Orbit 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Night

  In this way, they argue, the human race could survive the death of the universe itself.

  And the McJunkins effect, far from being a trivial curiosity, would have been proven to be the most important discovery in the history of the human race.

  * * * *

  From the article, “The Incredible Field That Stops Time,” written by Roy Cullins under the pseudonym of David Lester for the telezine Popular Technology Monthly.

  If one could observe them, the electrons in their vague orbits would be stilled, their positions no longer fuzzy zones of probability, but as definite as rigid crystal. But, though stripped of the cloak of the uncertainty principle, they are not revealed in their nakedness, for with time stopped, no medium of transmission can carry the message that they do not move.

  * * * *

  Seeds have grown in skulls:

  Roy Cullins said this “I think that the real cause of the opposition is that most people are afraid to risk it and face a strange new universe, but at the same time don’t intend to stand by and see somebody else survive the death of the universe.” Unfortunately, he said it at the wrong time. A light statement, it weighed no more than a straw on the back of a camel. A door was slammed and he could no longer look down and see a face on the pillow.

  What he needed, he decided, was a cold shower. After drying, he disconnected the phone in the hotel room and attached his own illegal phone with built-in scrambler, then whistled for Elfred Cain.

  “It’s got to be you, Cullins. Nobody else would call me at this time of the morning, not even my mother if my father was dying, or vice versa. You’re a dead man now, Cullins. My trained hamster with the poison-tipped fangs will be on your trail and you’re as good as six feet under. I would send him after your ass right now, but he needs his sleep too. Good night, dead man.” Click.

  On the eighth call, before which the unleashing of the hamster was threatened six more times, each time with exactly the same wording, the real Cain answered the phone; “Mmmmmmggglpf?”

  “Nice try, E. J., but I wasn’t fooled. You might be that banal at this time of the morning, but you would have been too dopey to organize the message that well. All you’re losing is a little sleep. I may have lost Erika.”

  “Whopened?”

  “Remember, she said that if I mentioned anything having to do with the Seed during one of those times once more, she would split that minute? I’m afraid that I said—”

  “Did she put her clothes on before she left?”

  “Hmmmmm.” Pause. “I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “Well, she won’t be back for that reason. The. Yawn. The least she could have done was wait until you got your rocks off.”

  “Well, actually this was the sixth time tonight—”

  “Cullins, are you sure that she left over the Seed?”

  “Roll it. Do you really have a killer hamster?”

  “No, the hamster is a clever fabrication so that your mind will be diverted and my Tyrannsaurus Rex will take you completely off guard when he pounces.”

  “Seems to me that she would understand that I have a lot on my mind. The vote on the appropriation for the Seed comes up in the A. U. Senate next week.”

  “You’re worrying? The Senate currently consists only of Senators whom you have charmed over to our side and those whom you are blackmailing, like that one from Massajeryork Complex who has the secret mistress. . . .”

  “Yes, I was able to convince him that the hard core of his Americas Homosexual Party would take a dim view of her. About Erika—”

  “You don’t want to talk about Erika, Cullins. You just want to talk. If you can’t swing one kind of ejaculation, you settle for another. By the way, you should give me a list of the Senators on our side. If I have to testify before that damned committee one more time, I’ll go berserk and start rending senators all around me. Sure wouldn’t want to kill the ones on our side.”

  “You know, I’ve explained to her that it’s natural for the Seed to occupy my mind at such times. It’s all part of the same instinct. The urge that the race survive the death of the individual. And for the race to survive the death of the individual universe is the next logical step.”

  “And that instinct is why you are balling a gal who’s on the vaccine?”

  “Well, the instinct easily satisfied on the emotional level, and on the intellectual level I realize that there are too many people reproducing already for the size of the solar system. But the Seed cries out on both levels to be born. And I’m more of a mother than a father to it.”

  “In that case, you had better get Erika to make an honest man out of you.”

  “Ha. Ha.”

  “Outstanding. When you can’t think of a comeback, you’ve stopped feeling sorry for yourself. Take a cold shower and go to bed. After you dry off, that is.”

  “I’ve had one already.”

  “Then I’ll have one. Good night.And quit calling me!”

  “Get an unlisted number.”

  “This number is supposed to be unlisted.”

  “Get a listed number. You’ll throw me off the track.”

  “I’ll throw you off something higher if you keep phoning in the dead of the night.” Click.

  Cullins took another cold shower.

  * * * *

  Q: When one man calls another, seeking counsel regarding an emotional

  disturbance, is it common for the other to greet him with levity?

  A: It is when the disturbed caller averages one point two three calls per night not

  earlier than one thirty a.m. and not later than four thirteen a.m.

