are aware of them. As aware of them as I am aware of you, or you of me."

"And they make sense?"

"Yes," said Sutton, "they make sense."

"And no one can get through again?"

Sutton shook his head. "Why don't you cross Cygni off your list? Pretend it isn't there. There is no danger from Cygni. The Cygnians will never bother Man, and Man will never get there. There is no use of trying?"

"They aren't mechanical?"

"No," said Sutton. "They're not mechanical."

Adams changed the subject "Let me see. How old are you, Ash?"

"Sixty-one," said Sutton.

"Humpf," said Adams. "Just a kid. Just getting started." His pipe had gone out and he worried at it with a finger, probing at the bowl, scowling at it.

"What do you plan to do?" he asked.

"I have no plans."

"You want to stay on with the service, don't you?"

"That depends," said Sutton, "on how you feel about it. I had presumed, of course, that you wouldn't want me."

"We owe you twenty years' back pay," said Adams, almost kindly. "It's waiting for you. You can pick it up when you go out. You also have three or four years of vacation coming. Why don't you take it now?"

Sutton said nothing.

"Come back later on," said Adams. "We'll have another talk."

"I won't change my mind," said Sutton.

"No one will ask you to."

Sutton stood up slowly.

"I'm sorry," Adams said, "that I haven't your confidence."

"I went out to do a job," Sutton told him, crisply. "I've done that job. I've made my report."

"So you have," said Adams.

"I suppose," said Sutton, "you will keep in touch with me."

Adams' eyes twinkled grimly. "Most certainly, Ash. I shall keep in touch with you."