The Forever Man (6 page)

“
Swallow
!” said Jim hoarsely. “Are you all right? Acknowledge. Acknowledge!”

But there was no answer from the two figures, and the
Swallow
continued to drift, turning, as if she was sliding off some invisible slope into the endless depths of the universe. Jim shook with a cold, inner sickness like a chill. They're just unconscious, he thought. They have to be just unconscious. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make the jump to here.

“—
Brigadier
!” the voice of Penard was singing with strange softness—

...repondit Pandore Brigadier! Vous avez raison. Brigadier! repondit Pandore Brigadier! Vous avez raison!—

Jim turned slowly to look into the screen showing La Chasse Gallerie. He stared at what he saw. If the old ship had been badly slashed before, she was a ruin now. Nothing could be alive in such a wreck. Nothing. But the voice of Penard sang on.

“No...” muttered Jim out loud, unbelievingly. “Not even a semianimate control center could come through that. It couldn't—” He stirred himself and shifted once more, pushing for speed by settling for any location in the general direction of the Frontier's other side….

“Identify yourself!” crackled a voice suddenly on Jim's ears. “Identify yourself! This is Picket Six, B Sector, Frontier area.”

“Wander Section—” muttered Jim, still staring at the tattered form of
La Chasse Gallerie
. He remembered the original legend about the return of the dead
voyageurs
in their ghost canoes, and a shiver went down his back. “Wander Section, returning from deep probe and rescue mission into Laagi territory. Five ships with two lost and one sent wide and home, separately. Wander Leader, speaking.”

“Wander Leader!” crackled the voice from Picket Six. “Alert has been passed all along the Frontier for you and your ships and orders issued for your return. Congratulations, Wander Section, and welcome back.”

“Thanks, Picket Six,” said Jim wearily. “It's good to be back, safe on this side of the Frontier. We had half the Laagi forces breathing down our—”

A siren howled from the control board, cutting him off. Unbelieving, Jim jerked his head about to stare at the telltale sphere. It was tilted with the white lights of the ships of Picket Six in formation spread out over a half light-year of distance. But, as he watched, green lights began to wink into existence all about his own battered Section. By sixes, by dozens, they were jumping into the area of Picket Six on the human side of the Frontier.

“Formation B! Formation B!” Jim found himself shouting at the
Lela
and the
Swallow
. But he'd forgotten that
Swallow
had fallen away on the other side of the Frontier, and only the
Lela
was here to respond. The
Swallow
, he knew, was still on its long, drowning fall into nothingness. “Cancel that.
Lela
, follow me. Help me carry
La Chasse
—”

His voice was all but drowned out by transmissions from Picket Six.

“Alert General! Alert General! All Pickets, all Sectors!” Picket Six was calling. “Full fleet Laagi attack. Three Wings enemy forces already in this area. We are overmatched! Repeat. We are overmatched! Alert General—”

At maximum normal acceleration,
AndFriend
and
Lela
, with
La Chasse Gallerie
caught in a magnetic grip between them, were running from the enemy ships, while Jim computed frantically for a jump to any safe area, his fingers dancing on the black buttons.

“Alert General! All ships Picket Six hold until relieved. All ships hold! Under fire here at Picket Six. We are under—” The voice of Picket Six went dead. There was a moment's silence and then a new voice broke in.

“—This is Picket Five. Acknowledge, Picket Six. Acknowledge!” Another moment of silence, then the new voice went on. “All ships Picket Six. This is Picket Five taking over. Picket Five taking over. Our ships are on the way to you now, and the ships from other Sectors. Hold until relieved! Hold until relieved—”

Jim fought the black buttons, too busy even to swear.

“Wander Section! Wander Section!” shouted the voice of Picket Five. “Acknowledge!”

“Wander Section. Acknowledging!” grunted Jim.

“Wander Section! Jump for home. Wander Leader, key for data. Key to receive data, and Check Ten. Check Ten.”

“Acknowledge!” snapped Jim, dropping his own slow computing. He keyed for data, saw the data light flash and knew he had received into his computing center the information for the jump back to Earth. “Hang on Lela!” he shouted. “Here we go—”

He punched for jump.

