Soldiers Out of Time (10 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Invisible and—they hoped—effectively undetectable by anything the Tranhumanists had installed on what was supposed to be a secret planet, the
Comet
settled cautiously down to the surface on grav repulsion.

Van Horn landed them a couple of miles east of the Transhumanists’ landing field—a compromise between security considerations and minimizing the distance they’d have to walk. The landing site was behind a low ridge which lent its own low-tech concealment. As soon as Tomori confirmed that they had not been detected, Jason, Rojas and Mondrago (whom Jason had insisted be allowed to come along) suited up.

Like all passenger-carrying spacecraft, the
Comet
carried, as a legal requirement, enough light-duty survival suits for all souls aboard. Jason (from his days with the Hesperian Colonial Rangers) and Mondrago (from his former life as a merc) were about as familiar with these as Rojas, whose training included them as a matter of course. This was not a bulky full-scale spacesuit, with its array of accessories. Instead, it appeared to be a jumpsuit made of electrically active, self-repairing nanofabric, flexible even when expanded slightly by pressurization. That “skin,” powered by sunlight and the wearer’s body heat, recycled waste and exhaled carbon dioxide, providing air and water practically indefinitely. Near-microscopic thermocouples woven into it maintained a comfortable temperature. A pullover clear plastic hood stiffened to form a helmet when the suit was pressurized. The gloves, with their sensory-input finger pads, allowed for dexterous manipulation of tools—including the electromagnetic needle pistols the three strapped to their belts. These suits were not military models, so their electronic camouflage systems did not automatically match the background, conferring near-invisibility; but the wearer could manually set the skin to any of several stock patterns. They chose “desert” and passed through the airlock.

The ship’s artificial gravity had never been reset from Zirankhu’s 0.72 G, so the transition when they left it and stepped onto the surface of “Planet A” was not as disconcerting as it might have been. They soon adjusted to a gravity little more than half Earth-normal as they mounted the ridge and proceeded across the barren landscape. Van Horn had landed shortly before sunset so they would have some light for at least the first part of their trek, but be in darkness by the time they neared their destination. (The planet’s rotation was only about a third longer than Earth standard.) So they walked west toward the dim light of the small westering sun, traversing a boulder-strewn plain which was mostly sand but reddish in color due to significant amounts of iron and sulfur oxides. They made good time in the low gravity, despite the satchels they were carrying.

The sun had almost set when they arrived at the edge of the plateau overlooking the Transhumanist installation. Lying prone, they peered down. The temporal displacer was in the distance to the right, beyond a cluster of pressurized domes. But the landing area was below and to the left, and the transport lay there. Discouragingly, there was activity around it.

“They must be preparing for departure,” said Rojas into the tiny communicator stuck to the base of her throat.

“Right. Another milk run to Zirankhu.” Jason studied the scene through small electronic binoculars. “Maybe they’ll quit work after dark.”

“And leave the ship unguarded?” Mondrago sounded skeptical.

“Remember, they don’t think they need to guard it.”

“All right,” said Rojas. “We’ll wait here and observe for a reasonable length of time.”

“How long is ‘reasonable’?” Jason wanted to know.

“Until I say it no longer is,” snapped Rojas.

There was little in the way of dusk in this thin atmosphere; almost at once, the moonless sky darkened from deep blue to black, spangled with stars that barely had the twinkling effect produced by Earth’s denser air. The temperature, already low, fell rapidly. But floodlights illuminated the transport, and the figures around it, clad in suits like theirs, continued their activity. It was difficult to keep count of how many entered the ship and how many left.

“This isn’t going to work,” muttered Rojas.

“Just a little longer,” Jason urged. “I can’t believe they’re going to keep at it all night.”

Time went by and Rojas was growing restless again when the workers began to head back toward what must be the residence dome, which showed a flicker of lights. The lights of the nearer domes began to go off and finally the floodlights went out. The transport lay alone, in darkness.

“This is our chance!” exclaimed Jason. Without waiting for Rojas’ assent he got to his feet and started off.

Inside their flexible transparent helmets they wore passive light-collecting goggles—vastly more compact descendants of an earlier era’s “starlight scopes.” This enabled them to scramble down a ravine that cut down through the plateau to the desert floor. Moving cautiously, they kept the bulk of the transport between themselves and the domes as much as possible. At Rojas’ insistence, they stopped at the edge of the landing area and waited a couple of minutes. There was no indication that they had been discovered; evidently no security field enveloped the transport. They proceeded in a low, crouching run to the transport’s side and worked their way around it to where a standard model like this would have a personnel airlock.

