The Fourth Time Travel MEGAPACK®

by Fritz Leiber

  “They’re happy now,” Arkalion observed. “The novelty of free fall, of weighing exactly nothing, strikes them as amusing.”

  “I think I’m getting the hang of it,” said Temple. Clumsily, he made a few tentative swimming motions in the air, propelling himself forward a few yards before he lost his balance and tumbled head over heels against the wall.

  Arkalion came to him quickly, in a combination of swimming and pushing with hands and feet against the wall. Arkalion righted him expertly, sat down gingerly beside him. “If you keep sudden motions to a minimum, you’ll get along fine. More than anything else, that’s the secret of it.”

  Temple nodded. “It’s sort of like the first time you’re on ice skates. Say, how come you’re so good at it?”

  “I used to read the old, theoretical books on space-travel.” The words poured out effortlessly, smoothly. “I’m merely applying the theories put forward as early as the 1950’s.”

  “Oh.” But it left Temple with some food for thought. Alaric Arkalion was a queer duck, anyway, and of all the men gathered in the spaceship’s lounge, he alone had mastered weightlessness with hardly any trouble.

  “Take your ice skates,” Arkalion went on. “Some people put them on and use them like natural extensions of their feet the first time. Others fall all over themselves. I suppose I am lucky.”

  “Sure,” said Temple. Actually, the only thing odd about Arkalion was his old-young face and—perhaps—his propensity for coming up with the right answers at the right times. Arkalion had seemed so certain of space-travel. He’d hardly batted an eyelash when they boarded a long, tapering bullet-shaped ship at White Sands and thundered off into the sky. He took for granted the change-over to a huge round ship at the wheel-shaped station in space. Moments after leaving the space station—with a minimum of stress and strain, thanks to the almost-nil gravity—it was Arkalion who first swam through air to the viewport and pointed out the huge crescent earth, green and gray and brown, sparkling with patches of dazzling silver-white. “You will observe it is a crescent,” Arkalion had said. “It is closer to the sun than we are, and off at an angle. As I suspected, our destination is Mars.”

  * * * *

  Then everyone was saying goodbye to earth. Fantastic, it seemed. There were tears, there was laughter, cursing, promises of return, awkward verbal comparisons with the crescent moon, vows of faithfulness to lovers and sweethearts. And there was Arkalion, with an avid expression in the old eyes, Arkalion with his boyish face, not saying goodbye so much as he was calling hello to something Temple could not fathom.

  Now, as he struggled awkwardly with weightlessness, Temple called it his imagination. His thought-patterns shifted vaguely, without motivation, from the gleaming, polished interior of the ship with its smell of antiseptic and metal polish to the clear Spring air of Earth, blue of sky and bright of sun. The unique blue sky of Earth which he somehow knew could not be duplicated elsewhere. Elsewhere—the word itself bordered on the meaningless.

  And Stephanie. The brief warm ecstasy of her—once, forever. He wondered with surprising objectivity if a hundred other names, a hundred other women were not in a hundred other minds while everyone stared at the crescent Earth hanging serenely in space—with each name and each woman as dear as Stephanie, with the same combination of fire and gentle femininity stirring the blood but saddening the heart. Would Stephanie really forget him? Did he want her to? That part of him burned by the fire of her said no—no, she must not forget him. She was his, his alone, roped and branded though a universe separated them. But someplace in his heart was the thought, the understanding, the realization that although Stephanie might keep a small place for him tucked someplace deep in her emotions, she must forget. He was gone—permanently. For Stephanie, he was dead. It was as he had told her that last stolen day. It was… Stephanie, Stephanie, how much I love you.…

  Struggling with weightlessness, he made his way back to the small room he shared with Arkalion. Hardly more than a cubicle, it was, with sufficient room for two beds, a sink, a small chest. He lay down and slept, murmuring Stephanie’s name in his sleep.

