Frederik Pohl - Other End Of Time

by Other End of Time [lit]

  Fidgeting in his seat while waiting for the curtain to go up, Dannerman was trying to decide what to do about Anita Berman. He didn't have to break up with her. Well, not just yet, anyway. Sometime, yes, because a permanent, committed relationship was out of the question for anybody in Dannerman's line of work. The worrisome part was that, he was pretty sure, the longer he waited the worse it would be for her when the break did come; and how bad was he willing to make it for sweet, pretty Anita Berman?

  When the play began, he was glad to put that question out of his mind; what was happening on the stage held his interest. Maybe the old adage was right; the blunders of the rehearsal had disappeared and the cast was flawless in the first act of The Subway. Anita was beautiful even in her 1920s bargain-basement flapper costume, and whoever the actor was who had taken over for poor Bucky Korngold, he didn't miss a beat.

  Even the play itself was going well with the audience. The Subway was definitely one of Elmer Rice's more squirrelly works, and Dannerman was the one who had first urged it on the group. It was ideal for them. It was short. It used a large cast- always an asset for an Off-Off-Off-Broadway theater, when everybody involved wanted to get on stage where some slumming big-time media critic might just possibly think their performance worth a few seconds' commendation in a review. The play was cheap to produce, since it only required one impressionistic-and therefore inexpensive-set. Most important of all, The Subway was just about totally forgotten. No major company had given it a production in close to a hundred years, and so the troupe didn't have a million library tapes floating around out there to compete with.

  He had also vowed to the group that some critics, at least, would be sufficiently intrigued by a long-lost classic of "modern" American theater to make the long run out to Coney Island to see its revival. He was happy to see that he had been right about that. He was pretty sure that at least six or eight of the audience members were actual critics. None of them were smiling, but he didn't expect that. Critics didn't smile. The important thing was that they weren't walking out, either.

  Then, when the first act ended, at least two of them were actually clapping. Well, the whole audience was enthusiastic in its applause-not surprising, since a good half of its members were in some way related to one of the actors-but it was a good sign. In the intermission crowd that packed the lobby-once the vestry, when the place had been a church-Dannerman attached himself, as inconspicuously as possible, to a woman he was nearly sure was a TV talk-show host, trying to overhear what she was saying to her companion. But she was only commenting on the buskers on the sidewalk outside: two Arab kids tap-dancing while a third, in an "I LOVE Allah" T-shirt, worked the intermission crowd for cash. He started for another potential critic and was annoyed when someone touched his arm. He turned to face a short, plump woman who was placidly gazing up at him. "Why, Danno," she said, "it really is you, isn't it? Nice to run into you like this. Why don't we step outside for a little air?"

  "Damn it, Hilda," he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  She didn't answer that, but then she didn't need to. She simply steered him firmly out of the doors and around the corner to where a large truck was parked at the curb. The liquid-crystal display on its side glittered with the words NIITAKE BROS. MOVING & STORAGE, but Dannerman knew it was not going to be any ordinary moving van.

  It wasn't. It turned out to be a complete mobile NBI surveillance station, with a Police Corps master sergeant saluting smartly as Colonel Hilda Morrisey brought him in.

  "It's time for us to do a little business," she said cheerfully. "Take a pew, Danno. Want some coffee? A beer? We're pretty well stocked here, and Horace'll get you anything you want."

  "What I wanted was to be left alone for one damn evening with my friends."

  "Another time, Danno. How's it going?"

  "As well as can be expected, considering you picked Korngold up the day before the opening."

  "Not me. They," she corrected. "They picked everybody in the operation up, but I wasn't involved. I've been off the Carpezzio business as long as you have, because your cousin's is more important. Let's have your report."

  She absorbed the news about the Floridian general and the diamonds without comment, but winced when he told her that the "muggers" had broken Mick Jarvas's wrong arm. "We'll have to do that another way," she said resignedly. "You've got to get his job, because she's going out to Starlab and you're going to have to go with her."

