The Forever Man (5 page)

“Look,” Jim began. “When a woman dies and a ship may be lost—”

“Have you looked at Penard's ship, Major?” interrupted the voice of Mary. “Take a look. Then maybe you'll understand why I want the talk beam on just as long as there's any use.”

Jim turned and looked at the screen that showed the cone-shaped vessel.

He stared.

If
La Chasse Gauerie
had been badly cut up before, she was a floating chunk of scrap now. She had been slashed deep in half a dozen directions by the light beams of the Laagi ships. And the old-fashioned ceramet material of her hull, built before collapsed metals had been possible, had been opened up like cardboard under the edge of red-hot knives. Jim stared, hearing the voice of Penard singing in his ears, and an icy trickle went down his perspiration-soaked spine.

“He can't be alive,” Jim heard himself saying. If a hit that did not even penetrate the collapsed metal hull of the
Fair Maid
could turn that ship's interior into a charred, if workable, area—what must those light-weapons of the enemy have done to the interior of the old ship he looked at now? But Raoul still sang from there his song about lumbering in Meeshegan.

“—Nobody could be alive in that,” Jim said. “I was right. It must be just his semianimate control system parroting him and running the ship. Even at that, it's a miracle it's still working—”

“We don't know,” Mary's voice cut in on him. “And until we know we have to assume it's Raoul himself, still alive. After all, his coming back at all is an impossible miracle. If that could happen, it could happen he's still alive in that ship now. Maybe he's picked up some kind of protection we don't know about.”

Jim shook his head, forgetting that probably Mary could not see this silent negative. It was not possible that Penard was alive. But he roused himself back to his duty. He had a job to do.

His fingers began to dance over the black buttons in their ranks before him, working out the situation, planning his next move.

“K formation,” he said automatically to the other ships, but did not even glance at the telltale sphere to make sure they obeyed correctly. Slowly, the situation took form. He was down one ship, from five to four of them, and that reduced the number of practical fighting and maneuvering formations by a factor of better than three. And there was something else….

“Mary,” he said slowly.

“Yes, Jim?”

“I want your opinion on something,” said Jim. “When we jumped out of the fight area just now, it was a jump off the direct route home and to the side by nearly sixteen light-years; and of course we carried
La Chasse Gallerie
with us, out of the direct route to home she's been on since we first found her. Penard let me do that without fighting me with his own controls. Now, what I want to know is—and it ought to be impossible that he's got power on that hulk, anyway, but he obviously has—will he let me move him from now on without fighting me, once I slap a magnetic on him? In other words, whether he's a man or a semianimate control, was that a fluke last time, or can I count on it happening again?”

Mary did not answer immediately. Then…

“I think you can count on him trusting you,” she said. “If Raoul Penard is alive in there, the fact that he reacted sensibly once ought to be some indication he'll do it again. And if you're right about it being just a control center driving that ship, then it should react consistently in the same pattern to the same stimulus.”

“Yeah.” said Jim softly. “But I wonder which it is—is Penard in there, alive or dead? Is it a man we're trying to get out? Or a control center?”

“Does it matter?” said the level voice of Mary.

Jim looked bleakly into the vision screens fed by his instruments “Not to you, does it?” he said. “But I'm the man that has to order men to kill themselves to get that ship home.” Something tightened in his throat. “You know that's what hit me when I first saw you in Mollen's office, but I didn't know what it was. You haven't got guts inside you, you've got statistical tables and a computer.”

He could hear his own harsh breathing in the headpiece of his suit once he had said it.

“You think so?” said Mary's voice grimly. “And how about you, Jim? The accidents of birth and change while you were growing up gave you a one-in-billions set of mind and reflexes. You grew up to be a white knight and to slay dragons. Now you're in the dragon-slaying business and something's gone wrong with it you can't quite figure out. Something's gone sour, hasn't it?”

Jim did not answer. He was sweating again.

“You know,” said Mary, “I think you've got a bad case of combat fatigue; but you won't quit and you're so valuable that people like Mollen won't make you quit.”

