Timemaster

by Robert L. Forward

  "I'm going!" he blurted out. "I can't stand this place anymore. I'm piloting our next ship out to Barnard and there's nothing you can say that can change my mind—so don't even try." He stomped off to his study and slammed the door behind him.

  Rose was furious. Here she was, trying to make him feel better, and he was yelling at her for no good reason. A vindictive look appeared on her face as she stared at the closed door.

  Going off again, are you? Just for that I'm going to keep my good news to myself.

  Randy had expected Rose to follow him into his study to try to argue him out of his decision. He was ready for yelling and screaming and tears and pleading, and had hardened his heart in preparation. When she went away instead, he wondered at her strange behavior.

  THE NEXT few days were a flurry of packing and last-minute preparations. There were a lot of things to take care of, for he would be gone nearly six years this time. Junior bore the news well for a six-year-old—although Rose knew that she would be soothing his bruised spirit for years to come.

  Rose had known what she was getting into when she had married this self-centered man. Poor Junior had no choice. You can choose your husband, but you don't get to choose your father. She tried to make the best of it and, for Junior's sake, kept a bright, unaccusing tone in her voice during the daily videolink connections with the geosynchronous orbit station where Randy and the crew were preparing the ship Golda for its flight to Barnard.

  Underneath, however, Randy could sense an angry, vindictive edge in her voice. She was still mad, and would strike back at him somehow. Randy knew that she wouldn't get a divorce. Divorce was out of the question. Rose had made that clear before they got married. That was one of the reasons she had taken so long to say yes. Well, he had to admit to himself, whatever she did, he would deserve it for being such a selfish stinker and running off to explore instead of staying home to take care of his family.

  FINALLY the day came.

  "Good-bye," said Randy. "I'll talk to you again in a month when we have our first warpgate comm link."

  The videoscreen went blank and Rose was alone ... again. The years of loneliness stretched seemingly endlessly ahead. She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. Junior was already asleep, but it was just after ten o'clock—too early to go to bed. She'd better find something to read. She went to the bookshelf and looked for a classic—one of those books your teachers in high school had said would be good for you. She found a book by Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill, and sat down to read it. The fantasy of two children meeting Puck the fairy took her thoughts far away from her problems. She was really enjoying herself until, about a quarter of the way through the book, she came to the poem "Harp Song of the Dane Women".

  What is a woman that you forsake her,

  And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

  To go with the old grey Widow-maker? ...

  She has no strong white arms to fold you,

  But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—

  Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you ...

  Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,

  And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,

  Is all we have left through the months to follow ...

  Putting the book down, Rose wept bitterly. Finally, when the grandfather clock struck midnight, she went to her lonely bed and fell asleep, her arms cradling the spark of life growing in her belly.

  "ROSITA Carmelita Cortez Hunter, Junior," said Rose defiantly.

  "Junior!" exclaimed Randy. "You can't name a girl Junior!"

  "I can and I did!" Rose declared haughtily. "This is my baby and I'll name it what I want."

  "But it's my baby, too," argued Randy.

  "All you did was supply half the seed," said Rose. "I did the rest. If you want this to be your baby, then come back and help take care of it."

  "You know I can't do that!"

  "You wouldn't be much help anyway," Rose said sarcastically.

  "You could have at least told me," complained Randy.

  "I was going to, but ... but ... you took off before I could." Rose pouted, her face starting to crinkle up.

  "Rose ..." implored Randy. "I'm sorry I left ... but I had to. I love you, and I love Randy, Junior, and I love Rose, Junior, too. I promise that when I come back from this trip I'll stay home forever."

  "Don't make promises you can't keep, Mr. Buck Rogers Hunter." Rose was turning contumacious again.

  AFTER five years and seven months of travel, the Golda finally reached her destination, a close orbit around Barnard. Unlike Proxima, which had a terraformable planet, the Barnard planetary system was exactly what the planetary scientists had predicted. Randy reported his findings back to Elena Polikova through the laser comm link as the autopilot on Golda matched velocities with the ship back in the solar system that carried the other mouth of the warpgate.