  He goggled at the woman. "Into space? Nobody goes into space anymore!"

  "She does; that's what she was bribing the general for. And she would've taken Jarvas along for muscle, but we'll have to change that."

  "You want me to go into space?" he said again.

  "Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Lots of people have gone into space."

  "Not the Bureau! And not recently for almost anybody."

  "Well, until recently the Bureau didn't have a reason."

  He looked at her more carefully. "Something's happened," he said.

  "That data from your cousin's file happened, Danno," the colonel said triumphantly. "I knew there'd be something there. You know what it was? Synchrotron radiation!"

  He said impatiently, "Cut the crap, Hilda. I don't know what that is."

  "Well, neither do I, exactly. But that's what started your cousin off. Seven or eight months ago the observatory was trying one more time to reactivate the satellite, and they detected a burst of this synchrotron radiation coming from it."

  "But you said to check into gamma radiation."

  "I know what I said. The agent who passed the word along must've gotten it wrong; anyway, the word is it's definitely synchrotron, not gamma. There wasn't much of it. It lasted just for a few seconds. But it was definite, according to your cousin's analysis, and the thing is, there isn't supposed to be anything on Starlab that could cause it." She paused, studying his face. "So you know what that means? Something's been added to Starlab."

  "Are you going to tell me what that is?"

  "I'll show you, as much as we know. Horace? Will you start the simulation now, please?"

  The sergeant touched one button, and the inside of the truck body went dark; touched another, and the simulation tank at the front of the body lit up with a picture of Starlab, sailing along in its perpetual fall toward Earth, with its ruff of solar panels soaking up photovoltaic power to run the instruments that were no longer responding, and its huge collector eyes staring un-seeingly out at the universe.

  "As you can see," Hilda instructed, "it's big. That's because it was designed to let astronomers live there for weeks at-"

  "I've seen all this, Hilda. It's no secret. Christ, they've got a model of the thing in the observatory waiting room."

  "Don't rush me, Danno. We're coming to what you haven't seen. This is stuff we got from your cousin's observatory records. She had this whole segment deleted from the public bank-decided to keep it a secret, I guess-but once our technicians knew what to look for they had no trouble retrieving it. This is enhanced imaging, otherwise you couldn't see anything at all. Watch that little thing coming in from the upper right."

  "I see it." It was a nearly featureless lump, by comparison with the huge Starlab no bigger than a football. It slipped past the great solar vanes and gently caressed the sheathing of the main body of the satellite. It didn't bounce away. It stuck where it touched. Then, while Dannerman watched, the object draped itself to the curvature of the shell. In a moment it was almost invisible again, except as a nearly imperceptible swelling of the hull.

  "So what the hell is it?" Dannerman demanded. "Space junk?"

  "Did that look like junk? It didn't crash into the satellite, did it? Looks to me like it docked with the son of a bitch."

  "What then?" As the idea struck him: "Does it have any connection with the CLO?"

  "Good question," she said approvingly. "I ran that past the experts as soon as they dug out the clip on the object. They said no. They said this th
ing was way too small to be taken for a comet, although they couldn't turn up any later observations of the object; lost it somewhere, I guess. But they didn't exclude the possibility that this thing had come in on the CLO and been dropped off."

  "Like a probe?"

  "I guess. Anyway, they're pretty sure it is some kind of an artifact."

  "Well," he said reasonably, "if it's an artifact somebody would have to put it in orbit. Who's been launching spacecraft lately?"

  "Nobody. Not openly, anyway."

  "Some terrorist bunch?"

  "God, I hope not. If there's some kind of technology that can launch an artifact without anybody detecting it we need to know about it. If terrorists got hold of it... well, can you imagine what it would mean if the Mads or the Irish or the goddam Basques could put up their own satellites?" She shrugged expressively, then added, "But maybe that would be better than the other possibility, at that. Your cousin seems to think it's extraterrestrial."

  "But that doesn't make any sense, Hilda! If she thought that, why would she keep it a secret?"

  "Money," she said shortly.

