The Past Through Tomorrow Part 89

"I am too old to make any more jumps from star to star and much too old to fight at the end of such a jump. Whatever the rest of you do, I'm staying."

"In that case," said Lazarus, "there is no need to discuss it, is there?"

"I am ent.i.tled to speak." - "All right, you've spoken. Now give sotheone else a chance."

The sun set and the stars came out and still the talk went on. Lazarus knew that it would never end unless he moved to end it. "All right," he shouted, ignoring the many who still, wanted to speak. "Maybe we'll have to turn this back to the Family councils, but let's take a trial vote and see where we are. Everybody who wants to go back to Earth move way over to my right. Everybody who wants to stay here move down the beach to my left. Everybody who wants to go exploring for still another planet gather right here in front of me." He dropped back and said to the sound tech, "Give them some music to speed 'em up."

The tech nodded and the homesick strains of Valse Triste sighed over the beach. It was followed by The Green Hills of Earth. Zaccur Barstow turned toward Lazarus. "You picked that music."

"Me?" Lazarus answered with bland innocence. "You know I ain't musical, Zack."

Even with music the separation took a long time. The last movement of the immortal Fifth had died away long before they at last had sorted themselves into three crowds.

On the left about a tenth of the total number were gathered, showing thereby their intention of staying. They were mostly the old and the tired, whose sands had run low. With them were a few youngsters who had never seen Earth, plus a bare sprinkling of other ages.

In the center was a very small group, not over three hundred, mostly men and a few younger women, who voted thereby for still newer frontiers.

But the great ma.s.s was on Lazarus' right. He looked at them and saw new animation in their faces; it lifted his heart, for he had been bitterly afraid that he was almost alone in his wish to leave.

He looked back at the small group nearest him. "It looks like you're outvoted," he said to them alone, his voice unamplifled. "But never mind, there always comes another day." He waited.

Slowly the group in the middle began to break up. By ones and twos and threes they moved away. A very few drifted over to join those who were staying; most of them merged with the group on the right.

When this secondary division was complete Lazarus spoke to the smaller group on his left. "All right," he said very gently, "You . . . you old folks might as well go back up to the meadows and get your sleep. The rest of us have things to make."

Lazarus then gave Libby the floor and let him explain to the majority crowd that the trip home would not be the weary journey the flight from Earth had been, nor even the tedious second jump. Libby placed all of the credit where most of it belonged, with the Little People. They had straightened him out with his difficulties in dealing with the problem of speeds which appeared to exceed the speed of light. If the Little People knew what they were talking about -and Libby was sure that they did-there appeared to be no limits to what Libby chose to call "para-acceleration"-"para-" because, like Libby's own light-pressure drive, it acted on the whole ma.s.s uniformly and could no more be perceived by the senses than can gravitation, and "para-" also because the ship would not go "through" but rather around or "beside" normal s.p.a.ce. "it is not so much a matter of driving the ship as it is a selection of appropriate potential level in an n-dimensional hyperplenum of n-plus-one possible-"

Lazarus firmly cut him off. "That's your department, son, and everybody trusts you in it. We ain't qualified to discuss the fine points."

"I was only going to add-"

"I know. But you were already out of the world when I stopped you."

Someone from the crowd shouted one more question. "When do we get there?"

"I don't know," Libby admitted, thinking of the question the way Nancy Weatheral had put it to him long ago. "I can't say what year it will be . . . but it will seem like about three weeks from now."

The preparations consumed days simply because many round trips of the ship's boats were necessary to embark them. There was a marked lack of ceremonious farewell because those remaining behind tended to avoid those who were leaving. Coolness had sprung up between the two groups; the division on the beach had split friendships, had even broken up contemporary marriages, had caused many hurt feelings, unresolvable bitterness. Perhaps the only desirable aspect of the division was that the parents of the mutant Marion Schmidt had elected to remain behind.