  "There're a few large, cold gas giants some distance away from Barnard," said Randy. "And a few airless dirtballs either too cold or too hot for life."

  "Are there large moons around the gas giants?" asked Elena. "Some of those might have water and an interesting atmosphere."

  "Nope," said Randy. "Earth-like moons around gargantuan gas giants in the Barnard system are only found in science fiction stories. No Rocheworld double-planets either."

  "Doesn't sound very profitable to me," came Andrew Pope's voice over the link. "Perhaps we should not even bother to open the warpgate, just write the mission off as a loss."

  "Wait 'til I get back through first!" joked Randy in mock fright. Then his voice changed. "But it isn't that bad. I think we can make money out of the asteroid belt. It's not only much larger and much thicker than the asteroid belt around Sol, but the asteroids themselves are mostly carbonaceous chondrites full of organic material, frozen ices, and other volatiles."

  "Hmmm ..." said Andrew. "It might be a lot easier to mine those Barnard asteroids and warp the valuable organics and volatiles back to Sol than attempt to find and extract the same materials in the dry stones that make up most of the asteroid belt here."

  Slowly the hollow, cylindrical laser beam through the Silverhair grew in size while Randy waited. On the other side of the warpgate he could now see the large, rotund tightsuit of Andrew Pope and the smaller suits of Siritha, Hiroshi Tanaka, and two other people.

  Finally the tunnel was large enough for Siritha. "Straighten out your legs!" came Hiroshi Tanaka's voice through the warpgate over the suit radio links.

  Siritha straightened out. Her small jetpack fired a short burst and she floated through. Randy caught her and pulled her out of the laser beam as her jets brought her to a stop.

  With Siritha safely through to take his place at keeping the Silverhair happy, Randy activated his jetpack and easily slipped through the warpgate back to the solar system. Now that he wasn't peering through a tunnel, he recognized the wasp-waisted figure in the tightsuit in front of him.

  "Rose!" he exclaimed, taking her into his arms, their helmets getting in the way of their hugs. The two were in turn grabbed by the long arms of a third, taller person.

  "Daddy!"

  "Junior!" said Randy. "What a surprise!"

  "Mr. Pope said I could come," said Junior. "Rosey is too little and had to stay at home." The three hugged each other again.

  "OK," said Andrew in a mock-serious tone, "that's enough mush. You civilians get in the lock. We engineers have some work to do."

  The lock door opened and the happy family squeezed into the vacuum lock. Andrew cycled them through.

  IT WAS only six months before Randy started to get itchy feet again.

  "You're not going to get away from me so easily this time," said Rose. "I'm going with you."

  "But Rose, these exploration ships are only designed for one person," protested Randy.

  "Then have Andrew make a bigger one," said Rose. "And I want it nice and comfortable, not some tin can."

 
"But that'll cost a fortune!"

  "The last time I talked to Alan, he said you were worth a million ordinary fortunes," Rose retorted. "Have you ever thought about spending some of them for the enjoyment of yourself and your family? You can't take it with you, you know."

  Randy was taken aback by Rose's remarks. She was right. He was nearly thirty-seven—almost middle-aged—and the world's first trillionaire. It was time he stopped working so hard and started enjoying life.

  "That's a good idea, Rose," he finally said. "With a negmatter drive, it doesn't really matter how massive the spaceship is; you just use more negmatter in the drive room. I'll have Andrew build us a large explorer ship with a couple of comfortable rooms."

  "Make sure he includes a nice kitchen," said Rose. "It doesn't need to be a big one. After all, we won't be doing much entertaining."

  "Sure," Randy said expansively. "A nice kitchen."

  "With a view over the sink."

  "We can easily add a viewscreen over the sink with living video images taken from every scenic spot in the solar system," said Randy agreeably.

