by Ian Miller
There was more conversation, and Klendor stared at Gaius. The Tin Man's voice returned, "I told him, and I also added that you realized that ten ships means more than the thirty-odd crew. I have also told the other ship that we have finally managed to remove this object from the ship's wall, and one of them will be crossing back in a few minutes."
"Thank you," Gaius said. He and Klendor looked at each other, and Gaius felt he had never been so frustrated in his life. There were so many questions he wished to ask, and so far all he had was the alien's name. He was not even sure whether this was a first name or a cognomen. There was nothing to do but wait.
Eventually the Tin man reappeared, carrying something that looked like clothes. "Put these on," he said to Gaius.
"What are these for?" Gaius asked.
"It's not ideal," the Tin Man said, "but Klendor insisted. As best I can describe in your language, it is armour, and it will protect you, to some extent, from the enemy's weapons. My advice is, wear it but don't rely on it. It has been made in a hurry, and it's not perfect."
"I understand," Gaius nodded.
"Klendor also apologizes, but he says you will have to rely on your gladius. We could make you a more modern weapon, but we can't adapt you to using it on this ship, and . . ."
"What d'you mean by adapt me?" Gaius asked suspiciously.
"Don't worry! It isn't going to happen, and it takes too long to explain now. In any case, as Klendor noted, you appear to have discovered a weapon their armour does not protect against, and since you know how to use it, that will have to do."
"That's fine."
"Then good luck, Gaius. Time for you to go. Please do what Klendor indicates with his hand signals."
"Of course," Gaius replied. "Tell him the Roman soldier is nothing if not disciplined."
There was a further conversation that Gaius could not understand, then Klendor signalled. Gaius followed to the hatch, through the outer hatch, and into a very much smaller cabin. Gaius noted that while Klendor had spare headroom, the seats were far too narrow for him. Gaius, however, almost had to resort to crawling on hands and knees. Klendor indicated a seat at the rear. Gaius nodded, crawled towards it, and sat in it. It came as no surprise to him that he did not fit at all well, but at least the seat was low, his head was below the ceiling, and there was room to splay his feet. Then Klendor reached over him, fitted a harness around him, moved to the front seat, harnessed himself, then did something that closed the hatch. There was a shudder, and the ferry departed.
Immediately Gaius felt himself become weightless. The front of the ferry gave the only view of outside, and soon the other ship filled what little of this view there was. Then there was space, the stars of which began to roll, then the side of the ship seemed to fill the view. Gaius was certain there would be a collision, and in a sense there was for there was a light clang as the ferry docked. Klendor did something that released the harness, then indicated to Gaius that he should get behind him. Gaius crawled forward, with Klendor watching with what Gaius later realized was a broad Ulsian grin at his awkwardness. When he was in position, with his gladius in his hand, Klendor did something, the hatch opened, and Klendor thrust himself out, throwing himself directly into the body of the alien who intended to greet them.
The alien was completely surprised, and was unarmed. In physical strength he was no match for Klendor, and after a quick blow the alien slumped to the floor, unconscious. Gaius leaned over, pulled a tie from the alien's robe, and tied the hands behind the back, and to the feet. Klendor nodded in approval, then signalled they should advance.
They moved quickly to the forward part of what to Gaius seemed to be an empty ship. Nothing moved, and there were no surprises. They reached a small flight of stairs, and Klendor cautiously began to climb, but nobody appeared. They reached the bridge door, paused, then after a number of hand gestures that merely puzzled Gaius, Klendor flung it open and they charged in. As a total anti-climax, the bridge was empty.
A brief examination by Klendor found that the ship was flying on auto so that it kept parallel to the target. Klendor made a signal that all was secure there and they should proceed to the rear of the ship. Whether Gaius actually understood was not clear but he followed obediently. They then searched back along the ship and found the next part pathetically simple; the remaining two crew members were in their separate quarters, sleeping. It was a simple matter for Klendor to roll each of them over and pin them while again Gaius tied their arms and legs
A careful examination showed that there was no other life on board, and since the flight was programmed to follow the target ship, Klendor indicated they should ferry the aliens back. Gaius had no objection and, as he remarked later, even if he had one, he had no means of making it. At least he knew there were lockable cages on the cargo ship. They bundled the aliens into the ferry, and once again Klendor piloted the ship. They docked, and when they entered, Gaius found Vipsania waiting.
"Thank the Gods you're back safely," she said. Then she looked at him with a touch of expectation, and asked, "You succeeded?"
"Dead easy," Gaius shrugged, then added, "not that I actually did much." He turned to the Ulsian and said, "This is Klendor." He pointed to his wife, looked at Klendor, and said, "Vipsania."
The Ulsian bowed, then said, "Ave, Vipsania."
"You speak Latin?" Gaius looked perplexed.
"You have heard his entire vocabulary," the Tin Man intervened. "He asked me for that word, just in case. However, he will learn Latin."
"What happens now?" Gaius asked.
"Provided you accept this, and I beg you to, we shall accelerate and travel to Ulse. I suggest we provide you with quarters that are more comfortable than your last ones, I try to prepare you better food, you do whatever you can to get tired, then you get some sleep. When you wake up, we shall be there, or at least nearly there."
