The Forever Man (38 page)

The pause before Mary answered this time was shorter than the others had been, but long enough for Jim to hear his own words echoing in his mind.

“That was a rather brutal thing to say,” said Mary.

“Maybe it was,” said Jim. “But Squonk's given us everything he had to give; and what he'd tell you he wanted most, if he could tell you anything, would be that his wish would be to die working. As soon as he finishes cleaning the ship, which was the excuse I had to use to bring us here, I'll let him go back to searching the ship for the key. I've even had the ship's robot tuck a couple of dozen small objects in corners about the ship for Squonk to find. Of course, when he does find them, we'll tell him they aren't what we're looking for, but it'll keep the hunt alive in his mind.”

“Until we reach Earth. And if we don't, which is most likely, he won't either.”

“He won't reach Earth in any case,” said Jim.

“Why not?” asked Mary, and then answered herself. “Are you planning on putting him out the entry port while we're still in space—”

She broke off.

“You mean you don't think he'll live until then?”

“That's right,” said Jim. “I don't think he will.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” said Jim. He searched for the words to describe what had given him the impression. “It's just something I feel from him. He's been very close to dying for some time, I think. He can't last much longer.”

Neither one of them said anything more for a minute.

“Look at him,” Mary said then; and Jim realized she must have been spending the small interval watching Squonk. “He's working away just as he always does. What makes you so sure of this feeling?”

“Only the fact I've got it,” said Jim.

They drove steadily down-galaxy, not saying very much to each other. A couple of days, Laagi-time, went by. Squonk finished cleaning the interior of
AndFriend
and was set to work hunting for the nonexistent key, ignoring the fact—which did not seem to bother Squonk either—that he would be searching the very areas he had just finished going over so meticulously in the process of cleaning them.

The third day two Laagi fighter ships appeared off
AndFriend
's right bow at a distance of about eight hundred kilometers. They moved in to within less than a kilometer and one of them disappeared, phase-shifted off to someplace else. The one that remained kept station beside
AndFriend
, following her toward the Laagi down-galaxy frontier, simply paralleling her course and waiting.

“I wonder why the other one left?” said Mary

“Why do you think?” Jim answered. “His friend here was left to keep an eye on us while he went to get more ships. They'll be planning to do exactly what we did with
La Chasse Gallerie
when we brought her home. Lock on to
AndFriend
and phase-shift with her attached, so that she has to come along with them.”

“Take us back,” said Mary.

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“That depends on you,” he answered. “I can let them take us, or if you give me back the ability to run the ship, I can make a phase-shift jump—one long enough and at an angle that'll confuse them until I can make a few more and get beyond their frontier in this direction—into fly-swatting territory. As much as they might want
AndFriend
back, I don't think they'll follow her there.”

“You know I won't give you back anything.”

“Think about it,” he said. “Think it through—what'll happen if they take us back?”

“I have,” she said. “I'll study them for another year, that's all. Then I'll set you free and you can take us home. But I've got to have that year back on the surface of that Laagi planet.”

“You'll never get it,” he said.

“Why? Because you'll start fighting with them some way using what mind control you have over this ship; and they'll destroy
AndFriend
completely when they find they can't stop her just by cutting her up?”

“No, there's no way I can fight with
AndFriend
unless you turn me loose. But suppose we just do let them lock on and cart us away. Stop and think of it. They'll never let you down on the surface of that world of theirs again.”

She did not speak for a second.

“You're crazy,” she said finally. “You're so determined to get away, you're imagining things.”

“No,” he said. “Think. Think it through.”

“I have,” she said. In his imaginary mental image of her, he watched her eyes narrowing. “Why wouldn't they take
AndFriend
back down on the surface of their world?”

“They've had two human ships,” Jim said. “They've picked up and taken home two human-made ships with no humans aboard them. The first one just up and left on its own and made its way back to the human Frontier and beyond. So they tied down the second one when they got it home, so that it physically couldn't take off. But it's not only taken off, anyway, but got some of their own squonks to cut it loose so that it could. And in each case, as far as they could tell, there was no human on board. In the case of
AndFriend
, at least, they'd even had the entry port open at one time, so that there was no atmosphere inside to support Earth life.”

“All right,” she said. “I can see where they'd be puzzled.”

“Puzzled isn't the word. Frightened, I think, would suit the way they feel, better. Somehow, either human ships can operate without any living thing aboard—and Laagi ships aren't able to do that. Or else humans have some way of being invisible and undetectable inside their own ships. In which case, who knows what's been done by whatever humans might have been aboard
La Chasse Gallerie
and
AndFriend
?”

“Hmm,” said Mary. “I see.”

“In any case,” went on Jim, “whatever harm's been done has been done. But they're certainly not going to take the chance of any more human intrusions on their home world, or one of their home worlds—whichever the one we were on is. Once they lock onto us, they're going to take us out into interstellar space, well inside their territory, but far, far away from any of their worlds, and effectively nail us down out there. They'll post guards on us to see we stay where we've been put, and kept that way until they've figured out the answer to how we did what we did—which may take them a few thousand years or more. Meanwhile, what you've learned so far isn't going to be getting back to do any good on Earth.”

“It might be like that,” said Mary thoughtfully. “All right, we'll just see. We'll let them come and take us away; and if they put us out in space somewhere the way you think they will, I'll set you free, and you can take us home.”

“Then'll be too late,” said Jim.

He imagined her staring at him, the brown eyes wide now.

