Soldiers Out of Time (9 page)

Before they approached the Secondary Limit and disengaged their drive-field, Tomori’s instrumentation, though certainly not in the same class as that of a survey ship, had told them most of what they needed to know about the local planets. Aside from a few iceballs orbiting in outer darkness, there were only two: a tiny, charred cinder close to the sun, and a small rocky globe just outside this sun’s narrow “Goldilocks zone.” It was for the latter that the transport shaped its course.

As they followed their quarry through the maneuvering necessary for a ship under negative mass drive to approach a planet—decelerating to zero pseudovelocity and disengaging the drive before entering the Primary Limit, then killing the retained intrinsic velocity that had been built up departing from Zirankhu—they studied the planet. It was within the normal size and density parameters for terrestrial planets of its mass range, with a surface gravity of 0.55 G. It had no moons. There were polar ice-caps, partly carbon dioxide snow but holding an impressive amount of water, indicating that there was a lot more in the underground cryosphere. But there was no apparent liquid water, even though the topography, with its dry channels, made clear that the planet had possessed it in the past. In fact the atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide with a little nitrogen and argon, was just barely dense enough for water to exist in a liquid state. These were not vacuum conditions, which would simplify the problems of constructing a base there. And it didn’t take Tomori long to detect such a base.

As Van Horn put them into a high orbit, they all waited, tensely wondering if that base had anything that could crack their stealth suite. But they watched without incident as the transport settled down into the atmosphere—no need for orbital transfer here—and landed.

“Can you give us visuals of that base?” Rojas asked Tomori.

“Yes. We’re on the right side of the planet. I’ll increase the magnification.” On a small screen, the desert surface of the planet seemed to rush toward them, and the base grew into recognizability. It was located on the desert floor at the base of a low plateau. There was a landing field on which the cargo carrier now rested, a very large powerplant, a cluster of domes, and . . .

Jason drew a sharp breath. Rojas turned and gave him a curious glance. “What is it, Commander?”

Jason couldn’t keep his hand altogether steady as he pointed to a large circular expanse surrounded by machinery of, at least to his eyes, unmistakable purpose.

“That, Major, is a temporal displacer. If you don’t immediately recognize it for what it is, that’s understandable. It’s a bigger one than I’ve ever imagined.”

CHAPTER TEN

They all stared, speechless, as Tomori produced the figures for the size of what they were looking at.

“That would be enormous even for us,” Jason finally said. “Not that we could afford to build it. Using the Transhumanists’ technology, which can produce small, cheap displacers, and scaling it up to
that
. . .”

“Something else,” Mondrago pointed out. “Their time travel technology is also an order of magnitude more energy-efficient than ours, which is one of the things that makes it so cheap. But look at the size of that antimatter powerplant! If they need to pump all that power into one of
their
displacers, then whatever it is they send back in time must either be massive as hell, or else go back a lot of years, or both.”

“Buy why send anything at all?” demanded Rojas, clearly perplexed. “Building this installation out here, sixty-three light-years from Earth, must have been a supreme effort for them. Why should they make such an effort to go back into the past of this godforsaken, lifeless, historyless ball of sand?”

“Well,” Jason deadpanned, “at least they don’t have to worry about the Observer Effect.” Rojas’ expression told him this was not the time for levity. He turned to Tomori. “Your sensors were going throughout our approach to this planet, right? Can you go back over the readings, visual and otherwise, and see if there’s anything here besides that base?”

“Certainly. I’ll just tell the computer what sort of things to look for.” Her manipulations didn’t take long, and the computer scan was even briefer. “No,” she stated unhesitatingly. “Aside from the base, this planet is exactly what you would expect it to be. There’s not another artifact on it.”

“So,” said Chantal, “they’re not doing—or, I should say, haven’t done—anything on this planet in the past that has left any traces in the present.”

For a moment they all reverted to silence in the face of the unfathomable.

“Can you zoom in closer?” Jason finally asked Tomori. “I want a closer look at that displacer.”

“Yes. We still have a while before our orbit carries us around to the other side of the planet.” The base expanded still further, and Jason studied the vast circular displacer stage, as he decided he must continue to think of it even though, unlike the Authority’s Australian facility, it wasn’t covered by a dome. Such a dome would have been a colossal feat of engineering for an expanse this size, and on this planet there wasn’t the same need to shield it from the weather. The control stations surrounding it were, however domed . . . and as Jason watched, tiny antlike figures moved purposefully into those small domes.

