by Rob Grant
It had been a while since he'd pulled a round-the-clock shift, but the symptoms of exhaustion were as familiar as an old friend. Right now, he was experiencing the big gloom phase which always hit just before the dawn, when he began to feel resentful of regular people, sleeping their sane sleep in their sensible beds with their normal daylight-hours jobs. Parts of his body started becoming forgetful about how to perform the most basic operations: his mouth would neglect its swallowing duties, and he'd suddenly realize drool had caked on his chin; his buttocks wouldn't shift frequently enough in the chair and sharp pains would shoot up his back, urging him to kindly remember to move now and then, if you please, because there's plenty more where that came from. Time would start dragging and jumping teasingly, so that minutes could last several hours, and then flit by suddenly in unseen flocks.
He comforted himself with the thought that the next phase couldn't be too far away, and that was the good part. He would suddenly be aware that daylight had sneaked up on him, and he'd get an adrenaline rush, thinking of being the first customer at the breakfast canteen, of the mounds of sizzling fresh bacon he'd deservedly consume, of watching the poor suckers who'd slept the night away dragging their way into a day of drudgery, while he wound his way home to the sweet caress of a sleep well earned, with sunbeams slanting on to the bed through the slits in his curtains. He'd begin to feel special, almost more than human, having gone on when lesser men would have surrendered.
And, best of all, he would feel incredibly horny.
But all that was hours away, and right now it was a matter of dife or leth that he found a way to concentrate.
Dife or leth?
He had to stop drifting. He pinched the skin of his cheeks cruelly, sipped again at the foul mouth of his coffee mug, shuddered, and forced himself to re-focus on the screen.
He jumped at the sudden loudness of the hangar door sliding metallically back, thus adding stale coffee to the unnameable melange of stains and odours on his overall crotch. He cursed mentally. For the past five years he'd been fighting a running battle against his own natural slobbiness, and was still losing, badly. The fluorescents buzzed and clicked on, filling the hangar with shocking white light.
'Good God, Spanners. You still here, old fruitcake?'
Lister tried to speak, but the coffee and tiredness had furred his throat, and what came out of his mouth sounded like the unintelligible ranting of a chronic drunk raging across the street at invisible demons. He coughed and tried again. 'What time is it?'
Ace, in full flight gear, clacked over to him. 'Zero hour minus two.'
Listers drowsy brain couldn't achieve the required arithmetical standard to subtract two hours from six o'clock. 'What's that, then?'
'Four a. m. Time for you to catch some zeds, old chum-burger.'
'The White Coats come up with anything?'
'Zipporola, I'm afraid. They've run everything through the simulator upside down and back to front: nada. They're tearing their hair out. Damn thing should work, they reckon. You get anywhere?'
Lister rolled his head back along his shoulders, cracking his neck satisfyingly. 'There's got to be something here. It's just a matter of time.'
'Face it, Spanners: if you haven't found it, it's not there. You get some shut-eye. I'm going to need you around for the pre-flight check, so you're only going to fit in about ninety winks, anyway.'
Lister thought about protesting, but couldn't work up the energy. He sighed, big time, and pushed his castored chair away from the screen. The truth was, he'd gone more or less image-blind, anyway. He'd watched the disk so many times, it had become meaningless to him. Jumbled nonsense. He felt like he'd been through an all-night session of MTV. 'Half an hour,' he said, as if it were a threat. 'On the inspection trolley. You'd better wake me.' He stood, and tried to walk, but his left leg had gone dead. Too tired to bother about the pain, he simply dragged it behind him towards the trolley.
'Good man.' Ace leaned over and stopped the disk.
In the sudden silence that whistled emptily through Lister's fatigue-sensitized ears, a thought struck him. Obvious. It was obvious! 'Hang on!' he yelled, and hopped back to the video console. He hit 'search', 'play' and then 'pause'. 'There! There it is!'
Ace peered at the flickering still frame. Suddenly, his face ignited with delight and relief. 'By God, Spanners. You've only gone and cracked it!'
