by Brian N Ball
“Suzanne tracked it through a crank,” said Garvin. “Ellison isn’t a crank!” said the girl.
“He’s an enthusiast An amateur,” said Garvin.
“You found the ship?” prompted Del. There was a difficulty here, but it could wait.
“It’s the only ship that has a chance of reaching the Forever Planet,” said Garvin simply. "There’s nothing in the Galaxy that could attempt the trip. This is the last of the experimental hyperspace ships. As you know, the only other one of its land was lost when the Commander sent back the message out of time.”
“And that’s why they need you,” said Rosetti. “Garvin here, and Suzanne. They didn’t tell you that you have the same background as the Commander. The same training, the adaptability levels.”
“But with a special feeling for the unknown,” said Garvin. “That’s why we want you.”
Knowing the inconceivable answer already, Del felt impelled to ask the impossible question: “And this leads to what?” Why look for the Forever Planet, the planet of the garbled message that defied all previously understood concepts of space and time? The planet where the ultimate problem might be set and an answer expected?
“We’ll capture time itself,” said the girl triumphantly.
“Listen to this,” said Garvin eagerly, seeing Del’s excitement. He switched on a machine. “You’ll know what it is. This is the original recording.”
Del had heard the famous Report on previous occasions. It was played, for instance, to new recruits in Disaster Control as an example of a man tortured by doubt and stress and yet still able to send out some coherent ideas. Again, it was occasionally the subject of a learned article, but no-one had added a new interpretation in decades. It was short and confused: almost sense, and almost surreal. “ ... a net of warps ... a matrix of forevers ...” the quick, agonized phrases began: “... a frozen function of time ... sexagesimal patterns ... the pitiful loss! Lost in a labyrinth ... they want to rip out the key ...” And, last of all, one word: “... sorry ...”
“That’s all of it,” said Garvin. “Again?”
“No,” said Del. “I’ve gone over every word, every possible shade of expression, just like everybody else who’s heard it. It doesn’t mean any more to me than when I first heard of it”
It was the greatest legend of the millennium.
‘We’ve been working on it,” said Garvin.
Of course they had. “And?”
“We’ve found something new.”
Del felt the slow bum of absolute confidence flooding through him. Every instinct told him that this self-assured now serious young man and this exquisite girl had stumbled on something so big that it shocked him to think of it. He took a minute or two before he spoke, and in that time he discarded the remainder of his doubtful career in Disaster Control. What was there to lose?
“You’re in,” said Rosetti. The short man looked levelly at Del. “You know that once you’re committed you’ll never be passed by Security for work in the Frames again?”
“I’m finished anyway,” said Del.
“You are,” agreed Rosetti. “I checked with Security. Your next assignment would be a write-off.”
Del felt a sudden lurch. Agents were usually written-off when they were past their best; it was distressing to hear of it though. The Plot Director he had just worked for would have known of it, possibly already have written the script of his death.
“A hero’s death,” said Rosetti with a grin. “You died in the face of overwhelming odds. Bravely.”
“And if I’d decided against the enterprise?” asked Del. He looked directly at the girl.
“You know better than to expect an answer,” said Rosetti.
Del turned to Garvin. “Til take over from here. Give me all you’ve got.”
Rosetti turned at the door. “I don’t suppose we’ll meet again—not until things are well advanced anyway. Let me tell you one thing, however. My daughter. Suzanne. Listen to her, Delvaney, listen carefully. She always knows what she wants. Always.”
Chapter Eight
A week later Del’s opinion of Garvin had risen still more. Between crash courses in Field Theory, semantic reorientation with the age that had produced the Thomas Cook so that no shade of meaning in the Commanders message should escape him, and basic survival data courses, Del gradually came to measure the extent of Garvin’s thorough investigation of the legend of the Forever Planet. Rosetti’s own magnificent computers had analysed the data he had turned up. The whole of recorded human history had been searched for references to the legend.
“I could let you see the abstracts, the charts, the deductions, but they wouldn’t help,” said Garvin. ‘Tutting it briefly, the computers say there’s nothing but that one message, interpret it how you like. And there’s only one conclusion they come up with.”
“Keep away, leave it,” said Del.
“Right. We’ve gathered together all the information we can get, but we—you and me—were unlikely to turn up anything new. The problem is to dig where the computers can’t scan.”
“How?”
“Somewhere there has to be a report that hasn’t been put on record.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The legends that cluster around the Commanders
message. They’re too detailed for fiction. They’ve too much insight for imagination free of fact.”
‘‘You’ve been working on this,” said Del.
Garvin nodded. “I called in Henry Sokutu last week.”
Suzanne Rosetti came swinging along the grass track, her skin golden and wet. Garvin threw her a wrap.
“You’ve told Del about Ellison?” asked the girl.
“I’m leading up to that,” said Garvin. “So far I’ve only just brought Sokutu into the picture.” He looked behind the girl. “Here he is now.”
Del restrained himself with an effort. When he spoke, his voice was calm: “Garvin, Miss Rosetti,” he said.
“Suzanne,” the girl interrupted. “We have to be close.”