  * * * *

  He awoke to the faint hum of the air-pumps, got up feeling rested, forgot his weightlessness and floated to the ceiling where only an outthrust arm prevented a nasty bump on his head. He used hand grips on the wall to let himself down. He washed, aware of no way to prevent the water he splashed on his face from forming fine droplets and spraying the entire room. When he crossed back to the foot of his bed to get his towel he thrust one foot out too rapidly, lost his balance, half-rose, stumbled and fell against the other bed which, like all other items of furniture, was fastened to the floor. But his elbow struck sleeping Arkalion’s jaw sharply, hard enough to jar the man’s teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” said Temple. “Didn’t mean to do that,” he apologized again, feeling embarrassed.

  Arkalion merely lay there.

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  Arkalion still slept. It seemed inconceivable, for Temple’s elbow pained him considerably. He bent down, examined his inert companion.

  Arkalion stirred not a muscle.

  Vaguely alarmed, Temple thrust a hand to Arkalion’s chest, felt nothing. He crouched, rested the side of his head over Arkalion’s heart. He listened, heard—nothing.

  What was going on here?

  “Hey, Arkalion!” Temple shook him, gently at first, then with savage force. Weightless, Arkalion’s body floated up off the bed, taking the covers with it. His own heart pounding furiously, Temple got it down again, fingered the left wrist and swallowed nervously.

  Temple had never seen a dead man before. Arkalion’s heart did not beat. Arkalion had no pulse.

  Arkalion was dead.

  Yelling hoarsely, Temple plunged from the room, soaring off the floor in his haste and striking his head against the ceiling hard enough to make him see stars. “This guy is dead!” he cried. “Arkalion is dead.”

  Men stirred in the companionway. Someone called for one of the armed guards who were constantly on patrol.

  “If he’s dead, you’re yelling loud enough to get him out of his grave.” The voice was quiet, amused.

  Arkalion.

  “What?” Temple blurted, whirling around and striking his head again. A little wild-eyed, he re-entered the room.

  “Now, who is dead, Kit?” demanded Arkalion, sitting up and stretching comfortably.

  “Who—is dead? Who—?” Open-mouthed, Temple stared.

  A guard, completely at home with weightlessness, entered the cubicle briskly. “What’s the trouble in here? Something about a dead man, they said.”

  “A dead man?” demanded Arkalion. “Indeed.”

  “Dead?” muttered Temple, lamely and foolishly. “Dead.…”

  Arkalion smiled deprecatingly. “My friend must have been talking in his sleep. The only thing dead in here is my appetite. Weightlessness doesn’t let you become very hungry.”

  “You’ll grow used to it,” the guard promised. He patted his paunch happily. “I am. Well, don’t raise the alarm unless there’s some trouble. Remember about the boy who cried wolf.”

  “Of course,” said Temple. “Sure. Sorry.”

  He watched the guard depart.

  “Bad dream?” Arkalion wanted to know.

  “Bad dream, my foot. I accidentally hit you. Hard enough to hurt. You didn’t move.”

  “I’m a sound sleeper.”

  “I felt for your heart. It wasn’t beating. It wasn’t!”

  “Oh, come, come.”

  “Your heart was not beating, I said.”

  “And I suppose I was cold as a slab of ice?”

  “Umm, no. I don’t remember. Maybe you were. You had no pulse, either.”

  Arkalion laughed easily. “And am I
still dead?”

  “Well—”

  “Clearly a case of overwrought nerves and a highly keyed imagination. What you need is some more sleep.”

  “I’m not sleepy, thanks.”

  “Well, I think I’ll get up and go down for breakfast.” Arkalion climbed out of bed gingerly, made his way to the sink and was soon gargling with a bottle of prepared mouthwash, occasionally spraying weightless droplets of the pink liquid up at the ceiling.

  Temple lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, made his way to Arkalion’s bed while the man hummed tunelessly at the sink. Temple let his hands fall on the sheet. It was not cold, but comfortably cool. Hardly as warm as it should have been, with a man sleeping on it all night.

  Was he still imagining things?