  Q: Still, does this not indicate a certain insensitivity and even cruelty on the part of

  callee?

  A: It might indicate that the counselor has his own problems and is using levity to conceal them and remain uninvolved. Look at this:

  * * * *

  She had black hair and blue eyes of the sort that do not really seem to be part of the face they are in. Cain liked the way the muscles in her legs moved when she walked. (Sociological context: Hemlines were in the rising phase of their cycle that year.)

  He had been watching the way she moved for a month and a half now. Today he managed to head for the computer programming department where she worked and to keep moving in that direction without veering off and breathing a sigh of relief, hating himself at the same time. He informed her, clumsily, that there was a good show in town and maybe. . . . She was busy that night.

  He mumbled his way from the computer programming department and knew that he would never work up the nerve to speak to her again.

  Maybe some other girl. . . .

  In talking to himself (mentally, fortunately, rather than audibly) he often used that word: maybe.

  * * * *

  Q: These two emotional cripples are the ones working to save the human race from

  extinction?

  A: Irrelevant. The nobility-ignobility of a cause is not determined by the suitability

  of its adherents as models after which one might pattern one’s life. Moreover, it is possible that a more well-adjusted or more self-confident person might be completely uninterested in fighting for such a near-abstract cause.

  Q: I reject that notion.

  A: You may be correct, but you are supposed to be asking questions, not advancing

  opinions.

  * * * *

  Beyond the orbit of Pluto the Seed orbits, dimly shining with the light of stars, including the sun, which is only slightly brighter than the other pinpoints of light. The surface of the McJunkins field is a perfect sphere and a perfect reflector, for no light can enter the field of timeless space. Contained in the zone of the field when it was activated was a starship. To speak of anything being inside the field now is to speak gibberish. Nothing can penetrate the field to determine what is within and no statement about the interior can be verified. Therefore there is no interior. Thus speaks positivism. In no way can it be proven that
the nine figures still exist within and that they do no move.

  * * * *

  The Seed is not yet fully explained:

  Billions thought this: Dr. Roy Cullins is speaking. Cullins himself, while watching and listening with the billions, thought this: a pattern of phosphor dots excited by electricity forms an image resembling me while other electrical impulses create sounds similar to my voice and both sets of impulses are controlled by sensitized molecular layers in a block of alloy, which is a recording made of my image and voice a few hours ago.

  When he was very young, Roy Cullins had developed the habit of thinking that way. He thought it was the mark of a precise, analytical mind. He still thought that.

  Cain thought this: Cullins is speaking. Again.

  Erika’s thoughts were not of the stereovision screen. She wanted to get laid. Again.

  The pattern of phosphor dots, etc., said, “It is necessary that the Seed be a starship. The cosmic egg will explode and the cosmic debris will fill the small but expanding universe with hydrogen gas which will condense into planets, stars, and nebulae. The new universe will not have been expanding as long as our older one has and will contain less empty space in proportion to solid matter, but the distances between spiral nebulae will still be immensely greater than between stars in our present galaxy. And, though it is not impossible that the Seed will be in the midst of an infant galaxy when the McJunkins field collapses, its most likely location at that time will be in intergalactic space. The average distance between galaxies in our universe is about three million light-years, though the galaxy M33 in Andromeda and the galaxy M31 are closer than that to our galaxy, and we have taken into consideration that the Seed may have to travel across such intergalactic gulfs. If the crew find themselves between galaxies, they will simply select the closest one and accelerate in that direction, using the del Gatto field drive, until they are traveling at a velocity which is within a hairsbreadth of the speed of light. Though the voyage will take more than a million years from the point of view of an observer in the galaxy ahead, only a few weeks will have elapsed from the viewpoint of the crew, as a consequence of the usual effects of Classical Relativity. At an appropriate distance within the galaxy they will begin deceleration, at the same time using the usual methods of selecting a sunlike star that has planets.”

  “Then they will colonize that planet, Dr. Cullins?” That came from another pattern of phosphor dots, etc., which was an analog of the reporter doing the interviewing.

  “Not necessarily. The first star selected might lack planets at the proper distance for a reasonable temperature. Or the planet might be at the right distance but have such a slow rotation period that the extremes of temperature would be too great. In that case, they would accelerate again and try another likely star. With the del Gatto drive, a suitable planet could be found in a few months. But there is also the possibility that the planets would not yet have cooled enough to develop life. In that event, the crew would send the Seed away from the planet and travel at near light speed until sufficient time has passed and the planet has cooled and oceans have formed. Then spore pods will be discharged into the oceans.”