FIVE
Black Box Recording
Project: 70773
Codename: Wildfire
Status: Need-To-Know Only
Security Clearance: AAA
Europa Test Centre
Event: 237. Prototype Test Flight
Dateline: 0600 31/03/81 Earth Standard
The pre-flight instrument check winked into blackness, to be replaced on the screen by a head-and-shoulders shot of the pilot, framed by dozens of digital readouts of the craft's various functions. His helmet was on, but his oxygen mask dangled unstrapped by his chin, and the Plexiglas of his raised visor flared in the overhead cockpit light.
'All checks are go-go. Flight recorder on-line.' Commander Rimmer leaned towards the camera, his hands flicking test switches on the out-of-view console below. He was clean-shaven, and it was impossible to tell he'd been up all night, or that he had any notion this flight could possibly end in his death: his clear eyes glimmered with the little-boy excitement his workmanlike tone successfully concealed. There was a sudden high-pitched squeal, and he winced.
'Ungh, could do without the feedback, M C.'
The mission controller's voice bzzted back, flat and tinny over the speaker. 'MC to Wildfire: sorry about that. We're broadcasting your transmission on the base PA. Some idiot looped the wiring.'
'Let's hope it's not the guy who did the drive relays on this crate.'
Laugh. 'That's a no-no, Wildfire. We're all go-go at this end. Zero minus thirty, from my mark.' Pause. 'And... mark!'
'Tertiary ignition... engaged.'
The tortured whine of jet engines built to a slow crescendo, and the image began to shudder. Ace kissed the first two fingers of his gloved hand and pressed them against the St Christopher medallion dangling from the dash. He flicked the oxygen mask over his face and flipped down the visor.
'Engaging launch catapult.' In the visor's reflection, the sky crept into view as hydraulic legs tilted Wildfire One back towards its optimum launch angle.
'Zero minus twenty, Wildfire. You are in launch position.'
The hydraulics juddered to a stop, and Ace leaned forward. 'Chocks away.' He flicked a switch and braced his features as the spacecraft shot back into its launch silo.
'Zero minus fifteen. You're looking good from here, Wildfire.'
'Bet you say that to all the pilots, you old Lothario. OK, engaging secondary ignition.' Another set of jets slow-howled into life.
'Beginning automatic countdown...'
A computer voice kicked in. 'Ten...'
'Good luck, Wildfire.'
'Nine...'
'MC? Is Spanners around?' 'Eight...'
Listers voice fssed over the speaker. 'That's a yo, Commander. '
'Seven...' 'Thanks for pulling the all-nighter, old love. Above and beyond, and all that. '
'Six...'
'Don't be a ponce. Just get the smegging thing back in one piece. '
'Five...'
'Will do. Engaging primary. '
'Four...'was almost drowned by the massive belch of the main engines.
One of the readout dials turned red and started flashing.
'Three...'
'Abort, Wildfire, we have a hiccup on the G-force modifier. '
'Two...'
'Negative, MC.' Rimmer leaned forward and tapped the control fascia. The readout turned green and stabilized. 'Loose wire. '
'One...'
Commander Rimmer gave a thumbs up. 'That's it, one and all. Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast. '
'Zero. '
The lift-off booster kicked Wild
fire One free of the silo. Despite the G-force Modification Field, the skin around Ace's eyes dragged back his features like a bad Hollywood facelift, as he fought to maintain control of a craft travelling at a greater rate of acceleration than any human had ever experienced.
His image quivered madly as he shot through the temporary window in the Plexiglas dome and was yowling through the vacuum of space in less than forty seconds.
The speaker tzzed: 'Wildfire, you are go-go.' There was a tinny cheer from the control tower.
The velocity readouts blurred as the monumental engines maintained the blistering acceleration out towards the gaseous whirl of Jupiter's sphere. Ace struggled against the G force to reach the control panel, his voice straining against the screaming mechanical bedlam in the cockpit as he issued his penultimate pre-arranged communication: 'Igniting course correction jets. '
Wildfire One pitched down towards the gas giant, using the planet's massive gravitational pull to add to its momentum.
