Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  “Then why come along?” said Del. The cunning old man was still holding something back. “Disregard the objections. Why do you want to come?”

  ‘1 believe the Commander did land,” said Henry Sokutu. “He landed and he learned something.”

  “There’s no support for this,” said Garvin.

  “Miss Rosetti has the idea,” said the big man. “The germ of it at least.” He looked suddenly dignified at last. ‘Whilst there’s any remote chance of resolving the only problem still facing man—the conquest of time itself—I shall follow any absurd line of investigation, any comic hypothesis, and the most futile of all quests.” The others now felt the authority of the presence of an inspired visionary. “We have to attempt this search. We have to follow the trail.” He looked intently at the girl. “You said it was Commander Smith’s intuition that told him he had stumbled on an aspect of the ultimate mystery. No. It was more than his undignified intuition.” He shook his head. “No man could have jumped to the astonishing conclusions he reached.”

  “Another mind,” whispered Garvin. “Another mind reached out to him.”

  Del shivered. He felt the cold touch of an alien contact

  Henry Sokutu nodded. “Now do you understand why at this remote relay station someone had the courage to suppress this part of the report; for courage it was. Some unimportant nobody who hasn’t left even his name took the immense decision to cut out any mention of a contact—the least hint that there was other intelligent life in the Universe.”

  “But he left it in the records,” said the girl.

  "For us,” said Garvin.

  Chapter Nine

  “In theory any third year student of field technology could work the ship,” Garvin said. Del and Suzanne Rosetti were waiting outside the entrance to the dock. “Anyone with a little experience of interstellar drives could handle it, too.” A small communicator scuttled rapidly up to them:

  “Reminder from Mr. Rosetti, sir,” it said. “Please to remember the 2 p.m. meeting of the Ways and Means Committee.”

  It had been a busy time. There were, Del learned, a number of interested parties who had queried the value of the expedition, and to clear the air Rosetti had called a meeting. Dealing with Henry Sokutu had taken up large chunks of the past few days; Del had wanted every fact checked and re-checked, every lead again investigated. Henry Sokutu had been able to show that nothing remained apart from the one recording he had found in the records of the Trust. The mystery of how a hint of the recording had found its way into the many popular Forever Planet ballads, epics and totex scripts still remained. And how Commander Smith had been able to land on the forbidden Planet—if he had in fact landed—was also a complete mystery. Satisfied that nothing further could be learned, Del had turned his attention to the ship itself. And the man who could handle the drive.

  “Ellisons late." said Garvin.

  “Hes finished the work on the ship?” asked Del.

  “Yesterday.”

  There were signs, small insignificant pointers, of recent tests and checks. A field projector had been replaced. Someone had smeared the smooth dull-black finish of an inspection hatch. The alignment of a series of energy coils had left a scratch or two on a DO NOT REMOVE notice. In themselves they were nothing, but they added up to a feeling of actively suppressed power; no longer was the ship a museum-piece, but an organism capable of immediate and sudden action.

  “What time did he say he'd be here?” asked Suzanne Rosetti.

  “Ten. It's ten-twenty now,” said Garvin.

  “He's confident?” said Del.

  “You’d never call Ellison confident,” said Garvin. “But he knows what he's doing. In any case, we haven't much choice, have we?”

  Del laughed aloud. It was true. Anyone could run the ship through a few test evolutions in the well-charted dimensions of the Galaxy. The art of flickering through the whorls of time and space beyond was lost. They were going to place themselves in the hands of a man of barely mature years, a youth almost, who had acquired his knowledge of Field Theory and practice from piles of ancient spools. Del had seen Ellison for the first time a few days before. He was an unimpressive sight, short, slight, uncoordinated physically and incapable of communicating clearly. Suzanne's presence brought on instant stupefaction.

  “Where is he?” said Garvin. “What can you do with a man like Ellison! I said ten o'clock, and there's no sign of him. I have to get together with Sokutu about the Galactic Trust thing later this morning.”

