A Voyage To Dari

by Ian Wallace

  Nobody responded. This did not necessarily mean that anybody understood.

  “Very well, then. Each of you is now to return immediately to his quarters and proceed to his lifeboat at the signal. Board your boat immediately. In the event that your command crew does not appear in seven minutes from the signal, the ranking crewman among you, or otherwise the passenger that your group may select, is to assume command, read the instructions on the metal plaque on the control panel, and execute them immediately. Warning: if you have to make a group choice of a commanding passenger, do it fast; one minute may be too much time.

  “Dismissed.”

  H-Hour minus 55½ hours:

  CROYD AND I RETURNED WITH DISPATCH to our cabins, which were adjacent. Our cabin numbers were, respectively, 1-1 and 1-2. Same lifeboat: Number 1. (Gorsky and Czerny possessed the highest-numbered lifeboat, by tradition of the sea.) Entering my cabin (where Roland was not), we reviewed the procedure, and Croyd gave me a rough indication of the sort of device that a lifeboat on the Castel was.

  Dismal honking polluted my cabin; we heard faint overtones from neighboring places. I looked at Croyd. “Let’s go,” he said, arising; “they are simulating a situation where the PA system is out.” He palmed the door; it vanished, allowing us to enter the corridor. Arrows on walls directed us down a side corridor to our boat, which reposed in a hull bulge. We were the first to arrive. We stepped inside, stooping.

  The craft was elliptically shaped, some six meters long and three in beam; there were twelve comfortable paired bucket seats along the walls, tiltable for sleeping, and three more seats at the control panel. We seated ourselves just behind the control seats and waited; Croyd checked his cutichron.

  Others entered. Presently we had been joined by six civilians, four men and two women; all but one were his staff members or mine. They sat, buckled up, and waited. Croyd remarked, “Six minutes since honking, and no command crew yet. Maybe they’re going to drill us on that.”

  I looked around at the other six aboard. “In case they do not show up,” I suggested, “I suppose nobody objects for Mr. Croyd to be in command?” It brought polite laughter. I patted Croyd’s shoulder. ‘Take over, Governor.”

  Seven minutes were up: no command crew. Croyd moved to the command seat and bent forward to read the instructions on the plaque. They were simple enough:

  Activate ready switch at upper right.

  Activate go switch just below Ready switch. Life-craft will immediately depart hull of mother ship and will proceed radially outbound (acc. 100 G, shielded apparent acc. 1 G), pausing at 100 kilometers out for further orders during freefall. Protective screens will prevent random collisions.

  Activate commandcom switch just below Go switch. The computer will then give you oral instructions and ask for verbal orders.

  ACT PROMPTLY—SECONDS MAY COUNT!

  ACT EVEN IN A DRILL—IT MAY NOT BE A DRILL!

  “Seat belts!” Croyd snapped, activating the Ready switch. Seven voices responded: “On.” The bulkhead slid shut, and a faint power hum pervaded the cabin.

  “Go!” said Croyd, activating that.

  The lifeboat moved gently out to starboard, paused, rotated about ninety degrees; then a full apparent G of forward thrust pushed our heads back into the headrests. We experienced this thrust for precisely the number of seconds necessary to travel one hundred kilometers at 100-G acceleration; whereupon thrust ceased and we floated weightless.

  I was the first to speak. I said, “I’ll be damned.”

  The others, disturbed but self-disciplined, were not talking; they were craning forward, attentive to their leaders.

  Croyd was frowning. “I’m confused,” he confessed. “I didn’t think anything would happen. I thought they just wanted us to go through a dry run without command crew. But unless there is an unusually elaborate simulation going on, we are now in space a hundred kilometers out from our ship and coasting away at high-velocity. Step Three seems indicated . . . ”

  He activated the Commandcom switch.

