The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

by Robert A. Heinlein

  I was about to tell Gay to zip my tape—when the whole world was lighted by the brightest light imaginable.

  Luckily we were cruising south with that light behind us. I goosed Gay to flank speed while telling her to tuck in her wings. Not one of my partners asked a foolish question, although I suspect that none had ever seen a fireball or mushroom cloud.

  “Smart Girl.”

  “Here, boss.”

  “DR problem. Record true bearing light beacon relative bearing astern. Record radar range and bearing same beacon. Solve latitude-longitude beacon. Compare solution with fixes in perms. Confirm.”

  “Program confirmed.”

  “Execute.”

  “Roger Wilco, Zeb. Heard any new ones lately?” She added at once, “Solution. True bearing identical with fix execute-coded ‘Gay Deceiver take us home.’ True range identical plus-minus zero point six klicks.”

  “You’re a Smart Girl, Gay.”

  “Flattery will get you anywhere, Zeb. Over.”

  “Roger and out. Hang on to your hats, folks; we’re going straight up.” I had outraced the shock wave but we were close to the Mexican border; either side might send Sprint birds homing on us. “Copilot!”

  “Captain.”

  “Move us! Out of this space!”

  “Where, Captain?”

  “Anywhere! Fast!”

  “Uh, can you ease the acceleration? I can’t lift my arms.”

  Cursing myself, I cut power, let Gay Deceiver climb free. Those vernier controls should have been mounted on arm rests. (Designs that look perfect on the drawing board can kill test pilots.)

  “Translation complete, Captain.”

  “Roger, Copilot. Thank you.” I glanced at the board: six-plus klicks height above ground and rising—thin but enough air to bite. “Hang on to our lunch, Sharpie!” I leaned us backward while doing an Immelman into level flight, course north, power still off. I told Gay to stretch the glide, then tell me when we had dropped to three klicks H-above-G.

  What should be Phoenix was off to the right; another city—Flagstaff?—farther away, north and a bit east; we appeared to be headed home. There was no glowing cloud on the horizon. “Jake, where are we?”

  “Captain, I’ve never been in this universe. We translated ten quanta positive tau-axis. So we should be in analogous space close to ours—ten minimum intervals or quanta.”

  “This looks like Arizona.”

  “I would expect it to, Captain. You recall that one-quantum translation on this axis was so very like our own world that Deety and I confused it with our own, until she picked up a dictionary.”

  “Phone book, Pop.”

  “Irrelevant, dear. Until she missed the letter ‘J’ in an alphabetical list. Ten quanta should not change geological features appreciably and placement of cities is largely controlled by geography.”

  “Approaching three klicks, boss.”

  “Thanks, Gay. Hold course and H-above-G. Correction! Hold course and absolute altitude. Confirm and execute.”

  “Roger Wilco, Zeb.”

  I had forgotten that the Grand Canyon lay ahead—or should. “Smart Girl” is smart, but she’s literal-minded. She would have held height-above-ground precisely and given us the wildest roller-coaster ride in history. She is very flexible but the “garbage-in-garbage-out” law applies. She had many extra fail-safes—because I make mistakes. Gay can’t; anything she does wrong is my mistake. Since I’ve been making mistakes all my life, I surrounded her with all the safeguards I could think of. But she had no program against wild rides—she was beefed up to accept them. Violent evasive tactics had saved our lives two weeks ago, and tonight as well. Being too close to a fireball can worry a man—to death.

  “Gay, display map, please.”

  The map showed Arizona—our Arizona; Gay does not have in her gizzards any strange universes. I changed course to cause us to pass over our cabin site—its analog for this space-time. (Didn’t dare tell her: “Gay, take us home!”—for reasons left as an exercise for the class.) “Deety, how long ago did that bomb go off?”

  “Six minutes twenty-three seconds. Zebadiah, was that really an A-bomb?”

  “Pony bomb, perhaps. Maybe two kilotons. Gay Deceiver.”

  “I’m all ears, Zeb.”

  “Report time interval since radar-ranging beacon.”

  “Five minutes forty-four seconds, Zeb.”

  Deety gasped. “Was I that far off?”

  “No, darling. You reported time since flash. I didn’t ask Gay to range until after we were hypersonic.”

