"It's on a collision course with Oscar!"
THE BUZZING alarm sounded again in Oscar's ears and a blinking circle appeared around one of the strange objects.
Another missile! he thought with alarm, then calmed down as he realized that the quick response of his laser cannon would take care of it. The missile grew impossibly large.
Another spacecraft! It was a ship like his, with the wreckage of a kilometer-long silver cannon trailing behind. Before Oscar's human reflexes could respond, the superstrong magnetic radiation-protection fields in the space around the two ships collided with each other. The hull of the Animal Avenger creaked dangerously and loose items crashed against walls. Oscar, only partially protected by the immersion tank, nearly blacked out under the extreme acceleration.
"OSCAR'S ship was deflected away by the copy! We're saved!" exclaimed Randy. Oscar's ship had been damaged in the collision, and its kilometer-long electric cannon was now trailing along behind.
"Notice what direction it's going," said the bearded man.
"It's going right toward the older warpmouth!" Randy said in astonishment. "While the copy was deflected off in the direction that Oscar came from!"
"Well, the action is all over," said the bearded man, reaching for his beer. "Oscar's ship will shoot through one of the pentagons in the older warpmouth and be warped back in time one-point-six seconds. His ship will emerge from the younger warpmouth at just the right time, with just the right speed, and just the right angle to hit Oscar on the way in, deflecting his ship to go through the older warpmouth at just the right angle and just the right speed and at just the right time to produce a completely self-consistent event. The net result is that after a collision with itself, a passage through the timetrap, and another collision with itself, Oscar's ship will be sent flying off in the direction it came. In effect, the timewarp 'repelled' Oscar from the region it was protecting. A highly unlikely event indeed ... but it happened in order to keep Oscar from killing you and creating a paradox."
A SECOND after the collision, Oscar saw one of the huge structures growing in size ahead of him as he shot toward it. It was as big as a moon. Off to the right were the three untouched ships, Randy no doubt gloating in one of them. His ship shot into one of the gigantic pentagons in the structure and flew out the other side—but something was wrong; the three ships were still on his right, and in front of him was another ship on a collision course with him! Oscar then suffered his second high-gee collision in less than three seconds. This time, despite the protection of the high-gee tank, he blacked out ...
When Oscar came to, a short while later, his ship was in free-fall. He heard hissing sounds that indicated an air leak somewhere. He would stay in the tank where he could breathe the oxygenated fluid until the robomechanics could fix the leak. He looked out through the liquid surrounding him in the protection tank. The control room was a shambles, broken pieces of equipment floating everywhere. Then Oscar saw, making their way slowly through the floating debris, six softball-sized silvery blobs, moving in formation. A sheet of metal, drifting in the swift air currents created by the air leak, collided with one of the silvery blobs. The blob passed right through the sheet of metal, leaving a softball-sized hole where a small portion of its multiton mass had nullified the metal away.
The negmatter balls from the space drive are loose on the ship! thought Oscar with alarm. The blobs moved ponderously closer and trapped Oscar in the protection tank. The center blob started to eat its way through the tank, and then the protection fluid itself, heading straight for Oscar's face, now pale with fear ...
Oscar raised a hand and futilely attempted to push the silvery ball away. His hand went right through the ball, leaving behind three fingertips—floating away in the fluid. Oscar stared at the bloody stump that was left of his hand, part of his thumb hanging from the stump by a strip of skin and blood spurting out of the middle, coloring the protection fluid a crimson red.
The silvery blob moved inexorably closer to his face. In panic, Oscar froze, and his eyes looked down in horror as the menacing silver blob approached his face. The onset of a painful tingle in his nose induced a loud gurgled roar as Oscar attempted to scream with a throat full of fluid. His head—trying to escape the pain—twisted from side to side as the silvery blob slowly ate its way through his nose, lips, teeth, palate, cheeks, jaw, tongue, and throat—nullifying enamel, bone, and tissue with equal impartiality. Oscar's terrified howl was mercifully cut short a few seconds later as the silvery blob of negmatter relentlessly nullified its way through his spinal cord and out the back of his neck ...
