The Forever Man (2 page)

“The pilot of this ship was a Canadian,” said Mollen. “Raoul Penard.” He coughed dryly. “He was greatly attached to his home.
La Chasse Gallerie
was one of the ships near the center of the nova explosion, one of the ones that disappeared. At that time we didn't realize that the nova explosion was merely a destructive application of the principle used in phase-shift drive. You've heard of the statistical chance that a ship caught just right by a nova explosion could be transported instead of destroyed, Jim?”

“I'd hate to count on it, sir,” said Jim. “Anyway, what's the difference? Modern ships can't be anticipated or held still long enough for any kind of explosion to be effective. The Laagi haven't used the nova for eighty years. Neither have we.”

“True enough,” said Mollen. “But we aren't talking about modern ships. Look at the desk schema, Jim. Forty-three hours ago, one of our deep, unmanned probes returned from far into Laagi territory with pictures of a ship. Look.”

Jim heard a stud click. The stars shifted and drew back. Floating against a backdrop of unknown stars he saw the old-fashioned cone shape of a one-man space battlecraft, of a type forgotten eighty years before. The view moved in close and he saw a name, abraded by dust and dimmed, but readable on the hull.

La Chasse Gallerie
—The breath caught in his throat.

“It's been floating around in Laagi territory all this time?” Jim said. “I can't believe—”

“More than that"—Mollen interrupted him—“that ship's under pilotage and moving.” A stud clicked. The original scene came back. A bright line began at the extreme edge of the desk and began to creep toward the back limits of Laagi territory. It entered the territory and began to pass through.

“You see,” said Mollen's voice out of the dimness, “it's coming back from wherever the nova explosion kicked it to, over one hundred years ago. It's headed back toward our own territory. It's headed back, toward Earth.”

Jim stared at the line in fascination.

“No,” he heard himself saying. “It can't be. It's some sort of Laagi trick. They've got a Laagi pilot aboard—”

“Listen,” said Mollen. “The probe heard talking inside the ship. And it recorded. Listen—”

Again, there was the faint snap of a stud. A voice, a human voice, singing raggedly, almost absentmindedly to itself, entered the air of the room and rang on Jim's ears.

…en roulant ma boule, roulant—roulant ma boule, roulant…

The singing broke off and the voice dropped into a mutter of a voice that switched back and forth between French and English, speaking to itself. Jim, who had all but forgotten the little French he had picked up as a boy in Quebec, was barely able to make out that the owner of the voice was carrying on a running commentary on the housekeeping duties he was doing about the ship. Talking to himself after the fashion of hermits and lonely men.

“All right,” said Jim, even while he wondered why he was protesting such strong evidence at all. “Didn't you say they had the early semianimate control systems then? They used brain tissue grown in a culture, didn't they? It's just the control system, parroting what it's heard, following out an early order to bring the ship back.”

“Look again,” said Mollen. The view changed once more to a close-up of
La Chasse Gallerie
. Jim looked and saw wounds in the dust-scarred hull—the slashing cuts of modern light weapons, refinements of the ancient laser beam-guns.

“The ship's already had its first encounter with the Laagi on its way home. It met three ships of a Laagi patrol—and fought them off.”

“Fought them off? That old hulk?” Jim stared into the dimness where Mollen's face should be. “Three modern Laagi ships?”

“That's right,” said Mollen. “It killed two and escaped from the third and by rights it ought to be dead itself, but it's still coming, on ordinary drive, evidently. It's not phase-shifting. Now, a control system might record a voice and head a ship home, but it can't fight off odds of three to one. That takes a living mind.”

A stud clicked. Dazzling overhead light sprang on again and the desk top was only a desk top. Blinking in the illumination, Jim saw Mollen looking across at him.

“Jim,” said the general, “this is a volunteer mission. That ship is still well in Laagi territory and it's going to be hit again before it reaches the Frontier. Next time it'll be cut to ribbons, or captured. We can't afford to have that happen. Its pilot, this Raoul Penard, has got too much to tell us, even beginning with the fact of how he happens to be alive in space at well over a hundred years of age.” He watched Jim closely. “Jim, I'm asking you to take a Section of four ships in to meet
La Chasse Gallerie
and bring her out.”

