The Forever Man (19 page)

“How did he find that?” Mary's voice was interested.

“Let's not go into that, please,” said Jim. “Just take it from me he did establish a theoretical—repeat, theoretical—center for the galaxy. Someday we may come up with ships which can go in toward the center and come back, and actually establish if he was right about where the centerpoint is, like we finally established the position of the North Pole of Earth—or the South Pole, for that matter.”

“You mean we figure all our space-shifts by referencing a point so far away that even a ten-light-year jump is a tiny fraction of our distance to the reference point? Isn't the galaxy something like sixty thousand light-years across? It seems like overdoing things to figure all your spaceship travel—”

“It would be, if that's what we did,” said Jim. “No, once a theoretical centerpoint was established, a theoretical line was drawn through it—a diameter of the galaxy—taken as close to Sol as practical. It's that theoretical line we tie to for navigational purposes. That's to say, to travel any real distance from Earth, we go down the line until we're close enough to find on our instruments the star we're interested in. Then we turn off at a sharp angle and go directly from the line to it.”

“I remember this now,” said Mary. “Yes, it all comes back to me. I had the elements of it in secondary school. The Laagi, of course, are almost right on that line of ours as it goes inward from us toward the theoretical center. That's one reason why going around them's been such a problem.”

“That's it,” said Jim. “And they evidently either use the same line or one so close to it that we ought to be able to find their home base or bases near or on it, somewhere farther down-galaxy.”

“But—” began Mary, and stopped. “We're lost now then, aren't we? How can we find the line again, now that that ship's just led us away out here?”

“The answer to that,” said Jim, “is ‘not easily'.”

“But—” And Mary got stuck again.

“The point is, it makes it pretty hard for the Laagi to find out where we are, at the same time.”

“So how did you plan to get around Laagi space? How did you plan to find your way around to their other side and then back home again?”

“How did Raoul find his way home?”

“We don't know,” said Mary.

“And it never occurred to you to ask how you and I were going to do it,” said Jim.

“Will you stop that?” snapped Mary. “It may be giving you emotional relief to make a joke out of what I don't know, but you're taking it out of me to get that emotional relief. No, I didn't think to ask how we'd get there and back. I had other things to think of and it wasn't part of my field of expertise. I left it up to those whose field it was. Now either explain yourself, or shut off the funny remarks!”

“Sorry,” said Jim. “Though I might point out that being the one who's got to get us out of this, I could be the one needing emotional relief right at this moment, a little more maybe than you do. No, sorry again. I seem to end up apologizing to you more than I have with anyone else I ever met. No, it's not your fault you didn't ask. But it's somebody's fault you were let come up here not realizing the risks you were running. If and when we get back, I may even say a word to the general about that.”

“All right,” said Mary. “I forgive you. You forgive me. Now, explain things.”

“All right.” Jim took a deep breath. “How's your history? Do you remember that before the navigator's sextant came along, there was the cross-staff and the astrolabe and dead reckoning as means for sailors sailing out of sight of land on Earth's oceans to find a particular destination?”

“Yes,” she said.

“All right. Pre-sextant navigation, with compass, log, dead reckoning and a ship's clock that might be less than accurate, still allowed people to sail around the world. You just headed for someplace like Africa, say, once upon a time, instead of to a particular town on its east coast; and you sailed along the coast when you hit it until you found what you were after, instead of going directly to it across open ocean from your starting point. It's something like that early level of ocean navigation we're at in galactic space now. So, that's what you and I have to work with from where we sit now.”

“You're going to have to be more specific than that,” said Mary.

“All right, I will. Now, we've been taken out here and dropped off, out of sight, so to speak, of our galaxy centerline. But we have what the ancient seamen of Earth didn't have, which is a chronometer—in fact three of them, not counting the one in my mind—which are accurate to such a small fraction of a second that for ordinary practical purposes we can ignore the inaccuracy. Also, we have a ship's memory which can recall every phase-shift, how far and where to, and every turn and twist on ordinary drive and calculate all these to tell us where we've gone since we left Earth.”

