The Forever Man (3 page)

“Two…” The voice of Transmission Section seemed to thunder at them along their overwrought nerves. “One…”

“…
Transmit
!”

Abruptly, a wave of disorientation and nausea broke through them, and was gone. They floated in dark and empty interstellar space, with the stars of the Frontier area surrounding them, and a new voice spoke in their ear.

“Identify yourself,” it said. “Identify yourself. This is
Formidable
, command ship for Picket Nine Sector, requesting identification.”

“Wander Section. Five ships.” Jim did not bother to look at his instruments to find the space-floating sphere that was
Formidable
. It was out there somewhere, with twenty ships scattered around, up to five and a half light-years away, but all zeroed in on this reception point where he and the other four ships had emerged. Had Jim been a Laagi Wing or Picket Commander, he would not have transmitted into this area with twenty ships—no, nor with twice that many. “Confirm transmission notice from Earth, Five ship Section for deep probe Laagi territory. Wander Section Leader, speaking.”

“Transmission notice confirmed, Wander Section leader,” crackled back the voice from Picket Nine. “Mission confirmed. You will not deship. Repeat, not deship. Local Frontier area has been scouted for slipover, and data prepared for flash transmission to you. You will accept data and leave immediately. Please key to receive data.”

“Major—” began the voice of Mary, behind him.

“Shut up,” said Jim. He said it casually, without rancor, as if he was speaking to his regular gunner, Leif Molloy. For a moment he had forgotten that he was carrying a passenger instead of a proper gunman. And there was no time to think about it now. “Acknowledge,” he said to Picket Nine. “Transmit data, please.”

He pressed the data key and the light above it sprang into being and glowed for nearly a full second before going dark again. That, thought Jim, was a lot of data—at the high-speed transmission at which such information was pumped into his ship's computing center. That was one of the reasons the new mind-units were evolved out of solid-state physics instead of following up the development of the older, semianimate brains such as the one aboard the ancient
La Chasse Gallerie
. The semianimate brains—living tissue in a nutrient solution—could not accept the modern need for sudden high-speed packing of sixteen hours' worth of data into the space of a second or so.

Also, such living tissue had to be specially protected against high accelerations, needed to be fed and trimmed—and it died on you at the wrong times.

All the time Jim was turning this over with one part of his mind, the other and larger part of his thinking process was driving the gloved fingers of his right hand. These moved over a bank of one hundred and twenty small black buttons, ten across and twelve down, like the stops on a piano-accordion, and with the unthinking speed and skill of the trained operator, he punched them, requesting information out of the body of data just pumped into his ship's computing center, building up from this a picture of the situation, and constructing a pattern of action to be taken as a result.

Evoked by the intricate code set up by combinations of the black buttons under his fingers, the ghost voice of the mind-unit whispered in his ear in a code of words and numbers hardly less intricate.

“…transmit destination area one-eighty Eli Wye, Laagi Sector L 4 at point 12.5, 13.2, 64.5. Proceeding jumps 10 Eli Wye, R inclination 9 degrees Frontier midpoint. Optimum jumps twelve, 03 error correctable on the first shift…”

He worked steadily. The picture began to emerge. It would not be hard getting in. It was never hard to do that. They could reach
La Chasse Gallerie
in twelve phase-shift transmissions or jumps across some hundred and eighty light-years of distance, and locate her in the area where she should then be, within an hour or so. Then they could—theoretically at least—surround her, lock on, and try to improve on the ten light-years of jump it seemed was the practical limit of her pilot's or her control center's computing possibilities.

With modern phase-shift drive, the problem was not the ability to jump any required distance, but the ability to compute correctly, in a reasonable time, the direction and distance in which the move should be made. Phase-shifting was an outgrowth of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of physics that had enunciated the fact that it was possible to establish either the position of an electron, or its speed of movement, but not both at the same time. When a ship activated a phase-shift it did not move in the ordinary sense of that word. Effectively, for a timeless moment its speed became zero and its position universal. It was everywhere and no particular place. Then its position was established at the destination point which had been calculated for it and its speed became relative to its position at that point.

The problem with phase-shifting lay in that calculation. Of necessity, it had to take into account the position and current movement of the ship about to make the jump and the position and movement of the destination area—this in a galaxy where everything was in relative movement, and only a mathematical fiction, the theoretical centerpoint of the galaxy from which all distances were marked and measured, was fixed.

The greater the distance, the more involved and time-consuming the calculations. The law of diminishing returns would set in, and the process broke down of its own weight—it took a lifetime to calculate a single jump to a destination it would not take quite a lifetime to reach by smaller, more easily calculable jumps. Even with today's ships it was necessary calculation time-factor that made it impractical for the human and Laagi races to go around each others' spatial territory. If we were all Raoul Penards, thought Jim grimly, with two hundred and more years of life coming, it'd be different. —The thought chilled him; he did not know why. He put it out of his mind and went back to the calculations.

The picture grew and completed. Re-keyed his voice to the other ships floating in dark space around him.

“Wander Leader to Wander Section,” he said. “Wander Leader to Wander Section. Prepare to shift into Laagi territory. Key for calculations pattern for first of twelve shifts. Acknowledge, all ships of Wander Section.”

The transmit section of his control board glowed briefly as the
Swallow
, the
Fair Maid
, the
Lela
and the
Fourth Helen
pumped into their own computing centers the situation and calculations he had worked out with his. Their voices came back, acknowledging.

“Lock to destination,” said Jim. “Dispersal pattern K at destination. Repeat, pattern K, tight, hundred kilometer interval. Hundred kilometer interval.” He glanced at the sweep second hand of the clock before him on his control board. “Transmit in six seconds. Counting. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Transmit—”

Again, the disorientation, and the nausea.