Jim stared at him. He found himself involuntarily wetting his lips and stopped the gesture.

“How deep?” he asked.

“At least eighty light-years in toward the heart of Laagi territory,” said Mollen bluntly. “If you want to turn it down, Jim, say so now. The man who pulls this off has got to go into it believing he can make it back out again.”

“That's me,” said Jim. He laughed, the bare husk of a laugh. “That's the way I operate, General. I volunteer.”

“Good,” said Mollen. He sat back in his chair. “There's just one more thing, then. Raoul Penard is older than any human being has a right to be and he's pretty certainly senile, if not out-and-out insane. We'll want a trained observer along to get as much information out of contact with the man as we can, in case you lose him and his ship, getting back. That calls for someone with a unique background and experience in geriatrics and all the knowledge of the aging process. So Mary, here, is going to be that observer. She'll replace your regular gunner and ride in a two-man ship with you.”

It was like a hard punch in the belly. Jim sucked in air and found he had jerked erect. Both of the others watched him. He waited a second, to get his voice under control. He spoke first to the general.

“Sir, I'll need a gunner. If there was ever a job where I'd need a gunner, it'd be this one.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mollen slowly—and Jim could feel that this answer had been ready and waiting for him—“Mary, here, is a gunner—a good one. She's a captain in the Reserve, Forty-second Training Squadron. With a ninety-two point six efficiency rating.”

“But she's still a weekend warrior—” Jim swung about to face her. “Have you even done a tour of duty? Real duty? On the Frontier?”

“I think you know I haven't, Major,” said Mary evenly. “If I had you'd have recognized me. We're about the same age and there aren't that many on Frontier duty.”

“Then do you know what it's like, Captain—what it can be like out there?” raged Jim. He was trying to keep the edge out of his voice but he could hear it there in spite of all he could do. “Do you know how the Laagi can come out of nowhere? Do you know you can be hit before you know anyone's anywhere near around? Or the ship next to you can be hit and the screens have to stay open—that's regulation, in case of the one-in-a-million chance that there's something can be done for whoever's in the hit ship? Do you know what it's like to sit there and watch someone you've lived with burning to death in a cabin he can't get out of? Or spilled out of a ship cut wide open, and lost back there somewhere… alive but lost… where you'll never be able to find him? Do you know what it might be like to be spilled out and lost yourself, and faced with the choice of living three weeks, a month, two months in your suit in the one-in-a-million chance of being found after all, or of taking your x-capsule? Do you know what that's like?” “I know of it,” said Mary. Her face had not changed. “The same way you do, as a series of possibilities, for the most part. I've seen visual and audible recordings of what you talk about. I know it as well as I can without having been wounded or killed myself.”

“I don't think you do!” snapped Jim raggedly. His voice was shaking. He saw Mary turn to look at the general.

“Louis,” she said, “perhaps we should ask for another volunteer?”

“Jim's our best man,” said Mollen. He had not moved, or changed his expression, watching them both from behind the desk. “If I had a better Wing Cee—or an equal one who was fresher—I'd have called on him or her instead. But what you're after is just about impossible; and only someone who can do the impossible has a hope of bringing it off. That's Jim. It's like athletic skills. Every so often a champion comes along, one in billions of people, who isn't just one notch up from the next contenders, but ten notches up from the nearest best. There's no point in sending you and five ships into Laagi territory with anyone else in command. You simply wouldn't come back. With Jim, you might.”

“I see,” said Mary. She looked at Jim. “Regardless, I'm going.”

“And you're taking her, Jim,” said Mollen, “or turning down the mission.”

“And if I turn it down?” Jim darted a glance at the general.

“I'll answer that,” said Mary. Jim looked back at her. “If necessary, my Bureau will requisition a ship and I'll go alone.”

Jim stared back at her for a long moment, and felt the rage drain slowly away from him, to be replaced by a great weariness.