The drag looked unbearable: Aces lips were being stretched back into an eerie, quivering grin and the helmet's visor seemed to be bending inwards towards his face, warping the reflection of the planet's Great Red Spot — a permanent hurricane the size of the Earth that howled relentlessly over its surface. He strained to move his arm towards the controls. Six inches. Seven. The pull snatched it back.
There was a hint of muted babble from Mission Control. '... won't make it... can't reach...'
Gripping the armrests of the pilot seat, slowly, agonizingly, he edged his entire body forward. When he could go no further, he tilted his right shoulder towards the fascia and began stretching his vibrating hand out, centimetre by aching centimetre, as if he were pushing some colossal invisible stone up hill. With a final, grunting effort, he reached the switch and, through teeth gritted in an exaggerated Burt Lancaster grin, he said: 'Engaging Wildfire drive. '
The machinery's clamour ceased, and the screen whited out in the visual equivalent of the sonic boom as Commander Arnold J. Rimmer became the first living creature to break the light barrier.
Just as suddenly, the image returned.
Now the craft was buffeting so violently, Ace's image was blurring. The noise level in the cockpit had become unbearable. Half the digital read-outs were registering red, and great clusters of the rest were following suit by the second. Ace was pinned, helpless, his body being sucked into the thick leather of the pilot seat which began to fold around him. The temperature reading started climbing rapidly. The Plexiglas visor began to warp. Ace tried to raise his hand to tear off his helmet but could manage barely a centimetre.
His gloves began smouldering.
All the readouts flashed red. The cockpit filled with choking smoke.
'This is control centre, Europa. You are in violation of Space Corps air space. Please identify yourself. Repeat, please iden . . . '
Then the AV cables melted, and there was only blackness and silence.
SIX
'There! It was staring at us all the time! We couldn't see it for looking!'
Lister's enthusiasm might have been more welcome to Admiral Tranter if (a) it had been a slightly more civilized hour than five in the morning, (b) the man's breath had smelled slightly less like a hyena's flatulence and (c) in his ebullience he had remembered it was considered impolite in superior circles to spray the listener with stale-coffee-coloured spittle when speaking.
What, precisely, had been staring at them all the time? The admiral leaned closer to the screen and peered at the frozen image of Commander Rimmer in the cockpit. He half-closed his eyes as if he were trying to unscramble a 3D Magic Eye trompe-l'oeil without really expecting it to work. He waited for what he considered to be a decently contemplative interval, and then squeezed his over-cologned chin and shook his head. 'Sorry, I just can't...'
Lister leaned forward and tapped the screen rapidly with the knuckle of his forefinger. 'There!' He turned his wide-eyed grin towards the admiral, barely millimetres from his face. 'There!'
Tranter tried to maintain his querulous smile as he was treated to a hot wave of Lister's pungent expiration but, while his lips did a creditable job, his eyes registered an unmistakable blend of horror and nausea. He straightened to put a safer distance between himself and this hygienic threat. 'All right, chaps. Lets not make this a guessing game.'
'You'll have to excuse Spanners, Admiral. He's put in a thirty-hour stint on this one. Gears are running a little slow. Still, he's the chap who spotted it. Only fair he...'
'It's there! There!' Lister jumped up and down, grinning, his eyebrows crescented at the very peak of their elevation.
Tranter seriously considered taking his pistol out of his drawer and splattering what passed for this man's brains over the wall. He could have it framed and tell everyone it was a Jackson Pollock.
'The date! Check the date/time readout.'
'The date?'
'Thirty-one, zero-three.' He nodded enthusiastically, as if he were training a particularly stupid dog to sit up and beg. 'Thirty-first of March, 'he translated. 'Three days ago!'
Tranter maintained his cool by reflecting that it would probably be an exceptionally small Jackson Pollock. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that precisely when we recovered the craft?'
'Yes!'
Ace recognized the dangerous glint in Tranter's eye and cut in: 'D'you see, Admiral? If this was our Wildfire One; if we'd launched it today, if it had broken the time barrier and then showed up three days ago, the flight recorder would have logged today's date.'