Strange stars were around them. The mind-unit's lights glowed while it verified their position and adjusted the figures for the precalculated next jump. After a time it whispered in Jim's ear again, and— “Check Ten,” whispered Jim. It was the code for “make next jump immediately.”

“Three. Two. One. Transmit—”

Once again the wrench of dislocation. Nausea. Lights glowed in silence as time passed again— “Check Ten…

Ten more times they shifted, silent tension reflecting the waits for calculations while they floated, only lights in the silent darkness. Then they were there.

In darkness. They were alone amongst the enemy's stars. None of the other ships registered on the instruments.

“Report,” ordered Jim to the universe at large.

“
Swallow
...” came a whisper in his earphones as from somewhere unseen a tight beam touched the outside of the
AndFriend
, carrying its message to his ears. “
Fair Maid
…
Lela
...” A slightly longer pause. “
Fourth Helen
.”

Fourth Helen
was always a laggard. Jim had warned her pilot about it a dozen times. But now was not the hour for reprimands. They were deep in Laagi territory, and the alien alert posts would have already picked up the burst of energy not only from their initial transmit from Picket Nine, which had been precalculated by the com-ship there over the hours since
La Chasse Gallerie
had been discovered—and which consequently had been able to send them with some accuracy half the distance to her—but from the succeeding jumps that had brought them lightyears deep into Laagi territory. Communication between the ships of the Section must be held to a minimum while the aliens were still trying to figure out where the chain of shifts had landed the intruders.

Shortly, since they must know of the approximate position of
La Chasse Gallerie
, and have ships on the way to try to kill her again, they would put two and two together and expect to find the intruders in the same area. But for the moment Wander Section, if it lay low and quiet, could feel it was safely hidden in the immensities of enemy space.

Jim blocked off outside transmission, and spoke over the intercom to Mary.

“All right, Mary,” he said. “What was it you wanted to say Frontier?”

There was a slight pause before the other's voice came back.

“Major—”

“Nevermind that,” said Jim. “You had it right before, let's not go all formal now we're in space. I apologize for the ‘Captain,' earlier. What was it you wanted, Mary?”

“All right, Jim,” said the voice of Mary. “I won't bother about military manners either, then.” There was a slight grimness to the humor in her voice. “I wanted to say I'd like to get in close enough to
La Chasse Gallerie
, so that we can keep a tight-beam connection with her hull at all times and I can record everything Penard says from the time of contact on. It'll be important.”

“Don't worry,” said Jim. “We're spread out and searching on instruments for him now. If Picket Nine did a reasonable job of calculating his progress, we should have him alongside in a few minutes. And I'll put you right up next to him. We're going to surround him with our ships, lock him in the middle of us with magnetics, and try to shift out as a unit, since he doesn't seem capable of anything more than regular acceleration on his own.”

“You say he'll be along?” said Mary. “Why didn't we go directly to him?”

“And make it absolutely clear to the Laagi he's what we're after?” answered Jim. “As long as they don't know for sure, they have to assume we don't even know of his existence. So we stop ahead in his line of travel—lucky he's just plugging straight ahead without trying any dodges—and wait for him. We might even make it lock like an accidental meeting to the Laagi—” Jim smiled inside the privacy of his suit's headpiece without much humor. “—But don't bet on it.”

“Do you think you can lock on to him without too much trouble—”

“Depends,” answered Jim, “on how fast he starts shooting at us when he sees us.”

“Shooting at us?” There was incredulity in Mary's voice. “Why should he—oh.” Her voice dropped. “I see.”

“That's right,” said Jim. “We don't look like any human ship he ever knew about, and he's in territory where he's going to be expecting aliens, not friends.”

“But what're you going to do, to stop him shooting?”

“They dug up the recognition signals of the Sixty Ships Battle,” said Jim. “Just pray he remembers them. And they've given me a voice signal that my blinker lights can translate and flash at him in the code he was working under at the time of the battle. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.”

“It will,” said Mary calmly.

“Oh?” Jim felt harshness in his chest. “What makes you so sure?”

“It's my field, Jim. It's my business to know how the aged react. And one of their common reactions is to forget recent events and remember the events of long ago. Their childhood. High points of their early life—and the Sixty Ships Battle will have been one of those.”

“So you think Penard will remember?”

“I think so,” said Mary.

Jim grinned again, mirthlessly, privately in his suit.

“You'd better be right,” he said. “It's one order of impossibility to pick him up and take him home. It's another to fight off the Laagi while we're doing it. To fight Penard at the same time would be a third order—and that's beyond ordinary mortals.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “You don't like to think of being mortal, do you, Major—Jim?”

Jim opened his mouth to answer and shut it quickly. He sat rigid and sweating in his suit. This—this professional—he thought, who doesn't know what it's like to see men and women you know, die…! The shockingly murderous reaction passed, after a moment, leaving him trembling and spent. There was the sour taste of stomach acids in his mouth.

“Perhaps not,” he said shakily over the intercom. “Perhaps not.”

“Why put it in the future, Jim,” said the voice of the other. “Why not tell me plainly that you don't like people who work in geriatrics?”

“Nothing,” said Jim. “It's nothing to do with me. Let them live as long as they can.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“I don't see the point of it,” said Jim. “You've got the average age up pushing a hundred. What good does it do?” His throat went a little dry. I shouldn't talk so much, he thought. But he went on and said it anyway. “What's the use of it?”

“People are pretty vigorous up through their nineties. If we can push it further... Here's Penard who's far over one hundred—”

“And what's the use of it? Vigorous!” said Jim, the words breaking out of him. “Vigorous enough to totter around and sit in the sunlight! What do you think's the retirement age from Frontier duty?”