“There’s activity around that displacer,” he said in a voice charged with tightly controlled excitement. “Is there any energy buildup from that powerplant?”

“No,” Tomori told him. “The emissions are holding steady.”

Jason and Mondrago met each other’s eyes. Mondrago spoke. “That can only mean—”

All at once, the displacer stage was no longer empty.

There was never any warning of a temporal retrieval, which was why they were always timed according to a rigid schedule. The person or object, its temporal energy potential restored, simply appeared with a slight swirl of displaced air. Only . . . this time the swirl was not slight. Even in this thin atmosphere, a small, brief dust storm blew over the control domes, for the mass that had materialized was that of a spaceship of the same class as the one that they had followed to this system. It rose slightly on grav repulsion and moved off the stage. That was the last thing they saw before their orbit carried them around the limb of the planet.

Chantal broke the silence with a chuckle.

“What, exactly, is funny?” Rojas demanded.

Chantal continued to smile. “There’s an old saying, Major: many a true word is spoken in jest. And I think Commander Thanou may have hit on the truth with his earlier crack about the Observer Effect.”

“Explain.”

“Clearly the Transhumanists are doing something—and of course we still don’t know what—off Earth, and in the past. Suppose the Observer Effect somehow makes it impossible for them to perform temporal displacement on whatever planet is the scene of their operations? Or—which somehow seems more likely—it’s impractical for them to build a displacer on that planet in the present? The solution would be obvious: find a planet like this one, that isn’t and never has been inhabited—let’s call it ‘Planet A’—and build a displacer large enough to send back interstellar transports, which could then proceed to . . . ‘Planet B.’”

Rojas frowned intently. “But why go to the colossal effort of coming all the way out here to build this displacer? Why not somewhere closer?”

“You don’t fully appreciate the Underground’s obsession with security, Major. They’d want a planet altogether outside the sphere of human exploration, in a worthless system.”

“But,” Mondrago objected, “humans will eventually explore out here. The Transhumanists’ privacy won’t last.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need to last very long,” said Jason slowly. “Remember, we don’t know when
The Day
is.”

The temperature in the overcrowded control room seemed to drop a few degrees. It was the cloud under which they all lived. The most closely guarded secret of the Transhumanist Underground remained as secret as ever. The moment when all their elaborately laid plans came to catastrophic fruition at once could be tomorrow. It was worse when one was in interstellar space, because for all anyone could prove to the contrary
The Day
might have
already
have occurred on Earth. Although, Jason reflected, the fact that this interstellar/transtemporal transshipment operation here on what he decided he must call Planet A was still a going concern indicated that the moment was not quite yet.

“Well,” said Rojas briskly, “be that as it may, we’re now in a position to abort whatever it is they’re doing. We’ll return to Earth with our knowledge of the location of this system, and the Deep-Space Fleet will come here and blast this installation into its component atoms! Or, rather,” she hastily amended, recalling the nightmarish political delays involved whenever the Deep-Space Fleet was called upon to do anything, ”it ought to be possible to do it as an independent IDRF operation—I’ve seen no defenses here.”

“Not so fast,” said Jason. “We still don’t know where this, ah, Planet B is, or how far back in its past they’re operating, or what they’ve done there—or if that operation has already become self-sustaining even if we cut off their supply line here. We can’t leave yet.”

“But we’ve obtained all the information we can.”

“Not by a long sight!” Jason grinned wolfishly. “For one thing, we can deduce how far into the past they’re displacing these ships.”

“How?”

Instead of answering Rojas directly, Jason turned to Tomori. “Your sensors can measure the output of that antimatter reactor, right?”

“Of course.”

“And when we got a sensor lock on their ship, in orbit around Zirankhu, you got a mass reading on it?”

“Yes.”

Jason turned back to Rojas. “There’s your answer, Major. It is a truism that the energy expenditure required for temporal displacement is a function of two factors: the mass being displaced, and how far back in time it’s being sent. The Transhumanists’ displacers are equally subject to this tradeoff, even though their overall energy efficiency is incomparably higher than ours. And now that we’ve been able to study their captured displacer on Earth, we know the energy figures to feed into the equation. Knowing that, and the mass, it’s just a matter of simple substitution to get the temporal ‘distance.’”

“And you know these energy figures?”

“Approximately. I’m no specialist, you understand, but I’ve naturally taken an interest in the subject. If we can observe the displacement of one of these ships, I can tell you roughly how far into the past it’s gone.”