To their surprise, the access ramp was extended. And the airlock was as standard as everything else seemed to be, so the paratronic lockpick Rojas carried sufficed to open it from the outside. They stepped into the tiny chamber, illuminated only by the dim lights of the control panel, on which Rojas punched out a command. The outer door slid shut automatically, and then the inner inner door began to open . . .

All at once, Jason’s entire universe was a blinding glare of light.

Hastily, he shut off the light-gathering goggles he had left on, expecting the ship’s interior to be dark. Instead, it was fully lighted, and the goggles had enhanced that illumination into an intolerable glare, which now abruptly ceased. But his field of vision was still full of exploding suns, which he tried desperately to blink away. Just ahead, he could make out the figure of Rojas, who had stumbled into the ship, and a second figure who brought some kind of tool down on the back of the IDRF major’s head.

Still frantically trying to clear his eyes of the stroboscopic aftereffects, Jason lurched forward and grappled Rojas’ attacker. But he was hopelessly disoriented, and his opponent’s muscles were products of genetic upgrade. He was flung aside, to smash against a bulkhead . But then his gradually returning sight made out Mondrago, grasping the Transhumanist from behind in a chokehold with his left arm and, with his right, giving a quick, vicious sideways twist to the head, breaking the neck.

Jason got unsteadily upright, smiling weakly. “You must have had your light-gatherers deactivated.”

“Just being cautious,” said Mondrago modestly as he helped Rojas to her knees. “Rest a minute, Major.”

“No time!” Rojas got to her feet, holding her head and swaying slightly. “Let’s see if there are any others.”

They drew their gauss needlers and fanned out through the transport, ending in the control room, but there was no one. “So there was just the one, still in here working,” said Jason.

“And now he’s dead.” Rojas shot Mondrago a look that Jason though had a rather high acid content, considering that the Corsican had just saved her life. “When they find him—or if they
don’t
find him—they’ll know someone has been here.”

“I’ve got an idea on that,” said Jason. Rojas muttered something in Spanish about Jason’s ideas, which he decided he was just as glad he couldn’t understand. “But for now, let’s hurry up and do what we came to do.”

“All right,” said Rojas stiffly, as though agreeing only grudgingly. She turned, knelt and fumbled in her satchel.

“You’re welcome,” Mondrago murmured inaudibly in the direction of her back.

The device Rojas pulled from her satchel was the heaviest item in it, even though it was vastly lighter and more compact than its distant ancestor, the late twentieth-century’s TEMPEST (Transient Electromagnetic Pulse Emission Scanning Technology) gear. And, unlike that ancestor, it could read data already stored on a computer, not just what was currently being keyed in or displayed. Even though the transport’s interior lights made clear that it was operating under minimal auxiliary power, they took no chances. They booted up the nav computer on its integral battery power before Rojas began her probing. The process took a while, during which interminable minutes Jason’s nerves crawled. Finally Rojas looked up. “All right. What we need should be in here. Now let’s go. And . . . let’s hear your ‘idea’ regarding the highly inconvenient corpse.”

The dead Transhumanist was wearing a suit not unlike theirs. They pulled his helmet cowl over, pressurized the suit, and carried him out of the airlock. The inner door could, with suitable manipulations, be closed while leaving the outer one open. They then arranged the corpse at the base of the ramp in such a way as to suggest he had finished his work, departed the transport, tripped, and fallen and broken his neck.

“Do you really think this will fool them?” Rojas demanded irritably.

“I think it might. Given their belief that they’re alone on this planet—and all indications point to them thinking that way—it will make better sense to them than anything else. And . . . do you have any better ideas?”

“No,” Rojas admitted. “Let’s go.”

They scrambled back up the ravine to the plateau and retraced their steps in the darkness with the aid of their goggles and Jason’s brain implant. Rojas still seemed intermittently dizzy, but she kept up.

Tomori took several minutes to download the data and interpret it, while Chantal attended to Rojas’ head injury, which the latter accepted with fairly good grace. Finally the navigator looked up.