  "That'll do fine." Rose looked around their large living room. A roaring fire was burning in the fireplace in the far wall, ostensibly warding off the cold autumn evening. "And a fireplace," she added.

  "A fireplace in the kitchen?!" exclaimed Randy, waking up from his reverie.

  "Of course not, darling." Rose looked at him indulgently. "In the living room, of course."

  "A fireplace in the living room," Randy repeated, nodding thoughtfully. "I suppose you'd also like a fountain in the garden."

  "A small waterfall would be nice," said Rose.

  "Why not?" Randy was getting into the spirit of the discussion. "And some rosebushes, so I can stop and smell the roses as I rush through life at relativistic speeds."

  "That would be nice, dear."

  The grandfather clock next to the fireplace struck ten.

  Chapter 7

  Epsilon Eridani

  IT WAS a year later when Randy was taken on a tour of the new ship the Interstellar Division had built for his trip to Epsilon Eridani. The cylindrical spacecraft was floating some distance from the Reinhold orbital space station. It still had a crew of teleoperators and robots checking out the instrumentation and putting on the last touches, such as painting its name, Spacemaster, on the side. Randy, Andrew Pope, and chief engineer Hiroshi Tanaka rode out to the ship in a flitter. Hiroshi was piloting the flitter, and he flew it in a circle around the spacecraft as he explained the new features of the radiation shield that would protect the ship during its high-speed travel through the not-so-empty vacuum of space.

  "Whereas the first-generation explorers were limited to a safe upper speed of eighty percent of the speed of light," said Hiroshi, "the shielding on this ship is good enough to allow travel at up to ninety-nine-point-five percent of light speed."

  "Impressive!" exclaimed Randy. "What's the gamma for that?"

  "The time dilation factor is ten," said Hiroshi. "Although we don't recommend extended travel at that speed until we have a lot more experience with particle concentration variations in space."

  "You're right," said Randy, nodding. "Hit a molecular cloud at that speed and you could get fried in a hurry."

  Hiroshi suspended the flitter and pointed toward the spacecraft. "Do you see those lumpy portions at the front and rear?"

  "The things that look like Turkish knots?"

  "Right," said Hjroshi. "Those are force-free coils made of the new supermagducting wire. They generate the magnetic field for the primary radiation shield. The outside of the ship, of course, is plated with the same metal to keep the magnetic field inside the ship to near zero. The primary shield extends out to ten thousand kilometers and essentially takes care of all incoming atoms or molecules by stripping off their electrons and deflecting the resulting ions away."

  Hiroshi activated the flitter and moved it to the front of the interstellar spacecraft. "What really concerns us, however, is the larger dust grains and ice crystals. At those speeds, they can penetrate the primary field before the field can break them up into individual atoms. Now, notice the smaller lump on the front end of the ship."

  "I see it," said Randy. "A smaller Turkish knot on the end of a short boom."

  "That coil generates the secondary shield," said Hiroshi. "When the ship approaches relativistic velocities, the boom extends out a kilometer ahead of the ship and the coil is turned on. Its concentrated magnetic field breaks apart the dust grains and smaller meteorites into individual atoms and molecules at a sufficient distance away from the ship that the primary shield has time to deflect them. Particles that come right down the magnetic axis will not be deflected, of course, but will be collected by a patch of activated metallic foam. That will supply the small amount of positive mass input needed for control of the mass balance of the ship, while insuring that the radiation generated in stopping the matter is kept far from the crew."

  "What about the larger meteorites?" asked Randy. "They're pretty rare, though ... I guess I'll just have to take my chances with them."

  "They are taken care of by the third shielding system," said Hiroshi. "If they are large enough to penetrate the magnetic shields, they are large enough to be seen by our laser radar system at over one thousand kilometers distance. Even if the meteroid has a significant velocity of its own, so the closing rate is three nines, the meteroid will be lagging the laser radar return by more than a kilometer, giving us whole microseconds of warning time so we can zap it into small fragments. The magnetic fields then take care of the fragments."