  “Oh. I feel better.”

  “Captain,” inquired Jake, “how did Gay range an atomic explosion? I would expect radiation to make it impossible. Does she have instrumentation of which I am not aware?”

  “Copilot, she has several gadgets I have not shown you. I have not been holding out—any more than you held out in not telling me about guns and ammo you—”

  “My apologies, sir!”

  “Oh, stuff it, Jake. Neither of us held out; we’ve been running under the whip. Deety, how long has it been since we killed that fake ranger?”

  “That was seventeen fourteen. It is now twenty-two twenty. Five hours six minutes.”

  I glanced at the board; Deety’s “circadian clock” apparently couldn’t be jarred by anything; Gay’s clock showed 0520 (Greenwich) with “ZONE PLUS SEVEN” display. “Call it five hours—feels like five weeks. We need a vacation.”

  “Loud cheers!” agreed Sharpie.

  “Check. Jake, I didn’t know that Gay could range an atomic blast. Light ‘beacon’ means a visible light to her just as ‘radar beacon’ means to her a navigational radar beacon. I told her to get a bearing on the light beacon directly aft; she selected the brightest light with that bearing. Then I told her to take radar range and bearing on it—spun my prayer wheel and prayed.

  “There was ‘white noise’ possibly blanketing her radar frequency. But her own radar bursts are tagged; it would take a very high noise level at the same frequency to keep her from recognizing echoes with her signature. Clearly she had trouble for she reported ‘plus-minus’ of six hundred meters. Nevertheless range and bearing matched a fix in her permanents and told us our cabin had been bombed. Bad news. But the aliens got there too late to bomb us. Good news.”

  “Captain, I decline to grieve over material loss. We are alive.”

  “I agree—although I’ll remember Snug Harbor as the happiest home I’ve ever had. But there is no point in trying to warn Earth—our Earth—about aliens. That blast destroyed the clincher: that alien’s cadaver. And papers and drawings you were going to turn over to your Finnish friend. I’m not sure we can go home again.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem, Captain. Two seconds to set the verniers. Not to mention the ‘deadman switch’ and the program in Gay’s permanents.”

  “Jake, I wish you would knock off ‘Captain’ other than for command conditions.”

  “Zeb, I like calling you ‘Captain.’ ”

  “So do I!—my captain.”

  “Me, too, Cap’n Zebbie!”

  “Don’t overdo it. Jake, I didn’t mean that you can’t pilot us home; I mean we should not risk it. We’ve lost our last lead on the aliens. But they know who we are and have shown dismaying skill in tracking us down. I’d like to live to see two babies born and grown up.”

  “Amen!” said Sharpie. “This might be the place for it. Out of a million billion zillion Earths this one may be vermin-free. Highly likely.”

  “Hilda my dear, there are no data on which to base any assumption.”

  “Jacob, there is one datum.”

  “Eh? What did I miss, dear?”

  “That we do know that our native planet is infested. So I don’t want to raise kids on it. If this isn’t the place we’re looking for, let’s keep looking.”

  “Mmm, logical. Yes. Cap—Zeb?”

  “I agree. But we can’t tell much before morning. Jake, I’m unclear on a key
point. If we translated back to our own Earth now, where would we find ourselves? And when?”

  “Pop, may I answer that?”

  “Go ahead, Deety.”

  “The time Pop and I translated to the place with no ‘J’ we thought we had failed. Pop stayed in our car, trying to figure it out. I went inside, intending to fix lunch. Everything looked normal. But the phone book was on the kitchen counter and doesn’t belong there. That book had a toll area map on its back cover. My eye happened to land on ‘Juab County’—and it was spelled ‘Iuab’—and I thought, ‘What a funny misprint!’ Then I looked inside and couldn’t find any ‘J’s’ and dropped the book and went running for Pop.”

  “I thought Deety was hysterical. But when I checked a dictionary and the Britannica we got out in a hurry.”

  “This is the point, Zebadiah. When we flipped back, I dashed into the house. The phone book was where it belonged. The alphabet was back the way it ought to be. The clock in my head said that we had been gone twenty-seven minutes. The kitchen clock confirmed it and it agreed with the clock in the car. Does that answer you, sir?”