“All right. Got it. That ship’s destination, after going back five hundred years, was the star HC+32 8213.” She brought up a display on which a star-symbol blinked for attention. “It’s fourteen point eight light-years from here, so it would only be a trip of less than five and a quarter days for them.”

“And afterwards they don’t have to make a return trip to this system at all,” Jason observed. “All they have to do is restore the ship’s temporal energy potential, and it simply reappears here in the present.”

“How can you be sure it works that way, Jason?” asked Chantal. “You’ve always told me that, for any number of reasons involving fundamental physics, temporal displacement can only work in a planetary gravity field.”

“Well, I can’t be absolutely sure,” Jason admitted. “We’ve never practiced time travel anywhere except on the surface of Earth, and you’re right about the displacement itself. But as for the retrieval . . . well, everything we know and understand indicates that the object
has
to return to its own time in the linear present, at the location from which it was displaced.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to indulge in this kind of speculation later,” said Rojas, standing up and shaking off Chantal’s ministrations. “What do you know about that star?” she asked Tomori

“It’s a single G3v star, only a little less massive and less hot than Sol. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing. It’s almost sixty-four light-years from Sol, and therefore has never been visited.”

“By us,” Mondrago amended drily.

“Very well, then. Now we know where ‘Planet B’ is.” Rojas gave Jason a hard look. “And before you can even make any suggestions regarding that star, Commander—”

“Actually, I hadn’t intended to.”

“—let me be quite definite on one point. It is now our duty to get back to Earth with the information we now possess, and we will take no further risks that might jeopardize our chances of doing so.” Rojas turned to Van Horn. “Captain, are our remaining provisions sufficient for us to return to the Solar system directly from here?”

“A sixty-three light-year hop—that would be a little less than fourteen and a third days for this ship.” Van Horn did some mental arithmetic. “Yes, I believe so, if we go on rations.”

“Good. We won’t have to waste time returning to Zirankhu.”

Where I left my Scotch
, moaned Jason inwardly.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“As it turns out, Jason, your calculation was quite accurate” said Kyle Rutherford, gazing down the long table. “Since your return, the specialists have reviewed the sensor data you collected and applied it to the performance figures for the Transhumanist temporal displacer we captured. And, in fact, that transport was displaced almost exactly five hundred years. I say ‘almost’ because absolute precision is impossible in the absence of exact figures on the mass of the transport’s load.”

They sat in the conference room adjacent to Rutherford’s office, deep in the heart of the Authority’s Australian facility. Mondrago and Chantal were also present, as was Rojas. Seated beside her at the table was a big, squarely built man with short iron-gray hair and general’s insignia on the shoulder straps of his dark blue uniform—Viktor Kermak, the chief of staff of the IDRF. He had brought a retinue of staffers, but they now sat unobtrusively back from the table, along the wall. This was a preliminary conference, to determine the recommendations that would be given the higher governmental authorities.

Alastair Kung was also present. Ordinarily Rutherford, as operations director, represented the Authority in meetings such as this. But Kung had gotten wind of what was afoot here, and had muscled his massive way in. Now he sat, somewhat resembling an overweight owl, occasionally looking down his nose over his nest of chins to give Jason a look of disapproving suspicion.

“Also, Jason,” Rutherford continued, “it is the opinion of the experts that you were correct in your surmise concerning temporal retrieval. It seems the mathematics of the effect predict that an object does not have to be in the same gravity field as the displacer to ‘snap back’ to it when its temporal energy potential is restored. This, despite all the seeming problems involving the laws of conservation of energy and momentum. And those same mathematics suggest no theoretical limit on the distance over which the effect obtains. Of course, the problem with general mathematical statements is that they contain no automatic cutoff points to tell you when they cease to apply to the real universe. And we’ve never tested this out. Indeed, it’s never occurred to us to think in these terms before.” Rutherford shook his head slowly. He still hadn’t altogether recovered from the whole concept of extrasolar temporal displacement.

“If this is true,” Mondrago mused, “then on their return trips the Transhumanists effectively have the kind of ‘teleportation’ the science fiction writers are always talking about, with interstellar range. That would be a terrific logistical advantage.”

“Which, in turn, may help make this whole project cost-effective,” Rojas nodded. “Even though it still must be a colossal effort for them.”

“And,” added Chantal, “we still don’t know why they’re making that effort. What can they have been doing on Planet B, five hundred years in the past, that would be worth it?”

