A Sense of Infinity

by Howard L. Myers

  He reached his ship feeling much more closely pursued than he actually was, cycled himself hastily through the lock, and yelled "Lift off, Kelly!"

  "Okay, Mark," the ship replied. "Now lifting."

  "Make it fast, and set warp for . . . for Vega!" That wasn't the first destination that came to his mind. He did not mean it to be his destination at all. He thought of Vega because that was where the Arlan Siblings were, and he named it because he had to move away from Bensor in some direction. After he had thrown pursuers off his trail he could change course—probably for Locus. He flopped down on a relaxer, feeling weak, shaky, and wrapped in pain.

  "Kelly," he groaned, "search your references for data on the formulation of a medication called aspirin." After a pause the ship replied, "I have the necessary information, Mark."

  "Good! Can you make up a batch of it?"

  "Yes. In fifteen minutes."

  "All right. Get started on it. Are your detectors on full for signs of ships trailing me?"

  "No, Mark."

  "Well, get them on!" he snapped.

  "Okay, Mark . . . There is no indication we are being followed."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "No. Nothing."

  Keaflyn's pain and gut-fear vanished. He laughed as he slumped deeper into the relaxer. "No rush about the aspirin, Kelly."

  "All right."

  Just as he began to doze off, Keaflyn was snapped awake by the ship's warning: "We're being followed now, Mark."

  Keaflyn sat up and tensed himself against the return of pain. Several seconds passed while he waited. Then he chuckled. Could his Neg have exhausted itself? It had really been working long and hard on him, almost constantly throughout his stay on Bensor, and if impingement was as hard on a Neg as he imagined it must be, then his invader should be in a worse state of collapse right now than he was!

  "How many ships and what range?"

  "One, at extreme range," the ship told him.

  Extreme range for the Kelkontar's detectors was 2.3 light-months. "Display it," he said.

  The viewscreen lit up to show a graphic of pursued and pursuer, with vector lines of indicated warp velocities and log-plotted scales to right and left to take in the Bensor system behind and the Vega system days ahead. A glance showed the Kelkontar would be overtaken in a shade less than six hours.

  "You're at max warp, aren't you?" Keaflyn asked, although he knew the answer.

  "Yes."

  He let out a giggly sigh. Why had he thought all he had to do was get into space to be safe? The Kelkontar was a good little ship, but not a racer—and, of course, not a fighter either.

  Evasive tactics?

  He shrugged. If he began zigging and zagging he would merely be overtaken more quickly. The pursuer could stay on his tail with zig-zags narrower than his own. And if he doglegged, the distance-gain would be the pursuer's.

  All this business of chasing and being chased was nonsense, anyway. What had happened at the Resistant Globe was, perhaps, a cataclysmic disaster, but it should make no difference to the relationship between himself and the Sect Dualers.

  "Kelly, see if you can comm that ship," he requested.

  "Yes, Mark . . . Comm established. Do you want visual?"

  "Sure."

  The viewscreen revealed the faces of Arnod Smath and the man who had questioned Keaflyn back on Bensor.

  "Dr. Smath," Keaflyn snickered with a slight bow, "and I never did catch your colleague's name . . . "

  "Carmon Daylemon," the man supplied, brusquely.

  "What do you want, Keaflyn?"

  "I want you gentlemen to relax and go home," he laughed. "What else?"

  "We'll do so . . . in a few hours, after we have secured the universe against a threat we have allowed to exist too long," Daylemon returned grimly.

  "Meaning me and my Neg?"

  "What else?"

  "I told you before, the Neg is suckering you into playing his game!" Keaflyn snorted. "That hasn't changed."

  "Through you," Daylemon returned coldly, "the Neg has already accomplished far more than your death. We're calling a halt to it."

  "If the Negs wanted to nullify the Resistant Globe," Keaflyn argued, "they could have done so through any one of the thousands of people who visited the Globe daily. And they could have done it long ago, since we've been playing that nullifying game for centuries. So, the question you guys should be asking yourselves is: Why did they pick me as their medium?"