  "From what, damn it?"

  "Oh, Danno," she sighed, "you know what your trouble is? You just don't think like a normal human being. You aren't greedy enough. Think about it: some kind of technology that can produce synchrotron radiation where there isn't supposed to be any. The brains tell me that it can't be done without a big particle accelerator-those things that run out of subway-tunnel kind of things, fifteen or twenty miles long. So that means there has to be some pretty hot hardware up there. If it's alien, it's worth money to whoever finds it. For us, on the other hand, it doesn't matter whether it's from some weirdo ET or somebody on Earth; we want it."

  "So let the Bureau send a mission up to get it," Dannerman said reasonably.

  She shook her head. "That's one option, sure. But maybe we can't. It's tricky. Starlab's private property; your uncle paid for it out of his own pocket. Maybe we could get around that- that's what we've got lawyers for, for God's sake-but then there's the other problem. We don't want to alert other people to what's going on. The goddam Europeans might send up a mission of their own if they knew we were after something; they can move faster than NASA, and you know there's no security there. And anyway the goddam Floridians still control the launch facilities."

  "So?"

  "So-probably-the final decision hasn't been made, because too many of the top people are all tied up with the press-secretary thing-so probably we want to let her go ahead, but send one of our own along to make sure we get first crack at whatever's there."

  "Ah," said Dannerman glumly. "Like me, you mean."

  "Exactly like you, Danno, so you have to take Jarvas's place. I've got an idea about that. Sergeant? Kill the display and let's have some light again while we brief Agent Dannerman on what he's going to do for us."

  As she turned to get something out of a locker, Dannerman tardily remembered the other thing that had been on his mind. He sneaked a look at his watch.

  It was late. The play would be long over before he got away from the colonel. And so he wouldn't be keeping his promise to meet Anita backstage; which meant that probably that particular problem had already settled itself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dan

  When Danny Dannerman was eight years old, spaceflight was still a going business. Young Danny was a pretty normal American kid, too, so naturally he did a lot of daydreaming, picturing his grown-up self as one of those grand spacefaring adventurers with sharp uniforms, rows of ribbons, the look of eagles on their faces and all. But that was then. Then he was a child. As he was growing to become a man, the space program was dwindling at almost the same rate of speed-few human heroes but a lot of machines; then, as money began to run short, fewer machines, too. Even instrument launches got rarer and rarer, and the dream dried up.

  Until now.

  Now it had become not only real but personal, and Dannerman had never reckoned on anything like this. When he joined the National Bureau of Investigation he knew, as every rookie knew, that the work could take you anywhere in the world; but it had never occurred to him that it might someday take him right out of it. All the way home from Coney Island, in the subway train sparsely occupied by drunks and sleeping homeless people, he thought about what he had let himself in for. Climb into a giant kind of sardine can and let them lock it shut behind you. Lie there, strapped in and helpless, while a few dozen exploding tons of fireworks blasted you, hard as a hammer blow, right off the surface of the Earth. Oh, the idea was exciting, all right; but it kept him awake for an hour after, very late, he finally got to his narrow bed in Rita's condo, and then he dreamed all night of spaceships and hideous, sharp-toothed aliens and a long, terrifying fall out of orbit. He didn't know what final smashup he was falling to. The dreams never got that far. But all night long he was falling, falling; and when the speaker clock woke him at 6:45 (the only time he could expect to beat his neighbors to the shower) he was edgy and unrested.

  And then, as he was getting ready to leave, Hilda called. "You're awake. Good. You've got a busy day ahead of you, Danno. I should've told you there wasn't much time. Now there's no time at all."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about your cousin, what do you think? She got all her papers signed last night. She's planning to launch tomorrow."

  The news beat Dannerman to the office. By the time he arrived, half the observatory staff was clustered in the reception room, all chattering. "What's going on?" he demanded, as Janice DuPage checked his sidearm. "Where's Jarvas?"

  "In Dr. Adcock's office. So're Dr. Artzybachova and Commander Lin. They're going up to the orbiter, Dan!"