  “And the Ways and Means comments,” said Suzanne.

  “What’s the general impression at the moment?” asked DeL

  Suzanne stood up, and again Del admired her lithe roundness. He wondered if Garvin was still her lover; and at once hid the thought. There had been enough women in the past twenty years: to become involved with this one on an expedition so wild as this was to invite trouble.

  “You know my father's main line of argument?”

  Del nodded. Rosetti had worked fast and shrewdly in publicizing the expedition as the greatest real-life experience of the century. Every phase of the adventure was being recorded so that billion upon billion of hours of entertainment could be produced; against this was balanced the possible loss in an accident of a worn-out agent from Disaster Control, a popular but by no means irreplaceable commentator, an historian of some talent but also considerable nuisance value, and two young people of no outstanding economic value. Already the totex people were interested, and Ellison s demonstration of his ability to handle the ship could make Rosetti’s case conclusive. Rosetti could have bull-dozed the scheme through, but he was a realist: he was looking beyond the immediate expedition to a time when there might be more and better-founded trips outside the Galaxy. He was reserving his power for a bigger aim.

  “Look!” said the girl suddenly. She was close to Del and as he saw the deliberate, slow movement of the field projectors he put an arm round her.

  “Someone’s in there!” shouted Garvin. “Back to the observation room!”

  The huge voice caught them unawares and amazed. It boomed round the dock in a confused babble:

  “I say, should I start? I mean—Mr. Delvaney, is it—I’ve waited half-an-hour, but you didn't—”

  “It's Ellison,” said Garvin. “He’s been in the ship all night!”

  Del reached for the control console in front of him. He flipped the circuits into life and at once Ellison’s voice continued at a lower level:

  “Permission to start?” it said impatiently. “I mean, if you want me to get the drive working, I’m ready.”

  Del waved the others into silence. Explanations could wait. Now that the first full test of the ship's capabilities was about to begin, he was as excited as Ellison. The events of the past weeks had led up to this moment. In a few seconds, they would know the answer to the problem they had all been obsessed with: not whether or not the ship would still function, but could this youthful dilettante control it?

  “Ellison? You hear me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Delvaney, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  ‘Well, thank you! I’m just—”

  The three watchers shielded their eyes from the incredible sight in front of them. A small crackling noise of dust motes vanishing in a blistering haze of coruscescence told them that the ship was moving out of the triple confines of Euclidean space.

  “It’s gone,” said the girl quietly.

  “Phase One,” said Ellison’s voice from the desk in front of them. The three dazed watchers flinched back instinctively.

  “Going into Phase Two,” Ellison continued cheerfully. Dials spun, energy levels blinked off and on.

  “Ellison!” Del shouted, but it was too late to call the man and the great ship back, for already Ellison was calling out, incoherently now, that he was ready to slip into the complexities of hyperspace that had not been searched into for centuries.

  For a few seconds the ship’s phantom shape reappeared, and then
it plunged off in a colossal clangour of noise; a few seconds more of the interplay of forces outlined around numbers of vanishing shapes and then silence. The ship was gone again into places where whirlpools of cosmic energy existed, down into the unreal dimensions where great gaping pits of forces alternated with mighty stairways of unbelievable power.

  “A flight into hyperspace,” said Garvin. “He's made it See—” he pointed to the complex lay-out in front of them. “—Phase Three.”

  “Flight,” said Del. The others looked at him. 4
  “An archaism, like ‘ship’,” said the girl, and Del knew that she understood.

  How could you apply ordinary words to the incredible phenomenon of shift? Del watched the bursts of power registering on the console in front of him as Ellison flung the ship around in manoeuvres that had no relationship with anything that lay within their experience.

  “Here he comes!” breathed Garvin jerkily. “Look, he’s coming in direct!”

  “No transitional Phases!” said the girl.