“At least,” rumbled General Kermak, “we know where this, uh, Planet B is. We also know the location of Planet A, through which it is being supplied. And they don’t suspect that we possess this knowledge . . . we hope,” he added with a hard look at Jason and Mondrago. “So the solution is clear: direct military action!”

“You’re familiar with the arguments I advanced against an attack on Planet A when Major Rojas suggested it, General,” said Jason mildly.

“Yes, Commander, I have taken cognizance of them. Which is why I’m not proposing it as an isolated operation. I say, at the same time we hit Planet A, we also go to Planet B. Whatever the Transhumanists went back in time to do there, it must presumably have consequences in the present. Otherwise, why would they have done whatever it is?”

Rutherford looked alarmed. “Surely, General, you’re not advocating an all-out attack on Planet B in the current state of our ignorance of it? What you suggest may be more than the IDRF can manage on its own.” This, Jason knew, was true. The IDRF’s space-combat capability was limited to relatively small, lightly armed ships, for political reasons and also due to the seeming lack of a need for any heavier metal.

“No, of course not. First we need to perform a reconnaissance.” Kermak pronounced it correctly. “If it turns out they’ve got more than we can handle there, then we’ll just have to set the wheels in motion to bring in the Deep Space Fleet.” He made no attempt to keep the distaste out of his voice.

Jason framed his words very carefully. “General, your duties don’t normally involve time travel, so you’re accustomed to thinking entirely in the ‘linear present’ as we call it. But I ask you to consider something. The Transhumanists are taking an enormous amount of trouble to go to Planet B five hundred years in the past. They must have a reason for doing so. If it’s like all their other machinations, it can only be to plant the seed of something that’s not going to come to fruition until
The Day
—which self-evidently hasn’t occurred yet. Now, the Transhumanists could quite easily go across space to Planet B in the present.
Why don’t they?
”

“What are you driving at, Commander?”

“General, are you familiar with what we call the Observer Effect?”

“I’ve heard of it. I can’t claim that I entirely understand it.”

“If you did, you’d be the only one,” said Jason with a smile. “But it seems clear to me that for reasons related to the Effect, the Transhumanists have to leave what they’ve started on Planet B alone. This suggests that whatever they’re doing there is vulnerable at its inception.” He glanced at Rutherford, who had clearly grasped where this was headed and appeared to be experiencing some difficulty breathing. Kung still wore a look of blank incomprehension, which was just as well. Jason continued to address Kermak. “I propose that we nip their little scheme in the bud. And if we do it after they’ve finished setting their project up and have ceased going to Planet B, we’ll have destroyed it without them knowing we have. And then won’t they have a surprise on
The Day
?”

Mondrago spoke up, breaking the silence. “General, you might say time travel adds a new dimension to warfare. If I may draw an example from history, military men were used to thinking in two dimensions before the invention of airplanes allowed operations in the third dimension. In addition to going around an enemy’s flanks on the ground, they could—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” snapped Kermak. “They called it ‘vertical envelopment.’”

“Well, General, think of what Commander Thanou is describing as ‘temporal envelopment.’”

Jason held his breath, hoping Mondrago, an ex-merc, hadn’t strayed over the line with Kermak. But at the same time, he reminded himself that this was no mere boneheaded warhorse; such types did not rise high in today’s military. And after a moment, the general’s thin lips formed a slight smile.

“I get the concept, Superintendent. Of course, its usefulness would be very much limited by the Observer Effect. Good thing, too; otherwise the consequences would be . . . unimaginable. But in this particular case, we just may be able to put it to use.” Kermak turned back to Jason. “Do I understand, Commander, that you are proposing—”

“—That we ourselves perform an extrasolar temporal displacement?” blurted Rutherford, who had regained the power of speech. Kung had not; he finally understood, and his face was a frozen mask of slowly purpling blubber.

“Right. If the Transhumanists can build a displacer on that scale, then so can we, now that we have their technology. We can send a ship back almost but not quite as far as those transports of theirs are going—maybe to a point in time about a decade later—and proceed to Planet B in that time period. If possible, we can go ahead and abort their scheme, whatever it is. If that’s not possible, we can return with enough ships to do it.” Jason turned to Kermak with a smile. “But I would be very surprised, General, if the IDRF couldn’t handle this strangle-in-the-cradle operation on its own, without the need to involve the Deep-Space Fleet.”

