Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  Holmes nodded. “And you want me to help you find out who altered history. Who stopped this—” he tapped the book, “—from happening?”

  Both doctors nodded slowly.

  “This is beyond the imagination,” I said, no longer able to hold my tongue. “I have heard some crazy stories in my time, but—”

  Holmes held up his hand for me to stop and then turned to the gentlemen. “How would you propose I do this task?” Dr. Frederick pointed to the large case. “In here is the machine that moves us through time. Come back with us to the night of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.”

  “What?” I said.

  But Holmes nodded. “Can you then bring us back to this point?”

  Dr. Frederick shook his head. “Not exactly. We can leave a homing package here, but time will flow at the same pace as the time you spend on the ship. If we are there for an hour, you will return here in an hour.”

  Holmes again nodded, then turned to me. “Watson, dampen the fire. And fetch our heaviest coats. We are going for a short trip.”

  “But you can’t really imagine—” For the third time tonight Holmes stopped me with a sharp look and a hand gesture.

  “My dear Watson. We have a case at hand.” He was clearly seeing something I was missing and was willing to let these two have enough rope to prove their insanity.

  I sighed rather loudly, but then nodded and did as I was instructed. Holmes and I donned our coats as Dr. Serling seemed to type on some sort of instrument inside the case, clicking like the sound of a dog scampering across a hardwood floor. Then he placed a small blue-green cube on the table on the top of the large book and nodded to Holmes and myself. “We are ready. Please step close.”

  Holmes did so immediately and I followed reluctantly. My mind was starting to worry at the possibility of actually traveling through time. Yet the thought was so utterly preposterous that I couldn’t hold the reality of it.

  As I stopped beside Holmes, Dr. Serling tapped a small button inside the case.

  For a moment nothing registered. It was as if someone had turned off the lights and the fire and all the sounds and feelings of the world.

  Then as quickly as it had left the world was back.

  In my mind we were still standing like fools bundled against the cold inside the warm Baker Street address. But then Holmes said, “Interesting” and stepped toward the wooden rail to gaze out at the black night.

  “What the devil—” The icy cold wind sucked the words from my mouth. I could not only feel the cold, but smell and taste it. Intense, biting cold mixed with the salty smells of the open sea. I spun around to look quickly in all directions as the wind messed my hair and pulled open my coat, sending shivers through my torso. We were clearly on a large ship, somewhere near the bow. The width of the ship was almost that of a city block, and a towering wall of metal rose both forward and aft of our position.

  “We are on the forward well deck near the starboard side,” Dr. Frederick said to Holmes.

  Holmes only nodded as his intense gaze took in every detail. I, on the other hand, fought to keep my late dinner in my stomach. The very fact that we stood here on this cold wooden deck challenged every principle I believed in and lived by. I must be dreaming. Holmes had not awakened me and any moment this would all be a fleeting memory of a long night of troubled sleep.

  Overhead a bell started ringing insistently. I glanced up at the tall pole and could barely see the light from what seemed to be a crow’s nest. Words floated down to us through the night air. “Iceberg right ahead.”

  Dr. Franklin turned to Holmes. “That was lookout. Fleet talking to Sixth Officer Moody who is on the bridge.” Franklin pointed toward the stem and up. “All right on time.”

  Holmes only nodded. He seemed to be listening intently to the sounds of the night, the water slapping against the sides of the huge ship, the low rumble of the engines. After a moment he nodded and then leaned out over the rail to watch the iceberg approach.

  I moved over beside him and did the same, the cold wind hitting my face and hands with a much harder intensity. Out of the shadow of the well deck, I suddenly realized just how fast the ship had been moving, and that realization combined with the blast of cold wind took my breath away.

  I stood back for a moment, then again leaned out into the wind, peering into the black where the ship was headed. It took me a moment to understand that the dark shape, darker than the night, as if someone had punched a hole in the air, was a huge wall of ice, far wider and bigger than the ship. Fear twisted my stomach and for a moment I forgot the intense cold on my skin. I could see no way that a ship of this size could turn fast enough to avoid a collision.