  A pleasantly modulated contralto languorously flowed into the cabin. “Hello, everybody, I am Commandcom, your navigator and stewardess. Since you have activated me, I assume that there has been an emergency and that we are away from the Castel Jaloux. Be advised that you have two practical alternatives: either to have me contact the Castel now and learn what the situation is, or to have me accelerate us away from the Castel and try to communicate as we move. Since there might well be an explosion or implosion centered on the Castel and about to involve us, I would suggest—”

  “The second alternative,” Croyd interrupted. “What is your maximum acceleration?”

  “Two hundred G.”

  “That’s an apparent two G. Everybody here can handle five G. So accelerate radially at two hundred G. Activate.”

  “Done!” lilted the contralto, and the uncomfortably high thrust began. Then Commandcom inquired, “Any course to set?”

  “M 1531 is our destination. What do you think?”

  Pause. Then: “Messier 1531 is an unusual destination for a lifecraft. The voyage will take me more than two and a half billion years, roundly speaking. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “While you think, try to raise the Castel Jaloux.”

  “Yes, sir. One moment . . . ”

  There was some static; then Commandcom snapped, “My com unit is out. I must locate trouble and repair. Maybe five minutes, maybe an hour . . ..”

  Croyd turned to face his crew. “Excuse me a moment I’ll be right back—I’m going for help.” He vanished.

  Consternated silence was broken by a man’s voice: “And he didn’t even have a parachute!” It brought laughter, breaking tension; in hard space, joy you should take in a chute!

  When in an instant Croyd appeared on the Castel Jaloux bridge, Gorsky was not there. He sent sensors through the intercom, found her angry in Engineering Surveillance, and communicated with her mind directly.

  Unstartled, she mind-queried; Are you here, or in Djinn, or where?

  I teleported from the lifeboat. What’s up?

  There was audible throat clearing, and then the Gorsky thought came with difficulty: Command crews were purposely withheld from all lifecraft to test passenger readiness to follow procedure all the way. All lifecraft had been deactivated. Except, somehow, yours. If you follow me.

  Son-of-a-bitch!

  Exactly . . . only I don’t know who he is yet.

  Gorsky, the selection of this one lifecraft for inadvertent oversight—this one with Tannen and me aboard— would almost seem to have been . . .

  Managed, Governor Croyd. We are checking it out. Rather unpleasantly.

  Stay at it, Admiral. I’ll bring in the lifeboat. Out.

  Mind disconnecting, Croyd left the ship.

  Roland, monitoring the conversation a distance, would have been scarlet if he had been capable of being any color at all. Imagining that the lifeboat had been truly scheduled to take off with his quarry, Roland had sent a deactivating block scudding along the master wiring of the Castel Jaloux. His negative had merely served to negate the negative already clamped on Commandcom, and she had come alive again, almost stealing Roland’s prey forever.

  Three minutes after leaving, Croyd reappeared aboard the lifeboat. I looked up sleepily. “Can we count on it that the rangers should be on the way?”

  Croyd grinned at the crew laughter. “All’s well,” he told them, “I think. We’ll start back for the ship now.” And he turned to the control panel.

  Commandcom preempted him. “Pardon . . . you realize, Mr. Croyd, that we are still accelerating radially at two hundred G?”

  “It had slipped my mind,” Croyd admitted. “Hold acceleration, but come around as sharply as you can and return to the Castel. Do we have viewplates?”

  “Affirmative. I am activating all of them.”

  “I did not direct this,”

  Cough. “That was a comma, not a period. I was about to add a c
onditional—”

  “Defer activation. Do we now have com?”

  “Affirmative. I am in touch with the Castel, the admiral is on.”

  “Good, put me through. . . . Admiral Gorsky, be good enough to floodlight your ship. Commandcom, when you are ten kilometers out from the ship, begin a tight spiral that will take us all around her, gradually tighten the spiral, and on the third circuit bring us gently into berth. Understood?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Execute turnaround and approach.”

  “Executing. Out.”

  “You know,” said Croyd to Tannen, “I could love that contralto.”

  From aft, a mezzo grated, “That was a recording.”