  Daylemon made an impatient gesture. "I can anticipate the answer you're going to hand us to that. The Negs chose you to give us a new motivation to kill you.

  I'll grant a possibility—a slim possibility—that you're right, that the prime goal of the Negs is to bring about your death and the stoppage of your research. But there are other more logical interpretations, Keaflyn.

  "I would say the most probable of these is that, while the Negs would foresee our reaction to the compromising of the Resistant Globe, they would also anticipate your being able to escape us or to talk us out of our intent. You survived your encounter with Smath on Terra and the one with me a few. hours ago on Bensor. The Negs are doubtless pleased with the durability you've displayed. They find you a useful tool indeed. Not only do your plans promise to put you in a position to wreck one stability after another, but you've proved your ability to survive while you do so.

  "We're stopping you this time, Keaflyn. That's final." For a long moment Keaflyn sat silent and grinning, feeling rather foolish. Daylemon's viewpoint, after all, did make sense. The impinging Neg had managed to stir up quite a ruckus. Considering, he now wondered: Had it really been trying to get him killed—or merely make him think that was its mission?

  He blinked at that thought. Nothing would make him look out for his survival more thoroughly than the belief that the Neg was trying to kill him. Therefore, it was extremely likely that the Neg would want to make him believe that, as a first order of business, so Keaflyn would guard himself from harm while he carried out the Neg's purposes.

  Dully he asked, "If that's what the Neg's up to, why is it letting me become half-convinced that you're right?"

  The image of Daylemon stared at him. "I don't know. Doubtless there's a limit to what the Neg can anticipate. We believe they can foresee the future in much the same manner as we can recall the past. If the parallel is exact, it is their own future they would see with some clarity, not ours, just as we cannot know the pasts of others by direct recall but only by hearsay. We cannot be sure whether we overestimate or underestimate the Negs' powers of anticipation.

  "But in the present instance," Daylemon continued, "we can easily see what future course of events would be most disastrous to humanity and most helpful to the Negs: the undermining of the stabilities. When we compare that clear and present danger to the vague possibility that we might be stopping the development of desirable knowledge through your research"—he shrugged—"our choice is quite obvious, Keaflyn."

  After a moment Keaflyn nodded. "The only flaw I can see in all this is, if you're right, why did my Neg let me get into the predicament I'm in now? You gents seemed determined to finish me off, and damned if I know how to stop you. If it wants me alive, why doesn't my Neg come to my rescue?"

  "As I said," returned Daylemon, "the Negs must have their limitations. And when one impinges, it is working in an environment that must be very difficult and puzzling. It has to make mistakes, as yours obviously has." That, too, made sense to Keaflyn. The fact that his Neg seemed to be conked out at the moment, after its long exertion on Bensor, could exemplify one specific area of limitation.

  . . . And maybe if the Neg were on the job right now, keeping him half traumatized and not fully rational, he would not be so receptive to the sound reasoning by which Daylemon was weakening his urge for personal survival.

  But, damn it all! he glowered internally, his research project was important! He did not want to be stopped! If this was to be his last go-around as a capable human, he wanted to make
it count!

  On the other hand, he did not want to be instrumental in pulling the whole universe down. "Was the nullification of the Resistant Globe complete?" he asked at last.

  "I notice you merely said 'compromised."'

  "No, it wasn't complete," said Daylemon thoughtfully.

  "We've been in comm with Bensor-on-Bensor . . . Something rather puzzling happened. Nobody seems to know just what so far. It was as if an automatic defense mechanism had been triggered. . . . "

  "The Globe is still there, then," Keaflyn demanded eagerly, "the same as ever?"

  "It's still there," Daylemon admitted. "It looks the same as ever, we're told. Whether it really is or not—whether it's still a stability—will have to be learned later."

  "Hey! Maybe I did no harm at all!" Keaflyn exclaimed.

  "That's the defense a pyromaniac might offer," snorted Daylemon, "after the citizens restored the town he burned down."

  "That's a strained analogy," Keaflyn said.