“Very well. We will remain in orbit and watch for an impending displacement.”

* * *

As it turned out, they didn’t have long to wait. Fortuitously, their orbit had carried them over the hemisphere where the displacer was located when the transport they had followed from Zirankhu—having offloaded some but seemingly not all of its cargo—rose on its grav repulsion and maneuvered out onto that vast outdoor stage.

The sensors involved were passive, so they were in no danger of detection as they measured the output of that antimatter reactor as it built up to the surge that would send the mass of the transport back in time at least the minimum three hundred years. They all stared as the figures mounted and mounted—especially Jason, who had some inkling of what such an output must mean when channeled into a Transhumanist displacer. It seemed as though the planet itself must shake, or at least that there ought to be some visual manifestation of these titanic energies . . .

Then, with the usual anticlimactic absence of any such visual effects, the transport was gone.

“Did you get that?” Tomori asked Jason.

“Yes.” Recalling the mass of the transport (adjusted for a reasonable guess as to its cargo), he could do it in his head. He turned to Rojas. “Assuming that the energy efficiency of this displacer is the same as that of the one we captured on Earth, that ship has gone back approximately five hundred years.”

“The 1880s, more or less,” Chantal remarked.

“On Earth, that is,” Mondrago demurred. “Out here, in this barren system, nothing in particular.” He shook his head and voiced the question in all of their minds. “
Why?
”

Rojas ignored his perplexity. “All right. We’ve been more successful in obtaining information than we could have reasonably expected. We need to return to Earth with that information without further delay. Captain Van Horn, prepare for departure.”

“No.” Jason’s blunt monosyllable drew a sharp look from Rojas, and he decided he’d better put a little more care into deferring to her as officer in charge of what was, after all, an IDRF investigation. “I mean, Major, that you might want to reconsider that order in light of the fact that there’s one extremely crucial datum that we haven’t yet obtained: where these transports are going after they’ve been displaced five hundred years into the past.”

“And how do you propose to obtain it?”

“I want to get aboard the transport that’s still here—the one we saw return—and access its nav computer.”

Jason couldn’t avoid a certain satisfaction at seeing Rojas, for the first time in their acquaintance, completely flabbergasted. “
What?
But . . . but how—?”

“Look, we haven’t seen any sign of any weapon emplacements around that installation. You said so yourself.” Jason turned to Tomori for confirmation. “Isn’t that so?”

“Right.”

“And it makes sense. They know they couldn’t possibly build any defenses here that could stand up to a serious attack from space if they were discovered. So instead of trying, they’re relying entirely on secrecy—the fact that we don’t know they’re here. And they have no reason to think that secrecy doesn’t still hold. As far as they know, they’re all by themselves on this planet and have no reason to mount guard over that ship. We can land under cloak, a short distance from their base, and approach it unnoticed.”

“And what do you propose to do once we get there? Do you think they’re simply going to let you stroll aboard their ship?” With an effort that obviously cost her a great deal, Rojas turned to Chantal in search of support. “Didn’t you say that the Transhumanist Underground is obsessive about security?”

“I think, Major, that Commander Thanou may have a point about this perhaps being a case where they think they can afford to relax from that. And don’t forget another characteristic of theirs: arrogant overconfidence, rooted in their contempt for us Pugs.”

“And,” Jason added hurriedly, before Rojas could think of a rejoinder, “I recall that you brought a nice little toolkit of IDRF intelligence-collection goodies along from Earth—including items which, in less respectable hands, might be called extremely sophisticated burglar’s tools. Is that stuff still aboard this ship?”

“Well, yes. We never had any use for it on Zirankhu.”

“And carrying whatever we need ought to be easy, in this gravity.” Jason held Rojas’ eyes. “We’ll never have this chance again, Major. If the IDRF attacks this place with guns blazing, anything they don’t obliterate the Transhumanists will blow up themselves.” Chantal nodded in confirmation.

Rojas looked grim even for her. “Very well. We’ll try it. But I want two things clearly understood. First, I’m coming along, and I’m in charge.”

“Of course,” Jason assured her.

“Secondly, our objective is to get in and out tracelessly with the information we want, so they won’t know they’ve been compromised. We’ll approach the installation and wait for any opportunity to do that. If no such opportunity arises—in other words, if your assessment of their security proves to be overly optimistic—then we abort the mission and get out while still undetected.”

“We’ll have no disagreements in this regard, Major.” Jason grinned. “Remember what I said before about heroes.”