“All right,” he said. “All right, Mary—General. I'll head the mission.” He breathed deeply and glanced over Mary's coveralls. “How long'll it take you to get ready?” “I'm ready now,” said Mary. She reached down to the floor behind the desk and came up with a package of personals: sidearm, med-kit and x-box. “The sooner the better.”

“All right. The five ships of the Section are manned and waiting for you,” said Mollen. He stood up behind the desk and the other two got to their feet facing him. “I'll walk down to Transmission Section with you.”

They went out together into the corridor and along it and down an elevator tube to a tunnel with a moving floorway. They stepped onto the gently rolling strip, which carried them forward onto a slightly faster strip, and then to a faster, and so forth until they were flashing down the tunnel surrounded by air pumped at a hundred and twenty miles an hour in the same direction they traveled, so that they would not he blown off their feet. In a few minutes they came to the end, and air and strips decelerated so that they slowed and stepped at last into what looked like an ordinary office, but which was deep in the heart of a mountain. —This, the memory returned to Jim, in case the Transmission Section blew up on one of its attempts to transmit. The statistical chance was always there. Perhaps, this time…?

Mollen had cleared them with the officer of the duty guard and they were moving on through other rooms to the suiting room, where Jim and Mary climbed into the unbelievably barrel-bodied space suits that were actually small spaceships in themselves, and in which—if they who wore them were uninjured and still would not take their x-pills—they might drift in space, living on recycled air and nourishments until they went mad, or died of natural causes.

—Or were found and brought back. The one-in-a-million chance. Jim, now fully inside his suit, locked it closed.

“All set?” It was Mollen's voice coming at him over the aud circuit of the suit. Through the transparent window of the headpiece he saw the older man watching him.

“All set, General.” He looked over at Mary and saw her already suited and waiting. For a moment it struck Jim that she might have been trying to suit up fast to show she was something more than a weekend warrior, and he felt a twinge of sympathy toward her. With the putting on of his own suit, the old feeling of sureness had begun to flow back into him, and he felt released. “Let's go, Captain.”

“Stick with —‘Mary',” she said, “and I'll stick with ‘Jim'.”

“Good luck,” said Mollen. Together, Jim and Mary clumped across the room, waited for the tons-heavy explosion door to swing open, then clumped through.

On the floor of the vast cavern that was the takeoff area, five two-man ships sat like gray-white darts, waiting. Red “manned” lights glowed by each sealed port on the first four they passed. Jim read their names as he stumped on forward toward the open port of the lead ship, his ship, the
AndFriend
. The other four ships were the
Swallow
, the
Fair Maid
, the
Lela
and the
Fourth Helen
. He knew their pilots and gunners well. The
Swallow
and the
Fourth Helen
were ships from his own command. They and the other two were good ships handled by good people. The best.

Jim led the way aboard
AndFriend
and fitted himself into the forward seat facing the controls. Through his suit's receptors, he heard Mary sliding into the gunner's seat, behind and to the left of him. Already, in spite of the efficiency of the suit, he thought he could smell the faint, enclosed stink of his own sweat; and, responding to the habit of many missions, his brain began to clear and come alive. He plugged his suit into the controls.

“Report,” he said, One by one, in order, the
Swallow
, the
Fair Maid
, the
Lela
and the
Fourth Helen
replied. “—Transmission Section,” said Jim, “this is Wander Section, ready and waiting for transmission.”

“Acknowledged,” replied the voice of the Transmission Section. There followed a short wait, during which as always Jim was conscious, as if through some extra sense, of the many tons weight of the collapsed magnesium alloy of the ships' hulls bearing down on the specially reinforced concrete of the takeoff area. “Ready to transmit.”

“Acknowledged,” said Jim.

“On the count of four, then,” said Transmission Section's calm, disembodied voice. “For Picket Nine, L Sector, Frontier Area, transmission of Wander Section, five ships. Ready to phaseshift. Counting now… three—” The unimaginable tension that always preceded transmission from one established point to another began to build, a gearing-up of nerves that affected all the men on all the ships alike.