  “I think so. In a translation, duration just keeps chugging along. I wondered because I’d like to check that crater after it has had time to cool down. What about that one rotation?”

  “Harder to figure, Zebadiah. We weren’t in that other space-time but a few seconds and we both passed out. Indeterminate.”

  “I’m convinced. But Jake, what about Earth’s proper motions? Rotation, revolution around the Sun, sidereal motion, and so forth.”

  “A theoretical answer calls for mathematics you tell me are outside your scope of study, uh—Zeb.”

  “Beyond my capacity, you mean.”

  “As you will, sir. An excursion elsewhere—and—elsewhen … and return … brings you back to where you would have been had you experienced that duration on Earth. But ‘when’ requires further definition. As we were discussing, uh … earlier this afternoon but it seems longer, we can adjust the controls to reenter any axis at any point with permanent change of interval. For planetary engineering. Or other purposes. Including reentry reversed against the entropy arrow. But I suspect that would cause death.”

  “Why, Pop? Why wouldn’t it just reverse your memory?”

  “Memory is tied to entropy increase, my darling daughter. Death might be preferable to amnesia combined with prophetic knowledge. Uncertainty may be the factor that makes life tolerable. Hope is what keeps us going. Captain!”

  “Copilot.”

  “We have just passed over North Rim.”

  “Thank you, Copilot.” I placed my hands lightly on the controls.

  “Pop, our cabin is still there. Lights in it, too.”

  “So I see. They’ve added a wing on the west.”

  “Yes. Where we discussed adding a library.”

  I said, “Family, I’m not going closer. Your analogs in this world seem to be holding a party. Flood lights show four cars on the grounding flat.” I started Gay into a wide circle. “I’m not going to hover; it could draw attention. A call to their sky cops— Hell’s bells, I don’t even know that they speak English.”

  “Captain, we’ve seen all we need. It’s not our cabin.”

  “Recommendation?”

  “Sir, I suggest maximum altitude. Discuss what to do while we get there.”

  “Gay Deceiver.”

  “On deck, Captain Ahab.”

  “One gee, vertical.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” (How many answers had Deety taped?)

  “Anybody want a sandwich?” asked Sharpie. “I do—I’m a pregnant mother.”

  I suddenly realized that I had had nothing but a piece of pie since noon. As we climbed we finished what was left of supper.

  “Zat Marsh?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Sharpie.”

  “Zebbie you brute, I said, ‘Is that Mars?’ Over there.”

  “That’s Antares. Mars is— Look left about thirty degrees. See it? Same color as Antares but brighter.”

  “Got it. Jacob darling, let’s take that vacation on Barsoom!”

  “Hilda dearest, Mars is uninhabitable. The Mars Expedition used pressure suits. We have no pressure suits.”

  I added, “Even if we did, they would get in the way of a honeymoon.”

  Hilda answered, “I read a jingle about ‘A Space Suit Built for Two.’ Anyhow, let’s go to Barsoom! Jacob, you did tell me we could go anywhere in zip—nothing flat.”

  “Quite true.”

  “So let’s go to Barsoom.”

  I decided to flank her. “Hilda, we can’t go to Barsoom. Mors Kajak and John Carter don’t have their swords.”

  “Want to bet?” Deety asked sweetly.

  “Huh?”

  “Sir, you left it to me to pick baggage for that unassigned space. If you’ll check that long, narrow stowage under the instrument board, you’ll find the sword and saber, with belts. With socks and underwear crammed in to keep them from rattling.”

  I said soberly, “My princess, I couldn’t moan about my sword when your father took the loss of his house so calmly—but thank you, with all my heart.”

  “Let me add my thanks, Deety. I set much store by that old saber, unnecessary as it is.”

  “Father, it was quite necessary this afternoon.”

  “Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s to Barsoom we go!”

  “Captain, we could use the hours ’til dawn for a quick jaunt to Mars. Uh— Oh, dear, I have to know its present distance—I don’t.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Gay gobbles the Aerospace Almanac each year.”

  “Indeed! I’m impressed.”

  “Gay Deceiver.”

  “You again? I was thinking.”

  “So think about this. Calculation program. Data address, Aerospace Almanac. Running calculation, line-of-sight distance to planet Mars. Report current answers on demand. Execute.”