  Daylemon did not bother to reply to that. "I see no point in prolonging this discussion. Smath and I have an unpleasant duty to perform, and we would like to keep it as impersonal as possible. If you have nothing further to say . . . "

  Keaflyn considered, then said, "Out." The image vanished. There was no chance of talking the Sect Dualers out of their attack on him.

  What to do now? He could use some sleep, he knew, but with five and a half hours left in this lifetime, sleeping would be a waste.

  Prepare to fight the Sect Dualers? He grimaced. What would he prepare with? The Kelkontar was not armed, and such defenses as it had against assault could be activated in full within seconds.

  He chuckled. Get on with his work! Of course! Why shouldn't a man spend his final hours living as he had lived? Particularly if he had lived in accord with his desires.

  "Kelly, set up the workboard," he ordered. "We'll continue our analysis of the Lumon's Star warpicles."

  "Okay, Mark," said the ship. The board opened out of the bulkhead, revealing on its glowing face the mathematical permutations Keaflyn had been formulating before his arrival on Bensor. He sat in the chair at the keyboard while studying the three-channel symbol flows.

  "Hum-m-m. Didn't I have an equivalence somewhere in that mess?" he asked.

  "Yes." A red indicator flashed around one of the symbols. "Here."

  "Oh, sure. Only a third-equivalence, of course. That doesn't simplify matters much. That's as inelegant a concoction of chicken-tracks as any mathematician ever got lost in, Kelly."

  "The permutations do seem insolubly complex," the ship agreed.

  "We're working with too little hard data about the warpicles, guessing at orders of magnitude where we ought to have precisely measured values," murmured Keaflyn. "About the only assumptions I feel sure of are one, that warpicles exist, and two, that they constitute a spectrum . . . Oh, well. Zoom and elaborate the first block, Kelly."

  A segment of the screen full of symbols expanded to crowd off the remainder, and a mass of subscriptural details sprang into view. For several minutes Keaflyn absorbed himself in the math, silent except for snorts and snickers. Then he said, "Make a slow pan to block two." The symbols began a creeping motion from right to left across the screen. Time passed. "On to block three," he directed. " . . . Block four . . . "

  When the symbols finally ran out, he straightened in his chair and blinked, surprised with the realization that two hours had passed. Three and a half left.

  Urgency pressed in on him. "We can't handle this rigorously, Kelly, because we have no way of knowing what factors out, so I'm going to start throwing out by intuition. Both the non-equivalence channels are beyond redemption and may be meaningless besides. Drop them."

  Two-thirds of the symbols vanished.

  "Now start running concurrent sums and derives on what we have left."

  Equations began to pile up above and below the row across the middle of the screen: a first order, a second order, a third . . . a fourth . . .

  "Hold it!" Keaflyn peered at the results for several seconds. "Drop everything but the fourth sum and derive, and show me the Freund's Law warp equation in basic form."

  Kelly did so.

  After a moment Keaflyn said, "Check me on this if you can, Kelly, but it appears to me that our two equations form brackets, so to speak, that take in only a small portion of the field defined by Freund's Law. Do you need a special program to determine if that's true?"

  "My standard programming includes the necessary operations, Mark," said the ship. The symbols on the screen flickered through a rapid series of manipulations, then steadied. "Here's the result, Mark."

  "I see. That looks like about a hundredth of a warp field, if Freund's Law is right. It's as if Freund were describing the whole spectrum, and we are describing the blue band in the visible part."

  "That could be an apt comparison, Mark," the ship approved.

  "But our equations ought to define warps, if they mean anything at all!" snorted Keaflyn. "And if they do, the question is: what the hell is all the rest of that spectrum Freund takes in?"

  "I don't know, Mark."

  Keaflyn fidgeted. His time was running out, and he would have to do better than this if he wanted get any kind of report on the comm before the Sect Dualers came within attack range.

  "We need a meaningfulness check," he griped, "which is to say we need that probe for the Lumon's Star test, but John Donflannis won't have fabricated that in less than three years. I don't have that kind of time, Kelly."

  "So I've gathered, Mark."

  "To hell with it," said Keaflyn, getting up. "Fix me a ham sandwich and coffee."