"SEE!" SAID the bearded man, taking another gurgle out of his bottle of beer. "All over in a few seconds. If Oscar hadn't tried to hurt us, he wouldn't have hurt himself." He munched down the last of the pretzels.
"Is he dead?" asked Randy quietly as he watched the red-shifted image of Oscar's damaged ship moving rapidly away from them, in the opposite direction from which it had come.
"I'm afraid so," said the bearded man without concern. "Alan told me that the engineers were finally able to overcome the computer control blocks that Oscar had inserted, and they instructed the robots in Oscar's ship to open up the warpgate." He paused as his face took on a pensive look. "He refuses to tell me any details about what they found."
"Thank God this nightmare is over at last!" Randy breathed.
"That's where you're wrong, me boy," said the bearded man. "I've done my part—and I get to go back and live a happy future with Rose. You, however, have a lot of work left ahead of you, and if you're to be successful, you'd better get a move on."
"Me?" asked Randy. "Why me?"
The bearded man looked pensively at the soot-caked chimney in the fireplace. "It's a dirty job ... but somebody has to do it."
Randy looked at him in bewilderment.
He sighed in exasperation. "Think, me boy ... think."
It then dawned on Randy what lay ahead of him. He had survived so far, but only because the mustached man had deflected Oscar's original fusillade of missiles, and the bearded man had first knocked the poker from Oscar's hand and then set up the timetrap ... and those two men were future versions of himself.
"You're right," Randy finally admitted. He then panicked a little. "But what am I supposed to do?!?" he asked.
The bearded man got up from the sofa. "The first thing I'd do is contact Andrew Pope and tell him to warp out some pilots to ferry the Errol Flynn and John Wayne to a safe landing at Tau Ceti." He headed for the elevator door. "I'll tell you the rest while we're waiting for your Silverhair to dilate so I can pod home."
"Why didn't you warp back through the artificial warpgate in your own ship?" asked Randy. "It would've been a lot faster than waiting for this Silverhair to open up."
"Admittedly," said the bearded man. "But then I wouldn't be able to jump back as far into the past as I can with this warpgate, and I'd miss seeing my kids grow up." He pointed at the complaining Silverhair. "You don't realize how important that Silverhair is, me boy. Make sure you take good care of it as you fly it back to Earth."
"I've got to fly back to Earth? Why can't I just warp back like you're about to do?"
"I can see you don't quite understand yet," said the bearded man. "Let me go over it in detail ..."
"WELL, IT looks like the throat has dilated enough that I can pod through," said the bearded man finally. He stepped into the transfer pod and reached up to grab the handholds overhead. "Now remember," he cautioned Randy, "there isn't much leeway timewise, so don't dawdle!"
"But suppose I make a mistake and do the wrong thing?" asked Randy.
"I can assure you that you didn't," said the bearded man. "Besides,
when you have time to think about it—and ahead will be lots of boring time in spaceships for you to think—you will find that what I have told you to do is the only logical path open to you. The main thing to remember is to watch the time ..." Randy saw the bearded mouth spread into a sly grin. "You don't want to come up short."
"Stop that!!" Randy yelled over the suit radio as he slammed the pod shut around the bearded man.
AFTER he had closed down the warpgate and said good-bye to the Silverhair, Randy went immediately to the flight control deck and, with the assistance of Didit, changed into a comfortable jumpsuit and boots. He picked up the virtual helmet and turned to Didit.
"I'm soon going to have the ship under five gees. Better have the robomechanics collapse the mansion."
"Very well, sir," said Didit. Randy donned the virtual helmet and gauntlets. As he lay down on the water-filled acceleration couch he could feel vibrations coming from the lower decks. Within fifteen minutes he was breathing heavily, as Timemaster decelerated at five gees on its way to a stop at Tau Ceti a half-year later. The constant five-gee pull at his body was much tougher to take than the three gees he had used to get up to speed. Soon, Randy found himself looking forward to his daily poof-ball games and free-fall dances with the Silverhair. He didn't even mind dancing the long "Bolero".