“Are you talking absolute nonsense?” she demanded. “Even if they've got guards watching, once you're free you can phase-shift
AndFriend
up to ten or fifteen light-years at least, in any direction, can't you?”

“I suppose,” said Jim, “it's not your fault you don't think in terms of a military action in space. You didn't think I meant they'd just put a couple of ships beside us wherever they left us, and then the rest of them would all go home? We wouldn't do anything as stupid as that if the situation was reversed; and nothing on the Frontier's indicated the Laagi are any more stupid than we are. There'd not only be guard ships beside us, but we'd be boxed in for as far as we could jump in any direction by sentinel ships with instruments tuned to track us if we suddenly went off by phase-shift. And there'd be other space-forces on call near enough to keep us tracked, and close in on us within a day at the outside, no matter which way we went or dodged about.” He snorted. “For that matter, they might just come on board and remove our phase-shift engines.”

“Of course,” said Mary slowly, “this is all just a theory of yours.”

A two-person Laagi warship phased in not a hundred meters from
AndFriend
's right side.

“Woops,” said Jim. “That was close. A fortieth of a decimal point farther, and he'd have been in
AndFriend
's space when he came out of phase—and that'd be all there was! Bet you a snap of the fingers that whoever commands his flight is jumping down his throat, right now.”

“These are aliens. We can't be sure of how they think,” said Mary.

The Laagi ship which had just appeared rolled over on its side, revealing what appeared to be two long bars, like skis, attached to its hull by struts several meters in length. Both struts and runners were thick and heavy, firmly bonded to the body of the craft. As they watched, the bottom surface of the runners that was facing toward
AndFriend
began to turn pink, and the pink color darkened until it became obvious that the surfaces were warming up toward a white-hot heat, at which temperature they would weld themselves firmly to
AndFriend
's hull at a touch.

Another ship appeared on the other side of
AndFriend
, but in this case it popped into existence a much safer four or five kilometers off. But it, too, had attachment runners and the face of these, also, began to heat up as they watched.

“Maybe two more ships yet to come, to cover us completely,” said Jim. “Time's getting short, honey.”

“Clear all, Jim Wander! Clear all—go! Go!”

As the words erupted from Mary's mind, Jim felt control of
AndFriend
return to him. Two other Laagi vessels with runners had appeared and the first two were drifting in close. He had programmed the shift down-galaxy in his mind long before. It was an automatic thing to feed it to the phase-shift mechanism.

They shifted.

All at once they were alone in empty space with strange stars burning all about them.

“How far did we come?” Mary asked.

“At least three light-years,” said Jim grimly. “I think we've taken them by surprise, and maybe we'll be able to make it to fly-swatter territory.”

He calculated and shifted; shifted again…

He was scanning space in all directions around them, gratefully once again using the powerful distance vision of the ship's equipment. “Look at that, I think we're beyond the flyswatter range—there are those G0-type stars we saw before. Maybe that's what Raoul meant by Paradise—”

He broke off. The interior of the ship was suddenly aswarm with invisible life.

It was unbelievable. Not only that, thought Jim, it was just about indescribable.

He and Mary and Squonk were surrounded by what could only be described as a host of innumerable invisible fireflies. To call them fireflies and at the same time to say they were invisible was a contradiction in terms, but it was the only way of describing them. They were invisible to any physical sight—even
AndFriend
's instruments did not register their presence. But his mind saw them very clearly indeed as multitudinous living points of colored lights, lights whose colors changed constantly, so that it was like standing in the midst of a rainbow in the process of sorting itself out from an endless number of tiny component parts.

And they were constantly in motion.

Not only that, but they were not only in the ship but all around it. They were in the interior space of the ship, they were partway through the hull of the ship, they were outside the ship, swarming in space and stretching off into the interstellar distance like the tail of a comet.

“—They see us! Like the other one!”

“—That one doesn't.”

“—But these two do. It's lovely to see and be seen by you.”

Their voices rang in Jim's mind, each one different and memorable. Each one audible separately for a moment before they were drowned by a perfect roar of greetings from what sounded at the very least like hundreds of thousands of such voices, all entirely individual.

“Who're you?” asked Jim.

“I'm me,” said the chorusing host of different voices.

Jim shook his head, stunned.

“If you'd speak just one at a time,” said Mary, “we could hear you better.”

“Of course, if you wish. But what kind of hearing is that?” said one voice. “We loved your friend. We'll love you, I think. Why aren't more of you lovable?”

“I don't know what you mean by what kind of hearing,” said Mary. “In what way are we lovable?”

“Are there different ways of being lovable?” asked a different voice.

“I asked you a question first,” said Mary.

“No, you didn't,” said the voice that had agreed to talk one at a time. “I asked you a question first.”

“Got you,” murmured Jim to Mary.

“What is ‘got'?”

“Look here,” said Mary determinedly. “What do you mean, ‘that kind of hearing?' and in what way are Jim and I lovable?”

“There really is only one way to hear,” said the most recent voice to speak to them. “Just like there's only one way to see. The small hole that's your other friend doesn't see or hear us.”

“You mean Squonk?”

“There it is again,” said the voice resignedly. “You're just like your friend who could see and hear us. It's very painful for us when a person won't, of course. That's why we told your other friends not to come any nearer. We only let this one come with you because you two can see and hear us, and we wanted to talk to you. But you're just like your other friend we loved dearly, who was here before. He'd start to tell us something and then he wouldn't say it. You just did that. You said ‘you mean…‘ and then you stopped.”

“I didn't stop,” said Mary. “I said his name was Squonk.”

“You're doing it again. You say ‘I said his… was…'”