  The ship served him the snack and he carried it back to the viewscreen, where the graphic was still displayed, showing the closing gap between the Kelkontar and pursuer.

  "Kelly, in a couple of hours, I'm going to suit up and go out to wait on my violently-inclined acquaintances back there. I'll comm them and let them know. Then I want you to go to Danolae and, turn yourself over to Tinker. Her current-lifetime name is Marianne Didorik. Got that?"

  "Yes. I will belong to Tinker until your return, Mark." Keaflyn didn't reply. There was no point in trying to explain to the ship that his upcoming death involved the loss of more than a body . . . that the Mark Keaflyn egofield was going to lose much as well. Perhaps too much for him to continue as a human. So he merely giggled and continued munching the sandwich.

  It was very frustrating. But the blame was his own. He had refused to take the threat of the Sect Dualers seriously enough from the beginning, despite the pleas and warnings of Alo Felston, Tinker, Clav Didorik, and the Splendiss-on-Terra Emergencymen. He had blandly ignored the possibility of ever being involved in a nonsensical, backtrack, space-opera chase such as this . . . the quarry of determined killers.

  That, he reflected with a sudden laugh, was the price of being sane. You weren't automatically afraid. You had confidence in yourself and in the universe. You didn't have to be careful. A sane mind was a carefree mind . . . in most cases, his own included. Those Sect Dualers avoided a carefree attitude toward life; they knew of an enemy.

  But he, even with an enemy Neg impinging upon him, had refused to recognize danger as fully as he should. And now he was stuck in an indefensible position, in his cozy little ship that was unequipped to fight and too slow to run.

  The Arlan Siblings, in their giant Calcutta which was probably armored and armed to the teeth, had the realistic approach.

  Keaflyn, on the other hand, hadn't even bothered to keep the Kelkontar's warp engines precisely tuned for max efficiency.

  . . . Tuned warp engines? His jaw stopped munching.

  "Kelly," he chuckled, "what would burn out if we channeled your warp energy flow into that bracketed area we came up with?"

  The ship replied after a pause, "Nothing should be damaged, Mark. The total flow would be unchanged and would be well within all safety specifications."

  "Has anybody ever tried tr
imming a warp down like that before?"

  "Not to my knowledge, Mark. There is no reason why anyone should have. However, in the light of your suppositions concerning warpicles, this would appear to be a useful test of the meaningfulness of your calculations."

  "Okay, let's try it," Keaflyn decided.

  "Very well. I will need some circuitry changes, specifically, two impeders with cutoffs that could be improvised with little difficulty. Shall I run off specs for you, Mark?"

  "Yes, right now!"

  Keaflyn spent a busy hour rigging the required components and connecting them into the warp engine circuit according to the Kelkontar's directions. At last he rubbed his blackened hands against his tunic and returned to the viewscreen. The Sect Dualers' ship was still fifteen minutes away, the graphic indicated.

  "Okay, Kelly," he said, "switch in the gimmicks!"

  He heard a soft click as the ship obeyed. For an instant he was not sure what the result was. Could the change have made the warp too specific, producing an ultrafast and fatal mitosis of ship and man by warping certain of their constituent elements while leaving the others behind? Or, perhaps, by warping mass while leaving behind all energies, ego-field included? Or by warping nothing at all, leaving the ship inert in space and subject to immediate attack?

  None of these seemed to be happening, he decided with a chuckle. In fact, the only change he could detect was on the screen. The gap between the two ships was widening rapidly.

  Keaflyn watched the screen with a calm joy that, for the moment, overrode the false hilarity of his pleasureimpress. He savored the feeling without trying to define it.

  Finally he said, "Is this about a hundred times your normal warp speed?"

  "It is 78.3 times normal, Mark," the ship replied.

  "Our chicken-tracks were pretty close, then, considering our abysmal ignorance," he said with satisfaction.

  "Well, I'm going to get some sleep. Head for Locus, but stop about two light-years short. And here's a change in standing orders, Kelly: Don't let any ship approach you in space without orders from me. If I'm asleep, just move away from anybody who tries to come closer than a lightweek. If whoever it is tries to communicate, wake me as usual."