Disorientation. Nausea. And…

Peace.

AndFriend
lay without moving under the landing lights of a concrete pad in the open, under the nighttime sky and the stars Earth. The daylight hours had passed while Wander Section had been gone. Next to
AndFriend
lay the dark, torn shape of
La Chasse Gallerie
, and beyond the ancient ship lay
Lela
. A hundred light-years away the Frontier battle would still be raging. Laagi and men were out there dying, and they would go on dying until the Laagi realized that Wander Section had finally made good its escape. Then the Laagi ships would withdraw from an assault against a Frontier line that well over a hundred years of fighting had taught was permanently unbreachable by either side. But how many, thought Jim with a dry and bitter soul, would die before the withdrawal was made?

He punched the button to open the port of
AndFriend
and got clumsily to his feet in the bulky suit. During the hours just past, he had forgotten he was wearing it. Now, it was like being swaddled in a mattress. He was as thoroughly soaked with sweat as if he had been in swimming with his clothes on.

There was no sound coming from
La Chasse Gallerie
. Had the voice of Raoul Penard finally been silenced? Sodden with weariness, Jim could not summon up the energy even to wonder about it. He turned clumsily around and stumbled back through the ship four steps and out the open port, vaguely hearing Mary Gallegher rising and following behind him.

He stumped heavy-footed across the concrete toward the lights of the Receiving Section, lifting like an ocean liner out of a sea of night. It seemed to him that he was a long time reaching the door of the Section, but he kept on stolidly, and at last he passed through and into a desuiting room. Then attendants were helping him off with his suit.

In a sort of dream he stripped off his soaked clothing and showered, and put on a fresh jumper suit. The cloth felt strange and harsh against his arms and legs as if his body, as well as what was inside him, had been rubbed raw by what he had just been through. He walked heavily on into the debriefing room, and dropped heavily into one of the lounge chairs.

A debriefing officer came up to him and sat down in a chair opposite, turning on the little black recorder pickup he wore at his belt. The debriefing officer began asking questions in the safe, quiet monotone that had been found least likely to trigger off emotional outbursts in the returned pilots. Jim answered slowly, too drained for emotion.

“…No,” he said at last. “I didn't see Swallow again. She didn't acknowledge when I called for Formation B, and I had to go on without her. No, she never answered after we reached the Frontier.”

“Thank you, Major.” The debriefing officer got to his feet, clicking off his recorder pickup, and went off. An enlisted man came around with a tray of glasses half-filled with brown whisky. He offered it first to the pilot and the gunner of the
Lela
, who were standing together on the other side of the room with a debriefing officer. The two men took their glasses absentmindedly and drank from them without reaction, as if the straight liquor was water. The enlisted man brought his tray over to where Jim sat.

Jim shook his head. The enlisted man hesitated.

“You're supposed to drink it, sir,” he said. “Surgeon's orders.”

Jim shook his head again. The enlisted man went away. A moment later he came back followed by a major with the caduceus of the Medical Corps on his jacket lapel.

“Here, Major,” he said to Jim, taking a glass from the tray and holding it out to Jim. “Down the hatch.”

Jim shook his head, rolling the back of it against the top of the chair he sat in.

“It's no good,” he said. “It doesn't do any good.”

The Medical Corps major put the glass back on the tray and leaned forward. He put his thumb gently under Jim's right eye and lifted the lid with his forefinger. He looked for a second, then let go and turned to the enlisted man.

“That's all right,” he said. “You can go on.”

The enlisted man took his tray of glasses away. The doctor reached into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket and took out a small silver tube with a button on its side. He rolled up Jim's right sleeve, put the end of the tube against it and pressed the button.

Jim felt what seemed like a cooling spray against the skin of his arm. And something woke in him after all.

“What're you doing?” he shouted, struggling to his feet. “You can't knock me out now! I've got two ships not in yet. The
Fair Maid
and the
Swallow
—” The room began to tilt around him. “You can't—” His tongue thickened into unintelligibility. The room swung grandly around him and he felt the medical major's arms catching him. And unconsciousness closed upon him like a trap of darkness.