Lazarus was in charge of the last boat to leave. Shortly before he planned to boost he felt a touch at his elbow. "Excuse me," a young man said. "My name's Hubert Johnson. 1 want to go along but I've had to stay back with the other crowd to keep my mother from throwing fits. If I show up at the last minute, can 1 still go along?"

Lazirus looked him over. "You look old enough to decide without asking me."

"You don't understand. I'm an only child and my mother tags me around. I've got to sneak back before she misses me. How much longer-"

"I'm not holding this boat for anybody. And you'll never break away any younger. Get into the boat"

"But. . ."

"Oft!" The young man did so, with one worried backward glance at the bank. There was a lot, thought Lazarus, to be said for ectogenesis.

Once inboard the New Frontiers Lazarus reported to Captain King in the control room. "All inboard?" asked King.

"Yeah. Some late deciders, pro and con, and one more pa.s.senger at the last possible split second-woman named Eleanor Johnson. Let's go!"

King turned to Libby. "Let's go, Mister."

The stars blinked out.

They flew blind, with only Libby's unique talent to guide them. If he had doubts as to his ability to lead them through the featureless blackness of other s.p.a.ce he kept them to himself. On the twenty-third ship's day of the reach and the eleventh day of para-deceleration the stars reappeared, all in their old familiar ranges-the Big Dipper, giant Orion, lopsidecL Crux, the fairy Pleiades, and dead ahead of them, blazing against the frosty backdrop of the Milky Way, was a golden light that had to be the Sun.

Lazarus had tears in his eyes for the second time in a month.

They could not simply rendezvous with Earth, set a parking orbit, and disembark; they had-to throw their hats in first. Besides that, they needed first to know what time it was.

Libby was able to establish quickly, through proper motions of nearest stars, that it was not later than about 3700 A.D.; without precise observatory instruments he refused to commit himself further. But once they were close enough to see the Solar planets he had another clock to read; the planets themselves make a clock with nine hands.

For any date there is a unique configuration of those "hands" since no planetary period is exactly commensurate with another. Pluto marks off an "hour" of a quarter of a millennium; Jupiter's clicks a cosmic minute of twelve years; Mercury whizzes a "second" of about ninety days. The other "hands" can refine these readings-Neptune's period is so cantankerously different from that of Pluto that the two fall into approximately repeated configuration only once in seven hundred and fifty-eight years. The great clock can be read with any desired degree of accuracy over any period-but it is not easy to read.

Libby started to read it as soon as any of the planets could be picked out. He muttered over the problem. "There's not a chance that we'll pick up Pluto," he complained to Lazarus, "and I doubt if we'll have Neptune. The inner planets give me an infinite series of approximations-you know as well as I do that "infinite" is a question-begging term. Annoying!"

"Aren't you looking at it the hard way, son? You can get a practical answer. Or move over and I'll get one." - "Of course I can get a practical answer," Libby said petulantly, "if you're satisfied with that But-"

"But me no 'buts'-what year is it, man!"

"Eh? Let's put it this way. The time rate in the ship and duration on Earth have been unrelated three times. But now they are effectively synchronous again, such that slightly over seventy-four years have pa.s.sed since we 1eft.'

Lazarus heaved a sigh. "Why didn't you say so?" He had been fretting that Earth might - not be recognizable . . . they might have torn down New York or something like that.

"Shucks, Andy, you shouldn't have scared me like that."

"Mmm . . ." said Libby. It was one of no further interest to him. There remained only the delicious problem of inventing a mathematics which would describe elegantly two apparently irreconcilable groups of facts: the Michelson-Morley experiments and the log of the New Frontiers. He set happily about it. Mmm . . . what was the least number of pamdimensions indispeMably necessary to contain the augmented plenum using a sheaf of postulates affirming- It kept him contented for a considerable time-subjective time, of course.

The ship was placed in a temporary orbit half a billion miles from the Sun with a radius vector normal to the plane of the ecliptic. Parked thus at right angles to and far outside the flat pancake of the Solar System they were safe from any long chance of being discovered. A ship's boat had been fitted with thc neo-Libby drive during the jump and a negotiating party was sent down.