  They watched as the space before them filled instantly with the towering bulk of the ship, dull-black and shimmering intensely as its constituent molecules shivered into quietness; the grinding hammering of molecular spin whirled up to a high pitch and then it ceased abruptly. A port opened, and Ellison sprang out, tucked in his shirt, missed his footing and fell in an untidy sprawling and apologizing heap in front of them.

  ‘Isn’t she marvellous?” he stuttered. “Wonderful! A ship to dream about!” He looked at Suzanne Rosetti and instantly dissolved into confusion.

  “Our Field Theorist,” said Garvin in a low voice. "Mr. Ellison,” he said aloud, "it was brilliant! An impressive performance! Will she make it?”

  "That's what were waiting for,” said Del. "Can you handle her on a long voyage?”

  They had all taken a course in Field Theory. Each one of them could have handled the controls of the Thomas Cook; they had studied the mechanics of her huge bulk and they could have taken the ship apart. Each one of her many systems, each phase of her warp-accelerators, each of the many servo-systems and their attendant eager robots, was known to the three. They also knew that only an artist like Ellison had proved himself to be could operate in the strange remoteness of hyperspace.

  "Could anyone else do it?” the girl added softly.

  “No,” said Ellison at last. "No, Miss Rosetti. And I'm not sure, Mr. Delvaney,” he said, turning to Del. He was in control of himself now that he was talking about his own subject. "No one can guarantee this kind of drive. Every flight is different. At some point I'll have to guess about what I do, and you'll have to trust me. It's not just a matter of calculating how much stress you can put on the force-shields, or how much drive you'll need to blast the ship out of a hyperspace whorl. The computers can't help when they haven't got the data.” He smiled shyly. "When I say the ship's at the limit, you'll just have to believe me, Mr. Delvaney.’'

  “Del,” Del told him. "And now this is Suzanne. You're?”

  “Charlie,” said Ellison, a huge grin across his face.

  “Charlie,” said Garvin, and Garvin looked worried. "You say you'll have to tell us what to do when we reach the limits. What about the field imbalance factor?”

  “You've studied it?” interrupted Del.

  “Every last detail,” Ellison assured him. “I had copies of everything from Mr. Sokutu.”

  “And?” asked Garvin.

  “I don't know,” said Ellison. “Really, I can't say. It's the time bit I'm not sure about I'm sure that’s the key to the whole business.”

  “That's why we're going!” said Suzanne Rosetti impatiently. “Surely you've had time to think it over?”

  “If I had more than a glimpse of an idea, I'd tell you,” said Ellison reluctantly. “One thing I’ve felt more and more strongly is—” He paused, and the three waited. It was obvious that Ellison was groping once more with his customary inarticulacy.

  “Is?” prompted Del.

  “Mind—Smith's mind. Not conditioned. Or more like-”

  “What!” exploded Garvin.

  “It sounds presumptuous,” said the untidy man. He had regained dignity. “An astounding presumption,” he said. “That's what I feel. And that's what I think the Commander felt, too. It was an utterly presumptuous thing to investigate the nature of that bit of time.” He shrugged and turned to the girl. “If we knew that, don't you see, we'd know everything.”

  Ellison was impressive. Garvin looked worried. Del looked at the girl and knew with an astounding clarity that she was the rarest of all creatures, a person possessed of a single unique vision.

  “Everything!” she said. “It was in the songs. That's where the myth broke through. Once you know time, you know everything.”

  Del knew that he had to go to the planet.

  Chapter Ten

  “Do you know the origin of the Committee?” said Garvin as Del and he walked through the immense marble halls.

  “Old, I’d say,” guessed Del.

  “Old and odd,” said Garvin. ‘In Early Nuclear days when national governments existed, the Ways and Means Committees gradually soaked up power. Now they govern the Galaxy."

  They stopped and examined the notice-board: “An Examination of a projected voyage to the planet known as the ‘Forever Planet*.” They went in to find that Hector Rosetti had just begun to talk.