  "Up to the Starcophagus?" he asked, hoping to learn more than the colonel had been able to tell him.

  Even in the excitement of the morning she took time to give him a reproving look. "To the Starlab, right. We don't use that other word, remember? Anyway," she went on, the spirit of the morning taking over again, "she's going to make an announcement as soon as everyone's here-that'll be any minute now- hut that's what it is, all right. I saw the documents myself when they came in. Isn't that wonderful, Dr. Papathanassiou?" she added, as the old man came up to hand her his ancient Uzi.

  "Yes, quite wonderful," he said, managing to avoid noticing that Dannerman was standing right beside him.

  "It calls for a celebration," said one of the postdocs. "Is there any money in petty cash, Janice? Maybe Dan could go out and get some supplies-"

  "I'll ask Dr. Adcock as soon as she's made the announcement," Janice promised, and someone else predicted:

  "She won't want to spend the money."

  "So what the hell," the postdoc said happily. "We'll take up a collection. God! To have observing time on Starlab! You don't know what that's going to do for my T-Tauri count!"

  But they did know; they all did know, because almost all of them had observations they wanted to make, and only the skimpiest budget of hours Pat Adcock had been willing to buy for them on the Keck, or the big twin instruments in Arizona, or even the ancient radio dish at Arecibo. They didn't need party "supplies." They were all partying already, and when the interoffice channel lighted up and Pat Adcock's flushed face appeared on all the screens there was a cheer from everywhere in the observatory.

  Pat had to have heard it, even locked in her private office; she looked startled, then grinned. "I guess you all know what I'm going to say already," she said. "Well, it's true. The mission is on. We're taking off tomorrow; in seventy-two hours we'll be on Starlab. Dr. Schneyman will be in charge while I'm gone- and-and wish me luck, all of you!"

  But she hadn't said what kind of luck she wanted. Dannerman wondered what she was going to tell them all if she got back with a fortune in new technology, but the old orbiter still out of commission... but it wouldn't matter, of course. If she was right-

  If she was right, the whole world was going to change, and Dannerman himself would be par
t of it... provided, that is, he reminded himself, he did what the colonel wanted him to do and won the chance to go along.

  He patted his belly bag, where the pouch Hilda had given him was packed away. What he needed now was a chance to use it.

  Pat had firmly vetoed the notion of a party, but not much work got done at the observatory that morning anyway. Word of the mission had got out. Janice was kept busy on the phone, fending off calls from well wishers, listening to complaints from the downstairs security guards, besieged by reporters with their tinycams who wanted statements from Dr. Adcock. When Pat took her crew out to an early lunch most of the staff took off, too, determined to celebrate even if they had to do it at some nearby restaurant. The observatory finally began to quiet down.

  It was time for Dannerman to do his job; all he needed was for Janice DuPage to cooperate. He lurked around the reception room, waiting for her to leave her desk for a moment. It didn't happen for a long time. She seemed fixed at her desk, making him wonder what sort of bladder the woman had. But finally, with hardly a quarter of an hour before Mick Jarvas would be back with his charges, Janice stood up, put the elevator door entrance on lock, picked up her purse and moved toward the washrooms.

  Dannerman didn't wait. As soon as she was out of sight he was in the gun locker. A coded computer file might defeat the skills the Bureau had taught him, but a simple locker was not a serious challenge. In thirty seconds he had the locker open, peering past the gun racks until he found Jarvas's private cubbyhole. And when he had it open, there, in among the candy bars and the anti-inflation trade goods and the porno disks, was a package, unmarked, with three sealed medical-looking patches that, he knew, did not contain any physician-prescribed medications.

  Bingo. Dannerman pulled the patches out, stuffed them in his belly bag and replaced them with three of the ones Hilda had given him the night before. By the time Janice returned from the ladies' room he was innocently watering the reception-room plants and realizing that he had not left himself enough time to eat lunch. No matter. A missed meal was a small enough price to pay for the mission.