Mary sighed with relief. A mental sigh, observed Jim, was impossible to describe. It was like a promissory note of what would, if there had been a body to do it, have been an exhalation of breath.

“Then we do know where we are right now.”

“Well—again, yes and no,” said Jim. “Yes, we know where we are right now because in addition to what I've just told you, my memory banks were supplied with the point where that last guide ship dropped us off; although I didn't know it, until his lights flashing farewell released the lock on that section of memory. And, no, because all we know is where we are in relation to Earth, the Frontier and the galactic centerline. What we don't know is where what we're looking for is located.”

“But all you have to do—” Mary broke off. “Oh, I see.”

“Exactly,” said Jim. “The proper course for us would be to head back toward the galactic centerline and follow right down it to the Laagi world or worlds. But if we do that, we'll run into large numbers of their fighting spaceships long before we get to our destination—let alone, beyond it into the unknown territory. Our only hope is to go forward out here, essentially paralleling the centerline until it's safe to turn in toward it again and find ourselves beyond the other side of Laagi territory, in the unknown.”

“And if we turn inward toward the line too soon, we run into Laagi warships,” said Mary.

“Right. And if we go too far and turn in too late, we'll end up at where the centerline is, according to our calculations, but not knowing where we are in relation to anything but it. Should we assume in that case that we're still short of unknown territory and head on down-galaxy along the line, or figure we've overshot it, and turn back along the centerline in that case essentially guaranteeing that we'll run into Laagi if we're wrong?”

“There's got to be some way around this,” said Mary.

“Oh, I forgot one possibility. What if there's nothing to be found beyond Laagi territory within any practical distance? Do we keep on? Do we turn back—”

“There's a method they used to use for zeroing in artillery fire,” began Mary. “You deliberately fired your first shot to strike beyond the target, the second shot short. Then you fired a little short of your long shot or a little farther than your short shot and kept on increasing or decreasing your range until you ‘zeroed in,' as they used to say, on the target—”

“Correct, first time out. My compliments. That's exactly the method we'll be using. We deliberately jump for what we are as sure as can be is beyond the Laagi home base—which we estimate to be about as far from the Frontier in its direction as Earth is in its, on the other side of it. We jump beyond the home base, or hope we have, but short of the farther limits of Laagi territory. Then, taking advantage of the fact that we're only one alien ship and in where they'd never expect to find us, we sneak in toward the centerline and see if we can't spot evidence of Laagi space travel or living centers, before whichever it is spots us.”

He paused.

“Am I making sense to you so far?”

“Yes,” she answered, “go on.”

“Well then,” he said, “if, by doing all this, we reach the centerline without running into any such evidence and conclude we've overshot the Laagi territory, we go out away from the line again, to what we think is a ‘safe distance', and head back parallel to it, in the direction of the Laagi center, and then, in again. If we don't find any evidence, we repeat and go back farther. If we do, we repeat and go outward again, toward galaxy center but not as far as we went before, and nose in again. Finally, this way we establish where Laagi territory ends on the down-galaxy side; and we're ready to go hunting for Raoul's ‘Paradise'.”

“Raoul,” said Mary almost wistfully, “didn't do all this inning and outing.”

“No, Raoul sailed straight through the heart of Laagi territory and let them cut him to ribbons,” said Jim. “The only reason they didn't blow
La Chasse Gallerie
into cosmic dust was because somehow, even without drives, he couldn't be stopped and held still long enough to be blown up. You and I, we've got a ship to protect, to say nothing of ourselves. Come to think of it, what does happen to two minds when a ship is destroyed out from under them? Do they die, too, or are they left just drifting in space—”

“Let's face that possibility when it comes,” said Mary.

“We don't have any choice but to face it when it comes. I was hoping for a little advance notice.”

“Well, I don't have any answer for you. That's why there's no point in facing it beforehand,” replied Mary, almost tranquilly. “Shall we begin?”

