The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (4 page)

“By gravitons—Where have you been all your life?”

“Learning,” said Tony, “good manners.”

She flushed. Her fingers stopped drumming. “If you realized you were interrupting important work, you’d know why I forget my manners. We were trying to finish this up so daddy could get back to his farewell dinner at the university. I guess the professors guessed right when they sent his—Well, why should I explain that to you?”

“I’m sure,” said Tony, “I don’t know.”

“Well, go on,” she said coldly.

Tony lighted a cigarette, offered her one with an apology. She shook her head impatiently.

Tony eyed her through the haze of smoke. “Back there on 1007 I saw a skeleton with a ring on its finger.”

She seemed nonplused. “Well. Was it a pretty ring?”

Tony said grimly, “The point is, Braker never got near that skeleton after I saw it, but that same ring is now on his finger.”

Startlement showed in her eyes. “That doesn’t sound very plausible, lieutenant!”

“No, of course it doesn’t. Because then the same ring is in two different places at the same time”

“And of course,” she nodded, “that would be impossible. Go on. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but it certainly is interesting.”

“Impossible?” said Tony. “Except that it happens to be the truth. I’m not explaining it away, Miss Overland, if that’s your idea. Here’s something else. The skeleton is a human skeleton, but it existed before the human race existed.”

She shoved herself away from her indolent position. “You must be crazy.”

Tony said nothing.

“How did you know?” she said sharply.

“I
know
. Now
you
explain the H-H drive, if you will.”

“I will!” She said: “Gravitons are the ultimate particle of matter. There are 1846 in a proton, one in an electron, which is the reason why a proton is 1846 times as heavy as an electron.

“Now you can give me a cigarette, lieutenant. I’m curious about this thing, and if I can’t get to the bottom of it, my father certainly will.”

After a while, she blew out smoke nervously.

She continued, speaking rapidly: “A Wittenberg disrupter tears atoms apart. The free electrons are shunted off into accumulators, where we get power for lighting, cooking, heating and so forth. The protons go into the proton analyzer, where the gravitons are ripped out of them and stored in a special type of spherical field. When we want to move the ship, the gravitons are released. They spread through the ship and everything in the ship.

“The natural place for a graviton is in a proton. The gravitons rush for the protons – which are already saturated with 1846 gravitons. Gravitons are unable to remain free in three-dimensional space. They escape along the time line, into the past. The reaction contracts the atoms of the ship and everything in the ship, and shoves it forward along the opposite space-time line – forward into the future and forward in space. In the apparent space of a second, therefore, the ship can travel thousands of miles, with no acceleration effects.

“Now, there you have it, lieutenant. Do what you can with it.”

Tony said, “What would happen if the gravitons were forced into the future rather than the past?”

“Lieutenant, I would have been surprised if you hadn’t said that! Theoretically, it’s an impossibility. Anybody who knows gravitons would say so. But if Braker is wearing a ring that a skeleton older than the human race is also wearing—
Ugh!
”

She put her hands to her temples in genuine distaste. “We’ll have to see my father,” she said wearily. “He’ll be the one to find out whether or not you make this up as you go along.”

Erle Masters looked from Tony to Laurette.

“You believe this bilge he’s been handing you?”

“I’m not interested in what you think, Erle. But I am in what you do, Daddy.”

Overland looked uneasy, his stubbled jaws barely moving over a wad of rough-cut.

“It does sound like . . . er . . . bilge,” he muttered. “If you weren’t an IPF man, I’d think you were slightly off-center. But – one thing, young man. How did you know the skeleton was older than the human race?”

“I said it existed
before
the human race.”

“Is there any difference?”

“I think there is – somehow.”

“Well,” said Overland patiently, “how do you know it?”

Tony hesitated. “I don’t really know. I was standing at the mouth of the cave, and something – or someone – told me.”

“
Someone!
” Masters blasted the word out incredulously.

“I don’t know!” said Tony. “All I know is what I’m telling you. It couldn’t have been supernatural – could it?”