  “I regard this voyage as the sum of my life’s work,” he said. There was a mild splatter of approval. A score or so of men and women sat around a table looking at Rosetti. Perhaps another dozen spectators had come along to watch. But from every vantage point a score of tiny pinpoints winked: every movement, each flicker of expression, every noise no matter how insignificant, was being recorded. It was to be the greatest series of the age when it was broadcast to the billions of watchers who would soon be told of the venture.

  Del looked at the sturdy frame of Hector Rosetti. There was force and vigour in his voice, and profound confidence in his manner.

  “I like to think of this undertaking as the Rosetti Project,” he said loudly. “I want to be remembered as the man who made possible the unravelling of the only mystery that’s left to us, the conquest of time itself.”

  Del suddenly realized that Suzanne Rosetti had communicated this vitality and eagerness to her father. In his arguments, Del could hear the voice of the girl: the challenge, the wild elation, and the tremendous sense of involvement in the most wonderful undertaking ever conceived. Rosetti ran through the familiar history of exploration and conquest. He did not avoid the dangers:

  “We all know of the accidents. We’ve seen the horrors of the early days of hyperspace exploration. The pictures of men circling endlessly through half-a-dozen dimensions that mean nothing to our understood concepts of space. We’ve seen the agony of undead men crystallized in places we can’t reach out to. And I still say that the expedition should go forward!”

  A few murmurs of disagreement indicated that Rosetti’s confidence in his own powers might be misplaced. Del saw with some concern that the civil servants who were the mainstay of the Committee had noncommittal looks. Was Rosetti in a position to dictate to them?

  “If it fails, we’ve provided enough excitement and entertainment to occupy many millions of minds for weeks. Why, the preparations alone have taken thousands of work-shifts up—the totex people say there’s a tremendous potential for exploitation.” He paused. “If it fails, we’ve lost a small number of wasting assets.” His look took in the five who sat behind him, Del with the girl, Garvin and Sokutu together, and Ellison alone. “A ship that had been forgotten and five talented but not irreplaceable people.”

  “And if you succeed?” said the civil servant who was presiding from the head of the table.

  “If the expedition brings back the least glimmer that c
an reveal the nature of time, we may at last be able to frame a Unified Field Theory.” He sat down and waited for the questions.

  “If we can be sure the expedition will return,” said a suave voice. “After all, Commander Smith didn’t.”

  “I take it your people will stand well off to make their investigations?” added a thin voice.

  Rosetti turned to the two speakers. They were unimportant members who had been briefed by him.

  “Every precaution will be taken. There’s the inhibitor on the main drive,” he explained. “It’s programmed to shift into warp when the Planet’s within a certain proximity. There’ll be no landing.”

  Del felt the girl stir restlessly beside him. “There will!” she muttered. ‘“There must!”

  “And the personnel?” queried the presiding Chairman.

  “I have permissions here from their various agencies,” said Rosetti.

  “Isn’t Mr. Delvaney more useful in his present occupation?” asked a woman who Del recognized as a leading Frames enthusiast.

  “We’re willing to release him,” at once said Del’s ultimate authority, the Director of the Frames. ‘Indefinitely.” Del wished he hadn’t added that one qualification.

  “A personal matter, Mr. Rosetti,” said the Chairman. “Miss Rosetti isn’t qualified, I understand?”

  “Were regarding the expedition—the proposed expedition as fieldwork,” said the Secretary for Education.

  “And Mr. Ellison?” suggested another voice.

  “No problem,” announced the Chairman. “Both he and Mr. Sokutu aren’t under contract to any agency.” He was silent for a moment, and then he dropped a bombshell. “There are two serious objections that have just been registered, however.”

  ‘What?” growled Henry Sokutu behind Del.

  “The Culture people!” said Garvin. “I forgot to tell you, Dell I heard a few days ago they were cooking something up, but I didn’t take it seriously!”

  “May I?” asked an enormous woman. She stood up, smoothed untidy hair and squared her massive frame. “My Ministry objects on the grounds of cultural deprivation.”