Lazarus wanted to go along; King refused to let him, which sent Lazarus into sulks. King had said curtly, "This isn't a raiding party, Lazarus; this is a diplomatic mission."

"h.e.l.l, man, I can be diplomatic when it pays!"

"No doubt But we'll send a man who doesn't go armed to the 'fresher."

Ralph Schultz headed the party, since psychodynamic factors back on Earth were of first importance, but he was aided by legal voluntary and technical specialists. If the Families were going to have to fight for living room it was necessary to know what sort of technology, what sort of weapons, they would have to meet-but it was even more necessary to find out whether or not a peaceful landing could be arranged.

Schultz had been authorized by the elders to offer a plan under which the Families would colonize the thinly settled and retrograded European continent. But it was possible, even likely, that this had already been done in their absence, in view of the radioactive half-lifes involved. Schultz would probably have to improvise some other compromise, depending on the conditions he found.

Again there was nothing to do but wait.

Lazarus endured it in nail-chewing uncertainty. He had claimed publicly that the Families had such great scientific advantage that they could meet and defeat the best that Earth could offer. Privately, he knew that this was sophistry and so did any other Member competent to judge the matter. Knowledge alone did not win wars. The ignorant fanatics of Europe's Middle Ages had defeated the incomparably higher Islamic culture; Archimedes had been struck down by a common soldier; barbarians had sacked Rome. Libby, or some one, might devise an unbeatable, weapon from their ma.s.s of new knowledge-or might not and who knew what strides military art had made on earth in three quarters of a century?

King, trained in military art, was worried by the same thing and still more worried by the personnel he would have to work with. The Families were anything but trained legions; the prospect of trying to whip those cranky individualists into some semblance of a disciplined fighting machine ruined his sleep.

These doubts and fears King and Lazarus did not mention even to each other; each was afraid that to mention such things would be to spread a poison of fear through the ship. But they were not alone in their worries; half of the ship's company realized the weaknesses of their position and kept silent only because a bitter resolve to go home, no matter what, made them willing to accept the dangers..

"Skipper,". Lazarus said to King two weeks after Schultz's party had headed Earthside, "have you wondered how they're going to feel about the New Frontiers herself?"

"Eh? What do you mean?'

"Well, we hijacked her. Piracy."

King looked astounded. "Bless me, so we did! Do you know, it's been so long ago that it is hard for me to realize that she was ever anything but my ship . . . or to recall that I first came into her through an act of piracy." He looked thoughtful, then smiled grimly. "I wonder how conditions are in Coventry these days?"

"Pretty thin rations, I imagine," said Lazarus. "But we'll team up and make out. Never mind-they haven't caught us yet."

"Do you suppose that Slayton Ford will be connected with the matter? That would be hard lines after all he has gone through."

"There may not be any trouble about it at all," Lazarus answered soberly. "While the way we got this ship was kind of irregular, we have used it for the purpose for which it was built-to explore the stars. And we're returning it intact, long before they could have expected any results, and with a slick new s.p.a.ce drive to boot. It's more for their money than they had any reason to expect-so they may just decide to forget it and trot out the fatted calf."

"I hope so," King answered doubtfully.

The scouting party was two days late. No signal was received from them until they emerged into normal s.p.a.cetime, just before rendezvous, as no method had yet been devised for signalling from para-s.p.a.ce to ortho-s.p.a.ce. While they were maneuvering to rendezvous, King received Ralph Schultz's face on the control-room screen. "h.e.l.lo, Captain! We'll be boarding shortly to report."

"Give me a summary now!"

"I wouldn't know where to start. But it's all right-we can go home!"

"Huh? How's that? Repeat!"

"Everything's all right. We are restored to the Covenant. You see, there isn't any difference any more. Everybody is a member of the Families now."

"What do you mean?" King demanded.

"They've got it."

"Got what?"

"Got the secret of longevity."

"Huh? Talk sense. There isn't any secret. There never was any secret."

"We didn't have any secret-but they thought we had. So they found it."