Overland said quickly, “Don’t let it upset you, son. Of course it wasn’t supernatural. There’s a rational explanation somewhere, I guess. But it’s going to be hard to come by.”

He nodded his head abstractedly, and kept on nodding it like a marionette. Then he smiled peculiarly.

“I’m old now, son – you know? And I’ve seen a lot. I don’t disbelieve anything. There’s only one logical step for a scientist to take now, and that’s to go back and take a look at that skeleton.”

Masters’ breath sounded. “You can’t do that!”

“But we’re going to. And remember that I employ
you
, because Laurette asked me to. Now turn this ship back to 1007. This might be more important than patching up a torn-up world at that.” He chuckled.

Laurette shook her blond head. “You know,” she said musingly, “this might be the very thing we
shouldn’t
do, going back like this. On the other hand, if we went on our way,
that
might be the thing we shouldn’t do.”

Masters muttered, “You’re talking nonsense, Laurette.”

He ostentatiously grabbed her bare arm, and led her from the room after her father, throwing Tony a significant glance as he passed.

Tony expelled a long breath. Then, smiling twistedly, he went back to the lounge, to wait – for what? His stomach contracted again with revulsion – or was it a premonition?

Braker came sharply to his feet. “What’s up, Crow?”

“Let me see that ring again,” Tony said. After a minute he raised his eyes absently. “It’s the same ring,” he muttered.

“I wish to hell,” Braker exploded, “I knew what you were talking about!”

Tony looked at him obliquely, and said under his breath, “Maybe it’s better you don’t.”

He sat down and lighted a cigarette. Braker swore, and finally wandered to the window. Tony knew what he was thinking: of Earth; of the cities that teemed; of the vast stretches of open space between the planets. Such would be his thoughts. Braker, who loved life and freedom.

Braker, who wore a ring—

Then the constellations showing through the port abruptly changed pattern.

Braker leaped back, eyes bulging. “What the—”

Yates, sitting sullenly in the corner, came alertly to his feet. Braker mutely pointed at the stars.

“I could have sworn,” he said thickly.

Tony came to his feet. He had seen the change. But his thoughts flowed evenly, coldly, a smile frozen on his lips.

“You saw right, Braker,” he said coldly, then managed to grab the guide rail as the ship bucked. Braker and Yates sailed across the room, faces ludicrous with surprise. The ship turned the other way. The heavens spun, the stars blurring. Something else Tony saw besides blurred stars: a dull-gray, monstrous landscape, a horizon cut with mountains, a bright, small sun fringing tumbled clouds with reddish, ominous silver. Then stars again, rushing past the port, simmering through an atmosphere—

Blackness crushed its way through Tony Crow’s consciousness, occluding it until, finally, his last coherent thought had gone. Yet he seemed to know what had happened. There was a skeleton in a cave on an asteroid – millions of years from now. And the ship had struck.

Tony moved, opened his eyes. The lights were out, but a pale shaft of radiance was streaming through the still-intact port. Sounds insinuated themselves into his consciousness. The wet drip of rain, the low murmur of spasmodic wind, a guttural
kutakikchkut
that drifted eerily, insistently, down the wind.

Tony slowly levered himself to his feet. He was lying atop Braker. The man was breathing heavily, a shallow gash on his forehead. Involuntarily, Tony’s eyes dropped to the ring. It gleamed – a wicked eye staring up at him. He wrenched his eyes away.

Yates was stirring, mumbling to himself. His eyes snapped open, stared at Tony.

“What happened?” he said thickly. He reeled to his feet. “
Phew!
”

Tony smiled through the gloom. “Take care of Braker,” he said, and turned to the door, which was warped off its hinges. He loped down the corridor to the control room, slowing down on the lightless lower deck ramp. He felt his way into the control room. He stumbled around until his foot touched a body. He stooped, felt a soft, bare arm. In sudden, stifling panic, he scooped Laurette’s feebly breathing body into his arms. She might have been lead, as his feet seemed made of lead. He forced himself up to the upper corridor, kicked open the door of her father’s room, placed her gently on the bed. There was light here, probably that of a moon. He scanned her pale face anxiously, rubbing her arms toward the heart. Blood came to her cheeks. She gasped, rolled over. Her eyes opened.

