Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  Lucky Columbus. The technology that had produced Terra II had brought plenty of new fears.

  Three shells “up”—toward the ship’s center—a surgeon’s mate named Conboy was pulling the fourth needle out of the arm of Lieutenant Groden. The big navigator should have been out cold, but he was tossing and mumbling, his head thrashing from side to side in its thick wrappings of bandage.

  Tough guy, thought Conboy critically, counting up the ampoules of opiate the blinded officer had taken. They were all tough guys, anyway, from the skipper on down. But the little pipettes brought them down to size and Conboy, though only an inch over five feet tall and the frailest on board, was the man who drove in the pipettes.

  “He’s under, Mr. Broderick,” he reported to the ship’s surgeon, who nodded.

  “Keep it so,” the officer ordered. “If anything comes up, I’ll be in the wardroom.” The captain would be wanting to hear about Groden’s condition, and Broderick wanted very much to hear what the emergency meeting had to say about the condition of Terra II in general.

  This was fine with Conboy, who had a similar concern of his own. As soon as Commander Broderick was out of sight, Conboy took a last look at Groden and, reassured that the navigator would be out of trouble for at least half an hour, hurried to the next cabin to pry what information he could out of the chart room.

  A spaceman-first named Coriell was methodically taking optical measurement on all the stars of second magnitude or brighter. Conboy looked uncomprehendingly at the entries on the charts. “Got anything?” he asked.

  Coriell spat disgustedly. “Got trouble. See that little fellow down there, between the two real bright ones? That might be Canopus. The rough lines check; Mr. Ciccarelli’s going to have to run a spectrum on it, when he gets through with the meeting.”

  Conboy looked sourly at the indicated star. It was brighter than the average, but far less bright than the two that flanked it. “Canopus, huh?” he repeated. “Suppose it is, Coriell. How far from Earth does that put us?”

  Coriell shrugged. “What am I, a navigator? How’s Groden, by the way?”

  “He’ll live. Suppose it is, Coriell?”

  “Well—” Coriell thought for a moment. “Depends. If we’re on the same side of it as Earth, might not be far at all. If we’re on the other side—well, Canopus is six hundred and fifty light-years from Sol.”

  Conboy looked again, longingly. “Well, thanks,” he said, and went back to his patient.

  That was the trouble with hyperspace travel, he thought. You go in at one point, you rocket around until you think it’s time to come out, and there you are. Where is “there”? Why, that’s the surprise that’s in store for you, because you never know until you get there.

  And sometimes not even then.

  On the bridge, everything was Condition Able. Ensign Lorch, booted early out of the meeting because he was due to relieve as Junior O.O.D., signed in and made his tour of the ship. The damage-control parties belowdecks were all through with the necessary repairs, and keeping themselves busy with such cosmetic tasks as fairing down the beads left by the first emergency welds. It was hot down there.

  Lorch conscientiously whistled up the bridge on the speaking tube and ordered them to start the fans and valve enough gas into the expansion locks to make up for the heat rise. The crew quarters were shipshape, even the women’s section; the jet chambers were at standby, with the jet-room hands busy at their usual standby task of thumping the tubes for possible hidden cracks. The working parties were finishing up the job of restowing the cargo that had to be shifted when the meteorite hit.

  Lorch signed in the log, and paused thoughtfully over the spaces for entries of course and position. The helmsman was smartly at attention at the main board, though there was nothing for him to do since all jets were capped. Lorch glanced at him reprovingly, but the helmsman was conspicuously correct in his behavior.

  It made a problem; Lorch detested the thought of writing in “unknown,” but it certainly would be exceeding his authority to call the chart room without permission of Lieutenant Yoel, his shift commander. Not, thought Lorch a trifle rebelliously, that Yoel was likely to object very strongly.

  Yoel was a drafted mathematician, not a ship handler. He knew very nearly all there was to know about geodesic theory and the complex equations that lay behind the “jump” generators and their odd nucleophoretic drive. But he was far from a model officer, so little conscious of the fundamental law of R.H.I.P. that he was capable of presuming to advise the captain on ship handling—the scene in the wardroom had proved that.