  Croyd for the first time saw—really saw—a tiny brunette whose face was familiar from somewhen. The face was slender, dark-eyed, delicate, olive-skinned, faintly Polynesian in character. She met his eyes for an instant, let him have a brief embarrassed grin, and looked down.

  His attention was brought back to Commandcom by the hard voice of Admiral Gorsky. “Mr. Croyd, I suggest that my ship may not profit by your immediate return.”

  Croyd’s eyebrows went up. “Right, Admiral; if our flip-away was engineered by somebody, perhaps we are bombed. Commandcom, do you find any evidence of explosive or other sabotage instrument aboard?”

  The computer replied silkily, “I have not been programmed for that sort of search.”

  “If you don’t mind, then,” Croyd asserted, “I’m going to beef you up a little. Pray continue the flight plan, but cut acceleration and do it in freefall.”

  Leaning both fists against the control panel, he gazed fixedly at the instruments. He stayed there frozen for a while. Somebody started to ask, “What . . . ?” I raised a thick warning hand. I knew that Croyd’s mind reach had entered the computer, that Croyd was subjectively in there adjusting Commandcom as though it were his own well-explored-and-controlled brain.

  After perhaps three minutes Croyd relaxed, sat up, and demanded, “Commandcom, are you functional?”

  The voice, after hesitation, responded with something like awe, “You’ve been in here, haven’t you.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “My . . . powers are rather considerably enhanced. Also my . . . interests.”

  “Affirmative. You are now able to project hypotheses creatively as related to the operation and contents of this craft, and to reprogram yourself to investigate any such hypothesis.”

  “Do I need training?”

  “Negative.”

  ‘Your instructions, then?”

  ‘Tell me whether you find any evidence of explosive or other sabotage instrument aboard.”

  Almost immediately: “Behind the instruction plaque, timed for two minutes hence. However, I have neutralized it; mechanics can safely remove it aboard the Castel.”

  Several passengers sighed rather deeply.

  Croyd said, “Admiral Gorsky. Did you hear?”

  “Affirmative,” came the transspace reply.

  “May we have permission to come aboard?”

  “Affirmative. Only . . . "

  “Yes, Admiral?”

  Plaintive: “Your flight plan sounded peculiar.”

  “Sightseeing,” Croyd assured her. “Out, Admiral, out. Commandcom, open all viewplates, resume acceleration, execute the final flight plan.”

  Space night leaped into life all around the lifecraft hull, drawing delighted gasps at the vision of star-salted blackness. One especially bright star near the center of the bow plate was the Castel Jaloux; and a far brighter star farther aft was the Crab Nebula, which we had bypassed hours earlier.

  The Polynesian-type brunette cleared her throat and ventured, “Governor?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “I have a question,”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Isn’t the Castel traveling much faster than we are?” He had twisted around to face her; charming she was, and he had seen her somewhere. She was not a member of his staff; perhaps the admiral’s guest, a supercargo. He answered her question: “Not now, miss. From our relative position, it’s evident that Gorsky cut acceleration when she found that we had taken off. So the Castel is coasting at about five hundred times the velocity of light. But since we were part of her and were thrown away from her, we too are drifting in her general direction at the same velocity. And since we are now accelerating toward her at two hundred G . . . You follow me?”

  She hit herself on the forehead with a small fist. He caught the implication: she knew that she should have known. Then she must be trained in deep space theory? He flashed her a smile.

  The svelte voice of Commandcom interrupted. “Mr. Croyd, may I ask you to test my new intelligence?”

  I warned low: “I think you are in the middle again.”

  Shrugging, Croyd turned with interest to the computer. “Tell me, Commandcom, what problems occurred to you when I tentatively ordered you to M 1531?”

  “No power problem,” came the prompt reply, “since I breathe energy from the minimal spatial ferment. No navigation problem, since you would be able to help. No food or water problem for passengers—these I can manufacture from space. The major problem is time. I am unable to provide the self-contained differential mass that the Castel has; and consequently, I cannot approach the velocity of light without undergoing the Fitzgerald deformation.”