  Yet I continued to watch with fascination as every moment seemed to stretch. It was a sick fascination, as if watching a horrible fight where someone was being badly hurt, yet unable to turn away.

  As my eyes watered and the tears seemed to freeze on my checks, I watched.

  Slowly the ship turned, just enough, and just at the last second. The bow somehow slid by the leading edge of ice.

  There was a faint rumbling lower in the ship and a distant scraping sound.

  The huge gray wall was suddenly beside us and it seemed as if I could reach out and touch the rough ice. Yet I knew that if I did, the razor-sharp edges would have cut my hands.

  Holmes and I instinctively both took a step away from the rail and watched the mountain slide past the ship. When it was far beyond the stem of the ship and again fading into the black of the night Holmes turned to Dr. Frederick. “So what do you observe is different?”

  “Nothing from our three times back here since we became stuck. However, the records we have said that this part of the deck where we are standing was originally covered with ice from the berg as it scraped past.”

  Holmes nodded.

  “So we are only talking a matter of feet,” I said, “maybe even inches between saving this ship and having it sink?” It was Dr. Frederick’s turn to nod. “In this world, as I am sure you read in your newspapers, the ship sustained damage, but the watertight compartments held the ship afloat until it could get to New York. In my universe the damage was too extensive and the watertight compartments did very little.”

  Behind us ten or twelve hearty men emerged from a door, the yellow light casting a long bright streak across the deck. They were clearly interested in what had happened and why the engines had stopped. They talked loudly among themselves and headed toward both rails to gaze into the night. I again leaned out and looked to the stem. The iceberg was now barely visible, a gray mountain looming in the night.

  Holmes turned to Dr. Serling. “Is it possible to see these events again?”

  Dr. Serling nodded. “Actually, yes. We can move up, and back in time, to the boat deck.”

  I looked at Holmes and then at Dr. Serling, who was again working in the case. “You mean that we can be up there on the boat deck at the same time we are, or were, here this time watching? I mean—” I stopped. I was totally confused and again my fear returned.

  Dr. Frederick nodded and pulled his coat tighter around himself. “Yes, but there are limits. We have never been able to get close enough to ourselves in experiments to see our earlier, or later, self. But that has not been from lack of trying.” He laughed. ‘Time travel is still new to us. We really can’t explain some of the paradoxes. We just know they exist and somehow the universe stops certain things from happening.”

  “So,” Holmes said, pointing up at the leading edge of the boat deck. “I will not be able to go to that position up there and look down at myself here, unless I am, or was, doing it now. Correct?”

  I glanced up, but a later version of Holmes was not standing there, much to my relief.

  “That would seem to be the rule,” Dr. Serling said. “Ready?”

  Holmes nodded.

  “What about the passengers?” I asked, but to Dr. Serling that question didn’t seem to matter.

  The cold, the salt-
filled air, the feeling of the wooden deck under my feet all went away for a moment.

  And suddenly we were standing next to a lifeboat about halfway down the boat deck, again on the starboard side.

  Without a moment’s hesitation Holmes strode to the starboard side of the ship and looked in the direction of the coming wall of ice.

  I glanced around, relieved that no passenger was within sight to witness our arrival. “I have no desire to get used to this mode of travel,” I said, pulling my coat around me tightly in a vain attempt to hold out the wind. “How fast is this ship traveling?”

  “Over twenty-two knots,” Dr. Frederick said.

  “Far too fast,” I said.

  Dr. Frederick only grunted as the alarm bell started its insistent noise from the direction of the bow. He and I moved to join Holmes at the starboard rail, leaving Dr. Serling with the heavy case.