He slept, evidently for a long time, and when he woke he was not in the bed of his own quarters but in the bed of a hospital room. Nor did they let him leave it for the better part of a week. He had had time, lying there in the peaceful, uneventful hospital bed, to come to an understanding with himself. When he got out he went looking for Mary Gallegher.

He located the geriatrics woman finally on the secret site where
La Chasse Gallerie
was being probed and examined by the Geriatrics Bureau. Mary was at work with the crew that was doing this, and for some little time word could not be gotten to her; and without her authorization, Jim could not be let in to see her.

Jim waited patiently in a shiny, unlit lounge until a young man came to guide him into the interior of a vast building where
La Chasse Gallerie
lay dwarfed by her surroundings and surrounded by complicated items of equipment. It was apparently a break period for most of the people working on the old ship, for only one or two figures were to be seen doing things with this equipment outside the ship. The young man shouted in through the open port of
La Chasse Gallerie
, and left. Mary came out and shook hands with Jim.

There were dark circles under Mary's eyes and she seemed thinner under the loose shirt and slacks she wore.

“Sorry to hear about
Swallow
,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jim, a little bleakly. “They think she must have drifted back farther into Laagi territory. The unmanned probes couldn't locate her, and the Laagi may have taken her in.”

Mary looked steadily at him.

“That's what chews on you, isn't it?” she said. “Not knowing if her pilot and gunner were dead or not. If they were, then there's nothing to think about. But if they weren't… we never know what becomes of them—”

He shook his head at her in a silent plea and she broke off.

“
Fair Maid
made it in, safely,” he said hoarsely. “Anyway, it wasn't about the Section. I came to see you.”

“No.” Mary looked at him with a gentleness he had not seen in her before. “It was about Raoul Penard you came, wasn't it?”

“I couldn't find out anything. Is it—is he alive?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “He's alive.”

“Can you get through to him?—What came to me,” said Jim quickly, “while I was resting up in the hospital, was that I finally began to understand the reason behind all his poetry-quoting, and such. It struck me he must have started all that deliberately. To remind himself of where he was trying to get back to. To make it sharp and clear in his mind so he couldn't forget it.”

“Yes,” said Mary nodding. “You're right. He wanted insurance against quitting, against giving up.”

“I thought so. You were right.” Jim grinned with a slight grimness at her. “I'd been trying to quit myself. Go find something that could quit me. You were right all the way down the line. I'm a dragon-slayer. I was born that way, I'm stuck with it and I can't change it. I want to go through the Laagi, or around them and end this damn murderous stalemate. But I can't live long enough. None of us can. And so I wanted to give up.”

“And you don't now?”

“No,” said Jim slowly. “It's still no use, but I'm going to keep hoping—for a miracle.”

“Miracles are a matter of time,” said Mary. “To make yourself a millionaire in two minutes is just about impossible. To make it in two hundred years is practically a certainty. That's what people like me are after. If we could all live as long as Penard, all sorts of things could be possible.”

“And he's alive!” said Jim, shaking his head slowly. “He's really alive! I didn't even want to believe it, it was so farfetched.” Jim broke off. “Is he—”

“Sane? No,” said Mary. “And I don't think we'll ever be able to make him so. But maybe I'm wrong. As I say, with time, most near-impossibilities become practicabilities.” She stepped back from the open port of
La Chasse Gallerie
, and gestured to the interior. “Want to come in?”

Jim hesitated.

“I don't have a secret clearance for this project—” he began.

“Don't worry about it,” interrupted Mary. “That's just to keep the news people off our necks until we decide how to handle this. Come on.”

She led the way inside. Jim followed her. Within, the ancient metal corridor leading to the pilot's compartment seemed swept clean and dusted shiny, like some exhibit in a museum. The interior had been hung with magnetic lights, but the gaps and tears made by Laagi weapons let almost as much light in. Pilot's compartment was a shambles that had been tidied and cleaned. The instruments and control panel were all but obliterated and the pilot's comchair half gone. A black box stood in the center of the floor, an incongruous piece of modern equipment, connected by a thick, gray cable to a bulkhead behind it.