  "Whole microseconds ..." Randy said, bemused at the thought. "I hope I never have to test it."

  "Finally, there is the last layer of shielding," said Hiroshi. "Notice the color of the top of the ship around the boom."

  "It's a smooth silver," said Randy.

  "An electrostatically levitated pool of liquid negmatter. Anything that gets through the first three shields will strike the ultradense negmatter and be nullified. No particle left and no energy released." Hiroshi gave a proud smile.

  "Terrific!" said Randy. He turned to Andrew Pope. "I hope you appreciate what a talented engineer you have here."

  "Oh! I do, Mr. Hunter, I do." Andrew patted a now embarrassed Hiroshi Tanaka on the shoulder.

  "And will show your appreciation in his paycheck next week," continued Randy.

  "Oh! I will, Mr. Hunter, I will," Andrew vowed with a grin.

  "I will now take you to see the inside of the ship," murmured a thoroughly flustered Hiroshi as he reactivated the flitter. They entered the free-falling spacecraft at the center airlock.

  "This is the drive room," Hiroshi said as they floated into a large space dominated by bulky boxes of high-power electronics surrounding a large sphere at the center. "It has the usual collection of six negmatter blobs for six-axis acceleration and torque capability, except that these negmatter blobs are ten times bigger, since your spacecraft is ten times more massive than our first one-man explorers. The drive is capable of five gees, although the recommended acceleration is three gees."

  "You could go at one gee and take it easy on yourself," interjected Andrew Pope.

  "Takes too long to get up to speed that way," said Randy. "I want to get to Epsilon Eridani in a hurry." He patted one of the power supplies. "With Spacemaster here, I can accelerate at three gees, and in nine months I'll be at ninety-eight percent of cee and traveling five light-years per year. Then I can cut back to one gee, bring in Rose, and live in style as I whisk my way to Epsilon Eridani. By the way, can I see my living quarters?"

  "Since they are only designed to withstand one gee, they're all folded up," said Hiroshi. "After we get back to the station, I can take you on a virtual walk-through of the computer design data. Right now, all I can show you is the drive cockpit with the high-gee acceleration couches."

  "If you've seen one cockpit, you've seen them all," said Randy. "Besides, I've been practicing in the virt
ual simulator cockpit for the past month, so I know it well. You did a good job on the design. The drive controls are nearly foolproof."

  "Thank you, Mr. Hunter," Hiroshi said. In order to divert attention from himself he changed the subject. "Now let me take you to the Silverhair chamber to show you the transfer pods that Steve Wisneski invented."

  "The invention that finally made spacewarp transportation a civilized way to travel," Randy remarked as he followed Hiroshi down the corridor.

  "I'll see you back at the flitter," said Andrew, heading the other way. "I have some things to check on."

  As they cycled through the vacuum lock into the chamber, they were greeted by the Silverhair.

  said the Silverhair.

  "It was fed and danced with just two hours ago," said Hiroshi. "Ignore it."

  "I'm going to have to live almost three years with this Silverhair," said Randy, adjusting his suit radio so it broadcast some rumba music. "It behooves me to stay on the good side of it." Arms and legs moving with the syncopated beat, Randy swung around the electrode support posts that kept the Silverhair centered while the ship was under acceleration. The Silverhair joined in the dance, its long silver tendrils developing traveling waves in them as they moved jerkily to the beat.

  <> sang the Silverhair in its mysterious, melodic voice.

  After about three minutes the tune came to an end, and Randy didn't start another. The Silverhair, contented, stopped wiggling and relaxed into its normal spherical shape. Randy kicked over to where Hiroshi stood patiently waiting beside a long oval egg of silvery-colored negmatter resting inside what looked like a small electromagnetic gun. The oval was about three meters long and a half-meter thick at the center, just big enough to hold a person in a stretched-out position.