“We've already begun,” said Jim. “I've been setting up an automatic pattern of jumps to take us forward, in and out, just in case for some reason I shouldn't be able to command the ship. So hang on, here we go.”

After those words, the actual going was anything but dramatic. They shifted ten times—even though they were out of their bodies, the shifts were perceptible as a sort of hiccup in attention—and at last swam in what hardly looked any different than the point in galactic space where their last guide ship had left them.

“Now we try going in… very carefully,” said Jim.

He mentally ordered about the controls; and Mary was knowledgeable enough about ship-handling to realize he was reorienting the hull prior to the shift, so that they would come out facing in the direction they wanted, which in this case would be toward the centerline. Then he began a series of phase-shifts, shorter and shorter jumps, until he was down to a final shift that was no farther than
AndFriend
's instruments could see.

“According to the calculations of the instruments—and mine,” said Jim, “we ought to be within three light-years' distance of the centerline. If we're right in the assumption of everybody back home, and the Laagi use a centerline very close to ours, then the area we're in ought to have traffic of Laagi ships up and down the line. We'll just have to park here, wait and see.”

“And if nothing comes along by the time we get tired of waiting?” Mary asked. “Do we go all the way out again, or do we just edge back up the line?”

“The first way's safe but slow. The second ought to be faster, but risky—assuming we're moving into a higher incidence of Laagi traffic.” Jim hesitated. “I know what I'd do. What would you do?”

“Inch back up the line at this distance from it,” said Mary without hesitation.

“I was afraid you'd say that.”

“Because your choice was going back out again, was it?”

“No,” said Jim glumly, “because I'd made the same choice. Now we don't have any excuse for not doing it. And we could stub our toe on a Laagi ship this way before we know it.”

They began going up-galaxy. Jim estimated they were now more than half a light-year out from the centerline; and he kept his phase-shifts to just within the limit of the ability of his instruments to spot a Laagi ship. He and Mary fell into a silence with which they both seemed to be content, for it was only briefly and occasionally broken during a period which their ship's chronometer measured as a little over fourteen hours.

The procedure was to make the shift, pause, scan all instrument-visible area and, if anything shiplike was observed, to creep up on this with tiny phase-shifts of no more than a few hundred kilometers until it became clear that what they were seeing was not an alien vessel. Then they would make another jump forward to the limit of their instruments' scanning ability, and another close investigation of the new area if there seemed to be reason for it.

At the end of the slightly more than fourteen hours, however, Jim suddenly grunted and began coding for a shift of a full five light-years more out from the centerline.

“What is it?” demanded Mary. “Did you see something?”

“No,” said Jim. “Just back-of-the-head hunch. I can't explain it to you any better than that.”

“Come to think of it,” said Mary, “you've mentioned several things—a chronometer in your mind, and your own mental calculations as to where we were, in addition to the calculations of the ship's instruments. Now this. Is there something about you I ought to know?”

“Nothing miraculous,” said Jim. “You remember my talking about the early days of ocean navigation? Even with a sextant and a good chronometer, it was quite a trick to cross the Atlantic and have the first land you sighted turn out to be the point you were aiming at. But some navigators then seemed to have a knack for it. Some of us space jockeys seem to have a knack for interstellar navigation. That's all.”

“That's quite a lot, it seems to me,” said Mary. “In fact it's right on the edge of being almost too much to believe.”

“Ever hear of a homing instinct in animals—not merely birds but domestic dogs or cats?” said Jim. “The Polynesian navigators watched the action of waves to guide themselves in crossing great stretches of the Pacific in small ships not much bigger than large canoes. The Aleuts up near the North Pole, back home, had something like seventeen different names for different kinds of snow in their language. Their children would play in snowdrifts—but never in the ones that would fall in and bury them. When you asked them why they picked one snowdrift over another, they essentially said it was obvious. I'm one of the ones with a knack for intragalactic navigation—that's one of the reasons it was my Wing that went after Raoul.”