"We're that close?" Gaius asked.
"We're a few hundred years away. It will take about twelve hours to get up to speed, a few of your days to get there, and about fifteen hours to decelerate down. But once you go to sleep, I shall ensure you sleep comfortably until we are there."
"Timothy?"
"He's dead," Vipsania said, and held Gaius' arm.
"However," the Tin Man said, "I have his memories. Anything he knew, I know, and if you wish, I can converse with you in the way he would have. I can . . ."
"No," Gaius said firmly.
"No?"
Gaius sighed, and turned to the Tin Man. "For me, Timothy is dead. By all means, remember things, but do not pretend to be Timothy. It would hurt me too much."
"As you wish," the Tin Man said. "Now, you agree to go to Ulse?"
"Do I have a choice?" Gaius asked, in a weary tone.
"It would be a lot better if you agreed voluntarily," the Tin man said, almost emphatically.
"You said, we could not go back and see our friends because by the time we got there, they would have been dead for hundreds of years."
"That is true."
"If you can explain in words I can understand, and conditional upon certain assurances as to our safety once we get there, then we shall volunteer on the grounds that this assists you."
There was a silence, then the Tin Man began to speak to Klendor. After some further discussion, the Tin Man turned towards Gaius and asked, "What do you mean, assurances?"
Gaius noticed that Klendor seemed quite interested in the response to this. He turned to the Tin Man and said, "I wish it to be recorded that when others come to live in Roman territories under Rome's request, their safety is guaranteed, they are looked after as high status citizens, and they are treated as representatives of their civilization, while encouraged to learn and participate in what they can of Roman life. I wish a guarantee that we shall be treated accordingly. Otherwise I wish you to return us from where we were illegally taken."
There was a further conversation, then the Tin Man said, "Klendor approves of your request and it is so noted.
It so happens that request triggers an Ulsian law, and it so happens that Klendor has just sufficient rank to approve the request. He does so, and it is hereby recorded that Ulse is now so committed under its own laws. Now, I shall try to explain the reason why your friends cannot be alive when you return. This is difficult because you do not even have clocks."
"And a clock is?"
"Something that measures time."
"We have water clocks," Gaius said. "Amongst other things, they measure the time of men's shifts."
"How do they work?" The Tin Man asked.
"They have a large tank that narrows towards the top, and you fill them to the mark. At the bottom is a very thin tube, from which the water exits as a regular drip."
"That's adequate," the Tin Man said. "Now, suppose you are beside a large lake, and every time a drip drops, something makes a huge wave on the water. Can you visualize that?"
"That is clear," Gaius nodded.
"So every drip leads to a wave going out across the water. Label that wave one, the next wave, two and so on."
"If you say so."
"Now," the Tin Man said, "what do you know about the speed of light?"
"According to Empedocles, a Greek," Gaius said slowly, "the speed of light is fundamental to physics."
"You believe that?" the Tin Man asked curiously.
"I do," Gaius said firmly. This was based on the expression that had passed across Klendor's face when he had said that, and also on the way the Tin Man was making an issue of it. It seemed important to stake out whatever position he could.
"So what do you conclude?"
"Romans tried to measure it," Gaius said slowly. "This is probably ridiculous to you, but people stood on distant hills with lamps, and when one was flashed, the reply was given."
"And you concluded?" the Tin Man asked.
"That the delay had nothing to do with the speed of light," Gaius shrugged, "and everything to do with the reactions of the people. Nevertheless, we think it has a speed."
"It has," the Tin Man said. "You once said you thought your planet was about 33 million kilometers from your sun?"
"Yes, I did, but I suspected it could be further."
"It's about 150 million kilometers," the Tin Man said, "and light takes about five hundred seconds to travel that far. That's about eight minutes. For your information, such light would take nine years to get from your planet to your star Sirius, and over six hundred years to get to Ulse."
Gaius said nothing.
"Now, back to your clock, fixed on your planet, that makes regular drops, and have something else to read how many drops have occurred by counting the waves. Imagine it sends out a wave defined as now. The next wave is one year later, the next two, and so on. These are waves of steady time, and while you sit beside your lake, the number of waves read by your counter equals the number of drops. Can you see that?"
"Yes."
"Now, suppose you get on a boat that travels with the speed of a wave. You set off at the time 'now', but because you are travelling with the speed of the wave, according to your reader it is always 'now'. Your clock has stopped."
Gaius still said nothing.
"Now, if you are in a ship travelling nearly as fast as the waves, the amount of time you think has passed is the number of waves that overtake you. Comment please?"
"That's Timothy," Gaius muttered.
"Sorry," the Tin Man said. "I promised I wouldn't."
"It doesn't sound right?" Gaius frowned. "A wave of constant time would . . . It's just . . . I don't know. I have never seen anything at all consistent with that!"
"The wave of constant time," the Tin Man said, "travels at the speed of light. For you to feel no time elapsing, you must travel at the speed of light along the time wave. Another way of looking at it might be to think of time flowing like a stream. If you stand at the bank, the time flows by. Get in a boat and get into the stream, if you go as fast as the stream, no time overtakes you."