Tranter glanced over at Rodenbury, the white-coated technical coordinator, who was trying his best not to look shame-faced. The date? These boffs were talking about cracking time travel, and they hadn't checked the bloody date? 'I don't understand. If this isn't our ship, then whose the hell ship is it?'
Rodenbury cleared his throat. 'Well, in a way, we're not absolutely one hundred and ten per cent certain, Admiral.'
'But I saw the test results. You assured me, did you not, that the corpse in that craft was unquestionably that of Commander Rimmer?' Tranter's eyes flitted guiltily at Ace, and then carried on glaring at Rodenbury.
'Oh, uh, yes sir, I...'
'I believe you said you were certain. One hundred and fifteen per cent certain, as I recall.'
'Indeed, that is also my recollection of our, uh, conversation, Admiral, but there may be some...'
'So would you like to explain to me how it is possible for him to be both dead and alive at the same time?'
'Well, uh, I believe Commander Rimmer's theory is about the best spin we can put on it.'
'Commander Rimmer's theory?'
'Well, I wouldn't take credit for its being my theory, Admiral, I just helped thrash it out with Spanners, here, and a couple of the tech boys. You see, I think our blind spot's been this breaking the time barrier business: you can understand everyone jumping to that conclusion, wanting it to be true. Damn it, I wanted it to be true myself.'
Lister, long past the fatigue point where his facial muscles were sufficiently under his control to disguise his expressions, was unable to conceal his astonishment at Ace's generosity. Lister had been there. The white coats had simply sat and gawped like adolescent boys peeking through a hole in a nudist camp fence as the good commander pointed out the errors in their Wildfire theory, and outlined his own alternative, complete with diagrams and mathematical proof. The truth was that the researchers had been rendered fact-blind by the prospect of the glittering prizes that were waiting for whoever cracked time travel: a Nobel Prize or two, a lifetime ticket to the lucrative lecture circuit and their names on the spine of an impenetrable book that would top the bestseller charts for decades. For them, the fact that their test pilot had been broiled alive by the process had been an irritant: a temporary glitch, nothing more. Some of them had actually begun working on presentation papers to establish their authorship of the theory, rather than concentrating on the problem of Ace's impending demise. Yet, here h
e was, letting them off the hook.
'So, it's... Have I got his straight? We haven't broken the, uh, the time barrier, then?'
'Not exactly, Admiral.'
Tranter slumped into his oversized chair. He actually felt his eyes begin to sting with disappointment. He'd already rather rashly ordered a dozen new, hideously expensive gold stars for his uniforms: twice as many as necessary, just in case the Admiralty saw fit to leapfrog him up to a triple-pipper.
Ace lit one of his rare cheroots — his only vice, unless you counted an extremely active, multi-partnered sex life as a vice, which Ace didn't. 'I believe we've cracked the reality barrier.'
'The reality barrier?' Tranter leaned forward. He had no idea what the reality barrier might be, but it sounded good. It sounded wonderfully... promotional.
'Let's look at the facts. One: this pilot, let's call him the beta Rimmer, he took off on the test flight three days earlier than ours was scheduled. Two: the beta Rimmer hasn't got one of these beauties.' Ace raised his shade, exposing his black eye.
'Where did you get that, Commander?' Tranter had heard a rumour, but it couldn't be true...
'Altercation with a door jamb, Admiral.' Ace lowered his sunglasses. 'And three: I no longer possess a St Christopher medallion. Conclusion: the beta Rimmer is not me. He's almost me, just not quite. Now, from here on, it's speculation and prediction, but I think it's pretty solid. We believe the beta Rimmer belongs to another reality, another dimension, if you like, co-existing with our own, but neither affecting the other — slightly out of phase. When the beta ship hit the light barrier, it jumped out of its own dimension and into ours.'
'So you're saying there are two realities; two universes running parallel with each other, with only minor differences in between? And the Wildfire drive can jump between them?'