“Hmmm . . .” Kermak stroked his craglike chin, and Jason saw he had struck a chord. “Yes. There’s something to be said for avoiding all the complications
that
entails.”

“Especially considering the impossibility of avoiding security leaks when something has to be taken into the political arena,” Rojas added.

“And security is going to be a problem anyway,” said Mondrago morosely. “Where are you going to build this displacer? The Transhumanist underground is bound to notice a project of that size.”

“That’s right,” nodded Jason. “It can’t be on Earth, for that reason—not to mention the Observer Effect, since nobody on late nineteenth-century Earth noticed any spaceships popping into existence out of thin air! We’d have to make it in modular components and ship them to some other planet for assembly.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rutherford and Kung seemingly go into shock.

“Mars, perhaps?” suggested Rojas. Sol’s fourth planet had been the subject of extensive terraforming studies in the twenty-first century, but nothing had come of them. By the end of that century, the competition for the finite funding available had been won by the first slower-than-light interstellar probes. And then, in the early twenty-second century, had come the takeover by the Transhuman Dispensation, which hadn’t been interested. And after its overthrow, no one had been interested because the negative mass drive had opened up a galaxy full of more promising planets. So Mars continued to orbit the sun in its pristine state of cold lifelessness—like Planet A, only smaller and even more inimical to life.

“It’s still too close for comfort, right here in the Solar System,” said Jason. “I’d prefer an extrasolar planet. I’d also prefer a planet with a breathable atmosphere. Mars is almost airless, and having to build a base there would complicate our engineering problems, besides being expensive.”

Rutherford, who had managed to recover his composure, spoke with icy sarcasm. “I am reassured that you are thinking in terms of expense! Jason, do you have any conception of the magnitude of this undertaking?”

“This
unprecedented
undertaking, I might add!” blurted Kung. “Kyle, I cannot believe that your latitude as operations director can possibly be stretched so far. I would insist that it be put to the full council.”

“I know it may be a hard sell to the council,” Jason understated. Then he had a sudden inspiration. “But you might point this out to them. To avoid all the political headaches of achieving unity of command in a large-scale military operation, the government will almost certainly want the Authority and the IDRF to handle this, in conjunction with each other but still acting
independently
.”

Rutherford’s expression instantly grew more cheerful. As usual, preservation of the Authority’s status as an independent agency would be uppermost in the minds of the council, and he knew it. Even Kung’s face began to grow a lighter shade of purple.

“Well,” Rutherford said after a moment, preening his beard thoughtfully, “if it’s put to them that way . . . perhaps . . .”

Kung, however, was still not mollified. “But Kyle, the
impropriety!
I remind you that all Special Operations Section activities are at present in abeyance pending the Section’s official disbandment.”

“And I remind you, Alastair, that this is not an expedition of the Special Operations Section as such. Commander Thanou is, indeed, acting for the Temporal Service—”

“With which his connection is, at present, somewhat ambiguous,” Kung interjected darkly.

“—but as a consultant to the IDRF, not in his capacity as head of the Section.” Something seemed to firm up inside Rutherford. “And in
my
capacity as operations director, I am provisionally approving this project, and authorizing funding from my discretionary monies. You, of course, have every right to subsequently raise the question before the council of whether I have exceeded my authority.” Before Kung could speak, he spoke in a more conciliatory tone. “So you see, whatever happens I will bear all responsibility.”

Kung brightened visibly. In his bureaucratic world, what mattered was not success but avoidance of accountability for failure.

Well ,well,
thought Jason, looking at Rutherford with more respect than he had felt in a while.
Is it possible that his conscience is bothering him for not fighting harder—or at all—for the Section? It should.

“But Jason,” Rutherford continued sternly, turning to face him, “before I can finalize my approval—and in anticipation of later council review—I must have a specific proposal as to just where we want this displacer constructed.”

“Well, there are a lot of habitable extrasolar planets—”

“What about Zirankhu?” Chantal suddenly interjected. “Yes, I know it might not ordinarily occur to us. But remember, it’s a dry world with extensive empty areas like . . . this.” She gave a gesture that indicated Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, which stretched away from the installation in all directions. “And we could purchase many of our supplies locally, rather than hauling them from Earth. And furthermore, it’s not far, as interstellar distances go, from Planet A—which, if I understand the spatial relationships correctly, means it also can’t be all that far from Planet B.”