  “I’m glad you didn’t call for a burial detail and have me expelled into space with yesterday’s garbage,” Arkalion called over his shoulder jauntily as he went outside for some breakfast.

  Temple cursed softly and lit another cigarette, dropping the first one into a disposal chute on the wall.

  * * * *

  Every night thereafter, Temple made it a point to remain awake after Arkalion apparently had fallen asleep. But if he were seeking repetition of the peculiar occurrence, he was disappointed. Not only did Arkalion sleep soundly and through the night, but he snored. Loudly and clearly, a wheezing snore.

  Arkalion’s strange feat—or his own overwrought imagination, Temple thought wryly—was good for one thing: it took his mind off Stephanie. The days wore on in endless, monotonous routine. He took some books from the ship’s library and browsed through them, even managing to find one concerned with traumatic catalepsy, which stated that a severe emotional shock might render one into a deep enough trance to have a layman mistakenly pronounce him dead. But what had been the severe emotional disturbance for Arkalion? Could the effects of weightlessness manifest themselves in that way in rare instances? Temple naturally did not know, but he resolved to find out if he could after reaching their destination.

  One day—it was three weeks after they left the space station, Temple realized—they were all called to assembly in the ship’s large main lounge. As the men drifted in, Temple was amazed to see the progress they had made with weightlessness. He himself had advanced to handy facility in locomotion, but it struck him all the more pointedly when he saw two hundred men swim and float through air, pushing themselves along by means of the hand-holds strategically placed along the walls.

  The ever-present microphone greeted them all. “Good afternoon, men.”

  “Good afternoon, mac!”

  “Hey, is this the way to Ebbetts’ Field?”

  “Get on with it!”

  “Sounds like the same man who addressed us in White Sands,” Temple told Arkalion. “He sure does get around.”

  “A recording, probably. Listen.”

  “Our destination, as you’ve probably read in newspapers and magazines, is the planet Mars.”

  Mutterings in the assembly, not many of surprise.

  “Their suppositions, based both on the seven hundred eighty day lapse between Nowhere Journeys and the romantic position in which the planet Mars has always been held, are correct. We are going to Mars.

  “For most of you, Mars will be a permanent home for many years to come—”

  “Most of us?” Temple wondered out loud.

  Arkalion raised a finger to his lips for silence.

  “—until such time as you are rotated according to the policy of rotation set up by the government.”

  Temple had grown accustomed to the familiar hoots and catcalls. He almost had an urge to join in himself.

  “Interesting,” Arkalion pointed out. “Back at White Sands they claimed not to know our destination. They knew it all right—up to a point. The planet Mars. But now they say that all of us will not remain on Mars. Most interesting.”

  “—further indoctrination in our mission soon after our arrival on the red planet. Landing will be performed under somewhat less strain than the initial takeoff in the Earth-to-station ferry, since Mars exerts less of a gravity pull than Earth. On the other hand, you have been weightless for three weeks and the change-over is liable to make some of you sick. It will pass harmlessly enough.

  “We realize it is difficult, being taken from your homes without knowing the nature of your urgent mission. All I can tell you now—and, as a matter of fact, all I know—”

  “Here we go again,” said Temple. “More riddles.”

  “—is that everything is of the utmost urgency. Our entire way of life is at stake. Our job will be to safeguard it. In the months which follow, few of you will have any big, significant role to play, but all of you, working together, will provide the strength we need. When the cadre—”

  “So they call their guards teachers,” Arkalion commented dryly.

  “—come around, they will see that each man is strapped properly into his bunk for deceleration. Deceleration begins in twenty-seven minutes.”

  Mars, thought Temple, back in his room with Arkalion. Mars. He did not think of Stephanie, except as a man who knows he must spend the rest of his life in prison might think of a lush green field, or the cool swish of skis over fresh, powdery snow, or the sound of yardarms creaking against the wind on a small sailing schooner, or the tang of wieners roasting over an open fire with the crisp air of fall against your back, or the scent of good French brandy, or a woman.