“Play-patty psychiatrist, are you?” demanded Jim through gritted teeth. Mary ignored him. “You think I didn't have a chance to look at your personal history before I met you?” said Mary. “You ought to know better than to think that. You're a Canadian yourself, and your background is Scotch and French. That, plus the way you've been reacting to hearing Raoul Penard, ought to be all anyone needs to know to read the signs—and the signs all read the same way—”

“Shut up!” husked Jim, the words choking in his throat.

“The signs read dead, Major. All of them, including the fact it upsets you that I'm in the business of trying to make people live longer. You don't want to live a long time. Victory, or death, that's what you've been after; and now that you've been forced to the conclusion that you can't win that victory, you want death. But you're not built to deliberately kill yourself—” Jim tried to speak, but the strained muscles of his throat let out only a little, wordless rasp of sound.

“So death has to come and take you,” said Mary's relentless voice. There was a trace of something sad also in that voice. “And it's got to come take you against the most of your strength, against all your fighting will. He's got to take you in spite of yourself. And Death can't do it! That's what's wrong with you, isn't it, Jim?” Mary paused. “That's why you don't want to grow old and be forced to leave out here, where Death lives.”

Mary's voice broke off. Jim sat, fighting for breath, his gloved fingers trembling on the access flap to the sidearm. After a little, his breath grew deeper again; and he forced himself to turn back to his computations. Aside from the habit-instructed section of his mind that concerned itself with this problem, the rest of him was mindless.

I've got to do something, he thought. I've got to do something. But nothing would come to mind. Gradually the careening vessel of his mind righted itself, and he came back to a sense of duty—to Wander Section and his mission. Then suddenly a thought woke in him.

“Raoul Penard's dead,” he said quite calmly to Mary. “Somehow, what we've been hearing and what we've been watching drive and fight that ship is the semianimate control center. How it got to be another Raoul Penard doesn't matter. The tissue they used kept growing, and no one ever thought to keep one of them in contact with a man twenty-four hours a day for his lifetime. So it's the alter ego, the control center we've got to bring in. And there's a way to do that.”

He paused and waited. There was a second of silence, and then Mary's voice spoke.

“Go on. Maybe I underestimated you, Jim.”

“Maybe you did,” said Jim. “At any rate, here it is. In no more than another half hour we're going to be discovered here. Those planet-based big computers of theirs have been piling up data on our mission here and on me as leader of the Section, and their picture gets more complete every time we move and they can get new data. If we dodged away from here to hide again, next time they'd find us even faster. And after two more hides they'd hit us almost as soon as we got hid. So there's no choice to it. We've got to go for the Frontier, now.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “I can see we do.”

“You can,” said Jim. “And the Laagi can. Everybody can. But they also know I know that they've got most of the area from here to the Frontier covered. Most anywhere we come out, they'll be ready to hit us within seconds, with ships that are simply sitting there, ready to make jump to wherever we emerge, their computations to the forty or fifty areas within easy jump of them already computed for them by the big planet-based machines. So, there's only one thing left for me to do, as they see it. Go wide.”

“Wide?” said Mary. She sounded a trifle startled.

“Sure,” said Jim, grinning mirthlessly to himself in the privacy of his suit. “Like I sent
Fair Maid
. —But there's a difference between us and Fair Maid. We've got
La Chasse Gallerie
. And the Laagi'll follow us. And we'll have to keep running—running outward until their edge in data lets them catch up with us. Then their edge in ship numbers'll finish us off. The Laagi ships won't quit on our trail—even if it means they won't get back themselves. As I said a little earlier, enemy ships can't be allowed to get this deep into their territory and get home again.”

