Upon a Sea of Stars (2 page)

Chapter 3

AFTER SONYA HAD LEFT
he pottered around his office for a while, doing jobs that could have been done faster and better by Miss Willoughby. When his secretary returned from her visit to the Stores Superintendent and, with a display of efficiency, tried to take the work from his hands, he dismissed her for the day. Finally, realizing that he was accomplishing nothing of any value, he put the papers back in their files and, having drawn himself a cup of coffee from the automatic dispenser, sat down to smoke his battered pipe.

He felt sorry for Sonya Verrill. He knew much of her past history—more, in fact, than she had told him. He was sorry for her, and yet he envied her. She had been given fresh hope, a new goal towards which to strive. Whether or not she met with success was not of real importance. If she failed, there would be other goals, and still others. As an officer of the Survey Service Intelligence Branch she was given opportunities for travel denied even to the majority of professional spacemen and women. Grimes smiled at the corniness of the thought and muttered, “Someday her prince will come . . .”

Yes, he envied her. She, even within the framework of regulations that governed her Service, had far more freedom of movement than he had. He strongly suspected that she was in a position to be able to select her own assignments.
And I,
he thought,
am marooned for the rest of my natural—or, if I so desire, unnatural—life on this dead-end world at the bitter end of sweet damn’ all . . .

Come off it, Grimes,
he told himself.
Come off it, Grimes, Commodore Grimes, Rim Worlds Naval Reserve. Don’t be so bloody sorry for yourself. You’ve climbed to the top of your own private tree.

Even so . . .

He finished his coffee, poured himself another cup. He thought,
I should have offered to put her up during her stay on Lorn.
And then he was glad that he had not made the offer. She was used to luxury—luxury on a government expense account, but luxury nonetheless—and surely would have been appalled by his messy widower’s establishment. His children were grown up, and had their own homes and, in any case, incurable planetlubbers that they were, would have little in common with one who, after all, was a professional adventuress.

So . . .

So I can enjoy adventures—although not in the same sense—vicariously,
he thought.
I’ll do what I can for Sonya, and hope to receive in return a firsthand account of all that happens to her. She said that she would want a ship—well, she shall have
Faraway Quest.
It’s time that the poor old girl was taken for another gallop. And she’ll be wanting a crew. I’ll put out the call for volunteers before I get definite word that the expedition has been approved—just quietly, there’s no need to get the politicians’ backs up. Rimworlders, she specified. Rimworlders born and bred. I can see why. People raised on the Rim are far more likely to have counterparts in the alternative Universes than those of us who have, like myself, drifted out here, driven out here by the winds of chance. I shouldn’t have much trouble in raising a team of officers, but a Master will be the problem. Practically all our Captains are refugees from the big, Earth-based companies, or from the Survey Service.

But there was no urgency, he told himself.

He drew yet another cup of coffee and, carrying it, walked to the wide window. Night had fallen and the sky had cleared and, work having ceased for the day, there was no dazzle of lights from the spaceport to rob the vision of keenness.

Overhead in the blackness was one bright star, the Faraway sun, and beyond it lay the faint, far nebulosities. Low in the east the Lens was rising, the upper limb only visible, a parabola of misty light. Grimes looked away from it to the zenith, to the dark immensities through which Calver in his
Outsider
was falling, perhaps never to return. And soon Sonya Verrill would be falling—but would she? could she?—through and across even stranger, even more fantastic gulfs, of Time as well as of Space.

Grimes shivered. Suddenly he felt old and alone, although he loathed himself for his self pity.

He left his office, fell down the dropshaft (what irony!) to the ground floor, got out his monocar from the executives’ garage and drove home.

Home was a large house on the outskirts of Port Forlorn. Home was a villa, and well kept—the maintenance service to which Grimes subscribed was highly efficient—but sadly lacking in the touches of individuality, or imagination, that only a woman can supply.

The commodore drove his car into his garage and, after having shut off the engine, entered the house proper directly from the outbuilding. He did not, as he usually did, linger for a few minutes in the conservatory that housed his collection of exotic plants from a century of worlds. He went straight to his lounge, where he helped himself to a strong whisky from the bar. Then he sat down before his telephone console and, with his free hand, punched the number for library service.

The screen lit up, and in it appeared the head and shoulders of a girl who contrived to look both efficient and beautiful. Grimes smiled, as he always did, at the old-fashioned horn-rimmed spectacles that, some genius had decided, made the humanoid robot look like a real human librarian. A melodious contralto asked, “May I be of service, sir?”