  Deceleration began promptly. Before his face was distorted and his eyes forced shut by a pressure of four gravities, Temple had time to see the look of complete unconcern on Arkalion’s face. Arkalion, in fact, was sleeping.

  He seemed as completely relaxed as he did that morning Temple thought he was dead.

  CHAPTER IV

  “Petrovitch, S. A.!” called the Comrade standing abreast of the head of the line, a thin, nervous man half a head shorter than the girl herself. Sophia Androvna Petrovitch strode forward, took a pair of trim white shorts from the neat stack at his left.

  “Is that all?” she said, looking at him.

  “Yes, Comrade. Well, a woman. Well.”

  Without embarrassment, Sophia had seen the men ahead of her in line strip and climb into the white shorts before they disappeared through a portal ahead of the line, depositing their clothing in a growing pile on the floor. But now it was Sophia’s turn, after almost a two hour wait. Not that it was chilly, but.…

  “Is that all?” she repeated.

  “Certainly. Strip and move along, Comrade.” The nervous little man appraised her lecherously, she thought.

  “Then I must keep some of my own clothing,” she told him.

  “Impossible. I have my orders.”

  “I am a woman.”

  “You are a volunteer for the Stalintrek. You will take no personal property—no clothing—with you. Strip and advance, please.”

  Sophia flushed slightly, while the men behind her began to call and taunt.

  “I like this Stalintrek.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “We are waiting, Comrade.”

  Quickly and with an objective detachment which surprised her, Sophia unbuttoned her shirt, removed it. Her one wish—and an odd one, she thought, smiling—was for wax for her ears. She loosened the three snaps of her skirt, watched it fall to the floor. She stood there briefly, lithe-limbed, a tall, slim girl, then had the white shorts over her nakedness in one quick motion. She still wore a coarse halter.

  “All personal effects, Comrade,” said the nervous little man.

  “No,” Sophia told him.

  “But yes. Definitely, yes. You hold up the line, and we have a schedule to maintain. The Stalintrek demands quick, prompt obedience.”

  “Then you will give me one additional item
of clothing.”

  The man looked at Sophia’s halter, at the fine way she filled it. He shrugged. “We don’t have it,” he said, clearly enjoying himself.

  In volunteering for the Stalintrek, Sophia had invaded man’s domain. She had watched not with embarrassment but with scorn while the men in front of her got out of their clothing. She had invaded man’s domain, and as she watched them, the short flabby ones, the bony ones with protruding ribs and collar-bones, those of milky white skin and soft hands, she knew most of them would bite off more than they could chew if ever they tried what was the most natural thing for men to try with a lone woman in an isolated environment. But she was in a man’s world now, and if that was the way they wanted it, she would ask no quarter.

  She reached up quickly with one hand and unfastened the halter, catching it with her free hand and holding it in front of her breasts while the nervous little man licked his lips and gaped. Sophia grabbed another pair of the white shorts, tore it quickly with her strong fingers, fashioning a crude covering for herself. This she pulled around her, fastening it securely with a knot in back.

  “You’ll have to give that back to me,” declared the nervous little Comrade.

  “I’ll bet you a samovar on that,” Sophia said quietly, so only the man heard her.

  He reached out, as if to rip the crude halter from her body, but Sophia met him halfway with her strong, slim fingers, wrapping them around his biceps and squeezing. The man’s face turned quickly to white as he tried unsuccessfully to free his arm.

  “Please, that hurts.”

  “I keep what I am wearing.” She tightened her grip, but gazed serenely into space as the man stifled a whimper.

  “Well—” the man whispered indecisively as he gritted his teeth.

  “Fool!” said Sophia. “Your arm will be black and blue for a week. While you men grow soft and lazy, many of the women take their gymnastics seriously, especially if they want to keep their figures with the work they must do and the food they must eat. I am stronger than you and I will hurt you unless—” And her hand tightened around his scrawny arm until her knuckles showed white.