“From now on, you tell me everything,” Del said quietly. “Not bit by bit, but all at once. You understand that, Garvin?” It was the basis of any successful assignment, the knowledge of all factors influencing events. His entire training shrieked out in protest against these amateurs. The girl flinched when she watched his face change expression.
“All right, all right!” she said. “Yes, Dell” Ashamed of her sudden show of fright she grinned at him. “Look at that!” she said suddenly.
Henry Sokutu had decided on one of his set-pieces. He was dressed in the resplendent opalescent swathings of the priest-kings of the Later Mid-Galactic Empire, with a candelabra of crystalline tektite swinging above his head. In his hands was a bunch of clockwork chiming sunflowers. With a huge grin across his wide warty face, he bellowed a greeting:
“Madam, I jiggle your breasts!” He raised a hand towards the girl, who backed away in amazement. “Gentlemen, I greet you in the name of the first Commander to penetrate the mists of time, the immortal Commander Smith!”
Del had often heard of this brilliant man, the almost pure white throwback to an earlier age of big coarse-featured pale-skinned people; Sokutu had capitalized on his gross body, his unquestioned wit and a genius for finding the bizarre in his historical researches, with the result that he was the most sought-after performer in half the Galaxy. “O that this tender breast lay in my palm!” he intoned to the girl. “My dear, once again we meet!”
“I've heard it all before,” the girl assured him. “Sokutu, this is Delvaney—he's taken over and he's not standing for any of this land of nonsense.”
“Your servant,” said Sokutu in a tinkle of bells and cymbals. He shrugged off the heavy robes and removed the enormous absurd headgear. “It goes down well with my second-year classes,” he explained. *1 run a course on Comparative Decadence for housewives. My contribution to the deprived. All good • sound historical stuff.”
“And the Forever Planet?” said Del. What could you say to a grotesque buffoon like Sokutu? He was a man of the most prodigious intellectual skills. His peculiar genius lay in the correlation of facts, in the scouring of recorded history for unrelated scraps of information which he could weave into erudite and complex monstrosities of theories. Del looked with distaste at this latest member of his team. He wondered what else in the way of shocks he had to face that day.
“Who can detach meaning from myth?” said Henry Sokutu. His voice was cautious, and the ugly face was that of a vast and sly toad.
“That's the line he's taken,” said Garvin. “He took the wide view that I just touched on: there has to be a basis for the legend.”
“Let’s look at the facts,” said Henry Sokutu deliberately. "Always the facts first, then the legend.” He told them of the first launching into hyperspace. It had been the greatest single event in human history.
The first ship to make that fantastic leap extended the whole framework of human action. Henry Sokutu’s calm manner evoked the splendour of those far off days when billions of people stood tensely waiting for the moment when the ill-understood conjunction of forces took place and the massive bulk of the first real extra-Galactic ship disappeared in a single appalling surge of energy. The drive had been discovered by accident, and the force-fields which barely controlled and directed it were again chance discoveries: the Field Theorists who watched the first launching trembled inwardly, though they appeared unconcerned. The real sufferers were the three men inside the vessel. No-one had any idea what would happen once the leap into the unreal dimensions of hyperspace was taken. The apparatus of conventional space-ships had been provided, the absorption chambers, the various systems for metabolic adjustment, field reorientation and simulation of atmospheric and pressure conditions; but the utter strangeness of hyperspace shocked the crew into a state of complete disorientation. Fortunately one man had possessed a degree of will-power that bordered on paranoia. He had brought the ship under control and slung it through the billowing dimensions and back to the dock. After that, the techniques of charting fields developed until an incursion into some areas of hyperspace became an everyday matter. Within a decade, more than a score of ships had been built—the Commanders ship and its sister-vessel the Thomas Cook were under construction—and then the disappearances began. One after another, the ships failed to return.
"Warping time had its dangers,” said Henry Sokutu. "The Field Theorists of the twenty-fifth century had no more idea of how their vessels circumnavigated extra-Galactic space than the ancient Greeks knew how the winds of Sol blew in a pattern. They knew as much about their propulsion units as engineers of the twentieth century knew about the properties of petrol. The drive worked, but they didn’t understand how.
“Naturally the first disappearances caused alarm, but they were marked up as inevitable. The most advanced of all the ships went in the same way, so it seemed: until the famous Report came back.”
“The time-slip,” said Del. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“A freak transmission, that was the immediate verdict,” agreed Sokutu. “We think we know better. Again, back to the facts, which are straightforward. The ship went missing, then came the Commander’s report. The usual data, of course, speeds, fields, sightings, observations, information on the crew’s condition and behaviour. And, finally, the message out of time.” Henry Sokutu paused. “This is the important bit,” he said. “And this is what I’ve been ferreting out The time sequence. It’s all wrong. According to what we know of the gulfs where Smith was driving, there’s nothing to account for the way we got his message.” “He dated it by a supernova explosion in a nearby arm of our galaxy,” said Garvin.
“One that occurred after the time of his message!” said Henry Sokutu. He was inflamed by his own retelling of the story. “It’s impossible! It’s as impossible now as it was when the Report was suppressed!”