  Lorch had just about decided to call down to the chart room when Yoel appeared, signaling that the meeting was over, and Lorch deftly dropped the problem in his superior’s lap. “Ship on Condition Able,” he reported briskly. “No maneuvering during watch; no change in operating status during watch. I have made no entry for course and position, sir. Though you might like to.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Yoel said sourly. “Put down ‘unknown.’ Write it in big letters.”

  “As bad as that, sir?”

  “As bad as that.” Yoel turned his back on his junior and methodically scanned the segment of sky outside the port. It was in constant spinning motion, flashing past the field of vision as Terra II whirled on its axis to give the crew something approaching gravity.

  Lorch cleared his throat. “You got nothing out of Eklund, sir?”

  “Oh, sure. We got the absolute magnitudes and stellar distances of half the stars in the Galaxy.” Yoel turned from the port and shook his head. “We got a short course in Riemannian geometry and an outline of the geodesics of n-dimensional space. But we didn’t get a road map.” He glanced at the thermometer on the wall and said vaguely, “I thought I heard—”

  He stood up straight. “Mister Lorch!” he exploded. “I wasn’t hearing things! You were bleeding air into the expansion locks!”

  “Why, yes, sir. To cool the ship,” Lorch explained. “The welding torches were—”

  “Blast the welding torches, mister! Did it ever occur to you we’re a long way from home?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “But you’re an idiot! But! You valve off air as though we had a whole world of it. Did it ever occur to you that we might be in space a long time? Did you stop to think that we might run out of air?”

  Lorch stared at him wordless. For a frozen moment he thought his superior had gone mad. Spaceships? Spaceships ran from point to point in n-dimensional hyperspace, no point was far from any other—an hour’s travel, perhaps a day’s. Terra II was crammed to the gunwales with air, by the standards of the service. Run out of air?

  “Easy, Sam.” The voice came floating up at Groden out of blackness. Something was wrong, and he was lying down; he grunted and started to get up.

  A hand stopped him. The voice said, “Easy.” He fell back, and felt nothing as he fell. His whole body was numbed, only a faint tingling sensation where it touched what he was lying on. Drugged, he thought. The voice said, “Sam, don’t try to open your eyes. Can you hear me?”

  It was like making a statue speak, but he got the word out, “Yes.”

  “Good. You’ve been hurt. A meteorite hit while we were in hyperspace. Got the Atlas, and something got you right across the eyes—drops of molten metal, by the scars. You’re—you’re blind, Sam. At least for now.”

  “Yes,” he said, after a moment. There was a very special sort of tingling around the eyes.

  “Maybe we can fix you up when we get back to Earth. But we’re lost, Sam.”

  Lost? Groden pondered that. Lost. It didn’t make sense. Of course, if the Atlas was dead—but still, how could they be lost? He strained to hear what the voice was saying; but it had gone on to something else.

  Soothingly. “Now, Sam, this is going to hurt. We’ve got to change the dressings.” Business of tingling, and more tingling of a different sort, but not anything that Groden could call painful. And then, suddenly and surprising
ly, it hurt very much. He tried to speak, but the voice said, “Easy, Sam. It will only take a minute.” Silence and pain. “Now, I want you to tell me if you can see anything at all, Sam. Any light? Even a flicker when I pass the light over your face?”

  Light? Groden stared into the painful blackness. There was nothing, nothing at all, neither light nor flicker nor motion. He said through the lips that were still tingling marble, “No.”

  The voice was disappointed. “All right, Sam. I’ll stop the pain in a minute.” Another voice farther away was saying something about getting stowed away for the jump and the voice that had talked to Groden said impatiently, “Just a minute.”

  Groden licked the marble lips and tried to say, “What did you mean, lost? What’s the matter?” But it came out a blur. The voice said something short and insincerely reassuring, and then there was a special prickling tingle in his arm, and even the voices were dark.

  “Secure,” ordered the captain, and the exec relayed the word through the speaking tubes: “Secure!” One by one the sections reported in on their tubes—All secure.