"IT WASN'T fun, but it had to be done," Randy said to himself as he finally pulled down on the virtual joyball and brought Timemaster to a halt at the Tau Ceti space station. He took off the helmet and gloves and floated over to a porthole. The slowly rotating space station was huge. In the center was a stationary spherical portion, with dozens of docking ports for spacecraft, while rotating around it was a large double torus. In the distance, extending from the remains of a partially mined asteroid, was a cable catapult under construction. Nearby were the two ships, the Errol Flynn and the John Wayne. Being capable of thirty gees, they had arrived long before Timemaster did. Next to them was a similar Reinhold spaceship, but it had been sliced in two, as if it were waiting for the insertion of an additional deck.
"That must be the Rip van Winkle," said Randy. He then saw a cloud of robomechanics, androids, and human-piloted passenger flitters approaching to greet him.
"Looks like we have plenty of company coming," said Randy to Didit. "Too bad. we can't unfold the mansion and have them to dinner, but I've no time to dawdle." He went to the airlock and waited for his visitors to float across the short distance between the ships in their tightsuits.
Andrew Pope was the first one through the airlock. Randy had talked to Andrew back on Earth not long ago, while setting up his weekly video laser link to Rose and the kids through the Silverhair in the hold. The date on Earth through that warpgate had been late 2054. This version of Andrew had come in from the warpgate between Sol and Tau Ceti, and was thirteen years older. He had lost some weight, and the bangs covering the front of his balding head were greyer and sparser.
The next one through was Siritha. She was still as skinny as ever, but her face was now much more mature, though still very beautiful. She too had a few strands of grey hair, and the makeup on her caste mark was less blatant than Randy remembered. She had a small, plain gold wedding ring welded permanently through her nose, and Randy wondered who the lucky guy was.
Behind Siritha was a older Hiroshi Tanaka, also in a tightsuit. He was operating a robogang controller and leading a cluster of android robots. Hiroshi had a similar plain gold wedding ring welded through his nose.
"Good to see you again, Mr. Hunter," said Hiroshi through his helmet. "I won't stay around to talk. My robogang makes it too crowded. I'll take them off to start working on the inside disconnects."
"I'd better go with him," said Siritha. "I want to stay with the Silverhair while we move its chamber over to the Rip van Winkle. I'll tell it what's going on and reassure it you'll soon be back to dance with it."
"You can now talk with the Silverhairs?" said Randy in surprise.
"Not well," said Siritha. "For some reason their brains are only capable of coping with one syllable at a time. Two syllables without a pause becomes noise to them. There are some brain-damaged humans with a similar problem. They can read single words, but compound words are beyond them. Once we understood that, we made some progress." She shook her head. "But it is painfully obvious that they have a low IQ—about that of an octopus—or kitten." She put on her helmet as she followed Hiroshi's robogang off down the corridor.
"Everything is all set," said Andrew. His left arm held his helmet in an awkward fashion, as if it had been badly damaged some time in the past. "We should have the Silverhair transferred over from Timemaster in twelve hours, and by this time tomorrow you can be on your way in the Rip van Winkle. Would you like a visit to the space station in the meantime?"
"Sure!" said Randy. "Let me get my tightsuit on."
"IMPRESSIVE!" Randy said as he looked around the gigantic, spherical room that formed the hub of the Tau Ceti space station. In the center of the room was a large artificial warpgate. Each of its pentagons had been opened until they were ten meters in diameter. The rigid negmatter frames of the warpgates had then been covered with welded normal-matter vacuum tubing that shielded the negmatter frame from dust, residual gas, and the occasional bump.
Most of the pentagons faced cargo hatches that opened out into the space around Tau Ceti. Out of some of the pentagons there flowed a continuous stream of instruments, portions of structures, rolls of supermagductor-coated diamond fiber, and other manufactured parts that were obviously designated for further construction of space stations, spacecraft, and space transportation systems. Into other pentagons flowed equally large streams of partially processed asteroid material.