  ‘Spore pods, of course, are containers of primitive one-celled life forms which have a DNA structure like that of terrestrial life forms but which were artificially constructed to approximate the first life forms that appeared on our planet. And your hope, Dr. Cullins, is that these forms of earthlike life will flourish in the seas of the new planet and evolve into more complex life forms not greatly different from those of the earth. Is that correct, Dr. Cullins?”

  “Hell no, man! Where do you get all these weird ideas?” said the nonphosphorus Cullins.

  “Yes,” agreed the Cullins of the phosphors. “Of course the evolution will certainly take several billion years, during which time the crew of the Seed will spend time on another round trip at near light speed. When they return, an earth-like ecology should be present, allowing a hospitable environment in which present terrestrial plants and animals could function. And they will have fertilized seeds and ova preserved by freezing and the equipment for nurturing them. The new world will have both familiar and strange life forms on it, but all will be children of Earth.”

  “What if the crew finds a suitable planet which already has life on it, Dr. Cullins?”

  “Precisely the same thing that we will do as we spread our colonies through the galaxy. They will land and determine if they and the terrestrial life forms can survive alongside the alien life forms. If they cannot, they will have to search elsewhere.”

  “Isn’t the crew rather small for such an undertaking, Dr. Cullins?”

  “Bastard!” said the dotless Cullins, speaking the thought aloud that he had kept silent when the recording had been made.

  The Cullins of the phosphor dots was apparently calm and genial. “As is the usual case with starships, the majority of the crew exist as frozen fertilized human ova which will be thawed at an opportune time and grown in artificial wombs, then educated by the adult crew members and by the ship computer. This is the most economical way to colonize the galaxy and the same holds true for colonizing the next universe.”

  “But the usual size for the adult and conscious crew of a starship is fifty, Dr. Cullins, not nine. Is there a reason for this?”

  “You’re hurting me,” Erika protested.

  “Sorry,” said the dotless Cullins, releasing his grip on her hand.

  “As you know,” began the Cullins of the phosphors, “this is a starship of standard design and the standard starship wasn’t designed with a McJunkins field generator as part of the structure. And a McJunkins generator is a rather bulky piece of hardware. Therefore, space is less abundant and the number of adult crew members had to be reduced.”

  “I didn’t want to have to admit that—” said the dotless Cullins, “that we had been unable to get funds enough to build a special ship and had to be content with the ship that was built for the ninth interstellar probe. That ship is not even close to being an optimum design. It cheapens the project. And might make it hard for us to get a special ship for the next Seed.”

  “If there is another Seed,” said the only and dotless Cain. “You’re ignoring the point that you just talked around in that interview. The Seed could carry a crew of fifteen in spite of the McJunkins generator. But we could only find nine who were fitted to be the nucleus of a new race and wanted to go. We had to drive off the crackpots, and the ones who were suited only to be janitors, with threats of violence, but could only find nine volunteers who had the talents and the mental stability.”

  “Which only shows that this is a decadent age. But the reality of the first Seed will grow in the public consciousness and reverse the trend. Even if this century doesn’t launch them, more Seeds will come.”

  The Cullins of the phosphors had vanished from the screen. There was more to the interview, but the scene in the steevee screen had been shifted to an announcer behind the usual bare desk. “And now we switch to live coverage of the launching of the Seed, beamed from beyond Pluto to our relay on Titan, then from Titan to our relay satellite, then down to our studios. I remind you again that Pluto is never closer to Earth than three billion two hundred million miles, and, though our signals from the Seed travel at the speed of light, they take five hours, thirty-four minutes, and twenty-seven seconds to travel from our transmitter near the Seed to the Earth. Consequently, though our transmission shows the Seed prior to its launching, and this is a live broadcast, not a molecording, the Seed has, in fact, already been launched upon the seas of time.”

  “Ouch,” said the only Cullins in sight.

  “Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep,” Cain sang softly.

  The announcer with the household word for a name beamed through his glasses in an extrovertedly intellectual way, then faded, leaving only his voice. The starship was visible on the screen. Not visible were the batteries of search-lights that were necessary to illuminate the starship
for the benefit of the steevee cameras. The older TV cameras could have been operated with the addition of an image intensification circuit which would give them a sensitivity appropriate to the faint light of the distant sun, but the networks wanted to cover the event not just in color but in living depth as well. “It is now T minus one minute and counting. We cut to the Seed for a final word with the mission commander, David Kandt.” Cut they did, to an unsmiling, obviously nervous mission commander.

  “In your last seconds in this universe, what are your thoughts, Commander?” asked the voice of a new announcer, this one sounding just as extrovertedly intellectual as the first.