  The captain had taken the conn himself, and he had the bridge on the jump. Lieutenant Yoel was backing up the helmsman, the navigator Ciccarelli was staring dubiously at the whirling stars, Ensign Lorch was hustling along the light-up detail, as they, with painstaking slowness, adjusted the hollow wicks in the running lamps. The odor of kerosene filled the bridge.

  “All secure, sir,” the exec reported.

  The captain said curtly, “Kill the spin.” The exec gave the order to the jet-room; there was a distant barking rattle, and the bridge complement, like standing wheat in a gusty wind, staggered and caught itself. The spinning stars outside jerked unevenly to a stop as the ship steadied on its axis.

  Lorch cast a quick look around. The chronometers were wound and synchronized; the kerosene lamps burning brightly. He saluted the exec and reported all clear. The exec nodded gravely and passed the word on to the captain—all of a yard away.

  The captain said, “Take us up, Hal.”

  “Yes, sir. Number One circuits open!”

  The watch officer relayed into the speaking tube: “Number One circuits open!” There was a flicker, and abruptly all of the fluorescent lights were out. Only the kerosene lamps illuminated the bridge, or any of the ship.

  “Number Two open,” said the exec.

  “Open Number Two!” Yoel echoed into the tube: From all over the ship the distant drone of motors, fans and refrigerators and boosters and burners deepened and died.

  “Main circuit breakers open.” That was only a precaution. Every electric current in the ship had ceased to flow; but on the off-chance that something, somewhere, still was drawing juice, the mains themselves were opened. Terra I had taught that lesson very well; electronic flow and the hyperspace field did not mix.

  The exec, looking a little gray, said, “Stand by to jump.”

  “Stand by!” Yoel sang into the generator-room tube. The faraway moan of the nucleophoretic generators shook everyone in the ship; even on the bridge, they could feel their subsonic grind and hear the rumble of the diesels that drove them.

  The exec was rapidly scanning his panel of instruments, his lips moving. Everyone on the bridge could see his lips move, and knew what he was doing; making sure he had the readings memorized. Once in hyperspace, it would not be precisely impossible for him to read them, but it would not be reliable.

  At the feeler chart table where the Celestial Atlas should have been standing, Recorder Mate Nancy Eklund stood with her fingers on the pits and ridges that represented the coded course analyses. Like the exec, she was doing her best to memorize them, in the last moments before vision became unreliable and instruments began to lie; it was her last chance to see them as a whole.

  The exec had his eyes on the big chronometer. As the second hand touched straight up, he said, “Jump!”

  Far away, the diesels complained, as the generators clutched in. The ship shimmered and glowed. A high, thin beep sounded from nowhere. Outside the crystal port the universe of stars flickered and whirled into new and fantastic shapes.

  And, half the ship away in the sick bay, Lieutenant Groden screamed shrilly.

  Ensign Lorch tried shutting his eyes, but the flaming pinwheels had left scars of blankness on the visual purple of his retina. He blinked to clear away the darting afterimages. When he opened them again, the images were gone, and lashing serpentines of light peered ferociously in the port. The writhing snakes squirmed away and the planet Earth lay before him, green and inviting.

  It was only an illusion, but it was an illusion the whole bridge saw at once. Lorch looked away and heard the voice of Nancy Eklund, droning her course coordinates to be repeated by the exec.

  Illusion, illusion—only the voices were real. It had to do, Lorch thought fuzzily through the wonder, with light speeds and partial radiation vectors and null-polarity; but the words meant nothing when the reality was before his eyes.

  “C” became infinite and finite at once, creepingly slow and immeasurably fast. Light trapped on the outer surface of the port crept through to them at last, movement appeared fast or slow or reversed, or irrelevant to its real components.

  He could see the captain, stolid and transfixed like a bronze man—but was he? Or was that motionless metal figure really leaping about the bridge, and what Lorch’s eyes beheld only the image of a split second, captured and pinned? He could see the navigator, Ciccarelli, floating dreamily a yard above the floor; that was illusion and symbol, for the little magnets in their shoes made it impossible. But what reality, translated, did it represent?