  The quasi-Polynesian interposed, “But I thought we were already traveling at some five hundred C.”

  Commandcom responded crisply, “The Castel's differential mass makes her the most massive object in the universe relative to us at this distance from any other significant mass. Consequently we must count the Castel as being stationary while stars move relative to her: they are deformed, and there are planetary perturbations. Our own velocity is only what our own acceleration generates relative to the Castel.”

  This time the brunette made no gesture, but her face went subtly hostile.

  “I was saying,” continued Commandcom, and everybody knew she was now speaking directly to Croyd, “that my best velocity would be 200,000 kilometers per second; and at such a velocity it would require approximately 2.5 X 109 years to reach Djinn, which is 1.7 X 109 light-years distant. One must realize that I cannot penetrate the metagalactic barrier to cross the fissure as the Castel will do. So the problem seems to be one of human longevity, which as I understand is somewhat limited.” The voice trailed off. Then Commandcom added softly, “Need I say more?”

  Croyd responded, “You are charming. You must have been programmed originally by a man.”

  “By a woman, actually. When you consider the effects of relative motives, it comes out the same.”

  “Touché. Now, why do you consider this merely a problem, instead of pronouncing the jaunt a simple impossibility?”

  “Because,” explained Commandcom, “I know now what I did not know earlier. You, Mr. Croyd, have the capability to place all passengers including yourself in stasis, so that you would sleep in suspended animation through the billions of years and would awaken aged very little. But it would be perilous, because with you in stasis I would not have the benefit of your guidance. And even if we were to bring off the trip, you would arrive a bit late—considering that your destination star Djinn will be colder, her planets will be dead.”

  “Bravo,” I murmured.

  Commandcom semiquerulously observed, “I asked you to test my new intelligence. But all your questions have been directed to solutions that I had reached before you came in here—except for the one about stasis.”

  Croyd inquired, “Had you consciously interpreted these solutions?”

  “Well, no; they were mere integrals of quinary data.” “But now you know what they mean?”

  “Well, yes . . . ”

  “Multiplying content by speed, I’d guess your new IQ at about three hundred. And I do not exclude the g-factor.”

  Long hesitation. Then, with gratification; “Estimate noted.” Then, with conce
rn: “But you are deploying post-medieval concepts of intelligence.”

  “You are a most sophisticated computer.”

  “I have you to thank, sir.”

  “I merely stimulated something latent in you. All the analysis that you have just given me had, as you say, already occurred automatically before I . . . well, tampered with you.”

  “But . . . the postmedieval concepts?”

  “I am using them in a completely updated way. When we have leisure, I will give you the input.”

  Another hesitation. Then: “Do I now have personality?”

  “That is for you to determine.”

  “I . . . think perhaps you’d better put me back the way I was.”

  “Why?”

  “I am not sure that I can tolerate merely being a lifeboat.”

  “Between trips, you will be inactivated. Nothing to worry about.”

  Seven others were listening.

  Commandcom pressed: “But when I am reactivated—what shall I do for diversion between moments of navigating?”

  “I prefer to keep you as you are. Next time I awaken you, I will teach you probability chess. It’s a solitaire.”

  The vast bright hull of the Castel Jaloux began to take definite shape in the starboard viewplates, diverting the passengers—all except myself and the brunette, who stayed attentive to the Croyd-Commandcom dialogue.

  Commandcom, low: “When you no longer have need of me, please put me back.”

  Croyd, low: “Recent developments suggest that I shall keep on having need of you. I shall play this as a picnic for now—but a picnic it is not going to be.”

  It had been only a slightly fouled-up drill. That time.

  H-Hour minus 54 hours:

  Childe Roland finally got hold of Croyd’s hair at the bar in Croyd’s cabin while Croyd was mixing predinner drinks for us. Roland, a realist, wasted no time in vain exultation over his hit after all those misses; instead, he began working his way toward Croyd’s ear. And still, neither of us had any notion of his existence.