“Then what's the use of going wide?” asked Mary. “It just puts off the time—”

“I'm not going wide.” Jim grinned privately and mirthlessly once more. “That's what the Laagi think I'll do, hoping for a miracle to save us. I'm going instead where no one with any sense would go—right under their weapons. I've computed ten jumps to the Frontier which is the least we can make it in. We'll lock on and carry
La Chasse Gallerie
; and when we come out of the jump, we'll come out shooting. Blind. We'll blast our way through whatever's there and jump again fast as we can. If one of us survives, that'll be all that's necessary to lock on to
La Chasse Gallerie
and jump her to the Frontier, if none of us does—well, we've done our best.”

Once more he paused. Mary said nothing.

“Now,” said Jim, grinning like a death's head. “If that was a two-hundred-year old man aboard that wreck of a ship there, and maybe burned badly or broken up by what he's been through so far, that business of jumping and coming out at fighting accelerations would kill him. But,” said Jim, drawing a deep breath, “it's not a man. It's a control center. And a control center ought to be able to take it. Have you got anything to say, Mary?”

“Yes,” said Mary quietly. “Officially I protest your assumption that Raoul Penard is dead, and your choice of an action which might be fatal to him as a result.”

Jim felt a kind of awe stir in him.

“By—” He broke off. “Mary, you really expect us to come out of this all right, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Mary calmly. “I'm not disappointed with life the way you are. You don't know it, Jim, but there's a lot of people like you back home, and I meet them all the time. Ever since we started working toward a longer life for people, they've turned their back on us. They say there's no sense in living a longer time—but the truth is they're afraid of it. Afraid a long life will show them up as failures, that they won't have death for an excuse for not making a go of life.”

“Nevermind that!” Jim's throat had gone dry again. “Stand to your guns. We're jumping now—and we'll be coming out shooting.” He turned swiftly to punch the data key and inform his three remaining other ships "…Transmitting in five Seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Transmit—”

Disorientation, nausea…

The stars were different for the fifth time. Acceleration hit like a tree trunk ramming into Jim's chest. His fingers danced on the sub-light control buttons. The voice of Raoul Penard was howling his battle song again—

When you come drive de beeg saw log, You got to jump jus' lak de frog! De foreman come, he say go sak! You got in de watair all over your back!…

Time passed…

“Check Ten!” shouted Jim once again. “All ships Check Ten. Transmit in three seconds. Three. Two—”

No Laagi ships in the telltale sphere again this time. And the next. And the next—

Suddenly
AndFriend
bucked and slammed. Flame flickered for a fraction of a second through the cabin. The telltale was alive with green lights, closing fast.

Fifteen of them or more… Directly ahead of
AndFriend
were three of them in formation, closing on her alone. In Jim's ears rang the wild voice of Penard...

P'raps you work on drive, tree-four day—You find dat drive dat she don' pay
…

“Gunner!” cried Jim, seeing the peen lights almost on top of him. It was a desperate cry for help. In a moment—

Two of the green lights flared suddenly and disappeared. The third flashed and veered off.

“Mary!” yelped Jim, suddenly drunk on battle adrenaline. “You're a gunner! A real gunner!”

“More to the left and up, sector ten—” said a thin, calm voice, a voice he could hardly recognize as Mary's, in his ear. He veered, saw two more green lights. Saw one flare and vanish—saw suddenly one of his own white lights flare and vanish as the scream of torn metal sounded from one of the screens before him. Glancing at the screens, he saw for the moment the one picturing Fourth Helen's cabin, showing the cabin split open, emptied and flattened for a second before the screen went dark and blank.

Grief tore at him. And rage.

“Transmit now!” he howled at the other ships. “Check Ten! Check Ten—”

He slapped a magnetic on the battered cone shape that fled by a miracle still beside him and punched for the jump—

Disorientation. Nausea. And—

The stars of the Frontier were ahead of them. Jim stared into his screens. They floated in empty space, three gray-white dart shapes and the ravaged shape of
La Chasse Gallerie
.
Lela
rode level with Jim's ship, but
Swallow
was slowly turning sideways like a dying fish drifting in the ocean currents. Jim stared into the small screen showing the
Swallow
's interior. The two suited figures sat in a blackened cabin, unmoving.