  Light and electrons. In hyperspace, they lied.

  “Number Six, Number Ten,” droned the exec, echoing the library. “Full reverse.” The voices did not lie; the grosser physical phenomena were immune to the distortion of Riemann’s continuum. What they heard was what was there to hear. What Nancy Eklund felt with her fingers was real. Lorch saw, or seemed to see, that the exec had his finger on the pulse in his own wrist, timing their jets-on periods by his heartbeat.

  The spring-driven chronometer across the bridge was clearly visible and undoubtedly telling the correct time. But the light that carried its message might lie, and the fingers that touched his pulse would not. “Off jets!” droned the exec.

  They hung there. This was what Ciccarelli and the exec and the old man had worked out—lacking the Atlas, lacking Groden—working only from their memories of the course that had brought them into the meteorite’s orbit and the sketchy notes the captain himself had made.

  If they had remembered everything with the eidetic recollection of Eklund or the Atlas; if they had every component correct, and could stay on course for the proper period before halting their flight; they might—might—come out where they had started, and from there easily find their way home.

  There was motion and activity on the bridge while they waited; and Lorch observed that Ciccarelli had kicked loose his shoes to float high enough off the steel floor to touch the hands of the chronometer. If he was floating now, thought Lorch, it was no lie of the light. And was what he had seen a moment before the image of now, received before it was sent?

  They waited, and asked themselves such demented questions, while Terra II described the complex curve that passed for a Riemannian straight line, and the exec thoughtfully counted his heartbeats.

  Then: “Full jets, One, Four, Five Main,” snapped the exec. The ship bucked and shuddered.

  And then it was over, and they came “down” out of hyperspace, down into the normal space-time frame that held their own sun and their own planet. They had backtracked, as near as could be, every component of their course. And they had come out.

  They stared wordlessly at the stars, until the captain said briskly, “Belay that. Take a fix, Mr. Ciccarelli!” And down in the sick-bay, little Conboy, able once more to trust his vision, was rapidly assembling a hypodermic. But as he turned to his patient, he saw that it
wasn’t necessary; Groden, who had been mumbling and crying out throughout the jump into hyperspace, was out cold again.

  Ciccarelli put down his abacus.

  “No position, sir,” he said throatily to the captain. “We’ve checked everything down to third magnitude.”

  The old man’s chin went up a degree of arc, but that was all. “All right,” he said. “Keep going.”

  “We’ll try, sir,” Ciccarelli promised. “I’ll get to work on the faint ones.”

  The captain nodded and walked delicately, almost mincingly in the light spin-gravity, away. Commander Broderick from the surgeon’s office down the corridor replaced him. He was staring after the captain, as he came into the navigation room.

  “If I were the old man,” he said thoughtfully, “I would still be here.”

  “Maybe that’s why you aren’t the old man.” Ciccarelli wearily leaned over his crewman’s shoulder to scan the rough log.

  “Maybe,” Broderick agreed. “Still, what’s he going to do back on the bridge? Go through this same routine again? Make another jump and see where we come out? Might work, I don’t deny it. Given infinite time and infinite fuel and a couple of other infinites, sooner or later we’d come out right spang in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

  “Tell him your troubles,” Ciccarelli said shortly. “How’s Groden?”

  “He’ll live. If any of us do.”

  “That,” said Ciccarelli, picking up the completed sheaf of observations from his crewman, “is a pretty long shot, Doc.”

  The captain, in his own mind, would have agreed with Ciccarelli. He walked soberly, unswervingly, down the galley-ways toward the bridge, ticking off the possibilities with a part of his brain while the big, deep area that might have been labeled “officer’s country” was making careful note of the ship’s condition.

  The fuel and food reserves would outlast the air; and Broderick’s sick bay was an Asiatic mess. Lacking the Atlas’s data and Groden’s skill on the bridge, it would take a miracle to get them home; and Spaceman-Second Kerkam was out of uniform.