“And you’ve found something?” asked Del, but the big face grinned slyly at him:
“Let me tell it my own way,” said Henry Sokutu. “First, the rash of folk songs about the time-slip. By the way, did you know that there was a popular dance craze known as the Hyperspace Hop?”
“The time-slip,” said Del impatiently.
“Please,” said the girl. ‘He likes to do things this way.”
“Dramatic licence,” said Garvin, supporting the girl. “I can't forget that Henry Sokutu is our leading creative historian.”
“Too flattering! Still, I shall try to be brief, though it's an enormous field to cover in a short time. I got the first hint from the ballads—the late twenty-seventh century rather dreary songs about love and time and space.'' Henry Sokutu bellowed in a great baritone:
“Come age with me, my love
Let time hang still my love
Let the golden sun hold still—
Let the clock of time run T—i—ll—”
He stopped. “And then there's the interesting line. You see, it's got a hint of an unnatural temporal sequence that's reinforced by the admittedly banal wording of the final line of that stanza. It goes:
You return to time with m—e—e.' ”
“And this has a connection with the Report?” asked Delvaney. He was searching his own memory for similar stanzas. “The one about natural clocks,” he said. ‘Is this another?”
“Exactly one such,” said Henry Sokutu. “There was the common theme of time hanging still. It runs through the epics of the early total experience simulators and the tone-poems of the next century. The example you quoted is a rather later ballad that's only a copy of an early one. The first song about natural clocks had the same idea. The freezing of time. The clock held still. The place where time could have a stop.”
“The Forever Planet,” said the girl.
“The Forever Planet,” agreed Henry Sokutu. “Now this is the point of all my researches on Sol—yes, I went to Sol to get the answer,” he said, seeing the query in Delvaney's face. “And it was there. What led me to it was, finally, what wasn’t contained in the Commanders message. Nowhere is there the notion of time hanging still, or stopping.” He looked around triumphantly. “Question: where does the idea come from?”
“From a missing report,” said Del tiredly. “You said that at first. Did you find it?”
“Naturally! And I kept it to myself. The ballads led me to the source. The archives of the Galactic Trust.”
“What!” Now Sokutu had captured the attention of his hearers.
“Yes, the Galactic Trust. They inherited the records of a small relay station on the periphery of the Galaxy. How they came to be there is a tale of tangled bureaucracy that even I find boring. The only apparent reason for their finally coming to rest in their files is that no-one else would have them. Do you know what I found?”
“I can guess,” said Del.
“The source of the myth,” said Henry Sokutu, ignoring DeL “A report that didn’t get onto the official record. Another message from the Forever Planet.”
The three others watched in fascination as Henry Sokutu produced a small capsule. In silence, he pressed the switch and the voice from out of time immediately rang out:
“Reporting after departure from Planet B716 Sector 59—”
“Departure!” “They landed!” ‘Impossible!”
“—Procedure Emergency—” There was a sudden gasp of breath and a muffled shout in the background. “Temporal shift observed—” began the voice of the Commander again, with an attempt at calm normality, “—the clock!—the clock’s showing a different phasing level—” There was stark disbelief in the loud and agitated tones “—the ship’s moving faster than the planet’s receding! There’s a kind of time-shift. Time’s holding still! Tell them—” Above the several voices that interrupted unintelligibly, the awed listeners heard the sound of a million ringing bells, a wild and weird sound, “—time’s holding still!” Faintly came the last message: “the Planet’s snatched ba
ck—time!” “They couldn’t have landed!” said Del. ‘Impossible!” “Why was this message held back?” said Garvin thoughtfully.
“It’s the source of the myth,” said the girl. “Unquestionably. The theme—even the words—are the same.” Delighted, Henry Sokutu waited for silence. “The question you should be asking is what caused the time-slip.”
“Do you know?” said Del.
“No-one can know. To say the message is ambiguous and anomalous is an understatement.”
“A field imbalance,” said Garvin. “A difference between the time scale for gravity and light Could that noise—that ringing effect have something to do with it?”
“I put the problem to the computers,” said Henry Sokutu. “In a hypothetical way. They came up with the idea that some gravitational effect reached the ship before the electro-magnetic effect.”
“And shifted the time-scale,” said the girl. “The Commander was trying to account for something he couldn’t conceivably understand. Yet he had that moment of intuition that told him there was a slip somewhere in the relationship between time for him and time for the bit of space he was occupying.”
“So it’s the Planet,” said Del. “That’s what we have to investigate.”
“And land on it,” said Garvin.
“We’ll never get permission,” the girl said. “Not in a million years.”
“Smith did,” said Del.
“We don’t know that—we have an ambiguous report,” said Henry Sokutu. “And remember that if we do manage to get this ship reactivated, and if we get
the expedition approved, and if Delvaney agrees to take on as Field Theorist an amateur—ah, they haven’t told you of this have they!—and, finally, if I manage to persuade the Galactic Trust to give us authority to get near the vicinity of the mysterious Forever Planet: if, I say again, if we do all this, we still can’t land there. The drive will be locked with a complete inhibition against any planetfall except on this one!”