“Lieutenant,” she muttered.

“You all right?”

Tony helped her to her feet.

“Thanks, lieutenant. I’ll do.” She tensed. “What about my father?”

“I’ll bring him up,” said Tony.

Five minutes later, Overland was stretched on the bed, pain in his open eyes. Three ribs were broken. Erle Masters hovered at the foot of the bed, dabbing at one side of his face with a reddened handkerchief, a dazed, scared look in his eyes. Tony knew what he was scared of, but even Tony wasn’t playing with that thought now.

He found a large roll of adhesive in the ship’s medicine closet. He taped Overland’s chest. The breaks were simple fractures. In time, they would do a fair job of knitting. But Overland would have to stay on his back.

Masters met Tony’s eyes reluctantly.

“We’ll have to get pressure suits and take a look outside.”

Tony shrugged. “We won’t need pressure suits. We’re already breathing outside air, and living under this planet’s atmospheric pressure. The bulkheads must be stowed in some place.”

Overland’s deep voice sounded, slowly. “I think we’ve got an idea where we are, Erle. You can feel the drag of this planet – a full-size planet, too. Maybe one and a half gravities. I can feel it pulling on my ribs.” A bleak expression settled on his stubbled face. He looked at Tony humorlessly. “Maybe I’m that skeleton, son.”

Tony caught his breath. “Nonsense. Johnny Braker’s wearing the ring. If anybody’s that skeleton, he is.
Not
that I wish him any bad luck, of course.” He nodded once, significantly, then turned toward the door with a gesture at Masters. Masters, plainly resenting the soundless command, hesitated, until Laurette made an impatient motion at him.

They prowled through the gloomy corridor toward the small engine room, pushed the door open. The overpowering odor of ozone and burning rubber flung itself at them.

Masters uttered an expressive curse as Tony played a beam over what was left of the reversed Fitz-Gerald Contraction machinery. His nails clicked startlingly loud in the heavy silence.

“Well, that’s that,” he muttered.

“What d’you mean – that’s that?” Tony’s eyes bored at him through the darkness.

“I mean that we’re stuck here, millions of years ago.” He laughed harshly, unsteadily.

Tony said without emotion, “Cut it out. Hasn’t this ship got auxiliary rocket blasts?”

“Naturally. But this is a one and a half gravity planet. Anyway, the auxiliary jets won’t be in such good condition after a fifty-foot drop.”

“Then we’ll fix ’em,” said Tony sharply. He added, “What makes you so sure it’s millions of years ago, Masters?”

Masters leaned back against the door jamb, face as cold and hard as stone.

“Don’t make me bow to you any more than I have to, lieutenant,” he said ominously. “I didn’t believe your story before, but I do now. You predicted this crack-up – it had to happen. So I’m ready to concede it’s millions of years ago; mainly because there wasn’t any one and a half gravity planet within hundreds of millions of miles of the asteroid belt. But there
used
to be one.”

Tony said, lips barely moving, “Yes?”

“There used to be one –
before the asteroids
.”

Tony smiled twistedly. “I’m glad you realize that.”

He turned and went for the air lock, but, since the entire system of electric transmission had gone wrong somewhere, he abandoned it and followed a draft of wet air. He jerked open the door of a small storage bin, and crawled through. There was a hole here, that had thrust boxes of canned goods haphazardly to one side. Beyond was the open night.

Tony crawled out, stood in the lee of the ship, occasional stinging drops of rain lashing at their faces. Wind soughed across a rocky plain. A low roar heralded a nearby, swollen stream. A low
kutakikchkut
monotonously beat against the night, night-brooding bird, Tony guessed, nested in the heavy growth flanking a cliff that cut a triangular section from a heavily clouded sky. Light from a probably moon broke dimly through clouds on the leftward horizon.