by John Rankine
Helena said gently, ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’
There was no help from the figure on the bed. She continued to stare.
Helena went on, ‘It must have been a tremendous shock. I knew something about what to expect. You didn’t know?’
‘No. Are we really the same person?’
‘We were the same person once. Now we live in different times at the same time.’
‘But not in the same place. We can’t!’
‘We have no choice. It’s something we must all come to terms with.’
The older Helena struggled to sit up, trying to flight off the fear that was in her eyes. ‘You must leave. I have my own life. I have accepted it. I have my work. It is enough.’
‘But I won’t interfere with your life. We can help each other. We can all help each other.’
‘Is everybody up here?’
Helena knew what was behind the question. ‘Yes.’
‘John Koenig?’ It was out in the open, the real point of issue between them.
She hesitated, then said calmly, ‘Yes.’
‘John Koenig was my husband.’
‘How could I know?’
‘He’ll come here, won’t he?’
‘He’ll come. None of us can choose. Our Alpha is close to destruction.’
Earth Helena was showing signs of agitation, voice in rising hysteria, she demanded, ‘How can we live together? You and John Koenig. You with my husband. How can I come to terms with that?’
There was a change. She was listening intently and said suddenly, ‘He’s here now. I know it.’ She was off the bed, running for the door.
Helena threw herself forward to block the way, said, ‘No, you mustn’t!’
But she was flung aside as the other woman rushed blindly out of the dome.
A rising scream alerted Koenig and Bergman. Helena and Sandra ran out of the house and stopped. Carter and Morrow turned from Regina’s grave, Kano, Tanya and the children ran to see. Every eye tracked Earth Helena as she ran on a weaving, erratic course to Koenig and clung to him in a wild passion. Koenig could only respond, face grave and compassionate. Over the shaking shoulder his eyes met those of his time peer Helena. The situation was outside every scheme of reference. How could they handle it?
Earth Helena suddenly went limp, head arched away from him, only held up by his supporting arms. Tenderly, Koenig lowered her to the ground. Her eyes were fixed, he reached out and closed her eyelids. For her at least, the dilemma was resolved. She had seen him back from the dead, had touched him and had died.
Slowly and sadly he stood up. Others moved in to carry her away. He would have helped, but Bergman said sharply. ‘All right. Leave her. We’ll take care of her. She is one of us.’
They had the open ground to themselves. The settlers had withdrawn. Helena was inconsolable.
Koenig said, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Helena.’
He had never seen her look more vulnerable and defeated. She refused to be comforted, ‘The whole thing is impossible.’
‘You’re wrong. We have to make it work.’
Alan Carter alerted them, ‘Commander!’
The whole community had turned out and was approaching them. It was a hostile tribe defending its territory. They had come round to a majority verdict. They were rejecting their strange counterparts as alien and menacing to their way of life.
Helena moved closer to Koenig. Carter drew his stun gun.
Koenig spoke out, ‘We have no choice. The Moon will be destroyed in the collision.’
Earth Morrow said tightly, ‘Go back to your own place, Commander. We’ve fought hard for our life here. We have children. We have a future. We will not let you destroy it.’
Koenig said, ‘We can build somewhere else. We have exactly what you had to start with.’
‘No. It won’t work. Take your people and go back.’
Koenig turned deliberately to Carter, ‘Alan. Call Moonbase. Tell them to activate Operation Exodus immediately.’
Morrow had worked close. As Carter sheathed his gun and opened his commlock, Earth Morrow threw himself forward and grabbed for it, wrenching it away and bringing up his own gun to threaten them.
Bergman, torn by indecision had been at the back of the group and ran forward. He shouted, ‘Wait.’ He had the centre ground and they all listened as he went on rapidly, ‘Regina died because she came face to face with herself in her own mind. Helena confronted herself in the flesh and our Earth Helena could not live. If the rest of us were to come together, the result could be chaos and disaster.’
He paused to steady himself and went on earnestly, ‘But for another, more logical, inevitable reason, coexistence is impossible. We belong to different times. When those two Moons collide, time will correct itself. Normality will return. One Moon. One set of people. In other words, our communities will cease to exist in the same time. You must go back.’
Carter said, ‘Back to what? Certain death?’
‘If you’re not there when time corrects itself, you’ll have nowhere to die.’
There was silence. He had made his point.
Helena said wearily, ‘Take us back, John. Our time and our place are on Alpha.’
The whole community watched them go. There was no move and no farewell as the Eagle blasted itself out of its dust cloud and Carter wheeled it away in a long climbing turn. They watched it diminish to a distant speck on their empty horizon. The mournful, sighing wind was the only sound in the ash desert.
Carter took them in to their home Moon with the time freak Moon closing in and their destiny for good or ill waiting in the wings. In the passenger module, Helena and Koenig sat side by side. As they touched down, she lifted a small bunch of fresh flowers she had taken from the Earth garden.
Koenig was proud of his people. He looked round Main Mission and checked them off. Morrow and Sandra, Carter at his operations desk, Kano, Tanya, Bergman, Helena herself at the observation gallery looking out. They were rock steady. Tense and quiet but ready to take what had to be.
The moons were closing, beginning to overlap. Chaos had come again. Main Mission was lashed in lurid, flashing light that drove Helena back from her window. The whole fabric of the base was groaning and wrenching at its foundations. The huge, churning mass of tormented space was all round them.
Sandra staring hypnotised at the big screen was overwhelmed, her despairing scream was soundless in the tumult that engulfed them. Then she was gone and Main Mission was whiting out in blinding eye-aching light.
Koenig gripping his desk until his knuckles showed white, hauled himself to his feet and looked for Helena. She was still near the window looking out and then she was gone. It was all gone. There was only the centre of white light pulsing and throbbing like a monstrous heart beat.
None of them saw the Moon reappear from the great welter of cosmic force and sail out from constellation to constellation, moving faster than any instrument could measure or any mind understand.
Then the insane racket died away, the space sky had stabilised around them. The main scanner was a black velvet pad. Personnel were standing up, looking around to see if they were alone as a wandering Ka or if what they saw was real.
Koenig ran up the steps to find Helena. She was holding her bunch of Earth flowers. She said, ‘It’s over. We’ve come through, John.’
Sandra called, ‘We’re in different space, Commander.’
They were all wanting his opinion. He still had a command and a job to bring them home somehow, somewhere.
Carter said, ‘I wonder if the others made it, Commander. If they survived?’
Victor Bergman asked, ‘Did they really exist?’
Koenig had an arm round Helena’s shoulders. He could settle for that. She was alive. Whether the others were there in their slot in the future was an academic issue. Good luck to them anyway if they were.
He said slowly, ‘Maybe they are saying the same thing about us?’
; Helena was more sure, she looked at her flowers, ‘They did exist. They were real.’
John Koenig sat at his command desk. He felt the edge of it hard and solid against his hand. Around him, Moonbase Alpha was stirring like a busy hive, repairing itself, making good, holding their life support systems together. The Moon ploughed on over the endless star map. Somewhere, there would be a landfall.
Helena had left him her flowers in a plastic beaker. He looked at them. They were already beginning to wither. He swivelled away from the desk, stood up and went to find her.