  Again we watched as the iceberg took its collision course. I found myself unable to take my gaze from that huge, growing mountain. That same sick desire as before kept my gaze frozen into the cold wind until finally, at what seemed to be the last moment, the ship slowly turned, shifting the iceberg to the starboard side of the liner.

  With a fairly loud scraping the cold gray wall slipped past. No one said a word this time and again Holmes seemed to be listening.

  I, on the other hand, was again trying to keep my nerves under control. I took a few quick steps back from the towering wall of ice as it slid past. There was something about this entire event that felt ghoulish, as if we were robbing graves. I shook that thought from my mind and instead thought of the warm fire at Baker Street.

  The mountain faded into the distance behind the ship as Holmes stood at the railing, not watching it but instead deep in thought. I had no idea what he might be thinking. I just knew I wanted to be off this ship and back in my warm quilts, if that was not where I was still.

  “Once more,” Holmes said, turning and moving back over to Dr. Serling. “Only this time could we be somewhere near the bridge?”

  Dr. Sterling seemed to think for a minute and then nodded. “Yes, I Slink I can get us to the boat deck on the port side. That was a deck above where we were on our first visit. That would be close enough for you to move to the port door of the bridge and watch what was happening.”

  Holmes nodded. ‘That would be satisfactory.”

  Serling went to work. A number of first class passengers now occupied the deck, staring toward the stem after the retreating wall of ice. But Serling and Frederick paid them no attention, as if they were nothing but harmless ghosts.

  Serling typed in his case and suddenly the night again vanished.

  And just as suddenly returned.

  We now stood on the other side of the ship, on an empty boat deck, slightly closer to the bow.

  Holmes immediately started toward the door of the bridge. I struggled in vain to remove the thought from my mind that I was not only standing here at this moment, but also at two other places on this same ship. It was enough to make a sane man crazy, and I was sure that insanity was where I was heading at a speed faster than the ship.

  “You only have one look,” Dr. Frederick said. “We won’t be able to repeat this again.”

  Holmes glanced over his shoulder. “I understand perfectly, Doctor.”

  Just as Holmes stuck his head around the edge of the open bridge door the warning bell rang out through the night air.

  Again we watched as the iceberg loomed closer and closer, only to be swept past the starboard side. Being on this side of the deck I felt less threatened by the entire event. Or possibly I was just growing used to it. Another thought I put quickly out of my mind.

  Holmes never took his head away from the open door to glance even once at the iceberg. As the ship slowed and drifted in the black waters he turned to us. The look on his face was one that I had never seen before. It was almost as if he had seen a true ghost.

  “Holmes, are you all right?” I asked as he rejoined us.

  “I need one more time here,” he said. “Can you get me close enough to the main engines to watch them during the time of the collision?”

  Again Dr. Serling thought for a moment while the cold cut through my coat as if it weren’t there. I had experienced many cold London nights, but none anywhere near as cold as this.

  “We’ll have to go back five minutes sooner to give you the time,” Dr. Serling said. He worked in the case for what seemed to be a long minute.

  Then, again without warning from him, the world and the deck and the cold wind vanished. It would at least be courteous for him to give us a moment to prepare.

  This time he had placed us in a fairly narrow hallway lit by electric lamps at intervals along the walls.

  I leaned against the polished wood and took a deep breath of the warm, coal-smelling air. It was a relief to be out of the wind and the cold, but the thought of being inside a ship about to hit an iceberg had me on the edge of a slight panic.

  ‘Through there and down the circular stairs,” Dr. Serling said, pointing to a wooden door at the end of the hall. “The engine room will be down there. You only have a few minutes.”

  Holmes nodded and didn’t waste a moment striding the distance to the door and disappearing through it.

  I opened my coat to allow the warmer air to flow around my torso. Dr. Serling adjusted a dial inside his case and then sat on the carpeted floor. Dr. Frederick just paced.

  Finally he stopped and turned to me. “Do you think he can solve this?”