“You may, my dear,” answered Grimes. (A little subtle—or not so subtle—flattery worked wonders with often temperamental robots.) “I’d like whatever available data you have on Rim Ghosts.”

“Visual sir, or
viva voce?
”

“
Viva voce
, please.” (Even this tin blonde, with her phony femininity, was better than no woman at all in the house.)

“Condensed or detailed, sir?”

“Condensed, please. I can always ask you to elaborate as and if necessary.”

“Very good, sir. The phenomenon of the Rim Ghosts occurs, as the name implies, only on the Rim. Sightings are not confined to single individuals, so therefore cannot be assumed to be subjective in nature. A pattern has been established regarding these sightings. One member of a party of people will see himself, and be seen by his companions, in surroundings and company differing, sometimes only subtly, from those of actuality. Cases have been known in which an entire group of people has seen its Rim Ghost counterpart.

“For a while it was thought that the apparitions were prophetic in character, and the orthodox explanation was that of precognition. With the collection of a substantial body of data, however, it became obvious that prophetic visions comprised only about 30% of the total. Another 30% seemed to be recapitulations of past events, 20% had a definite here-and-now flavor, while the remaining 20% depicted situations that, in our society, can never arise.

“It was in the year 313 A.G. that Dr. Foulsham, of the Terran Rhine Institute, advanced his Alternative Universe Theory. This, of course, was no more than the reformulation of the idea played around with for centuries by speculative thinkers and writers, that of an infinitude of almost parallel Time Tracks, the so-called Worlds of If. According to Dr. Foulsham, on Earth and on the worlds that have been colonized for many generations, the barriers between the individual tracks are . . .” The robot paused.

“Go on, my dear,” encouraged Grimes. “This is only a condensation. You needn’t bother trying to break down fancy scientific terminology.”

“Thank you, sir. The barriers, as I was trying to say in suitable language, are both high and thick, so that a break-through is almost impossible. But on the very rim of the expanding Galaxy these barriers are . . . tenuous, so that very often a fortuitous breakthrough does occur.

“An example of such a breakthrough, but visual only, was that achieved by Captain Derek Calver and his shipmates when he was serving as Chief Officer of the freighter
Lorn Lady
. The ship was proceeding through deep space, under Mannschenn Drive, when another vessel was sighted close alongside. In the control room of the other spacecraft Calver saw himself—but he was wearing Master’s uniform—and most of the others who were with him in
Lorn Lady
’s control compartment. He was able, too, to make out the name of the strange ship. It was the
Outsider
. Some months later, having become the recipient of a handsome salvage award, Calver and his shipmates were able to buy a secondhand ship and to operate as a small tramp shipping company. They christened her the
Outsider
. This, then, was obviously one of the precognitive apparitions, and can be explained by the assumption that the Alternative Universe in which Calver’s career runs almost parallel to his career in
this
Universe possesses a slightly different time scale.

“Physical breakthrough was inadvertently achieved by Captain Ralph Listowel in his experimental light jammer
Aeriel
. Various members of his crew unwisely attempted to ‘break the light barrier’ and, when the ship was proceeding at a velocity only fractionally less than that of light, discharged a jury-rigged rocket hoping thereby to outrun the photon gale. They did not, of course, and
Aeriel
’s crew became Rim Ghosts themselves, experiencing life in a succession of utterly strange cultures before, more by luck than judgment, returning to their own. The unexpected result of this ill-advised experiment was the developing of a method whereby atomic signs may be reversed, thereby making possible intercourse between our planets and the anti-matter worlds.

“There is no doubt that the Rim Ghost phenomenon is one deserving of thorough investigation, but with the breakaway of the Rim Worlds from the Federation it has not been possible to maintain full contact with either the Survey Service or the Rhine Institute, which bodies, working in conjunction, would be eminently capable of carrying out the necessary research . . .”

“You’re out of date, duckie,” chuckled Grimes.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“You’re out of date. But don’t let it worry you; it’s not your fault. It’s we poor, inefficient humans who’re to blame, for failing to feed new data into your memory tanks.”

“And may I ask, sir, the nature of the new data?”

“Just stick around,” said Grimes, “and some day, soon, I may be able to pass it on to you.”

If Sonya comes back to tell me,
he thought, and his odd mood of elevation evaporated.