"You mean," Gaius said, suddenly struck by the enormity of something, "that if we had decided to turn around and go back, we would have run into all those waves, and died of old age?"
"No," the Tin Man said. "It resets. In that sense, my example was imperfect. Think of the stream of time, which is independent of the direction in which you travel. You cannot go upstream; you cannot travel to the past. Let's try again. You know that ship over there is flying parallel to us?"
"Yes."
"Which means it is at a constant distance?"
"Yes."
"So if I send a beam of light across to it and bounce it back from a mirror to us, it takes a certain time?"
"Yes."
"Now, suppose the ships are travelling. If I send of a pulse of light towards it, by the time it gets there the ship has moved, so if you think of a right-angled triangle, our ship travels along one side, while light has to travel along the hypotenuse, so the distance is further?"
"Of course!"
"Well, it is a principle of physics that you cannot tell how fast your absolute velocity is, but you can only tell how fast you are going relative to something else. In this case, the only thing that you can be relative to is the other ship, and by definition its distance from you is constant, so the time light takes to get there and back has to be constant. Since the distance the light travels is further as you approach the speed of light, and since the speed of light is a fundamental constant, this can only be right if your clock, and everything you sense about time, slows. Do you understand?"
"I follow your argument," Gaius nodded, "and if you are telling the truth about the principles, I agree that if you were travelling at the speed of light . . ."
"Yes?"
"You would never see the reflected message or the other ship," Gaius said, a little hesitantly. "If something along the side of such a triangle is travelling at the speed of light, the message can never get there because it has to go along the hypotenuse, which by geometry, has to be longer than the side?"
"Correct!" the Tin Man said. Gaius also noted that Klendor seemed a little stunned that Gaius had come up with that conclusion. "So you can see now it doesn't matter which way you are going. If you go back, your clock runs as slowly as required for your velocity. Not only your clock, but all the things going on inside you that make you you. Your friends, not travelling, are stuck with their clock. Travelling on a space ship going near the speed of light, you leave out hundreds of years going one way, and when you turn around, you miss out the same number of hundreds of years going the other way. I was telling the truth. You can go back, but your friends will be dead, and Rome as you knew it would have changed forever.
"Perhaps I can persuade you in a further way. Light from Ulse takes over three hundred years to get here, Klendor has come from there, and you cannot travel faster than light. If the time did not slow down, Klendor would have died of old age long before he got here. It is only because of this time dilation effect that travel between stars makes any sense."
"In that case," Gaius shrugged, "going back can wait. If you accept my terms, let us travel to Ulse."
As Vipsania was to point out later, there was no reason at all to believe that once they got to this Ulse they would ever be permitted to board another ship. This could well have been their only chance. Indeed, later, when boredom on Ulse set in, Vipsania was to remind Gaius of this far too often. Gaius had to agree, but also had to point out that this was also their only chance to see things that no human had ever seen, and also, it was what this Ulsian called Klendor seemed to want. If they went with him, they might have one friend; if they insisted on being returned, they might still be forced to go to Ulse without any friend, or they might be dumped on some other planet, or, if they did get to Earth, they could be dumped somewhere totally remote from Rome, or even in the middle of a war. The problem was they were totally dependent on the alien good will, and there was a limit to that good will if they refused to cooperate on something apparently very important to them.
Chapter 4
Setting out for Ulse did not start immediately. The ships motors soon slowed.
"The planet where you could have been kept in a zoo is called Kroth," the Tin Man explained. "The Krothian military has demanded we stop accelerating and be inspected. Three warships are approaching."
"And we cannot outrun them?" Gaius said.
"No, we cannot. But do not be afraid. I do not think there will be a problem."
"They may want us back for their zoo," Vipsania said in a desperate voice. "You might have scared off two zoo-keepers, but . . ."
"No, that will not happen," the Tin Man replied, "or at least I very much doubt it. That would be against their own laws, and the military will not be interested in what a couple of zoo-keepers want."
"Then what do they want?" Gaius asked.
"We shall have to wait and see," the Tin Man said. It was difficult to argue with that. Through further interpretation, Klendor informed the Romans that Kroth was part of the Ulsian Federation, and had been a very loyal ally previously.
"Then why did they permit your enemies into their system?" Gaius asked.
"Who says they did?"
"Well, they were there, and they attacked you."
"There may have been a reason for that," Klendor said. "I had come from Ulse, bringing them news of the war, and an official request for assistance. It is always possible that the enemy wished to stop my conveying that message."
"In that case, Ulse has yet another problem," Gaius offered.
"And that is?" As the Tin man translated Klendor's question, he also added that Klendor was a little irritated that Gaius seemed to be finding fault with Ulse.
"Quite simple," Gaius said to the Tin Man. "Tell him that if the enemy wished to stop him conveying a message, they had to know he was conveying it, which means someone on Ulse must have told them. The size of space is too big for it to be an accident."
When Klendor was told, he seemed stunned for a moment, then he said, "I guess that must be so, although I suppose they could have guessed we might send such a ship."