  I gave a slight, very halfhearted laugh. “If there is something to solve, I am sure he can. But I do not exactly understand what you are asking of him.” I stared at Dr. Frederick and then said quietly, “If you ponder it, I am not sure you understand either.”

  “We are asking him,” Dr. Frederick said, gesturing at the walls around us, “to simply put history right. This ship belongs on the bottom of the Atlantic. It needs to be there for history to return to normal.”

  I simply watched him as he started his pacing again. I knew it would do no good to remind him of the hundreds of people he said would die tonight if that occurred. In the background we could hear the seemingly distant rumble of the engines and occasionally a noise of a passenger from somewhere nearby. But otherwise the hallway remained silent until a fairly loud scraping and grinding filled the air.

  I held onto a smooth edge of wood paneling and took deep, controlled breaths until the noise stopped. The engines dropped silent and then there was only quiet. Again my mind filled in the comparison between the silence of a graveyard, or the silence of the dead of night, before even the birds are moving.

  Frederick looked at me and I returned his stare, saying nothing.

  At the end of the hall the door opened and Holmes rejoined us. “We can go back to Baker Street now,” he said, his voice sounding tired and emptied of all energy.

  I glanced first at Holmes and then at the doctors as they looked at each other puzzled.

  “Did you solve our problem?” Dr. Frederick asked.

  Holmes did nothing but shake his head. “The fire would feel comforting against the chill.”

  After a moment Dr. Serling bent to the case at his feet, made a few adjustments and suddenly the hall was gone, replaced quickly by the familiar surroundings of Baker Street.

  Without removing my heavy coat, I bent to the fire and soon had it roaring again, its yellow flame overpowering the lamps.

  I finished and turned to the room. Holmes had removed his coat and was again in his chair. Only it was very clear he was deep in thought. Both our guests understood his mood and both were respecting it. I removed my coat and hung it in its place, then moved back to the chair near the fire. The heat cut into the oppressive cold of the night and the feeling that the ship had been haunted. Haunted by not only our own ghosts, but more by the fact that many people might have died that night. In my years with Holmes and as a doctor I have witnessed many close calls and many deaths.

/>   Yet none to my memory had shaken me as much as standing on the deck of that ship tonight.

  Holmes stirred and picked up the book beside him. “Does this book have an account of the collision?”

  Dr. Frederick nodded and Holmes opened the book and went to work studying and quickly reading. We remained silent and I spent the minutes holding my hands out in front of me so that the cold could be forced out by the warmth of the flames. The memory of being on that ship would, in time, fade into a seemingly bad vision and nothing more.

  Finally, Holmes laid the book back down and sighed. “I’m afraid there is nothing I can do to help you gentlemen.” “What?” Dr. Serling said. “You mean you won’t help us.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Holmes said, “I said I can’t.”

  “But—” This time it was Dr. Frederick’s turn to stop his companion.

  “Mr. Holmes,” Dr. Frederick asked, “are you saying you do not know what caused the switch in history?” “Basically, yes. That is what I am saying.” Holmes patted the book. “The details outlined here are exactly what occurred on that ship, except, of course, the ship we visited tonight didn’t sink. I can think of a thousand factors that would have caused such a difference.”

  “Such as?” Dr. Serling said. He was not disguising the panic and the fear in his voice at all.

  “Such as someone or something turning the iceberg just a fraction of a degree.” He made a helpless gesture. “I would not think such a feat possible, yet I did not think travel through time possible until this evening either.”

  Before either doctor could say a word, Holmes went on. “The switch might have occurred much earlier in the evening. As the captain ordered the increase in speed, the implementation of the order could have been delayed just a few seconds, which would again allow the iceberg to be in a slightly different position at the time of the collision, thus making the damage lighter.”

  It was clear that Holmes’s words were being understood by our guests. Finally Dr. Serling sighed. “It was a hope. Nothing more.”

  Dr. Frederick nodded slowly, his shoulders slumping. “A crazy, stupid hope, at that.”