"Expiain yourself," insisted Captain King.

"Captain, can't this wait until we get back into the ship?' Ralph Schultz protested. "I'm no biologist. We've brought along a government reptesentative-you can quiz him, instead?

Chapter 6.

KING RECEWED Terra's representative in his cabin. He had notified Zaccur Barstow and Justin Foote to be present for the Families and had invited Doctor Gordon Hardy because the nature of the startling news was the biologist's business. Libby was there as the ship's chief officer; Slayton Ford was invited because of his unique status, although he had held no public office in the Families since his breakdown in the temple of Kreel.

Lazarus was there because Lazarus wanted to be there, in his own strictly private capacity. He had not been invited, but even Captain King was somewhat diffident about interfering with the a.s.sumed prerogatives of the eldest Member.

Ralph Schultz introduced Earth's amba.s.sador to the a.s.sembled company. "This is Captain King, our commanding officer and this is Miles Rodney, representing the Federation Council-minister plenipotentiary and amba.s.sador extraordinary, I guess you would call him."

"Hardly that," said Rodney; "although I can agree to the 'extraordinary' part. This situation is quite without preccdent. it is an honor to know you, Captain."

"Glad to have you inboard, sir."

"And this is Zaccur Barstow, representing the trustees of the Howard Families, and Justin Foote, secretary tO the trustees-"

"Service."

"Service to you, gentlemen."

"Andrew Jackson Libby, chief astrogational officer, Doctor Gordon Hardy, biologist in charge of our research into the causes of old age and death."

"May I do you a service?" Hardy acknowledged formally."Service to you, sir. So you are the chief biologist-there was a time when you could have done a service to the whole human race. Think of it, sir-think how different things could have been. But, happily, the human race was able to worry out the secret of extending life without the aid of the Howard Families."

Hardy looked vexed. "What do you mean, sir? Do you mean to say that you are still laboring under the delusion that we had some miraculous secret to impart, if we chose?"

Rodney shrugged and spread his hands. "Really, now, there is no need to keep up the pretense, is there? Your results have been duplicated, independently."

Captain King cut in. "Just a moment-Ralph Schultz, is the Federation still under the impression that there is some 'secret' to our long lives? Didn't you tell them?"

Schultz was looking bewildered. "Uh-this is ridiculous. The subject hardly came up. They themselves had achieved controlled longevity; they were no longer interested in us in that respect. It is true that there still existed a belief that our long lives derived from manipulation rather than from heredity, but I corrected that impression."

"Apparently not very thoroughly, from what Miles Rodney has just said."

"Apparently not. I did not spend much effort on it; it was beating a dead dog. The Howard Families add their long lives are no longer an issue on Earth. Interest, both public and official, is centered on the fact that we have accomplished a successful interstellar jump."

"I can confirm that," agreed Miles Rodney. "Every official, every news service, every citizen, every scientist in the system is waiting with utmost eagerness the arrival of the New Frontiers. It's the greatest, most sensational thing that has happened since the first trip to the Moon. You are famous, gentlemen-all of you."

Lazarus pulled Zaccur Barstow aside and whispered to him. Barstow looked perturbed, then nodded thoughtfully. "Captain---" Barstow said to King.

"Yes, Zack?"

"I suggest that we ask our guest to excuse us while we receive Ralph Schultz' report."

"Why?"

Barstow glanced at Rodney. "I think we will be better prepared to discuss matters if we are brief by our own representative."

King turned to Rodney. "Will you excuse us~~ sir?"

Lazarus broke in. "Never mind, Skipper. Zack means well but he's too polite. Might as well let Comrade Rodney stick around and we'll lay it on the line. Tell me this, Miles; what proof have you got that you and your pals have figured out a way to live as long as we do?'

"Proof?' Rodney seemed dumbfounded. "Why do you ask - Whom am I addressing? Who are you, sir?"

Ralph Schultz intervened. "Sorry-I didn't get a chance to finish the introductions. Miles Rodney, this is Lazarus Long, the Senior."