"I don't see much passenger traffic," said Randy, looking in vain for a space-suited figure.
"Humans don't use the cargo pentagons," said Andrew. "Too much trouble getting in and out of tightsuits all the time. We use the passenger pentagon over there." He pointed up to one of the pentagons, where the tubular protective frame had been welded to a pentagonal corridor that led up to the central docking hub. Andrew led the way back to the exit door. "Come on, I'll show you."
After getting out of their tightsuits and dressing in jumpsuits and boots, Randy and Andrew pushed their way through the busy free-fall corridors to the docking hub. Andrew came to a halt in the middle of the pentagonal corridor.
"Up there," said Andrew, pointing up the corridor, "is the Reinhold space station serving the Tau Ceti system." He pointed down, and where Randy would have expected to see the far wall of the central sphere was another docking hub. "Down there," Andrew continued, "is the Reinhold space station servicing the solar system."
As Andrew talked, someone in a businessman's jumpsuit floated by and kicked down the short, air-filled corridor with leaf-green walls and pink trim that spanned the twelve light-years between Tau Ceti and Sol. Randy noticed that businessmen's jumpsuits hadn't changed much in thirteen years, except that the lapel was narrower and the trim less flamboyant. Seeing the different clothing made Randy wonder what things looked like on Earth now that thirteen years had passed. Up in the space station, where things like clothing had to be functional, there didn't seem to be much that was different. But, unfortunately, he didn't have time to go down to Earth and be a rubbernecking tourist from the past. He was on an urgent mission to save his own life.
Then Randy saw someone coming the other way up the corridor. The young man looked familiar and was carrying a foam container. He was wearing a groundling's business suit, so he wasn't a regular visitor to the space station. Although the brown suit was obviously custom-robotailored out of expensive natural silk, the long tails on the coat looked funny flapping around in free-fall. The brown throat choker looked funny too. It had a hard knot tied in the middle, and was sort of halfway between a choker and an ancient bow tie. There was a large pearl in the middle of the knot that looked familiar, but he was wearing no other jewelry, not even 'rings on his ears.
&
nbsp; "Dad!" said the young man.
"Junior!" exclaimed Randy. He gave the young man a hug and held him at arm's length. "My, how you've grown! I just talked to you by videolink yesterday and you were only seventeen. How old are you now?"
"Thirty," said Junior, looking slightly annoyed. He hesitated, then moved closer to his father so that Andrew couldn't hear. "Say, Dad," he muttered, "I'm grown now—and president of Reinhold Astroengineering Company ... would you please stop calling me Junior? Just use Harold, will you?"
"Sure ... Harold," said Randy, taken aback.
Andrew interrupted. "I invited Harold to join us for dinner." He pointed to the rotating portion of the central hub above them. "Shall we go out to the one-gee ring where dining is more comfortable?"
"That reminds me," said Harold, handing Andrew the foam container. "Have this broiled for the main course." He turned to Randy. "A trout from the pond in the center of the racetrack. Curly and I went out early this morning and caught it—a four-pound beauty."
"ROSEY apologizes that she can't come," said Harold as the three sat down to dinner. "She's having bouts of morning sickness and didn't relish the idea of free-fall."
"Then I'm going to be a grandfather!?!" said Randy.
"You already are, Dad," said Harold. "Harold Randolph Hunter the Third is seven years old this month."
"Whom did Rosey marry?" asked Randy, not sure that he liked the idea of his little girl getting married.
"No one you know," said Harold. "He's a nice guy, although a little immature," he said condescendingly. "He makes a good househusband for Rosey, though."
"What's Rosey doing?" Randy asked innocently. Andrew coughed self-consciously, and Harold grimaced.
"Chewing me out most of the time," he replied. "She's been chairman of the board of Reinhold Astroengineering Company since she was eighteen."
"And a good one, too," Andrew interjected between bites of trout.
Timemaster Page 26