  “Program running.”

  “Report.”

  “Klicks two-two-four-zero-nine-zero-eight-two-seven point plus-minus nine-eight-zero.”

  “Display running report.”

  Gay did so. “You’re a Smart Girl, Gay.”

  “I can do card tricks, too. Program continuing.”

  “Jake, how do we this?”

  “Align ‘L’ axis with your gun sight. Isn’t that easiest?”

  “By far!” I aimed at Mars as if to shoot her out of the sky—then got cold feet. “Jake? A little Tennessee windage? I think those figures are from center-of-gravity to center-of-gravity. Half a mil would place us a safe distance away. Over a hundred thousand klicks.”

  “A hundred and twelve thousand,” Jake agreed, watching the display.

  I offset one half mil. “Copilot.”

  “Captain.”

  “Transit when ready. Execute.”

  Mars in half-phase, big and round and ruddy and beautiful, was swimming off our starboard side.

  XIV

  Deety

  Aunt Hilda said softly, “Barsoom. Dead sea bottoms. Green giants.”

  I just gulped.

  “Mars, Hilda darling,” Pop gently corrected her. “Barsoom is a myth.”

  “Barsoom,” she repeated firmly. “It’s not a myth; it’s there. Who says its name is Mars? A bunch of long-dead Romans. Aren’t the natives entitled to name it? Barsoom.”

  “My dearest, there are no natives. Names are assigned by an international committee sponsored by Harvard Observatory. They confirmed the traditional name.”

  “Pooh! They don’t have any more right to name it than I have. Deety, isn’t that right?”

  I think Aunt Hilda had the best argument but I don’t argue with Pop unless necessary; he gets emotional. My husband saved me.

  “Copilot, astrogation problem. How are we going to figure distance and vector? I would like to put this wagon into orbit. But Gay is no spaceship; I don’t have instruments. Not even a sextant!”

  “Mmm, suppose we try it one piece a
t a time, Captain. We don’t seem to be falling fast and—ulp!”

  “What’s the trouble, Jake!”

  Pop turned pale, sweat broke out; he clenched his jaws, swallowed and re-swallowed. Then his lips barely opened. “M’sheashick.”

  “No, you’re space sick. Deety!”

  “Yessir!”

  “Emergency kit, back of my seat. Unzip it, get Lomine. One pill—don’t let the others get loose.”

  I got at the first-aid kit, found a tube marked Lomine. A second pill did get loose but I snatched it out of the air. Freefall is funny—you don’t know whether you are standing on your head or floating sideways. “Here, Captain.”

  Pop said, “Mall righ’ now. Jus’ took all-over queer a moment.”

  “Sure, you’re all right. You can take this pill—or you can have it pushed down your throat with my dirty, calloused finger. Which?”

  “Uh, Captain, I’d have to have water to swallow it—and I don’t think I can.”

  “Doesn’t take water, pal. Chew it. Tastes good, raspberry flavor. Then keep gulping your saliva. Here.” Zebadiah pinched Pop’s nostrils. “Open up.”

  I became aware of a strangled sound beside me. Aunt Hilda had a hanky pressed to her mouth and her eyes were streaming tears—she was split seconds from adding potato salad and used sandwich to the cabin air.

  Good thing I was still clutching that wayward pill. Aunt Hilda struggled but she’s a little bitty. I treated her the way my husband had treated her husband, then clamped my hand over her mouth. I don’t understand seasickness (or freefall nausea); I can walk on bulkheads with a sandwich in one hand and a drink in the other and enjoy it.

  But the victims really are sick and somewhat out of their heads. So I held her mouth closed and whispered into her ear. “Chew it, Aunty darling, and swallow it.”

  Shortly I could feel her chewing. After several minutes she relaxed. I asked her, “Is it safe for me to ungag you?”

  She nodded. I took my hand away. She smiled wanly and patted my hand. “Thanks, Deety. Can we kiss and make up?”

  Mars—Barsoom—seemed to have grown while I was curing Aunt Hilda’s space sickness. Our men were talking astrogation. My husband was saying, “Sorry, but at extreme range Gay’s radar can see a thousand kilos. You tell me our distance is about a hundred times that.”